Hardware related stuff on DCS future (GR interview with Simon)

Here the video:

Here a related thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=282292

But I want to focus here on the Hardware related side of the interview and resume them a little: (within what I understand).

Question number 5 (min. 12.30): "will you be editing your game engine to use the I9 multiprocessors along with GPUs and Cuda cores, etc?": They are planning a major engine overhaul (multi CPU stuff) at fall 2020-beginning of 2021 (I don´t know if this guy is the guy in charge for those things, but these are great news). Later on the video he talks about how many improvements are CPU bottlenecked right now and the necessity to jump on that.

Question number 13 (min. 38.00): "when will we see more optimization for DCS so we have less lag?": It´s not a written rule, but they try to give a 5 year old PC user a +- 30-40 FPS experience (I supose on 1080p flat screen and Mid settings, maybe low settings?: I don´t think so) but they are allways working to bring as many things as they can in the Sim, so power users are allways wellcome.

But the developers are users at the same time, so it´s allways a tradeoff. (Of course they work on optimizations all the time and looking forward, but they want as many people as posible in the Sim at the same time).

Question 14 (min. 44.00): The MS 2020 thing and how gorgeous it looks: Of course they are aware of the competition. And they want to do it even better. It will take time because they have a budget. But they won´t give up.

Question 16 (min. 50.00): Old Pc users: Again: there is not an official norm, but they try to being up to date with 5 years old PCs.

Question 24 (min. 1.04.20): "Ray tracing": Resounding Yes!, they are working on that too. (It seems they will never give up over improving their visuals and it will allways be a work in progress on that departament). (If that is related on the Vulkan thing or the multi CPU revamped engine comented before: I don´t know but I think the multi CPU revamp is closer and the Vulkan uppgrade will come later, but I´m guessing here and reading in between lines).

Question 30 (min. 1.10.00): Improvements on the weather in DCS?: He don´t know when they will be able to improve that, but are working on that, of course. But there are priorities in ED.

Question 41 (min. 1.18.00): "Will we ever be able to get in and out of our aircraft and do walkarounds?" (That´s not a hardware related thing, but only one I was eagerly awaiting to try in VR): And the answer is Yes!!

Question 43 (min. 1.19.30): "what are the current plans to try and improve the poor performance of the game, specially in VR?": He uses Rift-S on a medium spec Pc and he consider the experience as "fantastic" (not poor in any way), but he is aware of people in the forum requesting for help on the VR config side of the equation and maybe they could bring us a video with instructions..... He likes a lot the VR thing but, again, there must to be taken into account that there are priorities in ED. (They are working with all major and minor VR headsets developers though).

(A puntualization of my own here: maybe they need to jump on OpenXR to simplify a little: OpenXR will take care of some things headsets related and, eventually, you could be "headset agnostic" in the future. That´s where OpenXR is headed to in the future).

Anyway: MS FS 2020 will be VR compatible (starting with the launch of the HP G2 and WMR; later on other headsets) and it will be very interesting to see how it works on VR.

Competition is good for the users and ED don´t evade from the rivalry. It encourages them. It´s fine.

Well: that was my resume on that important interview. I know many people are worried because of the lack of refinement, stuttering, etc on DCS and they are allways working on that.

But this time I see, in that regard, a very important timeframe window in the year 2021 for improvements: MultiCPU and Vulkan.

They were confronting a thicker wall each year and have a clear roadmap to adress those flaws and move on to a new territory (and maybe all at the same time, wich is very hard to do).

At fall 2021 we will have 5 nm Nividia, AMD (and maybe Intel) GPUs. And more CPU power than ever, including improvements in VR headsets, etc.; and, at ED, they are confident they will be up to the task.

Let´s see.

Dcs has no competition. Unless your into flying a bus for hours?

Not me and everyone i know with our online players 100s.

Dont get me wrong, great for irl civi training. Not combat, combat systems and weapons. Sync weather for acm etc etc.

Also flight models, especially choppers.

You also missed. Its that good (seen by other military's) they are flooded with contacts. So these upgrades might get paid for by them etc. I mean thats why ED is able to still do all this.

Well: that was my resume on that important interview. I know many people are worried because of the lack of refinement, stuttering, etc on DCS and they are allways working on that.

But this time I see, in that regard, a very important timeframe window in the year 2021 for improvements: MultiCPU and Vulkan.

 

Let´s see.

The Vulkan engine improvement has on progress.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4168367&postcount=233

Vulkan API Support

 

In order to improve game performance, particularly in VR and take advantage of today’s hardware, we have been working on the integration of the Vulkan API into DCS World over the past year. This is an important undertaking, but we believe it will be well worth the end-results.

