About to give up on issues

[Criszeri]

I Paid USD 79 for this thing and I haven't seen it flying one single time. It crashes like hell, no matter what I choose to do. Mission editor, instant action or quick mission, they all crash while loading.
Plus, I have the feeling my whole DCS instalation looks quite unstable after installing the Phantom module.
Any suggestion, sirs? Thank you

13700k - GTX4070 TI - 32MB ram

[Volator]

Have you tried a slow DCS repair? That's the only advice I can give unfortunately. The F-4 runs pretty well for many happy customers, I'm one of them.

[Hiob]

Some general best practice tips for performance and stability:

- Make sure GPU is stable. Remove overclocks if applied.
- Set a fixed pagefile in Windows. Recommended 32GB in and 32GB max.
- Deactivate realtime Anti-Virus or at least make all DCS-Folders an exception.
- Make sure you purge all your shader caches after each game and or GPU-driver update. (FXO and Metashaders in DCS/savegames as well as the GPU-Driver-Cashes)

- (bonus) open windows dervices and deactivate the power service. That isn't related to stability as far as I can tell, but it improves performance/reduces stutters. Can't hurt

- Don't update to W11 24H2 (if you haven't already)
- You might wanna check if an older Nvidia-Driver works better for you.

Edited October 28, 2024 by Hiob

[MAXsenna]

I Paid USD 79 for this thing and I haven't seen it flying one single time. It crashes like hell, no matter what I choose to do. Mission editor, instant action or quick mission, they all crash while loading.
Plus, I have the feeling my whole DCS instalation looks quite unstable after installing the Phantom module.
Any suggestion, sirs? Thank you

13700k - GTX4070 TI - 32MB ram

Post your DCS.log/crashlogs?
Have you checked your Windows Eventviewer? On my system I can't even start DCS if I use a newer driver than February from Nvidia.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Zabuzard]

Since you mention the price, Id like to remind you about two things:
- You purchased an early access product. Experience can thus be rough for a minority of users. Id wish it wouldnt be like that, but thats how development goes.
- We have a no-questions-asked refund policy. So if you cant get the issue resolved, you can just refund, get your money back and perhaps try again in a few years or once the product is out of EA

Fingers crossed on getting these nasty issues resolved

[Criszeri]

Thank you everybody. I will just wait, maybe some day this product will work for me. My machine is new, never clocked anything in my life. just a vanilla installation on a vanilla PC, and BOOM.
On my previous PC, DCS gave me one single problem: smooth as silk and amazing sim.
As a last chance, I will try the older nVidia drivers thing, if that fails too, I will just switch back, de-activate the Phantom module and live happy until the time comes

[Sideburns]

4 minutes ago, Criszeri said:

Thank you everybody. I will just wait, maybe some day this product will work for me. My machine is new, never clocked anything in my life. just a vanilla installation on a vanilla PC, and BOOM.
On my previous PC, DCS gave me one single problem: smooth as silk and amazing sim.
As a last chance, I will try the older nVidia drivers thing, if that fails too, I will just switch back, de-activate the Phantom module and live happy until the time comes

I would say that DCS is one of the most demanding games for my PC, pretty much a stress test. It often highlights if there is a driver or hardware issue that otherwise doesn't appear. As others have recommended try a DCS repair, try doing a windows repair (dism, sfc), update or reinstall graphics drivers and check ram timings. If you can post the DCS crash logs someone here can probably say what the issue is.

[Gianky]

On 10/28/2024 at 5:00 PM, Criszeri said:

I Paid USD 79 for this thing and I haven't seen it flying one single time. It crashes like hell, no matter what I choose to do. Mission editor, instant action or quick mission, they all crash while loading.
Plus, I have the feeling my whole DCS instalation looks quite unstable after installing the Phantom module.
Any suggestion, sirs? Thank you

13700k - GTX4070 TI - 32MB ram

Have you tried activating the "CPU: Lower HB UI Refresh Rate (Require Restart)" in the Special option menu?

I had a lot of crashes as you describe, until I tried it and it didn't he trick for me, now I have some stutter, but everything is in the normality of my DCS installation and now I can finally fly the Phantom.

I hope this can help you too.

[WarbossPetross]

14 часов назад, Gianky сказал:

Have you tried activating the "CPU: Lower HB UI Refresh Rate (Require Restart)" in the Special option menu?

I had a lot of crashes as you describe, until I tried it and it didn't he trick for me, now I have some stutter, but everything is in the normality of my DCS installation and now I can finally fly the Phantom.

