DCS 2.5 Optimisation Guide

I figured out what Full Screen is for. It didn't appear to do anything, so I recommended keeping it OFF, but what it does it that it keeps you in full screen even if playing in a low resolution and since some have reported Vsync problems, I'm going to change my recommendation to keeping it ON! I'll update the first post with this information.

I went from 100+ fps without MSAA-4x to 75+ fps with MSAA-4x, while using Def.Shading.

 

It looks nicer but comes with a price

You mean you compared MSAA X2 and MSAA X4?

I go from 70-80 fps with MSAA off to 30fps with MSAAx2 :megalol:

Interesting! On my 1060, MSAA OFF to X2 and X2 to X4 cause -25% performance each, but X4 to X8 is practically free, which is weird and I don't know why this is, but I was expecting it to work differently on a weaker card, such as yours.

My framerates are so unstable with AA I have to use Vsync. With MSAAx4 I can manage to stay steady at 30fps in tree-laden valleys, but only thanks to Vsync. With it off, it will plummet to 24. It ends up playing rather smoothly, actually.

My framerates are so unstable with AA I have to use Vsync. With MSAAx4 I can manage to stay steady at 30fps in tree-laden valleys, but only thanks to Vsync. With it off, it will plummet to 24. It ends up playing rather smoothly, actually.

Vsync doesn't affect FPS, it syncs the framerate with the monitor refresh rate. It can only lessen the framerate to keep it in sync. It is literally impossible for vsync to increase fps. I suggest you look elsewhere for the cause.

At such a low framerate I would highly recommend disabling MSAA or at the very least, not using more than 2X.

A double buffered vsynced (or freesync/gsync) image will look smoother than a non-synced image at fluctuating framerates due to the stuttering and tearing caused when frames are displayed at inconsistent intervals. That is probably why you find it feels smoother.

I figured out what Full Screen is for. It didn't appear to do anything, so I recommended keeping it OFF, but what it does it that it keeps you in full screen even if playing in a low resolution and since some have reported Vsync problems, I'm going to change my recommendation to keeping it ON! I'll update the first post with this information.

Fullscreen means the same that it means in all 3d programs. It makes the program use the full screen. Windowed or "windowed fullscreen" both run in a window and in some cases there can be performance or compatibility problems, but it makes switching between programs quicker because it doesn't have to switch out of full screen mode.

Gsync does not work in DCS unless it is running in fullscreen (hidden driver setting). Nvidia also has some weird Vsync behavior in windowed mode for all programs. Everyone should most certainly be running DCS in fullscreen.

DCS will not continue running in fullscreen after tabbing out to another program. You must use alt-enter to switch it back. You will know if you were in fullscreen if the screen flashes black when switching to another program.

MSAA 2x looks better visually but costs more performance. FXAA is too blurry (especially with text). Also, FXAA affects the DCS GUI too, which is very annoying. IMHO, of course.

 

But you should really try for yourself, YMMV or you may disagree.

Normally I would agree that FXAA looks blury, but that is not the case in DCS. I suggest you try it for yourself as well, as different resolutions might have a different effect. In my case FXAA is at least as good as MSAA X 2 at smoothing edges with 0 noticeable blur. You obviously will still get shimmering of some thin objects in the distance.

I do not see any effect on the GUI. If it does something, it is not noticeable.

Fullscreen means the same that it means in all 3d programs. It makes the program use the full screen. Windowed or "windowed fullscreen" both run in a window and in some cases there can be performance or compatibility problems, but it makes switching between programs quicker because it doesn't have to switch out of full screen mode.

 

Gsync does not work in DCS unless it is running in fullscreen (hidden driver setting). Nvidia also has some weird Vsync behavior in windowed mode for all programs. Everyone should most certainly be running DCS in fullscreen.

 

DCS will not continue running in fullscreen after tabbing out to another program. You must use alt-enter to switch it back. You will know if you were in fullscreen if the screen flashes black when switching to another program.

But DCS appears to run in perfect full screen for me even with full screen OFF. Alt-tabbing doesn't affect anything, but I understand what you mean, so it may be different for different people.

Normally I would agree that FXAA looks blury, but that is not the case in DCS. I suggest you try it for yourself as well, as different resolutions might have a different effect. In my case FXAA is at least as good as MSAA X 2 at smoothing edges with 0 noticeable blur. You obviously will still get shimmering of some thin objects in the distance.

 

I do not see any effect on the GUI. If it does something, it is not noticeable.

The problem with FXAA is that it blurs all text in the game, including the menues! Doesn't it for you? ARMA 3 has fantastic FXAA by the way.

