WipeUout

Since your refresh rate is set at 60hz, your FPS will never exceed 60. When you see "CPU Bound" in the DCS FPS counter it can be missleading and not necessarely mean your CPU is not keeping up. You need to use OXRTK FPS counter and see what is the reported frametime for your GPU and CPU. If the frame time exceed 16.67ms then the system component (CPU or GPU) exceeding this value is limiting factor, or the bottleneck in your system. At that point you have two options: Upgrade Hardware or Lower Settings. If any of the two components seldomly exceed the 16.67 threshold, then you are in a good place. If you are using the single thread version of DCS, then you could experience CPU bottleneck more easily. Better to use Multi-Thread to split the load on the CPU between several cores.

Install process lasso and you will see all programs and process that are using your CPU during your sim session. (https://bitsum.com/?inproduct)

Depending on the severity of the stutter you are experiencing. Lock Half frame rate from PimaxPlay does not work with the 8kx, I have to set 45 FPS cap in DCS settings. It is ok but not ideal. If you have GPU frametimes over 20ms, then it is much better than a stuttery experience at 90hz with FPS jumping up and down well below the target 90FPS. If you can tolerate ghosting, then you are better off with smart smoothing (Pimax "reprojection" equivalent). Below is a graph I did to explain what we try to achieve by tweeking settings with some explanations: Analyzing your frame times for both CPU and GPU for a specific level of details/quality will help you see if the CPU is the bottleneck. When setting graphics quality level, we all try to stay within an acceptable framerate for most of the time. In order to achieve this, we set things up in order to have the CPU frametime average at a certain level that will be equal or bellow what it takes to generate the target FPS. The GPU generate frames from data provided by your CPU. Ideally, you need the CPU frametime to be the same or lower than the GPU frametime in order to fully use the potential of your GPU. In this situation, you are GPU limited and it is what most of us experience in VR as it is very demanding to pump out all those pixels in such large amount. We tweak settings for countless hours in order to be in this situation where our GPU is being used to the maximum. At one point, you may increase the performance of your CPU by overclocking or upgrading but eventually, it is the GPU that will not keep up. At that point, not matter how low your CPU frame time is, the average FPS will not change much. If you experience very high peaks in your CPU frametime, then it might be helpful to consider an upgrade but It will not increase your GPU`s performance. It might give you a more stable framerate though. You have to analyze what is your particular situation by monitoring your CPU and GPU frametime. OpenXR toolkit (or fpsVR if using SteamVR) is a great tool for this. Understanding where your bottleneck is, will guide you as to where to tweek or adjust settings. Detailed framerate datad displayed by DCS can also help understand which setting or aspect of a particular mission is consuming too much CPU resources.

