Fps loss 50% near water/sea and drawing of fences

[maks]

Dear Ugra,

- noticed fps drop from stable 60fps to sudden 30fps near sea side e.g. peenemunde and lubeck, only when flying towards the water….looking in land back to 60fps

- on the border between frg and gdr , one of the fences is being drawn when approaching it while 2 other types of fences are rock solid?(also the shadows appear suddenly and drawn when nearing them)

 Maybe change the type of fence?

 

brgds maks

Edited April 19 by maks

[Boosterdog]

38 minutes ago, maks said:

Dear Ugra,

- noticed fps drop from stable 60fps to sudden 30fps near sea side e.g. peenemunde and lubeck, only when flying towards the water….looking in land back to 60fps

- on the border between frg and gdr , one of the fences is being drawn when approaching it while 2 other types of fences are rock solid?(also the shadows appear suddenly and drawn when nearing them)

 Maybe change the type of fence?

 

brgds maks

60 to 30 could possibly be Vsync halving the frames when you drop below your chosen refresh rate. It only needs to drop 1 fps under that to half the frames. As such the actually perfoamcne load may not be very much, it just that you are running the settings close to the bone. 

I think I know the fences. Its the cross wire chicken type?  Again I think thats more a limitation of DCSs pretty clunky shadow tech. 

Could be talking out of my hat on both buth perhaps something to check? 

 

Edited April 19 by Boosterdog

[Hiob]

I think you are spot on.

[maks]

But only when looking at the sea area? Where less scenery is ? Running all maps on stable 60fps, only kola sometimes to 55fps ….i think optimalisation? 

[maks]

Just noticed that grim reapers review had the same lag ! At 9.10min into the video on youtube

[Boosterdog]

22 hours ago, maks said:

Just noticed that grim reapers review had the same lag ! At 9.10min into the video on youtube

If you watch all the footage you'll also see long sections of it with no lag on the coast as well as with higher frame times (so less fps) over relatively sparse lanscape inland as Cap swings his head about. Caps also streaming, recording and flying on a virgin map, in a Clan server, in an MP environment and no doubt with a few other things that may cause issues. 

I still think that your're issue is that you are running your settings too close to the the Vsync limit.  No doubt it will see some optimisation, but this isnt the principal reason for your frames halving. 

You can take this tip of not but when im looking a settings, especially for a new map, I turn off Vsync to see what the true Fps is, pick the heaviest bits i intend to use with the heaviest module, and aim to find settings that will give me a minimum of a clear 15 fps about my monitors refresh rate. It doesnt matter if Im hitting 200 fps at 30000ft, if im less than 75 on the ground anyywhere, i trim the settings back.  

[Qcumber]

I have also seen big dips in performance when flying towards large bodies of water inland. e.g. flying NW from Berlin towards Warren there is a large group of lakes (sorry but I am not sure what they are called). Very strange. It's the only performance issue I have seen so far on this map. 

[JNR231]

Also has a same problem. But in my case - at Lybek, Wismar and Pinemunde, sometimes at Rostok. More interesting - most often drops occur when I fly from east to west, and not from east to west (but need more tests, maybe I am wrong).

[GenericUser]

On 4/19/2025 at 7:47 AM, maks said:

Dear Ugra,

- noticed fps drop from stable 60fps to sudden 30fps near sea side e.g. peenemunde and lubeck, only when flying towards the water….looking in land back to 60fps

- on the border between frg and gdr , one of the fences is being drawn when approaching it while 2 other types of fences are rock solid?(also the shadows appear suddenly and drawn when nearing them)

 Maybe change the type of fence?

 

brgds maks

Yep, Im getting the same FPS drop, particularly when looking north-west near the coast. No VSYNC or anything like that turned on. Framerate goes from a capped 70 down to 40-45.

[maks]

Noticed something just now…..started a mssion at peenemunde….looking towards sea / island …..30fps iso 60fps……i go out the mission and restart it ……all 60fps either side i am looking at! No problems anymore….strange

[ShinyMikey]

Same problem, in north eastern East Germany looking north in the direction of the sea. 30-40FPS drop, but if I turn my head in another direction its back to normal FPS.

[Spicysauced]

I can confirm that. Being north and looking north causes massive FPS drop.
Happens online and offline, isn't server/hardware related.
Since a lot of others are affected, I think it's a bug.

Here's a short video: 

 

[Spicysauced]

Addition, I did more testing. Flew along the black line, keeping the stutter always in front of me in an effort to find the zone that's causing it.
Sometimes I zoomed in all the way to narrow down my "search cone". And I think I found it. It's the northernmost part of the little islands, I put a label down there.
The second you go feet wet and fly over the coastline the FPS jump back to normal. So whatever is on that island, it's too much for everything from a 3060 to a 4080 apparently.
When flying red side this is particularly awful, because you're basically always in the area that's affected.
And yes I tried the usual tricks with deleting fxo, metashaders before. I also checked if preload radius affects it - it doesn't. Even with preload to 0 it still happens. View distance has no effect either. I also tested different vehicles, although not as in depth as with the Hind I used to search in detail. The thing is, in a flanker quick mission where you gen an airstart this didn't happen, and in an F5 it didn't happen either (I wasn't in that exact spot with those, but close). So it did happen in the Mig21 and Hind, it did not happen in the Flanker and F5. So you could make a theory that it depends on the plane you're using. But I put a big question mark behind that theory.
I hope Ugra looks into this, its really annoying

 

[Barthek]

Same problem on my end. Noticed it near Peenemunde.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi folks, can you attach short track replay examples of this happening, please do not use any unofficial mods in the mission, and we will take a look.

