Loading times and general headaches

[cobrabase]

I need help.   

 

A. Loading times from engaging VR in steam to actually having all textures loaded are reaching 12 minutes.  If something like VR crashes for some unknown reason I'm looking at probably 10 minutes to reload the program.   This CAN'T be normal or is it my system?  I need advice from the community.     

B. The Kola map is a huge issue for my system for some reason.   No other map gives me any trouble.  I can fly low and slow in helicopters but fixed wing jets get these stutters in frame-rates to zero like the sim is loading something in for up to 7 seconds at a time and then frames are back to 60 fps and smooth.... for about 10 seconds before it does it again.    Like I said - no OTHER map does this to me.  \

I'm sure you all will look at my specs and immediately tell me what the problem is.   I can run the sim to high standards at 60 fps but the more they add the more the code seems overtaxed.   Nothing seems well optimized.     What changes would YOU make.   

My specs. 

Windows 10 Home

4.00 gigahertz AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core
768 kilobyte primary memory cache
4096 kilobyte secondary memory cache
16384 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (8 total)
Hyper-threaded (16 total)

 

2151.30 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
945.40 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

ATAPI iHES212 3 [Optical drive]

Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series [Hard drive] (128.04 GB) -- drive 1, s/n S1ANNEAD606598T, rev DXM05B0Q, SMART Status: Healthy
SATA SSD [Hard drive] (1024.21 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 19041510242184, rev SBFM61.3, SMART Status: Healthy
WDC WD10EZEX-60WN4A0 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 2, s/n WD-WCC6Y1VL7U0V, rev 01.01A01, SMART Status: Healthy

 

 

Main Circuit Board ^b

Board: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ROG STRIX X370-F GAMING Rev X.0x Serial Number: 180833929300059 Bus Clock: 100 megahertz UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. 5009 06/24/2019

Drives

2151.30 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity 945.40 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space ATAPI iHES212 3 [Optical drive] Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series [Hard drive] (128.04 GB) -- drive 1, s/n S1ANNEAD606598T, rev DXM05B0Q, SMART Status: Healthy SATA SSD [Hard drive] (1024.21 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 19041510242184, rev SBFM61.3, SMART Status: Healthy WDC WD10EZEX-60WN4A0 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 2, s/n WD-WCC6Y1VL7U0V, rev 01.01A01, SMART Status: Healthy

Memory Modules ^c,d

32702 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory Slot 'DIMM_A1' is Empty Slot 'DIMM_A2' is Empty Slot 'DIMM_B1' has 16384 MB Slot 'DIMM_B2' has 16384 MB

 

Local Drive Volumes

(NTFS on drive 0) * 1023.20 GB 712.54 GB free     f: (NTFS on drive 2) 1000.07 GB 130.33 GB free     g: (NTFS on drive 1) 128.03 GB 102.53 GB free     * Operating System is installed on   Any other data you all need just ask.  I'm running at Reverb2 VR and am happy with it.

 

[sleighzy]

Which of those drives is DCS installed on? Hopefully not a HDD and is on an SSD....

If I'm reading this correct you also only have 16Gb of RAM. Upgrade to at least 32Gb of RAM. As a bandaid fix for this you can make sure that your Windows page file is on your fastest SSD (preferably NVMe) with at least 10% space left after adding the page file. Set your initial and max values to 32768 for the custom page file, click set, apply, and restart your machine. See the attached screenshot for an example.

You can also drop your "C:\Users\username\Saved Games\DCS\Logs\dcs.log" file (if Windows is hiding file extensions then this will just be a text document named "dcs") into the #dcs-log-analyzer channel into the official DCS Discord server which will also provide more feedback around tuning advice for your system.

https://discord.gg/dR7U7ZgM

Edited October 6, 2024 by sleighzy

[cobrabase]

6 minutes ago, sleighzy said:

Which of those drives is DCS installed on? Hopefully not a HDD and is on an SSD....

If I'm reading this correct you also only have 16Gb of RAM. Upgrade to at least 32Gb of RAM. As a bandaid fix for this you can make sure that your Windows page file is on your fastest SSD (preferably NVMe) with at least 10% space left after adding the page file. Set your initial and max values to 32768 for the custom page file, click set, apply, and restart your machine. See the attached screenshot for an example.

You can also drop your "C:\Users\username\Saved Games\DCS\Logs\dcs.log" file (if Windows is hiding file extensions then this will just be a text document named "dcs") into the #dcs-log-analyzer channel into the official DCS Discord server which will also provide more feedback around tuning advice for your system.

https://discord.gg/dR7U7ZgM

 

Thank you for noticing this.   It says 2 slots are empty when it is not the case.  I have 64 RAM installed and yet 2 slots show empty.   Not good. 

[sleighzy]

1 minute ago, cobrabase said:

Thank you for noticing this.   It says 2 slots are empty when it is not the case.  I have 64 RAM installed and yet 2 slots show empty.   Not good. 

Yeah that's definitely worth investigating

[cobrabase]

I must have jolted the cards loose when I moved.   I have noticed a loading time from roughly 13 minutes now to 9 mins 40 seconds.   Not much better but an improvement.  The Kola map is still a dumpster fire of performance for me.   See the attached video.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atvlz5MPKkE&t=6s

 

When I attempt to go to discord with the invite it says "unable to accept invite." Ugh.  Fed up. 

