dlder

Two issues with binding keyb-to-joystick-to-mouse: pressing the left mouse button and trying to turn the "mouse wheel" comms menu can only be interacted with the mouse cursor; which is not the "cockpit interaction" cursor you move with your HMD

Thanks, appreciate it!!

I'm sorry, but I can't seem to find that function in DCS... what's it called? Where can I find that? (search in general and ui). Also, what settings do you use for the mouse-wheel-keystrokes in JoyToKey? I'm currently using Auto Repeat: 2 times per second. But it seems not enough for some dials like altimeter... I'm gonna try 10 times next (ever 100ms)

If it really is "just" a Steam issue, then I guess we're... for lack of a better word: Then the viable thing to do - if you play 2D and VR like I do: VR: set MT as default executable in Steam and add the VR launch options + launch the game via Steam 2D: launch the game via commandline, forgoing the Steam option, but you'll be stuck with singlethread @BIGNEWY I guess there is one option ED could make: a startup switch like for VR -> Steam seems to "respect" those

nice; I also use Joy2Key^^ So, one can add keyboard buttons in DCS to perform the mouse wheel function? Didn't know that...

That sounds awesome, nice work! That is slick, I gotta say. I'm not quite sure how I'd change my Hotas layout to accommodate for the 2 mouse buttons + wheel, but I'm gonna try that ASAP. Yep, that's what I meant I've just fooled around with the DFR which released on the Crystal today... this is a bit OT, but damn, that works great! Highest setting (like the ones I use for 2D) with my 4090 on Marianas I got ~30fps. With Dynamic Fov. Rendering I now have ~42. And with my default VR settings I get about 55-60 fps.

Yeah, that's what I've always been using. But somehow Steam is deciding to launch the normal exe instead I've now tried to set DCS to always launch in "MT Preview". So launching it through Steam always opens the MT exe. BUT doing it like this I would need to add/remove the VR-launch options every time I want to fly in either 2D or VR... And with no Steam Launch Options, I've tried the same as before (directly starting the mt exe) and I've tried it by launching it via Steam CMD: D:\Games\GamePortals\Steam\steam.exe -applaunch 223750 --force_enable_VR --force_OpenXR But for whatever reason, this also starts the "normal" DCS exe... So, to recap: MT is only launching when launched directly via Steam. NOT when launching via command line (either via "bin-mt\dcs.exe" nor via "steam.exe -applaunch)

So... I fooled myself in thinking that I was running DCS in MT since it came to Stable. But... I wasn't. The problem is: I launch DCS via Batch - with which I launch a number of apps beforehand, like Afterburner, XrNecksafer, VKB-Tools, OKB, ... - and then I launch the exe via "steamapps\common\DCSWorld\bin-mt\dcs.exe" BUT: when I go into the task manager I can see that the normal exe from "DCSWorld\bin" is running. Only after starting it through Steam and clicking MT Preview in the pop window, the multi-threading exe is started. And now I know that in the lower right corner of the game it actually states "multithread preview". So: is there any command line option (like for VR: "steamapps\common\DCSWorld\bin-mt\DCS.exe --force_enable_VR --force_OpenXR") that I can use to force the MT exe to be launched? Thanks!

Yeah, maybe I just have to try it; would need a place for my mouse first though. Yes, when used with the "pointer" right? With imprecise I didn't mean the tracking of the controllers themself, but the manipulating of switches "directly", without the pointer like with a mouse. Does that work well with you? Concerning PointCtrl: I'll keep it in mind (but I'm currently waiting for my leap motion, so wanna try that first) Yeah, mine too^^ This is probably the most useful addon for VR... holy moly, it's literally a pain in the neck to fly without^^ So... I can just look at the controls to then press a button and activate them? Hm... that's what I'm gonna try next. Sounds not too bad (but a bit imprecise? I mean, you'd need to keep your head perfectly still while fixing on a 5x5mm button^^) So, if I understand you correctly: you have physical buttons (like the MFDs) and (more or less) all bound to left mouse click, so you don't really have to find exactly the correct button with your fingers, while looking at it in VR? That's... not a bad idea. So you have like one rotary (probably bound as a mouse wheel?) and you look at the correct control in VR and manipulate basically any virtual rotary you want with one physical? That's genius! Really does sound doable!

