Battle Of Normany Review / Experience So Far

[Iflewforthefuhre]

Like the rest of us I woke up this morning to the news that BON was finally released and playable. Excellent I thought, I have a free day ahead of me I will get into that right away. Patched the sim and loaded up a beachead patrol in Normandy and off I went. Only to discover, the game now runs like absolute garbage in VR. 

I am used to this happening now with every single patch that is released. It always breaks something and I have to spend hours fiddling with settings to try and replicate the performance I was getting pre-patch.  So I sucked it up and set about trying to figure out what my settings are now to no avail. Highest settings, lowest settings and every combination in between the game just runs like a pile of crap. 

It has the most inconsistent and perplexing performance of any application I own by an order of magnitude. Flying in a straight line looking at the horizon and I am getting 70 fps one minute. Then tanks to 40. For absolutely no apparent reason. 

So I decide I am just going to buy a new CPU right now, knowing full well that the biggest limitation of this ancient game engine is the CPU. An hour later I have a new 5800X3D - currently the fastest gaming CPU in the world to replace my already excellent 5800X. It changed absolutely nothing. In fact I think it made it worse somehow. Doesn't matter what combination of settings I use, I simply cannot get a playable experience out of this simulation in VR. In normal screen mode it works flawlessly as expected with consistently maxed out GPU usage and high frames even at 5K Ultrawide (I have a 6900XT)but in VR even if I make it look like a potato it still runs like shit. 

I am at my wits end with this game personally. It's been nothing but trouble since I bought it with every single change made to the engine requiring hours of tinkering on my end to make it playable - that is simply not an enjoyable experience. It's more like a chore. 

Before anyone says it, yes I have done every single conceivable tweak, hack, fix and trick to improve the performance of this game in VR but as I said it doesn't matter what I do or what combination of settings I run, even with one of the fastest PC's money can buy, it makes no difference. The game engine is utterly broken. And to make matters worse, it's not even a particularly good looking game with any kind of advanced rendering techniques. It's as vanilla as a game can come in 2022 but runs as though it was Crysis 4. If I could get a refund, I would. I am that disappointed by this. 

Going forward I personally won't be spending anymore money on this sim so long as it runs on this awful game engine. Sadly, that doesn't leave me with any alternatives because DCS is just as bad and costs even more for the same bad experience. This will be an unpopular opinion I am sure and for sure I will be blamed as the culprit and not 1C but whatever. So annoyed had to put it out there. 

[some1]

No offence but it's not a review of any kind, just a rant that your VR performance is bad. 

 

To me it runs better in VR than any other modern simulator (VTOL VR does not count). No idea if your issues come from hardware incompatibility, messed up settings or simply too high expectations. 

Edited September 8, 2022 by some1

[76SQN-Minimayhemtemp]

I actually thought the same as OP.  Fired up Normandy today and loaded the map.  Quick mission, free flight only.  I've got a upper-mid tier PC with 32 gb ram, 3070ti, i7, m.2 ssd and Q2 VR headset.  None of my resources peak above 56% but the frame rate is choppy. Bit pants really.

[CosmicXSolitude]

so i play in 8k on my pimax 8kx and have no frame problems whatsoever with an i9 10900kf and RTX 3090 and 64 gigs of ram. tends to sit around 70fps and in major chaos can drop to 40's but usually high 50's

[tattywelshie]

I ran this on an Q2, and noticed no difference from previous version, a steady 72fps, it dropped slightly to 65fps when I came into land, but that was it. There was some shearing where some aircraft crossed a band of cloud, but that was it really, I thought it was very impressive in VR. I've got a 3080, 32gb ram and a 5600X.

 

Graphics are all on high, besides grass quality and mirror quality. 

[Iflewforthefuhre]

12 minutes ago, some1 said:

No offence but it's not a review of any kind, just a rant that your VR performance is bad. 

 

To me it runs better in VR than any other modern simulator (VTOL VR does not count). No idea if your issues come from hardware incompatibility, messed up settings or simply too high expectations. 

No offence is taken. I can't review anything else because the performance is so utterly bad I can't play the game. It's not from hardware incompatibility, or messed up settings. I am happy to lower my expectations (hence trying to logically lower settings until a performance equilibrium is reached) but no such equilibrium exists. My hardware is performing in other tasks and applications as expected. I literally do not know what else to do to try and resolve this but I have been here dozens and dozens of times over tweaking and adjusting until it is satisfactory (never perfect, but at least playable) and then they patch it and I have to start over again. I am not the only one to experience this either as I have seen others mention it on the board. 

