After starting DCS, there is one minute with periodic stuttering since 2.9.15. Visible on graph.

[Dangerzone]

10 minutes ago, YoYo said:

You probably expect too much ;). No developer (unless it's Open Source software) will simply share their documentation and codes. It would even be against business assumptions. You won't find any advice or documentation, possibly 3rd Party developers have a lot of knowledge and tools, but this is more about the SDK itself than the functioning of the game. In our case, it's more about tracking what's in the DCS files and drawing the right conclusions, but without 100% guarantee, because some elements can affect others, which we may not be aware of. You should rather expect a lot of trials and tests and draw conclusions yourself. Personally, I suggest not to delve that far because at some point you will hit a wall, which is understandable, I guess . 

I was thinking if it was an official configuration variable, there might be something. But if this is more from the SDK or things we're not supposed to know about, and someone has somehow figured it out by tracking what's in the DCS files and doing trial by error and testing, then that probably answers why ED are so quiet on all this. It's not something that we're supposed to know about.

Just a pitty though that ED couldn't have thrown us a bone and said "Try this setting" instead of leaving us to have to hack through the files to find a solution, but on the flip side - I'm grateful to whomever came about the discovery so we have a solution to a problem! 

But now it's really got me wondering how many more secret autoexec.cfg configuration variables are available. 

[Nightstorm]

5 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

I was thinking if it was an official configuration variable, there might be something. But if this is more from the SDK or things we're not supposed to know about, and someone has somehow figured it out by tracking what's in the DCS files and doing trial by error and testing, then that probably answers why ED are so quiet on all this. It's not something that we're supposed to know about.

Just a pitty though that ED couldn't have thrown us a bone and said "Try this setting" instead of leaving us to have to hack through the files to find a solution, but on the flip side - I'm grateful to whomever came about the discovery so we have a solution to a problem! 

But now it's really got me wondering how many more secret autoexec.cfg configuration variables are available. 

It would be nice to know.  You wouldn't think that there would be that many.  And a cheat sheet of them with descriptions and even cautions would be great.  Of course, from a troubleshooting standpoint, from ED's perspective, guessing what an end user has in their autoexec could be an issue.  "Step 1:  Remove any autoexec if you have one".

Still, the "We're stuck in a loop. ChatGPT is referencing us, and we're referencing it." made me laugh.  The AI takeover may be a little further down the road than some fear.

[Dangerzone]

8 hours ago, Nightstorm said:

It would be nice to know.  You wouldn't think that there would be that many.  And a cheat sheet of them with descriptions and even cautions would be great.  Of course, from a troubleshooting standpoint, from ED's perspective, guessing what an end user has in their autoexec could be an issue.  "Step 1:  Remove any autoexec if you have one".

Maybe autoexec.cfg is configured after it loads all the defaults, and any (and all) global variable defaults can be changed via it. If so - there could be hundreds of variables/options that could be set by autoexec.cfg that we don't know of (or shouldn't be touching) .  That now has me wondering about the whole dynamic spawn at dynamically created CTLD FARPS and whether that could be set at the server via autoexec.cfg instead of hacking/editing the main install file. 

I guess for now, I'll be grateful to whomever found it and realised that it provided the solution that we have one. Honestly - I'd be stoked if it did come from ED officially through a support ticket, or even just see ED officially recognizing it now as a work-around solution. 

8 hours ago, Nightstorm said:

Still, the "We're stuck in a loop. ChatGPT is referencing us, and we're referencing it." made me laugh.  The AI takeover may be a little further down the road than some fear.

The more I see of AI, the more I see that it is nothing like the fictional movies that we have watched. The real danger we face with AI is taking what it says as gospel and being lead by it as it learns incorrect (or stupid ) content. It's pretty much the same danger that we face if we do a google search and trust what's been presented to us without scrutiny). 

That's why I prefer forums. People can challenge others and provide a different perspective, or even correct bad information. The amount of times I find myself arguing with ChatGPT and then realize "What am I doing"   

[scommander2]

21 minutes ago, Dangerzone said:

That's why I prefer forums.

Indeed, I asked Copilot about the autoexec.cfg and Copiloted directed me to the DCS forum  

[jnr4817]

On 6/17/2025 at 6:53 PM, Dangerzone said:

Don't trust ChatGPT. It makes things up when it doesn't really know the answer) - and often gives different answers. For instance, I just asked it and it gives this response:

In autoexec.cfg, the bkg_load_signed_plugins setting controls whether DCS loads digitally signed plugins in the background during startup:

true: Enables background loading of signed plugins. This can improve startup time by parallelizing plugin initialization.

false: All plugins (even signed ones) are loaded sequentially, possibly making startup slower but more stable for troubleshooting.

It's mainly a performance tuning flag. Most users can leave it set to true.

... which is a completely different response to what you got. Plus, if no one has any unsigned plugins (or even if they do) - I don't see how setting it to false would fix the issue, as @YoYo has mentioned. There's something more going on here. I can't find any documentation about it on the internet - and ChatGPT seems to be just making things up. 

Additionally, when I asked ChatGPT for it's source for this information it gave:

The information about bkg_load_signed_plugins in DCS World's autoexec.cfg file is primarily sourced from user discussions on the ED Forums. For instance, a user named @Nightstormreported that setting bkg_load_signed_plugins = false resolved performance issues introduced in version 2.9.15, such as startup stuttering and mission saving problems. This suggests that disabling background loading of signed plugins can lead to more stable performance in certain scenarios.forum.dcs.world

However, there is no official documentation from Eagle Dynamics detailing the exact function of this setting. The understanding of its impact is based on community observations and troubleshooting experiences.

For more detailed discussions and user experiences, you can refer to the ED Forums thread where this topic is discussed: forum.dcs.world.

We're stuck in a loop. ChatGPT is referencing us, and we're referencing it. 

This is why I asked the question where people are getting their information from, or even knew that this setting existed in the first place. There seems to be no official documentation available.

Is someone doing searches through the binaries for text constants and found this as an option and decided to throw it into autoexec.cfg to see what it does, and it just worked?

Or did an insider recommend to a friend to try the setting, who recommended it to another friend, and it finally made it's way 'leaked' to this forum? 

Or did this come from someone who submitted an official support ticket to ED, and they said to try it?

Or does the first person who recommended it actually know more information about this setting, and is able to provide deeper information as to any potential side effects to watch out for. Or if there's no potential side effects - can we get ED to set this as the default to fix the countless people struggling with the same issues that don't frequent this forum. 

What's so bizarre about all this is that multiple 'stuttering' threads are popping up on this forum, with very few getting a response by ED reps. Then this comes out apparently from nowhere, with no source of origin.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is a dev fallback solution that ED put in for a change they've made with 2.16 and it's leaked its way to us. And if so - it's very disappointing that ED hasn't acknowledged there's been a change that they introduced that has caused this problem, and being more forthcoming about trying this setting themselves to resolve it in the numerous 'stuttering' threads that are popping up. But this is conjecture - we seem to be very much in the dark about it. 

Plus, I'm beginning to wonder now how many more secret/hidden autoexec.cfg settings there are that could help increase our experience with DCS - which is another reason I'm eager to know the source of this information. 

Hence why I referenced, chatgpt, lol. AI is just laughing at us...