Dont think I can stop playing the campaign any more!

[Wolf8312]

I just dont find it smooth enough when there are alot of units and planes around especially over big cities. I will probably try PWCG and some of the user created SP missions in future, as presently I find performance too poor for the main campaign.

 

Even on the lowest possible settings over the port in Kuban or during massive dogfights performance is degraded to an immersion breaking degree, but just a few weeks ago playing MP with countless amounts of units everything seemed to run fine. I'm really pining for how things used to be before the update to be honest as all I have done in the last week is mess about with the settings and feel frustrated.

 

So I gotta stop playing the campaign and try and see how performance is in less demanding missions. But to be honest something feels off with this game in VR now, as I have happily relied on reprojection in the past (in BOS and DCS) and my settings were on absoloute rock bottom. Maybe it's just too demanding at certain times in VR now but...

 

The thing is my frame rates are never that bad, but performance and dogfights just seem stuttery and distracting, kinda like how the zoom is now. I'm really not someone who demands constant 90 and cant live with reprojection but there seems to be something else wrong. I'm not sure if its the clouds that make things appear to be stuttering when they are not, but clouds are definately up there as one of the biggest problems. 

 

I guess I will get used to this over time and accept the limitations and avoid certain missions, but I feel like this is bound to put me off playing the campaign.

 

I havent even tried multiplayer.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Wolf8312

[Wolf8312]

Strange thing is I just played Moscow and was dropping frames over a city in a dogfight and relying on RP but it didnt feel so stuttery as it did on Kuban over that port. Dont know why that would be cause the FPS is still flittering around all over the place. The best thing would be improvement of the clouds at low graphics, because high graphics in VR is a massive performance drag, and to my eyes doesent really look that much better, its not something I really notice anyway like lack of MSSA for example.

Lol VR. If you're thinking of getting it know this, you'll probably spend more time in options menus than you will the game itself! It's still worth it though. Theres just so many damned variables!

Edited March 22, 2018 by Wolf8312

[dburne]

Kuban is certainly tough, but so far I have been able to " get by " with what I have.

I guess I am fortunate in that I do not see that much stuttering. Well unless I watch the clouds as they move by, they certainly stutter like crazy.

Have flown probably around 25 missions in the Kuban Career with the Spit.

 

I have settled on no SS,  4x AA, graphics preset on high, shadows on low. No SSAO and no HDR. No mirrors either.

I fly with ASW set to off.

Draw distance 70km. Textures on Sharpen.

 

The lowest fps I have seen so far is mid 40's, it does reach 90 fps at higher altitudes without a lot of action, during combat it will run in like 50's and 60's. 

Still at that it remains fairly smooth for me.

 

Hoping they can do some performance optimizations down the road.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2018 by dburne

[katdog5]

 The new settings add a whole new level of complexity 

 

Def try/use dynamic resolution factor. Go test in the mountains .7 , .8 

 

Edited March 23, 2018 by katdog5

[dburne]

10 hours ago, TimJ147 said:

dburne I see you said in the previous post you fly with ASW set to off. Is there a way of doing this permanently as I have it set off through Oculus tray tools and its hit and miss whether it activates on game startup. I know you can use left ctrl np1 to turn it off but its becoming a bit distracting in game trying to work out if its on or not.

 

 

I use a profile in Oculus Tray Tool  for BoS with ASW set to off.

It works for me every time I launch the game.

Not sure why it would be hit or miss with you.

 

The only time it did not apply on first launching the game, was when I forgot to start OTT before Oculus Home launched. I exited the game and then launched it again, then it applied properly.

 

 

 

 

 

[dburne]

1 hour ago, TimJ147 said:

Do you set up that profile on tray tools on the il2.exe file or on the launcher file please?

 

Mine is set up on IL-2.exe.

I do not use the launcher to start the game though, have a shortcut to IL-2.exe on my desktop.

I only use the launcher for grabbing an update. Otherwise I never use it.

[ironk79]

tried Kuban map in multiplayer just to see how it perfoms. sadly its to much for my system, i stick with with the refurbished stalingrad map and mostly pwcg mission. (old version) - the missions of newer version are to demanding for my system.

i dont plan on upgrading in the near future, even if i would, a top notch gaming system still has its limitations with this demanding sim, which is a bit frustrating to be honest, so for me its not worth spending the money.

[Wolf8312]

I'm playing mid autumn campaign and seriously loving it. That has alot of missions that have great atmosphere. The best mission I flew so far was a night mission in bad weather and poor visibility 

 

I wish I could find more like the MAC. I will buy the other one but there are only 2 sadly. I didnt know PWCG has also updated to make his own missions more demanding. Damn! Which version has been updated? Will old user created single player missions now have problems on the updated version or can I play them with no problems.

