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DCS Black Shark Tweak Guide Alpha Version


Frazer

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I have found the issue, FogParam1 and FogParam2 in graphics.cfg.

 

FogParam1 and 2 make the "see through" of buildings which I adviced to put off in my tweakguide. This because it increases FPS by around 3. I tested this in cockpit and in a certain F11 cityview.

 

What I didn't test is what this setting does with the Shkval. Now I did and the outcome is stunning :shocking:

 

FogParam1 = 6

FogParam2 = 0

Inpit: 53 fps

Shkval on: 34 fps

Difference: 19 fps

Cityview: 50 fps

 

FogParam1 = 6

FogParam2 = 1.1

Inpit: 50 fps

Shkval on: 44 fps

Difference: 6 fps

Cityview: 48 fps

 

Thanks for the observation support there Falcon!


Edited by Frazer
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No problem Frazer.

In fact I'd like to thank you for solving my issue.

Though may i suggest to put a note about this in the next version of your tweak Guide?

(assuming another one will come since ya name this one Alpha Version)

Rep inbound and happy flying.:pilotfly:

 

**EDIT**

Ok just tested it and i can confirm that the FogParam2 setting can influence FPS significantly when using the Skhval.

I have it now back again at 1.1 and FPS without Skhval is ~50 and whit Skhval it drops to 42-45 depending on where

i point it. I suggest to everyone to play whit this setting a bit and see what gives best results for your system.


Edited by 159th_Falcon

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You kind of make it appear that by heating up your graphic cards your CPU usage went down. I want to point out that graphic cards can not really take over CPU jobs. I think with the changed video card settings, you have set your graphic cards to work harder (making graphics look better). The lowered CPU usage (and increase of FPS) comes from lowering some key options.lua settings.

 

I didn't mean to imply that DCS incorporates nVidia CUDA, but I did see a drop in CPU usage from moving AA to SLI32xQ. As I stated in the post (see below) I don't know why, but I retested it and it's true. Also Single Display Perf Mode in the nVidia settings brought the cpu usage down. Concerning the heat of my cards, I'm just glad they're being used. The desktop was heating them up more than DCS before :doh: I used top down testing methods as I have in official testing I've done for companies in the past. That involves taking measurements with fixed environment variables, changing the parameter, restarting the software, then taking measurements again with the same environment variables. I use use a licensed copy of Everest Ultimate to take my measurements.

Multi-Display/Mixed-GPU Acceleration to 'Single display performance mode' brought my CPU utilization down by about 10%. I don't really understand how this could be, but the explanation on the above URL for nVidia settings was that some apps that allow multiple monitors in high graphics try to span the resources out to both monitors, even if you're using only 1 for the app.

 

AA setting in nVidia settings made THE biggest difference. I went from 4x to 'SLI 32xQ' and saw a breathtaking difference in video quality. I actually saw an increase of 5-10FPS. My CPU usage went down quite a bit, and my GPUs started to heat up!

 

Your guide is great and something the community can really use I think. I had a hard time finding all the information necessary to tweak DCS properly through all the posts. I would, however, condense the guide a bit and take out the items where you're saying changing the params doesn't make a difference. In the first 10 pages I was able to identify three settings that make a difference:

["mirrors"] = false,

["reflections"] = false,

["water"] = 1,

It's a good thing that this is Early Access and we've all volunteered to help test and enhance this work in progress... despite the frustrations inherent in the task with even the simplest of software... otherwise people might not understand that this incredibly complex unfinished module is unfinished. /light-hearted sarcasm

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@ Frazer

Well, i have an Squad flight coming up that will take about 2 hrs escorting an convoy.

Ill keep Pen and Paper handy and watch for any other anomalies.

 

Though for some reason i don't seem to be able to get rid of some tearing, especially in the cockpit. I have tried Fullscreen On whit and without setting Vsync on in ATI tray tools whit no effect.

Same for Fullscreen Off.

During testing for tearing i have set MAXFPS at 30 (1/2 of refresh rate of monitor) and the in game FPS meter displayed an FPS of 31.

