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DCS World 2.5 - GTX 1060 6GB

falken76
Expert Consultant
I just recently downloaded DCS World 2.5.  This makes me want a new video card but I can't come close to affording one at today's pricing.  Hopefully Nvidia gets those mining cards out soon and they're cheap compared to real cards so the minors flock to them.

I have an I7 - 7700k w/ 16 gb ram and a 1060 6 GB card.  What kind of performance should I expect out of DCS World 2.5?  I am getting low frame rates, but it appears to play normally.  There is no choppiness or anything, I just start to get VR sickness quickly.  I ended up playing it for a few hours the other day, I thought I was just feeling a little ill because I was flying an F15 and doing a lot of moves.  After I finished, I felt slightly dizzy.  But this lasted 48 hours! 

If I turn VR off, I can max out all the settings and it seems to play just fine, but I don't like the game at all without VR because I can't look around easily when I'm in a dog fight.  I don't even think I'm reaching 45 FPS so I can't even use ASW as far as I can tell.  I turned off MSAA and that is being handled by the Nvidia control panel.  It does some sort of post processing, so it doesn't slow it down like the ingame option does, but screenshots come out with no anti aliasing.  The image I see in the HMD is smoothed though.

Are there good settings for a 1060 6gb on an I7-7700k.  I think I bought good ram,but I don't know, according to CPU-Z the NB Frequency is fluctuating between 3700 and 4000 mhz and Dram Frequency is listed as 1066.7mhz.  I don't know how to interpret what speed my ram is, but that's what it says, does this mean anything?

Everyone I see that has this game is running on a 1080 or higher for the most part, surely this can also be played on a 1060 6 gb, I just don't know what settings to use.  I've upped the gfx on many options and this doesn't appear to make the performance change, the gfx get better.  Either way it's not fast enough to keep me from getting vr sickness.
28 REPLIES 28

Sabrejet
Protege
With my previous AMD CPU's, I really got sorry performance out of DCS, Kerbal and alot of other games.  It would play most action titles perfectly, but simulations were not the best.

I'll give you a top of mind guide for DCS and the 1060 6GB.


In game, turn off all AA
Put Anisotropic filtering to no more than x4 - when rift supersamples, it will multiply those up (in a way.. more pixels to filter) greatly reducing fps.

You'll have to compromise on some detail, lower grass and trees, you won't miss them, and there will be plenty of trees where it counts.

Turn off Depth of Field... in VR, your eyes are supposed to do that for you.

(I'll add more if I can think of them)

THIS is a good tip:
Turn Pixel Density IN-GAME to about 1.5 (no reason)
Download Oculus Tray Tools, make a profile for DCS.exe, and turn Pixel Density to about 1.8.  I don't know what voodoo it does, but it works awesomely.  Give it a try.  It seems to completely circumvent the games Pixel Density, that's why I said "no reason" above.


In Nvidia Control panel, manage the settings for DCS:
Leave everything default to start with, and just change these settings:
Anisostropic filtering - app controlled (important so nvidia doesn't disable it fully)
Antialiasing - FXAA - Off
Antialiasing - Mode - application controlled
Antialiasing - Transparency - Off
Multiframe Sampled AA - Off
(In the future, if you want AA, you will need to rethink these settings, as these can stop AA from rendering regardless what the game is set at.  We are essentially disabling AA here both ingame and in NVCP)

Max Pre rendered frames - app controlled (this is one game where it doesn't seem to help at all)
Shader Cache - On
Negative LOD bias - Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality
Trilinear Optimization - On - gives better performance
Threaded Optimization - On.
Triple Buffering - Off.  Mainly used to improve Fast Vsync and we aren't using that here. Greatly effects frames in some games.
VR Pre-rendered frames - 1 seems fine.

I skipped over a few for time.  Just leave them at default.  As long as AA is managed, everything else is minor really here.

I am betting with Oculus Tray Tools it will get you closer to 45 fps.

Use Ctrl+numpad 1-4 to change ASW settings.
1... disable, 2.  Force 45hz ASW off  3.  45 with ASW  4.  ASW at all times.

2 for me runs best, 3 is slightly better but ASW looks like a nightmare in flyby view (f3)

You will likely see quite a bit of stutter on the ground until you pan around a bit, switch to an outside view and back, etc, then it should be solid.  The non VR game is like that too.

Sabrejet
Protege
Well I don't know why my comment was pulled but here it is again.

With my previous AMD CPU's, I really got sorry performance out of DCS, Kerbal and alot of other games.  It would play most action titles perfectly, but simulations were not the best.

I'll give you a top of mind guide for DCS and the 1060 6GB.


In game, turn off all AA
Put Anisotropic filtering to no more than x4 - when rift supersamples, it will multiply those up (in a way.. more pixels to filter) greatly reducing fps.