Now that I have the Crystal, I've decided to tip my toe into the whole VR thing and although the visuals are not on par with 2D (which will probably always look sharper & clearer), the immersion is off the charts, especially with spotting and the... "closeness" to the controls and the cockpit, which is excellent! But: I've tried using the controllers and even though the tracking especially to the side isn't good enough, the main problem is: switching from Hotas to a controller takes time, you have to find them on the desk and is just a major pain in the a$$. Also, if you're using the controllers to directly manipulate the switches, it is just way too imprecise!? Like actuating a specific button is kinda luck? -> this means you'll kinda have to use it with the "pointer" and thus it works exactly as the mouse, which is easier and more precise to use. So, I've mostly used the mouse so far and... it works pretty well. But it's only for my right hand, so I can't toggle anything with my left (sure, I could just attach another mouse, but have you tried using your "other hand" with a mouse? It's sooooo bad^^). Here are my thoughts (I don't have any of that hardware, so couldn't try it as of yet) and would like to ask your opinions or even better your findings with hardware you've tried: Handtracking would eliminate the need to grab a controller/mouse (which you first have to find when in VR^^) but has the same problem of being imprecise when directly manipulating controls? so has to be used with pointer? which brings us to "ring mice" "button box" on every index finger to accentuate controls, which you point to via handtracking seems like a VERY good idea! The problem is there's practically nothing you can buy PoinCtrl has it's own tracking (which I guess doesn't need to be used) and is more or less unavailable there is a Bluetooth version you can make yourself (Hackster.io or Instructables.com), but I wouldn't know how, nor do I know how good it actually works. Looks like the best PoinCtrl alternative though! then there is Vanzy; which is only a Kickstarter product and seemingly unavailable. With JoyToKey I'm sure one could remap the buttons to what you need. I'd hope. the only other alternative I've found: Aibyks Multifunctional Bluetooth Ring on Amazon (or other, less trustworthy places^^). Don't know how usable that would be, but I'd try it first, seeing the price and all that haven't found any other so far... Haptic Feedback Gloves no cheap options yet available only bulky gloves priced at 4.000€ and more would probably have the same issue as only Handtracking though, right? Like accidentally actuating controls in the cockpit and being imprecise when trying to toggle a switch? So, I don't know how right I'm with my conclusion being: you either use the mouse or handtracking with pointer or even more precise: handtracking with ring-mouse What do you use? What did you try and what's your conclusion? There are some sick setups out there, so there must be a "solution" to this problem (and I don't mean a 1:1 recreation of the cockpit^^). Thanks for your time and hoping for some great tips! Cheers!

This. 100% ack! That's why "made for VR" games can be soooo good (especially of course FPS).

PointCTRL would be an option, but alas, no haptic feedback; it would be fantastic if you could actually "feel" the buttons and switches you press And yeah, the wait time... Unreal(tm)^^

I totally agree! This has been a more of an academic question in the end, because you can't do anything about it, other then lowering the pixel density (not really viable) or upsampling (which is better, but still not that great). I just was baffled by, why the 4090 wouldn't perform as well as expected; well, I didn't expect such a large amount of pixels to be rendered tbh And although playing in VR is very cool indeed, I'm still not sure I'll switch to it. 1) the graphics in 2D are still better -> there isn't any pixelated shimmer from medium to long distance. It would need a way higher resolution to combat that... so, 6090 maybe? 2) using the mouse and not your hands/fingers to actuate buttons is viable and better then using the controllers, but using physical buttons (UFC, MFDs) is just way better -> as long as you cannot reliably use 2 haptic feedback gloves (and from what I hear, this works still wonky at best) or you can use the cameras to bring your physical controls into DCS (which would pose another problem, because nobody has a 1:1 replica of all the planes at home), physical buttons are still best

I'm new to VR in DCS too (also the Pimax Crystal) and THAT was also my issue; I wanted it to work like TrackIR. -> fortunately, that's possible with this awesome tool: [Open]XrNeckSafer It's an OpenXR tool that needs to be running. Don't worry about all the features; just set the re-center button and use auto-rotation (you have to find the values that you like, just like with TrackIR). I use smooth rotation, which does feel a bit weird but is imho better then the step-rotation.

