St4rgun

Don't be unfair. These are really HUGE - a module (!) OK, by a third party, but a module (!) a 3D model by ED's 3D modeling artist(s) which is near completion and a stick base which is really professional but of course made by a totally different company, not ED. As nowadays at least 98% of ED are working on the new pilot body's modeling it's more, than reasonable. You can understand that as each newsletter length is quite limited it's impossible to write every itty-bitty tiny details every week which are really marginal and only a handful of hardcore DCS users are interested in like the new EDGE features, VR performance plans and preliminary results, experience with the new AA techniques like DLSS, MT testing progress and Vulkan implementation, challenges on the field of clouds in VR and new shadow techniques sneak peek. If ED would always write about those topic it would be like hourly adding a new screenshot about texturing a renewed AI bomber... It's indeed useless. And I'm pretty sure if ED would dare to write even a line about those insignificant details then at least a dozen of angry users would comment here that they are absolutely not interested in any of those technical nonsense and by the way where is my X/Y module and Z map what ED promised! Be fair and understanding: simply poor ED can't win, they'll be always the ones to blame. I really feel sorry for them.

We'll see in today's newsletter. I would be more than happy if the following weeks' newsletters will be about some BIG changes in details. I can easily wait until March to have them in OB

Changing cloud preset from standard to ultra should (in theory) give the GPU more work, I have no idea how should my 32 GB be the bottleneck there. But using ultra is really useless for me, because with standard in 80% the clouds are pretty nice except some exact cloud type which is heavily aliased. Not to speak of the lack of proper anti-aliasing at certain objects and edges, semi transparent surfaces etc. It's obvious that in VR even the MSAA 4X does work only partially, that's why I'm eagerly waiting for DLSS.

As now I'm highly supersampling my G2 (300% in OpenXR and 60% in OpenXR Toolkit FSR) the clouds are really nice even at STANDARD despite of being on the horizon or being closer (in fact they're much nicer that using the G2's "native" 100% resolution of 3100x3100). It seems that there's an exact type of cloud layer which is still extremely aliased, but only that, not the other types. And the position of the sun can also influences the effect (worse aliasing at low sun angles). After the last tweakings several patches ago the overall quality of the clouds really became much better, only that stubborn cloud type remained so ugly. Thanks for any help, becuse the ULRA setting is extremely power hungry in VR (when raining it literally becames a slideshow with a 3090).

Thank you @BIGNEWY for the answer. May I ask if then current stall of cloud aliasing problem means that any progress on that field can be expected only with the new engine in the future (maybe DLSS as a new anti-aliasing technique)? Because the clouds in VR are still highly aliased without any change despite the last several patches.

In MSFS I'm using DLSS because there it's the best overall AA technique speed / quality vise. In DCS as the current MSAA implementation leaves a lot of shimmering objects that's why I'm more than curious to see DLSS in VR in action here also. It can solve the temporal aliasing flickering and the transparent / semi transparent textures' aliasing as well. Let's see. By the way as long as we speak I tried some new settings with my rig with really breathtaking results is DCS, even the clouds quality is highly improved on standard settings (SP only): set the OpenXR in Windows to 300% custom render scale (!!!) with motion reprojection disabled set OpenXR Toolkit as the following: Performance tab: upscaling to 60% with FSR -> this equals roughly 3200x3200 pixels resolution for my G2 frame rate throttling to 45 Inputs tab: Shaking reduction to -70% to have smooth and stable IHADSS System tab: double check that motion reprojection set to Default (not forced on) And my DCS settings pages: With these settings my 3090 can almost always produce 45 fps with all the airplanes I have (20) even on the ground and locked 45 fps in air. The clouds seem much nicer despite being set to "standard" only and the overall cripsness of the image if phenomenal. The sweespot became much bigger as well. Personally I don't like having 55-60 fps while that causes more microstutter on the G2 than 45 fps. As long as I can't have steady 90 its better to have stable 45. And I really hate motion reprojection's arifacts, so that's always set to off for me in DCS.