I hope this can help you too.

I use that as well. I had issues with the "simplified avionics" parameter or some-such, so I leave that one unchecked. Also don't bother with the simplified radar, it degrades the picture beyond any use at all.

[Art-J]

21 hours ago, Criszeri said:

Thank you everybody. I will just wait, maybe some day this product will work for me. My machine is new, never clocked anything in my life. just a vanilla installation on a vanilla PC, and BOOM.
On my previous PC, DCS gave me one single problem: smooth as silk and amazing sim.
As a last chance, I will try the older nVidia drivers thing, if that fails too, I will just switch back, de-activate the Phantom module and live happy until the time comes

First and foremost, post your logs next time the game crashes. Without them we don't have any data to base our advices on, we can only guess. Logs might at least give us more clues about what's causing the crash.

You can also investigate them to some extent yourself. Google for "DCS log analyser", first result will link you to analyser tool on discord which will try to diagnose the logs for you.

[Criszeri]

Il 30/10/2024 at 00:19, Gianky ha scritto:

Have you tried activating the "CPU: Lower HB UI Refresh Rate (Require Restart)" in the Special option menu?

I had a lot of crashes as you describe, until I tried it and it didn't he trick for me, now I have some stutter, but everything is in the normality of my DCS installation and now I can finally fly the Phantom.

I hope this can help you too.

I will try it right now, but I really am astonished. Sure this is an early access object. I purchased tons of early access stuff in my life, but nothing ever was this destructive. This is my third total re-installation, and everything becomes unstable and crashy as soon as I install the Phantom F4. Terrible.

I would have never figured out the "CPU: Lower HB UI Refresh Rate (Require Restart)" thing, among the billion of variables and options, thank you for the suggestione.

Quoting another user in this thread: yes, DCS can be demanding, expecially on max settings, but deserves any effort and expense. The sim is magnificent. Fun fact, I switched to this brand new PC from an i7-4770K with 16Mb Ram and a humble 2070rtx. That machine never had a sngle problem running DCS. It's a pain to go through this hell with my new PC. Really frustrating.

[Criszeri]

Il 30/10/2024 at 00:19, Gianky ha scritto:

Have you tried activating the "CPU: Lower HB UI Refresh Rate (Require Restart)" in the Special option menu?

 

I'm sorry, can't find this thing anywhere...

[Criszeri]

Now the other modules start becoming unstable and crashy, too. Even F16, usually a rock even during the worse of the last 30 days.
Attached is a log report of the last events.
Hope this can help and that I won't have to say goodbye DCS, I loved this Sim.

dxdiag.txt dcs.log-20241105-170836.zip

DxDiag.txt

Edited November 5, 2024 by Criszeri

[joey45]

Wasn't there a problem with 13 gen intel CPUs ?

[Criszeri]

7 minuti fa, joey45 ha scritto:

Wasn't there a problem with 13 gen intel CPUs ?

Wow, perfect. Typical of me. I change a whole machine, dreaming of it for months, and voila, my configuration has a known issue about my fav sim.
I feel pathetic, to say the least.
Anyway, the sim is now absolutely damaged. Nothing starts/loads/works. regular freezes and crashes. I will try a long, boring complete uninstall and reinstall tomorrow night.
(I have noticed little glitches during uninstall, too. files the PC doesn't allow me to delete)
After that, the last chance, and if things don't work, I will just switch to something else, sad but necessary.

[TKhaos]

You got two things in your files, one is VCRuntime140.DLL error in dxdiag.txt which apparently crashed DCS.exe, you can try to sort that by a post I did earlier:

Quote

As there is a new build recently be worth updating Microsoft Viscual C++ 2015-2022, if it's installed just do a repair but if not it will update.

The latest Microsoft Viscual C++ 2015-2022 (x64) Build 14.40.33816.0 can be downloaded below, first is the direct link so will just download or second link you can go to Microsoft site yourself and pick the x64 version off the list at the top, which shows the direct link.

https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe (direct link)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170

 

In the DCS log there's quite a few "out of memory" errors, forget that you have 32GB of RAM as plenty of people run on that, but 64GB is better and check your Virtual Memory.

Quote

The Page File (Virtual memory) on some systems got disabled in a recent Windows Update, or some kind of error and has been reset to 'No Paging File'

 

Type 'System Settings' into your search on Windows task bar, or start it through your Windows Settings by selecting 'Settings' / 'System' / 'About' and clicking on ' Advanced System Settings' on the right.

