Patch discussion August 2024

[BIGNEWY]

We will have some news today in the newsletter about what is coming, but I can not give you any ETA on the patch until QA have completed all checks and are happy it is ready for the public build. 

Thank you 

[Bounti30]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

For you... ok, but for ED nothing can just wait. There are whole different teams for maps, modules (jets, helicopters, pistons) and core teams (coders, 3d modelers, artists, research, manuals) - they all work in parallel and they all cannot just jump to work on performance.

what is the interest of developing new functionalities, modules, maps, etc.?
If no one can benefit from it.

I have the impression that it is like an unmentionable secret.
If the future of DCS is to be developed for high-end computers. That's not a problem, but let it be said and we know what to expect.
Everyone will make a choice. Today the version usable for mid-range computers is 2.9.5.55918 and if, like many of us, there is no progress it will be the last.
What a pity

[BIGNEWY]

5 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

what is the interest of developing new functionalities, modules, maps, etc.?
If no one can benefit from it.

I have the impression that it is like an unmentionable secret.
If the future of DCS is to be developed for high-end computers. That's not a problem, but let it be said and we know what to expect.
Everyone will make a choice. Today the version usable for mid-range computers is 2.9.5.55918 and if, like many of us, there is no progress it will be the last.
What a pity

We have a full range of PC's we test on, from low end to high end. We are always working on optimisations and FPS is important, we have some tweaks coming in the next patch. 
As technologies change it allows us to progress, we now have multithreading which is being tweaked, but that alone has allowed us to push the limits of DX11 for DCS, the next step is Vulkan and that should also help with performance for most people, and again allow us to push performance boundaries. We have to continue to be mindful about lower end systems, but also allow high end machines to get the most out of DCS, this is why we have so many user options in settings, so you can tweak to your own preference of performance vs quality. 

thank you 

[Bounti30]

54 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

We will have some news today in the newsletter about what is coming, but I can not give you any ETA on the patch until QA have completed all checks and are happy it is ready for the public build. 

Thank you 

Hello BIGNEWY
I hope there is good news.
I really encourage the team to listen to user feedback and especially from those who have relevant opinions.
There are issues that have been submitted for a long time and have still not been resolved.
I definitely don't want to be pessimistic and I really want to always be able to enjoy this incredible simulator

Thanks for all

[draconus]

15 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

what is the interest of developing new functionalities, modules, maps, etc.? If no one can benefit from it.

We all can benefit from updates but they are not mandatory if you don't want them. You can use older DCS version at will but I somehow doubt you have performance problems with your high-end hardware. As said there are settings - use them.

[BIGNEWY]

5 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

Hello BIGNEWY
I hope there is good news.
I really encourage the team to listen to user feedback and especially from those who have relevant opinions.
There are issues that have been submitted for a long time and have still not been resolved.
I definitely don't want to be pessimistic and I really want to always be able to enjoy this incredible simulator

Thanks for all

Hello Bounti30,

We listen to lots of feedback constantly and pass it on to the team, issues  get reported, and we fix many ( check our change logs for details ) we can not always fix everything or the team may have a different priority task from what you or I would like but they are working very hard and will continue to make fixes and bring us new features. 

thank you 

[Bounti30]

11 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

We have a full range of PC's we test on, from low end to high end. We are always working on optimisations and FPS is important, we have some tweaks coming in the next patch. 
As technologies change it allows us to progress, we now have multithreading which is being tweaked, but that alone has allowed us to push the limits of DX11 for DCS, the next step is Vulkan and that should also help with performance for most people, and again allow us to push performance boundaries. We have to continue to be mindful about lower end systems, but also allow high end machines to get the most out of DCS, this is why we have so many user options in settings, so you can tweak to your own preference of performance vs quality. 

thank you 

I understood well,
but the problem is that with the same settings and identical missions the FPS drops.
It's good that something changes as updates come.Why should I sacrifice quality when until now my settings suited me?

