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Forrestal Development Update: Deck Crew WiP!


Cobra847

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In all truthfulness the Viggen is one of the best performers in terms of FPS on my PC with high graphics settings. Cant say this is the same for everybody but that's what I find. I know that when mirrors and perhaps a pilot model are implemented it will likely have an impact. But I'm very happy with performance at this time.

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True, flight sims are notorious for never having enough computing power to really stretch their legs, but there is also this funny dichotomy where flight sims don't necessarily use up-to-date techniques. But the sense that the visuals are a lesser priority might also be part of the reason.

 

DCS (imho) is the best looking flight sim that I have seen (most brand new things I've seen primarily on youtube), but there are other games/programs out there that take it even further.

 

Flight sims frequently find themselves behind the curve on visuals, despite the fact that they are pretty important for completing the experience. This is especially true as VR becomes mainstream. But you don't get modern visual rendering techniques unless someone is pushing those boundaries and finding a way to make beautiful artwork function well in the simulator. As developers press forward, they find ways of building artwork that also performs well and this can lead to improved overall performance as new methods are integrated.

 

Its not a guarantee of improvements and often these improvements offset the improved artwork, but I think it is better to keep pushing forward. Even if it seems like a rocky transition in the short-term.

 

Just my 2 cents,

 

Nick

 

I didn't think about it like that, fair call. Thanks for your input :thumbup:

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Godlike work

 

That said, I'm also worried about that that quality set a too high standard compared to the core of DCS and the other modules. Not to mention hardware performance issues. I already struggle to run DCS smoothly with my Rift which will hopefully never need so fine details.

 

Anyway if HS is the master of artwork here, can they be hired by ED to help them to reduce the depressive rate of old 3D models updates ? and/or why not DCS engine performance optimization ?


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In response to Cobra's claim from Hoggit:

 

 

 

That's not how the graphics pipeline works AFAIK. Compression saves bandwidth, but not processing power. While the compressed textures are sent to GPU in this form, they have to be uncompressed and processed in full (though probably not all at once - heavy optimization happening on the GPU). But at some point you're going to load the engine with hundreds of megabytes of textures. Per skin.

 

You're completely wrong, but I honestly don't feel like getting in a debate as to why.

I have 10+ years of experience working in various engines, from Ogre3D to UE3/UE4, FSX and DCS (+ a gazillion different offline renderers). Have some faith. :)


Edited by Cobra847

Nicholas Dackard

 

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If you are getting hung up on the performance, reduce your video settings. Problem Solved. Also, if the developer in question tells you that the performance impact will be negligible and you don't believe him, then the problem does not lie in the product, or the developer, but somewhere else.

 

I know this is kind of hard to swallow, but pushing the envelope, like ED are doing with 2.1 is going to demand improved hardware. There is no getting around this. The last 5 or so years in the PC enthusiast market has spoiled us all, as we have seen very little need to upgrade.

 

DCS World is not a console port, and as improvements to the visuals continue to come down the pipeline we are going to need new hardware if we want to play with all the bells and whistles. In the meantime, dropping some settings to achieve acceptable frame rate, is perfectly justified.


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For example i have it set so that the cockpit and gauges are awesome looking, but the terrain leaves something to be desired. Since I feel like the cockpit is almost always what you are looking at, insert Ka-50 joke here, and even on low settings the ground doesn't look bad from a few-hundred meters. Just my preference though.

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You're completely wrong, but I honestly don't feel like getting in a debate as to why.

I have 10+ years of experience working in various engines, from Ogre3D to UE3/UE4, FSX and DCS (+ a gazillion different offline renderers). Have some faith. :)

 

It's been a few years since I studied this stuff at university, so my memory may need refreshing. Can you at least point me in the right direction instead of pulling "I know but I won't tell you"?

 

And I might have misunderstood you, but how can you reduce the VRAM footprint of so many textures to 7-8MB when a single 4k DXT1 texture usually takes more space?

 

If you are getting hung up on the performance, reduce your video settings. Problem Solved. Also, if the developer in question tells you that the performance impact will be negligible and you don't believe him, then the problem does not lie in the product, or the developer, but somewhere else.

 

The problem with the developer in question is that when sitting in the same situation in the cockpit of various planes in my Oculus Rift I get about:

 

90 fps in L-39

80 fps in F-5

75 fps in M-2000C

65 fps in A-10 with MFDs turned on (moving map and stuff)

60 fps in MiG-21

50 fps in the Viggen, 45 when I turn on the radar screen

 

And I'm not the only one experiencing low Viggen or MiG performance relative to other modules. Call me of little faith, but I take what Cobra says about negligible performance impact with a grain of salt.

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It's been a few years since I studied this stuff at university, so my memory may need refreshing. Can you at least point me in the right direction instead of pulling "I know but I won't tell you"?

 

And I might have misunderstood you, but how can you reduce the VRAM footprint of so many textures to 7-8MB when a single 4k DXT1 texture usually takes more space?

