15Yr Anniversary Q&A: Answering 'Performance' in DCS

[Raptorattacker]

Trick is 'if you don't let the Landlord know that his beer is off then he won't know,,,'

Just sayin'...

[mondo]

This is really awesome but as a very long time player of EDs sims, my most pressing issue has always been issues with ground AI, ground vehicles with impossible accuracy and situational awareness and the lack of either meaningful splash damage and/or simplistic ground vehicle damage models.   

 

The day when the BMP2, which in reality is so loud and has such poor vision for those inside it that it would have trouble hearing or seeing a B52 taking off next to it is fixed, will be almost as good as the day the Phantom is released. 

[rfxcasey]

Really appreciate this video from Wags and ED, hope to see more in the future. Great stuff.

 

[zoomCrumb]

I can't help but notice that you answered the same question over and over and over for 10 minutes. 'Look over here, not over there' vibes.

[T.Power]

I thought I'd give some performance feedback as I'm a minority Radeon user.  I have a SFF MINISFORUM HX99G, Ryzen 9 6900HX, 64gb RAM, RX 6600M GPU, Crucial T500 1tb 4x4 gen, for DCS only.

As DCS is currently using only FSR 1 I decided to test RSR in the latest drivers as I can force frame generation on with this unit, sure enough I was able to run FSR and RSR and get the same framerate but with way better scaling quality, but it appears they conflict sometimes.  I also went sightseeing in Incirlik in my Black Shark to see if the Mosque would be a framerate killer as per usual or if the update really did help in built up areas, crikey!  The Crucial SSD was a recent purchase as it's designed for media and gaming, that amplified the new texture pipeline, it's vastly improved for me.  My only request is less tracing but I'm sure that will come eventually.  Thanks for the hard work.

Edited April 8, 2024 by T.Power

[Eclipse]

On 4/5/2024 at 1:23 PM, AJaromir said:

For that reason the special flight model, called "GFM" or General Flight Model is now made for AI aircrafts.

The general flight model for AI will be one of the best improvements to DCS in a long time, when it eventually is released.  Authentic maneuvering and dogfights in the incredible DCS warbirds with AI planes that follow the same physics as player aircraft with no UFO behavior will revive interest in the WWII through Korean War periods like nothing else could.  It will revive my own interest, at least. I assume I'm not alone in this!

There are so many incredible things being developed right now. The multithreading and rendering reworks and so many other "under the hood" modernizations have been huge.  Prior to these I could barely handle multiplayer in VR on my PC, and now it's a low 30s framerate with suitable settings but it's relatively smooth so it's still enjoyable.  It's a very noticeable improvement. Not every update helped my situation but in total it's been a good step up.  Vulkan and further VR rendering efficiency improvements down the line will only make it better.  We are still only seeing part of what it will eventually be, which is exciting. 

I can't imagine how complex these projects are.  The ED team should be proud of all they've accomplished. It's a great time to be into DCS!

[St4rgun]

Connecting to the performance questions: I'm thinking about a possible CPU upgrade from 10700k to 14700k to fit more to my 3090 in VR (G2). Right now the performance is really good, almost every time I can have 45 fps with minor hiccups here and there.

But as this upgrade would cost a lot of money and work I'd do it only when it's really neccessary, so I'd prefer to wait for Vulkan to see if it hugely helps in VR with current config. I have no idea how my CPU is a real bottleneck with these resolutions in VR.

Dear @BIGNEWY is it possible to have at least some estimate about the Vulkan deployment? Or at least having some preliminary data about the possible performance uplift of Vulkan?

As we have about one major patch / 1,5 months rate we could see about 4 more major patches this year. Is is possible that we'll reach to Vulkan in this timeframe to check these initial improvements? I know that in the first big newsletter in January ED mentioned this year as the year of Vulkan, but this happened 3 years ago also. Is is possbile that we're still years away, or this time we're really close?

[BIGNEWY]

Just now, St4rgun said:

Dear @BIGNEWY is it possible to have at least some estimate about the Vulkan deployment? Or at least having some preliminary data about the possible performance uplift of Vulkan?

Hi, I am sorry but I can not give any estimates for the timeline for Vulkan, work is in progress and as soon as we can share some more news we will. 

thank you 

[Philippcl04]

Some interisting answers in the video (but one answer to fsr 2+3 schould have done it ) ... but what i really liked to see and wanted to know is when Will the dedicated server also get multithreading? Its really a Problem when you play with friends and the enemy jets starts to hyperjump over the map... cause the single used cpu core on the dedicated server is at 100% load and you get desync Problems and such things...

[schurem]

Please do AI (PvE) next!

[j9murphy]

3 hours ago, St4rgun said:

Connecting to the performance questions: I'm thinking about a possible CPU upgrade from 10700k to 14700k to fit more to my 3090 in VR (G2). Right now the performance is really good, almost every time I can have 45 fps with minor hiccups here and there.