 

On the 'Advanced' tab select 'Performance'

Select 'Advanced'

Select 'Virtual memory' and 'Change'

See what the VM is set at, if it's off change it to 'System Managed Size' and it will change dynamically as needed.

If it's greyed out you need to uncheck 'automatically managed all drives' at the top to set it.

 

Some people prefer setting the page files to a block or min/max setting.

 

So you could set Min/Max both to say 32768which would give you a 32GB block.

or set Min to 4982 and Max to 32768

 

Edited November 5, 2024 by TKhaos

[MAXsenna]

11 minutes ago, Criszeri said:

I will try a long, boring complete uninstall and reinstall tomorrow night.

Please don't. A waste of time. A repair does exactly what a full uninstall/reinstall will do. 

Like the others pointed to above. Make sure you set a manually managed page file to 32768MB if your have 32GB or less RAM. 

Update all the Visual C redistributions. 

Obvious remove all mods. Rename the DCS folder in Saved Games. 

Do a complete nuke of your graphics drivers with DDU in Safe Mode, and install new ones in Safe Mode before you boot into normal mode again 

If you have any questions about how to do what's noted above. Ask! We'll be happy to help! 

Cheers! 

[joey45]

2 hours ago, Criszeri said:

Wow, perfect. Typical of me. I change a whole machine, dreaming of it for months, and voila, my configuration has a known issue about my fav sim.
I feel pathetic, to say the least.
Anyway, the sim is now absolutely damaged. Nothing starts/loads/works. regular freezes and crashes. I will try a long, boring complete uninstall and reinstall tomorrow night.
(I have noticed little glitches during uninstall, too. files the PC doesn't allow me to delete)
After that, the last chance, and if things don't work, I will just switch to something else, sad but necessary.

Not just with DCS but as as whole. something about the threads/cores being over cooked and burning out.

Edited November 5, 2024 by joey45

[Dangerzone]

3 hours ago, Criszeri said:

Anyway, the sim is now absolutely damaged. Nothing starts/loads/works. regular freezes and crashes. I will try a long, boring complete uninstall and reinstall tomorrow night.

Before you do - I would just like to second what MAXSenna wrote - it might save you a lot of time and frusturation. 

That is - before loading DCS - rename the DCS folder (or DCS.OpenBeta - whichever you have) to something else. (Like DCS.OLD) and then start DCS. This will reset the DCS configuration for you, so if there's something corrupt in saved games causing this issue, it won't be there. (It's kind of like doing a full reinstall without actually doing the reinstall). 

If it fails to fix issues, you can close DCS and simply delete the new folder DCS created, and rename the old one back to the original. This will debug a tonne of different possibilities in one quick pass. If it does fix the issue, you can either start narrowing down what the difference is, or othewise just copy across your config/inputs directory so you don't have to remap your controls and then reset up the settings how you want.

[Criszeri]

20 ore fa, Dangerzone ha scritto:

Before you do - I would just like to second what MAXSenna wrote - it might save you a lot of time and frusturation. 

That is - before loading DCS - rename the DCS folder (or DCS.OpenBeta - whichever you have) to something else. (Like DCS.OLD) and then start DCS. This will reset the DCS configuration for you, so if there's something corrupt in saved games causing this issue, it won't be there. (It's kind of like doing a full reinstall without actually doing the reinstall). 

If it fails to fix issues, you can close DCS and simply delete the new folder DCS created, and rename the old one back to the original. This will debug a tonne of different possibilities in one quick pass. If it does fix the issue, you can either start narrowing down what the difference is, or othewise just copy across your config/inputs directory so you don't have to remap your controls and then reset up the settings how you want.

 

Il 5/11/2024 at 18:44, TKhaos ha scritto:

You got two things in your files, one is VCRuntime140.DLL error in dxdiag.txt which apparently crashed DCS.exe, you can try to sort that by a post I did earlier:

In the DCS log there's quite a few "out of memory" errors, forget that you have 32GB of RAM as plenty of people run on that, but 64GB is better and check your Virtual Memory.

