preload radius

[Viciam1]

Hi guys, what are your thoughts and experiences with the Preload Radius option in the DCS settings? It seems to be a real resource hog. Turning it down in VR helps with frame rates. I read somewhere it doesn't effect performance as it runs of the SSD drive but it clearly has a HUGE impact for me in VR. Its a driving factor on what FPS im able to get in DCS with good crisp graphics.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Viciam1

[Steel Jaw]

Yeah good question I will watch this thread.

[DarkStar79]

hm very intresting.  I have mine at 100k  And im using a HB Reverb G2.  So you are saying that its better to have it at 0 if im playing in VR?

[pimp]

Anytime you have questions about settings/performance, it's always best to post your specs.

[bart]

17 hours ago, Viciam1 said:

Hi guys, what are your thoughts and experiences with the Preload Radius option in the DCS settings? It seems to be a real resource hog. Turning it down in VR helps with frame rates. I read somewhere it doesn't effect performance as it runs of the SSD drive but it clearly has a HUGE impact for me in VR. Its a driving factor on what FPS im able to get in DCS with good crisp graphics.

 

 

There's a really good video here DCS World 2.7 Settings Optimization Guide - YouTube by Reflected. He talks about the Pre-Load Radius setting at 15:15 into the video, as well as covering all the other settings in detail. 

 

Hope this helps.

Edited May 3, 2021 by bart

[Viciam1]

Well I had it at 80,000 in 2.5 DCS and it was working fine in VR...smooth game play in multiplayer...in 2.7 I've had to reduce it to 30,000 and only then does it run smooth...at the previous 80,000 in 2.7 was giving me crazy stuttering in VR. I will try and increase it to 40,000 and see if its playable and keep increasing it until I find a sweet spot.

[Furiz]

Don't know about VR, I use track IR.

I have my preload radius at max with 16GB of RAM and once it loads up the game is working fine, it loads pretty fast cause of the fast m.2 SSD and fast RAM sticks.

 

19 hours ago, bart said:

 

There's a really good video here DCS World 2.7 Settings Optimization Guide - YouTube by Reflected. He talks about the Pre-Load Radius setting at 15:15 into the video, as well as covering all the other settings in detail. 

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

This guy on the video talking about 32GB RAM...

RAM size doesn't matter, well it does but not that much, you can't have 4GB and expect a good game, 16GB would be optimal, what matters is speed cause the faster your RAM loads the less will the impact on your gameplay be, and your processor has to follow as well, it cant be dragging behind, cause then it will get overwhelmed and the fps will go down.

 

You can put 32GB of RAM, well go for 64GB but it wont help if its slow, or if your CPU is slow etc...

 

So for users with slow RAM, Processor or SDD/HDD I suggest you max out the preload radius, cause it will load everything at star of the mission, so it wont have to load later and slow down your game.

 

Now this is with few people on the MP server, with 30 people my RAM usage goes up to 5GB, and I don't have state of the art components they are just well set up, nothing is dragging behind.

[Mr_sukebe]

I tried 100% as I've plenty of RAM, and it just resulted in stutters.  I'm currently running stutter free at around 45%. 

Like many of the settings, seems to be a "try it and see".

[tweet]

Preload radius primarily affects your load times getting into the sim 3D and the mission editor. If you're running a fast SSD (<~65% full), a decent CPU, and have plenty of RAM you should have minimal stutters to none when the game needs to load more terrain data. I've had preload radius maxed out since DCS came into existence. I recently lowered it to 75,000 with no decrease in game performance or stutters but a significant decrease in load times, especially in MP, and fewer spawn failures loading into MP. A near full SSD can make your performance worse than a similar HDD.

Edited May 4, 2021 by tweet

[Viciam1]

Okay guys scratch all of the above. pre load doesn't help with the stuttering and fps. I thought I had it solved as VR was running fine in DCS for a bit but it went back to being a mess.

[schurem]

There's a microsoft windows update that fried performance on many systems. They offer a fix. https://download.microsoft.com/download/e/e/e/eee62513-e95c-4d8a-99f8-2c1d62f15b0b/Windows 10 (2004 & 20H2) Known Issue Rollback 042121 01.msi

[Talvid]

Edited July 8, 2021 by Iceman555

[splash]

I recently upgrade my computer and now I have got 64 Gb RAM and preload radius configured to 100%. This way I can confirm that I have less stuttering when flying.

[ACME_WIdgets]

And FYI radius area is the square of radius.  So if you double the radius, then DCS will need to load 4 times as much data.

If you set the pre load radius to 100, and fly low, you will see the trees, etc. get created in front of you. 

I would expect every different h/w system has a sweet spot for radius/visual appeal vs. air speed vs. stuttering.