WipeUout

If you are using a quest 3, then these setting are useless as they apply only for dynamic foveated rendering. You need to change settings manually in the settings.cfg file, see QVFR instruction for details and how-to. Is Quadviews box ticked on in DCS VR settings?

Yup, as long as you are using nvidia driver 572.xx. If you use previous drivers, then you need to copy the DLLs.

Thanks for the tip, was able to download it after first intsalling 1.36... 1.37 still underperforming significantly compared to using Mbucchia's implementation of OpenXR (PimaxXR 0.4.4). Other piece not performing as well is the quadviews implementation within PimaxPlay with very limited settings (quality, balanced, performance). Quadviews 1.1.3 from Mbucchia offers much more possibilities and performance. You can override PimaxPlay 1.37's OpenXR by installing PimaxXR 0.4.4 right after installing PimaxPlay, and then installing quadviews 1.1.3. And then follow instruction on how to setup a config file for Quadviews to tweek settings and get max performance.

If you use Nvidia driver 572.XX, there is no need to copy any dll to your DCS Bin/Bin-mt folders. Just turn on the three "override" switches using nvidia profile inspector in common section and select whatever preset you want there as well. null

Pimax Play 1.37 not available anywhere. Where did you get it? What are the release notes saying?

For me, using PimaxXR 0.4.4 along with Pimax Play 1.29 provides much better performance. On average in my test replay, I get 0.5ms less on GPU frametime, which is quite significant. Pimax Play with integrated support for OpenXR is not optimized as much as using PimaxXR 0.4.4.

You missed my point, I prefer to get a review from a DCS simmer rather than a general VR user. You can like or dislike the review but coming from someone that actually flies in DCS, it is more relevant to me. MRTV is sometimes useful but never as much as review from a community member.

Far and astigmatism (if you have any).

And more relevant coming from a fellow DCS sim user.

Monitoring GPU and CPU frametime may not always show stutters. I had instances where my frame times were well below the equivalent FPS threshold and still experienced stutters caused by bogged down single processor thread. I see same stutters also as you mention when starting/stopping the sim, when explosions occurs or even when messages are played, this is part of the performance baseline. As far as stutters, big or small, I think it is pretty much easy to spot and common understanding. The video is either fluid or not. The intensity, duration, frequency of the stutter can vary a lot but the fluidity of the video rendering is broken and easy to see. Stutters are caused either because you are pushing the hardware too much or because something is stealing CPU cycles from you.

Limiting your FPS to 90hz will cause stutters. The FPS, even when stable, will vary and sometimes go up to 91 FPS. If you limit your FPS within DCS settings, you should limit at 95 FPS.

What is your HMD? At what refresh rate are you running it?

This is a little confusing, what is the difference between: "ensure the operational status of our aircraft" and "maintaining the current usability" ?

**UPDATE** 8KX, 4090, i9-13900K 9800X3D, 64 96 GB RAM DCS MT Textures High/Terrain texture High DLAA + DLSS Performance Shadow low Water Med Clouds Ultra Keep off: Traffic, Heat blur, Lens flare, Secondary blur/shadows, SSAA, SSLR, SSAO, Aniso Filt., Cockpit Global Illumi., V-synch Clutter/Forest/Scenery all maxed out. Preload at max LOD at 0.5 Gamma 1.5 (To reduce haze, must be used in conjunction with max backlit in pimax client) Max refresh rate try to set just above your HMD refresh rate, not exactly the same as it will introduce stutters. For 90hz set at 95 FPS, for 75 set at 80 FPS. PD =1.0 Pimax Client Refresh 90hz Backlit 100% FOV Normal Render Quality 1.0 FFR off OpenXR Turbo mode on PimaxXR Enable quadviews Do not enable turbo mode as this will disable frametime reporting in OpenXR which is very usefull to check performance. If you want to use turbo mode, use it in OpenXR instead. Quadview I use the following config file: _________________ # These settings are for all headsets and applications smoothen_focus_view_edges=0.3 sharpen_focus_view=0.2 [app:DCS] # The settings are specific to the app "DCS World". turbo_mode=0 peripheral_multiplier=0.3 focus_multiplier=1.6 horizontal_fixed_section=0.45 vertical_fixed_section=0.35 _______________ Process Lasso Not required anymore in Win 11 24H2 with HAGS enabled. Additional tips and notes: Setup two saved settings in DCS: "Setting 1" for low demand maps, "Setting 2" for high demand maps. Acceptable AA option varies quite a lot from person to person. For me, using DLAA/DLSS combination is great and I do not mind the small smearing. Shadows can be improved a lot with mod "https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3329503/". Quadviews high res box (40% x 30%) may seems small but with the wide FOV of the 8KX, this will give you a reasonable size with tremendous uplift in performance, over 30% in my case! In VR, clouds are a significant performance hit and horrible at any setting except ultra setting. If you play a mission that has lots of clouds, you must keep ultra setting and compromise elsewhere such as the "fixed_multiplier" down to 1.4 in quadviews, or lower HMD refresh rate. You always have the option to lower the HMD refresh rate to 75hz or 60hz and keep same settings on any scenario but for me, 75hz and 60hz cause some flickering. With these settings, you should get a super smooth experience with excellent clarity. If not, then your windows/BIOS/NVCP maybe the issue. A windows fresh install, though requiring lots of work, can cure a lot of performance problems. If you use 4 x memory sticks on an MSI mobo, make sure your BIOS is up to date as it can cause crashes because of the stress imposed by DCS on the memory controller. Did not try overclocking with the 9800X3D yet. Overclocking your GPU, even so lightly, can also introduce stutters.