That's what I always thought to be true. Super Sampling in VR means a Pixel Density of over 1 (= 100%). But as I don't do that and I still have an extremely high resolution, this really has to be the barrel distortion. Really? I haven't yet had the time to research barrel distortion, but that sounds... unlikely. The only thing that nVidia was/is working on was called "MVR" - Multi-View Rendering, but no game every utilized that feature. https://developer.nvidia.com/vrworks/graphics/multiview Nope, nowhere is it set beyond 1 or 100% pixel density. That is exactly my point: where is this resolution coming from. I'm gonna try my luck on the official Pimax Discord. Again, thank you all for your valued input! It's quite interesting to see how this all is working (this is not just for DCS; it's VR in general).

Wait... what? But that would double the amount of calculated pixels?! That sounds... excessive. 4k-UHD is "3840 x 2160", meaning a meager 8.29 MP. PimaxXR says 4.312 x 5.102. If this is the value per eye, that would mean it's not 21.99 MP (seems with 20.98MP I've miscalculated the last time), but double that? So 44 MP? That would be more then 8K-UHD (7.680x4.320 = 33.18 MP)...

That it is; I'm still using the mouse to adjust controls, as the controllers don't work very well. That's probably partly because controllers are a bit weird and cumbersome in DCS anyway, and partly because the controllers and the tracking is pretty garbage (I've only used the original Vive 1 wands).

Thanks for confirming that this is a "normal" issue^^ Thanks, good to know! Nope; these numbers - Render Target / Pixel Density - do not correlate with the resolution of the displays. I still have to find out, how: Render Target = 1 = 4.312 x 5.102 correlate with: Display Resolution = 5.760 x 2.880 I've tried a Render Target of 0.75, which would only be 12,37 MP -> the FPS were of course fantastic. But the picture quality isn't what I like about this HMD: "Crystal" clear picture^^ -> If you have a lower one, then you are probably using "balanced" in the Pimax-Client too... not "maximum", which would be Render Target of "1" Well, of course one can lower the number of calculated Pixel; I just don't see the point. Why buy a high resolution HMD if you are not rendering 100% of those pixels; UpSampling like NIS (which OpenXR can do) is possible and not as bad as just lowering the resolution, but it's still not DLSS, which imho might be up to par quality wise to 100% resolution. AWESOME, thank you! I hope that will explain what's happening I just now from testing that lower then 100% isn't an option. It's like in 2D, but even more apparent, because the displays are right infront of your eyes. So 100% resolution + 2xMSAA is the least one can use. One can only hope, but testing with FFR makes me believe differently. You just can't set the quality so low that you'll gain like 20% FPS or the visuals will be greatly degraded! -> so I doubt it will be a game changer. Yes, everyone hypes about the newest and greatest tech / feature, and Hope Dies Last, but I'm not too optimistic. Good thing I bought the 4090 which is way, way too expansive (still), but with these many pixels to be rendered, I doubt that any type of optimization will substantially improve performance. I've tried a lot. I will try more (from the videos that were suggested). I'm now playing with "High" graphics settings and have 40 (ground) to 90fps 4000ft and up (on Caucasus though^^) Custom2.lua

I've just now catched that: why is your resolution so low? (11.8 Megapixel) PimaxXR for me shows "4.312 x 5.102" (20.98 MP), which is also weird and not the native resolution of "5.760 x 2.880" (15.82 MP). -> this means I'm currently rendering double the amount of pixels... why?

So, did some more testing: Oh, first things first: whenever I change something in the Pimax-Client, or when OpenXR-TK tells me to, I restart DCS. So pretty much every test was a new game start. -> graphical glitches (like lightning flashes) with Pimax "SmartSmoothing"; at least in DCS (I've created a video showing that: -> Pimax FFR (fixed foveated rendering) doesn't really change anything either? Neither visually, nor performance wise What is Minimum and Maximum anyway? "min" is about 0.5 fps slower -> "Hidden Area Mask" area mask isn't doing anything either; it seems to me, with the exception of FFR, that the Pimax-Client settings are only for SteamVR? -> OpenXR TurboMode doesn't do anything -> NIS 75% is a huge performance gain of course; DLSS would be much preferred though. But when enabling NIS, why is it saying 100% resolution is "4312x5102"? The HMD has "5.760 x 2.880"! -> FFR works; but the performance gain isn't all that great