Vulkan Discussion is Here:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=217784

DCS Running on Vulkan was first announced to be in development here:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=196539

RE: Question 43

I think that a lot of people that have issues with performance (2D or VR) are not fully optimizing their hardware either due to not being technical minded enough or not being "engaged" enough to put in the work. The types of questions asked or detailed rants posted is pretty telling.

Not to say there aren't problems - FPS should be higher than it is and there are some edge case issues that you wonder how it got through QA (who am I kidding - QA at my shop is similar)...

But _in_general_ the performance is not as bad as you'd believe by reading this forum or Hoggit.

I expect that these factors are why the developer in the interview finds it more than serviceable in VR.

IMO YMMV etc. etc.

Yeah , for all the issues , VR is still an amazing experience in DCS . I can only dream of how good it will be with multicore and Vulkan .

The Vulkan engine improvement has on progress.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4168367&postcount=233

 

 

Vulkan Discussion is Here:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=217784

 

DCS Running on Vulkan was first announced to be in development here:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=196539

Thanks Silver Dragon.

I knew (or have to believe) that Vulkan was on development with a 2021 TF, but it´s good to know it really won´t get rellegated in the roadmap and it´s allready getting attention.

But I consider more important the multiCPU announcement, because the users consider it important, but they knew of the difficulties of implementing such a thing. (Very good to know).

You also missed. Its that good (seen by other military's) they are flooded with contacts. So these upgrades might get paid for by them etc. I mean thats why ED is able to still do all this.

Yes, I was focusing only in the hardware and software departament of the interview. There is allready a thread with other comments.

Nice to know ED is growing for whatever reason.

I want to climb the ladder to a plane with proper VR mechanics. (That´s immersion)

RE: Question 43

 

I think that a lot of people that have issues with performance (2D or VR) are not fully optimizing their hardware either due to not being technical minded enough or not being "engaged" enough to put in the work. The types of questions asked or detailed rants posted is pretty telling.

 

Not to say there aren't problems - FPS should be higher than it is and there are some edge case issues that you wonder how it got through QA (who am I kidding - QA at my shop is similar)...

 

But _in_general_ the performance is not as bad as you'd believe by reading this forum or Hoggit.

 

I expect that these factors are why the developer in the interview finds it more than serviceable in VR.

 

IMO YMMV etc. etc.

You're absolutely right. I followed some settings advice, and the game looks better and I gained solid FPS.

Doesn't get better than that.

I never understood all this Vulkan hype. There are tons of games that work flawlessly on directx 11. So it's definantely not problem of directX, but rather problem of ED not having world class graphics engine developers. They should just license UE5 and let Epic handle low level stuff

Maybe the announcement of multi CPU engine is more needed than the Vulkan one.

We will see from there.

And you miss the opportunity to differentiate if you fall under the Unreal engine.

I never understood all this Vulkan hype. There are tons of games that work flawlessly on directx 11. So it's definantely not problem of directX, but rather problem of ED not having world class graphics engine developers. They should just license UE5 and let Epic handle low level stuff

Flights sims seem better on vulkan due to loads of complex scenery.

RE: Question 43

 

I think that a lot of people that have issues with performance (2D or VR) are not fully optimizing their hardware either due to not being technical minded enough or not being "engaged" enough to put in the work. The types of questions asked or detailed rants posted is pretty telling.

 

Not to say there aren't problems - FPS should be higher than it is and there are some edge case issues that you wonder how it got through QA (who am I kidding - QA at my shop is similar)...

 

But _in_general_ the performance is not as bad as you'd believe by reading this forum or Hoggit.

 

I expect that these factors are why the developer in the interview finds it more than serviceable in VR.

 

IMO YMMV etc. etc.

So true!

There is a cost associated with Unreal. I forget the numbers but for a small shop like ED with effectively no negotiating power it would be similar to what Apple/Google does stealing 30% of every app in the app store and locking them in whether they want to be locked in or not.

It's a bad decision for a long running title. If you are making some bull sh!t game that is only going to be around for a few years then sure, go Unreal.

Saying ED doesn't have world class graphics engine developers?

That's just being miserable/pissy for the sake of being miserable/pissy. DCS is gorgeous and runs fine on high end hardware.

Can it be better, of course! I think ED got behind the curve a little and are playing catch-up as the industry changed around them. Vulkan is the way forward to stay relevant with the technologies offered by NVIDIA/AMD SDKs.

DX11 is old, switching to DX12 is probably just as much work as Vulkan. Isn't the future of DX kind of precarious at this point?

$0.02

Confirmed with the Nick Grey interview too:

Lots of added performance coming soon with that multi Cpu and graphic update.

It was needed to grow.

Hopefully people could relax a little before upgrading their rigs.

Maybe in a year The channel and Sirya maps will start to look small with the improved engine.