 

I dont see why the missions have to be more demanding to be honest as it is not like the game engine has suddenly become more capabul or switched to multi-core. I dont think in order to make missions more challenging you need tons of bombers and fighters everywhere, but I guess at the end of the day VR is an after thought and that is exactly what many people do want.

 

Yeah you might be best waiting. I updated my rig for the old BOS which it played almost flawlessly so I guess now I'm feeling a little spoiled. All I really want is a way to limit the number of assets, and be able to turn down graphics without making the clouds look like vomit.

 

If I'd still been on my old rig I'd be very upset now as I think the update would have basically broken the game for me, which I wasnt made aware of was going to happen when I first bought BOM/BOK specifically for VR.

 

I think in order to consider people who were playing the old campaign happilly or people who were playing either in VR, or on lower end systems, they should either have made sure specs remained about the same as they were, or at least not just arbitarilly deleted the old campaign which some people were in the middle of playing!

 

Still hopefully it can be improved and optimized, and Im reasonably confident it can be...

 

Best hope for near future VR is not really better PC's but better VR technology I think. By that time our ageing PC's may suddenly become beasts again!

 

I dont want to sound spoilt or like I'm complaining along with DCS this is hands down the best gaming experience one can have, and the update/Kuban is wonderful!

 

Just played over the Kuban port and it was fine to be honest! Maybe it was poor due to using interleaved reprojection but the variables are numerous!

Edited March 24, 2018 by Wolf8312

[Milopapa]

I've already proposed a setting for the Career mode in the official suggestions thread: let us choose unit numbers (low-medium-high) to be able to match our hardware.

 

Sounds great to have flights of 8 planes zipping around but when this kills my VR fps, not so great.

[ironk79]

if it were just the planes it would be fine, but i have the feeling that ground units draw that much comuting power even just by sitting there, thats a no no for me and something i can not understand (i can understand why, with the level of detail an calculated physics), this is still a flight sim, ground units shouldnt be much more than upgraded cannon fodder, at least until the mayority of players can backup the cpu hunger with much more potent hw.

maybe the devs could turn it down a bit on this side.

Edited March 24, 2018 by ironk79

[Wolf8312]

58 minutes ago, ironk79 said:

if it were just the planes it would be fine, but i have the feeling that ground units draw that much comuting power even just by sitting there, thats a no no for me and something i can not understand (i can understand why, with the level of detail an calculated physics), this is still a flight sim, ground units shouldnt be much more than upgraded cannon fodder, at least until the mayority of players can backup the cpu hunger with much more potent hw.

maybe the devs could turn it down a bit on this side.

 

Yeah it doesent need so much going on to make it an enjoyable experience for me.

 

Maybe its because they want to make things more difficult, but the AI is not so easy to improve, and I know many people want to play massive battles and thats understandable, it is so cool flying with all thsoe bombers. It really is just a case of giving us more options. It's definately something DCS has on BOS, the ability to change almost anything. Its great for VR because of that. 

 

Interesting thing is my zoom and performance seems to be working better today, and the planes/clouds dont seem to be flickering so much anymore. Of course now I've said this, it wont be true when I  next load the game up but still!  

[HunDread]

There is a setting in Career mode that looked like sets the action density. Does not it help? I haven't tested myself just have seen it's there.

[1foggy]

Wolf, just out of curiosity, what are your PC specs?   I'm on an older i7 920 overclocked at 4.1 GHz with the ram running at 1600MHz and a GTX 1080 SC Hybrid and even with that vid card I'm running around 30fps on the ground and between 35-40 in the air.  I'm pretty sure that my issue is the lower memory bandwidth and CPU (compared to the latest/greatest processors).   Was just curious what you're running.

[Wolf8312]

My specs are in my sig buddy. To be honest lately I've been haivng much better performance and can't really complain about anything though I have to give thanks to coconut as using his mod I have been able to lower graphic settings from high, to balanced which makes a big diffrence. VR doesent need high graphics on and it affects performance significantly. That was the main problem really for me being forced to play on high because the clouds were so terrible, which in turn tanked performance during big dogfights.

 

I was also running without XMP enabled in my Bios something I forgot I had disabled. My framerates are often at 90FPS now unless things get really hectic but turning the graphics off high makes a huge difference.

 

Theres still a few little niggles like the zoom function and the map tends to flicker strangely sometimes but on the whole I am now very happy with performance. In game I also run an overclock to 5ghz, but I also get pretty nice experience at stock to be honest. Over clocked to 4.1 should be fine to be honest but like you say it might be your RAM I noticed a nice boost with XMP.

