WipeUout

Interesting question. I tested both DCS PD and OXRTK at the exact same super sampling value and they are both performing the same, PD=1.1 in DCS and 10% more resolution in x and y values in OXRTK with a result of average 9.14ms and 9.16ms respectively in GPU frametime in my test track. The only difference is the granularity that OXRTK offers. In DCS with the PD, you are limited to 10% increase in each axis as opposed to OXRTK where you can increase by one pixel at the time. Much more precise but also much more time consuming finding the sweet spot.

First thing is to manage your expectations. VR is giving up quality of visual to get a more immersive experience. You will be in the sim instead of looking at the sim but will lower quality visuals. Remember that. Get the most powerful GPU you can afford, this is critical and more important than getting the most powerful CPU. Playing DCS in MT (Multi-threading) does not require the top CPU. Your graphics card will be the bottleneck of your system in VR. You have a good VR Headset with good resolution but there are a lot of pixels to render and it take a lot of power to run and maintain high FPS. Compromise on RAM (32 vs 64), same for CPU and expensive overclocking mobos. Get a 4080 or 4090 if you can.

Working fine here. Have you try a slow repair? Sounds like you have corrupted install... do you use any F-14 mods? Sometime not disabling the mod before an update can cause this sort of issue.

One thing you may try is to assign priority interrupt for your graphic card. Run the attached file as administrator, locate your GPU in the list, click on the msi box to so it turns blue, click apply and re-boot your rig. After boot, run again and check that there is a dash next to the irq number to ensure msi is activated. In some cases this has improved micro-stuttering where there is competing priority between sub-system trying to get the CPU's attention. Msi Mode.exe

Your ideal VR solution will be personal and tailored to what you can afford. There is no standard here and if I can give you only one piece of advice : try it before if you can! As I wrote a few times before, the VR proposition is to sacrifice quality of visuals for immersion. In VR you are not looking at the simulation anymore, you are in the simulation. I will try to give you my take (very biased) on the features you mentioned in your title: Refresh rate: There are HMDs out there that have all kind of refresh rates up to 180hz with the pimax 5k super (possible but with lowest FOV setting only). Some people can sim at 60hz, most prefer to have 90hz which is the sweet spot I would ague. Having the ability to switch refresh rate is interesting to allow different settings depending on the map you use for example. With lower refresh rate you can have more details or resolution or tackle busy scenarios. A setting that is used in VR to cope with low FPS is re-projection. This is great to ensure a smooth video but at the expense of artefacts and ghosting, which is not tolerable for everyone. If you can try it before hand, it will be an important factor in your decision. FOV: Here the Pimax 8k and 5k offer the widest. For my personal taste, FOV is a critical element of the immersion experience. I've tried the Index, Oculus 2, Reverb G1 and G2 and Varjo and would never switch to anything on the market now for my 8kX. Nevertheless, a lower FOV will still give you a huge difference in immersion over 2D flying, and is also less demanding on your hardware. Tracking: There are basically two possibilities here, inside or outside tracking. In other words, tracking performed internally by the HMD or through external means such as the ''lighthouse''. The most accurate and stable tracking way is the outside but it cost more as you need extra hardware (1 or 2 lighthouses). that is not to say the inside tracking can't be good, there are HMD that are pretty good at this also. good luck!

Sounds like a pretty good fix, are you on steam or standalone? Can you expand about "just clearing the DCS game folder"? i.e. delete the folder directly or do uninstall through windows settings?

Absolute reverse experience. I have been steadily keeping track of performance since 2.7 and the sim has been getting better and better even though new stuff/features has been added. We did have a drop with shadows at one point but prerformance now is better. I would agree with most here as to your issue is not the sim but settings...

3D will look as good as 2D the day we have: -HMD that match or surpases the humain eye equivalent PPD which I read somewhere is around 60-70 PPD. -Hardware that can render the huge amount of pixels required to get 60-70 PPD at a decent level of details and FPS rate. Until then, 3D will always look less detailed than 2D. Nevertheless, the VR proposition today is to trade quality of visuals for a higher level immersion and much more realistic experience.

I considered going for it and even shelled the 30 bucks. I changed my mind and I will not get it. Based on the reviews out there, I think that the crystal is a transitional HMD and not offering enough from what I can do with my 8kX, the tradeoffs would simply be too much. I had a hard look at the quest pro also, it is a slick HMD which sports DFR and local diming also with a much more mature design. Going from the Quest Pro to Crystal will bring you basically more resolution, a tad more FOV but a the expense of performance, then you will have to scale down settings and quality to achieve a decent FPS rate. I don't think it is worth it. For me, I will wait and upgrade my GPU instead as I am still not exploiting the full potential of my 8kX with present hardware.

