Exigeous

THANK YOU so very much - I knew I was missing it, as it seems things have changed over the years it was hard to work out what was what. Again thanks, owe you one!!!

Forgive me as I think this has been addressed but I'll admit my dumb @ss is still rather confused. Let me make it simple. I installed via Steam Bought some planes and maps via Steam I now realize that DLC is released for standalone a good deal before Steam so I'd like to convert somehow (really want to fly the Christen Eagle II) It seems, from what I can tell, that once you buy anything via Steam you're pretty much screwed and stuck there - is that true? When I ask for CD Keys in Steam I only see the F15 and A10, nothing for my other items (F18, Persian Gulf map). So are we stuck with Steam as soon as we buy some DLC there? If that's true I don't at all understand the release schedule difference as are we supposed to re-buy things to move over so we can get things early too? Thanks!! ~X

So almost 2 months ago I opened a ticket about major issues I was having. In short every 3-4 seconds I get a "stutter", the game pauses for a second, dropping a number of frames. I play in VR and if you've used VR you know how important a smooth framerate is. I've spent easily 40 hours trying to fix it. I've done everything, and I mean everything that I and anyone else could think of. Think I'm exaggerating, have a read here. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=176326 If you didn't read I've stripped everything down to 1 monitor, keyboard and mouse. No VR, no triple screens, no HOTAS, no anything. Same problem. I'm running a i7 4770k, 32GB RAM, SSD and GTX 1080 so not exactly old. It's a gaming only PC and I play MANY AAA titles in VR and out, notably Elite Dangerous which in VR with ultra settings is very demanding. It and all others are perfect. Okay, enough about that. After a month with not a single suggestion from support (with only 2 replies, one saying "what else can advise to people with 20-years IT experience") I finally asked for a refund with the reply "please wait, we will do it as soon as possible". Over the next month FIVE times I replied asking for an update and was met with silence. Today I check and see that 6 days ago I was asked another "have you tried this" question (again no suggestions), completely ignoring my repeated requests for a refund after the statement all I needed to do was wait. Oh and the kicker - the case is now "Auto Closed". Obviously I've opened yet another case referencing the first. I've seen bad support before, I have been in the industry for 20 years now so I've see a lot. This is definitely in my personal top 5. In 2 months I've updated the case 14 times, 4 of those having an extreme amount of technical details (again if you haven't just glance at the post from above). I've gotten 4 replies, no suggestions, with one saying to wait for a refund. I've now easily spent 50 hours of my time on a game I haven't gotten to play or enjoy for 5 minutes. A game I spent $50 on. Am I alone? Have others experienced this level of supreme incompetence? At some point I suppose I just have to move on and eat the $50. I know that's their hope, that I'll finally just give up. I try to fight this kind of thing but sometimes you just can't win I suppose. Is it me? Are my expectations too high? Okay, rant over. I at least feel a little better now.... ~X

Just thought I'd update everyone so you know how truly terrible ED support is. The last response I received was from Konstantin Kharin OVER 3 WEEKS AGO. That reply was I've bumped the ticket 5 times since then as they now won't reply to me. It's been over 6 weeks since I opened the ticket and I've easily spent 50 hours or more troubleshooting, searching, asking questions, contacting support, etc. Apparently I paid $60 for that privilege as I certainly didn't get to enjoy it in any way. If support happens to see this please, PLEASE help me resolve this. -Ross

That was in response to me asking several times for them to put me in touch with someone who could give me a refund. I don't know if the response means they'll give me a refund soon or if they'll have someone who can do that reply to me. Either way this has gone on for WAY too long and I just want my money back. Given this experience with them I have zero interest in either waiting for 2.5 or in spending another dime with them. I've been more patient than I think any normal customer would be. I've posted 14 updates/questions to the support ticket and they've replied to me 3 times, each time they do reply it takes them over a week to do so. Customer service like that isn't going to be rewarded with my dollars. Fortunately for me there are many other games that are fantastic in VR and run perfectly on my system so I'll happily play those.

Well a bit of good news - oh, not that news something else. As ED has no suggestions, really at all, they just replied and said to be patient they are working on it. I asked to clarify but from the thread of the tone I'm sure they mean issuing me a refund. Assuming they do that I have to give them a ton of respect and will plan to try the game in the future. Few game companies would issue a refund 6+ months after a purchase so color me impressed.

And yet again failure. Tried moving the temp drive just to see and nada, same exact issue. I hate to keep saying it but I just have to give up at this point as I've spent at least 20 and likely far more hours trying to get DCS playable and can't make it work. While I have a good amount of time to play I don't have this much and would rather spend my time playing games instead of troubleshooting them. I do appreciate all your help AtaliaA1, too bad we haven't been able to get this to work for me.