High refresh rate is useless unless your GPU can keep up. If not keeping up then you get stutters. Much better to select a refresh rate you can sustain by keeping your FPS matching and still have a bit of headroom. Why not set refresh at 90 hz and set "lock to half frame rate", this will provide a smoother experience. If you have a crystal and do not use the DFR, you are missing a good performance increase! If you are using sharpening in QVFR, using CAS in OXRTK is useless and just takes a bit of performance away. Only sharpening in QVFR, not the other way around. Also consider using QVRF to increase your resolution instead of using Pimax Play, you will get better performance and even can increase resolution higher in the focus area. Back to the subject, the idea is good but there are so many variations and hardware combinations, add to that all the different modules and terrains. Neverthelss, I am willing to participate. I already did a bit in the Pimax section : 8KX, 4090, i9-13900K, 64GB RAM DCS MT Textures High/Terrain texture High for Caucasus, Nevada and Middle-east Textures High/Terrain Low for other maps DLAA + DLSS Performance Shadow low or med for Caucasus, Nevada and Middle-east, else flat Water Med Clouds Ultra for Caucasus, Nevada and Middle-east, else standard. Keep off: Traffic, Heat blur, Lens flare, Secondary blur/shadows, SSAA, SSLR, SSAO, Aniso Filt., Cockpit Global Illumi., V-synch Forest visibility 100%, detail factor at 1.0 in Caucasus, Nevada and Middle-east, else 0.1 Scenery detail at 1 in Caucasus, Nevada and Middle-east, else 0.5 Preload at max LOD keep at 1 Gamma 1.3 (To reduce haze, must be used in conjunction with max backlit in pimax client) but for night mission, crank up. PD =1.0 Pimax Client Refresh 90hz Backlit 100% FOV Normal Render Quality 1.0 FFR off OpenXR Everything at off/default PimaxXR Enable quadviews Quadview I use the following config file: # These settings are for all headsets and applications smoothen_focus_view_edges=0.2 sharpen_focus_view=0.0 Turbo_mode=0 [Pimax Vision 8K X] # These settings are specific to Pimax 8K X devices. peripheral_multiplier=0.3 focus_multiplier=1.8 horizontal_focus_section=0.20 vertical_focus_section=0.25 Process Lasso For DCS, only use P-Cores + High priority class Pi_server, High priority class 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 (20% x 25%) may seems small but with the wide FOV of the 8KX, this will give you a resonable size with tremendous uplift in performance. In VR, clouds are a significant performance hit and horrible at any setting except tolerable at ultra setting. If you play a mission that has lots of clouds, you must keep ultra setting compromise elsewhere such as the "focus_multiplier" down to 1.4. in quadviews or lower HMD refresh rate. You always have to 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 sometimes. 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. Keep overclocking low, the i9 13th gen will not be the bottleneck in your system.

I used HWiNFO64, very good application to monitor system. It's free on top of it! (https://www.hwinfo.com/). To flash your firmware, got in your pimax client install directory in C:\Program Files\Pimax\Runtime, find and run dfu.exe. BTW, my blackouts came back and still haven't find what is causing it. I did find a way to get rid of it for a while by switching to upscale mode and back to native, then I have about 2-3 hours free of blackouts but it comes back eventually.

This is called banding. Try playing with your Gamma setting within DCS to find a sweet spot. I will not go away completely unfortunaltely. For me it is worst in low light or night missions.

Same issue, short and long distance plus astigmatism. I used to sim with my myopic and astigmatism correclted glasses, not short or pregressive, and thought it was fine. Then I got a pair of VR rock and the imporvement was significant both for comfort and sharpness. My HMD is pretty big and with a 15mm foam there is sufficient space for glasses but with the VR Rock it is so much more comfortable on long sessions. VR Rock was a good 130 bucks investment for me.

You should be using OpenXR instead of SteamVR but you will need to replace and possibly add a few things. First, you need to add OpenXR compatibility by using PimaxXR (https://github.com/mbucchia/Pimax-OpenXR/wiki). Next you should use OpenXRtoolkit, OXRTK for short, as it has plenty of features to enhance performance. Of note, Foveated rendering will not work from Pitool settings when using OpenXR but with OXRTK, you have that option and it works good. (https://mbucchia.github.io/OpenXR-Toolkit/) For even better Foveated rendering performance, you can also use Quad Views rendering (https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki) instead of the OXRTK implementation. Quad views runs in the background along side to OXRTK. Read and follow cerfully all instructions and for settings, you can have a look at the Pimax section in the top of VR Forum for tips and recomended settings.

Finaly found the issue after noticing PCIe bus errors poping out. After geting some help from HWiNFO64, found out that the GPU was causing the bus errors. Truns out the card was ok but my riser cable was the issue. After plugging the GPU directly in the PCIe slot, no error anymore and no blackout in the 8KX, riser cable was damage.

After about 4-5 hours of sim, back to same problem with random blackouts. I will revert to 75hz and raise another ticket I guess.

I did test with an extra cable from my 5K Super to no different result. I installed the debug version, created a log and Raised a ticket. In less than 24hrs I received another firmware to flash. So far so good, 90hz is working fine and blackout free. Will test for a few more days...

