[REPORTED]2.5.6 Performance

[TOViper]

Good words, and they too reflect my thoughts about the situation.

 

Regarding performance, and to stay on topic, I would love to learn what the OB updates really change (code or just configs), which I wasn't able to read anywhere in the update logs.

You know, performance is a matter of "good" configs (the many lua files in the game directory) too. Tuning them (don't know if ED does) might increase performance, but thereby maybe degrading quality.

 

Can someone point me to the direction where to find information about this please?

[Nightstalker]

Is anyone noticing that this still seems to be an AI issue? The new channel map for me is beautiful but mostly unplayable when there is a number of AI in the air. Smooth as butter when just flying around in free flight but go into instant mission and hit furball and my 2080ti and 9700k get dragged right down to 28fps and the stutters begin after flying well above 70fps or more in free flight or one on one dogfighting. It's very frustrating!

[Lanzfeld113]

Yes, stutters are killing the game. After reading the very thoughtful posts above I would have to say that if ED needs to charge to optimize, then I think there would be more than a few people that would be willing to pay for that. I would.

I mean really it’s the only choice because I can’t buy another module if the game isn't running smoothly. I just can’t.

[Northstar98]

The thing is Vertigo, the modules themselves are what fund the core, according to Nineline, 50% of the team are working on the core. It isn't a black and white thing here.

[30mikemike]

Yes, stutters are killing the game. After reading the very thoughtful posts above I would have to say that if ED needs to charge to optimize, then I think there would be more than a few people that would be willing to pay for that. I would.

I mean really it’s the only choice because I can’t buy another module if the game isn't running smoothly. I just can’t.

 

I’d pay too. A subscription or a one off payment, I wouldn’t mind at all. :thumbup:

[Vertigo72]

the modules themselves are what fund the core

 

That is precisely the problem. Everyone wants more improvements in the core, I bet even ED want nothing more, but no one pays for it. No one even CAN pay for it; so to pay for it ED needs (new) module sales, so especially whenever users start getting upset and sales start drying up, the only thing ED can do is bloat the game further by releasing more and more content, more EA modules no one ever asked for and that will only grow the long list of known bugs and missing features and angry impatient users demanding fixes and instead of improving the game for everyone, they tend to result in the exact opposite, with everyone suffering more bugs lower performance and more 10 FPS warpfests. And realistically, those new modules and urgent patches result in ED having even fewer developer time to improve the base layer. And as if that is not bad enough those devs who keep working on the core will have a MUCH tougher job reworking a base layer that at the same time constantly needs new features to support those new modules.

 

Ive done my share of IT project management, this is the stuff that gives me nightmares. You can not win. Its like digging your own grave or being trapped in quicksand. The harder you try to solve it, the worse the outcome.

 

, according to Nineline, 50% of the team are working on the core.

 

It doesnt matter what the ratio's are. The problem is the fundamental misalignment of incentives. EDs financial interest (especially short/medium term) require them to do the exact opposite of what most users want them to do now. Its simply an unstable construct. They may balance that ball for a long time, but the moment something starts going wrong and it starts leaning in one direction, it falls apart. At some point that 50% working on an zero revenue core has got to become 30% even if "temporarily" which will make their problem bigger and customers angrier and less likely to buy new modules and then it goes to 10% until core development stalls completely and the project eventually dies. I would like to see a solution before it comes to that.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Vertigo72

[Eldur]

Can't there be any thread without the friggin' subscription model off topic? Nobody wants to have that anyway...

 

Just noticed that the latest build indeed is _AFU_. I was reporting it was the worst ever, later I revised to tell I still got my 45fps on Caucasus. Well, that is. But I just have 7 fps on the Channel... this is ridiculous.

[Noluck]

As a fairly new user of DCS all of these issues are really not affecting me, yet. I have an old system (see my sig) that runs the F/A-18C in NTTR pretty decent with few, maybe 10 AI units + a wing man. I get 60+FPS once airborne and 40 FPS in flying over downtown Vegas. That is with over maxed out system RAM and GPU RAM. I know most here run all the highest settings, I would if I could.

 

I have had no FPS issues with my bare bones 'dino' system, I'm currently running 4.5.6.4978 altough at a tweaked medium setting. I cannot download the latest Beta though. Why?, updater freezes while performing the update downloads. Posted this issue almost a week ago and still no response for a fix. Being new, I'm doing a lot of training and it works for me. But you guy's that run a PC 'super computer' configuration and are experienced here, well these post really bother me in the fact I have already purchased F/A-18C, NTTR, Persian Gulf and a TM WH stick and throttle to start with. Now everyone with the good hardware cannot run the latest Beta? Makes me wonder if I should abort learning this sim if I cannot update my hardware and expect excellent maxed out performance. I really love the sim, it's better than any other fighter based sim out there.