As @Baldrick33 said using Pico 4 seems to be much more complicated right now as a more mature and widespread used headset like the HP Reverb G2 where the OpenXR support is really native in Windows. With all my respect may I ask: why don't you roll back to previous open beta which worked well as long as ED irons out these problems? If you use DCS Updater you can even have two different builds (one for the known good version and the other for the newest OB). As ED planned the next patch in March and we're expecting some serious changes then I think the rollback would be the logical solution for you right now, then checking out the new version sometime in March.

I'm not talking about the special DLSS3 frame generation tech which is (at least right now) only supported by RTX 4000 series, but the simple supersampling available in DLSS2 also. It just scales up a lower resolution rendered image to a given (much) higher resolution with extreme efficiency and (mostly) pretty good quality. Plus can solve the dreaded shimmering effects of MSAA.

Right now I"m actually exclusively using DLSS in MSFS because it's massively better than anything else, altough I had to spend quite amount of time to set it correctly: apply OpenXR Toolkit's fixed foveated rendering set the resolution higher (or much higher) than the native resolution of the headset - for my G2 I set it to 3500x3500, or even 4000x4000 to have very crisp dials and screens despite of DLSS I know it's unbelievable at first but it's really good, only certainly not with default settings. Worth a try. I'm pretty sure that if DLSS would be worse in VR than the currently available MSAA in DCS then ED would not have spent the development resources to implement it nor state it publicly that this technology will be supported. As they said for years that ED will not use any proprietary technology I'm sure they made all the preliminary test implementations to get to this decision.

DLSS would be really important for us, VR users for getting proper AA and having performance boost at the same time. I already asked @BIGNEWY before but I think he was to busy to answer if DLSS could be implemented in the existing graphic engine (without Vulkan of course), or is that somehow related to future versions. I'm really curious how long should be wait for it. Given the fact that the 2023 and beyond trailer used MT and DLSS in the making implies that those technologies COULD be at a proper level to reach OB in the near future, but anything unforseen can happen anytime.

After those years of waiting I still don't dare to raise my expectations... That means one thing for sure: NO PATCH IN FEBRUARY, and that's all. Any other is pure speculation. But I'm also eagerly waiting for MT and even more the newly announced DLSS. Fingers crossed.

I searched for banding but surely missed that thread. Sorry.

The 2.8.2.35759 OB patch produces ugly color banding on airframes and other surfaces like the tarmac which is worst at low sun conditions (example: M2000 Nevada take-off instant action). In this OB the gamma defaulted at 1.8 so I checked with both 2.0 and 2.2 also but the banding was the same. At first I tought that my G2 produced the banding but fortunately the screenshots also contained it. Check those out for reference.

To be honest seeing your specs made me think you're extremely brave with that HW and your previous settings... I used a GTX1070 before with a G2 but strictly with 1.0 PD in DCS and as I remember 70% OpenXR resolution to have playable framerates. By the way the 1070 have 8 GB VRAM instead of only 6 GB. You should try fixed foveated rendering with OpenXR Toolkit which is why the RTX2060 could be much better than my 1070 was, that can help a lot.

After the last OB hotfix I made a full repair just to be sure (DCS Updater). Then I noticed that my graphics settings set to something default values, like the gamma "resets" to 1.8. Is this 1.8 the new recommended value? Because previously the devs said that 2.2 is preferred, but in the last OB patches that value produced highly overexposed cockipts. I'm using G2 in VR.

By the way dear @BIGNEWY as there're not any more detailed info on the core development may I ask if the DLSS implementation will be only part ot the new EDGE? Is there a possibility that DLSS will come sooner than MT then Vulkan, or we should wait for the "whole package" to have all the features? Previously ED stated that MT will be available sooner than Vulkan that's clear, but at that time DLSS was not on the table.