14 minutes ago, 76SQN-Minimayhemtemp said:

I actually thought the same as OP.  Fired up Normandy today and loaded the map.  Quick mission, free flight only.  I've got a upper-mid tier PC with 32 gb ram, 3070ti, i7, m.2 ssd and Q2 VR headset.  None of my resources peak above 56% but the frame rate is choppy. Bit pants really.

Yeah this is what I am experiencing. Under utilization of all hardware resources combined with terrible performance. My GPU usage is up and down like a Yo Yo. The only way to make it consistent is to force such high resolution that it stays at max usage but then it's getting like 20fps.......but at least it's a stable 20fps not 80fps spiking to 30 then back to 80 then right back down to 30 again. 

 

11 minutes ago, CosmicXSolitude said:

so i play in 8k on my pimax 8kx and have no frame problems whatsoever with an i9 10900kf and RTX 3090 and 64 gigs of ram. tends to sit around 70fps and in major chaos can drop to 40's but usually high 50's

Would you mind sharing your exact settings in game? I am not running a resolution anywhere near 8k. Only 1.33 pixel density in Oculus Rift S (but can super sample it to match 8k for test purposes)

Do you mind screenshotting your exact settings? "all on high" doesn't tell me what settings you have for say, SSAO or HDR or detail distance etc etc. Cheers

13 minutes ago, tattywelshie said:

I ran this on an Q2, and noticed no difference from previous version, a steady 72fps, it dropped slightly to 65fps when I came into land, but that was it. There was some shearing where some aircraft crossed a band of cloud, but that was it really, I thought it was very impressive in VR. I've got a 3080, 32gb ram and a 5600X.

 

Graphics are all on high, besides grass quality and mirror quality. 

 

Do you mind screenshotting your exact settings? "all on high" doesn't tell me what settings you have for say, SSAO or HDR or detail distance etc etc. Cheers

[tattywelshie]

7 minutes ago, Iflewforthefuhre said:

 

 

Do you mind screenshotting your exact settings? "all on high" doesn't tell me what settings you have for say, SSAO or HDR or detail distance etc etc. Cheers

For sure, I'm at work at the moment, but will share my settings when I'm home  From what I can remember I used this website https://www.gamersbynight.com/il2-vr-settings-optimization/ to get my settings and then just tweaked away.

[CosmicXSolitude]

17 minutes ago, Iflewforthefuhre said:

No offence is taken. I can't review anything else because the performance is so utterly bad I can't play the game. It's not from hardware incompatibility, or messed up settings. I am happy to lower my expectations (hence trying to logically lower settings until a performance equilibrium is reached) but no such equilibrium exists. My hardware is performing in other tasks and applications as expected. I literally do not know what else to do to try and resolve this but I have been here dozens and dozens of times over tweaking and adjusting until it is satisfactory (never perfect, but at least playable) and then they patch it and I have to start over again. I am not the only one to experience this either as I have seen others mention it on the board. 

Yeah this is what I am experiencing. Under utilization of all hardware resources combined with terrible performance. My GPU usage is up and down like a Yo Yo. The only way to make it consistent is to force such high resolution that it stays at max usage but then it's getting like 20fps.......but at least it's a stable 20fps not 80fps spiking to 30 then back to 80 then right back down to 30 again. 

 

Would you mind sharing your exact settings in game? I am not running a resolution anywhere near 8k. Only 1.33 pixel density in Oculus Rift S (but can super sample it to match 8k for test purposes)

Do you mind screenshotting your exact settings? "all on high" doesn't tell me what settings you have for say, SSAO or HDR or detail distance etc etc. Cheers

 

Do you mind screenshotting your exact settings? "all on high" doesn't tell me what settings you have for say, SSAO or HDR or detail distance etc etc. Cheers

general setting on high, screen resolution in game 1280x720, Shadows high, Mirrors off, distant landscape x4, canopy off, Horizon 100km's landscape filter off, Terrain roughness off, Grass quality off, Clouds Medium but might test high later. AA type FXAA, AA x2. Fullscreen unchecked, and use 4k Textures checked.

[some1]

The apparent GPU underutilization is pretty normal with VR headsets if you run them with ASW, which I think on Oculus headsets is enabled by default. If your PC cannot maintain full headset refresh rate, it drops the game fps in half, and interpolates the missing frames in headset software. 

