DCSW loading times

[Gloom Demon]

How does DSCW normally load?

 

1. I start DCSW and get the initial screen, allowing me to load missions, run campaigns, engage in instant combat etc.

2. For example, I choose a mission to fly and I am presented with a screen outlining the mission and an option to press Fly.

3. Some time passes, while the mission is loaded - quite some time if DCSW is installed on a hard drive (a minute or so), less than that if it runs of an SSD, however it still takes about 20-30 seconds.

4. I fly the mission and, supposedly, after completing it, decide to fly it again from the debriefing screen.

5. What happens then is that DCSW starts loading the same mission again in the same slow fashion, instead of using the data, which is already available.

 

I presume, that if the necessary data is already in RAM, there is no need to load it up again. For example in almost any other game it could take a while to load the game itself to play it for the first time, but then, if you get killed, for example, loading a saved game is much more faster, then starting it up all over again, because the necessary libraries and stuff is already loaded. It seems, that DCSW either does not use the data it needs, which is already stored in RAM, or it wipes it clean, for some reason, after the mission is finished, having to load it all up again, which is somewhat inefficient ;-)

 

I find it very strange, when I load the Huey Tbilisi airport freeflight mission to practice landings (still to no avail, unfortunately :lol:), and have to wait another half a minute each time I want to retry it after another crash and burn fiasco. Please understand me correctly - I am not complaining, it's just that I find this kind of behavior a bit frustrating and unnecessary.

 

Perhaps, when it is deemed feasible, some mechanism could be realized in DCSW, that will retain the data, which was loaded into RAM or cached, in case it is needed again and so that it is overwritten only if the occupied system resources are needed for some other task - that would allow the player to spend more time in the game, other than waiting while it loads over and over again.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Gloom Demon

[Flagrum]

Perhaps, when it is deemed feasible, some mechanism could be realized in DCSW, that will retain the data, which was loaded into RAM or cached, in case it is needed again and overwritten only if the occupied system resources are needed for some other task - that would allow the player to spend more time in the game, other then waiting while it loads over and over again.

 

If you enable "Permit Crash Recovery" in Options/Gameplay, you can get a new aircraft directly if you click "Briefing" and then "Fly" instead of "Quit".

 

The mission as such is still running then, though. To restart the mission completely, you would have to click "Quit" and wait for the debriefing screen. But for i.e. Huey landing practise it should work ok without restarting the whole mission.

[PFunk1606688187]

I have noticed that loading missions in DCS has gotten way longer for me since 1.2.5. Not sure if its the official patch or one of the minor updates since that did it, but now I find my loading times are 2-3x longer.

 

Interesting thing is though that if I were to load the same mission as a multiplayer mission it doesn't take nearly as long which really baffles me.

[ez]

What happens then is that DCSW starts loading the same mission again in the same slow fashion, instead of using the data, which is already available.

 

Won't that data have changed the second you started the mission the first time?

 

All the unit states, the weather fronts will have moved, etc.

 

It'll need to reset all of these things to the way they were at the start of the mission, and the easiest way to do that is to unload everything from memory and reload it all from scratch.

 

 

Regarding loading times, I fired up my old Steam copy of DCS:A-10C standalone last night, and was surprised to find that loading times were worse.

Now this could have a lot to do with Windows optimising frequently-used programs, of course, but I found performance of DCS: World to be better than the same mission in DCS:A-10C.

Once you've started the simulator once or twice, subsequent load times are faster I find. I have Windows on SSD and DCS installed on standard HDD and the simulator loads in about 30 seconds.

 

Also performance (slightly off-topic) is something I've seen people say is worse in World compared to the original standalone.

The only time performance is better for me in the original standalone compared to World is in single screen mode with all graphics settings at low or off.

With the current build of World I get a 1 - 2 FPS difference between each of the three graphics presets.

 

 

System specs: Q9550 @ 3.7GHz, HD 6950 2GB @ 6970 clocks, 6GB RAM, 1920x2280 screen res, SoftTH, Helios, TM Warthog

[xracer]

It seems like they have done changes to memory managment in Update 2 or 3 since before after a few times into DCSW my system had very litte available mem as all was in the cache. Now my resources are allways freed not matter how many times i run DCSW without a reboot. I do see that loading times are longer yes. Maybe because of above. Could also be changes of the decompressing ruitnes. Quite a few files have gotten smaller recently also (more compressed). But the main thing which is annoying for me with longer loading times is when i work on a mission and have to test many times.