fixed After latest update targets showing as rectangles or low quality boxes on tpod

[aurocia]

hi all, after latest update targets showing as rectangles or low quality boxes on tpod or tads in apache. People on discord have also mentioned the same problem in a10. Referring to the boxy btr behind the sa5

Edited July 14, 2024 by aurocia

[Flappie]

@aurocia Which unit was that?

[aurocia]

4 hours ago, Flappie said:

@aurocia Which unit was that?

I think it’s BTR 80

[WideRide]

I'm getting a similar issue with the MMS in the Kiowa. Haven't had time to test much but the T90 looks like a box, and the Ural with a Zeus mounted on it looks like a normal truck (albeit a different model to the Ural)

I have a pretty low-end system so the above was seen on the single-threaded version. Switched to MT and the models were correct (but unfortunately the stutter/pauses are too much on my system to be playable)

[Flappie]

Apparently, this bug is ST-only:

Try with DCS MT, you should not have this issue.

If you think you're using MT and you are still seeing this issue, please attach your dcs.log file, from Saved Games/DCS.../Logs.

[Bazz_Mulder]

Fix is to delete shaders files in "fxo" and "metashaders" dirs under SavedGames\DCS

Edited July 23, 2024 by Bazz_Mulder

[dfpoor]

On 7/20/2024 at 3:38 AM, Flappie said:

Apparently, this bug is ST-only:

Try with DCS MT, you should not have this issue.

If you think you're using MT and you are still seeing this issue, please attach your dcs.log file, from Saved Games/DCS.../Logs.

I was hoping the BUG would be addressed during the Chinook update.  This really, really, really sucks.

Are you saying ST is no longer supported?  Under MT I get 1 million microstutters, the game is not playable on a new gaming laptop.  Under ST I get 150 silky smooth FPS on high settings.  If ST is no longer supported I will have to quit DCS.  Why don't you load the game under ST and see how all vehicles in the FLIR have been turned into storage containers?  Obviously visual IFF is impossible under this situation.

[dfpoor]

On 7/23/2024 at 2:54 AM, Bazz_Mulder said:

Fix is to delete shaders files in "fxo" and "metashaders" dirs under SavedGames\DCS

 

I deleted the entire contents of "fxo" and "metashaders2" folders, it did not work.  Thanks for your reply.  I am desperate for a solution.  Any other ideas?

[rob10]

ST is not fully unsupported yet, but it is being phased out (ED has indicated this for >6 months now) so support is more limited.  Honestly I think ED were planning to have it gone by now but they're having issues with some newer systems choking on MT so they haven't fully depreciated ST yet while they continue to work on that issue.

Unfortunately I doubt there is anything you can do to fix it on your end short of running MT (this is a known and reported issue in ST).  Otherwise your hoping for ED to decide it's worth the effort to fix it in ST.

Edited August 10, 2024 by rob10

[dfpoor]

rob10, thanks for the help.  I was not aware ST was a goner but in the back of my mind I was afraid it was going to happen.  I have 32G Ram, 8G vRam, RTX4060.  I know the card is not the problem bc I get 150 FPS on ST.  So, the i9-13900 cpu is the problem?  

Six months ago Spudknocker made a tutorial about Process Lasso.  Unfortunately, this did not work for me and I was about to uninstall DCS when I realized I could play on ST.  I just gave Process Lasso a second try and it seems to be working on MT, thank God.  For a second I thought my $700 worth of modules were going to go down the drain.  That was scary.

Can I ask a stupid question?  If I get 150 FPS on ST, and 80 FPS on MT, what is the purpose of MT?

[rob10]

26 minutes ago, dfpoor said:

Can I ask a stupid question?  If I get 150 FPS on ST, and 80 FPS on MT, what is the purpose of MT?

Short version is that that's atypical and for the majority MT is going to improve the experience significantly and allow ED to do more for less performance cost.  Unfortunately they seem to have ran into some issues with certain newer processor combinations where MT isn't a better option.

