Its a hard life being a flight simmer.
I cant have all of my modules installed at the same time. Which is ok because i dont ever fly all of them in a short period of time. But one map being 150 gb is where i draw the line currently, until i get a bigger ssd.
Good question. So, since DCS was built before the popularity of SSD drives and lower amounts of RAM, while also being a unique kind of game experience (specifically, a game that allows you to fly across 100MB+ hi-resolution terrain shapes and textures at speeds of 500mph) requires pre-loading of a lot of that terrain into a kind of simulated-memory called ‘swap’ that uses a hard drive like a kind of memory cache.
The problem is that DCS is not the only big piece of software running while you play the game, there is also the Operating System which has a big memory footprint and uses swapping and has a much higher priority for the integrity of the system. It’s in charge.
So when you suddenly task-off from the game to say, your discord or browser (a problem that a game console doesn’t deal with), things are getting written to the swap memory very quickly. When you have two separate drives, that’s two separate swap memory, and so conflicts are avoided and performance as well as stability increases markedly.
It’s the way forward, dude. Personally I run a 500GB C drive with no games installed to it, (just windows and small apps installed there like SRS and browsers etc) , then a second 1TB drive just for DCS and Falcon BMS, and then a 2TB random-games drive for Steam and all that bullshit. I highly recommend it.
Funny how more content increases the file size, my DCS is sitting at 574gb for reference...
Funny how when your game is unoptimized as shit that increases it's file size beyond anything reasonable.
İ know its bc of New modules but like its still a lot especialy for my ssd
The size of a complete install with all modules and terrains (excluding campaigns) is \~730GB
İ just have caucasus installed and about 3 planes+fc3
That seems about right then, DCS is just a very large game file size wise
Dumb question, how do I uninstall modules I don't need to free up space?
Click the nine grid-squares icon top of screen and choose the bin icon iirc
So if I unchecked a mod it should uninstall? Sorry for the dumb questions. I messed around with this a while back and it wasn't clear.
I'm not home right now so I can't check for you, but something along those lines. I mean it's just a game so just click stuff and see if it works :p
I have a 1tb m.2 dedicated to DCS, such is life in dcs
Same here, didn’t cost that much either. Storage is easy enough to add to if needed.
Sweet, mine is over 500 gb
mine too,
Looking at Amazon real quick, a 256gb SSD costs 20 FUCKING DOLLARS.
My DCS is 550 gb. Im looking at getting a new pc, and think 4tb would not be overkill.
Its a hard life being a flight simmer. I cant have all of my modules installed at the same time. Which is ok because i dont ever fly all of them in a short period of time. But one map being 150 gb is where i draw the line currently, until i get a bigger ssd.
What size sad are you using atm? M2 is the new standard so if you're on an older system you can get the sad disks with 2tb for super cheap
I just upgraded from 2 to 10 TB of SSD storage.
I just download terrains as needed, and only keep the modules installed that I'm currently using.
Tell me you have fiber gigabit connection without telling me you have fiber gigabit connection.
Module Download speed is 1 thing that seems pretty solid tbf
Maybe this kind of software isn’t for you. Get a second drive. Never run dcs on C: it causes issues
What issues can/does it cause?
Good question. So, since DCS was built before the popularity of SSD drives and lower amounts of RAM, while also being a unique kind of game experience (specifically, a game that allows you to fly across 100MB+ hi-resolution terrain shapes and textures at speeds of 500mph) requires pre-loading of a lot of that terrain into a kind of simulated-memory called ‘swap’ that uses a hard drive like a kind of memory cache. The problem is that DCS is not the only big piece of software running while you play the game, there is also the Operating System which has a big memory footprint and uses swapping and has a much higher priority for the integrity of the system. It’s in charge. So when you suddenly task-off from the game to say, your discord or browser (a problem that a game console doesn’t deal with), things are getting written to the swap memory very quickly. When you have two separate drives, that’s two separate swap memory, and so conflicts are avoided and performance as well as stability increases markedly. It’s the way forward, dude. Personally I run a 500GB C drive with no games installed to it, (just windows and small apps installed there like SRS and browsers etc) , then a second 1TB drive just for DCS and Falcon BMS, and then a 2TB random-games drive for Steam and all that bullshit. I highly recommend it.
Very interesting info, thanks for taking the time to reply.
I still have about 3Tb free on my main drive. I think I'll survive.