But DCS appears to run in perfect full screen for me even with full screen OFF. Alt-tabbing doesn't affect anything, but I understand what you mean, so it may be different for different people.

That's called "borderless fullscreen". Just because it's filling your whole screen doesn't mean it's actually in fullscreen mode. As I mentioned there are compatibility issues with some games and features like Gsync. Some games can't even run in windowed like DCS can.

The problem with FXAA is that it blurs all text in the game, including the menues! Doesn't it for you? ARMA 3 has fantastic FXAA by the way.

Nope, not for me. Not in any significant way. It might be resolution dependent.

Thanx for the HU. Simply selecting 'full screen' in the main menu did work already.

I'd say no it probably didn't :D. This option has been bugged since 2.0.5 and it only flips to borderless windowed, which looks like full screen, but isn't (thus some gfx options, like V-Sync don't enable correctly). Similar to in-game V-sync option, which isn't V-sync at all, just a frame limiter (unless that changed in 2.5).

I've figured out a few more optimisations that I'll work into the first post after I've benchmarked them in a wider variety of scenarios. Also, for users of cards with only 3GB RAM, I'm experimenting with ways to manage VRAM. If it runs out, there's a significant 15-25% decrease in performance, but I haven't been able to identify the options that affect it yet.

Here are my current recommended options (1920x1200):

Textures HIGH

Terrain Textures HIGH

Civ. Traffic HIGH

Water HIGH

Visib. Range EXTREME

Heat Blur HIGH

Shadows HIGH

Resolution PERSONAL PREFERENCE

Aspect Ratio PERSONAL PREFERENCE

Monitors PERSONAL PREFERENCE

Res. of Cockpit Displays 1024 EVERY FRAME

MSAA X8

Depth of Field OFF

Lens Effects DIRT+FLARE

HDR OFF

Deferred Shading ON

Clutter/Grass 1500

Trees Visibility 100%

Preload Radius 1500 (don't know if it makes any difference anyway)

Chimney Smoke Density 0

Gamma 2

Anisotropic Filtering 4X (5%+ performance compared with 16X, no significant graphical difference)*

Terrain Object Shadows FLAT (DEFAULT currently has extremely low resolution shadows and this actually looks better)

Global Cockpit Illumination OFF (7.5%+ performance, no significant graphical difference)

Disable Aero Interface OFF

Vsync OFF

Full Screen ON

Scale GUI OFF

I've discovered Anisotropic filtering and (especially) Global Cockpit Illumination affect FPS in practically significant amounts and Textures, Terrain Textures, Water, and Clutter/Grass APPEARED to affect performance, but in another test they affected nothing.

After adjusting Anisotropic filtering and Global Cockpit Illumination, I get like 50 FPS average in 1080p and 40 FPS average in 1200p, which rocks.

I've tested this in the Warthog, Mirage, and Huey across Vegas and Caucasus maps, high and low altitude and performance rocks across the board.

Normally I would agree that FXAA looks blury, but that is not the case in DCS. I suggest you try it for yourself as well, as different resolutions might have a different effect. In my case FXAA is at least as good as MSAA X 2 at smoothing edges with 0 noticeable blur. You obviously will still get shimmering of some thin objects in the distance.

 

I do not see any effect on the GUI. If it does something, it is not noticeable.

I did try it (which is why I said FXAA was blurry). On my monitor (2560x1600) it is very noticeable, both in the GUI and flying.

As I said, YMMV or you may disagree :)

I've discovered Anisotropic filtering and (especially) Global Cockpit Illumination affect FPS in practically significant amounts and Textures, Terrain Textures, Water, and Clutter/Grass APPEARED to affect performance, but in another test they affected nothing.

After adjusting Anisotropic filtering and Global Cockpit Illumination, I get like 50 FPS average in 1080p and 40 FPS average in 1200p, which rocks.

I've tested this in the Warthog, Mirage, and Huey across Vegas and Caucasus maps, high and low altitude and performance rocks across the board.

- AF should have minimal impact to performance as you have seen

- Global Cockpit Illumination has an immeasurable effect on my system, but the effect is also barely noticeable.

- Textures general don't impact framerate at all on modern GPUs. Too high a quality can cause you to run out of vram, which will cause significant performance issues, but if you have the vram for it, it should be at maximum. Cockpit instruments and labels may be unreadable at lower settings.

- Water will have a small to moderate impact depending on GPU. Difference is mostly in the reflection which you won't notice 90% of the time. If you have the power for it, water looks much better on high.

