Its 2013 ... Really!!! Is that all???? DCS Performance

[TZeer]

Hi folks,

 

i got to say, i am a little bit disappointed and frustrated. I got a little time off and came to re install the good old DCS A-10, now as a DCS World Modul, on my new gaming rig.

 

I recently only played short games such as Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3 and i was very enthusiastic to see the performance gain in DCS.

 

And then......bang!!! :mad: :mad::joystick: Nothing. Nothing has changed..... I am still happy to see those steady 30 FPS during an attack flight with multiple planes / targets etc. I thought a stable 45 - 50 fps should be no problem by now......:cry:

 

How can that be? What am i doing wrong? Can you guys help me out? :helpsmilie:

 

 

My Game Settings:

 

- 1920 x 1080

- everything maxed out (no mirrors)

- MDF resolution 1024

- 4x MSAA

- low CIV traffic

- no changes over GPU driver whatsoever

 

 

My Rig:

 

- CPU: Intel 3570K @ 4.5 Ghz

- GPU: EVGA GTX 670 FTW 2GB - OCed to 1280 Mhz Boost Clock

- Samsung 830 Pro SSD

- Win 7 64 bit

- all the latest Updates and Nvida drivers (no beta)

 

It would be great if you could give me some good advice....

 

Thx for your help! :smartass::thumbup:

 

Nume

 

Change this:

 

Civ Traffic: Off

Cockpit Display: 512 ( Not every frame!)

Water: Low

TSSAA: Off

Cockpit Shadows: Off

Tree Shadows: Off

 

And report back if you have any luck with this.

[Nealius]

Interestingly chimney smoke doesn't hurt my framerates at all. I fly through them on a regular basis.

[Nume Noctre]

Now go back to post #48 and change all the MDFs to MFDs :megalol:

I´m on my way.....dogh...

[cichlidfan]

Interestingly chimney smoke doesn't hurt my framerates at all. I fly through them on a regular basis.

 

I believe just having them on, and consequently all over the screen, knocks down the frame rate. As long as you can see them they are an issue.

[Wolf Rider]

Hi folks,

 

i got to say, i am a little bit disappointed and frustrated. I got a little time off and came to re install the good old DCS A-10, now as a DCS World Modul, on my new gaming rig.

 

I recently only played short games such as Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3 and i was very enthusiastic to see the performance gain in DCS.

 

And then......bang!!! :mad: :mad::joystick: Nothing. Nothing has changed..... I am still happy to see those steady 30 FPS during an attack flight with multiple planes / targets etc. I thought a stable 45 - 50 fps should be no problem by now......:cry:

 

How can that be? What am i doing wrong? Can you guys help me out? :helpsmilie:

 

 

My Game Settings:

 

- 1920 x 1080

- everything maxed out (no mirrors)

- MDF resolution 1024

- 4x MSAA

- low CIV traffic

- no changes over GPU driver whatsoever

 

 

My Rig:

 

- CPU: Intel 3570K @ 4.5 Ghz

- GPU: EVGA GTX 670 FTW 2GB - OCed to 1280 Mhz Boost Clock

- Samsung 830 Pro SSD

- Win 7 64 bit

- all the latest Updates and Nvida drivers (no beta)

 

It would be great if you could give me some good advice....

 

Thx for your help! :smartass::thumbup:

 

Nume

 

Knock WATER down to medium, TREES down to minimum (trees will bring any pc to it's knees), also turn Clutter (AA has a lot of work to do on grasses etc) way down as well

and what are your VGA settings?

Edited May 29, 2013 by Wolf Rider

[locoidal]

Hi,

 

i am not asking for an FPS style. I love the look of the DCS titles. To me they really look fantastic. I just want them to be a bit smoother....

 

Since there is no fancy "dx11 tesselation super smaa pixel shader downsampling" magic goin on i just dont know what is pulling the FPS down...:(

 

Nume

 

It is because the number of the objects in the scene.. and the fact that there are some unoptimized edm models .. you can find some info here http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=101491

 

There are others core design performance problems like the absence of multithread tech .. but I'm fed up of speaking about the same topics and I don't want to be the "boring multithreaded guy of the forum" :noexpression:

[Humvee28]

Can you give me a link to the mod you used to get rid of the chimney smoke?