 

Even with ASW disabled, the headset may sync to half refresh rate if your PC can't generate much more fps than that. At least my Oculus headset did that back in the days, I don't have it any more. 

 

For example, if you have Rift S which has 80 Hz refresh rate, but your PC can't reliably maintain 80 fps, it will drop to 40fps and stay there. If your GPU utilization at half of the headset refresh rate is above 50%, then obviously it won't be able to maintain 2x higher framerate. 

Edited September 8, 2022 by some1

[Ribbon]

Nothing new for me, i'm having those framedrops since new clouds hotfix!

I had to lower ingame settings and steamVR SS to keep it steady 45fps with reprojection, otherwise it sunks down to unplayable 35fps in qmb.

 

I would say that as game is evolving it is normal to be more performance demanding but i barely see any graphical improvement or any at all....in VR!

[Bando]

I have the 5800X3D as well.
Combined with the 3080Ti, I jumped on the VR wagon some 2 weeks ago.
I have no problems running this map. My VR device is a Reverb G2.
It may be that some unique setups have troubles. It's PC's after all.

I really hope you can solve it one way or another, as it's great to just fly in VR over the southern part of England.

[Iflewforthefuhre]

20 minutes ago, some1 said:

The apparent GPU underutilization is pretty normal with VR headsets if you run them with ASW, which I think on Oculus headsets is enabled by default. If your PC cannot maintain full headset refresh rate, it drops the game fps in half, and interpolates the missing frames in headset software. 

 

Even with ASW disabled, the headset may sync to half refresh rate if your PC can't generate much more fps than that. At least my Oculus headset did that back in the days, I don't have it any more. 

 

For example, if you have Rift S which has 80 Hz refresh rate, but your PC can't reliably maintain 80 fps, it will drop to 40fps and stay there. If your GPU utilization at half of the headset refresh rate is above 50%, then obviously it won't be able to maintain 2x higher framerate. 

Yeah I am aware of ASW and all the other bits and pieces you mentioned. I used to run with ASW on at 45fps frame rate target in my OG Rift CV1 - but running ASW with the Rift S causes the screen to tear like crazy.....on the CV1 it was slight warping but hardly distracting. On the Rift S it's unplayable, super distracting. So I no longer have the option to shoot for a consistent 40-45fps with this headset. Not that I should need to though! because back then I only had a 3800X and 5700XT. 

I then went to 5800X and 6700XT and now 5800X3D and 6900XT and it's only made things worse by throwing more money at the sim. Fortunately it's not the only game I play and everything else has seen enormous uplift. But this is one of my most played games, so it's hugely disappointing. 

The thing is this - typically when GPU usage goes down and the framerate also subsequently drops, that is an indicator of a bottleneck elsewhere in the system, usually the CPU. If GPU utilization is high but frames dip, that is an indicator of GPU limitations. 

Sometimes, the sim will be genuinely GPU limited and I will see 99 percent usage and low FPS, but 90 percent of the time it's the opposite. Moving from 3800X to 5800X I did get gains but still have erratic performance issues. 

18 minutes ago, Bando said:

I have the 5800X3D as well.
Combined with the 3080Ti, I jumped on the VR wagon some 2 weeks ago.
I have no problems running this map. My VR device is a Reverb G2.
It may be that some unique setups have troubles. It's PC's after all.

I really hope you can solve it one way or another, as it's great to just fly in VR over the southern part of England.

Yeah I would imagine the 3080Ti outperforms my 6900XT in this game regardless, but still, shouldn't be such a huge margin given that you are using a G2 which has a MUCH higher pixel density than my Rift S. 

Yeah very much a case of specific setups having issues I think because I am not the only one. That is what has bothered me about this game for so long. Every time I go through this ritual of trying to stabilize my performance I read and re-read what everyone else is doing and there is zero consistency in what people report - way more so than any other game I have ever played. 

Some, like yourself, with that hardware report nothing but awesomeness, others, with similar or same hardware the opposite. It's frustrating. Of course this is true of any game but like I said this has been the worse I have ever experienced as it changes with every patch for me. 

[LuftManu]

No issue here with RTX 3080.

OP, AMD 6000 radeon cards run poorly on Il-2. It's a known thing on the Benchmark thread.

Nvide does VR too better here.