But as this upgrade would cost a lot of money and work I'd do it only when it's really neccessary, so I'd prefer to wait for Vulkan to see if it hugely helps in VR with current config. I have no idea how my CPU is a real bottleneck with these resolutions in VR.

Dear @BIGNEWY is it possible to have at least some estimate about the Vulkan deployment? Or at least having some preliminary data about the possible performance uplift of Vulkan?

As we have about one major patch / 1,5 months rate we could see about 4 more major patches this year. Is is possible that we'll reach to Vulkan in this timeframe to check these initial improvements? I know that in the first big newsletter in January ED mentioned this year as the year of Vulkan, but this happened 3 years ago also. Is is possbile that we're still years away, or this time we're really close?

I said this in another thread a while back, but I think it's a mistake to think that Vulcan is going to give some huge improvement in FPS.  Vulcan will enable the developers to manage graphics calls more efficiently. It's multicore friendly and separates object creation from object usage meaning you can create objects on a different thread and use them without additional overhead. This gives you a lot more ability to tune the app. However, tuning will be a long process. My guess and it's only a guess.. the first release of Vulcan in dcs will not provide huge performance benefits. It will probably make frame rates more consistent, but you're not going see a huge performance jump. Over time, because of Vulcan, the devs will have a much better basis for tuning and we will therefore get improvement (over time) unless they they decide to use the new headroom for new features:) 

[Willie Nelson]

@j9murphy Yes, that’s what I’ve heard too. Vulkan itself simply facilitates more efficient rendering. What that headroom is ultimately used for is up ED and that subsequent process will no doubt take time too. All this happens slowly but I look back at DCS when I first got involved around 2018 and wow it’s come a looooong way. 
 

@Eclipse I too am really looking forward to the General Flight Model being rolled out to AI aircraft if for no other reason that formation practice being a lot easier. 

[draconus]

On 4/17/2024 at 5:44 PM, St4rgun said:

But as this upgrade would cost a lot of money and work I'd do it only when it's really neccessary, so I'd prefer to wait for Vulkan to see if it hugely helps in VR with current config. I have no idea how my CPU is a real bottleneck with these resolutions in VR.

It varies during a mission and depends on a lot of factors: map, objects, AI, settings... so get a tool that shows you CPU/GPU times (even DCS fps counter kinda shows this) and see for yourself. No matter what HW you have a few settings or different mission can make it either CPU intesive or GPU. If anything, Vulkan will help in optimisation and you won't have to upgrade then, but until this time comes you'll probably upgrade anyway. It all depends on your own requirements - does it play and look nice atm?

Edited April 23, 2024 by draconus

[St4rgun]

9 hours ago, draconus said:

It varies during a mission and depends on a lot of factors: map, objects, AI, settings... so get a tool that shows you CPU/GPU times (even DCS fps counter kinda shows this) and see for yourself. No matter what HW you have a few settings or different mission can make it either CPU intesive or GPU. If anything, Vulkan will help in optimisation and you won't have to upgrade then, but until this time comes you'll probably upgrade anyway. It all depends on your own requirements - does it play and look nice atm?

 

To be honest, yes, it looks and plays nice. When 45 fps can be kept rock solid, it's 100% stutter free and flawless at 90 Hz refresh rate. It's smooth as silk.

But this situation is really rare, there're always some little itty-bitty small hiccups here and there. Really not much, but the feeling is like having a quietly ticking clock is a totally silent room: when you detect it, it ruins the otherwise perfect immersion.

What is interesting, that these spikes are simply not shown on DCS's inbuilt frame graph. It shows a smooth flat curve of 45 fps. And the situation depends on a lot of factors (switching to F10 map and back, or simply start DCS on a PC running for hours or start DCS on a freshly rebooted PC etc.)

That's why I started thinking about other possbile sources of these weird micro tracking lag spikes or other glithces (don't forget, it's still WMR). The lighting in my room is pretty adequate and even, shadowless for the G2 (at least I hope so). If you have idea for a better and reliable method for recording exact CPU / GPU frametimes which doesn't induce lag spikes please let me know.

I hope that Vulkan can finally iron out these glitches to get rid of those spikes once for all. Because if everything works perfectly smooth it's really an amazing experience for me even with 45 fps on this headset.

[draconus]

9 minutes ago, St4rgun said:

That's why I started thinking about other possbile sources of these weird micro tracking lag spikes or other glithces (don't forget, it's still WMR). The lighting in my room is pretty adequate and even, shadowless for the G2 (at least I hope so). If you have idea for a better and reliable method for recording exact CPU / GPU frametimes which doesn't induce lag spikes please let me know.

Yeah, you need some 0.1% readings or detailed chart - I heard MSI Afterburner is good for that.