A day later the issue was back Can't pinpoint the cause, might be a cable issue as suggested. Today it is working fine, plugged the two USB cables in my USB 3.2 Gen 2 sockets, might be a solution. Man, this is killing me!!! If it comes back, I will raise a support ticket.

I think I found the solution. Having the blackouts only at 90hz got me thinking it was somehow related to the increase demand to render at the refresh rate. My GPU can pump the frames pretty good and after monitoring power drainage from the GPU, it was still well below max capacity. Next was the HMD, could it be that it did not have enough juice? I then installed a powered USB 3.0 hub and connected the HMD USB 3.0 cable to it and Eureka! No more blackout! Played for several hours and no issues at all I can't say if it is my mobo that is not supplying enough to the HMD through its USB ports or the HMD having some losses because of a bad cable or deteriorating component but the problem went away.

Well that is reassuring! Thanks for the details. I might seriously consider going for a crystal light

Yeah great, but this is until some update screws PimaxXR since it is not supported anymore by @mbucchia... Pimax needs to support OpenXR natively without the need for this PimaxXR runtine from a third party. @mbucchia created this workaround for free and updated it 15 times, but not anymore. Feels like we have a Damocles sword over every DCS Pimax users.

I have an extra cable and it does not go away. The issue is only with the 90hz refresh rate, everything fine using 75hz or 60hz, no blackout whasoever.

SteamVR is not used. PimaxXR is used instead which is an extra piece of software needed to avoid the ineficient SteamVR.

No change with the provided firmware, still having the blackouts. Now changing refresh rate and back to 90hz does not fix the issue anymore. Any idea?

I already have the 2.1.255.299 firware version. I will flash anyway it with the file you posted and see if it changes anything. Thanks for the support!

Hopefully Pimax will make it work better and also with OpenXR runtime. The present Pimax implementation of FFR through their software only works with SteamVR on my 8KX, impossible to make it work using OpenXR as a runtime.

FFR also provides huge performance boost, not the OpenXR Toolkit FFR but the Quadviews FFR. Sure you have to turn the head around but if the HMD is less heavy, then it is more tolerable. I use FFR with my Pimax 8KX and see my GPU frametime drop by 1.5ms to 2ms compare to FFR with OpenXR Toolkit!

The 5090 might be close to impossible to get early on, or at a very high price. I think that your option 3 is farther in time. Consider a 4080 for your son? Price is not so bad, performance is excellent for VR. If cost is an issue, got for a 4070Ti Super which is close to 4080 performance with a lower price around 800$. You could get two of those cards for the price of a 4090... just saying.

I noticed that majority of people going back to 2D is related to performance/quality and this is a main issue with VR. Unless you can drive that HMD with lots of power, the experience can be disapointing on the long run with endless attempts to squeeze performance by changing this and that setting. My setup is now pretty much the most powerfull I can wish for and yet, I could use even more power to fully exploit my 8KX with the best possible image this HMD can provide. The day I can sim without FFR, supersample to 2.0, widest FOV, every setting maxed out and keep a constant 90 FPS is the day I will see the full potential of the 8KX realized. Maybe with the 6090. As I always say to people, with VR you are in the simulation, not looking at the simulation. For me there is no going back to 2D. I just hope VR gets more accessible in the future, it is way too expensive now to get a decent experience.

Also HTC controlers work fine with Pimax using lighthouse. I bought two used ones on amazon and they work great with my 8KX.

I had this issue a few times and not sure what is causing it. It only happens when the HMD is running at 90hz and seems to be a software issue. Here is the problem: Image would blackout very briefly every few seconds at different intervals and once in a while, the screen would go white very briefly as well. The problem happens both using OpenXR or SteamVR in all my VR applications, but significantly more frequent in DCS. I tried many different things, including re-installing Pimax client, OpenXR-toolbox, PimaxXR, NVIDIA driver, etc... and even changing the HMD cable with not effect. Only solution working so far is: Change HMD refresh rate to 60hz or 75hz, run DCS a few minutes and then exit, reset HMD refresh rate to 90hz, reboot and it should clear the issues.