Anyways, probably there is some optimization pending or more work to do, but high end users are not having many issues. So I suspect is a thing of more workload with this huge and beautiful map.

Kind regards,

Edited September 8, 2022 by LuftManu

[Iflewforthefuhre]

30 minutes ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

Nothing new for me, i'm having those framedrops since new clouds hotfix!

I had to lower ingame settings and steamVR SS to keep it steady 45fps with reprojection, otherwise it sunks down to unplayable 35fps in qmb.

 

I would say that as game is evolving it is normal to be more performance demanding but i barely see any graphical improvement or any at all....in VR!

Yeah nothing new for me as I said every bloody time the game is patched I have to go through this and it's getting really tiresome. Waste half my day troubleshooting instead of enjoying myself. 

As I mentioned earlier I can no longer lean on ASW (reprojection) as it causes it's own issues with my setup. And yes......the game is horrendously outdated visually and tech wise but still runs like ass. Immensely frustrating. 

[Art-J]

One has to keep in mind that both Il-2 and DCS with their aging engines, still rely heavily on single core clocks, which unfortunately haven't increased in recent years all that much, have they? Thus, throwing these modern, beasty CPUs with more cores, faster cache and fancy scheduling at both sims doesn't quite bring as much improvement as one hopes for after looking at the hole in one's wallet / bank account. Even if we want to brute-force through the issue and have money for it, CPUs available currently on the market, albeit awesome in their own right, are not exactly fit for the job. 

[simfan2015]

OP better call this an AMD 6900 VR review ?

Probably has little to do with IL-2 BoN performance.

AFAIK AMD GPUs are far worse in VR than Nvidia ... in general, not only IL-2.

But OTOH such an AMD 6900 is great card otherwise ... but only for gaming.  

Edited September 8, 2022 by simfan2015

[Iflewforthefuhre]

40 minutes ago, LuftManu said:

No issue here with RTX 3080.

OP, AMD 6000 radeon cards run poorly on Il-2. It's a known thing on the Benchmark thread.

Nvide does VR too better here.

Anyways, probably there is some optimization pending or more work to do, but high end users are not having many issues. So I suspect is a thing of more workload with this huge and beautiful map.

Kind regards,

If you mean the SynVader bench then yeah I have referenced that numerous times in trying to resolve these persistent issues. AMD cards do perform worse than their Nvidia counterparts, that is true, but that doesn't explain why some people with Nvidia hardware are experiencing the same symptoms as me. And further to that, those results only show that my hardware is working as expected. 

I cannot get a stable 80fps or even 90 percent stable 80fps at any setting when their is more than 8 units present in a scene. That is just a joke.....

5 minutes ago, simfan2015 said:

OP better call this an AMD 6900 VR review ?

Probably has little to do with IL-2 BoN performance.

AFAIK AMD GPUs are far worse in VR than Nvidia ... in general, not only IL-2.

But OTOH such an AMD 6900 is great card otherwise ... but only for gaming.  

I have a 2070s and 3800X in my Sim Racing Rig and I have used it with IL2 to see if resolves my issues and it does not. Still cannot get stable FPS at any setting. My old 5700XT was comparable performance wise to the 2070s in this and every other game.....

I don't have issues in any other VR titles that use actual decent gaming engines, like Star Wars Squadrons using Frostbite, muuuuuuuuuuuch more detailed graphics engine with a higher Pixel Density and I get consistent frames the entire time. But you are right, Nvidia cards are more performant in general in VR, but not by an order of magnitude. And again, I am not the only one experiencing these same issues on AMD hardware, Nvidia users are reporting the same, even within this thread. 

21 minutes ago, Art-J said:

One has to keep in mind that both Il-2 and DCS with their aging engines, still rely heavily on single core clocks, which unfortunately haven't increased in recent years all that much, have they? Thus, throwing these modern, beasty CPUs with more cores, faster cache and fancy scheduling at both sims doesn't quite bring as much improvement as one hopes for after looking at the hole in one's wallet / bank account. Even if we want to brute-force through the issue and have money for it, CPUs available currently on the market, albeit awesome in their own right, are not exactly fit for the job. 

Yes I know, although I did clock my 5800X @ 5.05ghz all core and still wasn't enough to make it consistent performance in VR, the bottom line is the engine isn't built to take advantage of modern hardware. That's why I am done spending anymore money on it. Until they update the game engine I will just have to forgo flight simming as it's just not worth investing in a sub optimal experience (imo)

[Ribbon]

15 minutes ago, simfan2015 said:

OP better call this an AMD 6900 VR review ?

