horizon draw distance 40km ground haze / fog stuttering

[AFsparrow1968]

hello pilots,

 

i love this flight sim but as many people, I have some stuttering even if my overall fps are never below 60 on big maps like kuban. i tried all tips from community but nothing really work. the only settings which really reduce stuttering for me is to reduce horizon draw distance to 40km. problem with this setting is the ground looks very "hazy" in comparison with setting over 130km which is indeed really better without this strange fog.

does somebody know how to have the same ground aspect in 40km setting as it is on 150km?

may be something to change in "startup.cfg" or in options? 

may be my stuttering are due to offset between my very powerful GPUs (1080ti) and my old other components (Intel i7950 3,2 ghz, 12 GB ram 1600, motherboard x58, 500 GB evo 850 ssd.)

moreover I have a g940 ffb joystick which does not help with stuttering issues. 

I also noticed that stuttering is far less on small maps like "lapino" qmb mission (16 aircraft, ground units, clouds, )where I can set every options on maximum including horizon  draw distance on 150km. may be it need less RAM and less ssd page file access.

 

 

thank in advance for your help

Edited December 8, 2018 by AFsparrow1968
add pictures

[=RvE=Windmills]

Pretty sure it's just your CPU which is ancient, nothing is going to change that.

 

Any particular reason why you have such a powerful expensive GPU but with that CPU? You are incredibly bottlenecked by that and you're not even getting a fraction out of your GPUs capability due to that CPU.

[216th_Jordan]

Wow you have created one heck of a bottleneck there. Your CPU is essentialy limiting all other components. Having a 1080ti is useless in this case, you could have taken a gtx770 with similar results.

 

Upgrade your CPU and enjoy.

 

Edit: Btw: Turned FFB / noise filter off? This seems to help for your case of FFB, don't know if you tried.

Edited December 8, 2018 by 216th_Jordan

[AFsparrow1968]

Thanks for your advices,

 

This GPU was a gift for my 50 years old birthdays.

Now it is true that I seriously need to invest on remaining old components. I wait after Christmas, may be a 8700K with a good motherboard and 16 GB of RAM will not be too expensive..

 

So there is no ways or tips to remove this fog when horizon draw distance is 40 KM ?

[R6ckStar]

Here is the thing

 

I'm running a 1070 and a i7 940 its oced to 3.2 ghz with 16 gb of ram at 1600 MHz, and I get rock solid 60 fps on ultra with 4 msaa and 4 SS, unless im on the ground, on every map. (and I don't get much stuttering) 

 

I don't understand why you are getting so much suttering

 

 

Edited December 8, 2018 by R6ckStar
typo

[AFsparrow1968]

Hello R6ckStar,

 

Me too I do not understand. As Mentionned in my previous post, I tried all optimisation and settings proposed by experts of this passionated Community (Storebor, Geronimo, Lemon...etc).

Stuttering is also due to FFB joysticks which not behave very good in IL2. But devs introduced a trick in "startup.cfg" in last patch 3.008 and I will give a try.

 

Thanks for all your advices.

[AtomicP]

I recommend monitoring your CPU and RAM usage with something like HWiNFO or MSI Afterburner. The former allows you to monitor and log various parameters of your system, which you can then plot in Excel or similar (e.g. CPU use over time). If you start logging before you open IL-2 and then keep it going for maybe 5 minutes or so in-game you should get a good idea of what component is holding you back. If you get 100% CPU or close to it when flying then you are limited by the CPU. Your GPU in this case is more than sufficient so it's likely not able to dish out enough frames because the CPU can't send them across fast enough. Ideally you want to fully utilise your GPU but not overtax your CPU. 

 

Send me a PM if you would like any help with this.

[216th_Jordan]

39 minutes ago, AFsparrow1968 said:

Thanks for your advices,

 

This GPU was a gift for my 50 years old birthdays.

Now it is true that I seriously need to invest on remaining old components. I wait after Christmas, may be a 8700K with a good motherboard and 16 GB of RAM will not be too expensive..

 

So there is no ways or tips to remove this fog when horizon draw distance is 40 KM ?

 

There is none, that is just the way the game engine renders. One thing you could do is lower ingame gamma and see if yozu can adjust your monitor contrast to have a satisfiying experience.

 

Apart from that, stuttering is usually a personal experience, some people will see none, while others are very sensitive for it (I am).

I've had severe stuttering and only got rid of it after overclocking my RAM. What works fine on one system might not work fine on another, even if specs are close.

 

What you can try is turning off 'Threaded Optimization' in the Nvidia game profile and see if that helps for stuttering. (It did in my case)

[R6ckStar]

1 minute ago, 216th_Jordan said:

 

There is none, that is just the way the game engine renders. One thing you could do is lower ingame gamma and see if yozu can adjust your monitor contrast to have a satisfiying experience.