- Clutter/grass has a significant effect on performance with MSAA, but it is only drawn for about 100m. If you are more than 100m up it is not drawn at all and has no effect. It is only relevant for takeoff/landing/taxing and helicopters.

- Trees also have a massive effect on performance, and more so with MSAA. The closest trees are of a much higher quality and as such, from 30% to 100% there is only a small hit to performance. From 0% to 30% is where the big impact is. If you are in an area without trees, of course it wont affect framerate, but flying through the mountains over a sea of trees can take me from 100fps to 60fps without MSAA in extreme cases.

- Default versus flat terrain shadows... This effects how the shadows of trees and building affect other objects. On default a building will shade the building or trees next to it, on flat it does not. All shadows, including your own aircraft, will clip into the terrain at certain angles when set to flat making them quite ugly. In a helicopter, you can see the shadows of trees will change as you approach. The performance impact of default terrain shadows over flat can be significant when over dense forest, and is also affected by the shadow quality setting.

I find some of your recommendations a little odd. For example, extreme visibility will certainly impact framerates and you see little more than high. Once you drop to medium you will notice the building density drop off at a distance, but it's not very noticeable. Likewise, 8 X MSAA will easily halve your framerate when you are flying over a forest. The visual difference between 2X and 8X certainly exists, but not worth dropping to 30fps. Do yourself a favor and fly through the densely forested mountains north east of Sochi. I can't see you being able to maintain 40fps with those settings on a 1060.

As I'm a pilot and no pc-guru I honestly don't know what's the difference between v-sync and a frame rate limiter which limits the frame rate to the monitor refresh rate.

 

What's now the best thing to enable/disable in DCS and the nvidia control panel? thanx :)

Frame limiter limits the framerate. Vsync syncs the framerate to your monitor refresh rate. A frame limiter set to the same rate as your monitor can still tear.

DCS's vsync is not a frame limiter contrary to what was stated above. It prevents tearing like it should. I even unintentionally tested it today.

I recommend disabling vsync in DCS and all games you run, and setting vsync to on in the Nvidia control panel. You also have the option of "fast" vsync which can reduce latency when you are capable of getting really high fps, but it will cause stutter due to irregular frames (the frames themselves would be regular but the time between the drawn images will vary causing moving objects to sort of jitter as your eye attempts to track them).

Regarding your fps exceeding 60, I found a bug with Nvidia in that alt-tabbing out of a program will change vsync to fast sync (which stutters above your monitor refresh). It so happens that if you alt-tab out of DCS, even if you have set fullscreen the game will be running in a window (looks like fullscreen too). Alt-enter returns you to fullscreen and vsync returns to normal. HOWEVER, even if you don't alt-tab, and even with fullscreen selected, sometimes DCS runs in a window anyway. If you want to be sure it is fullscreen, just tab out once and then use alt-enter to put you in fullscreen. This only needs to be done once after starting DCS, and it will not screw up until you restart or alt-tab. You should then be capped to your monitor's max refresh rate whether you set it in DCS or in the Nvidia Control Panel.

- AF should have minimal impact to performance as you have seen

 

- Global Cockpit Illumination has an immeasurable effect on my system, but the effect is also barely noticeable.

 

- Textures general don't impact framerate at all on modern GPUs. Too high a quality can cause you to run out of vram, which will cause significant performance issues, but if you have the vram for it, it should be at maximum. Cockpit instruments and labels may be unreadable at lower settings.

 

- Water will have a small to moderate impact depending on GPU. Difference is mostly in the reflection which you won't notice 90% of the time. If you have the power for it, water looks much better on high.

 

- Clutter/grass has a significant effect on performance with MSAA, but it is only drawn for about 100m. If you are more than 100m up it is not drawn at all and has no effect. It is only relevant for takeoff/landing/taxing and helicopters.

 

- Trees also have a massive effect on performance, and more so with MSAA. The closest trees are of a much higher quality and as such, from 30% to 100% there is only a small hit to performance. From 0% to 30% is where the big impact is. If you are in an area without trees, of course it wont affect framerate, but flying through the mountains over a sea of trees can take me from 100fps to 60fps without MSAA in extreme cases.

 

- Default versus flat terrain shadows... This effects how the shadows of trees and building affect other objects. On default a building will shade the building or trees next to it, on flat it does not. All shadows, including your own aircraft, will clip into the terrain at certain angles when set to flat making them quite ugly. In a helicopter, you can see the shadows of trees will change as you approach. The performance impact of default terrain shadows over flat can be significant when over dense forest, and is also affected by the shadow quality setting.