Probably has little to do with IL-2 BoN performance.

AFAIK AMD GPUs are far worse in VR than Nvidia ... in general, not only IL-2.

But OTOH such an AMD 6900 is great card otherwise ... but only for gaming.  

My setup is rtx3080, 10700k 5ghz and 32gb ram.

Sudden framedrops started when new clouds hotfix was released and got worse with new lightning.

Best performance i had with freshly introduced new clouds, it looked and ran great, but hotfix ruined it.

I can say performance went down quite a bit since!

However i managed to fix problem by lowering ingame settings and steamSS.

Overall with lower settings game looks worse than it used to be before those patches....so IMO VR experience has downgraded in il2.

Edited September 8, 2022 by =VARP=Ribbon

[Iflewforthefuhre]

9 minutes ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

My setup is rtx3080, 10700k 5ghz and 32gb ram.

Sudden framedrops started when new clouds hotfix was released and got worse with new lightning.

Best performance i had with freshly introduced new clouds, it looked and ran great, but hotfix ruined it.

I can say performance went down quite a bit since!

However i managed to fix problem by lowering ingame settings and steamSS.

Overall with lower settings game looks worse than it used to be before those patches....so IMO VR experience has downgraded in il2.

I agree. There has been times where I would prefer to go back to previous versions of the game rather than tolerate the revisions they have made which have degraded the overall experience. I used to run modded clouds before the new clouds came online. Maybe I should mod the clouds again.....I dunno. This is why I am so bloody frustrated. Amped up to play and it's like sorry spend your day troubleshooting first. Like wtf......

[firdimigdi]

It would probably help if you mentioned which HMD, what target resolution you are aiming for (or_height and or_width in startup.cfg) and what scenario you are testing against. On my end (5900x/32gb/3080Ti/G2 without motion reprojection) the new map seems to perform on par with the Rheinland map on some quick tests that I did using the same setup that keeps my framerate in the 90fps region in the latter.

 

That said, and I know I'm starting to sound like broken record with this, but the game even at 90fps still suffers from this:

 

[Iflewforthefuhre]

7 minutes ago, Firdimigdi said:

It would probably help if you mentioned which HMD, what target resolution you are aiming for (or_height and or_width in startup.cfg) and what scenario you are testing against. On my end (5900x/32gb/3080Ti/G2 without motion reprojection) the new map seems to perform on par with the Rheinland map on some quick tests that I did using the same setup that keeps my framerate in the 90fps region in the latter.

 

That said, and I know I'm starting to sound like broken record with this, but the game even at 90fps still suffers from this:

 

Yeah I noticed that their is judder in the image even with good FPS and frame times - but that is nothing new for me. It's always been buggy as hell in that regard so I thought nothing of it. 

I am only using a Rift S - not even close to pixel density of the G2 and my CPU (which is the biggest limiting factor on this engine) is now faster than yours. Unless I am in a situation where I am GPU limited I should be able to replicate closely your performance. Do you mind sharing your exact settings? 

[firdimigdi]

12 minutes ago, Iflewforthefuhre said:

Do you mind sharing your exact settings? 

 

Startup.cfg:

[KEY = graphics]
	3dhud = 0
	adapter = 0
	bloom_enable = 0
	canopy_ref = 0
	desktop_center = 1
	detail_rt_res = 1024
	draw_distance = 0.00000
	far_blocks = 0
	fps_counter = 0
	fps_limit = 0
	full_height = 1080
	full_width = 1920
	fullscreen = 1
	gamma = 1.00000
	grass_distance = 100.00000
	hdr_enable = 0
	land_anisotropy = 1
	land_detail = 2
	land_tex_lods = 3
	max_cache_res = 1
	max_clouds_quality = 2
	mgpu_compatible = 0
	mirrors = 0
	msaa = 0
	multisampling = 0
	or_ca = 0.00728
	or_dummy = 0
	or_enable = 1
	or_height = 2842
	or_hud_rad = 1.7500
	or_hud_size = 0.600
	or_ipd = 0.06435
	or_render_eye = 1
	or_sipdc = -0.30000
	or_width = 2908
	post_sharpen = 0
	preset = 2
	prop_blur_max_rpm_for_vr = 155
	rescale_target = 1.00000
	shadows_quality = 3
	ssao_enable = 0
	stereo_dof = 1.00000
	vsync = 1
	win_height = 1080
	win_width = 1920
[END]

 

Any more I use OpenComposite's OpenXR branch but I used the same settings with SteamVR targeting that resolution.