 

Thx

 

Nume

 

 

http://lockon.co.uk/en/files/145726/

[Nume Noctre]

Finally a good FPS gain!!!!!

 

I finally had the time to check the impact of a few settings. AA Settings, Tree Shadows, Traffic Settings etc. gave me only a very very slight gain of FPS, so it seemed, that the graphics was really not the problem.

 

Even the preload radius had no real impact in my test setting. But after tinkering with everything i found out, that the CLUTTER DISTANCE has a HUGE IMPACT on performance.

 

Not thinking of it as a BRUTAL FPS KILLER i curiously set my settings from 1500m to 700m and BOOM!!

 

The staggering result - in my test mission i had an FPS gain of almost 33%!!!! Meaning with everything set to high, no mirrors and in flight over a small city with the TGP on my frames went from 27 to 37!!!!

 

I never expected such a huge impact from the clutter setting!:doh:

 

Cheers

 

Nume

Edited September 5, 2013 by Nume Noctre
Typo!

[martinistripes]

Not thinking of it as a BRUTAL FPS KILLER i curiously set my settings from 1500m to 700m and BOOM!!

 

I have my clutter set down at 150m and it's still enough to get the perception of height and speed when I'm low enough. 700m is still overkill in my opinion. Glad you gained some FPS anyway. :thumbup:

 

Be thankful you don't need to play on a laptop like some of us!

[Nume Noctre]

Hey,

 

thanks. I think i am going to try an even lower setting and see if it brings something without loosing to much immersion.

 

My rig was practically build for DCS but my goal of having at least 50 fps no matter what is still far away.

 

I'll keep tinkering!:-)

 

Nume

[Dr_Arrow]

I have my clutter set down at 150m and it's still enough to get the perception of height and speed when I'm low enough. 700m is still overkill in my opinion. Glad you gained some FPS anyway. :thumbup:

 

Be thankful you don't need to play on a laptop like some of us!

 

Clutter is FPS killer, 150 m is just enough - I can even live with 0 m and have all other settings maxed (including mirrors) :)

[Cenobite]

Well I'm lucky enough to have my clutter set to full, but after 1.2.6, I even look in the direction of the action and I drop frames, add the TGP and its gone from min 45fps full maxed to min 45fps with scenes and vis dropped to low.

Editing graphics.conf is my last hope.

[Nume Noctre]

Well I'm lucky enough to have my clutter set to full, but after 1.2.6, I even look in the direction of the action and I drop frames, add the TGP and its gone from min 45fps full maxed to min 45fps with scenes and vis dropped to low.

Editing graphics.conf is my last hope.

 

Is there anything useful to edit in a config file? I haven't considered that way before...:huh:

 

Nume

[Cenobite]

Yeah it's the graphics.lua in the config folder of DCS World. Open in notepad.

Best performance I have seen is locking max frames to you lowest (wouldn't go below 30, just stops frames from jumping around) and I found a post in the buggs section which helped me gain around 10 frames back with no noticeable visual loss.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107551

 

It's from mustang regarding editing in high structures line, it works well.

 

Also,

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=101083

 

When I used these config files the game was pretty silky, tho they caused a missing texture error for me using them with DCS World.

But the graphics.lua from msalama will give a good guide to edit and test your on your own graphics.lua file.

I have saved a copy for the next patch to get my frames back if need be...lol...

Edited September 9, 2013 by Cenobite

[Cenobite]

Just a note on graphics.lua, when DCS world updates, it will over write you custom config.

You can instead edit the same file or similar in users (can't remember exact file name off the top of my head but easy to find), or do what I do and just change the offending lines back after an update.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Cenobite

[Nume Noctre]

Yeah it's the graphics.lua in the config folder of DCS World. Open in notepad.

Best performance I have seen is locking max frames to you lowest (wouldn't go below 30, just stops frames from jumping around) and I found a post in the buggs section which helped me gain around 10 frames back with no noticeable visual loss.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107551

 

It's from mustang regarding editing in high structures line, it works well.