You'll have to compromise on some detail, lower grass and trees, you won't miss them, and there will be plenty of trees where it counts.

Turn off Depth of Field... in VR, your eyes are supposed to do that for you.

(I'll add more if I can think of them)

THIS is a good tip:
Turn Pixel Density IN-GAME to about 1.5 (no reason)
Download Oculus Tray Tools, make a profile for DCS.exe, and turn Pixel Density to about 1.8.  I don't know what voodoo it does, but it works awesomely.  Give it a try.  It seems to completely circumvent the games Pixel Density, that's why I said "no reason" above.


In Nvidia Control panel, manage the settings for DCS:
Leave everything default to start with, and just change these settings:
Anisostropic filtering - app controlled (important so nvidia doesn't disable it fully)
Antialiasing - FXAA - Off
Antialiasing - Mode - application controlled
Antialiasing - Transparency - Off
Multiframe Sampled AA - Off
(In the future, if you want AA, you will need to rethink these settings, as these can stop AA from rendering regardless what the game is set at.  We are essentially disabling AA here both ingame and in NVCP)

Max Pre rendered frames - app controlled (this is one game where it doesn't seem to help at all)
Shader Cache - On
Negative LOD bias - Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality
Trilinear Optimization - On - gives better performance
Threaded Optimization - On.
Triple Buffering - Off.  Mainly used to improve Fast Vsync and we aren't using that here. Greatly effects frames in some games.
VR Pre-rendered frames - 1 seems fine.

I skipped over a few for time.  Just leave them at default.  As long as AA is managed, everything else is minor really here.

I am betting with Oculus Tray Tools it will get you closer to 45 fps.

Use Ctrl+numpad 1-4 to change ASW settings.
1... disable, 2.  Force 45hz ASW off  3.  45 with ASW  4.  ASW at all times.

2 for me runs best, 3 is slightly better but ASW looks like a nightmare in flyby view (f3)

You will likely see quite a bit of stutter on the ground until you pan around a bit, switch to an outside view and back, etc, then it should be solid.  The non VR game is like that too.

Anonymous
Not applicable
DCS is very resource hungry especially in VR.

In Nvidia control panel, set power management to " prefer maximum performance".
Leave all other settings in there at default, as they really won't apply to VR.

In DCS, set your Pixel Density. I would start small and work up in increments, like 1.2. I would not set SS in Oculus Tray Tool if making a Pixel Density setting in DCS.
Set your other graphics settings fairly low and test, again you can work up from there. Shadows are a killer.
While I have not tried it, DCS does have a VR pre-set for graphics, might be a good starting point to work from as well.

I use the Oculus Tray Tool to set ASW to disabled for DCS, I just get a better experience with it off.
I would also encourage you to visit the DCS forums, they have a VR sub forum with a lot of helpful information in there. 

Sabrejet
Protege
I'm not sure why you would suggest not using SS in OTT.  I'm up to 2.5 and running smooth as silk and can see clearly for 20 miles.
While 1.8 is about my max using in game settings.

With OTT I can set 2.5 AND set 2.0 in game and it makes no difference to fps at all.  I can set it to 1.0 and 2.5 it also make no difference in fps, and it's clearly at 2.5.  The author of OTT told me that OTT will override most game's SS settings, which seems to be the case here.  But you can try it as well.

I left out the power management setting, forgot, and you're right, most won't apply to VR, but definitely Antialiasing will apply and reduce framerate.  But the thing is, the view normally isn't fine enough to notice AA.  Once you get above 2.0 or 2.5, you will start to see a minor need for it, but that's about the limit my vid card can do atm.

Anonymous
Not applicable
I see no point in trying to set the SS in both game and OTT. As you stated one will override the other anyway. I personally prefer using the in game settings in DCS.  And yes I have tried it both ways.

You are able to run DCS with a 2.5 SS on a 1060 card and get great results?
Are you sure it is being applied? My 1080 Ti would not even achieve that, and I have many hours into DCS 2.5.

Are you running DCS 2.5 or 1.5? Which map?

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
DCS 2.5 is extremely GPU hungry in VR. Admittedly it may very well be the absolute best looking game in VR made so far, but that beauty comes at a hefty price in system resources. In any case, your system is rock solid for DCS in VR except for the graphics card. My recommendation is to set your sights on a locked 45 fps.

The first thing you should do is drop Pixel Density to 1.0. Your 1060 simply doesn't have the performance for super sampling in that game since even 1080 TI's struggle when going above 1.2 to 1.3 PD. Second thing you should do is set "Object Distance" to medium. That will greatly reduce the distance buildings and trees are shown, thus freeing up a ton of resources. That setting is second only to PD when it comes to increasing performance. It will not alter view distances for non-static objects though, so planes, tanks, ships and so on will still display at the same distance. Next up, switch off "Differed Shading." This is an advanced lighting/shadows system and it is the third biggest GPU hog. It makes the game look amazing, but I'm not sure the 1060 has enough compute units in it to manage it.

