DCS 1.5 - graphic settings - a few questions

Hello,

I've got a few questions to you which reffer to graphic settings. Some settings are ununderstable to me and I don't see any difference when I change something there.

In photo, I marked a few things. Can you explain me what's going on with them?

My game looks good but sometimes I've got lags, especially over mountains ( use Starway`s terrain mod ), sometimes over forests, cities - not high.

What's the best combination of these marked settings for me if I've got i5-2500, GTX 960?

Sometimes, it's hard to fight in near contact. Maybe it's because of shadows?

I used to use 1024 resolution of cockpit and 8x MSAA. Is there any difference between 4x and 8x? And where are 8QX, 16QX, etc.?

"Visibility range" - affects the distance at which buildings, structures and whatnot are rendered, pretty heavy impact on performance, I used to switch between high and medium on my old GTX780 (which was probably similar to 960).

"Shadows" - affects quality of aircraft shadows, both cockpit and outside. Very hardware demanding as well, I use medium even on my GTX1070.

MSAA is the only hardware anti-aliasing method implemented in DCS, that's why there aren't any others to choose from. It murders the framerate in 2.2 when used with deferred shading, but fortunately doesn't affect 1.5 much, so just experiment with its performance impact. Visual difference between 4 & 8x is a very subjective thing anyway.

"Lens effect" is this fake camera lens "looking-at-the-sun-reflection" that all games have nowadays. It's just a gimmick with no fps impact whatsoever.

"Trees visibility" affects radius at which trees are rendered. Can be heavy on performance, experiment yourself.

"Preload radius" should in theory control how much stuff the game loads into memory to avoid stutters during rendering. Maybe it does to some extent, but it's always been causing quite an fps drop too, so I never crank it all the way up (notice it's not up even on default "high" preset). The game loads assets from disc all the time anyway.

"Terrain object shadows" affect building and trees shadows quality. Not a very fps-heavy option, but with "default" shadows flicker less, so I prefer to keep it that way for better quality.

Thank you that you wrote about it.

Visibility range - still the same, so high because I've noticed the difference between medium and high

Shadows to medium - didn't notice any difference but game seems to be fluently

MSAA to 4x

Lens effect = flat + dirt but I don't know what dirt could mean here

Trees visibility - the same, looks good, works fine

Preload radius - you're right and I wondered about it. Changed to 135000 instead of 150000

Terrain object shadows = default

"Visibility range" - affects the distance at which buildings, structures and whatnot are rendered, pretty heavy impact on performance, I used to switch between high and medium on my old GTX780 (which was probably similar to 960).

 

"Shadows" - affects quality of aircraft shadows, both cockpit and outside. Very hardware demanding as well, I use medium even on my GTX1070.

 

MSAA is the only hardware anti-aliasing method implemented in DCS, that's why there aren't any others to choose from. It murders the framerate in 2.2 when used with deferred shading, but fortunately doesn't affect 1.5 much, so just experiment with its performance impact. Visual difference between 4 & 8x is a very subjective thing anyway.

 

"Lens effect" is this fake camera lens "looking-at-the-sun-reflection" that all games have nowadays. It's just a gimmick with no fps impact whatsoever.

 

"Trees visibility" affects radius at which trees are rendered. Can be heavy on performance, experiment yourself.

 

"Preload radius" should in theory control how much stuff the game loads into memory to avoid stutters during rendering. Maybe it does to some extent, but it's always been causing quite an fps drop too, so I never crank it all the way up (notice it's not up even on default "high" preset). The game loads assets from disc all the time anyway.

 

"Terrain object shadows" affect building and trees shadows quality. Not a very fps-heavy option, but with "default" shadows flicker less, so I prefer to keep it that way for better quality.

Quick question. I have a GTX 1070 as well and my setup is great with smooth rates most of the time. The only time I have severe stutters is dropping CBU97/105s. It begins when the skeets fire off after parachute down. It drops almost to 3 FPS! What should I dial down to prevent this? I don’t even have to look at the target and still happens. Everything else is really good.

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No idea, as I neither own or fly any modern AC modules. I've read however multiple times that cluster munitions killing fps is "just" a DCS thing and you can't do anything about it - everyone's waiting for 2.5 + revised all explosion effects hoping that will solve that problem.

...

Lens effect = flat + dirt but I don't know what dirt could mean here

 

...

"Dirt" mimics specks of dust on a camera lens. "Flare" mimics the scattering of excess bright light inside a camera lens. Both are "artistic" additions to a screenshot.

No idea, as I neither own or fly any modern AC modules. I've read however multiple times that cluster munitions killing fps is "just" a DCS thing and you can't do anything about it - everyone's waiting for 2.5 + revised all explosion effects hoping that will solve that problem.

Interesting. Because my previous card was an ATI 6770. It never had issues with cluster munitions. You could watch the skeets hit the tanks with good rates both in 1.5 and 2.2. Maybe it’s an Nvidia issue? I haven’t tested in 2.2 with the 1070 yet.

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Update: just did one drop with CBU97 both in an open field and also in a populated area with three T-55s. No stutters in 2.2. Strange. Oh well.

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My the newest settings:

I also tested different settings with high shadows, 16500 trees and 100000 preload radius also with 8x MSAA but I didn't notice much difference but fps drops were appearing frequently. High shadows are noticable but not that much as I though while there's fps difference. Looks a bit better and flares are cool, that's all. I haven't tested it during dogfight. Sometimes, I had fps lags when shadows were on high.

But now is much better. I prefer more preload radius than this and only 8000 trees which makes that I can see further and when trees're appearing, it's smooth.

By the way, Art-J, what your settings are?

What is Heat Blur excatly is and what resolution of cockpit display is the best in your opinion?

512 vs 512 Every Frame vs 1024 vs 1024 Every Frame?

Anybody tested the difference between flat and default in terrain shadows?

^ Mine are default "high" preset, minus shadows on medium, civ traffic on medium, MSAA off, plus terrain shadows on default.

Heat blur setting controls the hot air effect behind jet engine nozzles when the engine runs.

Pit display rez - no idea what's best as I don't own any modern airplane with those displays :D.

Flat terrain shadows are flat is a sense they don't follow curvature of terrain - in very low sun conditions, when standing on the ramp in some airbases you might notice shadow layer cutting through your airplane a couple of meters above the ramp level. I prefer to keep them on default for that reason, the performance hit is negligible in my opinion.

 

Anybody tested the difference between flat and default in terrain shadows?

One thing to note - due to a bug in 1.5.x the only way to turn terrain shadows off is by disabling cockpit shadows. Which is annoying but this is fixed in 2.x.

Also, if you want a good stress test for how terrain shadows affect your FPS take a low-level flight from Sukhumi to Senaki and let your view sweep across the huge forest.

Yes, I know and I do my tests somewhere in this area.

What about vsync? Is it worth to turn it on?

I would like to change frames number from 30 to 60 but I don't have any idea how to do this.