 

Also,

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=101083

 

When I used these config files the game was pretty silky, tho they caused a missing texture error for me using them with DCS World.

But the graphics.lua from msalama will give a good guide to edit and test your on your own graphics.lua file.

I have saved a copy for the next patch to get my frames back if need be...lol...

 

 

Hey Cenobite,

 

THX for your input, i'll give those tips a try. Hopefully I will get something out if it.

 

Best

 

Nume

[Vedexent]

I really have to wonder about the fetishism of the "holy frame rate". I'm willing to bet that if you took the frame-rate measurement tools away from a people, a lot of them wouldn't even notice if/when their frame rate dropped (so long as it's not something like 10).

 

In my never-to-be-humble-opinion this is a combat flight simulator, not an 3D IMAX theater.

 

To me - and you may totally disagree, and that's fine - the important bits are (not necessarily in order of importance):

 

1. Is it a good flight model?
   
2. Is it a good systems model?
   
3. Is it a good airframe design? (I love my Frogfoot, even though it's a simpler system model than my Ka-50, just because I love the design philosophy of the plane)
   
4. Is the world and the AI good enough to provide an acceptable overall experience?
   
5. Are the graphics good enough to make it immerse enough?
   
6. Are the graphics good enough that I'm not getting distracting graphics artifacts?
   
7. Is the muti-player good enough that I can simulate larger military operations than 1 plane?
   

You might argue that DCS World is shakey on #4 and #7 right now, but I don't see the need for 4K imagery, or photorealistic landscapes, or super-high-realism particle smoke systems.

 

Do I like them? Do I appreciate them if they're there? Hell, yes! I like eye-candy as much as the next guy.

 

But I'll take simulator "steak" over eye "candy" any day of the week.

 

Just my $0.02

[siipperi]

^

I don't want to disagree what's the most important feature in the game but if we can't enjoy stable high fps no matter what kind of beast we have running under the table I don't think most of us can't enjoy the game fullest. If "combat flight simulator" equals to horrible FPS I think something is really wrong. As I said, I don't want to discredit the work ED have made or offend any user on this forum but I don't think it's wise to defend game if it's poorly optimized and it's known fact. Luckily EDGE could solve this. AFAIK problem is that there is currently just too much load on the CPU but with EDGE, major load transforms to GPU which really helps with performance.

Anything under 40fps is just horrible and 40 is on the border if it's playable.

You can clearly see difference between 40 and 60fps and my personal option is that even 60fps average with current hardware is way too low, issue is optimization not the complexly of the game.

And if we didn't care about the graphics why not play with terrain that has only 4 colours; green, brown, white and blue and flat surface. Immersion is really important for simulators and graphics really mean something. Look at the A10 it have tens of thousands of triangles, that is graphics and I love it! No need to discredit graphical aspects of the game.

[Nume Noctre]

Hi Vedexent,

 

i totally agree with you when it comes to pure FPS fetish. But IMHO i think there is pretty big different between hunting the best possible FPS beyond everything that is needed for the sole purpose of the sim and looking to get the needed FPS to make the sim actually work in all situations.

 

To be honest, i do have a framerate limiter set at 50fps. Everything beyond that is of no accountable benefit to me. But looking at your 7 points i would add one more:

 

8. Is the experience smooth enough to not interrupt the immersion?

 

Well, i guess i would have to say no to that one. Don´t get me wrong, i deeply respect ED for what they are doing and how they are pushing the genre and i also think that DCS is one hell of a great flight-sim. But when i fly the hog at Angels10 and everything is perfectly smooth and i engage into low altitude combat, turn around towards a city and suddenly my FPS drop by 50% and the plane feels COMPLETELY different than it truly rips me out of the immersion and frustrates me.

 

Right now i have my settings optimised to give me the most stable performance without going for the most FPS or the highest eye candy, but i think that DCS has way more potential in it!

 

Greetings from Berlin

 

Nume

Edited January 18, 2014 by Nume Noctre
typo!

