Air Combat Group

Wise ACG members,

I'd like to record my sorties during Sunday missions to create content and review my performance but when I record in-game (ctrl+R - with or without TacGrab) my game freezes. FPS don't drop that much (still averaging 110 fps) but every 2/3 seconds the game briefly freezes. The strange thing is that it's not lagging like when performance doesn't keep up with requirements, it's really regular, regardless of the number of aircraft in the sky. Obviously, this makes the game unplayable.

I'd like to know whether it's my hardware that's not good enough, and therefore what I need to upgrade?
Or is it something else that's causing this lag?

My setup:
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 Wraith Stealth Edition - 3,6/4,2 GHz
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X - 8Go VRAM
RAM: DDR4 - 48Go (2x16Go + 2x 8Go) - 3000MHz
SSD: Crucial P2 Nvme M.2 - 1 To
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK II

I'm not overclocking any element.

Best regards,
Valentin "Whovy"

I don't think it should be a hardware issue.

I run a Rog Strix gtx 1080 with an I5 8600k (oc'd to 5.0ghz)and only 32 GB of 3200 MHz ram and I don't generally get stuttering when recording.

I use Tac grab every mission and sometimes Nvidia shadow play as well.

Just to be 100% sure, have you unticked "Enable record pulsing?" on TacGrab

Hey Steel, yes I did.

Well it’s quite weird, I don’t find any similar experience on Google. Maybe it’s a conflict between my Tobii Eyetracker/FacetracknoIR and the recording system. I’m really clueless.

Whovy what do you use to record your mission?

If shadow play then make sure in settings you are not recording high resolution like 4k keep it to 1080p.

I use the in-game recording system. I finally decided to reinstall the game. It seems to have worked halfway as now, most of the time, I can record properly. Strangely on Combat Box, one time it worked perfectly with at least 10 planes around and another time it still lagged with only 2 planes ... I'm waiting to test it during tonight's campaign to see if it can at least be stable during missions.

I've also cleaned my PC (hardware) and the thermal paste on my CPU is getting really dry + my fan is really not efficient. I've just ordered a new one which is said to be very efficient. Maybe my CPU was capping my recording performance, we'll see.

Well, after trying everything I do think that I need a global update to tackle this problem and prepare to join VR later in the year.

Everything I tried didn’t worked:
-add RAM
- upgrade fans to help cool the components
- reinstall the game several times
- adjust all settings
- update all drivers
- check if the tracking softwares were the pb
- using external recording softwares such as OBS (recordings are always low quality and low fps on IL2)

Plus, now I’m experiencing lag when playing.

So, I did buy a 6800XT to upgrade my 1080 and will soon upgrade my motherboard from B450 to B550 + CPU Ryzen 5 3600 to Ryzen 9 5900x

It is quite an investment but prices are quite low these days compared to last year and I really need a more powerful setup if I want to continue enjoying flying on IL2.

Time to eat potatoes!