 

 

https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe (direct link)

This thing perfectly fixed the situation. Stable game, no glitches, no issues. I have stressed both sim and PC in many ways, no problem.
As soon as I download the Phantom module, BOOM! A complete disaster. The only way so far is to ignore that plane, uninstall it and enjoy the rest.

dcs.log-20241106-173412.zip

[Criszeri]

Il 28/10/2024 at 18:09, Zabuzard ha scritto:

- We have a no-questions-asked refund policy. So if you cant get the issue resolved, you can just refund, get your money back and perhaps try again in a few years or once the product is out of EA



 

I think this is what I'm doing. Looks like this module won't work in any way on my rig, so I will ask for a refund and who knows, some day in the future try again. Thank you

[TKhaos]

4 hours ago, Criszeri said:

https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe (direct link)

This thing perfectly fixed the situation. Stable game, no glitches, no issues. I have stressed both sim and PC in many ways, no problem.
As soon as I download the Phantom module, BOOM! A complete disaster. The only way so far is to ignore that plane, uninstall it and enjoy the rest.

Glad you got it sorted and it's working, shame about the F-4E Phantom II though as it's a nice aircraft, least they have a good refund policy.

Just had a brief look at your logs in the zip file, say brief I only just got in and going to bed soon as I finished my coffee as I got an early start

Most of the errors in the log are integrity check failures [IC Fail] and texture issues with the F-4E, I take it you haven't modded the Phantom in any way after the install.

If you have could try installing it again and test it before doing any mods to it. If you haven't modded it but got third party mods installed you could try removing them, I generally just drag them into a non DCS folder then try it with DCS clean. If that works you can then drag your third party mods back over one at a time and see which one is causing the issue. Of course if you do modding and a like many use a mod manager you can just disable them and do it that way.

Example of this is I had the JAS-39 Gripen third party mod installed and seemed to work fine, right up until I tried landing my F-18 on a carrier which wasn't there. Having that mod installed disabled all my carriers so had to remove it

[Zabuzard]

When IC fails despite having no mods then that smells like antivirus software having deleted some files or other disk corruption shenanigans.
With corrupt files crashes are about to happen sooner or later.

Perhaps that is a direction you could tackle this issue from.

[BJ55]

Cores are not parked, that's good, but:

dcs.20241106-173412.log

APP (Main): Command line: "F:\DCS World\bin/DCS.exe" --restarted  (restarted because of previous crash?)

APP (Main): CPU cores: 16, threads: 24, System RAM: 32530 MB, Pagefile: 1293 MB

...

DX11BACKEND (18280): failed to create structed buffer. Reason: E_OUTOFMEMORY

dcs.20241106-173412.crash

0x000000000002535b (edCore): ed::fatal_out_of_memory + 0x3B

The F-4 is resource heavy, increase pagefile to fixed 32GB or 64GB, in special options set "HB UI online access" to "offline", reduce/disable some eye-candy DCS settings, like chimneySmokeDensity motionBlur civTraffic.

Also check this link: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/331896-crash-troubleshooting-guide/#comment-5272952 and be aware that latest NV drivers are causing multiple issues.

 

 

Edited November 7, 2024 by BJ55

[Criszeri]

Il 6/11/2024 at 23:59, TKhaos ha scritto:

Glad you got it sorted and it's working, shame about the F-4E Phantom II though as it's a nice aircraft, least they have a good refund policy.

Just had a brief look at your logs in the zip file, say brief I only just got in and going to bed soon as I finished my coffee as I got an early start

Most of the errors in the log are integrity check failures [IC Fail] and texture issues with the F-4E, I take it you haven't modded the Phantom in any way after the install.

If you have could try installing it again and test it before doing any mods to it. If you haven't modded it but got third party mods installed you could try removing them, I generally just drag them into a non DCS folder then try it with DCS clean. If that works you can then drag your third party mods back over one at a time and see which one is causing the issue. Of course if you do modding and a like many use a mod manager you can just disable them and do it that way.

Example of this is I had the JAS-39 Gripen third party mod installed and seemed to work fine, right up until I tried landing my F-18 on a carrier which wasn't there. Having that mod installed disabled all my carriers so had to remove it

Well, no, I haven't modded anything. But 3 attempts (including 2 long repairs and 1 total re-installation) ended up the same way: DCS gets unstable, performance becomes unreliable or terrible, etc.
Now I have my brand new install: all my planes, all my usual custom liveries, and everything runs just perfect. I have stressed the game in any imaginable way, creating chaotic and heavy situations with the editor. No problems.
I don't feel like facing all the tech-tweaking stuff you kind people gave me. At least, not at the moment.
But I have 2 things on my mind
1 - Installing the Phantom F4 on my old PC, abd see what happens
2 - Park the whole problem for a few months. When summer comes and my job will give me more sparetime, I will update this machine to Win 11 and try the F4 again.

Edited November 8, 2024 by Criszeri