AtaliaA1 - thank you so much for your replies and attempts to help. You're exactly right that at this point everything suggested has been tried. I'm not surprised others haven't read the other thread, while I have done a great job of keeping everything I've tried, and failed, in the original post so it's easy to read people just don't click on such things. As such they'll try to help with somewhat simple suggestions that have been tried LONG ago. I've now asked for a refund for a second time as support dismissed that and then asked if I could make videos showing the issue, again something I did a good while back and had already shared with them. In 2 weeks they've not made a single suggestion of something to try and have only asked me 2 questions, both of things that are in the thread that I've already tried. In short support is an absolute joke. I do realize this isn't a simple issue, if it was I would have figured it out a long while back. Clearly there is something in the DCS code that is incompatible or not working properly with my PC but at this point I, nor anyone else, has an idea about what it could be. Thanks again, ~X

Sadly I'm now at the end of this journey. Spent over 2 hours last night trying the new suggestions and trying to dig through log files, etc. to find anything wrong that could be the cause - and nothing. Very few random errors in the Windows logs, not in any way related. Have confirmed CPU isn't parked or throttling, etc. After the 2 hours I played the following with these results - Doom 2016 - 5760x1080 (3 monitor), 100+ fps with everything maxed - Overwatch - 1920x1080 (they don't all triple), 150+ fps - Descent Underground in VR - 90 fps constant, all maxed (Rift VR wants 90 fps to be perfect) - Elite Dangerous in VR - all maxed and using 1.5x supersampling - 90 fps 90% of the time, a few dips below 75 but rarely. The interesting thing about testing with Elite is I use a number of additional tools while playing that pushes my overall CPU load to about 80% and GPU around 50%. That's with the following open as well: - Discord - Voice Attack - JoyToKey - Motion Platform LE - Windows Media Player - mIRC text-to-speech chat bot - Chrome (with Twitch open) - IE (with Twitch open) - OBS streaming live at 720p - EVGA control panel to dynamically adjust the CPU fans - AutoHotKey (watches for joystick input and when found it puts Elite in focus) - CAM (resource monitoring tool) - Task Manager (just to check occasionally - Elite in VR so Oculus Home is running - Steam (as EVGA's app runs from there) Given I can play Elite in VR at 90 fps with all those other apps open and streaming and get a great, near perfect experience but can't get DCS to play smoothly when running on a single monitor at 720p with everything I can possibly close closed and well, I gotta point the finger at DCS is some way. It's a real shame as I think I'd really enjoy it, especially in VR with my Warthog HOTAS. But at this point I'm just not willing to waste anymore time on this. I certainly think everyone would agree that I've gone way *way* beyond what other users would and that I've turned every stone and looked behind every tree. -Ross

Thanks, in cases like these I try to point out that I do know what I'm doing to hopefully avoid the simple "did you reboot" suggestions but at the same time don't want to come off as conceited. While SSDs make this far less important than in the past running in RAID 0 (striped) can effectively double disk IO. In a striped array the OS/hardware can read from one drive while writing to the other. While that's not an exact doubling of speed it can add real world benefits. The biggest downside is one drive goes and you're screwed. You can do RAID 10 where you have 2 mirrored disks striped with 2 other mirrored disks, using 4 total. That way any single drive can fail and you're still good. On a consumer PC that really makes no sense due to cost but in enterprise applications it can be fantastic. - Absolutely done, have shut down every single service and process possible. - Again done, I've set every single option as low as it will go to test. - Interesting idea, haven't tried this but might one last time before giving up. - Same here, will try as well - Yup, disabled. - No overclocking whatsoever, not to CPU or GPU - Again a new and interesting idea that I'll try. - I *really* don't want to but as some point I gotta cut my losses.