 

If you read the thread I linked I also did tests with my Rift S and got the same problem/results in busy scenarios as there appears to be some sort of thread locking occurring when multiple AI units are active; there's also a possible culprit pointed at in the latter posts.

[Iflewforthefuhre]

1 minute ago, Firdimigdi said:

 

Startup.cfg:

[KEY = graphics]
	3dhud = 0
	adapter = 0
	bloom_enable = 0
	canopy_ref = 0
	desktop_center = 1
	detail_rt_res = 1024
	draw_distance = 0.00000
	far_blocks = 0
	fps_counter = 0
	fps_limit = 0
	full_height = 1080
	full_width = 1920
	fullscreen = 1
	gamma = 1.00000
	grass_distance = 100.00000
	hdr_enable = 0
	land_anisotropy = 1
	land_detail = 2
	land_tex_lods = 3
	max_cache_res = 1
	max_clouds_quality = 2
	mgpu_compatible = 0
	mirrors = 0
	msaa = 0
	multisampling = 0
	or_ca = 0.00728
	or_dummy = 0
	or_enable = 1
	or_height = 2842
	or_hud_rad = 1.7500
	or_hud_size = 0.600
	or_ipd = 0.06435
	or_render_eye = 1
	or_sipdc = -0.30000
	or_width = 2908
	post_sharpen = 0
	preset = 2
	prop_blur_max_rpm_for_vr = 155
	rescale_target = 1.00000
	shadows_quality = 3
	ssao_enable = 0
	stereo_dof = 1.00000
	vsync = 1
	win_height = 1080
	win_width = 1920
[END]

 

Any more I use OpenComposite's OpenXR branch but I used the same settings with SteamVR targeting that resolution.

 

If you read the thread I linked I also did tests with my Rift S and got the same problem/results in busy scenarios as there appears to be some sort of thread locking occurring when multiple AI units are active; there's also a possible culprit pointed at in the latter posts.

Really appreciate your responses. Super helpful. I am using Open Composite myself, but I usually test out Steam VR as well after a patch just in case. 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Iflewforthefuhre

[firdimigdi]

Oh, for some singleplayer scripted campaigns that are more AI-intensive I usually use FSR upscaling to increase the headroom but sadly that doesn't alleviate the main issue of the physics thread getting out of sync and resulting in all planes (AI & player) having juddery motion; a conclusion I came to in the very last post of that thread after using external/chase camera and witnessing absolutely smooth rendering of everything else but the airplanes.

[Iflewforthefuhre]

7 minutes ago, Firdimigdi said:

Oh, for some singleplayer scripted campaigns that are more AI-intensive I usually use FSR upscaling to increase the headroom but sadly that doesn't alleviate the main issue of the physics thread getting out of sync and resulting in all planes (AI & player) having juddery motion; a conclusion I came to in the very last post of that thread after using external/chase camera and witnessing absolutely smooth rendering of everything else but the airplanes.

Yeah I am using image sharpening and upscaling tricks as well but like you said the issue is tied inherently to that one thread (same as with MSFS 2020) that holds everything back. That explains the apparent "randomness" of the hitching in flight that doesn't appear to be related at all to scene density but rather physics calculations. 

Sim racing engines used to have this problem as well - but no more. Because they have moved on with the times and begun to leverage multi core platforms (as they should) 

Sadly, Flight Simulation has not caught up. At all. 

[Ribbon]

1 hour ago, Iflewforthefuhre said:

Sim racing engines used to have this problem as well - but no more. Because they have moved on with the times and begun to leverage multi core platforms (as they should) 

Sadly, Flight Simulation has not caught up. At all. 

100% agree, how long will they be able to milk it's up to cows, mine has dried

[FuriousMeow]

You all need to stop with the singlecore/multicore misinformation. This engine has been multicore since ROF. I know someone will go "but optimize" without even understanding what could be "optimized", so I suspect you'll continue to rant about it anyway.

 

That one silly test years ago about how the "game is single core" was done on on the Dserver, not the game engine.