[flyingcyrus]

@St4rgun, finally I'm not alone complaining about WMR performances. Did you try with SteamVR as the runtime for handling OpenXR ? On my setup, it's butter smooth ! Don't forget to set the rendered definition via OpenXR toolkit as it takes precedence over SteamVR...

[draconus]

3 hours ago, flyingcyrus said:

On my setup, it's butter smooth !

Oh, good to know it's not 10700 performance deficiency.

[St4rgun]

7 hours ago, flyingcyrus said:

@St4rgun, finally I'm not alone complaining about WMR performances. Did you try with SteamVR as the runtime for handling OpenXR ? On my setup, it's butter smooth ! Don't forget to set the rendered definition via OpenXR toolkit as it takes precedence over SteamVR...

All right, I checked it out. I switched from SteamVR to OpeXR runtime years ago, and now it seems it was with a good reason.

With SteamVR as the default OpenXR runtime the visuals are SO MUCH WORSE (smeared, simply not crisp enough), and the stuttering is massive. I switched off motion smoothing and the resolution scale was custom - 100% in SteamVR. So I immediately switched back to OpenXR and what a difference!

With OpenXR set to 120% resolution everything is perfect in the G2, and really smooth. I tested with P51 / Caucasus / Free flight over Poti: after 10-15 seconds I started flying level while looking at the right wing. Looking sideways somehow generates bad stutters in DCS in no more than 5-10 seconds. But in OpenXR it's really minimal while with SteamVR it becomes a total stutterfest when looking sideways at a town or a dense forest. It's really terrible.

So thanks again for the suggestion, but I returned to my previous well established settings and still looking for Vulkan.

[flyingcyrus]

3 hours ago, St4rgun said:

With SteamVR as the default OpenXR runtime the visuals are SO MUCH WORSE (smeared, simply not crisp enough), and the stuttering is massive. I switched off motion smoothing and the resolution scale was custom - 100% in SteamVR. So I immediately switched back to OpenXR and what a difference!

With OpenXR set to 120% resolution everything is perfect in the G2, and really smooth. I tested with P51 / Caucasus / Free flight over Poti: after 10-15 seconds I started flying level while looking at the right wing. Looking sideways somehow generates bad stutters in DCS in no more than 5-10 seconds. But in OpenXR it's really minimal while with SteamVR it becomes a total stutterfest when looking sideways at a town or a dense forest. It's really terrible.

 

Just to be sure...
SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality are runtimes, not API. OpenXR (Khronos Group) and OpenVR (Steam) are the API. SteamVR can handle OpenVR (default) and OpenXR if you select it in the settings. Windows Mixed Reality can only handle OpenXR directly. Best result, for me, is the couple SteamVR/OpenXR. Image quality is the same (and set up via the OpenXR Toolkit), I check with screenshots in each combo.

[MartinVoy]

Matt, you mentioned in one of interviews that new maps are getting better, higher resolution textures. Is there a chance the old ones would get an upgrade? Like Nevada for an example. With growing community of VR users and growing sizes of flat screens this would be lovely to see.

[Gary]

On 4/5/2024 at 4:48 PM, Wags said:

You are very welcome. I look forward to more such videos every couple of weeks, or so.

Kind regards,

Wags

Can I ask when the next set of answers will come please and what "topic" it will cover?

Aside from a general interest my personal focus is anything ATC related (and has been for the last 10 years!) - info on which is extremely scarse.

Regards,

Gary

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

9 hours ago, Gary said:

Can I ask when the next set of answers will come please and what "topic" it will cover?

Does it even matter at this point? Not to be rude, but the first video was released half a year too late: everyone who regularly visits the forum already knew the answers.

[Gary]

16 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Does it even matter at this point? Not to be rude, but the first video was released half a year too late: everyone who regularly visits the forum already knew the answers.

You may well be correct in that the answers to the performance set of questions might have already been known. However, unless I've missed something, there are a good many questions to which some answers would be very welcome still - and for me particulary anything ATC related.

[twistking]

On 7/7/2024 at 3:35 PM, Gary said:

You may well be correct in that the answers to the performance set of questions might have already been known. However, unless I've missed something, there are a good many questions to which some answers would be very welcome still - and for me particulary anything ATC related.

they should just redo the performance part. it felt rushed and the questioned were seemingly cherrypicked to be answerable without saying anything concrete.

[Gary]

9 hours ago, twistking said:

they should just redo the performance part. it felt rushed and the questioned were seemingly cherrypicked to be answerable without saying anything concrete.

I made a fatal error in seeking a response to this thread. I foolishly included the "ATC" acronym in my query and I'm pretty confident the forum AI weeds these type of questions out so they never get seen! - the few that do get through usually trip the standard "we are working on it and will let you know more when we have something to say" - been that way for years (and that's no exaggeration)

Anyway, I will keep my fingers crossed for something substantial soon!

 

Regards,

 

Gary