Well I finally got a reply from support, here's what they said: I replied that if they mean the Windows temp folder yes, I've tried it on another SSD and HDD with no results. If there is an in-game temp folder no, as I don't know what/where it is. I also requested that at this point they help me get a refund from Steam as after spending more than 10 hours troubleshooting a game that I've not gotten to play more than a few minutes of is pretty unfair. Corsair 1000 Watt modular, can't remember the exact model at the moment but a rather nice one that's way more power than I need. First you are/were right that I had a cooling issue, the 2 120mm case fans had come unplugged and that's been corrected since the day after I started this thread, so a good while now. Temps run around 80C at times as the PC is a bit sandwiched in an area with less than perfect airflow. That said it's not throttling and I can play dozens of far more demanding games than DCS just fine. As for CPU and VR clearly you don't own VR as this is yet another misconception about VR. Of course you need a modern, powerful PC but GPU is FAR FAR more important for VR than CPU. It also seems you haven't read much of the thread, fair enough as it's rather long, but I have the exact same issues without VR on a single monitor running at 720p (with all VR services stopped and disconnected). So VR is not at all the issue here and there is no doubt whatsoever than my system is MORE than powerful enough to play DCS. And again I play many other games that are far more demanding with much higher system requirements than DCS with 60+ fps and no stutter at all. I play Elite Dangerous for 12+ hours at times with around 40% CPU and the same GPU usage and it is a very demanding game, and that's in VR - with 90 fps only dipping very occasionally. Trying to say that my system isn't powerful enough to play DCS on a single 1080p display in a 720p window is, well, laughable. As stated above it isn't a cooling issue at all, not only did I corrected the bad fan issue a while back but I've both disabled CPU throttling in BIOS and verified that I'm not getting CPU throttling via software (can't remember the damn app I used right now). As for CPU cooler of course it's not a stock Intel cooler - it's one of the largest Noctua copper core heatpipes, again I can't remember the model. While I wish I'd have done an integrated liquid cooled setup (and will likely upgrade to that at some point) cooling isn't the issue here at all. Another good guess and thing to check given my previous issues but clearly not the problem. At this point I've all but given up. I've asked ED to help me get a refund as I can't keep spending hour upon hour troubleshooting this when I've already gone FAR FAR beyond what virtually any other player would do. I've easily spent over 10 hours, probably closer to 20, trying to get this one game to work when all others run beautifully and the time investment no longer makes sense. It's clear that I'm not going to figure this out and when support essentially agrees and shrugs their shoulders with me (after taking a week to reply) it makes little sense to continue working on this. I greatly appreciate everyone's time and input trying to help me figure this out. Fortunately there are many other fantastic flight/VR games that I can enjoy, it's a shame that DCS won't be one of them. Hopefully I won't have to eat the $50 I spend on the game but something tells me I will, I suppose we'll see how good ED is to their customers. -Ross

Ha, don't worry my friend, of course I do. I've worked in IT for 20+ years so I know what I'm doing there. That said I always backup "data" and not the entire drive, that way if/when I rebuild I just restore the data rather than the whole machine so I get the benefit of a fresh install and not just restoring the old build. Either way we're talking a minimum of say 4 hours of work to test out a long shot to get 1 game working. Remember that when I built my current install I did exactly this - I installed Windows then DCS first and tried it, same problem I have now. That's why I don't expect this to work but I'm willing to try to cover all bases. While I get what you're saying and agree that it's technically possible that 1 block of RAM could be bad this is a moot point anyway as I have no other card to test with. It's not like I can ask Zotac to swap my card because 1 game doesn't play smoothly when dozens of others play flawlessly. So as this is something I can't in any way test I have to take it off the list. Also remember that before I got my GTX 1080 I had this problem on my Titan Z so I sorta have used 2 different cards already. As you say there's just no way to test this anyway. Many times when I've tested this it's the first thing I do in a gaming session - so my machine is at ambient temp, around 70C CPU or so and it doesn't get above 80C while playing/testing DCS. At those temps I can't believe it's throttling especially when I see no signs of it anywhere else and again remember that dozens of other games run flawlessly, games that run my CPU far hotter than it is when running DCS. Absolutely it does and absolutely it's using the proper 8 pin connectors to my power supply. I have a 1000 watt Corsair modular power supply and I'm using 2 GPU 8 pin cables from the PSU to the card. No adapters or other funkiness here at all. Looking at GPU stats there are no undervolts or other electricty issues. Yup, many times. I use it often with VR games to make sure I'm getting a solid 90 fps or if not that I enable asynchronous space warp, the new feature Oculus added for lower end cards. It shows a number of dropped frames in DCS - but again please remember I get these exact same problems when playing on a single 1080p display. I get the issues playing in a 720p window on a single 1080p display (meaning I've disabled my other 2 displays so the card is only having to run 1 single display). An 8 GB factory overclocked GTX 1080 should be able to run DCS on a single monitor at 720p with great ease, agree? That's why I turned off VR as I wanted to rule out as many things as possible. Again I appreciate all the help, I'm sorry that I keep shooting down all the ideas. I'm certainly not shooting down you guys, it's just that I've already tested everything I possibly can think of and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Hell I've spent more than 10 times as much time thinking about playing this game than I've actually gotten to play it! ~X