 

So... my question is as a new user, did I just waste my money and time on all of this? I pray I did not and ED will get things smoothed out in the core of the sim code. I'll keep running what I have for now, but I'm not updating nor buying any more modules until all of this has hopefully been address and properly fixed.

 

Been in flight simulation for 30+ years. I know the pain of software and marketing. "Does it work" they ask, "yes... well, sort of... it is still in development". "Good, we have a big demo next week, get everything ready". Great, now it's time to get out the damn sleeping bags and live at work for the next week, just to get ready for the big DEMO. Heck with development, just fix it so it works. Moan... and repeat...

 

FYI: A/A and A/G radar modelling killed our FPS back in the day, the standard was the code had to operate at 30HZ minimum. We ran a processor each for just those programs.

 

 

Cheers

 

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[Eldur]

Well, just tried some quick missions as I wanted to check out the HUD rendering. Still hardly visible in 50793, but I had to discover I'll just run off of 45fps when being literally alone with just static units at max. In the quick missions there are some others going about and I'm instantly down in the low 20s again. Not exactly what I'd call performance. This has to be bumped up considerably...

[speed-of-heat]

The channel map is indeed. AFU but as it is it’s first release of ea on beta ,mi don’t think I was expecting anything else

[petsild]

I remember when she came out N44, was due to bad optimization for a few months useless, and today works above 60 fps.

[Charly314159]

the modules themselves are what fund the core, according to Nineline, 50% of the team are working on the core. It isn't a black and white thing here.

 

That's how it should be. But I am afraid that in the current situation a module is mainly funding the next early alpha module and nothing never gets finished not even speaking about core update...

[Charly314159]

Can someone from ED acknowledge all the interesting remarks made in the past few pages? (Probably one of the best: https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4384188&postcount=400)

 

Just to sum up simplistically: we are not interested in buying new modules on a dying core.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Charly314159

[Eldur]

The channel map is indeed. AFU but as it is it’s first release of ea on beta ,mi don’t think I was expecting anything else

 

I just had to discover I'm having a whopping 120-180fps with the exact same settings in pancake mode that put out just 7fps in VR. On Caucasus it's almost as bad - 15-22fps in VR (unless I'm alone in there, then I rather have 30 and occasionally 45, but just when I don't move my head which alone rips 15fps off then), 150-200 in pancacke. It's ridiculous to say the least. My pancake fps seem to skyrocket consecutively with new updates, while the VR fps go down to the drink more and more. So obviously they're working hard on making the thing run better, even with some results, but those don't just come up where they're needed. Having a 6th or even less of the pancake frames is very weird... and that is, running a friggin' CV1 with no PD (=1) or AA, almost the same res as my screen (2048x1200 vs 1920x1200)... I don't want to imagine how this runs on a Reverb or Pimax. One frame per fortnight?

 

Probably the real question is: Should we ditch VR altogether until it actually works? I don't really want to... I mean, it has been this bad since the SC release now, and even worse before that when 2.5.6 dropped. And 2.5.5 which seems to be the holy grail at the moment, was worse than 2.5.4 as well where we even have been promised an up to 50% increase to be gotten in 2.5.5.

[Charly314159]

For me at least ditching VR = ditching DCS.

[speed-of-heat]

i get about the same perf as you in 2d but significantly more in VR ... you need to do what you need to do ... but something is screwy

[vracan]

ditching vr means ditching dcs for me too.

[Lanzfeld113]

For me in the reverb in my power system it’s very strange. I get consistent 60 FPS even on servers with 20 people. But I will be flying along and then and every 30 seconds or so my FPS will go down to the 40s for half a second.

 

I swear I’ve tried everything. I’m just at the end of my rope trying to fix their programming shortcomings.

[UncleZam]

@eldur @Charly

 

Are you running the same settings in 2D and VR? Because that is never going to work. In fact, I would be willing to hear the settings you are using and the HW configuration, so that we could see if that is in line with the performance the others are achieving.

 

In my opinion, the VR performance is kind of expectable considering the quality of graphics. Of course I wish that I could crank up all the settings in VR, but that is not reasonable expectation. Even though I have beefy system. Currently I find the VR perf acceptable. I hope that VR perf will improve, but I am not expecting 50% improvement (sorry, not going to happen). If I get occasional 5% improvements from various optimizations, I will be happy.