[draconus]

2 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

Why should I sacrifice quality when until now my settings suited me?

Becuse game has changed - something got added, there's more calculations going on, there's more details to render... or there are bugs.

[Hiob]

7 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

I understood well,
but the problem is that with the same settings and identical missions the FPS drops.
It's good that something changes as updates come.Why should I sacrifice quality when until now my settings suited me?

Why do people never take into account that the problem may originate somewhere else than DCS? If it was only(!) DCS that would cause those issues, everybody would experience them. Which is certainly not the case. More likely culprits like GPU-drivers, windows, windows-updates, windows-settings, other hardware/drivers etc. (maybe in conjunction with DCS, maybe not) are never looked at.....

Windows is a general purpose OS that has a ton of stuff going on that is completely unrelated to gaming, but can affect it a lot (negatively)

Personally I skipped the last NVIDIA-GPU driver updates, because there were reports of them causing issues (in general, not specific to DCS) - wether that spared me troubles I don't know. But it cerrtainly didn't cause any.

Edited September 20, 2024 by Hiob

[Bounti30]

6 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hello Bounti30,

We listen to lots of feedback constantly and pass it on to the team, issues  get reported, and we fix many ( check our change logs for details ) we can not always fix everything or the team may have a different priority task from what you or I would like but they are working very hard and will continue to make fixes and bring us new features. 

thank you 

I realize that the task is not easy, but I await the next update with great anticipation but also with fear.
We'll see.
In the meantime you have my full support

[BIGNEWY]

10 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

I understood well,
but the problem is that with the same settings and identical missions the FPS drops.
It's good that something changes as updates come. Why should I sacrifice quality when until now my settings suited me?

as mentioned we do have some tweaks coming in the next patch

5 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

I realize that the task is not easy, but I await the next update with great anticipation but also with fear.
We'll see.
In the meantime you have my full support

looking forward to your feedback. 

thank you 

[Bounti30]

Just now, Hiob said:

Why do people never take into account that the problem may originate somewhere else than DCS? If it was only(!) DCS that would cause those issues, everybody would experience them. Which is certainly not the case. More likely culprits like GPU-drivers, windows, windows-updates, windows-settings, other hardware/drivers etc. (maybe in conjunction with DCS, maybe not) are never taken into account.....

Hello Hiob,

You are wrong
when something works well I don't change anything
No update of Nvidia drivers, no update of my quest 2 (wifi cut), same for W10. Only those that I choose after good feedback and use 
As DCS is the only game I use everything is organized for it. example I am with a quest 2 v62

[BIGNEWY]

4 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

Hello Hiob,

You are wrong
when something works well I don't change anything
No update of Nvidia drivers, no update of my quest 2 (wifi cut), same for W10. Only those that I choose after good feedback and use 
As DCS is the only game I use everything is organized for it. example I am with a quest 2 v62

DCS is very complex, it is not always possible to catch every issue. I know it can be frustrating, but you will need to adapt occasionally or if you are not happy wait for improvement. 

thank you 

[Hiob]

Just now, Bounti30 said:

Hello Hiob,

You are wrong
when something works well I don't change anything
No update of Nvidia drivers, no update of my quest 2 (wifi cut), same for W10. Only those that I choose after good feedback and use 
As DCS is the only game I use everything is organized for it. example I am with a quest 2 v62

Hi, I didn't mean you specifically. You were merely the trigger for the statement.

And I'm certainly not wrong in that issues like that usually don't affect ALL DCS-users. Which makes it pretty unlikely that changes in DCS are the sole culprit.

I'm not trying to let ED off the hook here. I certainly expect them to improve performance continously for various reasons (some selfish, some not). But I would strongly encourage people to dive in the nuts and bolts of their system to make the most out of the hardware-hungry edge-cases that are flight-sims (DCS is not alone in that for sure!). 

 

[Bounti30]

36 minutes ago, Hiob said:

Hi, I didn't mean you specifically. You were merely the trigger for the statement.