[Ribbon]

44 minutes ago, FuriousMeow said:

You all need to stop with the singlecore/multicore misinformation. This engine has been multicore since ROF. I know someone will go "but optimize" without even understanding what could be "optimized", so I suspect you'll continue to rant about it anyway.

 

That one silly test years ago about how the "game is single core" was done on on the Dserver, not the game engine.

So why does it use only fraction of the cpu power and why time dillation and frame drops?

 

 

[firdimigdi]

13 minutes ago, =VARP=Ribbon said:

So why does it use only fraction of the cpu power and why time dillation and frame drops?

 

Best guess? Because one of its threads (physics/simulation likely) gets locked waiting for something that takes longer to complete.

 

The process profiling I posted in the other thread seems to indicate that calls relevant to the UI middleware baloon exponentially with more active AI. Without symbols and code to go with it I have no idea how accurate that is.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Firdimigdi

[Youtch]

4 hours ago, Firdimigdi said:

Startup.cfg:

[KEY = graphics]
	3dhud = 0
	adapter = 0
	bloom_enable = 0
	canopy_ref = 0
	desktop_center = 1
	detail_rt_res = 1024
	draw_distance = 0.00000
	far_blocks = 0
	fps_counter = 0
	fps_limit = 0
	full_height = 1080
	full_width = 1920
	fullscreen = 1
	gamma = 1.00000
	grass_distance = 100.00000
	hdr_enable = 0
	land_anisotropy = 1
	land_detail = 2
	land_tex_lods = 3
	max_cache_res = 1
	max_clouds_quality = 2
	mgpu_compatible = 0
	mirrors = 0
	msaa = 0
	multisampling = 0
	or_ca = 0.00728
	or_dummy = 0
	or_enable = 1
	or_height = 2842
	or_hud_rad = 1.7500
	or_hud_size = 0.600
	or_ipd = 0.06435
	or_render_eye = 1
	or_sipdc = -0.30000
	or_width = 2908
	post_sharpen = 0
	preset = 2
	prop_blur_max_rpm_for_vr = 155
	rescale_target = 1.00000
	shadows_quality = 3
	ssao_enable = 0
	stereo_dof = 1.00000
	vsync = 1
	win_height = 1080
	win_width = 1920
[END]

Curious to know why you are using v-sync wigh VR G2.

 

You don t seem to be using/ liking mirrors ?

[firdimigdi]

3 minutes ago, Youtch said:

Curious to know why you are using v-sync wigh VR G2.

 

You don t seem to be using/ liking mirrors ?

 

 I'm not using v-sync with the HMD, that only affects the monitor when playing in non-VR.

 

 Yeah, mirrors always felt useless in these planes.

[Iflewforthefuhre]

1 hour ago, FuriousMeow said:

You all need to stop with the singlecore/multicore misinformation. This engine has been multicore since ROF. I know someone will go "but optimize" without even understanding what could be "optimized", so I suspect you'll continue to rant about it anyway.

 

That one silly test years ago about how the "game is single core" was done on on the Dserver, not the game engine.

The game uses multiple cores but it's performance is bottlenecked by a single thread whose speed is determined by how fast those instructions are executed on that core - hence clock speed has always been the single biggest determining factor in minimum FPS in flight simulators (used to be an issue for racing sims as well, not so anymore)

All the data on Synvaders benchmark proves that. 

[Youtch]

Does anyone know what is this parameter? Most of the config seems to have it at 5.00000

stereo_dof

[Toxin1]

I don't have your hardware so can't comment on the performance issues.  However, I have seen some benefit of cleaning out the DirectX cache on your primary drive when there is a new release version of the sim.  YMMV

[Iflewforthefuhre]

8 hours ago, Toxin1 said:

I don't have your hardware so can't comment on the performance issues.  However, I have seen some benefit of cleaning out the DirectX cache on your primary drive when there is a new release version of the sim.  YMMV

Yeah I cleared my shader cache both in windows and drivers but it didn't fix anything unfortunately 

[Iflewforthefuhre]

On 9/8/2022 at 8:11 PM, Firdimigdi said:

 

Startup.cfg:

