F-14 Graphic performance on slower Computers – Experiences and oddities

Background:

Mainly there are 3 reasons why I started this thread:

1. I have 2.5 Findings I wanted to share

2. To ask the developers about vsync and the mirrors

3. Share my result for comparison. Any advice is also welcome, as I'm not really a professional in all this stuff

Findings:

- Everytime you change a single graphic Setting, you have to delete fxo and Metashader2 folders in your DCS user folder (e.g. C:UsersCorneliusSaved GamesDCS.openbeta).

(I wasted much time making benchmarks and writing down which was most likely normal fluctuations. until I have put everything low at some point and still no real change had occurred. (with the additional deletion of the two folders, it now behaves reasonable). This makes testing very time consuming.

(I guess this only affects amd video cards)

- As showed later, vsync drops the performance tremendously with this module. Without vsync, heavy tearing occurs. For some reason, i've been pressing alt-enter after entering the cockpit since a long time. That's what made DCS smoother for me. I still had vsync on. “Full screen” checked or not in DCS Settings made no difference.

Now it goes like this: vsync in game switched off. I press 2x alt-enter (the second time the screen goes black for a split second) the tearing is gone. I always suspected that with this the radeon settings would become active, but there vsync is also set to "off, unless application specifies". So, no explantion about where this “magical, lossless vsync” comes from.

- What I didn’t thought about before, is that headtracking also has an influence on the smoothness of the "game". Fiddling with Opentrack settings, especially Filter, point extraction and camera FOV helped a little bit more.

Ouestions:

1. VSYNC

Although, I found a workaround I’m wondering why vsync performs so bad.

If switched on, I get about 60 FPS when I look to the sides and it drops to 30 FPS, when I look towards the cockpit:

When I deactivate Vsync, the FPS are good, terrible tearing occurs, but only over the cockpit:

So, why is especially the cockpit an area of heavy tearing? That seems also to be the reason, why "vsync activated" drop the frames so much. Has it simply to do with high res. Textures? I used to have vsync activated prior to the tomcat with no such low framerates.

2. Mirrors

So far the only downside of the F-14 Module is for me , that the mirrors are so expensive in regards to FPS and at the same time add a special kind of immersion that is hard to do without, if you if you know they exist.

Is it correct to assume that 1 mirror does not eat as much performance as 3 ? If so, would it be possible to create an additional option to deactivate only the outer two mirrors?

Mirrors eating FPS:

My Result

PC Specs:

Intel Core I5 4690 @ 4.4 Ghz

Asus B85M-E Mainboard

Asus Strix RX580 8GB (OC Mode)

16GB DDR3-1600 / SSD

Opentrack with Playstation Eye and cap

32" Philips Cineos 32PFL9603 TV (1920*1080 @60Hz)

For comparsion of different CPU’s/GPU’s, I found CPUBoss and GPUBoss Websites a good source.

On the PG map, in the vicinity of Downtown Dubai, the performance is the worst with me, so that I can expect generally good FPS if I get through here reasonably well.

These are the details of the benchmark, from my short flight from Sharjah over d. downtown, to minhad, which I made simultaneously with the recording:

24-03-2019, 15:37:24 DCS.exe

benchmark completed, 32292 frames rendered in 470.532 s

Average framerate : 68.6 FPS

Minimum framerate : 50.2 FPS

Maximum framerate : 120.4 FPS

1% low framerate : 50.0 FPS

0.1% low framerate : 16.5 FPS

Please ignore the bad piloting skills…

Re VSync; it's possible (I don't know) that DCS doesn't support triple buffering. When you look ahead, you're dipping to sub-60 frames, capping you at 30 instead.

Is it correct to assume that 1 mirror does not eat as much performance as 3 ?

Unfortunately not. The cost induced by mirrors is a completely separate renderpath to render the game world from the ground up but in a different perspective (rear facing "camera").

It's only rendered once for all three mirrors (which are then placed appropriately on the rendered texture). Thus, limiting to just one mirror would not have any impact.

This need to re-render the world might be introducing new bottlenecks based on your system, hence why it hits your frames so hard.

Cornelius,

What you describe (in the spoiler), is the path many of us go through to attain our satisfactory experience level, in flight sims.

By chance, as a backup to that statement - just 7 days ago I've spent more money on a new GPU.

More:

My Asus B85M-G Motherboard (with 4 years) also fried last October... even today I don't know where exactly it failed.

Actually I'm with an AsRock H81 Pro BTC - and therefore limited to 16 GB of RAM.

(With less overclock, with a better PSU, but with the worry if it's going to last so short as the other p.o.s...)

Speaking for myself, I can't complain much performance wise with my PC specs - but then again, I never tried Multiplayer...

About specs / game options:

- I believe I used 1 x Alt+Enter at FSX, to prevent screen tearing... in DCS never found it to be necessary;

- I always have V-sync on, with 60 fps maximum;

- I rarely use mirrors.

Thank you for your quick reply, Cobra847.

Re VSync; it's possible (I don't know) that DCS doesn't support triple buffering. When you look ahead, you're dipping to sub-60 frames, capping you at 30 instead.

I just tried it with tripple buffering ( I'm wondering: Isn't it only a Opengl feature?) nothing changed.

As already mentioned, vsync worked before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPhlQ_33rYM

But as I have a good alternative now...

As you mentioned rerendering the world might be introducing new bottlenecks based on my system, I just remembered the only set screw I have left: Opentrack and its impact on the cpu, although I would assume that rendering is a graphics card thing.

Just tried switching mirrors on without opentrack and the FPS dropped only by 5. Also this trembling at the exterior view (F2) disappeared. I'm gonna investigate this further.

EDIT: No change with Opentrack off. But trembling on F2-View disapeared . Maybe ED Patch, couldn't find anything.

Cornelius,

 

What you describe (in the spoiler), is the path many of us go through to attain our satisfactory experience level, in flight sims.

By chance, as a backup to that statement - just 7 days ago I've spent more money on a new GPU.

 

More:

 

My Asus B85M-G Motherboard (with 4 years) also fried last October... even today I don't know where exactly it failed.

Actually I'm with an AsRock H81 Pro BTC - and therefore limited to 16 GB of RAM.

(With less overclock, with a better PSU, but with the worry if it's going to last so short as the other p.o.s...)

 

Speaking for myself, I can't complain much performance wise with my PC specs - but then again, I never tried Multiplayer...

 

 

About specs / game options:

 

- I believe I used 1 x Alt+Enter at FSX, to prevent screen tearing... in DCS never found it to be necessary;

- I always have V-sync on, with 60 fps maximum;

- I rarely use mirrors.

Yes, it is a bit sad to get to know especially this module not only with the manual, but through these eternal FPS tests. On the other hand you want to get the best out of it even when hardware (money) is limited...

I'm also not on multiplayer. But I tried it once and it worked well.

As I said in my first post, I think this Alt-Enter thing is an AMD-Card related issue.

*bump

Nobody with AMD Card and bad vsync performance, who tested Alt-Enter ?:music_whistling:

(I've now tried a full hd monitor. It's the same there. It's not my ancient Phillips TV)