A brief look at DCS World v2.5

[+MigBuster]

DCS World 2.5 recently came out of Beta and was released fully to the public. Primarily this means that there is again only one DCS version in development and 2.5 replaces 1.5 as the major branch for players, hopefully simplifying things a bit. The old 1.5 version will still be available for now but will not be developed further I understand.

 

 

If you were not aware DCS has been going through a transition period where the old 1.5 game engine was being used alongside several Beta versions including 2.2 and 2.5 which could do a few things 1.5 could not.

A-10C - yes the engines are just big hair dryers and produce power accordingly

 

 

New features

The main change with the DCS World 2.5 game engine was the transition to Direct X 11 (DX11) from Direct X 9 (DX9), so a major overhaul of the graphics engine that can utilise more modern techniques and hardware.

 

F-5E flies through the valley of the trees

 

R.I.P. Graphics Card
Unfortunately, it appears my graphics card is at the low end of the spectrum for this game.  My trusty MSI GTX 780 which I obtained solely because I knew it ran BMS Falcon 4 at the time is sitting at max puff, and despite my best efforts to fiddle with the GFX settings is not doing much more than warming up the room after 10 mins of playtime. I do actually get around 80 to 140 fps on the rather low settings, but I am still getting stutter at low level over the building and trees so have had to turn off Antialiasing.

Sadly, although the move from DX9 to DX11 will benefit the game for the future, for me at the moment on my rig it looks far worse than Strike Fighters 2 (DX10) and BMS Falcon (DX9) because I can max them out. That shouldn’t put too many off hopefully. I am like many waiting for the new NVIDIA 2080/1180 or whatever, and hoping sanity prevails and virtual currency miners stop buying up all the cards to make an extra 3 dollars a year.

 

Revamped Caucasus - might look better with some new hardware

 

Unified Terrain Maps  
With the v2.5 release I could finally install the Nevada map that I purchased in 2015 and run it alongside the revamped Caucasus map and even think about getting some Nevada campaigns. Previously Nevada only worked in the Beta versions so I was only using the old Caucasus map in 1.5 up to now.

 

The Draken MiG-21bis pilot hoped to pick up some bargains from the shopping mall later

 

The Sun my eyes!

 

 

3D trees
Not just 3D trees but collideable 3D trees, and this along with the 3D buildings is where a lot of the extra system resource is required. This will certainly make things more interesting for Chopper pilots!

Some may remember as clouds and 2D trees were introduced to Strike Fighters through patches and mods that the system requirements to run them also increased exponentially. Some asked TK back them to optimise the game engine – and with SF2 there was a big revamp in the engine, but still required a lot more power to run it. Today I think I run it on max settings through brute force computing power as opposed to code optimisation.

Trees - thousands of em!

 

 

Las Vegas is vast in size and polycount

 

 

 

[+Dave]

Yeah that 780 is long in the tooth for this build. Still looks good though. I cant wait for the F/A-18C module. That is what will bring me back to simming.

[+streakeagle]

After years of delays, 2.0 became merely a beta with 2.5 becoming the long promised release utilizing DX11 to improve performance AND image quality. The 2.5 public release is a slight disappointment to me. It isn't very stable or fast. The graphics and terrains were improved in many areas, but at the cost of performance and some glitches with the new deferred shading. With all the years of development and recent months of beta testing, I expected more from the final 2.5 public release. It is still good, but my next PC needs at least 32 GB of the fastest RAM I can afford and a gpu that smokes my current 1080 GTX. Overall, I am disappointed with the transition form 1.5 to 2.5. 1.5 looked so much better than Strike Fighters 2, and ran fairly fast and stable. 2.5 is largely a step backwards for the moment other than the fact that it supports all three terrains currently available.

[jeanba]

Thank you for this article

I think I will stick to SF2

[+Dave]

On 4/18/2018 at 11:15 PM, streakeagle said:

After years of delays, 2.0 became merely a beta with 2.5 becoming the long promised release utilizing DX11 to improve performance AND image quality. The 2.5 public release is a slight disappointment to me. It isn't very stable or fast. The graphics and terrains were improved in many areas, but at the cost of performance and some glitches with the new deferred shading. With all the years of development and recent months of beta testing, I expected more from the final 2.5 public release. It is still good, but my next PC needs at least 32 GB of the fastest RAM I can afford and a gpu that smokes my current 1080 GTX. Overall, I am disappointed with the transition form 1.5 to 2.5. 1.5 looked so much better than Strike Fighters 2, and ran fairly fast and stable. 2.5 is largely a step backwards for the moment other than the fact that it supports all three terrains currently available.

It looks like they are addressing your concerns.

"DCS World 2.5.1 Update
Version 2.5.1 for DCS World is currently in external testing and includes the new Offline Mode and improved memory management as its primary features. Now that it has been built, our valued 3rd parties are updating their aircraft to operating in version 2.5.1. Once this is complete, we will first move this version to the DCS World 2.5.1 Open Beta branch.
Until we can release 2.5.1 with improved memory management, we suggest looking at your System Options in DCS World. One setting that has been found to help out considerably is the Preload Radius setting, cutting that value in half can make a huge difference in load times for multiplayer servers, we suggest tweaking this setting and find what works best for you."

[+streakeagle]

All I can do is wait, see, and hope for the best. But I have been doing that for quite a few years now.