Sorry to hear that. Your experience, not mine. Only issue was with my 8k+ cable that was replace fairly quickly. the 8kx has been flawless but it sure needs a lot of tweeking and a beasty rig to get the best out of it.

I just can't believe he said it's a game

Yes, I agree. Barrel distortion correction can be very confusing and should not be the focus as it is not a variable in the user-controlled performance equation. Rendering resolution relative to the physical HMD resolution is the key element to understand and where the very bulk of the GPU's work is done.

Smart smoothing not the same as compulsive smoothing. Smart smoothing can only be enabled in Pimax client and does not work very well as transition between full and 1/2 FPS causes stutters. Did you try to enable a game specific profile and uncheck the smart smoothing box there?

My understanding is that it is not super-sampling but barrel distortion correction which is specific to each lenses and HMD combination. Super-sampling means rendering at a higher resolution and this is not the case with barrel distortion correction as the HMD stretches the image by using shaders, which is much less demanding from the GPU. My 8kX has a factor of 1.9 (190%) when I use the full 160 degree wide FOV. Good thing shaders do that job, else my FPS in VR would be less that 1/4 of what it is in 2D. As for the Pimax way to advertise resolution, not very honest indeed... nevertheless, I enjoy my 8kX, it is simply stunning to sim with this wide FOV. If PimaxXR reports that resolution, it could mean that you are Supersampling a lot your image. I doubt very much that the Crystal has a barrel distortion correction ratio of 21.99/8.3= 265%. You are overriding the resolution in your game/render quality setting in Pimax client, probably set to "maximum" or "customize" with a value higher than 1.

Use the latest PimaxXR (ver 0.4.0), there is an option to switch compulsive smoothing on/off when you open the app. null

I guess you are using DCS-ST with SteamVR? If not, then Reshade will not work with OpenXR, it is not compatible.

If you are using DCS-MT, it does not require opencomposite anymore since DCS has native OpenXR support. Opencomposite also reduces FPS performance significantly. Have a look at the first two posts here:

After second thought, it makes more sense. I am using wide FOV (160 degrees H) and it would take a much more than 30% bigger image to match the projected image through the lens. Good thing that this operation to apply barrel distortion correction is done by shaders, rendering an image at 190% would seriously reduce the FPS to less than 25% of what it is in 2D.

I don't understand why the PimaxXR reported resolution is lower than my native? I am at "1" everywhere (Pimax client =1, OXRTK no override, DCS PD=1) I have a PimaxXR reported resolution of 5012x3160 (15.8 MP) which is a bit lower than the physical resolution of the 8kX 4k panels x 2 at 7680x2160 (16.6 MP). Unless the reported resolution is per eye? This would mean that the upscaled "for barrel distortion correction" is 190%?

Getting the same problem with my 8kX. Smart Smoothing has never been an option, it is not good and the transitions are just full of stutter, better off without it. Unfortunalely compulsive smoothing option has been removed from Pimax client but if you use PimaxXR 0.4.0, you can switch it on there. I did not try it but it was working very good at 1/2 back then. Pimax FFR does not work with the OpenXR runtime, it will only run with SteamVR. You can use the FFR in OXRTK instead. I have a PimaxXR reported resolution of 5012x3160 (15.8 MP) which is a bit lower than the physical resolution of the 4k panels x 2 at 7680x2160 (16.6 MP). Not sure what this number stands for. Are you super sampling some where?

