Severe loading performance issues with 2.9.15

[Nightstorm]

31 minutes ago, Aluminum Donkey said:

Nightstorm,

I had the same problem with long loading times and crappy performance. Reverting to older versions of DCS didn't help, neither did trying older graphics drivers, uninstalling the latest Windows 11 updates, or messing around with numerous system settings.

The only thing that fixed it for me was to Reset my PC. I reinstalled Win11 and got everything going great again! Nice and smooth running simulator now. No audio problems either. It just seems to me that Windows needs reinstalling every now and then, possibly once a year or maybe even more.

I'm running the latest version of DCS (2.9.15.9599) with Nvidia driver 576.15 and all is well so far!

AD

Well, I only have to go back to 2.9.14.8394 for the issues to disappear completely.  They only happened on 2.9.15 versions.  I've updated to the latest NVidia hot fix 576.26 but the issues were happening on the same drivers with only a DCS version change.  I didn't change anything else.  I'm glad that you got it working but I have no intention of reinstalling my OS to solve the issue if all evidence points to it being a .15 problem.

5 hours ago, YoYo said:

I don't use MFD with displays, and I have some the symptoms mentioned here, for the first 2-4 minutes I see 50/50. What you're writing is placebo. Maybe you turned off the monitors but it will come back sooner or later, this effect doesn't always occur, at least for me and you probably happened to find that it disappeared.

I think that you are correct.  It had been happening very consistently for me, like every single time I started DCS.  Then I had three or four starts in a row after I made that change.  However, it did seem to come back.  At least I had a significant hang on saving a mission.  So, all I know is what has been previously stated.  The issues started with the new .15 versions of DCS after the release notes made specific mention of loading time improvements.  Whatever changes were made, seem to have had the opposite effect.

[placsea]

I'm also experiencing a severe degradation in performance with 2.9.15, prior version works great.

[Aluminum Donkey]

8 hours ago, placsea said:

I'm also experiencing a severe degradation in performance with 2.9.15, prior version works great.

I tried reverting to older version of DCS and it made no difference in the sim's framerate and smoothness, the only improvement was in loading times. 2.9.15 does have problems with loading times. The only fix for sim performance for me was reinstalling (Reset) Windows 11. Long loading times are still a bit of an issue, but much better now with a freshly reset OS.

Some people have beastly computers and are still having this problem. An OS reset might be the solution. Windows is kinda 'broken' and needs to be reset/reinstalled every now and then, maybe once a year or even more often if you're really picky about performance. My computer isn't God-tier but it's pretty good. Some people have a Ryzen 10900X3D with 128GB of 20 GHz DDR5 and a pair of RTX 5090s and still have crappy performance and long loading times. I think it's a Windows problem and not just DCS, they need a Windows reinstall.

Windows has been that way forever. I have no idea why.

AD

[Aluminum Donkey]

10 hours ago, placsea said:

I'm also experiencing a severe degradation in performance with 2.9.15, prior version works great.

Also, while resetting Windows 11 helped a lot, after flying a few missions I'm starting to get stuttering again. It f@cking sucks, I just wanna play the darn sim!

Since I started playing DCS in about 2008 I've spent more time porking around with it for performance reasons instead of really getting into the game and enjoying it. I get really tired of this.

AD

[t-stoff]

I was 1/2 months without playing DCS, did all the updates and all of a sudden I get +5 minutes just to get to the main menu.  Did repair, cleaned the files. Did a rollback on the NVIDIA drivers. Same thing.

also flying around Kola in an F-4 is a stutter mess.

my system is Q3 VR, 7800X3D 4090 64gb ram NVME

Edited Thursday at 10:31 PM by t-stoff

[sleighzy]

@Aluminum Donkey @t-stoff, drop your DCS log files here. Helps provide information and knowing whether or not they correlate with the issues experienced by other users. 

[YoYo]

8 hours ago, t-stoff said:

I was 1/2 months without playing DCS, did all the updates and all of a sudden I get +5 minutes just to get to the main menu.  Did repair, cleaned the files. Did a rollback on the NVIDIA drivers. Same thing.

also flying around Kola in an F-4 is a stutter mess.

my system is Q3 VR, 7800X3D 4090 64gb ram NVME

Current problems according me (from 2 last patches + hotixes), they are not FPS problems btw.:

- not always but sometimes there are slight hangs at the beginning (kind of small microstutter, like loading shaders everytime), which completely disappear after 2-4 minutes in the game ( strat from the menu), at the same time stutter is also in the sound, very visible in VR, but its present not alwayst
- longer mission loading
- no progress bar in VR (and it was) of loading mission, just black screen
- longer mission save in the editor (now it takes a dozen or so seconds)
- longer closing of DCS, sometimes even a minute

(btw. DCS has disabled antivirus, cores are unparked, settings the same like before patches, stable 72 fps for 72 Hz in VR, Win 10)

Edited yesterday at 06:16 AM by YoYo

[t-stoff]

15 hours ago, sleighzy said:

@Aluminum Donkey @t-stoff, drop your DCS log files here. Helps provide information and knowing whether or not they correlate with the issues experienced by other users. 

@YoYo can relate! nothing changed on my end as well.

@sleighzy here's the log dcs.log

[MAXsenna]

31 minutes ago, t-stoff said:

@YoYo can relate! nothing changed on my end as well.

@sleighzy here's the log dcs.log

The log analyser suggests to turn on Full Screen mode and disable TacView.  

[BJ55]

On 5/1/2025 at 10:17 PM, Aluminum Donkey said:

Windows is kinda 'broken' and needs to be reset/reinstalled every now and then

Only if your logs are full of critical errors. Now I have 3 Win 10 Pro machines (+2 Linux), since 2003 with XP I never needed a reset/reinstall and performance benchmarks were the same as day 1 until the dismissal of the machines (2 W7 are still being used), the trick is to disable all useless processes/auto tasks/backdoors/spyware, don't let Win manage maintenance (do it manually) and make backups before updating drivers/software.

Edit: forgot, disable disk indexing can prevent massive system slowdowns.

Anyone noticed that it's slower starting/exiting but during the mission is more smooth and stable (except for the periodic spike)?

Edited 7 hours ago by BJ55

[t-stoff]

4 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

The log analyser suggests to turn on Full Screen mode and disable TacView.  

yap :x

[YoYo]

I was visiting a friend just now, he has the same symptoms as me, namely:

- long closing of DCS

- in VR there is no loading progress bar, black screen as if there was some kind of freeze

- at the beginning, even though you are already in the "game", there is some loading, which goes away after a while, this causes a slight stutter

In my opinion something has been messed up with the operation of the CPU perhaps again.

 

[JNelson]

It's possible that the change to when the module are loading is contributing to the change being seen here. Here is a snippet from my log file on 2.9.15, seems like the modules are contributing about 140 seconds, whereas previously their loading would only be on demand (when loading into specific module).

Edited 7 hours ago by JNelson