 

Any pointers appreciated.


Edited by 159th_Falcon

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Fullscreen or not doesn't matter for your problem I think. Limeting the frames in graphics.cfg eighther.

 

The only thing I can think of is that you might have the wrong executable assigned for your graphics card. Make sure it is on Ka-50/bin/stable/DCS.exe and see if Vsync works then.

 

Oh and during testing, it would be better to have MaxFPS at 0 (unlimited). Your graphic card should limit it to 60 FPS if Vsync works.


Edited by Frazer

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About the Vsync, still not working.

I made a seperate profile now for DCS BS but vsync simply doesnt seem to work.

Just tested and i was getting over 80 FPS.......

 

On to the other "problems" i encountered during the mission i just flew whit the 159th.

On the Skhval certain buildings are see-trough, and while this is a very neat feature for women clothing, it looks kinda awkward when looking at buildings.

See also the attached screenshots.

 

I also noticed that the Farps became visible only once i was very close,

about 1km away. Though this might also have been because the season was set to winter. and the farp was well camouflaged.

 

That's all for now.

1290849054_seetroughbuilding1.jpg.62c6bab09ed89b2c30983e9e55b3a48c.jpg

359798498_seetroughbuilding2.jpg.fc7b0c4037a81d7c0cd1111329fea355.jpg

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and while this is a very neat feature for women clothing, it looks kinda awkward when looking at buildings.

 

ROFLMAO!:megalol: Good one :D

 

Indeed, I also don't like the "see through" of buildings and that was one of the reasons I put it off in my tweakguide. Though as we found, having FogParam off kills FPS when having the shkval on. I guess we have no real choice here since this frame drop is unacceptable.

 

About the Vsync issue you have there, the last thing I can think of now is to make sure you have both screen and graphic card drivers up to date.

 

So, the other settings you change in your graphic card settings do have effect?

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Allright, here is the alpha version of the citytweak.

 

With the citytweak we will remove buildings. I have selected the most uninportant, least beautiful and small buildings with those dark trees which are not affected by Haze or Fogparam (why? I have no clue).

 

These dark trees are part of buildings and will be removed.

DarkTrees.jpg

 

So, after this tweak you will probably not notice much difference in game, though once you fly near or over cities you will save around 5 frames. Not that much but if that means for you going from 25 to 30 FPS a nice improvement.

 

Here are some outcomes: (cities in F11 view)

Not Tweaked

Mineralnye Vody

Objects: 5081

FPS: 43

Nalchick

Objects: 6415

FPS: 33

Tweaked

Mineralnye Vody

Objects: 4563

FPS: 47

Nalchick

Objects: 5649

FPS: 37

 

Go to Ka-50/Bazar/Terrain/Structures/High and cut-paste the following files to a newly created folder (you can always put buildings back).

 

BUFET

BUFET_crush

CAFE

CAFE_crush

ceh_b

ceh_b_crush

ceh_c

ceh_c_crush

cinema_b

cinema_b_crush

dom2c

dom2c.LOM

domik1a

domik1a.LOM

F_ceh_b

F_ceh_c

F_hotel_c

F_korpus_c

F_school_a

F_sklad

garagh-small-a

garagh-small-b

home2_a

home2_a.LOM

home2_b

home2_b.LOM

hotel_c

hotel_c_crush

hozdomik_crush

hozdomik1

hozdomik2

hozdomik3

kazarma2

kladb3

korpus_c

korpus_c_crush

kotelnaya_a

kotelnaya_a_crush

malahov_park

park_nab01

park_pan

park_s4

park35

pp1

pp2

pp3

pp4

pp5

pp8

pp10

pp11

pp12

pp13

pp15

pp16

RESTORAN1

RESTORAN1_crush

saray_crush

saray-a

saray-b

saray-c

saray-d

saray-e

saray-f

saray-g

school_a

school_a.LOM

school_a_crush

school_a_crush.LOM

sklad

sklad_crush

stolovaya1

tr_budka

tr_budka_crush

 

In the official versions of the tweak guide I will provide screenshots of every building with the name.