 

I find some of your recommendations a little odd. For example, extreme visibility will certainly impact framerates and you see little more than high. Once you drop to medium you will notice the building density drop off at a distance, but it's not very noticeable. Likewise, 8 X MSAA will easily halve your framerate when you are flying over a forest. The visual difference between 2X and 8X certainly exists, but not worth dropping to 30fps. Do yourself a favor and fly through the densely forested mountains north east of Sochi. I can't see you being able to maintain 40fps with those settings on a 1060.

I already know everything you wrote. But, no matter what the theory is, I did in fact get 2.5%-5 performance differences with all Texture options at minimum instead of maximum, Water MEDIUM instead of HIGH, and a bigger 10%+ performance difference with Clutter/Grass minimum instead of maximum, and about the same difference with Cockpit Global Illumination. This was fully replicable, until I changed resolution.

Also, the Texture options make 0% VRAM difference for me. Instead, VRAM rather randomly changes from 2.6 to 3GB (all I have) when restarting. I've been unable to find any option that affects VRAM consistently, though I haven't modified the big three yet: MSAA, Shadows, and Visib. Range. In other words, VRAM works quite unintuitively and is difficult to benchmark with my current methods.

The difference between EXTREME and ULTRA is big. I benchmarked the difference around Batumi and the difference in range at which you can see buildings, vegetation, their density, and the distance at which shadows appear is alarming, in my opinion.

MSAA X8 and MSAA X4 has no performance difference on my machine. If you play with a weaker graphics card or at a 2K-4K resolution, multi-monitor, or VR, your experience may vary.

Wow, that's a lot of vegetation North-east of Sochi. I get 40-45 FPS there (more if the sky covers more than 1/3 of the screen), 38 FPS stable when I dive deep into the most heavily vegetated areas and in one valley I managed to bring it down to 37 for a few seconds. It also drops to a little less than that for a split-second when I initiate turns and when flying into the area I think it temporarily dropped into the low 30's for a while.

My specs, again:

1920x1200 (+10% performance in 1920x1080)

i7-4770K (4.0 GHz "OC")

ASUS 1060 Dual (3GB VRAM)

2x8GB 1600 MHz RAM

DCS installed on secondary Samsung 840 Evo 250GB

Windows 10 64-bit

Can't think of anything else that affects my performance. I'm currently not using my TrackIR 5. Mirrors are off, naturally. I flew the Mirage.

I'm using the exact options I describe above.

(The top-left says 39 FPS, but it was 38 FPS before I paused)

I didn't realize view distance affected shadow draw distance. It seems to be pretty minimal, but I think I'm going to do extensive testing today.

I didn't realize view distance affected shadow draw distance. It seems to be pretty minimal, but I think I'm going to do extensive testing today.

It might have chaned in DCS 2.5? I also never noticed it, but when flying at medium altitude in Caucasus, it made the difference between shadows only being rendered almost just underneath me, or shadows being rendered pretty far away.

My current settings in game - unfortunately, once is good, once not and I've got fps drops:

FPS:

at the airports, alone : ~50

with other plane : 38-50

flight : over 100 over sea

flight : over ground 40-80

flight : low altitude over forests near batumi 35-50

My computer specification :

i5-2500

GTX 960

8 GB RAM

Windows 8.1

My question is :

What graphic settings do you suggest to me to have a good visibility ( distance ) and do not have pixels ( which is appearing when I turn MSAA off )?

If you want more FPS, the two biggest things you can do is take visibility down to high (it still looks fine) and turn off MSAA. As you sait it will look a little ugly with all the jaggies. Your best bet is to turn on FXAA in the Nvidia Control Panel. It will do about 90% of what MSAA did, the biggest difference is thin objects like power line towers in the distance will still look ugly and shimmer. Those two changes I guess will probably bump up your minimum fps by about 15 to 20.

If you are really desperate, you can change shadows to flat only, that will give you a couple more if you don't care about seeing shadows on the aircraft surfaces or cockpit. You'd actually be able to turn terrain shadows back to flat and have a much better view of the terrain for a net gain in fps.

My current settings in game - unfortunately, once is good, once not and I've got fps drops:

 

 

FPS:

at the airports, alone : ~50

with other plane : 38-50

 

flight : over 100 over sea

flight : over ground 40-80

flight : low altitude over forests near batumi 35-50

 

My computer specification :

i5-2500

GTX 960

8 GB RAM

Windows 8.1

 

My question is :

What graphic settings do you suggest to me to have a good visibility ( distance ) and do not have pixels ( which is appearing when I turn MSAA off )?

I did originally have an "intermediate" recommendation, which gave +55% compared with minimum options and -55% compared with maximum options. I may bring that back at some point.