 

 

 

[SYN_Mike77]

In career options there is a setting for density.  This controls the density of ground objects which do, in fact, suck a lot of computing power.  

[dburne]

5 minutes ago, SYN_Mike77 said:

In career options there is a setting for density.  This controls the density of ground objects which do, in fact, suck a lot of computing power.  

 

Maybe I am imagining things, but it appears to affect air density some as well (enemy ai).

[Tomsk]

On 22/03/2018 at 6:03 PM, Wolf8312 said:

I just dont find it smooth enough when there are alot of units and planes around especially over big cities. I will probably try PWCG and some of the user created SP missions in future, as presently I find performance too poor for the main campaign.

 

Same boat as the OP: performance too bad to really play at the moment. Definitely feels like it’s got worse.

 

Honestly quite disappointed with the career mode. Too slow to play, the AI is still terrible, the missions are very predictable and I’d like to do something other than ground attack in the 190 A5. IMO PWCG is better, more options and less predictable. Playing other things until it all improves.

[Wolf8312]

5 hours ago, Tomsk said:

 

Same boat as the OP: performance too bad to really play at the moment. Definitely feels like it’s got worse.

 

Honestly quite disappointed with the career mode. Too slow to play, the AI is still terrible, the missions are very predictable and I’d like to do something other than ground attack in the 190 A5. IMO PWCG is better, more options and less predictable. Playing other things until it all improves.

 

Well I changed the title of this thread now as things are going well and I honestly cant complain about performance any more. What are your specs bud? And what settings are you using? Are you having problems on every map?

 

And have you tried the mod I linked above? That should help you immensely as it certainly changed everything back to normal for me. I also overclocked my RAM and put it on XMP mode in the bios. Speaking frankly though I do understand your frustration, I can imagine had I been on my old machine this update I wouldn't be very happy.

 

As for the career, I didn't take to it much at first either, but to be honest the more I play it, the more I love it! It just feels so damned immersive and is just so much better than it used to be. The single most best decision they made was to give us iron man mode as it makes things so much more exciting. I am flying on easy and don't tend to get very far, but it gets more tense with each mission!

I think people like me who are not that experienced (or very good at flight si

m's) tend to enjoy themselves more because not only do I find the game challenging, but I never really notice the AI doing stupid things, and even if he does I can hardly blame him, as I do stupid things too!

When people say the AI is dumb I often wonder if they mean that it is too easy to beat in a dogfight, or that it is moronic as a team player or both? Like I say I don't really notice it, though I do get enough kills to know he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but hey I am a German pilot on the Russian front 1941 at the height of my confidence and arrogance!

Most of my team members seem to get back with me in one piece, and to be honest I play like a narcissistic psychopath giving no heed to the comings,and going of my many squad-mates! Don't form attachments in wartime son, it will only break your heart! I honestly cant say either if the various accidents I see happening sometimes are not actually quite realistic. Many of the men I fly with are seriously sleep deprived!

I will say however it does seem quite easy to lose my team mates sometimes they do seem to fly too quickly on some missions!

But I gotta say I wouldn't swap this campaign for the old one or PWCG. Long missions are great fun only if you navigate in my opinion as it gives you something to do while flying, and is a very rewarding challenge in itself.

On the Russian front generally most of the missions, were in reality the very kind of missions we are flying- escort the bombers, or protect this and that, provide air cover etc! From what I have read, even if the missions are predictable, I don t think they are unrealistic. 

Anyway I am sure there will be improvements to come both for AI and performance.

 

 

 

 

[Tomsk]

1 hour ago, Wolf8312 said:

What are your specs bud? And what settings are you using? Are you having problems on every map?

 

GTX 1080, Core i5 6600K (thought it was an i7 but apparently not) and I'm running absolute minimum settings for everything. I can hold 45 fps (just about), most of the time. But as soon as I go near bombers, or ground units, or towns the framerate plummets into the 20s which isn't too playable in VR. Had problems both on Kuban, and on Stalingrad autumn.

 

Quote

When people say the AI is dumb I often wonder if they mean that it is too easy to beat in a dogfight, or that it is moronic as a team player or both? 

 

It's silly things like the AI will follow you half-way round the map, deep into your friendly territory, even though they can't catch you. And the AI will totally ignore being shot up from behind if it's got someone that it's latched on to. The AI also can't shoot so you get these giant conga lines of planes circling desperately trying to hit the plane in front, and totally ignoring the fact someone is shooting at them. And the AI wingmen will often all pile onto the same target, even though there are lots of different targets they could choose. I once defeated 8 yaks with myself and a single wingman; all the yaks tried to target my wingman and about half of them crashed into the others. The remainder then chased him and ignored me, so I just casually shot the rest down from behind while he avoided. It was quite silly. I don't mind that the AI isn't a great dogfighting opponent, I don't expect that. However, it would be nice for them to do less ridiculous things.

