Best DCS version for VR?

This post is not intended as a place to vent about the performance that we’re experiencing at the current time, nor a place to suggest settings, tweaks or mods to improve the performance of the current version, it’s purely to help others find the best version of DCS that VR players can install for some of the legacy aircraft such as the A-10C, F-5E, etc that were feature complete as of those versions.

Now, with that said, can I ask for anyone with any experience of those earlier versions that had good VR performance to post up the versions that they can confirm to work well?

Short of going back to 2.5.4 and rolling back from there until I find one, I thought I’d simply ask as I’m sure others have been wondering the same question.

I'm experiencing a significant performance increase in VR with the latest OB. I think that this is actually a better option that to roll back.

Your system is far superior to mine, and I find almost all version acceptable (including the widely complained about OG 2.5.6 - it took a massive hit, but was acceptable).

so your request is very, very subjective.

where was the best performance? it'll probably be 1.5.6...

So in an odd sequence of events, I ended up completely removing DCS from my system, both open beta, and stable. I then deleted the remaining folders, backed up my inputs and mission files to my OneDrive.

I then re-installed the current stable version, and the current Open Beta, and using SkateZilla's tool I rolled back to 2.5.5.41371. Performance there was back up to an average of low 40's which was much better.

I rolled back the open beta 2.5.6.49798, but after it was finished it was late and I was tired. I ran it the next morning, and without thinking updated when it prompted for the update. After it did so, it wanted to cleanup the old files which I thought had been fixed in the July 15th patch, but I had every single file on the drive where my DCS Open Beta was installed deleted. All of the folder structure remained.

This was incredibly frustrating, as I lost my IL2 and Half Life Alyx installations too, but I reinstalled everything. Here's where it gets odd...

After re-installing from scratch, the latest Open Beta is actually performing well!

Mission: F-16 Runway start at Batumi.

Settings: Preset "High" Settings, Anti Alaising OFF, Ansiotropic Filtering 8x, Terrain Shadows OFF

Open Beta: 34fps

Stable 2.5.5.41371: 42fps

Open Beta after Hard Drive deletion: 44fps

Why? I have absolutely no idea, and I'm at a complete loss to explain it. None of these builds used any mods and all files and folders, both game directory and Saved Games had been removed prior to installation. The tests were done within 48 hours of each other for the Open Beta, and there have been no system setting changes, Windows or driver updates during that time.

I was working on improving performance for Half-Life Alyx (VR) and stumbled across a handy script to increase CPU priority. You can either do this manually or run a simple powershell script as the game is launching.

I am running Windows 10 Pro, but I would imagine this works for other Win10 variants.

Manually: Right Click the task bar, open Task Manager, choose the Details tab, find the .exe in question... (DCS.exe in this case) right click and expand Set Priority and select High.

Since doing this with HLA I was able to go from medium fidelity at 45-60 fps(blinky and jittery) to high fidelity at a very stable and beautiful, very smooth 90fps. The shadows, lighting, fog effects I was missing out on have changed the immersion.

I recently tried the same thing with DCS:

Before, I was lucky to run low-medium with most of the eye candy turned off and get 30fps if I was lucky. Now I am running High/High, still flat shadows and the usual VR settings at a solid 45 fps (airborne) with dips into the mid 30's on the deck.

To save clicking just save the following line to a powershell script (.ps1), right click, run soon after launching DCS.exe

Get-WmiObject Win32_process -filter 'name = "DCS.exe"' | foreach-object { $_.SetPriority(128) } edit: 12 smiley face should read 128

I don't think this setting is persistent... but I think there's a way to set it so you don't have to re run the script each time.

Give it a shot.

My setup

i5 7600K

48GB RAM (2400)

Nvidia 1080 TI

HTC Cosmos Elite