Your options and performance are already quite optimised! What do you want?

Try this:

Textures HIGH

Terrain Textures HIGH

Civ. Traffic HIGH (almost free)

Water HIGH (almost free)

Visib. Range ULTRA (You can also try decreasing this to HIGH)

Heat Blur HIGH (doesn't make any difference to me, but it may affect your machine)

Shadows LOW (Set this to FLAT ONLY for better performance, but worse cockpit shadows)

Resolution PERSONAL PREFERENCE

Aspect Ratio PERSONAL PREFERENCE

Monitors PERSONAL PREFERENCE

Res. of Cockpit Displays 1024 EVERY FRAME

MSAA X2 (You can also try increasing this to X4 or X8, if Visib. Range is set HIGH)

Depth of Field OFF

Lens Effects DIRT+FLARE (probably free)

HDR OFF

Deferred Shading ON

Clutter/Grass 1000

Trees Visibility 80% (You can change this in-game without exiting a scenario and see if turning it up/down makes any practical performance difference)

Preload Radius 60000

Chimney Smoke Density 0

Gamma 2 (You can play around with this in-game also)

Anisotropic Filtering X2 (probably 5% performance increase)

Terrain Object Shadows FLAT (unless it kills your performance)

Global Cockpit Illumination OFF

Disable Aero Interface OFF

Vsync OFF

Full Screen ON

Scale GUI OFF

Visib. Range ULTRA (You can also try decreasing this to HIGH)[/b]

I see many people complaining about performance who are setting this value at very high level... however, this parameter is probably the most important framerate killer. Visible range increase count of objects to draw per frame, which increase both CPU usage (scenic computing), GPU usage (polygon draw), and memory (additionnal textures)...

Hi all as like everybody else or most, had the same proplems with stuttering especialy with BETTY coming on,but this morning i had to instal me sounddriver again for some other problem ,after a fresh instal from the website [amd]

after i play some dcs and ,

the stuttering was almost gone also with BETTY warning me [again]

so that worked for me this one ,.greetings from italy

amd m4a78-pro

amd phenom bl,x4 965

palit 1050ti 4 gb

hdd 2 tb

8 gb mem brand unnown

2 old joystick for use as hotas

I see many people complaining about performance who are setting this value at very high level... however, this parameter is probably the most important framerate killer. Visible range increase count of objects to draw per frame, which increase both CPU usage (scenic computing), GPU usage (polygon draw), and memory (additionnal textures)...

After discovering a few optimisations that made the whole MSAA/Shadows/Visib. Range choice rather redundant, I've re-written the entire guide and made it an easier choice of Low, Medium, or High settings instead!

Thanks very much! Much appreciated!

I've started playing with TrackIR 5 in DCS 2.5 (really, any kind of head or eye tracking) and when the camera is always moving around, you focus a lot more on the objects themselves than individual pixels on the screen. As such, I can really recommend MSAA X2 instead of X4/X8 with head tracking... added performance and in an action scenario, you won't care!

Maybe worth mentioning for players with similar PC specs - as I have:

I tried many of the suggested tweaks within this thread, I found my personal Quality - Performance sweetspot for 2.5 atm.

The main observations - at least for my System - were:

--> turning ON MSAA 2x had no Performance Impact..

--> turning both Shadow Options down to "FLAT only" gave the best FPS increase without any noticeable Quality/Candy loss

--> I messed around with Nvdia Seetings Panel but no good results Quality wise, the best DCS Fine Tuning still seems to be directly in the DCS GUI

my DCS Settings: ( I dont have a screenie available as Im posting this from another PC)

the below mentioned Settings give me a FPS bandwith of constant 45 to 65 FPS in MP in crowded areas.. over Sea and up higher around 80 to 120 FPS, .. sometimes more

Textures: High

Scenes: High

View Distance: High

Civil Traffic: OFF

Heat Blur: Low

!! Both Shadow Options: FLAT !!

Lens Effect: Off

HDR: OFF

Deferend Shading: ON

AF:4x

MSAA: 2x

Res of Pit Display: 512

Deph of Field: OFF

Resolution: 1980x1080 on 1 "standard" 27 inch Monitor

Clutter/Grass: 65%

Trees: 70%

Preload Radius: 90%

Chimney Smoke Density: 1

Gamma: 1.6

Global Pit Illum: OFF

Vsync: OFF

I hope someone can gain any benefit out of this..

I have a similar setup to yours and tried your settings, with pretty similar results in single player. Shadows seem to be the biggest offenders, which sucks because flat shadows on aircraft makes them look very 2-dimensional.