 

Apart from that, stuttering is usually a personal experience, some people will see none, while others are very sensitive for it (I am).

I've had severe stuttering and only got rid of it after overclocking my RAM. What works fine on one system might not work fine on another, even if specs are close.

 

What you can try is turning off 'Threaded Optimization' in the Nvidia game profile and see if that helps for stuttering. (It did in my case)

While he is at he should also disable Hyper threading  in the Bios.

[ShamrockOneFive]

1 hour ago, AFsparrow1968 said:

Thanks for your advices,

 

This GPU was a gift for my 50 years old birthdays.

Now it is true that I seriously need to invest on remaining old components. I wait after Christmas, may be a 8700K with a good motherboard and 16 GB of RAM will not be too expensive..

 

So there is no ways or tips to remove this fog when horizon draw distance is 40 KM ?

 

The fogging is a result of reducing the draw distance to 40 KM. You can't remove it because its covering for the reduced distance. Until patch 3.001 came out in March, this was how IL-2: BoS looked for everyone. The improved draw distance is beautiful but they left in the feature to help folks out.

 

As others have said, your CPU and RAM are the limiting factors here while the other components are quite strong. You can tweak some settings but I don't think you'll see much different until these components are replaced.

[AFsparrow1968]

Thanks for all your advices.

 

216th Jordan, RAM tweaking is an aspect that I did not used yet. All my RAM parameter are in auto in BIOS. I have three modes for RAM: standard, turbo ,extreme. I put mine on extreme.

All other parameters (CAS speed, Write speed ...etc) stayed in auto . I do not know many thing in RAM tweaking so I am afraid to modify all RAM settings.

 

I will also launch HWinfo to monitor computer loads and fly right now to check.

 

Thanks to all of you guys of this Community and also cheers for the Devs who make a great work by making alive all these beautiful warbirds. I work in an airline company and since I was Young, I love piston engine aircraft of this period.

 

It the fault of my father who bring me in all meeting in France, especially, le meeting de la Fertais Alais near Paris ☺️?.

[Donik]

What resolution are you playing at? You can compensate for that CPU somewhat by playing at a higher resolution.  If you play at 2560x1440 or above, you can transfer a lot of the workload from the CPU to your GPU.  Yes, you have an old CPU and should think about upgrading it soon-ish.. Newer hardware is always going to run things smoother and give you less headaches on new software. But that i7 you've got shouldn't stop you from getting at least 60fps without stutters, in my opinion.

 

Here's a Retro Review on the 2600k chip that Guru3D did back in March of this year.  I've linked specifically to a page with benchmark on it to get right to the point.

 

At a lower resolution like 1920x1080 you are using your CPU a lot more.  The differences in FPS between the old i7 2600k and a new i7 are pretty large.  But scroll down to the next benchmark shown at 1440p.  You up the resolution, transfer that work to your powerhouse GPU and suddenly it doesn't matter (so much) what CPU you are running.  Now granted you may not have a 1440p monitor to use.. But with that 1080 Ti you can set up Dynamic Super Resolution and still play in 1440p on your 1080p monitor and hopefully reap the benefits of transferring the workload to your GPU instead of your old CPU.

[216th_Jordan]

19 minutes ago, Donik said:

What resolution are you playing at? You can compensate for that CPU somewhat by playing at a higher resolution.  If you play at 2560x1440 or above, you can transfer a lot of the workload from the CPU to your GPU.  Yes, you have an old CPU and should think about upgrading it soon-ish.. Newer hardware is always going to run things smoother and give you less headaches on new software. But that i7 you've got shouldn't stop you from getting at least 60fps without stutters, in my opinion. 

  

Here's a Retro Review on the 2600k chip that Guru3D did back in March of this year.  I've linked specifically to a page with benchmark on it to get right to the point.

  

At a lower resolution like 1920x1080 you are using your CPU a lot more.  The differences in FPS between the old i7 2600k and a new i7 are pretty large.  But scroll down to the next benchmark shown at 1440p.  You up the resolution, transfer that work to your powerhouse GPU and suddenly it doesn't matter (so much) what CPU you are running.  Now granted you may not have a 1440p monitor to use.. But with that 1080 Ti you can set up Dynamic Super Resolution and still play in 1440p on your 1080p monitor and hopefully reap the benefits of transferring the workload to your GPU instead of your old CPU.

 

I'm not grasping how you would transfer workload from the CPU to the GPU, the instructions are not the same. While its true that you can up the cosmetic effects or resolution, things that require CPU performance like draw distance will still suffer equally. It seems that in your example the GPU will simply be used so strongly that it will use more resources than the CPU so the CPU has some resources left. Depending on the system that may or may not reduce stutters if the are related to CPU bottlenecks. Still a good advice to take the best from your setup by maxing out all non CPU related graphics.