Edited by Frazer

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I've done so much tweaking to this game that it's tiring me out. I'm like the guy who can't enjoy a 3d movie because I'm obsessed with lifting the glasses up and down to see the difference.

 

I'm using Vsync and so am limited to my pasma TV's refresh rate (60 hz) anyway. So is it fair to say if your fps is between 50-60 your good? I'm hearing that you'll get 35-45 fps flying over cities no matter what you do anyway. That's certainly the case with me.

 

I'm just asking if all the tweaking you're coming up with is where I'm already at. 50-60 fps 90% of the time with a drop to 45-45 fps as you fly over cities. Anything over 60 fps isn't that noticeable anyway.

 

Great tweaking guide BTW.

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Thank you very much!!! Rep inbound!!!

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ASUS M4A79 Deluxe, AMD Phenom II X4 940@3.5GHz, ATI 6870 1GB, Windows 7 64bit, Kingstone HyperX 4GB, 2x Western Digital Raptor 74GB, Asus Xonar DX Sound Card, Saitek X52 PRO, TrackIR 44: Pro.

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Is there a way to get the doc in a wordpad?
Seen that there are pictures in the tweakguide, no. I see that word files give problems for some people, so I will make the official versions in to PDF format (Adobe reader is freeware).

 

I'm just asking if all the tweaking you're coming up with is where I'm already at. 50-60 fps 90% of the time with a drop to 45-45 fps as you fly over cities. Anything over 60 fps isn't that noticeable anyway.
Don't bother yourself with tweaking any longer, go fly. :pilotfly: ;)

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PDF file of Alpha tweak guide included in post

 

Thanx for the reply about the buildings on the Skhval Frazer.

Though i wont apply this cause your removing it from the game.

What the big deal (for me) is?

I fly a lot online and mission designers tend to hide units behind objects,

now if i remove em for some extra FPS i feel like cheating.

Cause i will be able to see units while others cant, also if i lock it and fire

lets say a Vikr im not able to hit the unit because the building is still there on

the server and i will be like WTF, i hit unit X 5 times and its still not death.......

 

For other people that fly mostly SP it is definitely worth considering though.

 

@Wolf85 and Frazer;

I have included an PDF of your Alpha tweak guide whit this post.

If you have Office 2007 there should be an option in the Save As menu to

safe the file as a PDF, otherwise you should be able to do that whit openoffice.

Which you can download (free) at www.openoffice.org

 

 

About when to stop tweaking;

 

COMPLETELY UP TO YOU, at the point your happy whit your gameplay and FPS your done. Of course you can try to get the max out of it continuously

but that's up to you.

(go fly without any kind of FPS counter showing and judge for yourself if the flight is smooth enough, if it is, your done, even if your FPS counter would show your flying at only 5FPS, so to speak)

 

PS, the pictures in the PDF are a bit blury due to the file compression i had to apply, the forum doesnt allow PDF attachments bigger then 1MB.

Thought they should still give a good idea of what the discussed setting does.

DCS Black Shark Tweak Guide Alpha Version.pdf

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Removing buildings is not that much of an issue as you think.

 

First of all, as mission builder it would be not a good idea to hide units behind buildings because we can all see through buildings (fogparam). Actually, AI units can see through buildings as much as you can do, and in some cases even (fail to) fire through buildings.

 

The only issue you could have is that other players might see you flying through buildings and no if you don't see a building, you will not crash, same counts for missiles on both your and AI side.

 

Seen that I mainly removed small & very small buildings and only 2 (ugly) types of big ones (which you can also put back in if you wish) it will be very rare to encounter any problems online.

 

Next to that, people with slower computers will often choose to "force" medium or low scenery, which have by far fewer buildings.

 

But ofcourse, like you say yourself, you decide how far you want to go ;)

 

Thanks for converting the Alpha Tweak to PDF by the way :)

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This might not be possible to solve, but who knows. Did anyone find a way to reduce this frame drop / shkval visibility range?

