Heavy Mission optimalization

Dear Virtual Pilots,

I have a question what performance can be expected on heavy mission during multiplayer? I started to do nice Multiplayer mission, to get dedicated server, etc. Maybe you will play it one day. However as I was adding units, tanks, realistically, each side cca 400 ground units, static planes on airports/carrier to make it feel alive I have noticed a drop in FPS from 100 to around 20-40, , which is not that great, sometimes 15FPS which is bad.

I know I run pretty high settings, but when I check windows task manager it shows CPU usage 25%, RAM usage 40% (10 GB), Graphics GPU 30%? So why is FPS dropping (reducing graphic setting helped a bit, but the graphics GPU usage was never above 40%)?

So couple of questions:

-Would it run better on dedicated server?

-What is reasonable limit for units quantity?

-What could improve my PC performance? New CPU/Graphics?

-Would it help to change some settings?

- Any other ideas?

I thought that heavy multiplayer missions have also many units and they run very smooth for me.

My PC: Intel i7-7700@3.6GHz / 32 GB RAM / GeForce GTX 1080 / SSD Disk.

Good evening Marek. I think maybe you need to be a bit clever when it comes to how you use all of these units. For example we use triggers to activate units when we are near an area rather than all the units being active when there is really no need for them to be. You may also find that some units effect the fps more than others. We recently found that certain AI helicopters impact fps a fair bit. Its all about experimenting really. What i usually try to do is test the mission for FPS whilst building it so that way you can see how units effect fps. Another tip is that you may find that the FPS will be different when testing you mission on your own machine compared to a dedicated server...

Good evening Marek. I think maybe you need to be a bit clever when it comes to how you use all of these units. For example we use triggers to activate units when we are near an area rather than all the units being active when there is really no need for them to be. You may also find that some units effect the fps more than others. We recently found that certain AI helicopters impact fps a fair bit. Its all about experimenting really. What i usually try to do is test the mission for FPS whilst building it so that way you can see how units effect fps. Another tip is that you may find that the FPS will be different when testing you mission on your own machine compared to a dedicated server...

Thanks for answer. I obviously wanted to do it realisticall way, means the unit would traver to AO, so you can kill them on the way etc.

Another question: Is it possible to rent virtual dedicated server with enough power?

What affect the performance most on heavy missions? CPU / RAM or GPU? What I do not understand that CPU/GPU/RAM are bellow 50% but still the FPS drops? How is that happening?

Thanks for answer. I obviously wanted to do it realisticall way, means the unit would traver to AO, so you can kill them on the way etc.

 

Another question: Is it possible to rent virtual dedicated server with enough power?

 

What affect the performance most on heavy missions? CPU / RAM or GPU? What I do not understand that CPU/GPU/RAM are bellow 50% but still the FPS drops? How is that happening?

You can rent a dedicated server from OVH or other datacenters. The PC will be high end but the real value is their access to an internet backbone to the datacenter. You may have 1GB internet service at your house, but the limitations of your home router and neighborhood backbone will result in less satisfactory ping level through all conditions.

On the mission, it seems that moving ground troops and vehicles seem to have the most impact on frame rate. So you can use zone triggers to group activate units as you fly into the area to limit impact.

DCS is single threaded, so it only uses a small part of the CPU. Nothing can change that. So I like fewer core, high MHz CPUs. Fast SSD drive is critical and at least 32GB memory.

There are plenty of server options out there that will run dcs no problems at all. I think the problem is how you are making the missions. Our missions do run better when they are running on the server however but you really need to learn how to optimize the missions.

Okaaay, and does the heavy mission affects performance of both server and the clients the same?

My question is if the server part is more demanding than client? Or both server / client will be affected the same?

The server is under the most stress, as it needs to track all the AI behaviors and positions and report it to all the client machines. Fortunately, the dedicated server or -norender command line options remove the need to render video on top of the number crunching.

I find that clients will still see a noticeable frame hit on extremely heavy whole-map missions with thousands of units such as the Blue Flag servers, but for your average one-off scenarios you can be pretty generous with your unit counts without affecting performance overmuch.

I don’t know if this has changed or not. But, I remember reading more than one post explaining that DCS engine has a cap on how many units are in the mission and still able to perform as desired. I seem to remember a number around 500 active units. If this is still the case, then no matter what you do, if you have have 800 units as stated above, nothing you do will make it better. No matter what hardware you get, or server you rent. If the engine is limited and can only handle a certain number of units, then to keep performance, you have to stay under that threshold.

Okay guys, thanks. Another question :)

What ground units can rearm other ground units? E.g. SAMs, how long does it take to reload SAM?

Thanks anyways for tips