Wll the good thing is that DCS and other games like you said SkateZila only show allocated and that is not the same as actual usage which I guess is a good thing it would also explain that guy with the 3090 had his vRam @23.8gb’s…
It is only showing what is allocated and not in use… So if most programs show only allocated is there any program or way to find actual use of Vram or no go!!..
Thnx.
Windows 10+:
Right click taskbar, Task Manager, Performance, scroll down, highlight GPU, it will show usage, shared usage, encode/decode, copy function etc.
For example, Menu uses 0.7 / 3.0GB, Loading a huge Mission in Mission Editor uses 2.5/3.0, Launching Mission uses the 3.0, and about .2 GB of the Shared Pool. After the mission fully loads, the Shared Pool drops back down to 0.0
Keep in mind, the mission editor does load about 75% of the Texture Assets for said missions, specifically the terrain.
Numbers are about the same on my RTX 6GB Laptop, for menu mission and launch, except I max out the 6 GB of VRAM (around 5.8 GB, as I Run MSAA on the RTX, the 3GB 7970 I dont run MSAA), and there’s none set to share
For example, I get away with only 3GB for the time being, by allowing the system to allocate part of my 64GB of System RAM to the GPU Only, with a direct PCIe x16 bus link between GPU and RAM it’s significantly quicker than HDD → VRAM.
No, direct storage means loading assets from disk to vram, not from ram to vram.
OK I see that now never noticed the GPU Performance spot… I see there is 16gb of RAM for shared vram, is there a way to set that or is it set automatically?
You cant turn it off, it’s been part of windows since Windows 7, MS just never made it apparent.
if unused your Processor uses it, its basically just a Overflow.
I believe it’s auto 50% of the system ram, as when I release the ram drive and boot w/ all 64GB available, I have 32 GB shared I have to double check, I know it’s dynamic, but not sure the formula.
The only time I’ve ever used more than .5 GB of the shared was when I was Exporting Renders.
No, I did not want to turn it off just set a lower amount of Ram it used 
it does look to be 50% useage… I was only using .1 in DCS loaded with a instant action mission… I will see if I can find out which options are RAM, CPU, GPU Based effects in DCS Options…
I will then experiment with different settings, and since I traded resolution for the other options I can get it pretty decent even with my 1070GTX… I did have a 1080gtx but sold it for some dumb reason lol and all I could afford was a 1070GTX…
looking forward to some price drops and the 4xxx series official announcement…
I just checked the DCS Options if you hold the cursor over the effect it gives a toolpopup that says what the hit is and either CPU or GPU…
I will experiment with it later but for now I guess we beat this horse to death LOL!! Good info and thank you all for the help… lets see what trouble I can get into now…
I see your pancake res is FHD, but G2 pushes higher res. do you downscale in G2 or you are on native? because higher res can definitely cause a problem with older cards.
other thing is that stutter can be caused by CPU battlenecking. I have it on Marianas map, no matter how I fiddle with graphics settings I have stutters. and I think the culprit is the objects on the map and AI.
btw very handy are apps which shows frame times for both CPU and GPU so you can see which one is bottlenecking. like you will maybe notice that CPU is in that particular situation bottleneck and that VRAM size or usage isnt a factor.
as I cant recall correctly, dont know if default FPS counter in DCS shows both frame times. maybe it does (MSFS and XP default fps counters shows these values plus MSFS shows which is slower so bottlenecking).
In the G2 I managed to get 60% res which is about 2400x2400 in the G2. I just was in Syria on a MP server and getting like 35-40fps.
I used to use fpsVR to get my frametimes I guess I need to find another Program as I am now using OpenXR and fpsVR only worked with Steam…
the Frametime counter in DCS is a bit broke I think as it never matched what was showing in fpsVR Frametimes…
I will see what I can dig up for a CPU and GPU Frametime counter for VR…
Edit: Duh there is a counter in openxr. I get about 12-14ms in cpu and 20ms in the gpu. so I guess I am more GPU Bound even at 20% REs it does not get much better but looks worse… I will have to do some more tuning…
I turned up the rez to 50% and lowered some settings seem this is as good as I am going to get with a 1070gtx and I am not complaining hehe!!
Hey, kinda gonna switch gears here and talk about System RAM. I was on a MP Mission in Syria it had about 25 real players in it and was a very populated board enemy wise.
Now, I went into task manager and was using about 30.8 GB’s ram. now I am pretty sure it will not be like vRam and only show the cache of what it was using or does it?
If it was using all avaialble ram what happens when my RAM gets overused so say the mission was needing to get 35gb of ram would that dip into the pagefile at that point and it would probally induce major stutters.
Not too sure if any other mission I played so far needed that much Ram but I was looking at 64GB of ram and the cheapest I seen was about 250USD.
I just can not justify spending that much when that money could go towards a new video card and yes I know most of you will say just buy both well fact of the matter I have very shallow Pockets hehe!!
I have started a fund of sorts towards my future upgrade and am trying to save a bit before I have to buy which will probally be in another year or 2… Hopefully I will save enough for a decent video card and maybe an 64gb ram upgrade mid life…
I have 64 GB now, planning to upgrade to 128GB, but DDR4 Prices are still waaaay too high (500-700 for a 128GB DDR4 Kit)
wow what you gonna do with 128gb ram?
Let DCS eat it all 
RAM Drive as a Scratch Drive for Faster rendering etc
How do you show the counter!?
about ram usage there was rambling on dcs forum that both cliff house and steam house eat 1gb vram each!
there was a workaround allowing to disable both!
(i had dcs crashing with high textures while disabling them made my game stable at high textures - plain 10gb 3080 here)
now on open composite i still have to find a way to launch dcs without passing trough cliff house…
also there was a mod to disable loading the mig29 in dcs hangar. that should save more vram…
You need to get OpenXR Tools for windows mixedd reality if you use OpenXR instead of SteamVR.
I seen those threads on the hangar mod I will have to check them out again…
here’s a statistic,
Everyone I’ve urged to goto OpenXR, has never had any of the crashing problems they had with SteamVR
100% N C R (No Crash Rate)
yes i’m there
but i’m still passing trough wmr cliff house
was looking at this to start wmr into the void… instead of the cliff house…
https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsMR/comments/803sg7/a_way_to_kill_the_cliff_house/
I simply pasted the DLL for OpenXR into Program Files\DCS\bin and then launch through Skatezilla’s updater utility with the “VR on” button. No Cliff house involved
Yes it sounds like you do not have the OpenXR dll’s required in the DCS Bin folder… Only Mixed Reality Portal should open I do not think there is a clifhouse here.