NEW specs with 64 GIG of RAM:

Windows 10 Home (x64) Version 2009 (build 19045.4894)

 

Processor ^a

4.00 gigahertz AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core 768 kilobyte primary memory cache 4096 kilobyte secondary memory cache 16384 kilobyte tertiary memory cache 64-bit ready Multi-core (8 total) Hyper-threaded (16 total)

Main Circuit Board ^b

Board: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ROG STRIX X370-F GAMING Rev X.0x Serial Number: 180833929300059 Bus Clock: 100 megahertz UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. 5009 06/24/2019 2151.30 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity 951.95 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space ATAPI iHES212 3 [Optical drive] Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series [Hard drive] (128.04 GB) -- drive 1, s/n S1ANNEAD606598T, rev DXM05B0Q, SMART Status: Healthy SATA SSD [Hard drive] (1024.21 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 19041510242184, rev SBFM61.3, SMART Status: Healthy WDC WD10EZEX-60WN4A0 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 2, s/n WD-WCC6Y1VL7U0V, rev 01.01A01, SMART Status: Healthy   Memory Modules c,d 65470 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory Slot 'DIMM_A1' has 16384 MB Slot 'DIMM_A2' has 16384 MB Slot 'DIMM_B1' has 16384 MB Slot 'DIMM_B2' has 16384 MB Local Drive Volumes           (NTFS on drive 0) * 1023.20 GB 709.77 GB free     f: (NTFS on drive 2) 1000.07 GB 126.03 GB free     g: (NTFS on drive 1) 128.03 GB 116.15 GB free     * Operating System is installed on

Edited October 7, 2024 by cobrabase

[sleighzy]

@cobrabase, Which of those drives is DCS installed on? Hopefully not a HDD and is on an SSD....

You can drop your DCS log file here instead if you like.

[cobrabase]

7 hours ago, sleighzy said:

@cobrabase, Which of those drives is DCS installed on? Hopefully not a HDD and is on an SSD....

You can drop your DCS log file here instead if you like.

Thank you so much for helping my friend.    I'll post the file tonight. 

[cobrabase]

Yes, DCS world is on my SSD drive. LOL.  Here is my log file.  

 

dcs.log

[sleighzy]

Couple of things of note (although may not resolve this issue) based on that log:

1. You can remove those "--force_enable_VR --force_steam_VR" parameters as they are redundant, and cause warnings in the logs as you aren't using Steam for your OpenXR runtime.

2. Disable "Hot plug" in the controls settings in DCS. This can cause stutters as DCS will be constantly scanning for new USB devices being connected. If you do add another device you can just click the "Scan devices" button in the controls settings to have it picked up

3. You have Tacview installed. I see some long load times around this area (although can't confirm if directly related to Tacview). Remove this for now, it can cause performance issues, you can retest with this off and we can revisit it later as there is a setting that could help if you have to use Tacview.

Whilst these may not be directly the cause of the long loading times, you can at attend to those items to at least rule them out....and may help with stutters and other general game performance.

The log analyzer also notes the following:

* Disable civil traffic

* If you have FPS issues, trying turning off Vsync in the graphics settings

[MAXsenna]

My computer is very old, while I don't have anything close to your load times. 
Tried to read above, but did you exclude DCS installation folders and Saved Games in your Anti-Virus solution? 
Also, try to drop down the preload radius down to 100.

[TKhaos]

Might be worth a try as you appear to have it installed via Steam. Doesn't really matter now everything is MT but someone on Steam the other day had issues with slow loading and changed it from MT Preview back to the default Play with Steam setting and solved their problem, think they did a repair as well which doesn't take long to verify the files.

[Pikey]

The no listed brand SATA SSD for your F drive isnt keeping up, regardless of what it is. You can use a small NVMe drive for DCS like a Samsung 980 and it will be such a huge difference you will be surprised. With the amount of data that DCS shifts from disk to memory with the likes of these huge textures in the scenery, its just so easy to miss how important disk speed is when you need to run a 100GB terrain followed by unit and plane textures. Also make sure its plugged in a different sata controller, sometimes they conflict in the same lane and run at half speed, or it might need trimming.

[TKhaos]

As already suggested above and disabled Civ, Traffic and drop your Preload Radius

Looking at your log I would also drop the following:

Clutter/Grass has a big impact so would drop that to maybe 900 or 1000 at least, yours is currently 1240

Forest Visibility I would drop to maybe 80% or maybe 90%, you got it on 100%

Not related as such but your Bios is about 12 versions out of date, been a few fixes since then. Some people don't like touching it in case they brick the system.

Also you updated your Nvidia drivers recently, several people had issues with the latest drivers and had to drop back one or two versions.

 

Edited October 8, 2024 by TKhaos

[cobrabase]

Thank you so much gentlemen.    It's time to start fixing and testing. 

2 hours ago, sleighzy said:

Couple of things of note (although may not resolve this issue) based on that log:

1. You can remove those "--force_enable_VR --force_steam_VR" parameters as they are redundant, and cause warnings in the logs as you aren't using Steam for your OpenXR runtime.

Where do I find these settings?

[sleighzy]

5 minutes ago, cobrabase said:

Thank you so much gentlemen.    It's time to start fixing and testing. 

Where do I find these settings?

I'm assuming you run DCS from your Steam library, correct me if you are using another shortcut (in which case look for the properties on that shortcut). Check your Steam library for DCS and the program arguments.

- Right click on DCS World within your Steam Library
- Select Properties
- Click on "Set Launch Options"
- Remove the parameters above

[draconus]

On 10/7/2024 at 11:57 PM, cobrabase said:

Yes, DCS world is on my SSD drive.

No, it's not.

This is your real hard drive (7200rpm) - WDC WD10EZEX-60WN4A0 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) - and it's your F: drive - log says you run DCS on it.

Having said that all your loading times and stutters/freezes are normal and correct because hard disks are slooow nowadays. Move your DCS to SSD.