[KEY = graphics]
	3dhud = 0
	adapter = 0
	bloom_enable = 0
	canopy_ref = 0
	desktop_center = 1
	detail_rt_res = 1024
	draw_distance = 0.00000
	far_blocks = 0
	fps_counter = 0
	fps_limit = 0
	full_height = 1080
	full_width = 1920
	fullscreen = 1
	gamma = 1.00000
	grass_distance = 100.00000
	hdr_enable = 0
	land_anisotropy = 1
	land_detail = 2
	land_tex_lods = 3
	max_cache_res = 1
	max_clouds_quality = 2
	mgpu_compatible = 0
	mirrors = 0
	msaa = 0
	multisampling = 0
	or_ca = 0.00728
	or_dummy = 0
	or_enable = 1
	or_height = 2842
	or_hud_rad = 1.7500
	or_hud_size = 0.600
	or_ipd = 0.06435
	or_render_eye = 1
	or_sipdc = -0.30000
	or_width = 2908
	post_sharpen = 0
	preset = 2
	prop_blur_max_rpm_for_vr = 155
	rescale_target = 1.00000
	shadows_quality = 3
	ssao_enable = 0
	stereo_dof = 1.00000
	vsync = 1
	win_height = 1080
	win_width = 1920
[END]

 

Any more I use OpenComposite's OpenXR branch but I used the same settings with SteamVR targeting that resolution.

 

If you read the thread I linked I also did tests with my Rift S and got the same problem/results in busy scenarios as there appears to be some sort of thread locking occurring when multiple AI units are active; there's also a possible culprit pointed at in the latter posts.

Ok so I have copied your settings directly and it still runs very poorly. Basically no change at 1.33 PD on the Rift S. 

Gonna keep trying to lower the resolution I guess and see if that helps. 

[chiliwili69]

On 9/8/2022 at 11:14 AM, Iflewforthefuhre said:

AMD cards do perform worse than their Nvidia counterparts, that is true, but that doesn't explain why some people with Nvidia hardware are experiencing the same symptoms as me

 

I can understand your fustration in running this wonderfull sim with low fps. 

AMD cards peforms pretty well well in most of the game except IL-2 (in monitor and VR). It is not only a small factor but a big factor, based in all the AMD cards tested with the SYNVander bench. This has been reported to the bug section a while ago. Look here. 

I would love that dev team try to solve the issues of AMD cards since it will give us more options when buying GPUs.

 

Your 5800X3D is plenty of power for IL-2, and even more running at 80Hz at your Rift-S.

You can try to put your 2070 card in your 5800X3D PC and run the SYN_VANDER bench (CPU test, GPU test, VRTEST1, VRTEST2). With those results we wil have more data to know what is going wrong.

 

 

On 9/8/2022 at 11:14 AM, Iflewforthefuhre said:

3800X in my Sim Racing Rig and I have used it with IL2 to see if resolves my issues and it does not.

 

The 3800X CPU is not really good for IL-2. There is a big performance diference in IL-2 between 3800X and 5800X.

[simfan2015]

Sorry, my comment about nvidia better than amd GPU was a bit simplistic, especially in this case of DCS and VR and the multiple changes in rendering. 

I now understand much more is involved and switching to nvidia won't solve or improve these issues considerably. 

ED has to perform some VR magic first. 

 

[=BES=Senor_Jefe]

On 9/8/2022 at 3:24 AM, some1 said:

No offence but it's not a review of any kind, just a rant that your VR performance is bad. 

 

To me it runs better in VR than any other modern simulator (VTOL VR does not count). No idea if your issues come from hardware incompatibility, messed up settings or simply too high expectations. 

1. No offense is usually proceeding something you know will cause offense.  Especially when you categorically disparage someone's review (see definition below) in the very same sentence. 

2. Review (Merriam-Webster) - to go over or examine critically or deliberately.  

3. Saying "it runs better than any other modern simulator" is subjective. I'd say X-Plane 11 runs fantastically better than IL2 (i suspect it's due mostly to Vulcan implementation)

4.  This is nothing new, combat sims, over the past 2-3 years especially, have focused on graphical improvements, which will many times come at the initial or lasting detriment to VR users.  The saving grace will likely be Vulcan implementation where a more full pc utilization will be likely.

 

TL;DR:  Tell me you're a fanboy without saying your a fanboy.  Any negative comment toward the game is automatically brushed aside as a rant because God forbid your echo chamber is rattled and you have to see anything but sunshine and rainbows rammed up your 6.

Edited September 17, 2022 by =BES=Senor_Jefe

[dburne]

IL-2 Great Battles is the greatest performing combat flight sim in VR I have seen to date.

1CGS did an outstanding job of their VR integration with IL-2 Great Battles.

Just of course imho and my experience.