[Pavlin_33]

Same here: I am shooting at containers when doing air-to-ground, and my multi-threading is a stutter fest.
Single-thread is butter smooth.

 

Edited September 3, 2024 by Pavlin_33

[JohnRedcorn]

On 9/4/2024 at 2:48 AM, Pavlin_33 said:

Same here: I am shooting at containers when doing air-to-ground, and my multi-threading is a stutter fest.
Single-thread is butter smooth.

 

 

Hi, don't know if it will help you, but it helpped me. I had the same stuttering problems in MT version as many user here have. So I found that the solution is to run DCS on physical cores of CPU only. I have an Intel CPU and it uses the "Hyperthreading" technology as all Intel CPUs do nowdays. I don't know how this technology works exactly but I guess it do some kind of a quick context switch for each core (or some cores) of CPU. So it is like if CPU have one physical core it will virtually work as two cores. So we should say that the CPU have 2 cores one physical and one virtual.

 

For some reason DCS doesn't like the virtual cores. If you are not forcing somehow your OS to not use them when running DCS, than you will experience stutters in game. So, how to force you OS to run DCS on physical cores only?

First of all, visit Intel's site to find your CPU model. Check how many physical cores it have in its specs.

The second step is using this online calculator to create a CPU affinity mask for forcing your OS to run the game on physical cores only: -> https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/

How to use the calculator? It is very easy. For example you have an old CPU which have 8 cores, but only 4 cores are physical. You need to select "CPU 0", "CPU 1", "CPU 2", "CPU 3" in claculator. You will see a 0x000000000000000F in CPU Affinity Bitmask (hex): field. If your CPU have 8 physical cores than you need to select until "CPU 7"(inclusive), and the affinity mask will be like this 0x00000000000000FF.

The only thing you need from the affinity mask is the last hex value. For example, from 0x000000000000000F you need only F. From 0x00000000000000FF you need only FF.

From 0x00000000000007FF you need only 7FF. In other words, you don't need all the leading zeros and the "x".

 

After selecting all your physical CPU cores and finishing creating the affinity mask. Right click on the DCS folder on your desktop, click "Properties" and in the "Target" field, where you see a path to your game execution file. Enter the following before the execution path:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "DCS" /affinity [enter your affinity mask here, without the squared parentheses and without the leading zeroes and "x"] "Here continues your execution file path, do not change it".

Example:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "DCS" /affinity 7FF "Your game install folder\DCS World\bin-mt\DCS.exe"

 

The above example will force your OS to run DCS on 11 cores. You can just change the affinity mask to run it on any quantity of physical cores you need. Make sure that the execution path is poiniting to "bin-mt\DCS.exe" otherwise you will run a ST version of the game.

I hope it will help you and others.

 

P.S. I don't know if this solution will help the AMD users. As far as I know AMD CPUs have all physical cores (at least they were) so AMD CPUs should not have this problem.

Edited September 6, 2024 by JohnRedcorn

[Pavlin_33]

11 minutes ago, JohnRedcorn said:

Hi, don't know if it will help you, but it helpped me. I had the same stuttering problems in MT version as many user here have. So I found that the solution is to run DCS on physical cores of CPU only. I have an Intel CPU and it uses the "Hyperthreading" technology as all Intel CPUs do nowdays. I don't know how this technology works exactly but I guess it do some kind of a quick context switch for each core (or some cores) of CPU. So it is like if CPU have one physical core it will virtually work as two cores. So we should say that the CPU have 2 cores one physical and one virtual.

 

For some reason DCS doesn't like the virtual cores. If you are not forcing somehow your OS to not use them when running DCS, than you will experience stutters in game. So, how to force you OS to run DCS on physical cores only?

First of all, visit Intel's site to find your CPU model. Check how many physical cores it have in its specs.

