can not reproduce Blackouts have returned.

[DmitriKozlowsky]

Had 576.52 drivers. Got 5 to 10 second blackouts in Apache missions

Installed 576.80 Studio. Still have 5 to 10 blackouts in Apache. I don't drink or do drugs. But my rig appears to suffer from blackouts when running DCS (latest).

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

you are going to need to share more info if you want help. 

Please attach a dcs log from a session where it happens, a track replay if possible, and your dxdiag. 

thanks

[DmitriKozlowsky]

25 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hi, 

you are going to need to share more info if you want help. 

Please attach a dcs log from a session where it happens, a track replay if possible, and your dxdiag. 

thanks

Its not a crash. DCS keeps running and flying. But for the heart stopping 5,7,up to 10 seconds the screen is black. Sound remains. Upon recovery one must determine aircraft attitude and SA quickly.

[BIGNEWY]

I understand, but we need to see some data to work out why.

Otherwise I will be trying to help with guesses. 

[DmitriKozlowsky]

I looked at dcs.log in C:\Users\UserName\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Logs.

There is far too much personally identifiable information in it. I'd rather live with inconvenience, and wait for future improvements. The blackout screen only happens in DCS.

 

Thank you for the offer. Its likely not DCS's fault. It may be in all DirectX games. However DCS is the only flight sim and game currently installed. I removed X_Plane and Prepare3D some time back.  YouTube videos by other users point to monitor issues. Mine is Samsung 27" 2560X1440 @ 144Hz refresh, via DirectPort. Sadly switching ports does not resolve.

Problem does  not occur in Unreal, or any DCC apps (Houdini, Maya, Blender, NUKE).

[silverdevil]

On 7/1/2025 at 2:57 AM, DmitriKozlowsky said:

Installed 576.80 Studio

did you have game ready drivers installed previously? although i do not know of issues with studio drivers, perhaps game ready will give you better results.

[DmitriKozlowsky]

43 minutes ago, silverdevil said:

did you have game ready drivers installed previously? although i do not know of issues with studio drivers, perhaps game ready will give you better results.

No. I use Studio drivers. For stability and compatibility with DCC. DCS is only DirectX(?) realtime app I have. On my rig, game driver or studio drivers have no benefit or degradation for DCS. Performance is same.  Rest of my apps use OpenGL or Nvidia GPU rendering . Going by YouTube, if others are having blackouts on particular drivers, so do I. Except theirs are worse, more frequent and appear under AAA 1stPerson or 2nd shooters. For most part , according to experts (Jay2Cent, Linus TechTips, those fat guys) it is interaction of driver revision, GPU and , often, Samsung monitor. Something with high FPS and high refresh. I notice that there no FPS benchmarking for DCS on YT among gamers. They use first person games. CyberPunk 2077, Red Dead ##, etc.. Basically, I beleive, Unreal based games using latest features.

[darkman222]

I also had "blackouts". But playing in VR. Especially when holding my head still for air to air refueling. I never figured out how to fix it. Could be a placebo, but I never had it again when Tacview was uninstalled. So every time I knew there was AAR involved I uninstalled Tacview. You might want to give it a try as well. At least if it helps it would have been an easy fix for now.

Edited Wednesday at 10:20 PM by darkman222

[Czar66]

33 minutes ago, DmitriKozlowsky said:

On my rig, game driver or studio drivers have no benefit or degradation for DCS. Performance is same.

This is true overall. Game ready driver branch has the benefits of having more public releases in a given period of time. Eventually, when studio and game ready are on the same version, the differences of performance between both lies on margin of error.

I used studio drivers for 2 years with DCS and had zero issues. Only for recent games you should look into game ready drivers and their recent fixes. DCS is outside of that sphere.

About the issue:

If you can easily reproduce the issue, try to record the video output with OBS and when the screen goes black, keep recording. If the recording file shows video normally when your screen went black, it is something external like monitor cables or connectivity to whatever display you're using.

Blacks screens """generaly""" points at video driver crash and the reasons can be many, in my limited experience.
Try to double check your GPU connectivity to the motherboard, PSU health and have a look at the Event Viewer (windows) for any kind of error pointing at the video component.

Download some stress software to test the GPU/PSU to see if your system is stable.

FURMARK - Tests more PSU than GPU, but stress the later too. (not useful for throttling analysis) It is very light and simple old software. No subscription or paywall bs.
 