Did the test and here are my results with OXRTK recording feature: DCS Setting: preset VR, PD=1.1 OXRTK: CAS 100%, FFR performance preset Average FPS : 90.48 -> This is does not translate the accurate GPU load as the HMD refresh rate is at 90hz. The reported FPS will stay at 90+/-1 FPS even if your frame time is less than 11 ms. What 90.48 just means is that my GPU has "headroom" and it can pump those frames faster than 90 FPS. Lowest 86 FPS, max 91 FPS. Average CPU Frame time (app + rdr): 4.27 ms -> this equates to a CPU average capability of 234 FPS. In other word, my CPU has lots of headroom as it can pump up to 234 FPS, if the GPU can swallow it... which is not entirely true as it is multithreading and the graphic pipeline can't use all threads. Let's just say that the CPU is not a bottleneck here. Average GPU Frame time : 8.76 ms -> this equates to a GPU average capability of 114.2 FPS. This translates in what is the real average FPS that the GPU can pump. Looking at your data you have a running test time of 108.641 seconds and it is a bit longer than the actual track, which last 106 seconds. This means that you are capturing performance outside the track run and thus your real performance might be better or worse depending on what is going on during those extra 2.6 seconds. I don't know about MSI afterburner to monitor but I trust OXRTK which is a VR application. Using OXRTK recording feature will generate a csv file that can be use to calculate your averages, you just need an spreadsheet program. Since I start the recording a bit before I press "FLY" (to open OXRTK menu, toggle recording on), and stops a bit after the end of the track (open OXRTK menu, toggle recording off...), I remove a few seconds (lines) in the csv file at the start and at the end to make sure I only use 106 seconds of data. The recorded data outside the track run is easy to spot. Rigor in testing is crucial to ensure meaningful and accurate results, it's my engineering background probably... Now analyzing your results and taking into account those extra seconds, you definitely have lower performance than expected. You system should be 20-30% faster than mine (GPU wise). You should get an average GPU frame time between 6.8ms and 7.3ms. I also noted that you wrote about the infamous "Tacview" which is know to slow down the sim considerably in some cases. I personally uninstalled it 2 years ago, you might want to double check this. Re-installing windows might help a lot. If you go this route, have a look at this before to ensure a "fully optimized for game" Win 11 installation:

I'll do a ''default DCS VR settings'' test once back home later and post results. It will be interestiing to compare since we have the same pixel count... My 4080 results should be lower than your 4090's... Do you have your GPU frametime results? Sometime the FPS does not give the real picture as far as GPU usage.

Syria is a good test for a high end setup. For me it is strictly and always the same track in Caucasus with the FA-18 (attached). It is time consuming enough to have to optimize my system, one track file is enough. I keep my results in an excel file and have over 250 recorded test results since OB 2.7.9 only, and probably twice that which did not make it in the spreadsheet. Too much testing, not enough flying! No eye tracking with the 8kX, I am limited to fixed foveated rendering (FFR) but it is nonetheless a huge gain. As for my settings: DCS. I use low/med textures whenever on the Syria/Mariana/Falkland's maps and high/high on Caucasus/NTTR/Persian Gulf. I use med water, flat or low shadows and low clouds everything else is off. I crank up the pixel density to 1.1 to help a bit more with aliasing since I don't use MSAA and my HMD output is very clear. 21% increase in resolution (PD=1.1) is not as good as MSAA 2X but much less taxing on the GPU. I lower the gamma to 1.1 on day mission to eliminate as much as possible the haze but to compensate, my backlit and brightness is cranked up quite a bit in Pimax client. Pimax client. Everything at normal except the brightness as stated above. I use 90hz refresh rate on less demanding maps and 75hz on the demanding ones. No smart smoothing, no FRR either as it does not work with OpenXR, only with SteamVR. Thank god we have FFR in OXRTK! OXRTK. I use CAS 100% to have the crispest possible image and of course FFR at performance setting. A bit of brightness and that is pretty much it. For me the most important is avoid stutters and ghosting which is killing my immersion, the main reason why I sim in VR. I wish my rig could sustain 90hz in all scenario but I guess I would need a 4090 (or even more) for that, maybe later next year. I posted that before but I feel that I am not exploiting the full potential of the 8kX with the present hardware capabilities on the market. For now, I don't think I will get another HMD soon, a new GPU will come before that. performance track Caucasus F-18.trk

If you are testing with the Mariana map, it is very difficult to achieve good FPS. My test track is using the FA-18 on the Caucasus map, which is about the "average demanding" map. The results are quite different when on South-America for example, I have to drop my refresh rate to 75hz. I do not use MSAA anymore as the perfect cure to aliasing is high resolution. Aliasing (for me) is usually bad on the ground but very tolerable once airborne and this is with the 25PPD of the pimax 8kX. The Crystal has 35PPD which is much better and should have very little aliasing. Of course, personal preference and tolerance level can vary a lot between individuals.

Dismissing Pimax from 2018 hardware! What about the Crystal or the 8kX? considering that he is making this statement from a DCS sim perspective!! No doubt that the Quest pro is a very good HMD but not everyone want to fly with the FOV of a pair of binos... When you state that this HMD is the best, you need to consider the whole crowd.