With those big three out of the way, the next things to play with are shadows and terrain shadows. The terrain shadow setting is an override for your shadows setting that is applied strictly to terrain objects. Setting this to flat or off can allow you to have medium or high shadows for your cockpit and own plane without too much of a performance hit.

As a final note, there is an in game fps counter that will show in VR. Press right ctrl + pause to activate it. This should help you determine which settings are giving you the best improvements and which you can turn back up after getting performance up to an acceptable level.

As for feeling sick, welcome to VR flight sims! Fly, puke, repeat! 😛 But in all seriousness, you will get used to it. Keep your flights short at first and take frequent breaks. If you fly a little every day, you'll build up a tolerance just as with free move FPS's.

Edit: Forgot about anti aliasing. Turn it off completely. My 1080 TI can't handle anti-aliasing in DCS 2.5 so your 1060 certainly can't!

falken76
Expert Consultant
Wow, thanks guys!  I take it this is a popular game with many people.  I've tried changing the pixel desnity in DCS itself and I honestly don't even think it is working, 1.0 and 1.3 look the same and the performance doesn't change.  As far as I understand SS, It's very GPU intensive.  In a game like onward, changing the SS to 1.2 turns the game into a flip book, putting it back on one has a fluid 90 FPS I assume because I don't feel sick at all.  @sabrejet what video card are you using?  1.8 PD is really high, even for 1070s and 1080s, but I don't understand how DCS uses this info so maybe it doesn't matter.  1.8 seems extremely optomistic for a 1060 though.  I will try the suggested settings.  I don't feel like loading it right now, I'm still recovering from my last flight, that was the day before yesterday!

Sabrejet
Protege

dburne said:

I see no point in trying to set the SS in both game and OTT. As you stated one will override the other anyway. I personally prefer using the in game settings in DCS.  And yes I have tried it both ways.

You are able to run DCS with a 2.5 SS on a 1060 card and get great results?
Are you sure it is being applied? My 1080 Ti would not even achieve that, and I have many hours into DCS 2.5.

Are you running DCS 2.5 or 1.5? Which map?




Well OTT overrides ingame PD, but not the other way around.  OTT just seems to do it much much better. 

I run it with 2.5 SS on a 1060 6GB (which I'll be upgrading soon) and I will not settle for anything less than 45 fps. 
I'll admit 2.3, 2.2 runs a bit better.  2.0 is effortless.
2.5 is my extreme limit, it will run full, if nothing else on my PC is running.  I get a little up and downage on the ground of 35-45, but in the air, 45 solid.  It probably helps that I have I5 8600K as well, but we're mainly talking GPU.   I don't have a super computer, and it has taken alot of tweaking to get it like this, but I don't have to run it on the lowest settings.

If I do 1.8 in DCS I get about 23 fps, if I do 2.3 in OTT I get 45, so it's all gucci.

DCS 2.5, Caucasus map
I think you missed my meaning in saying set it at 1.5 in game, and I may not have been clear.  I was meaning as just putting at arbitrarily at a reasonable number.  I have a suspicion the reason in game PD is so slow is because they do something with LODs and pop in, and I'm still mid testing.  But yes, my 1060 will do that.  I'm getting a 1080ti this month most likely to go higher... even like this it's still difficult to show planes at a distance.   That's another reason I go without Antialiasing, that bad guy pixel can easily be washed away in the filtering.
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Sabrejet
Protege

falken76 said:

Wow, thanks guys!  I take it this is a popular game with many people.  I've tried changing the pixel desnity in DCS itself and I honestly don't even think it is working, 1.0 and 1.3 look the same and the performance doesn't change.  As far as I understand SS, It's very GPU intensive.  In a game like onward, changing the SS to 1.2 turns the game into a flip book, putting it back on one has a fluid 90 FPS I assume because I don't feel sick at all.  @sabrejet what video card are you using?  1.8 PD is really high, even for 1070s and 1080s, but I don't understand how DCS uses this info so maybe it doesn't matter.  1.8 seems extremely optomistic for a 1060 though.  I will try the suggested settings.  I don't feel like loading it right now, I'm still recovering from my last flight, that was the day before yesterday!


I use Oculus Tray Tools to manage my Pixel density.  It overrides the in-game PD slider.  I still use the in-game slider to try and find what causes the slowdown.  it was suggested to me that the in-game PD may control different LODs and other effects to give a better VR image, while OTT does not.

But I have yet to see anything like that.  So I just use OTT.