Edited Wednesday at 10:33 PM by Czar66
Windows Event Viewer highlight. It is important to check.

[DmitriKozlowsky]

4 hours ago, Czar66 said:

This is true overall. Game ready driver branch has the benefits of having more public releases in a given period of time. Eventually, when studio and game ready are on the same version, the differences of performance between both lies on margin of error.

I used studio drivers for 2 years with DCS and had zero issues. Only for recent games you should look into game ready drivers and their recent fixes. DCS is outside of that sphere.

About the issue:

If you can easily reproduce the issue, try to record the video output with OBS and when the screen goes black, keep recording. If the recording file shows video normally when your screen went black, it is something external like monitor cables or connectivity to whatever display you're using.

Blacks screens """generaly""" points at video driver crash and the reasons can be many, in my limited experience.
Try to double check your GPU connectivity to the motherboard, PSU health and have a look at the Event Viewer (windows) for any kind of error pointing at the video component.

Download some stress software to test the GPU/PSU to see if your system is stable.

FURMARK - Tests more PSU than GPU, but stress the later too. (not useful for throttling analysis) It is very light and simple old software. No subscription or paywall bs.
 

Stress test on GPU give me no blackout. Unreal environment gives me no problems. All OpenGL apps work great. I load cached voxels, cached liquid meshes. I have Renderman XPU GPU, Arnold GPU, Vray GPU. I tested them all in GPU only mode with stressed scenes. no blackouts.  Google Earth with all options ON runs without error in Chrome and as stand alone Earth Pro. I run Earth in DirectX.

With DCS, when I have a blackout, on Task Manager GPU 3D graph, the 3D usage graph, which is normally at 98% and 6-7.8 GB of GPU Memory in AH-64D, goes flat to zero on both. Stays there for some seconds. Sometimes its a flash, sometimes its 5 seconds. Rarely 7+ seconds . Then returns to normal. DCS continues running. No crash. Like DCS is  not aware of the blackout. So issue appears to be at driver/hardware level , independent of DCS. DCS hands off display data to Nvidia drivers, the drivers tell GPU to send signal to monitor. I believe that's called Nvidia Hardware Abstraction Layer or similar.

It depends on driver. I tend to  install the latest Nvidia reference form Nvidia. I do not install Nvidia app. I do not OC. On more then one occasion, I followed Jay2Cent instructions on fresh Nvidia install. Uninstall current Nvidia, clean out Registry, restart Windows with generic default video driver (in safe mode). Fresh install of Nvidia drivers. Restart Windows. The process works, but makes no difference in Nvidia GPU performance in DCS, and other apps.

I tried running DCS without YouTube running (on another panel). No difference. Tried running DCS without Chrome or any other browser. No difference. Blackouts are just a minor nuisance. Or not so minor depending on circumstances.

[Czar66]

@DmitriKozlowsky See if unchecking 'fullscreen' to run DCS in windowed borderless mode solves the issue.

[LucShep]

Using the correct Nvidia driver version for the respective GPU series model (and after uninstalling Nvidia drivers with DDU) often solves all problems.

I've lost count of silly bonker issues I was asked to help with in these last months, caused by the common lure of "installing latest drivers surely will make my game run better?!".
People need to stop thinking about "latest is greatest" and realize that can be a really terrible idea, and the root of hair pulling problems encountered with games.

None Nvidia driver is perfect, they are always in constant corrections, with new bugs appearing at times, when previously those weren't present (case in point lately).
Latest GPU hardware and newest game titles are, and have always been, the priority for improvements, while previous GPU models and games are considered secondary and can become worse in the process (and eventually they do, again case in point lately).

Graphics drivers are historically prone to errors when a new architecture is launched - as has been the case the last few months - sometimes indefinitely for the previous series models, and this is why you should really stick with certain driver versions for certain series models:

• You should only use latest Nvidia drivers (572.16 or newer) if you have an RTX 50 series GPU, and only then.
   
• If you have an RTX 40 series GPU, stick with driver 566.36 (link here) because that was the last "trouble free" driver for those models.  
  There's a better performance alternative in driver 566.03 (here) but it's not as refined bugs-fix wise. 
   
• If you have an RTX 30 series GPU (or older), stick with 537.58 (link here) because this is still the very best driver (and best overall frame pacing) for those models.