The second step is using this online calculator to create a CPU affinity mask for forcing your OS to run the game on physical cores only: -> https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/

How to use the calculator? It is very easy. For example you have an old CPU which have 8 cores, but only 4 cores are physical. You need to select "CPU 0", "CPU 1", "CPU 2", "CPU 3" in claculator. You will see a 0x000000000000000F in CPU Affinity Bitmask (hex): field. If your CPU have 8 physical cores than you need to select until "CPU 7"(inclusive), and the affinity mask will be like this 0x00000000000000FF.

The only thing you need from the affinity mask is the last hex value. For example, from 0x000000000000000F you need only F. From 0x00000000000000FF you need only FF.

From 0x00000000000007FF you need only 7FF. In other words, you don't need all the leading zeros and the "x".

 

After selecting all your physical CPU cores and finishing creating the affinity mask. Right click on the DCS folder on your desktop, click "Properties" and in the "Target" field, where you see a path to your game execution file. Enter the following before the execution path:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "DCS" /affinity [enter your affinity mask here, without the squared parentheses and without the leading zeroes and "x"] "Here continues your execution file path, do not change it".

Example:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "DCS" /affinity 7FF "Your game install folder\DCS World\bin-mt\DCS.exe"

 

The above example will force your OS to run DCS on 11 cores. You can just change the affinity mask to run it on any quantity of physical cores you need. Make sure that the execution path is poiniting to "bin-mt\DCS.exe" otherwise you will run a ST version of the game.

I hope it will help you and others.

 

Hi and thank you for your reply.

My CPU is old and has only 4 cores, but by re-setting the affinity in the task manager I was able to get rid of stutter in MT.

I will also try if the shortcut update can automate this.

 

[Scotch75]

Hi, don't know if it will help you, but it helpped me. I had the same stuttering problems in MT version as many user here have. So I found that the solution is to run DCS on physical cores of CPU only. I have an Intel CPU and it uses the "Hyperthreading" technology as all Intel CPUs do nowdays. I don't know how this technology works exactly but I guess it do some kind of a quick context switch for each core (or some cores) of CPU. So it is like if CPU have one physical core it will virtually work as two cores. So we should say that the CPU have 2 cores one physical and one virtual.
 
For some reason DCS doesn't like the virtual cores. If you are not forcing somehow your OS to not use them when running DCS, than you will experience stutters in game. So, how to force you OS to run DCS on physical cores only?
First of all, visit Intel's site to find your CPU model. Check how many physical cores it have in its specs.
The second step is using this online calculator to create a CPU affinity mask for forcing your OS to run the game on physical cores only: -> https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/
How to use the calculator? It is very easy. For example you have an old CPU which have 8 cores, but only 4 cores are physical. You need to select "CPU 0", "CPU 1", "CPU 2", "CPU 3" in claculator. You will see a 0x000000000000000F in CPU Affinity Bitmask (hex): field. If your CPU have 8 physical cores than you need to select until "CPU 7"(inclusive), and the affinity mask will be like this 0x00000000000000FF.
The only thing you need from the affinity mask is the last hex value. For example, from 0x000000000000000F you need only F. From 0x00000000000000FF you need only FF.
From 0x00000000000007FF you need only 7FF. In other words, you don't need all the leading zeros and the "x".
 
After selecting all your physical CPU cores and finishing creating the affinity mask. Right click on the DCS folder on your desktop, click "Properties" and in the "Target" field, where you see a path to your game execution file. Enter the following before the execution path:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "DCS" /affinity [enter your affinity mask here, without the squared parentheses and without the leading zeroes and "x"] "Here continues your execution file path, do not change it".
Example:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "DCS" /affinity 7FF "Your game install folder\DCS World\bin-mt\DCS.exe"
 
The above example will force your OS to run DCS on 11 cores. You can just change the affinity mask to run it on any quantity of physical cores you need. Make sure that the execution path is poiniting to "bin-mt\DCS.exe" otherwise you will run a ST version of the game.
I hope it will help you and others.
 
P.S. I don't know if this solution will help the AMD users. As far as I know AMD CPUs have all physical cores (at least they were) so AMD CPUs should not have this problem.

Hmm, I couldn't make that command line work. After inserting the required Affinity (F, in my case), then applying, double-clicking the new icon did nothing.