As a G2 user I can't stand reprojection in DCS. The wobbly, jello, stuttering visuals are simply disgusting, even after last OB hotfix. I simply don't use reprojection and without that in SP my framerates can vary from 35-45 on the ground to about 57-60 in the air. During flight this is really nice and smooth, the stuttering, ghosting happens while taxiing when I see sideways.

To have some good feedback also in this thread: for me on my system the picture quality is a bit better and the fluidness of the head movement is substantially better. I also switched off the OXR Toolkit's fixed foveated rendering, because the now as the performance seems more balanced because of the native OXR implementation, so it's not needed anymore (with terrain shadows switched off of course). And I'm not using motion reprojection. Right now I became really curious on the future DLSS quality, not to mention MT and Vulkan. That would be aweseome!

Dear ED team, thank you for the detailed report on the development of these modules! After the first newsletter in 2023 and the "2023 and beyond" video the expectations grow even higher according to the core development. Is it possible that in the next newsletters (like every two weeks) we can have some drops of information especially dedicated to the core development process, describing ANY interesting facts / preliminary results / plans in the following topics, all closely related to the new EDGE: multicore; Vulkan; DLSS (and its consequences to anti-aliasing); VR rendering; new clouds quality / performance with the new technologies; shadows rendering, I mean just some sentences to keep our curiosity alive while waiting for the new EDGE.

I know it for sure. That's why I told that 100% resolution in OpenXR is also 3100x3100, but with DLSS you can "easily" set the target resolution to even higher than that, even to 4000x4000 to get extremely crisp visuals on the cockpit gauges at playable framerates. Sounds crazy, but working - at least for me.

I'm using DLSS at "Performance" setting In MSFS with Reverb G2. The trick is to set the rendering resolution even higher than the 100% resolution of the G2 (which is around 3100x3100), so try to set it to 3500x3500, or even to 4000x4000 to se wonders. If you thought before that the G2 is super crisp then multiply it by 1,5. This is what you'll get at decent framerates. So if DLSS will come to DCS then this alone combined with multithreading should indeed yield enormous change for the image quality in VR.

Thank you very much for such a detailed report, this was highly anticipated. It would be nice to have this report format quarterly to be able to track the progress on each field. That would be truly awesome! I only have fears because of these sentences: general - " note that these are the items that we will be working on in 2023 and not necessarily planned to be released in 2023" Vulkan API - "The next step is to provide our graphics programmers with the new Vulkan features compared to DirectX 11. These include new types of shaders (as per Shader Model 6 and further), ray tracing, some advanced rendering techniques, such as GPU driven rendering, and similar." Weather - "We also plan to optimize the volumetric clouds and increase their basic quality." Virtual Reality - "VR is very important for all and we have heard your concerns regarding performance and we continue to optimize VR performance for DCS." These are really ambitious plans for the next 2-3 years. As always all (or any) of them will be ready when it's done. Bussiness as usual. What gives me the hope that this year is THE ONE when those revolutional changes will finally reach the users are these: the first text on the video - "THIS VIDEO WAS CREATED USING NVIDIA DLSS AND MULTITHREADING" - Now this is huge! general - "This year will see our substantial work on the DCS Core being deployed in the near future." - I know this is not exactly 2 weeks, but not bad! Thanks again for all your hard work.

Interestingly the Low / Standard / High setting does not change a lot quality wise, only the Ultra settings make all the clouds significantly better. I'm using Standard now with MSAA 2x and trying to tolerate that some layers are terrible while generally the sky looks pretty awesome.

This video is breathtaking as always. The photorealism is really top notch, always one step better than ED's last years' video. My only question: is this phenomenal picture quality will be the same for VR users also including proper anti-aliasing at playable framerate with the new EDGE? That would be awesome!

I don't think this kind of thread is appropriate while the user base is still trying to get answers (and not getting) from ED on why the clouds are STILL super ugly aliased in VR... The clouds for me changed in the good way months ago, but there's a spcific type of cloud layer which is still badly aliased on STANDARD settings. Quality with ULTRA cloud settings is much better, but it hurts frametime a lot. Look at here.