 

 

 

The problem with the developer in question is that when sitting in the same situation in the cockpit of various planes in my Oculus Rift I get about:

 

90 fps in L-39

80 fps in F-5

75 fps in M-2000C

65 fps in A-10 with MFDs turned on (moving map and stuff)

60 fps in MiG-21

50 fps in the Viggen, 45 when I turn on the radar screen

 

And I'm not the only one experiencing low Viggen or MiG performance relative to other modules. Call me of little faith, but I take what Cobra says about negligible performance impact with a grain of salt.

 

S3 size on disk is directly applicable to estimating VRAM requirements. The texture is stored compressed on the memory.

The GPU will use block based lookups and decompress on the fly, which is very efficient.

 

Because most of the detailed normals will be changed to tiled detail normals and the albedos will be reduced. I don't foresee keeping any 4K textures in the final piece, and even if I did, it's not a big deal whatsoever.

In addition to this, all crew members will share normals and roughness, which means that I get dozens of crew member varieties, with only the albedos differing.

 

You're probably the first person I've encountered (and that includes myself) that gets lower VR performance in the Viggen compared to the MiG-21.

 

This frustrating constant onslaught aside, we're adhering to realtime industry standards, and will continue to do so.


Edited by Cobra847

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If you don't plan to keep all those 4k textures around for the final release then I indeed misunderstood you. But then, the final little guy won't be as detailed as on those beautiful screenshots from the first post ;)

Peace.

 

You're probably the first person I've encountered (and that includes myself) that gets lower VR performance in the Viggen compared to the MiG-21.

 

I'm not doing anything, just sitting on the runway ready to take off. And it's the same in 2D (100-110 fps in the AJS37 vs 110-120 in the MiG).

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Textures arent ZIP Files.. you dont compress/uncompress them to use the color data.

 

once a texture is exported from the Suite to a Compressed DDS, that's the final form of the texture, the color data and quality lost depends on the compression type used when exporting.

 

You can't open the DDS and "un-compress" it to restore the lost color data from compression.

 

DDS is DirectX Compliant, and is not expanded into a RAW format when transferred to the VRAM Either.

 

And as Cobra Stated, the models will all be using the same normal (and likely Roughness/Metallic Maps), with only Albedo being different, then Normals and Roughness/Metallic maps will only be loaded once for all the models.

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I'm not doing anything, just sitting on the runway ready to take off. And it's the same in 2D (100-110 fps in the AJS37 vs 110-120 in the MiG).

 

This is probably variable based on GPU and settings.

 

The Viggen has a higher triangle count, but a lower total VRAM load.

It has a lower fillrate/overdraw load (less transparency) but it has higher shader complexity (more normal maps).

 

I'll do some testing, the opposite (performance wise) used to be the case. I even have e-mails from the testing process where I've asked people to do direct comparisons.

 

EDIT: Apologies if I sound frustrated. We're proud of our work and it's frustrating to have to try and convince people we know what we're doing.


Edited by Cobra847

Nicholas Dackard

 

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If you are getting hung up on the performance, reduce your video settings. Problem Solved.

Like if we don't instinctively this… thanks for that smart comment…

 

Also, if the developer in question tells you that the performance impact will be negligible and you don't believe him, then the problem does not lie in the product, or the developer, but somewhere else.

 

There is nothing to believe before the optimization is done and successful, and before we see by ourselves. Currently it's (commercial) anticipation words working effectively on you according to your attitude.

 

I know this is kind of hard to swallow, but pushing the envelope, like ED are doing with 2.1 is going to demand improved hardware. There is no getting around this. The last 5 or so years in the PC enthusiast market has spoiled us all, as we have seen very little need to upgrade.

 

Yes, but unfortunately the new hardware doesn't come as fast as the requirements.

 

DCS World is not a console port, and as improvements to the visuals continue to come down the pipeline we are going to need new hardware if we want to play with all the bells and whistles. In the meantime, dropping some settings to achieve acceptable frame rate, is perfectly justified.

 

So here comes the question:

Is it worth to create ultra demanding content that only a few of us will fully enjoy anyway, or sync both the current and legacy content as the affordable technology evolves ?

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This is probably variable based on GPU and settings.

 

The Viggen has a higher triangle count, but a lower total VRAM load.

It has a lower fillrate/overdraw load (less transparency) but it has higher shader complexity (more normal maps).

 

I'll do some testing, the opposite (performance wise) used to be the case. I even have e-mails from the testing process where I've asked people to do direct comparisons.

 

EDIT: Apologies if I sound frustrated. We're proud of our work and it's frustrating to have to try and convince people we know what we're doing.

 

You're cool Cobra..just keep on trucking and know that we're all very happy with what you're bringing to DCS.

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EDIT: Apologies if I sound frustrated. We're proud of our work and it's frustrating to have to try and convince people we know what we're doing.

 

Just keep it up Cobra.

I think you gave good explanations, and I trust you when you say you have performance in check.

 

After all, there are other aircraft all over the place, should be room for a few extra triangles here and there, especially when they look this good. ;)

 

Look forward to see how they look when they get animated. :)

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Honestly push the envelope! If I need to buy better hardware(which I understand I won't need to in this particular case) so be it. I would rather invest in hardware to drive a higher fidelity experience and I'm sure most of us are that way. The guys we fly with are constantly upgrading our rigs for just that reason....

