Pixelated clouds are moving and flickering

[Mik75]

Hi there!

I´ve just got back into DCS with the fantastic Phantom II and the Cold War map. My system is pretty low end (AMD 5600X, 32 GB RAM, RTX 3070 8GB), but with resonable settings, I manage to get 70-110 fps with good visual results. I use DLSS and clouds set to ultra. And especially during dusk and dawn, the clouds look pretty low res, and are wobbling (moving up and down) when using Track IR. Why is that?

Thx a lot in advance!

 

DCS 2025-04-22 13-37-27-05.bmp

[Jaguar 1-1 - Ant]

I also get this, would like to know if there is a solution

[Czar66]

Probably caused by the cloud shader combination with the DLSS algorithm.

Can you test with DLAA only to see if it is better? If it does get better with DLAA, the cause is the clouds rendering method causing the DLSS some confusion.

[Hikaruncat]

My system is
CPU: i7 3770
GPU: 2070 super
but the clouds look pixelated like this.
How can I adjust the settings to get nice clouds?

[Mik75]

17 hours ago, Czar66 said:

Probably caused by the cloud shader combination with the DLSS algorithm.

Can you test with DLAA only to see if it is better? If it does get better with DLAA, the cause is the clouds rendering method causing the DLSS some confusion.

Will definitely give this a try. 

[NineLine]

On 4/24/2025 at 2:32 AM, Hikaruncat said:

My system is
CPU: i7 3770
GPU: 2070 super
but the clouds look pixelated like this.
How can I adjust the settings to get nice clouds?

Post a screenshot of your settings, and we can see if we can help.

[Northstar98]

Also getting clouds wobbling around all over the place. They've done so since the initial 2.7 launch over 4 years ago.

Pay attention to the more distant set of clouds, initially they seem to wobbling, like a pressure wave is going through them, then with very small movements on the stick they can be seen to be moving up and down

Performance, as you can see in the video is an incredibly stable 60 FPS (the limit I've defined in both DCS and the NVIDIA control panel).

My settings are:

 

System specs are in my signature.

dcs.log

[Northstar98]

Here's another video showing cloud motion. This time it's a bit more clear.

Some points I'd like to raise:

• The clouds closest to me do not appear to move in the same way, it's only the next and subsequent clouds further out that do.
• When zoomed in, the motion stops.

[NineLine]

Thanks, I see it now, I will do some testing and see if I can reproduce this, I am nit sure I have see exactly this, but I do know distant clouds can look off at times. 

Do you have the track that the video was made from?

[Lange_666]

On 4/24/2025 at 11:32 AM, Hikaruncat said:

My system is
CPU: i7 3770
GPU: 2070 super
but the clouds look pixelated like this.
How can I adjust the settings to get nice clouds?

Pixelation like this comes from using DLSS which also creates ghosting. No pixel issue when using MSAA but then there's more shimmering.

[Northstar98]

12 hours ago, NineLine said:

Thanks, I see it now, I will do some testing and see if I can reproduce this, I am nit sure I have see exactly this, but I do know distant clouds can look off at times. 

Do you have the track that the video was made from?

Here's a track, not from the same video though (tracks don't seem to behave all that well with the Phantom and this followed a dogfight wherein the AI does different things) - default conditions on the Caucasus map, when I look to the right and make small roll inputs more distant clouds can be seen moving up and down relative to the terrain (as if they're moving with me).

CloudMotion.trk

Edited Thursday at 09:59 AM by Northstar98

[Mr_sukebe]

With those settings, can’t say I’m surprised.

Take a scan here:

 

[Vakarian]

7 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

With those settings, can’t say I’m surprised.

Take a scan here:

Whaaaaat? He has 60 FPS locked in VSYNC, no way the settings have anything to do with it.

The clouds behave like that since they released

[Mr_sukebe]

1 hour ago, Vakarian said:

Whaaaaat? He has 60 FPS locked in VSYNC, no way the settings have anything to do with it.

The clouds behave like that since they released

 

Have you read any of that thread?

If so, did you notice the recommendation about trying DLAA?

[Vakarian]

26 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

 

Have you read any of that thread?

If so, did you notice the recommendation about trying DLAA?

Skimmed through but it's boils down to "get the best HW possible, if you can't then decease these and these settings". Not applicable here as the core issue here is the rendering of the clouds, not the user settings.

Third party proprietary technology shouldn't have anything to do with the native rendering of the clouds. More so as I have the same issues on AMD GPU meaning all of the DLSS/DLAA "stuff" is completely meaningless to me.

 

I will record the videos tonight when I get home in hopes of this getting some more traction with ED. 

