Reinstalling needed for performance boost?

[Tiramisu]

Loading missions took a long time for me, especially during the "world preload 1/60" message. It took more than 3-5 minutes before that message went away each time I reloaded the same mission.

So I have decided to delete and reinstall DCS, which made loading missions much faster now. It also removed the horrible lag I had in the mission editor. E.g. opening the payload screen always took more than 1 minute the first time I opened it. Now it behaves normal again.

I believe reinstalling also increased my FPS a bit.

My question is whether I have to frequently reinstall DCS to ensure a good performance, because I suspect that DCS updates create issues for the file system that are not detected by the file validation function in Steam.

This time I had to download "only" 188 GB for the reinstallation, because I disabled some of the modules. Otherwise it would take almost 500GB for all the modules I own. 

Edited January 2 by Tiramisu

[SharpeXB]

As I understand it, there’s no difference between reinstalling and running the full repair. It’s also possible that cleaning out certain shader folders occasionally can help. Someone else can probably add some info, I forget exactly which these are. 

[Tiramisu]

I had already tried verifying my game files with Steam several times, but it did not find any problems. So reinstalling was my last option. However, I did not know about the shader folders. Next time I get this kind of problem, I will try it.

[sleighzy]

I believe one difference with Steam is that the verify files does not have the option like Standalone does to remove any files that are not part of the core installation. This means it could fix modified files, but the installation could still contain other mod files, etc.

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

As I understand it, there’s no difference between reinstalling and running the full repair. It’s also possible that cleaning out certain shader folders occasionally can help. Someone else can probably add some info, I forget exactly which these are. 

To clear shader caches delete the "C:\Users\username\Saved Games\DCS\fxo" and "C:\Users\username\Saved Games\DCS\metashaders2" folders.

The new launcher also has this option under the Files item in the menu.