Hm... OpenXR Tool Kit can capture performance data? I guess I've overlooked that bit; gonna try that next. Hz / Fps: the only correlation between those two are, if you are using VSync (or FPS limiter in accordance to GSync best-practice). I do (that's probably why my max FPS are 91), but I have a frame limiter at 77fps, but that doesn't take effect in VR, so I didn't even think about deactivating Gsync, as that is also very much monitor dependent, BUT: because of that I have Vsync turned on "globally". Now, I don't know if the nVidia DCS profile is actually being used in every instance - this being beta-multithreading exe - so I can't be sure. Long story short: the "max" fps might not be correct, but that really is besides the point anyway, because I don't really care about getting more then 90 fps if all I'm getting is 27 at Marianas^^ -> I now know, that this is really an unusual case and most seem to get their performance from Caucasus or some lighter maps like Nevada / Syria (sand maps). That's exactly why I used your track file; to be on the same playing field. Pixel Density: I use 1.0 in DCS (and everywhere, as already stated), because this is effectively supersampling and much more power-hungry then MSAA with MultiSampling Transparency AntiAliasing (which is what I use). To get about the same level of AntiAliasing you'd have to use something like 125% SS (at least), which takes more FPS then MSAA. Tacview: is imho a crucial program to review ones performance; but it's running only on my Stable install anyway which I don't use for this threads benchmarking (to again be comparable to you and most every other people). This install is also clean, so no mods. Also, after comparing the performance with your trackfile and the exact same settings, both Stable and Beta performance are about the same (1-2 fps difference). I still have to watch your video, but with the big things out of the way - like VBS (virtualization based security, which basically activates Hyperthreading, which means your Windows installation will be running virtualized on a hypervisor) - I don't think any "Windows Hacks" which have been around since Win 98 will be of any measurable help^^ Thanks for the video anyway; maybe I actually will learn something new^^ So, what does that leave me with: I could try a fresh Windows install, but from all the things I know, that probably won't help (I might do it on a test-SSD, just to make sure) to not play Marianas, as the performance in Caucasus is "good enough" wait for dynamic foveated rendering wait for DLSS (or use NIS) I'll continue my testing in a more "practical" matter (doing missions) and will report back on my findings and hopefully my then-final-settings.

Sorry, can't find any option in Afterburner

I guess I could also just for the sake of it post my options: options.lua options_vrdcs.lua

I'll do another run including the frame times (gotta check Afterburner on how to do that^^). -> please note if you use mirrors or not; I didn't check it and default DCS settings seem to disable them. I've since enabled the mirrors again for VR High (which is everything maxed) @BIGNEWY Quick question: are we sure that "msaaMaskSize" is doing anything? I've run it with 4xMSAA (just to max out the GPU usage and thus the potential performance gain) and it doesn't do a lot; 0.5 fps seems more like a benchmark tolerance 02-08-2023, 14:14:54 DCS.exe benchmark completed, 3378 frames rendered in 107.797 s dcs beta MT "vr high", 4xMSAA, 1.0 MsaaMask Average framerate : 31.3 FPS Minimum framerate : 22.7 FPS Maximum framerate : 36.2 FPS 1% low framerate : 22.4 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 22.3 FPS 02-08-2023, 14:19:00 DCS.exe benchmark completed, 3349 frames rendered in 108.937 s dcs beta MT "vr high", 4xMSAA, 0.1 MsaaMask Average framerate : 30.7 FPS Minimum framerate : 4.9 FPS Maximum framerate : 35.8 FPS 1% low framerate : 22.4 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 1.2 FPS

didn't really change much: 02-08-2023, 13:20:11 DCS.exe benchmark completed, 4746 frames rendered in 106.937 s dcs beta MT "vr high" Average framerate : 44.3 FPS Minimum framerate : 32.6 FPS Maximum framerate : 50.4 FPS 1% low framerate : 29.9 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 29.8 FPS 02-08-2023, 13:27:19 DCS.exe benchmark completed, 4904 frames rendered in 109.454 s dcs beta MT "vr high"+optimized nvidia settings Average framerate : 44.8 FPS Minimum framerate : 0.8 FPS Maximum framerate : 52.1 FPS 1% low framerate : 0.8 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 0.8 FPS