Hey Everyone, Leave me a comment below saying what you think about the DCS World 2.9 Update! Hope this video helped solve some issues or questions you guys had, or maybe just gave you some insight as to how things work, let me know!

Jabbers doing DCS related videos again. The world is a better place!

big spotting dots is actually a plus

Thank you for explaining all these features so my small brain can understand

Great video, thanks for explaining the new settings, haven't had a chance to try it yet myself yet but looking forward to doing so, keep up the good work.

Jabbers, great work. Thanks for doing this. I look forward to VR recording vid and a more in depth look at the DCS settings. Thanks again.

You're the man we need for times like this ;) Thanks for the work.

I haven't gotten much of a chance to really mess with the settings yet so this is great info to have at hand, thanks!

I ended up coming to the same conclusions as you did regarding most of the new settings. It's overall a good patch with relatively few show stoppers. Glad you're producing more and more DCS content again.

Great breakdown of the features! Thank you for this!!

From what I understand SSS is supposed to enhance the shadows by rendering additional (as you perfectly explained) shadows based on pixel visibility to a main lightsource. It's not intended to replace the existing object shadows. If you combine both it looks fantastic, especially the depth perception as far away scenery better blends in, while close up the grass and clutter and a bit further out the scene improves. At least for me. 🤔

Nice to see videos from you again. Regarding the shadows, I see the same issue.

In regards to the color gradient...I have tried all the settings in a wide range of conditions and all maps. Night, day, morning, dusk, cloudy, raining...just a mix of what you can expect. Even winter on the Caucuses map. For my monitor the teal & orange 4 seems to be the most realistic. But here's the catch: everyone's eyes, brain and preferences are unique. What I thought looked unnatural, my GF said looked the best to her. And monitors will influence what you see as well. I can't address VR, this is just a standard Vizio PC monitor/TV. Nice video. Liked and subbed. Going back to your video library to see if anything there is something that could help me be a better VR pilot!

Jabbers! Good to see you doing DCS vids again man! Thank you.

Glad to see you back … thanks for the video, you probably saved me a few hours of fruitless testing 😊 wish you all the best.

This is awesome. Thank you very much for explaining the new features!

Interesting video. I spent a fair bit of time just tweaking last night, and I'm not quite satisfied. These are some great examples of side effects of using different processing effects. It's quite the rabbit hole.

It's an excellent comparison video about the new update. Thanks.

Good explaination of sss. I was seeing some of those effects and didnt know that was what was causing it with dlss

Great video dude, seeing the same thing on the 4090 as well. Sharpening i have at 0.35 for the Aero.

I actually like that SSS ‘problem’. It’s quite cool. I do definitely intend to use the flat shadows too, though.

Very needed video. Good work, bud.

Thanks for all the hrs put in today Jabs, looooong day. You run into the F2 Epilepsy Hazard? The "jitter" is crazy

Great video. Thanks Jabbers.

I have a 4090 and have the same problem with DLSS + SSS. Thank you for a very good explanation.

Thanks for making this video, sir! Looking forward to the BBQ series ;)

Many thanks, Mr. J. Very useful as ever. Pete

I'm looking forward to the VR recording video. I'm on a 2k series card, so I'd like to see what options you suggest to get a little better perf while recording.

Jabber back to DCS again!!!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Great video and explanation of SSS and LOD switch factor. @Jabbers: What do you think about DLAA vs TAA? I am running VR.

Good video and helpful, i didn't really understand what SSS did and now i do

Glad to see I'm not the only one to see the "jittering" visible at 2:00 . Also on a 3090. Not seeing too much of a difference, but frames are around 90-100.

