Anti-Virus False Positives

[Darkdiz]

Since about 2 updates ago, I am getting a myriad of false positives on my anti-virus (McAfee). From what I hear, I'm not the only one. Typically, it is a flight model dll in the aircraft /bin folder, or lately the CombinedArms.dll (flagged as an actual virus and not quarantined like the others). This particular one cannot be put on the exception list because it is still seen as a virus, even though I marked it as resolved.

Apart from adding all of the individual files as exceptions as they get flagged, is there any way ED can get allow-listed for DCS?

Note that some anti-virus packages do not allow folder-level exceptions, so individual files have to be added one-by-one, which of course is a PITA.

[Rudel_chw]

23 minutes ago, Darkdiz said:

Note that some anti-virus packages do not allow folder-level exceptions,

 

mcafee is a lousy AV, but can't believe that it won't allow a folder exclusion. I use Microsoft defender which is free and allows me to exclude the whole dcs folder

[mkel2010]

Another AV option (better than either McAfee or Windows Defender, IMO) is Bitdefender. I get ZERO false positives with DCS files.

[SkateZilla]

16 hours ago, Darkdiz said:

Since about 2 updates ago, I am getting a myriad of false positives on my anti-virus (McAfee). From what I hear, I'm not the only one. Typically, it is a flight model dll in the aircraft /bin folder, or lately the CombinedArms.dll (flagged as an actual virus and not quarantined like the others). This particular one cannot be put on the exception list because it is still seen as a virus, even though I marked it as resolved.

Apart from adding all of the individual files as exceptions as they get flagged, is there any way ED can get allow-listed for DCS?

Note that some anti-virus packages do not allow folder-level exceptions, so individual files have to be added one-by-one, which of course is a PITA.

Gaming Drives should Typically be whitelisted already as a whole.

Unless you want to keep the performance hit of every file accessed scanned by the AV Suite.

[mkel2010]

5 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

Gaming Drives should Typically be whitelisted already as a whole.

Unless you want to keep the performance hit of every file accessed scanned by the AV Suite.

I think it really depends on the horsepower of the computer and the AV itself. Bitdefender, running in the background for me, takes virtually no CPU cycles and uses under 1.5 GB of RAM. I get no changes in the resource usage by Bitdefender when starting DCS (monitoring with Process Explorer.) There is little point in running an AV if you're excluding large chunks of data on a system.

[SkateZilla]

59 minutes ago, mkel2010 said:

I think it really depends on the horsepower of the computer and the AV itself. Bitdefender, running in the background for me, takes virtually no CPU cycles and uses under 1.5 GB of RAM. I get no changes in the resource usage by Bitdefender when starting DCS (monitoring with Process Explorer.) There is little point in running an AV if you're excluding large chunks of data on a system.

regardless of CPU Power, it introduces Latency.

[mkel2010]

51 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

regardless of CPU Power, it introduces Latency.

Years ago this may have been the case, but not any more, particularly if you're not running a full security suite and are using just an anti-virus. This is one of the many articles out there that debunk the old premise that anti-virus causes latency on gaming machines:

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/tests-gamers-antiviruses/47576/

[silverdevil]

15 hours ago, mkel2010 said:

Years ago this may have been the case, but not any more, particularly if you're not running a full security suite and are using just an anti-virus. This is one of the many articles out there that debunk the old premise that anti-virus causes latency on gaming machines:

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/tests-gamers-antiviruses/47576/

we need to understand and explain the difference between latency and slowness caused by scanning.

before i added exceptions in Defender, my loading time of the sim was over two minutes. after adding the exclusions, i now load at 30 seconds. i never noticed latency prior to or after the exclusions. this is just my experience.

Quote

the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer.
"poor performance due to network latency"

computation requires the decompression of required files to make a game work. each file will be scanned by the AV. once recognized as safe, these files stay decompressed until the game stops. this is the savings by adding an exclusion.

[Maulet]

On 8/23/2024 at 3:46 PM, SkateZilla said:

Gaming Drives should Typically be whitelisted already as a whole.

Unless you want to keep the performance hit of every file accessed scanned by the AV Suite.

Totally disagree, because nothing should be whitelisted. Games mean installing mods and tweaks sometimes, and there you go.....

And with today's hardware NOTHING hits performance (well, maybe your pc, don't know! )

[Hiob]

37 minutes ago, Maulet said:

And with today's hardware NOTHING hits performance.

What? You serious? There are several potential bottlenecks no amount of bruteforce hardware power can overcome.

You can have state of art hardware and still get latency, microstutters, frame drops, slow load times etc. Most of which is caused by the several layers of software (micro code, kernel, OS, drivers, application etc.) with the OS being the biggest offender. 

[SkateZilla]

2 hours ago, Maulet said:

Totally disagree, because nothing should be whitelisted. Games mean installing mods and tweaks sometimes, and there you go.....

And with today's hardware NOTHING hits performance (well, maybe your pc, don't know! )

So, to nix that urban legend.

Launch DCS Load a Decent sized Mission, Note the FPS,
Now Restart the Mission, Alt Tab out, and Tell your Virus Scanner to Scan the DCS Folder at the same time.

The Assumption that Active Virus scans don't hit performance has already been proven false by EVERY YouTuber/OverClocker/Pro-Gamer.

The RealTime Protection scans literally every file as it's being accessed, every item as it's being moved from one memory address to another, every running process, including 3rd party processes for addon UI things *(* ie HeatBlur modules), every incoming packet coming in from a MP Server,... eeevverrryyy thaaannngg.

In smaller missions w/ less stuff being accessed, you might not notice the hit, but it's measurably there, in MP on the other hand, w/ large missions, the impact is real.