[Dunx]

ditching vr means ditching dcs for me too.

 

Same.

 

A certain space sim (ish) has a shaky VR future, and three less customers.

 

Here's hope that ED keeps VR alive.

[Eaglewings]

I'm currently running 4.5.6.4978 altough at a tweaked medium setting. I cannot download the latest Beta though. Why?, updater freezes while performing the update downloads. Posted this issue almost a week ago and still no response for a fix.

 

---

 

I am equally stuck with openbeta version 2.5.6.4978 for the same reason. Updater freezes and it just the same cycle if I start it all over again. I read ED has switched their server to CDN. I have no idea what cdn mean but it has made things worse for me.

I use Skatezilla dcs utility software and when you check dcs update servers status there, only three of the twelve update server are online. The other servers have been offline. Bignewy commented ED was tweaking the new server system but obviously nothing good has come out as I still cannot update openbeta to the latest version. I

 

Most people complaining of fps issues in current openbeta are related to flying dcs in vr. There is a lot of gain to upgrade your system which is my plan too.

DCS is very playable with an average or even entry level system when you play on a 2d mode with low to medium graphic settings. The big challenge is in VR mode. Dcs in vr seems to have deteriorated since 2.5.6.

My assumption is that not much focus is given to vr improvements now as ED is busy introducing some core elements like lighting and other features for individual modules. I am hoping efforts to optimize dcs for vr will following soon as dcs without VR for me would be a difficult pill to swallow. Trackir would not cut it for me from how addicted I become to vr

Edited June 14, 2020 by Eaglewings

[schurem]

The overwhelming majority of DCS players want.

 

Speak for yourself mate.

 

Game runs fine on my box, happy with the progress I'm seeing.

[vracan]

Speak for yourself mate.

 

Game runs fine on my box, happy with the progress I'm seeing.

 

really? in VR? where's all the rest of the happy customers?

what fps you get typically(with no asw timewarp)?

no stutters? no aircraft double-images when they fly past you?

 

I have much better pc than you so hard to believe

[Knock-Knock]

Im seeing a up to 20% performance drop in 2.5.6.50979 OB compared to current Stable. Im saying up to, cause it depends on the mission. Seems the more units, the higher the % in drop will be compared to stable. Might even go higher than 20% with even more units?

 

This is using the same options files, and with fox and metashaders deleted first, and both monitor and VR tested (VR harder to get precise reading).

[robgraham]

So I bit the bullet on TGW's server and rolled us all back to stable and we all instantly noticed almost a 20 - 40% increase in performance on our machines measurable in both Monitor and VR, but not only that there is a significant increase in the server side reported FPS if your using something like Tacview to monitor said performance.

 

Here's just some things we noticed performance wise over the last 4 weeks or so... Prior to the SC dropping we saw server frames of about 70-90fps base line dropping over time down to about 60fps with a lower limit of 40 on our 'heaviest' mission at the time. (Red Iberia). When what is now 'stable' dropped that jumped with 119/120 being the 'baseline' fps and the lowest being 70fps. At the same time on my own machine I was seeing 40-100fps prior to stables release but often with extremely large frame time 'spikes' on monitor and well VR wasn't useable half the time as bowwave would crash out. With SC release frame rates went back to 60 - 120fps monitor and 30 - 60 fps on VR. There is still almost a 'stutter' in frame times every 12-20 seconds but it's not a 'major' stutter..

 

The releases in open beta after SC however saw all that drop rapidly again, I don't know if it's the radar, if something is messy with AI or what but something is defiantly causing a perf hit that impacts the GPU cycles on machines running GPU but also the reported 'frame rate' on servers.. as at times our server frame rate was falling to as low as 24fps and we were actually forced to stop running 1 mission all together due to the performance hit. Worse the frame times are not anywhere near smooth which makes drops in frames even more noticable.

 

Wednesday we rolled back to Stable .. and with out any changes to the missions we are running instantly we are back at the 100+ fps rates on the server and the smoother frame rates in clients.

 

If I was a gambling man I'd almost place bets on it being

A. The Radar code changes.

B. The lighting code changes.

C. fixes to AI Routing.

 

I'd lean more towards A and C given that C has had this type of impact before in the OB release 2 prior to the Super Carrier and with A we've no idea what is actually being done server side etc if anything or client side to drive all that.. Though we saw all 3 items drop at once so it's hard to work out what caused the impact.

 

Just my 2$ to the discussion.

Edited June 18, 2020 by robgraham