"Heavy missions" term in system requirements

Well, now I look like I lied because this 1.15 won't allow me to write an argument :(

It is just analogous. In the 2011 having more than 4GB of RAM was just wasting money. Now it is more than 32

misssions with hundreds of units in a MP environment

This is the infinitely more useful topic. The "other WWII sim that shall not be named" was the other guy's deal, I just want to know what specification I need to build a mission to so that it isn't going to crash on 16 GB of RAM every 40 minutes with 10-20 people on it.

So if it's unit count, how many hundreds of units is it? Does AI on/off state have any effect? Do late-activated units count towards it? Instead of just chalking it up to crazed mission designers and moving the goalposts by upping the recommended RAM spec, can we get some guidance on making it work with what we have now? Don't know when you might've last looked at the market, but it's about as bad a time as any to be telling anyone they need to double the amount of RAM in their machine.

I guess we have to endure a bit more until DCS+Vulcan is a reality? :)

I jumped from 16GB to 32GB the first week of 2.5 open beta. In general, It loads a bit faster and multiplayer doesn't crash for me anymore. It runs quite comfy on my i7+1080ti+32GB RAM and SSD. But don't expect the "holy grail" with 32GB. We are not there yet.

VR is not great (gone back to screen for now), shooting a volley of rockets still has a high impact on my FPS. Everytime a player jumps into an aircraft the whole server is about to die. Aliasing is through the roof (but can sort of be dampened with reshade).

Don't get me wrong DCS 2.5 is a good experience (on my rig atleast), but there will still be some quirks and irritating issues that you can not buy your way out of with better equipment atm.

I would only recommend to go for 32GB if you really can afford it atm. Cause it will still not solve all the issues. If not, do not worry. DCS Wold will get better with time :thumbup:

Vulkan wont stop the freezes from players joining and entering an aircraft, or Loading times.

Vulkan will talk DirectX API Calls off the CPU, and send the Graphics Commands directly from the engine to the GPU w/ little to no overhead. It may resolve issues w/ graphical effects causing FPS Dips due to particle sprite and object counts.

E.D. is actively working on Memory Management improvements.

Well, I am not the programmer. (at least I am not programming the PC software but PLCs) In a lot of other games I saw that a lot of things are just not loaded "right now" but "step by step" I hope you understand what do I mean. Just if someone joins the server, his aircraft just can be loaded in the meantime and not at once. You can see in some games that the textures are not loaded immediately but in the meantime their resolution is slowly increasing but the game does not freeze. I hope you understand what do I mean.

And yes, programming is really difficult job and maybe the devs know where is the problem. I am sorry if I have offended someone. I am just guessing what causes the freezes.

Just to imagine what I mean:

You mean someting like texture streaming I guess and I agree, this could help but its not the root cause. I have DCS on my m2 SSD, 1GB+/s read speed. It takes over 5 seconds until some planes are loaded in the encyclopedia... I cant find a valid reason for this...

Just some modules can have tons of polygons or really superhigh textures resolution. E.G. once the Mig-21 was released, it had really damn a lot polygons which were heavily reduced because they caused the heavy HW load.

ED need force all 3rd party modules to fit modules in some ED MODEL standard. Yes, all problems started when MiG21 is released and things going much crazy with every new module and new things in DCS. Just to much of everything non-optimized for this sim and MP.

-Should be added to this that many servers trying to host more than 40 players. They just want all players on his servers.

-Should be added to this that becasuse they want more and more players on his server they in mission put to many slots for every aircraft just to be here because they dont know hov many ppl will fly that aircraft. And we have to many of everything again. Why just not think about mission: How many Ka50(and any other) they need for mission and if is 4 put only 4 slots for that aircraft. If no free slots when some player want to fly it he simple must go on other server - that`s it. No problems on server, other server will have new player on it and all MP will be interesting for many ppl.

- Should be added to this, number of ground units. 5000 units is crazy. Because of to many slots they need to give people to doing something in Viggen, Gazela, Mi8, Harier, Albatros, P-51... :doh: . I understand... donations :music_whistling:

ED need (please) to limit number of units in mission (in ME) and max MP slots to 40, optimize some things and End of Story.

Should we need talk about track recording, etc...

Falcon, I can not agree but not at all. (Just I agree but not at all) I am "cooperating" with the mission Creator for not mentioned server which is in my eyes the best training servers and running on very powerfull rig. There is not so much targets but there are scripts that they can respawm the targets once they are destroyed or you can spawm your own via special radio menu. Also this respawming causes short freezes. And I guess the units are not loaded in memory until they are "physically" on the battlefield. Also I wonder to know why taking the screenshot will sometimes freeze the game for all players.

This kind of thread drives me nuts.

It's this simple:

- DCS is a consumer level flight sim pushing the boundaries of what's possible with a PC. As part of that, an unfortunate side effect are the hardware requirements. This is NO different to say buying an early version of Battlefield, and then the lastest AAA version.

- You STILL have the option of using 1.58, just as those with older PCs could still use the older version of Battlefield

So whilst it's not great that your existing hardware is struggling to run the latest version of DCS with complex missions, sorry, but that's just the way things are.

Please, get over it and either run 1.58 and be happy, or cough up the spondoolies for new hardware.

Is not 1.5.8 or 32G of RAM.