And I'm certainly not wrong in that issues like that usually don't affect ALL DCS-users. Which makes it pretty unlikely that changes in DCS are the sole culprit.

I'm not trying to let ED off the hook here. I certainly expect them to improve performance continously for various reasons (some selfish, some not). But I would strongly encourage people to dive in the nuts and bolts of their system to make the most out of the hardware-hungry edge-cases that are flight-sims (DCS is not alone in that for sure!). 

completely agree
The only question that bothers me is 
Have we arrived at the moment where we will have to make choices that will leave part of the community (perhaps me too) by the wayside?

Edited September 20, 2024 by Bounti30

[Hiob]

12 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

completely agree
The only question that bothers me is 
Have we arrived at the moment where we will have to make choices that will leave part of the community (perhaps me too) by the wayside?

I don't think so. There so many settings that can be adjusted to suit lower tier hardware. I feel that it is more often the unsolvable problem to min-max fidelity vs. performnance and the reluctance to accept that you can't have high fidelity with lower hardware. 

What bugs me is, that here in the forum one could get the impression that is only DCS that is so hardware hungry and that only ED is incapable or unwilling to do something about it. Which simply isn't true. Have you seen the forums of the "unnamed big civil flight-sim" and the myriad of youtube videos on how to tweak perfromance for it? Or the "recommended" hardware specs for its successor?

There may be temporary issues that are introduced by updated like (e.g.) terrain streaming issues, or unintended loads by AI-computing, or bugs in the MT-scheduler...whatever, but they will be squashed eventually. I don't get why some people always expect the worst (or even ill intend)...

 

Though - having said that - of course, eventually, existing hardware will be outpaced by software developements. That has always been the case. 
 

Edited September 20, 2024 by Hiob

[Hiob]

on a side note - in another thread sombody solved his stutter issues from the last patch by deactivating/deleting unofficial mods.....

[BIGNEWY]

6 minutes ago, Hiob said:

on a side note - in another thread sombody solved his stutter issues from the last patch by deactivating/deleting unofficial mods.....

I recently had an issue which was created by the tacview scripts, it can be strange reasons some times and machine specific 

[Hiob]

3 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

I recently had an issue which was created by the tacview scripts, it can be strange reasons some times and machine specific 

Indeed..... 
other export scripts (winwing) have caused issues in the past.

That's all I wanted to say (perhaps in a clumsy way) - blaming DCS-updates and not investigating further for other possible culprits just doesn't cut it.

[Bounti30]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

We all can benefit from updates but they are not mandatory if you don't want them. You can use older DCS version at will but I somehow doubt you have performance problems with your high-end hardware. As said there are settings - use them.

Exactly, i use the 2.9.5.55918 version

[waterman]

Just a thought - At this time i have to edit my missions using MT because theres no maps in ST - Then restart DCS and run my mission in ST because MT is broken.

So i hope MT is fixed or im out of action for good when ST is dropped.

I wont say what my missions are about because i always get stamped on for being off topic.

[draconus]

1 minute ago, waterman said:

MT is broken

It works since march 2023.

[BIGNEWY]

5 minutes ago, waterman said:

Just a thought - At this time i have to edit my missions using MT because theres no maps in ST - Then restart DCS and run my mission in ST because MT is broken.

So i hope MT is fixed or im out of action for good when ST is dropped.

I wont say what my missions are about because i always get stamped on for being off topic.

If you are having issues please DM me, missions will load in ST or MT it does not matter. If you have issues its best we check them out. 

thank you 

[waterman]

Please check my thread - MT problems using Trains

I do not wish to be provoked into another argument by that guy with the hat on.

so i had better leave it at that thankyou.

[draconus]

17 minutes ago, waterman said:

Please check my thread - MT problems using Trains

I do not wish to be provoked into another argument by that guy with the hat on.

so i had better leave it at that thankyou.

You could've worded it better. Both DCS MT and ST has bugs, yes, obviously.