I’m in 2D on a 2080Ti. Yes, I do get the occasional ghosting artifact (it seems to be most obvious to me on targeting pods more than anything else) and I’ve noticed the discussed shadow issues at the screen edges with SSS. But DLSS nukes the awful aliasing I was getting with any settings that gave me acceptable performance. I spent many years working in 3D (offline) design and rendering and when I did some work in game engines the aliasing was like fingernails on a blackboard. But I became much more used to it after a while in DCS, and I think I’d convinced myself it wasn’t a problem unless I recorded a flight (and then, again, it was torture). But just enjoying myself in DCS, I kinda stopped noticing it, or pushed it to the back of my head when I did. On fences around an airfield, for example. Until DLSS! It’s like night and day! I assume the sharpening is part of DLSS as at first I was impressed with the lack of alias artifacts, but a lot of stuff was soft. Not soft like a real lens, but soft like a cartoon or painting. Then I read the info from ED about setting it at 0.5 (not sure what that parameter adjusts, but anyway). Suddenly the image came into focus and looked much much closer to an Octane, Cycles or Arnold render. Still a fair distance from PBM unbiased type stuff but a huge quality difference from what it was. I could live without the occasional ghost and even though the screen space shadows fade a little bit rather than just pop at the edges, I could live without them too. But the massive reduction in aliasing artefacts makes me very happy. Especially on an ex-top of the range, now lower midrange machine. This machine was built to render in Nuke and Cinema 4D, so it’s fairly well tuned for rendering. Still, it must be nearly 5 years old now. So to have something that improves my DCS look AND performance is like free money. I get that the ghosting is a problem on VR, I remember a similar problem with I was doing VR stuff on a pair of 1080Ti’s for the first commercial rift in 2017 or something. But it’s much less noticeable on 2D, to my tired old eyes anyway. Thanks for the review, it confirmed a couple of things and I learned a couple (I didn’t realise DCS uses three shadow types - the things they do for games, eh?).

Great video & thank you for the explanation. I was kinda wondering whether openxr toolkit is still necessary or can it be deleted?

Lots of great info here. Very much looking fwd to the VR recording presentation. Great to have you back Jabbers!

Such a great example of showing how little ED knows about what they do. Thanks for doing the deep dive.

Dlss is not better on a 4090... DLAA is a godsend. No more shimmering on a pimax crystal at native res and its usable because it doesn't break QVFR like we thought.

love your videos, simply the best. Do you still use the Index for VR? any plans of getting a new VR?

If I'm not mistaken, OpenXR Tool Kit uses FSR 1 but DCS uses FSR 2. If true, one would expect the experience to be different.

I suspect the changing shadows for trees using SSS has something to do with the renderer swapping out tree models for lower LOD models as you get further away. So when you are close, trees are super detailed and light can filter through their branches and cast detailed shadows, but as the camera gets farther away, the engine swaps them out for simpler models that are basically big lollipops, and the shadows get bigger and denser accordingly.

Hi Jabbers it’s great to see you back. I’m still having issues of stuttering even after the patch update last week, especially in the Caucasus map when flying the AH64-D I’ve tried every setting but get the same result. It’s so frustrating when you’re flying along and you think you’ve sorted it and then wham a big stutter followed by a freeze. Man it’s so bad I don’t fly the Apache. Other maps seem ok except the Marianas and South Atlantic which suck. Any thoughts please 🙏 I run i7, 32gb and a 3070ti 16Gb thanks

@Jabbers Thanks for explaining the changes, now with DLSS MT at 4k I can max Everything and get 180 fps in F-16 free flight LOD at 2. You can manually play with the version of DLSS you have and in some games it effects ghosting, some games do better with older or newer versions, 4090 her on an Apex Encore and 14900k and not really seeing much ghosting unlike I do in other games. Didnt notice the shadow issues you have in the video so I tried changing the settings on and off and at least for my system I dont have the shadow issues with SSS at all with DLSS on Quality. Dont know if this is due to having a 4090 vs your 3090 or that I'm not on VR and have some pretty high 8000+mhz DDR5 48GB ram or all core 6ghz on my CPU but I dont have the issues so maybe its hardware specific?

4090 here. Yes, the ghosting in VR (reverb G2) is obvious for me too.

I’m also having issues with the dots being dark blocks in VR. I’m glad finally to see so,some else reporting what I’m seeing . Others were saying it’s great etc, I felt it was cartoonish. And I’m unable to turn it off with the autoexec setting

Thanks for the video. Finally I was able to make a recording with cinematics of a carrier take off and a case 3 landing, with the new record system. Great function. DLSS etc, no benefit for me I'm afraid, since i'm generally CPU bound, and have settings which give me 72Hz native, 99% of the time (4090 and I3700k).