 

Quote

But I gotta say I wouldn't swap this campaign for the old one or PWCG. Long missions are great fun only if you navigate in my opinion as it gives you something to do while flying, and is a very rewarding challenge in itself.

 

I prefer the PWCG campaigns because they felt less scripted. In the career if you get assigned jabo mission it's always the same: you fly out to the target, you get a few minutes to drop your bombs, then the enemy re-enforcements arrive, then you fight them or leave. If you are tasked with covering a ground area, you fly over, circle a few minutes, and then maybe some Pe-2s will turn up. Whereas in PWCG you might do the same bombing mission and you are intercepted on the way to the target and have to dump bombs, or you do your bombing but spot some IL-2s on the way back and shoot them down. Or doing the ground escort mission maybe you get bounced before you get there. Or maybe it's not Pe-2s, it's a just patrol of P-40s. Maybe you get intercepted from high altitude, maybe you end up sucked into a huge swirling furball as multiple different flights collide. There's much more variety and it's much less predictable. It feels like in the current career it's basically playing out a pre-scripted scenario. Whereas in PWCG it schedules lots of different flights, each is assigned there own mission, and you might bump into them, or you might not.

 

There's also the annoying fact that if you want to fly the 190 A5 in the current career you'll only ever get bombing assignments. Which I realise is realistic for the Kuban theatre, but I like doing air-to-air work in the 190 and there's just no opportunity to do it. PWCG let's you do what you'd like.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Tomsk

[Wolf8312]

Yeah I know what you mean about the lack of surprises going to and coming from the action point. Though I have been suprised at my own airport by enemy attack planes. It shouldnt allow one to finish the mission if the danger is not erradicated though.

[ironk79]

On 2.4.2018 at 4:38 PM, Tomsk said:

 

GTX 1080, Core i5 6600K (thought it was an i7 but apparently not) and I'm running absolute minimum settings for everything. I can hold 45 fps (just about), most of the time. But as soon as I go near bombers, or ground units, or towns the framerate plummets into the 20s which isn't too playable in VR. Had problems both on Kuban, and on Stalingrad autumn.

 

 

This sounds strange my friend, i am also strugling with performance from time to time, but i run with lets say "medium" settings, no AA or SS. I get 80-90ish fps 95% the time, the lowest i observed was in the 40s for a period of maybe 5 seconds.

Considering my system is i5 4690k @4,4ghz and a gtx970 your performance is to low for your hardware. Seems to me there is something else going on with your system.

have you tried OC at some point? CPU is key to better framerates with BOX

 

P.S. forgot to mention, maybe other VR users with "not high end" systems should take a look at coconuts mod, especially if you are playing SP most of the time.

Beside dealing with the cloud shimmering problem it can be used to modify the presets to ones liking, i for examble now use "balanced" preset with tree drawing distance of "high" preset. i also dialed down tree details (now low res trees) and cloud setting down to 64 (still no shimmering, looks good enough to me). the difference in performance is def. noticeable.

Edited April 5, 2018 by ironk79

[Wolf8312]

3 hours ago, ironk79 said:

This sounds strange my friend, i am also strugling with performance from time to time, but i run with lets say "medium" settings, no AA or SS. I get 80-90ish fps 95% the time, the lowest i observed was in the 40s for a period of maybe 5 seconds.

Considering my system is i5 4690k @4,4ghz and a gtx970 your performance is to low for your hardware. Seems to me there is something else going on with your system.

have you tried OC at some point? CPU is key to better framerates with BOX

 

P.S. forgot to mention, maybe other VR users with "not high end" systems should take a look at coconuts mod, especially if you are playing SP most of the time.

Beside dealing with the cloud shimmering problem it can be used to modify the presets to ones liking, i for examble now use "balanced" preset with tree drawing distance of "high" preset. i also dialed down tree details (now low res trees) and cloud setting down to 64 (still no shimmering, looks good enough to me). the difference in performance is def. noticeable.

 

How do I change trees to low res?

 

 

[ironk79]

4 minutes ago, Wolf8312 said:

 

How do I change trees to low res?

 

 

forest_quality=1

every value below 1 sets to low res, didnt see a difference f.e. 0,5 or 0,8. improves fps in low level flight over dense forrests, worth a try a kuban map, i only own bos at the moment.

[Wolf8312]

Thanks man every frame counts in VR! Highly recommend Kuban by the way!