[Northstar98]

9 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

With those settings, can’t say I’m surprised.

Take a scan here:

 

I don't have an issue with performance - my missions are kept fairly simple. You can see in the first video I have a stable 60 FPS and the frame time graph is essentially flat - it's very stable.

And that 60 FPS is capped both in DCS and in the NVIDIA control panel. My monitor is only capable of outputting 75 FPS maximum (though currently set to 60) and that's only at 1080p. So long as I don't have too many VRAM hungry aircraft in view with full-resolution textures, with more difficult weather settings on maps that have problematic performance at low-level (like the South Atlantic) I'm able to run such high settings and rarely encounter any issues with performance.

Regardless though, settings changes nothing with regards to cloud motion, the blurring effect present with DLAA smooths it out but it's still there. Even if I reduce the graphics settings all the way down. The new clouds have always exhibited this behaviour.

[Northstar98]

Just an addendum, this video was taken from the above track, with RTSS and DCS' own performance statistics enabled.

Ive also switched from MSAA to DLAA, all other settings are as they were in this post.

The clouds still appear to be exhibiting unexpected motions as I make small, rapid inputs on the stick. The motion is subtle but it's still there (the easiest comparison is probably at around 18-22 seconds in - pay attention to the cloud just in front of the mountain - you can see it moving up and down relative to the mountain).

And as you can see - rock steady 60 FPS once actually in-game, frame times too are basically completely stable. The only time they differ is immediately upon entering or exiting the mission.

Edited 23 hours ago by Northstar98

[Vakarian]

As promised earlier today, here's the video demonstrating cloud rendering issues. The "pixelation" effect is more visible when moving very fast, however the clouds "bouncing" is much more easily spotted.

Northstar mentioned in his post that the zooming has an affect on the issue so I've demonstrated that as well. When zoomed in (low FoV values) the clouds remain almost completely still, however when zooming back out to the default values I get when entering the cockpit (I have no snapviews btw) the clouds bounce up/down like crazy when there is movement of the aircraft. Interestingly though, if you move in F11 mode, clouds don't seem to bounce.

Additionally, I deliberately made mission with clouds and fog. Fog doesn't seem to show any of the issues that the clouds show. Also, when comparing fog and the clouds, the clouds seem to have this rigid grid-like rendering, it's really easy to spot in the first half of the video where the camera movement is quite fast, while the fog isn't anything like that. The fog is just... fog. Smooth and uniform and feels like the fog should feel.

Clouds on the other hand do break the feeling that they are clouds with the bouncing and the pixelation. 

 

cloudIssuesDemo.miz options.lua

[LucShep]

9 hours ago, Vakarian said:

the core issue here is the rendering of the clouds, not the user settings.

Third party proprietary technology shouldn't have anything to do with the native rendering of the clouds. More so as I have the same issues on AMD GPU meaning all of the DLSS/DLAA "stuff" is completely meaningless to me.

 

Yep.

The distant clouds jittering is always present.
It happens regardless of upscaling techniques being used (or not, it doesn't matter) or AA techniques (no matter which). 

The pixelation also happens regardless of clouds quality setting.
It becomes painfully glaring (very blurry and jaggy clouds) once you decrease the clouds quality setting to anything below "High", which of course takes its toll on any system that isn't considerably fast for DCS. 

At this point, and after four years with this cloud system, you have two options:

1. you swallow the pill, learn to live with it.
   Or
2. use older DCS versions prior to 2.7 if it annoys you (and boy, it does annoy me!). But that, of course, also comes with a plethora of other problems/limitations... 

 

Edited Thursday at 09:38 PM by LucShep

[Vakarian]

Oh yeah, I've learned to ignore it. However it would be nice to know that this is intended to get fixed eventually. Tagging @NineLine as you did respond in this thread  If there's more data needed just let us know. Seems we have people willing to deliver what's needed to try and get this demonstrated as quickly and easily as possible so it could be fixed soon:tm:

[draconus]

I noticed that some clouds (or sometimes) are refreshed at like half fps (which would explain the lag in movement) while the rest of the image is normally refreshed in full fps. Same with clouds resolution. I'm afraid these solutions may be deliberate for performance reasons but we have no control over it. Only devs can tell.

[Northstar98]

36 minutes ago, draconus said:

I noticed that some clouds (or sometimes) are refreshed at like half fps (which would explain the lag in movement) while the rest of the image is normally refreshed in full fps. Same with clouds resolution. I'm afraid these solutions may be deliberate for performance reasons but we have no control over it. Only devs can tell.

May also explain why the motion disappears when zoomed in - maybe something that works in principle to LODs for 3D model is employed and this cuts down the refresh rate.