I tested Anti-Aliasing on my 4090 in VR HP G2 and MSAA is the only one I found to Not turn the TV tower on the other side of the airfield so blurry you cant see the X bracing in the towers structure all the other types of Anti-Aliasing make it look like it is not rendering and is very blurry. Sharpening is giving me some strange effect and can even make the cockpit very blurry the effect is like a headshake odd movement that has a small amount of ghosting static effect. I didn't know it at the time to keep it at 0.5 or 0.6 so I will try it again. GOOD VIDEO Thank You

Great vid thanks

If you want your colors to pop a bit more, try Color Grade: Technicolor 3. Colors will look unrealistically bold (like a 1960s movie, hence the name), but you can then jack the Gamma up significantly without the color looking washed out. For me it seemed more like real life. Try it.

Jabbers back in DCS?!?

Great video Jabbers. Used Quest 2, Quest 3, and G2 headset in VR... .All looks like ass with DLSS/DLAA/FSR/NIS.... at least in VR.. It's all a process. Hopefully they stay engaged on improving it.

0:08 Sharpening 0.69. Nice! 1:18 I'm kinda glad they made spotting stuff easier, but this should be a scalabe option that can be force set by the server. 1:52 My eyes are crap, so it's probably fine XD 8:21 So SSS off. Looks weird anyways.

Jabbers have you noticed a strange camera jiggle and distortion close up on aircraft? I thought it was a graphical feature but when I F2 and zoom in it's really bad and it wasn't like that before the update. :( EDIT: Also F3 views the pan is not smooth anymore this is all without DLSS on I never needed them on my system before. EDIT 2: Fixed all issues I was having by turning OFF SSS. o7

Please do a VR recording, tried streaming with OBS but I can't figure out how to get a good capture of my screen. I am using Oculus for VR and the Oculus VR Mirror but the screen capture is not the right size and a lot of what is seen is cut off. Any advise would be helpful.

Thanks!

I feel dlss etc has definite ghosting & looks weird, also buildings are like toys from a distance, so i've gone back to msaax2 with 4.5 sharpening. Sss also when turning my head in vr, the shadows suddenly cover a huge area, so have that off. Idea is nice though. Absolutely love now the dust & grass effects with the Huey. Planes in front, like about 4 miles away seem to half disappear without shadows on in dlss etc. i9 13900kf, rtx 4090.

Have the same shadow bug. Had to turn off SSS

The community needed this one Jabs. Thx. o7

I agree with you,I have the same issues.

2D 3080 10GB, 1440P. Been running into the issue where if I spectate missiles or friendly planes, there is major stuttering or maybe ghosting problem. Even with DLSS off, the planes are crystal clear at a distance but start stuttering bad when I zoom into them and missiles still stutter.

seems like SSS in DLSS has a link to the players camera so that when you move it, it moves the shadows.

Was just testing out DLSS. I too have an Nvidia 3090, and boy howdy is the ghosting 🤢. Trying too midair refuel... it's like the Nazgûl are flying the tanker. 😂 Nope, no, nuh-uh.

The weird shadow covering the whole screen can be solved by setting the time of day to mid-day, sun directly overhead, not ideal but works.

SSS is a weird name for screen space shadows, as SSS is used industry wide for subsurface scattering. Either way, the main question for me is: does DLSS improve the antialiasing in VR? A temporal solution was long due, at least for me.

I have a NVIDA RTX 3090 and not able to turn DLSS on? I have changed to the (Open Beta), then launch from MT Preview, but still not able to view in my Oculus 3.

I have a 4090 setup, i find jets further out are pixelated what do you find te best setting for this?

All the knobs were ghosting for me yesterday in the F-18. I’m running a 4070 ti. Every knob twisted was ghosting

Looks like you put in A LOT of work into testing this. Thank you for your time and for this great video 🫡

Ever since the update I can’t see cannon tracers in any jet, any idea what’s going on there?

One problem you might be experiencing Jabbers is using reshade with 2.9. Have you tried the TEST without that mod installed?

From what I see on your video (didn't tried yet on vr) the ghosting you show on trees when landing is far less than ghosting when you don't have enough frames like 30ish fps and you look on the side

With the new update, I can’t get MT open beta to load in to my Q2 headset. It only shows up in oculus vr on steam

The issue at 8:15 looks like shadow acne. Seems like they're using the wrong positions to calculate the distance at some point so it thinks all that stuff should be in shadow.