 

Reduce/turn off shadows and in options.lua: ["effects"] = 2 (or 1 for old systems)

 

Will reduce fps drop.;) (At least for me with my crappy cpu, see my signature) Edit: I'm not sure yet, but reduce "lights" (options.lua) is may also reduce fps drop when shkval&beacon light is activated.

 

 

Nice guide! :)

 

You may should note at every settign if it depends on Gfx-Card or CPU ;) Because with my HD4870 I can set every GPU-only settings to very high. But some settings are cpu or cpu-only and these settings I need to turn down to lowest values, because of the shkval fps drops and airbase procedure(start&land).

 

 

Edit2: Another one: Set "haze=0" and set the terrain/weather to winter. May an option for you. ;)

 

And before I forget:

 

["scenes"] = "medium",

Only older systems should run BS with scenes at medium. More on this later.

 

Where? Didn't found it later....


Edited by Duke49th
correct values
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Really great stuff Frazer. Before this guide, I had to choose between ugly visuals or close to unplayable performance on the more complex missions. This gave me a substantial fps boost but what really impresses me is the clipping/lod values. They are a nearly perfect balance of situational awareness and cpu optimization for KA-50 missions. I know from experience that is anything but easy to accomplish, so a huge thank you and rep inbound from me! Have you done any significant tweaks in LOMAC? I'd love to have a peek at your graphics.cfg... ;)

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Happy to have helped you improve gameplay Chibawang :)

For LOMAC I have also done tweaking though LOMAC runs way faster (and that with only one core)! Most of the settings in this tweakguide have the same effect in LOMAC with the only real change that the settings in options.lua are all in the graphics.cfg.

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Thank you alot for the guide! I still get under 20 FPS on FARPs though. If we only could disable the beacon light without losing the landing light.

 

Now I have a problem. The vehicles are transparent and impossible to see.

I believe it has something to do with these settings I've modified:

 

High

{

near_clip = 0.2;

middle_clip = 4;

far_clip = 80000;

 

structures = {80, 5000};

trees = {1000, 6000};

dynamic = {300, 5000};

objects = {3000, 30000};

mirage = {3000, 20000};

surface = {5000, 15000};

lights = {100, 30000};


Edited by Griffin
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Vsync

 

Call me crazy but setting fullscreen to true or false seems to be the key.

 

In previous posts i stated Vsync wouldn't work. Updated to CCC version 10.1

and still no Vsync.

 

Then i went and installed ATI tray tools, made a profile forced Vsync, guess what, still not working.

 

Then i went in DCS BS to the options menu and turned OFF the fullscreen option, guess what, got a rock solid 60 fps.........

 

Call me crazy but im a happy camper...

 

(btw i got the same issue whit the same solusion whit lockon flaming cliffs.)

 

Anyone has an idea what setting fullscreen to true or false has to do whit Vsync?

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Yea, I tried copying your settings over to LOMAC but something got lost in translation: namely, bad popup with buildings and whatnot. Perhaps the clip values aren't as appropriate in a jet as they are in a helo?

 

Most of the settings have the same effect though not all. Making a direct copy of the BS settings is not adviced. I prefer not to go in to LockOn tweaking details in a Blackshark thread, this could only bring confusion. After the first official release of this tweak guide I will make a similar guide for LockOn.

 

Thank you alot for the guide! I still get under 20 FPS on FARPs though. If we only could disable the beacon light without losing the landing light.

 

Now I have a problem. The vehicles are transparent and impossible to see.

I believe it has something to do with these settings I've modified:

 

Could you post a screenshot?

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The strange thing is that only 3 of these vehicles in this column appear invisible. All others are just like before. Or maybe it's a new stealth troop transporter. :huh:

 

EDIT: I tested with the original graphics.cfg and it didn't solve the problem (=didn't have anything to do with tweaking). What the...? I'm afraid I need to switch to a clean back up game folder.

ScreenShot_000.thumb.jpg.4701915dfcaf29c97256e8eb20b3a827.jpg


Edited by Griffin
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