Entirely possible. As an example when I play the same mission on my sim rig vs. playing from my DCS server on my home network, the CPU shows lower frametime as the burden is taken in part by the server's CPU. In general, stutters appear when frametimes (GPU or CPU) come close or exceed 11 ms (for 90hz) but every time I had stutters with frametimes well below 10ms, it was caused by something else such as something running in the background or another setting in windows/BIOS/NVIDIA/etc. I do think that multithreading can be improved but there might be limitations because of the (old) DCS rendering engine not fully taking advantage of multi-core processors. This might change when ED transit to vulkan. BTW, I tried the same mission, following the as much as possible same path you used in your video and did not experienced any stutters. My max CPU frametime went to 7.6 ms and my GPU always stayed under 10 ms, I use OXRTK to track metrics. My DCS settings are quite different though, see below. My rendering pixel count (from QVFR log) is down to 11 301 800 from 23 611 520 and my HMD refresh rate is at 90hz.

I did a complete windows install from scratch at least four times in the past five years and every time, performance improved. No matter how careful you are with it, it will degrade over time. The last two installs I did was following F33THY's recipe (https://github.com/fr33thyfr33thy) which is very good for ensuring that win 11 will have minimal latency and max FPS. As far as DCS, you will need to re-install the sim completely but you can backup your Username\Saved Games\DCS\ folder in order to not lose all your settings and missions. Dual boot does not mean that windows registry is shared, you need to re-install everything. Windows 11 24H2, despite for some issues that are very specific, is so far the best windows I have experienced performance wise. That is for my setup of course (i9). I think it is a good approach to go dual boot and compare performance, as long as you have the drive space.

In general, QVFR will improve vastly the performance but in DCS, it is always a challenge to balance eye candy and performance. If you see stutters while looking to the sides, this may be normal as it is more demanding graphically to render side views than front view. Have you tried to lower your setting and see if the stutters are still there? If so, then it is a performance issue and you need to tone down some settings. If not, then there is something running in the background stealing CPU cycles from you. You need to look at what is running while playing and investigate a bit.

Sorry it didn't work for your setup, probably something in PimaxPlay specifically for the Crystal came post 1.29 and causing degraded performance. Yes, too many hardware/software configurations plus too many settings plus personal preferences for an infinite number of possibilities.

Was not aware of this, so I decided to give a go to PimaxPlay 1.36 and the results are very bad. I used same settings as before with quadviews disabled in PimaxPlay to ensure mbuccia's quadviews api layer is running and I am losing 14.8% performance when using Pimax's integrated OpenXR runtime compared to mbuccia's PimaxXR standalone runtime implementation. Using pimax integrated quadviews is even worse losing 15.2% at "performance" setting. This is like dropping to 4080 performance with my very expensive 4090. My average GPU frametime went up by 1.34 ms ! If you can run PimaxPlay 1.29 with no big problem, then stick to it and continue to use mbuccia's runtime instead.

Yes, and there should be courses on that!! Happy to hear it's better now. Just for the sake of it, I tried again with pimaxplay 1.36 and re-installed QVFR 1.1.3 after it to ensure I can tweak settings, the results are so bad, losing 15% performance!! PimaxPlay 1.29 with PimaxXR is by far the best solution.

Latest PimaxPlay does not support config file for QVFR. QV Companion is just an app to change settings in the setting.cfg without having to edit the actual file. I believe that if you follow this recipe, you will have very good performance: 1. Uninstall PimaxPlay if it is not 1.29 2. Install PimaxPlay 1.29 (https://dlappstore.pimax.com/release/play/PimaxPlaySetup_Release_toC_V1.29.01.01.07_202408231752.exe) 3. Install PimaxXR (https://github.com/mbucchia/Pimax-OpenXR/wiki), run the app and ensure the PimaxXR is checked on top and Enable Quadviews also. 4. Install QuadViews (https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki) 5. Run DCS once to generate a Quadviews log file 6. Log file and config file are in same folder C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Local\Quad-Views-Foveated 7. Use the settings files I gave you above, copy it there and edit the file to change the HMD name to what is in the log file in line "Using OpenXR system: Pimax Vision 8K X" 8. Start DCS and make sure in VR setting that Quadviews is enabled. If this does not provide good performance, then there is something else in other settings or DCS.

Another cause of stutter that I experienced was very difficult to pinpoint as it would not happen all the time on all maps: Too much overclocking on the GPU. Although I was very careful in setting the overclock, way below when I would see artifacts or crash, it may cause problems anyway. Turns out I only had 150mhz overclocking but it did cause stutters at time. As soon as I got rid of it, butter smooth again. If you are overclocking your GPU, even so lightly, test without it and validate it is not causing stutters.

One side of the story only. What about CPU core/thread utilization? DCS multithread uses several core but it is not the only software running, you have to look at each core utilization a see if some have high usage and this can be the cause of stutters even if overall CPU usage is well below 100%. If DCS is asking unlimited FPS to the CPU, the CPU will crank as much as possible. Limiting FPS in DCS will help to maintain some headroom for when you fly over cities using QVFR for example, or when you are near lots of high details units.

OXRTK works with Quadviews, OXRTK is not supported anymore but still very usefull for many settings and objective measurement of performance in VR.

Before the GPU processes the frame it has been prepared by the CPU. Having less frame to process unload the CPU as well, and if the CPU rendering thread is overwhelmed, then it will make a difference. Generating an image is team work involving the CPU, the memory controller and the GPU!