Edited December 8, 2018 by 216th_Jordan

[Donik]

17 minutes ago, 216th_Jordan said:

I'm not grasping how you would transfer workload from the CPU to the GPU, the instructions are not the same. While its true that you can up the cosmetic effects or resolution, things that require CPU performance like draw distance will still suffer equally. Still a good advice to take the best from your setup by maxing out all non CPU related graphics.

 

Yeah you are correct about still needing the CPU related things on the CPU - I just tried to word things in a way that would be easy to understand for everyone of all technology levels 

My advice may work incredibly well for a "GPU Heavy" game and maybe low to moderately well for a "CPU Heavy" game.  Either way, you should see some benefit by making the changes to resolution as described above.  And when you're rocking older hardware, every little tweak certainly can help make a difference in the play-ability.

 

I quoted below a reasonable answer about Low Resolution being CPU bound from a user at Tom's Hardware:

Quote

As the resolution decreases, less strain is placed on the graphics card because there are fewer pixels to render, but the strain is then transferred to the CPU. At a lower resolution, the frames per second are limited to the CPU's speed.  CPU sets the frame up + handles all the AI/resource allocation and then passes the parameters to the GPU which then draws the frame. So the CPU does its thing, sends the frame along to the GPU.  At low resolutions the frames are drawn much much faster therefore the CPU has to do a lot more work setting up more frames.

 

Edited December 8, 2018 by Donik

[coconut]

@AFsparrow1968 If you haven't tried already, try the Low settings. I believe they use a less detailed terrain mesh, which might allow you to push your terrain rendering distance further out.

 

If the stuttering is due to variations in FPS, and the FPS is always at least 60, then you can also set the FPS limiter to 60. You would give up the higher FPS, but gain in regularity. Alternatively, you can also try to enable VSync.

Edited December 8, 2018 by coconut

[AFsparrow1968]

thanks coconuts, I will try that.

concerning my screen,it is an Asus rogue 279q sync 144hz, I already test vsync, gsync, fixed frequency but stuttering is always there. 

I really need to invest in a new CPU.

Edited December 8, 2018 by AFsparrow1968

[Ptk]

I get less stuttering when I select the ultra preset and turn things down from there. The same settings with a low/med/high selected seem to stutter more for me. I also have vsync off in game but set "fast" vsync in the nvidia control panel. I run a triple screen with a 1080ti/8700k.

 

If you aren't afraid to do a little tinkering you can edit the text in gpresets.cfg (its in the file I've attached) and load it as a mod. For example you can run the "preset 0" (which is low) landscape_mesh_quality=0 with the "preset 3" (ultra) selected. Just edit landscape_mesh_quality=1.0 to 0 under "preset 3". There are other parameters you can turn down as well. Just remember to unload/reload the mod after each edit.

gpresets.rar

Edited December 9, 2018 by Ptk

[Eric86]

I had a ton of stutters, and got rid of most of them by doing 3 things:

1. Enabled 4k textures
2. Run the game in windowed mode
3. Disabled the in game AA, and instead forced AA through my GPU control panel (this made a massive difference)

[AFsparrow1968]

Hello PTK,

 

Thanks for your file !

I will tweak it and load it as a mod.

I noticed you have a powerful CPU and GPU but you encounter stuttering also. May be game code optimisation is not perfect today and does not use the capability of latest CPU's, GPU and large ammount of fast RAM. I trust in Devs talents to improve that in upcoming patch.

 

bye

Edited December 10, 2018 by AFsparrow1968

[AFsparrow1968]

Hello Community and especially PTK,

 

Since 2 days, I have been tweaking the gpreset.rar file you provided and activate it as a mod. I qet landscape_mesh_quality=1.0 to 0 in preset 3 and effectivelly, there is far less stutter!!!

I suppose my old CPU have now less workload and can generate instructions more smoothly to GPU.

There is a lot of parameters !! Some are self explicit ….but for some other, it is difficult to expect what effect it can have on CPU / GPU, FPS, smoothness and stutter free gameplay....

 

In any case, thanks a lot for providing this file where you can act on many parameters you do not see in game options screen.??

[AFsparrow1968]

Hello PTK,

 

Is there is a way to use GPRESET you provided me not as a mod but as a modified graphic preset to join multiplayer servers without mod option activated ?

 

Thanks in advance for your help

 

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by AFsparrow1968
join multiplayer with no mod activated but gpreset

[AFsparrow1968]

Dear team and community, is it possible in the future to integrate the "NO FOG MOD" as an official option. Indeed, it allow to set draw distance to 40km for low performance systems like mine and have no haze and same quality as you can see if you set draw distance to 150km (see below picture at 40 km setting)

With this 40km setting, I have no stutter anymore  and every options on ULTRA with average 100 fps and no hickups. This mod solve all my stuttering issues which occurred since 3.001 patch.

 

 

thank for this mod and this great game 

regards

Edited February 17, 2019 by AFsparrow1968