There are more situations in the middle where 16G is more than enough, plus there are still work improving memory leak and load times.

Is not 1.5.8 or 32G of RAM.

 

There are more situations in the middle where 16G is more than enough, plus there are still work improving memory leak and load times.

+1

My ancient i5 2500 is enough to run 2.5 in VR, though I have paid attention to optimisation through the various threads/discussions on the subject.

Sure, I tried a user built mission with 72 bombers, 15 fighters and a whole bunch of ground targets and it ran like a dog. For all that, it was obvious that the mission was simply "too optimistic" for my ancient PC. Doesn't mean that I need to throw my toys out of the pram as a result. Does mean that if I want to try to use the mission, that I should tone it down to make it usable.

Im in the same situation. 2500K + GTX 1060 + 16G RAM and i´m having outstanding perfomance with minor tweaks.

Im mostly flying inside a virtual squad, our flights are around 8-12 players with very populated missions but not at an insane counter level and the FPS, perfomance and absolutely no stutter at all are way much better than 1.5.8.

On the negative side i must admit that in very very populated servers ( +30 ), loading times are very long, and also textures loading takes a while, with some stutters at the beginning of the mission. But for me no crashes at all, no problems, good FPS and after 5-10 minutes flying, no stutters.

So i´m more than happy.

With more optimization, more memory management tuning, Vulkan API and some common sense DCS should be simply great.

What about on a ‘dedicated’ server? I have a stand-alone computer I use as a server, so that my primary gaming rig doesn’t have to operate as the server as well as fly in.

Would that make a difference?

The memory leak / performance issues are still being worked on,

 

the 32 GB / Heavy Missions stipulation are just precautions.

 

Even without the memory / performance issues, we still had users trying to run VR on a machine that barely meets Minimum Spec, Thus a Separate Recommended Specs for VR,

 

We also had users running HUGE missions (mainly MP Missions) w/ systems that barely met minimum requirements as well.

 

Some of the Heavy Missions are Built on Machines w/ significant ram, and not optimized for machines with limited memory, regardless of any memory leaks.

This sort of post amazes me every time ! What do people expect ? this is a computer programme and the more you over load it the worse your performance on average computers. Just build missions a simple as possible and remember it's 2018 computers not quantum computers. My system is 32 meg ram, 8 meg video i7 core intel and reasonable motherboard and I expect just reasonable performance as I like high graphic settings and resolution understanding I can't have it all. Just saying.

Mizzy

Is always better to run DCS servers in a dedicated computer.

Always

My 2 cents, on the latest release i run very fine with 16GB ram and 8GB vram. Memory usage at this point is 100% on vram and 90% on ram.

The game slows only on complex AI missions with lots of triggers and 50+ ground units in interaction (fighting).

Honestly i don't see any difference in the performance behavior with 1.5.8, it was the same : too much units, fps drops.

My 2 cents, on the latest release i run very fine with 16GB ram and 8GB vram. Memory usage at this point is 100% on vram and 90% on ram.

 

The game slows only on complex AI missions with lots of triggers and 50+ ground units in interaction (fighting).

 

Honestly i don't see any difference in the performance behavior with 1.5.8, it was the same : too much units, fps drops.

Yep, I am fine in most larger MP servers like Blueflag with 16 GB of RAM. Only time I slow down (as everyone does) is if a certain SAM fires... I think the SA-15s? I forget...

MP is a beast. Up to 65% CPU load, when that happens my GPU drops to 70%, all only for 1-2 seconds, but it happens.

If you set all to max the whole rig glows red.....but it works, no stutter, butter smooth :)

You mean someting like texture streaming I guess and I agree, this could help but its not the root cause. I have DCS on my m2 SSD, 1GB+/s read speed. It takes over 5 seconds until some planes are loaded in the encyclopedia... I cant find a valid reason for this...

Yeah... like campaign mission briefing loading after DCS start.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=205697

What DCS is possibly going through during 2 minutes loading with SSD instead of just load few small images plus text and show it on the screen?

I had probs on my new rig - microstuttering and spiking frame rates. I have 32 gigs of RAM and couldn't figure out what the problem was. A mate of mine suggested I look at the performance bottlenecks. I opened up task manager and CPU, then looked at individual cores.

My prob was not RAM or GC probs, but only one core being used to process DCS. That was causing the issue. Went back into task manager, details tab, right click on DCS exe and go to affinity and set all cores (only seems to work when in 3d world - not GUI). This spread the workload across all ten cores and now I have no bottlenecking and the whole sim is smooth as butter - in VR and in all scenarios (constant 45 fps in VR).

So, question is, why no multiple core support? Why do I have to set affinity up in this way? Can DCS not do this automatically?

Wayc00lio on my rig DCS uses all 4 cores (If I open task manager during game DCS' affinity is set to all cores by default).

There must be an issue on your rig / install / setting.

I have 8GB but have problem about connecting to the non heavy missions and some of our pilots have 16GB's but their still have problem with connecting to the non heavy and heavy missions.

So really this is our issue or ED ?

Wayc00lio on my rig DCS uses all 4 cores (If I open task manager during game DCS' affinity is set to all cores by default).

There must be an issue on your rig / install / setting.

I agree. Affinity set to all cores by default here too.