That ghosting lookd really bad in ACC using VR. The problem is, if you want 90 fps stable, you have to use DLSS.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed the effect that I am getting, but when I have DLSS turned on, if you look at the beach lines where the water joins the beaches, there is some weird diagonal striping artifact happening. I have also noticed this on some terrain & clouds too.

Tried 2.9 in VR tonight and the ghosting was terrible…the lettering in the cockpit are unreadable now. This really sucks. Do you think they’ll fix it?

It would help if for comparison you shared your system config. I have the 5800X3D CPU, 3090 GPU, & Reverb G2 VR. I would like to see what setting I can improve.

Let me just butt in here and say that even without DLSS or DLAA, the Multithreaded version of DCS kicks ass. Nothing else they've ever done has produced such a huge increase in performance, even when using good but "stale" graphics cards such as my RTX 3070 and brand-new but older CPUs like my 5800X :) It's about time DCS ran the way it always should have, and we're almost there. Bring on the Vulkan API version!

I just got an rtx 4070 super, coming from gtx 1060, honestly ghosting is not s problem for me, I'm not saying it's not there, but having consistent 60 fps or even higher in 4k on high settings is completely bonkers to me, such a huge upgrade for me so I think it's fine

Hey Jabbers you can revert the dot change by editing one of the files in DCS. They mentioned it in their changelog. SSS is definitely the culprit for the moving shadows, and the really dramatic behavior at the end of your example happens to me in VR only whenever I look in the direction of the sun. Still not sure if I like it or not. Would be great as a scalable option via a slider like the sharpening option.

I have a 4090 & 7800x3d setup. New to pcs and dcs. I find that in vr with hp reverb g2 the cockpit buttons and lettering arent clear. Is there a way to clear these up considering the hp reverb g2 is meant to be a good clear 2160 per eye

Just a reminder on DLSS/DLAA motion blur -- these are an artifact of the temporal nature of DLSS/DLAA (uses info from past frames) -- so the blur artifacts are worse when your FPS are lower. So if the blur bugs you, make sure you go 'all the way' with your collective settings to get the framerate up (ideally to the native refresh rate of your VR display / monitor).

The only issues were mostly with the cpu overheating after adjusting some new features. Is it possible the SSS causes higher cpu usage, I'd have to monitor all threads with more testing.

I’ve found that DLSS makes everything ground levers, grass, tanks and everything great but there is more glitches in the sky… Pixled clouds and ghosting

I’ve tried DLSS (also have a 3090) and the ghosting on MFDS is terrible. Not worth the performance bump in my opinion (I get around 50fps on average in VR with most things set to high, so it’s not worth it.)

My biggest issue was severe screen tearing with trackIR that I never had before. I turned on vsync and its gone. Not sure if theres another way to eliminate it.

I have a 4090 but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I can’t change to DLAA or DLSS. On the drop down menu, the options aren’t available and I’m baffled. My nvidia drivers are updated as well.

Well it looks like the big 2.9 hype was a deflated patch

You're correct In VR it's strait up horrible I played 5 minutes with it & was like yep it"s like the rest of the garbage with A.I plugged into it.

A lot of the ghosting goes away if you just use DLAA without DLSS, but not all of it. Any other types of AA that actually get rid of jaggies make the cockpit blurry or even unreadable. that's with a 4070 and 27" 1440p monitor.

yup thats exactly the ghosting ive seen tonight

...and just for the record, DLSS kicks ass

Is there any way to disable those spotting dots? I have bad eyesight and hate anything like that which gives an artificial advantage.

Same issue with SSS and DLSS, sometimes I’ll see the gamma go bright then dark.

Have you tried updating DLSS to the newest DLL and using DLSSTweaker yet?

wye is this option not avelable for me ? i own a rtx 2070 ? :( i us the updated DCS

DLSS has different presets that give different results i wonder if someone tried them to lessen the ghosting issue. you can change it using the DLSS tweaks program

He said Sharper Image!

Great beard Great demo 4.5 stars

Didn't they only implement DLSS 1.0? So having a 30 or 40 series card wouldn't provide the benefits of DLSS 2.5 or 3.0 right?

Just downloaded DCS and started a training session, yet when loaded up, a hundred or so buildings and objects are constantly flickering on and off all over the screen, whats my problem?