DCS World 2.X Thoughts & Impressions

All I care about is speed. If it’s faster to type, I type. If it’s faster to click, I click.

PS: Alt-F4 forever!

Is this the command people are looking for?

DCS_Updater.exe update 2.1.0.5677.215@openalpha

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I think the module manager bits for this are what people need:

dcs_updater.exe install NORMANDY_terrain

dcs_updater.exe install WWII-ARMOUR

Also be sure to keep the capitalization in those commands as @fearlessfrog has it.

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Not too happy so far. After more than 5 hours of downloading, the game keeps locking up when loading a mission or the mission editor. Time to go to bed for now.

I am on 73% complete for 2.1 after 13 hours. Then I have to get Normandy. Sigh

Installing the latest Nvidia drivers has solved my problem of not being able to open the mission editor. So I have been able to do my first flights. Unfortunately my initial impression is not so good. Loading times are long and the game crashes frequently when starting or ending a mission. Performance in VR is bad, even with all the goodies turned off. Even flying on the empty map, the performance is just barely above making-me-sick level. And quite frankly, with the settings turned down, the Normandy map doesn’t look very good either in VR. Its a far cry from all those nice screenshots.

I have been looking forward to this map a lot, so the disappointment right now is pretty big.

So I finally got to test 2.1 an Normandy!
The lighting is of course really impressing! But I turned it off to save FPS as the prop disc in the Spitfire turned to ASW jello in VR.

The wish for a 1080TI has never been stronger. My birthday is coming up in July, so now you know… :wink:

The small part of Normandy I have seen so far is really impressive! So happy to see the promise of a WWII battleground map being realised! I supported the DCS WWII Kickstarter, and ED sure came through!
I pledged $120 and have, so far, got a Spitfire, Messerschmitt, Fw-190D and a Map. And I still have two aircraft to go.

Also, did the Spitfire get updated ground handling in 2.1? Can’t remember reading anything about it? It seems a bit more stable now… Or maybe I’m just that good. :blush:

MBot, I’m not any worse than Vegas prior to 2.1. What are your system specs and are you using the VR preset?

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GTX 1080, i5-4670, 16 GB RAM, Win 7.

I haven’t tried Nevada in 2.1 yet as a comparison, but with these settings I have been able to play NTTR campaigns with several hundreds user objects in VR. Now in Normandy it is barely enough for a free flight and frankly it looks like crap.

FWIW, the only difference in our rigs is the CPU. I’m running an i7 4790 (Win 10). Mine does feel like it’s in the minimum acceptable fps with the VR preset and AWS enabled.

Does anyone else notice extreme differences in FPS with different planes? I’ve been flying the spitfire all morning and that works fantastic. But the Viggen is pretty much unplayable.

Ive noticed several planes are unplayable mainly due to weird cockpit lighting effects. FPS is down probably about 20 fps across the board for me.

That’s likely. So far, the Eagle, Mustang, and Albatros seem fine.

Ok, Deferred Shading does not like MSAA!
With MSAA turned off, I can use Deferred Shading, and it looks good…! :sunglasses:

In VR Deferred Shading seems to have very little performance impact for me (1070), but can be really white bright :sunglasses: unless beginning/end of day, and causes a subtle microstuttering on the ground objects (at least on NTTR). I’m still playing around for what works for me, doing circles of 8 over Nellis in a Huey. :slight_smile:

EDIT: One thought on Deferred Shading brightness, is that it is actually pretty bright in Vegas during the summer, even at about 4pm. One difference between us and reality is that if I was flying I would be wearing sunglasses, while in VR we don’t have that option. A fun option would be a ‘pair of shades’ sunglasses option (sort of like the in-game NVG option, but just for regular sunglasses), as that would actually make it more realistic. :dark_sunglasses:

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One other interesting thing found while tweaking is that I don’t think the Graphics slide ‘Trees’ does anything on NTTR anymore, as in I can put it up to 0 or Max but I still get the same tree objects. I think that might be my stuttering candidate. I can maintain a pretty solid ASW 45 FPS, so it’s playable but every so often a frame ‘drags’ and causes a slight glitch/stutter.

EDIT: Maybe the NTTR fixed trees are just map objects and I’m getting confused on the ‘forest’ bits that just go on the hills.

Here is an interesting observation I made. With Deferred Shading off and MSAA 4 I get 55 fps on the runway at Nellis (in VR). Turning Deferred Shading on cuts the fps to 30. Reducing MSAA to 2 improves the fps to 45 and turning MSAA off improves fps to 75. So with MSAA off, turning deferred shading on actually brings a pretty good performance boost.

Without MSAA the image quality suffers badly though and some of the cockpits do not look well with Deferred Shading. The F-5E cockpit for example has lighting problems with various of its material. Still, until MSAA is fixed (I assume its bad performance must be a bug), the option Deferred Shading On and MSAA 0 seems like a good option to get playable fps.

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Does it help if you set MSAA and AF to off in DCS, but then force it in the driver?

For me that seems to help with running Deferred Shading, at least on NTTR.

That does seem to be the official advice coming from ED now.

If using Deferred Shading, you may wish to set your MSAA and Anisotropic values to zero, and instead enable these only through your graphics cards settings manager.

I also heard this might help with graphics and FPS in general.

be aware to delete you old DCS 2 saved folders " shaders" and so on, to not keep old config files or old shaders.