 

Thanks for your work and most of us don't need convincing :D

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Textures arent ZIP Files.. you dont compress/uncompress them to use the color data.

 

once a texture is exported from the Suite to a Compressed DDS, that's the final form of the texture, the color data and quality lost depends on the compression type used when exporting.

 

You can't open the DDS and "un-compress" it to restore the lost color data from compression.

 

DDS is DirectX Compliant, and is not expanded into a RAW format when transferred to the VRAM Either.

 

You're answering a question that was never asked here. Yes, dds textures aren't zip files, they're more like mp3s or avi. As with every lossy compression, you can't restore compressed image to the original quality. But you still have to uncompress it (or maybe better word: upack the container) to access the raw data for each pixel you want to display. And that data after unpacking takes exactly the same space as uncompressed texture. In the case of DDS textures, the unpacking algorithms are run on GPU, so you save on bandwidth between RAM and VRAM, but it still has to be done somewhere. The good thing is, the texture compression algorithms are tailored for this purpose and for example you don't have to uncompress the whole image to access the portion of it. But I don't have that detailed knowledge on inner GPU workings to expand on this topic :)

 

This is probably variable based on GPU and settings.

 

The Viggen has a higher triangle count, but a lower total VRAM load.

It has a lower fillrate/overdraw load (less transparency) but it has higher shader complexity (more normal maps).

 

I'll do some testing, the opposite (performance wise) used to be the case. I even have e-mails from the testing process where I've asked people to do direct comparisons.

 

Maybe it's not graphics related but rather something in the viggen simulation that eats some extra FPS in the background. Or as you said, a combination of various factors like hardware and software settings.

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Honestly push the envelope! If I need to buy better hardware(which I understand I won't need to in this particular case) so be it. I would rather invest in hardware to drive a higher fidelity experience and I'm sure most of us are that way. The guys we fly with are constantly upgrading our rigs for just that reason....

 

Thanks for your work and most of us don't need convincing :D

 

Such overenthusiastic consumer logic made FSX's poor performances to happen… never again they said after that :lol:

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DDS format is different, it's not an IMAGE, it's a Texture File, Containing MIPMAPS, CubeMaps, Volume, etc, etc it has a dedicated part of the GPU that can handle the processing of the File.

 

Since the DDS Already Contains MIPMAPS they do not have to be generated by the GPU, Saving Processing Time/Space than say a JPG Texture. The JPG Image will Load off the HDD Faster, but the GPU has to DEC and Generate MMs etc etc, the VRAM Used once MMs are Generated would be about the same as a Single DDS Texture File.

 

And 100% of GPU's since DX9_0 Feature Level have the DDS Codec Ability in a Separate part of the GPU so it doesn't detract from rendering performance, So DDS can be considered, at least in a DirectX9.0+ Pipeline, to be the GPU's Native Texture Format, where as JPG, BMP, PNG, etc etc would all need to be converted.

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Like if we don't instinctively this… thanks for that smart comment…

 

 

 

There is nothing to believe before the optimization is done and successful, and before we see by ourselves. Currently it's (commercial) anticipation words working effectively on you according to your attitude.

 

 

 

Yes, but unfortunately the new hardware doesn't come as fast as the requirements.

 

 

 

So here comes the question:

Is it worth to create ultra demanding content that only a few of us will fully enjoy anyway, or sync both the current and legacy content as the affordable technology evolves ?

 

The answer is push the technology out there. With a decently fast computer(relatively modern i5/i7), decent RAM, GPU of at least GTX 970 or so you can run this stuff on high all day. That is all hardware that's been out for a few years. More than reasonable. Your flying a Sim on a PC. Upgrading every couple of years to run something on high settings should be expected.

 

Again Cobra has pointed out his stuff isn't going to change your performance much anyway. But I just don't get this attitude of please don't give us a product that pushes our systems too much. Most of us don't feel that way ;)

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Such overenthusiastic consumer logic made FSX's poor performances to happen… never again they said after that :lol:

 

FSX has nothing to do with Hardware...it's running on an ancient platform that does not utilize modern hardware advances at all. DCS in Edge is pretty easy to get very high FPS at maxed out settings. We're nowhere near an FSX type of problem.

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DDS format is different, it's not an IMAGE, it's a Texture File, Containing MIPMAPS, CubeMaps, Volume, etc, etc it has a dedicated part of the GPU that can handle the processing of the File.

 

 

Skate, again, you're answering a question that was never asked here.

 

Yes, DDS is a container (as I said previosly). Inside there are various things, mostly DXT compressed textures. While handled by a dedicated part of the GPU, the data contained in those files still has to be extracted and put in the pipeline for further processing. And 4k textures have 16 times more data than 1k textures, that need to be extracted and processed. Simple as that, there's no free lunch. Sure, it's more efficient than having a jpeg or bmp, doesn't mean there's no performance impact at all.


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