Before installing any Nvidia drivers, it is recommended to uninstall your current Nvidia drivers with DDU: https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5324
This will ensure that your system is clean of any display driver left overs (which can cause issues) before (re)installing any Nvidia drivers.
(SIDE NOTE: I prefer to use the portable version of DDU, it'll extract files to a directory of your choice - where you then go to run DDU, by 2x clicking in the executable)
If you're not accustomated to this procedure with DDU, then you have a tutorial here: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/uninstall-nvidia-amd-intel-gpu-drivers

I'd also strongly suggest to debloat the Nvidia drivers before installing them - there's always a heap of nefarious bloatware in them which affects performance.
You can do this by using NVCleanstall (link here). If you never done this, there's a video tutorial here (there may be others around) to see how it's done.

Lastly, and as side note, never ever upgrade Nvidia drivers if the reason is to get newest DLSS version, because you can download/install whatever DLSS version regardless of Nvidia driver version in use (drop the desired DLLs in same folder location where the game executable is):

• NVIDIA DLSS DLL --------------------------- https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-dll/
• NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation DLL -------- https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-3-frame-generation-dll/
• NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction DLL  ------ https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-3-ray-reconstruction-dll/
   

Edited yesterday at 02:19 AM by LucShep
added links

[silverdevil]

5 hours ago, LucShep said:

I've lost count of silly bonker issues I was asked to help with in these last months, caused by the common lure of "installing latest drivers surely will make my game run better?!".
People need to stop thinking about "latest is greatest" and realize that can be a really terrible idea, and the root of hair pulling problems encountered with games.

this has to be the most true statement i have seen in these forums. bravo.

i have been working in IT since the late eightys and cannot tell you how many time i have heard someone mention newer is better. for the most part, it is probably true. though sometimes it is totally unnecessary. especially video drivers. and cards for that matter. what is the true benefits for getting the newest gear when it comes out? the answer is negligible. there many posers that think having the latest and greatest of anything makes them somehow a better human. in the US this idea is personified by a lifted pickup truck. i see bumper stickers mocking this attitude "member of the 2 inch penis club".

if having latest and greatest helps you, who am i to say its wrong. in my case, i have a computer i got is 2021. DCS from that point, and quite honestly on the previous computer, has never had many of the issues other users have had. so.....

[Czar66]

There are often fixes in nVidia drivers that benefits all GPUs. Example being "Monster Hunter World" textures glitching and artifacts fixed on a driver earlier this year.

If you only play DCS, sure, use 'that' stable driver you know it is going to work.

I had no issues updating to the latest drivers always since DCS W debut and I usually run a budget but decent setups since, not latest and greatest.

Here's an example of global fixes on the latest nVidia driver that affects all GPUs under support:

I haven't updated it because I won't need it, or use those things, but I don't have a clue if the other person does.

Performance wise it all lands on margin of error.

I have an RTX 30 series and I won't keep using old driver just because. I'm usually helping people here with stability and not the other way around.
Recent drivers had also meaningful fixes on productivity software.

There are public extensive lists of fixes easily readable that you'll be missing.

Edited Thursday at 09:33 PM by Czar66

[LucShep]

33 minutes ago, Czar66 said:

There are often fixes in nVidia drivers that benefits all GPUs. Example being "Monster Hunter World" textures glitching and artifacts fixed on a driver earlier this year.

If you only play DCS, sure, use 'that' stable driver you know it is going to work.

I had no issues updating to the latest drivers always since DCS W debut and I usually run a budget but decent setups since, not latest and greatest.

Here's an example of global fixes on the latest nVidia driver that affects all GPUs under support:

I haven't updated it because I won't need it, or use those things, but I don't have a clue if the other person does.

Performance wise it all lands on margin of error.

I have an RTX 30 series and I won't keep using old driver just because. I'm usually helping people here with stability and not the other way around.
Recent drivers had also meaningful fixes on productivity software.

There are public extensive lists of fixes easily readable that you'll be missing.

Heh... on an RTX 30 series GPU?  Sure thing.
Enjoy your "placebo fix" with a pinch of performance loss and instability.... 

[Czar66]

40 minutes ago, LucShep said:

Heh... on an RTX 30 series GPU?  Sure thing.
Enjoy your "placebo fix" with a pinch of performance loss and instability.... 

I have no crashes. Performance is the same.

[LucShep]

35 minutes ago, Czar66 said:

I have no crashes. Performance is the same.

Okay. You do you.