[virgo47]

On 4/19/2025 at 9:25 AM, Boosterdog said:

60 to 30 could possibly be Vsync halving the frames when you drop below your chosen refresh rate. It only needs to drop 1 fps under that to half the frames. As such the actually perfoamcne load may not be very much, it just that you are running the settings close to the bone.

It should not work this way. I have 60 FPS cap, VSYNC ON and 60Hz monitor. I regularly see any number between 30 and 60 when the detail/complexity is too much for 60 FPS. I assume the card just waits with the frame presentation for the next VSYNC, but not really with the preparation of the frame - that one should start right away when the previous is ready (and waiting for that VSYNC). At least that's how it worked for me with my GPUs and DCS until now.

Edited April 22 by virgo47

[Art-J]

^ Yup. I remember NVidia used to have 2 separate settings in control panel for VSync+halved fps and VSync "normal" (non-halved, so anywhere below 60). I'm not sure if that choice is still there in recent drivers, I tend to keep that as "application controlled".

Back on topic though, something clearly is not right in that particular sector of the map.

[JNR231]

В 4/20/2025 в 4:34 PM, JNR231 сказал:

at Lybek, Wismar and Pinemunde, sometimes at Rostok

After some tests, I find approximate boundaries of the zone where these drops occur (in my case). Approximate due to the fact that the drops aren't occur every mission load (except Pinemunde and H GDR30). Moreover, when I jump around the map using F11 and then wait for a while (like 10 minutes), the drops disappear altogether (until the mission is restarted). 

In addition-while I was writing this message, I restarted the mission in order to check my theory about F11. After restart drops returns but when I did Alt+Tab to browser and back and they disappeared as well as after waiting after F11. Maybe it's just my PC issue (I mean drops disappearance after Alt+Tab/waiting), but it looks extremely strange. 

[Spicysauced]

6 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hi folks, can you attach short track replay examples of this happening, please do not use any unofficial mods in the mission, and we will take a look.

Hi Bignewy,

thank you for checking in. I can only attach a file with max. 50MB here, my replay, although it's just a 2 minute flight is already 62 MB, I don't know why.
So instead I uploaded it to file-upload dot net, I hope that's okay: https://www.file-upload.net/download-15486819/CWGermanyStutter.trk.html
 

I accompanied it with a short video, this is the same session that's shown in the .trk file: 

Now here comes the interesting part: When I play back my own replay file, it comes out perfectly fine. No stutter, nothing. I could not believe my eyes. If I didn't do the video(s), it would look like it never happend

Maybe you can test this for yourself? It can be reproduced the easiest by:
- choose Hind
- Instant action
- Choose "Hot Start at Rostock"
- Fly/look into the direction of the island pointed out above

2nd easiest solution for reproducing:
- Join Contention Cold War
- Choose Hind
- Choose spawn in the north and look into the island direction

So to conclude:
- Reproducible 100% of times in single and multi player in the area in question
- Does NOT (apparently) show in replays (I cannot think of a reason here)
- Multiple planes affected (Hind, Mig21, F16 as proven by Cap from GR), but potentially not all planes (Flanker/FC3/-2024?)
- Not bound to a specific GPU or CPU configuration or too bad systems in general, so hardware isn't to blame here
- Not RAM bound either, I have 64 GB plus 50 GB Swap
- Not affacted by mods (I tested with the black Hind cockpit and with all defaults/stock)
- Not affected by head tracking software such as OpenTrack, tested with and without
- Many people affected, potentially all, but as usual with bug reports, most remain silent and never check forums
- Not affected by preload radius or visible range options, settings those to 0/min still gives stutter

This is all the information I have at this point, sorry I can't provide more. I'm afraid this will be hard to troubleshoot, especially since it doesn't seem to show on trk files.

Have a nice day and thanks again!

[Qcumber]

4 hours ago, JNR231 said:

After some tests, I find approximate boundaries of the zone where these drops occur (in my case). Approximate due to the fact that the drops aren't occur every mission load (except Pinemunde and H GDR30). Moreover, when I jump around the map using F11 and then wait for a while (like 10 minutes), the drops disappear altogether (until the mission is restarted). 

In addition-while I was writing this message, I restarted the mission in order to check my theory about F11. After restart drops returns but when I did Alt+Tab to browser and back and they disappeared as well as after waiting after F11. Maybe it's just my PC issue (I mean drops disappearance after Alt+Tab/waiting), but it looks extremely strange. 

It's not just there. I have seen it over/around inland water as well. 

[Barthek]

Same area, view rotated by a couple of degrees. Massive fps loss:

[Alves_o_Craque]

I've experienced the same issue. Once you are far enough north looking further north will cause FPS to drop from 60+ to arround stable 20 in VR. I also noticed it stops happening if I zoom in and only look at the ground relativelly near me. This leads me to belive the issue is far north. Also this hit me harder when flying modules that have a high VRAM toll like the F1 and less when flying the F-4 for example.

[Spicysauced]

I have made a video to summarize the facts regarding this bug as of today, 24th of April. It's just to raise more awareness.
As usual, the more people chip in, the higher the chance of a quick solution.

 

[MorgothNL]

Same issue here, FPS drop to 15-20 when looking North direction.
 

Track file added. It even happens when I just create a mission in the editor with only the player aircraft, so should not be hard to reproduce on ED/Ugra end..  (I do understand it may be related to specs or variables that not everyone uses)

LastMissionTrack.trk

Edited April 24 by MorgothNL

[Spicysauced]

@MorgothNL I can confirm the issue using your track file.
I hope anyone from Ugra or ED responds to this ...