[Netsk]

I have everything maxed apart from trees 9000m, clutter 1000m, 4xMSAA and 512 res MFD.

 

I have no FPS problems. Only time I get low FPS for a blink of a second is when a group spawns, thats it.

[Vedexent]

Hi Vedexent,

 

i totally agree with you when it comes to pure FPS fetish. But IMHO i think there is pretty big different between hunting the best possible FPS beyond everything that is needed for the sole purpose of the sim and looking to get the needed FPS to make the sim actually work in all situations.

 

To be honest, i do have a framerate limiter set at 50fps. Everything beyond that is of no accountable benefit to me. But looking at your 7 points i would add one more:

 

8. Is the experience smooth enough to not interrupt the immersion?

 

Well, i guess i would have to say no to that one. Don´t get me wrong, i deeply respect ED for what they are doing and how they are pushing the genre and i also think that DCS is one hell of a great flight-sim. But when i fly the hog at Angels10 and everything is perfectly smooth and i engage into low altitude combat, turn around towards a city and suddenly my FPS drop by 50% and the plane feels COMPLETELY different than it truly rips me out of the immersion and frustrates me.

 

Right now i have my settings optimised to give me the most stable performance without going for the most FPS or the highest eye candy, but i think that DCS has way more potential in it!

 

Greetings from Berlin

 

Nume

 

I would concur with the immersion factor - it's why I put "are the graphics good enough to not be distracting" aspect in my point #6.

 

But, I just don't see the kind of frame drops and radical changes to the flight model that seem to be affecting you - and my system is similar to yours except I don't have an i7 (i5 Haswell), and I don't have an SSD.

 

Something to consider: are you running any mods, or are you running a stock-only DCS? I can't blame ED totally, if I'm running mods which they never designed for, which hit my game performance.

 

That said, I'm no great fan of some of the software shortcomings, and can agree with you on those points. Working with software, I'm both frustrated by some of the shortcomings that shouldn't be in any modern program (poor multi-core utilization in this day and age?); and I'm understanding of them - given the history of the software, I can see exactly how/why these issues crept in: DCS is a decade old project, which is really a cluster of smaller projects that are retro-fitted and "glued together".

 

The issues are just going to happen with a setup like that, and the only long term cure is a complete redesign/rebuild from the ground up. Anyone got $20 million to donate to ED?

 

All in all, I agree that DCS is not the greatest software design in the history of the world, nor does it perform like a well oiled machine. It's not super-sexy performance, hyper-polished like a AAA video game title, and its graphics are not Crysis.

 

But I think it works "well enough" as a flight simulator, I'll continue to use and support it, and given what the fundamental causes of some of the issues are (or at least, so I believe) I don't think they're going away soon.

[AtaliaA1]

given what the fundamental causes of some of the issues are (or at least, so I believe) I don't think they're going away soon.

 

 

 

Ahhhh Ye of little faith.

 

The new mode of drawing graphics to the GPU should remove a lot of the work load as the newer method and Technology involved with the design of Edge is after all modern technology already in use.

 

How this new tech. and this old software will co-exist is only a guess as to it's functionality, but I as others do have high hopes for it being a total success of old software running on new tech.

[Nume Noctre]

You know,

 

i really love this sim and i am really looking forward to what is coming up in 2014. Until then i will try to keep tweaking what i can to make it even better in its current state.:)

 

I am pretty confident ED has some nice things for us already in their pipeline....

 

Best

 

Alex

[Serp Supreme]

I'm really straining DCS with my system, since I'm on a laptop and all, and in light to moderate combat I average at around 15-20 fps. I flew a mission last night that we had no idea how overloaded it would be, I had less than 1 frame per second :( My processor is only 2.3 Ghz but it's 8 core, I almost feel bad for the core that is actually doing work because of the strain on it. Hopefully EDGE with its multi core support will let me use my CPU to its full potential.

[SkateZilla]

and yet I'm running 4 Screens from a HD7950......

 

EDGE was never stated to be MULTI-CORE for the CPU, it's MULTI-GPU.