Cockpit FPS

[rextar]

Just a question on why this happens ...

When I hit alt + f1,you lose all the instruments , that's fine BuT I get a jump from 20 FPS with cockpit on ,to 43 FPS when I hit alt+f1!!!

Does cockpit animation really use up 23 FPS ?

Cheers

[EtherealN]

The change is a bit more dramatic than I'd expect, but yes. There is a LOT of triangles and a LOT of textures involved in that cockpit, as well as a lot of routines to handle switches, knobs and all of that. If you have limited vRAM or RAM but use too high graphics details I would suspect the impact to be larger - might this be what happens? I would suspect something like stepping from 20 to 30, or 40 to 60, etcetera - not doubling.

 

(This is one of the reason why I sigh deeply whenever people describe making a clickable cockpit as a small and simple thing. :P )

[rextar]

Ethe I hope that wasn't a dig at me,Im not saying it's a simple process,far from it.

Just don't know why as I said it's doubleing my FPS .

[EtherealN]

No, I should have been clearer: that kind of thing tends to happen in debates where people say things like "well, they already have the plane for the F-15E so they only have to make a cockpit, that's easy"... Your question is just an example of why it isn't that easy: it's a huge part of the work and eats a lot of the resources both in development and in the user's computer. I just took the opportunity. :)

 

But yeah, large FPS difference is expected, though in your case the difference is larger than I would expect and I suspect there are things you can tweak in the settings to gain a couple FPS while having cockpit on.

[Kuky]

I was playing around today also trying to figure out what my bottleneck is in certain missions (Hideout for example) and I couldn't figure it out as I was seeing both CPU and GPU not utilized 100% but my fps was low (14-15fps) looking to the left while in hangar... I tried to see if my vRAM was the reason so I lowered textures to medium, turned off AA and AF, made 1024x768 1 Screen and still I did not get any improvement. If I turned mirrors off fps would jump a bit and CPU utilization would go down by about 30%... just didn't make any sense to have 14fps and both CPU and GPU not showing 100% usage (I set affinity for DCS.exe to 1 core so I could watch the usage)

 

Anyway, back on topic... among changing and trying different things I found also turning cockpit off gave a good fps boost... if I remember correctly it was good 50% boost... I'll again just to make sure...

 

EDIT: Hideout mission, looking forward with cockpit on 43fps, with cockpit off 58fps... so bit less then 50%. But looking to the left didn't make any difference with cockpit on or off, there's about 1 fps better with cockpit off.

 

I am thinking I am either vRAM limited but I doubt this since if I lower resolution and turn off AA/AF etc, there is no difference in this instance... so I'm inclined to think system RAM is not feeding the CPU fast enough.

 

PS: I find mirrors chew quite a bit of CPU processing power as well... turning them off gives similar boost to turning cockpit off.

Edited April 26, 2011 by Kuky

[EtherealN]

Could you explain that affinity again? I don't quite see why you'd need that for the analysis. Your FPS change seems to mirror what I've seen as well though. I'm curious about why rextar has such a dramatic change.

[Kuky]

Basically I set DCS to run on 1 core only so I can see how much of it is utilized as when DCS is running on all cores it's impossible to tell how much of the CPU is used by the sim... if I can see in real time how much CPU and GPU are used I thought I could tell at any point in game what is the bottleneck, but I am puzzled as to how I can have DCS running at 14fps in certain scenario and not see 100% utilization of the CPU core I let it run at, or GPU also... so something is making the sim run at 14fps but it doesn't seem to be the CPU or the GPU ???

 

Another thing, which makes sense is that with affinity set to all cores or any 2 of the 4 cores I have on my CPU, the fps is exactly the same... this explains how DCS is currently using 2 separate cores. So running it on 2 or 3 or all 4 cores makes no difference.

Edited April 26, 2011 by Kuky

[rextar]

Somthing is causing my 20fps increase without cockpit on,not sure what tweaks to implement here,as is at x2,HDR off.512 res cockpit

[EtherealN]

Rextar: texture setting? It can also be completely unrelated settings if it is causing a bottleneck, so changing scenes, effects, water or something like that might also help.

 

Kuky: Ah, I see. I was going to suggest just monitoring the process through Resource Monitor, but that wouldn't achieve quite what you wanted.

[rextar]

Textures are set to medium ethe,low visibility 0 bushes ,1500 trees

[EtherealN]

Hardware?

[rextar]

P4 Prescott gtx 260,just got my i5 today

[rextar]

Could be card bottle necking, but to jump from 20 FPS to 43 FPS in as explained baffles me ethe?

[EtherealN]

P4 Prescott gtx 260,just got my i5 today

 

The problem is underscored, the solution is made bold. :)

[rextar]

Underscored?

[EtherealN]

Line under the text. :)

Basically: the problem is the processor, and the solution is the i5. :)

[rextar]

ok thx ethe im onto it!

thx for your help as always rex.