I'm 99.9% sure neither are true but I'm not sure how to prove or test it. First, bad card - as I've said several times I can play more than a dozen other AAA titles with absolutely no issues whatsoever. I have to think that if it was a bad card that it would be manifesting itself in other ways. I can't sweat I had these issues on my last card, the last gen Titan Z, I'm pretty sure I did have them. I'm also unsure how to test this, I don't have another card I could drop in and with all other games/benchmarks work great I just can't see how this could be the case. Thermal Throttling is a very interesting idea as well but again I think I can rule that out. As you say I do get some high temps at times recently, as in 2 days ago, I learned one of my case fans was dead so I replaced it. As such temps have dropped a ton since. I have throttling disabled in the motherboard bios (so no throttling for the CPU) and in the NVidia driver I have it disabled for the GPU/card as well. Any thoughts on how to test/rule this out? Can't argue with that but as I've had this issue for several months now (just now trying to figure it out) and I've been through many driver versions I'm also not sure how to rule this out. I can't really try installing every version of the driver to see if I get lucky, again any suggestion on how to test/rule out? Again possible but as I've run several different benchmarking tools, from some built into games (Tomb Raider, GTA V) and 3D Mark I'm 99.9% sure this isn't the case. You could also try to install windows 7 and DCS... ......it can be done in a few hours. This is a fair enough idea and you're right, one that wouldn't take too long. I'm trying to think of the best way to go about it, I don't want to try to setup dual boot with my current config. I could drop in another HDD/SD but at the moment I can't have either. Thoughts on testing this Later today I'll figure out getting Win 7 installed so I can test it with just that, drivers and DCS. I think this is the best all around way to rule out my software and also likely my hardware. If I still have problems after this it's just gotta be some incompatibility with the game and some piece of hardware.

Interesting idea as you're right, I haven't touched or considered anything sound related. And while that is definitely a long shot as you say we're looking for long shots at this point. I'm wondering what would be the best way to go about testing this idea. I suppose I could disable all my sound devices and see how it flies then. My machine does have a number of sound devices: 3 HDMI displays (all have speakers) - disabled Motherboard sound - enabled, 5.1 output to my speakers SoundBlaster USB card to run my Butt Kickers Oculus Rift headphones and mic - used for Discord/voice chat So with that many devices I suppose I could see how that might cause an issue. It certainly shouldn't but we're long past "shouldn't" at this point. I'll try disabling all of them next time I'm at my machine, if you have a better suggestion than that I'm all ears... ~X

First thanks again for taking your time to try and help, it's very appreciated. Now to answer your questions: I'm using the "Instant Action" from the main screen. I'm in an A10-C and think I remember the mission being in Georgia USSR? If you watch the video you'll see that CPU load stays constant when the stutters start/happen. In both VR and without the max CPU load is 35% Not exactly sure what you mean here but actually framerate should be 90 rather than 45. Using ASW you can lock the framerate to 45 in mode #2 but I use mode #4 which only uses ASW when dropping frames. All that said we shouldn't get too focused on VR as the stutter happens when all Oculus services are stopped and the headset unplugged. That all but proves the issue isn't VR related. It's a little hard to see as it's rather small but if you watch the VR stutter test you'll see that disk C (OS and where DCS is installed) is rather flat not getting above 20%, and likely lower than that. I've run CrystalDisk Mark on my drives many *many* times and everything checks out perfectly in terms of disk IO. 2 apps, first just good ole Task Manager and second CAM from NZXT. CAM logs the data and displays it in real time, that's what's generating the gauges at the top of the video. Been there, done that. Nothing in the Windows logs related to the issue. Yup, 100% I am. The only game I play and stream/record at the same time is Elite Dangerous. When I do Elite uses about 35-40% CPU with OBS using a little less at around 25-30%. I also used to use an AutoHotKey script that would return focus to Elite when I move the stick but that started using 10%+ CPU so I stopped using it (haven't had time to work it out yet, no biggie) ASW will only limit you to 45 fps if you use mode #2 or #3. Mode 2 locks you to 45 fps at all times where mode 3 will drop you to 45 when needed. Mode 4, which I use, only drops you to 45 when things are really bad, apposed to mode 3 that is far more aggressive. That said as far as processes that are busy no, I see none. I see none when I look at Task Manager, none when I look at CPU load in TM or CAM. None when I use Performance Monitor to log CPU usage wihle playing. In all cases DCS is using around 35% of the CPU with about 20% GPU. There aren't any spikes or other events that happen (at least that I can see) when the stutters start. I've had to do extensive troubleshooting many times in my career but this has to take the cake as the hardest one I've ever tried to track down. There isn't anything that makes sense here at all as you're right that when something like this happens there is usually a corresponding event/process that is taking CPU priority than the exec we're concerned with. I just. Don't. Get. It. I'm hoping that ED has some idea as to what the core issue is, I opened a ticket on Friday but haven't heard back on it yet. Believe me I'll share whatever they have me try as soon as I hear back. Ugh, so damned frustrating. ~X