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[JohnRedcorn]

2 hours ago, Scotch75 said:

Hmm, I couldn't make that command line work. After inserting the required Affinity (F, in my case), then applying, double-clicking the new icon did nothing.

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk
 

Do you keep a "space" between the affinity command and the execution command, and do you keep the execution command in quotes? You should also take only the "F" without the zeroes and "x".

And the most inportant thing is. If you have copy/paste my command then change the "Your game install folder" to actually a game install folder whatever it could be. For example "C:\Games\" or whatever else where your game is actually installed. If you are using steam version then find the game in your steam install dir and use that dir path to replace the "Your game install folder".

The thing that should happen is the cmd window should open and close almost immediatelly and then the game should run. And if you check the cores, you should see that the only 4 is used.

 

I personally always running the game like this because otherwise I have stutterings and the command works for me. So it is real and it works. By the way I have found this solution on this (DCS) forum, but it was buried somewhere betwwen the posts if I remember it well. So this was the reason I did my own post.

Edited September 7, 2024 by JohnRedcorn

[Scotch75]

Do you keep a "space" between the affinity command and the execution command, and do you keep the execution command in quotes? You should also take only the "F" without the zeroes and "x".
And the most inportant thing is. If you have copy/paste my command then change the "Your game install folder" to actually a game install folder whatever it could be. For example "C:\Games\" or whatever else where your game is actually installed. If you are using steam version then find the game in your steam install dir and use that dir path to replace the "Your game install folder".
The thing that should happen is the cmd window should open and close almost immediatelly and then the game should run. And if you check the cores, you should see that the only 4 is used.
 
I personally always running the game like this because otherwise I have stutterings and the command works for me. So it is real and it works. By the way I have found this solution on this (DCS) forum, but it was buried somewhere betwwen the posts if I remember it well. So this was the reason I did my own post.

Yes, I typed in exactly your example with my game location.
Did you change the Target in the DCS (MT) shortcut, or make a new shortcut?

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[JohnRedcorn]

2 minutes ago, Scotch75 said:

Yes, I typed in exactly your example with my game location.
Did you change the Target in the DCS (MT) shortcut, or make a new shortcut?

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk
 

Well, this is strange then.

No I didn't changed anything. There is no DCS_Updater.exe in "bin-mt" so the shortcut is pointitng to "DCS.exe" as it should.

Maybe you should try to create a new shortcut to "bin-mt\DCS.exe" and then try adding the command?

I'm really don't have an idea why its not working for you? Its just an additional command for the OS. You should be able to run any program like this, not just DCS.

[Scotch75]

Well, this is strange then.
No I didn't changed anything. There is no DCS_Updater.exe in "bin-mt" so the shortcut is pointitng to "DCS.exe" as it should.
Maybe you should try to create a new shortcut to "bin-mt\DCS.exe" and then try adding the command?
I'm really don't have an idea why its not working for you? Its just an additional command for the OS. You should be able to run any program like this, not just DCS.

Yes, that is what I was thinking. My DCS shortcut normally has Target "E:\DCS World\bin-mt\DCS.exe"

So I just put your example text in front of the above text and hit apply. The icon changes from the DCS one to the CMD icon. I double-click it, and nothing happens. I am running an i5-6600K, which has 4 physical cores, no hyperthreading, giving a CPU affinity of F.

I'm sure it will be something simple


Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[JohnRedcorn]

4 minutes ago, Scotch75 said:

Yes, that is what I was thinking. My DCS shortcut normally has Target "E:\DCS World\bin-mt\DCS.exe"

So I just put your example text in front of the above text and hit apply. The icon changes from the DCS one to the CMD icon. I double-click it, and nothing happens. I am running an i5-6600K, which has 4 physical cores, no hyperthreading, giving a CPU affinity of F.

I'm sure it will be something simple


Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk
 

Well, my icon is still showing the DCS icon, not a cmd one.

