DCS Dynamic Weather Performance

So turns out Dynamic weather has its issues as well. I get super annoying flickering when flying below heavy cloud cover over water. Appears to be some sort of bug with shadows and/or reflections. Static weather clouds at level 8 don’t do this.

So… flickering or suttering… hmmm… tough choice! :laughing::laughing:

Just stumbled upon this, you get it too? I’ve been using dynamic weather for most of my missions and noticed irritating water flicker in both the MiG-21 and Hornet when flying flying under broken/dense clouds. The flicker doesn’t happen in external views.

Yes, I made a video of it and posted on the ED forums but as usual issues like this get ignored by the devs. They don’t even acknowledge it which is frustrating. It’s definitely a bug and only happens with dynamic weather clouds. It happens under certain light conditions and appears to be related to reflections between cloud and water.

Here’s the video…

https://youtu.be/Xgye29k3IFU

Actually I saw that with static clouds…I only noticed it in the PG map - thought it was just humidity

Make sure you watch the video on youtube and not just from the forum. The flickering isn’t noticeable if the video is played below 720p resolution.There is mist in the video since its raining but the water itself is flashing/flickering.

Something else I just noticed about this… I tried watching the video on my laptop and I couldn’t see the flickering. This leads be to believe that the way the game is rendering reflections is triggering this response on my monitor.

I run DCS on a 32-inch LG-32GK850G 1440p 144hz G-Sync monitor. I’ve tried gsync off, lower resolutions, etc. but the issue persists.

Can confirm this issues.
Easy way to see it:

  1. Dynamic Weather w/clouds and rain present
  2. Set a carrier
  3. Place a playable Hornet on deck
  4. Load into plane, cockpit view, taxi to point nose to edge of the deck.
  5. Adjust camera to look down to the water.
  6. Flickering.

At first I thought it was related to the rain but its not. There’s videos from others on the DCS forums showing water flickering with scattered dynamic clouds and no rain. I think it has more to do with cloud reflections on the water.

What kind of display are you running DCS on? I’d like to find someone who doesn’t see this issue and find out what kind of monitor they are using. Maybe we can pin it down to a certain type/resolution of display.

**EDIT - nevermind, I just watched someone else’s flickering video on my laptop and it’s easily visible. It probably has something to do with the way I recorded the video in FRAPS that it doesn’t show up.

I haven’t tried yet, but what water setting are you using?

I noticed flickering on high, but I am wondering if that’s related to the extra reflectivity that comes with high vs. medium.

I think the issue is related to lighting in general, the same kind of odd screen flicker you can get when at 40,000ft+ or on the surface of the water when looking into the sun. It’s exacerbated by dynamic weather due to the way they cast shadows I believe.

I’m running water on high. When I was fooling with this issue before I found it happens on low and medium also, just not as badly. I think looking at where the sun reflects on the water is what triggers it?

I did watch it full screen YouTube…didn’t see it…like you said, it might have something to with the monitor.

Try this one.

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Now I see it…weird.

What values did you adjust to change the fade in and fade out of the cirrus clouds?

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My computer is in storage right now because I’m moving so I can’t tell you exactly what I tweaked. The values are in the cirrus.fx file I believe. I used some custom cloud textures and had success in changing the altitude for a nice result. I posted some screen shots of it a while back.