But if your CPU doesn't have the virtual cores "no hyper-threading" then there is no reason to set the affinity, because the game will run on 4 physical cores in any case. So if you still have stutterings then there might be some other solution for you.

[Scotch75]

Well, my icon is still showing the DCS icon, not a cmd one.
But if your CPU doesn't have the virtual cores "no hyper-threading" then there is no reason to set the affinity, because the game will run on 4 physical cores in any case. So if you still have stutterings then there might be some other solution for you.

Ok, thanks John. As Pavlen mentioned, I was also hoping this would let DCS distribute the load properly across 4 cores, instead of me having to do the CPU0 work-around in Task Manager everytime I load into a slot.
Cheers!



Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[JohnRedcorn]

3 minutes ago, Scotch75 said:

Ok, thanks John. As Pavlen mentioned, I was also hoping this would let DCS distribute the load properly across 4 cores, instead of me having to do the CPU0 work-around in Task Manager everytime I load into a slot.
Cheers!



Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk
 

You are welcome.

Well, I'm not sure that this command will do the proper core distribution. It just limits the number of cores if I understood it well. It's not a magic wand of some sort. The proper core distribution should be codded by the devs. Otherwise OS will use the free core or the core with shortest processes queue and you don't really know which one will be used.

Anyway, I'm sure there is other solution that will work for you. Maybe setting the the power plan to a "perfomance" and then settting CPU min and max power to 100% in advanced settings?

You should also check the BIOS/UEFI setup. It might have a CPU core usage settings and it might be set to "Auto". You can change it to "4" so CPU will always power up all of the cores without putting them to sleep or parking.

I hope you will find solution. Sorry that my solution didn't worked for you.

[usul]

HI

@JohnRedcorn

when you say

"Check how many physical cores it have in its specs."

you have to count the number of P-cores and E-cores?

 

[JohnRedcorn]

3 hours ago, usul said:

HI

@JohnRedcorn

when you say

"Check how many physical cores it have in its specs."

you have to count the number of P-cores and E-cores?

The following is from Intel site:

Performance-cores are:

• Physically larger, high-performance cores designed for raw speed while maintaining efficiency.
• Tuned for high turbo frequencies and high IPC (instructions per cycle).
• Ideal for crunching through the heavy single-threaded work demanded by many game engines.
• Capable of hyper-threading, which means running two software threads at once.

Efficient-cores are:

• Physically smaller, with multiple E-cores fitting into the physical space of one P-core.
• Designed to maximize CPU efficiency, measured as performance-per-watt.
• Ideal for scalable, multi-threaded performance. They work in concert with P-cores to accelerate core-hungry tasks (like when rendering video, for example).
• Optimized to run background tasks efficiently. Smaller tasks can be offloaded to E-cores — for example, handling Discord or antivirus software — leaving P-cores free to drive gaming performance.
• Capable of running a single software thread.

 

As you can see. The P cores and E cores are a physical cores. But Intel has implemented a technology which is called "Hyperthreading".

This technology make each Performance core work as 2 cores. And this is what I mean by virtual cores. Each virtualy doubled P core is actually a core which doesn't exists and you should prevent DCS from running on these virtual, non-existent cores.

I guess, there is no problem to run DCS on E cores alongside with P cores, but you should create an affinity mask which will exclude the Virtual cores. Now I don't really know how the cores are distributed in your speciffical CPU. It might be that for exmaple 8 cores, starting from core 0 are P cores. Then there might be 8 virtual cores and then all the E cores. It might be also that there is 8 P cores, then all E cores and then the virtual ones. So I guess it would be much easier to run the game on the P cores only. Because they are the first ones?

You should try and check different affinity masks to find out what is working the best way for you. As for me, I have an older model of CPU which have "Hyperthreading" but don't have P cores and E cores. So it is a little bit easier for me to create the proper affinity mask.

Edited September 23, 2024 by JohnRedcorn

[usul]

Thank you for this information. For an i7 12700, it seems that the p-cores are cores 0, 2, 4, 6, 8...14
I'll try with this