GunSlingerAUS

Oh, and please ignore Toykilla, the guy has absolutely no idea about the reprojection ghosts/stutters that annoy the rest of us. His suggestions for settings are ludicrous.

I've realised that due to the resolution limitation, most graphics settings can be set to low. Crank up the SS to 120, medium shadows, water and draw distance, a Nd it purrs at 60fps. No reprojection artefacts, unless that God awful, performance devouring carrier comes into view. I can only imagine how terrible the new carrier will be.

Ah Toyboy, purveyor of absolute nonsense and misinformation. If you're runnijng at 45fps you do indeed have reprojection enabled. I'd love to have your mysterious optical system, as you apparently can't see the glaring flaws inherent with this technology. If you were running at 60 or 90 fps, it'd be a different story, but that is literally impossible with 200% SS.

Interesting. Unlike you though, I can't stand reprojection; at close range it causes ghosting/double view of nearby aircraft, as well as huge stuttering of the ground. Instead I'm aiming to hit 60fps all the time so it doesn't kick in at all.

After months of trying to enjoy DCS in VR on my Reverb, I think I’ve found a good compromise that offers a smooth game, yet not sacrificing a crisp image. The secret? Lower your Reverb’s refresh rate to 60Hz. This means my 5GHz CPU and 2080 Ti actually has a chance of maintaining 60fps, and thus remove all async reprojection and its associated ghosts. While running at 60Hz was initially a little worse experience than running at 90Hz, my eyes soon adjusted to it, and the incredibly smooth effect of not having reprojection on is absolutely worth it. Until Dice fixes VR in DCS (it’s not just performance that is incredibly broken, the game has other issues like only rendering distant trees in one eye, rotating clouds, and many more) this is a fantastic solution for me to keep it running at 60fps while not having to drastically lower the resolution. I think Reverb owners should give this a try. On my 5GHz i7/2080 Ti system I’ve had to lower many of the in-game graphics, but can keep textures high and shadows at medium (resulting in a nice, clear F-14 cockpit with realistic shadows). I run DCS at 2160 x 2119 via SteamVR with MSAA off, but VR PD at 1.2. While I do get jaggies on the ground, they’re hard to perceive in the air. Most other settings are set at low to medium – this drop is far less noticeable on the Reverb than on my 3440 x 1440 35” display. If you want to try this, to lower your Reverb’s refresh rate to 60Hz, do the following. Start WMR Portal Click the three bars on the WMR portal’s side to open up the options Then click “ … See more”, then settings, then Headset Display Head to the section called “Experience Options” and hit “Change” Select 60Hz, then close it all up, keeping WMR Portal open, then start SteamVR, and away you go! Would love to hear your thoughts on this configuration – personally it’s changed my opinion on VR. I still can’t wait for ED to optimise the game for VR so that it runs as well as most other VR titles, when I’ll be able to crank up the resolution even more, but until then it’ll do me.  

You guys are obviously highly experienced in complex software development, so I look forward to the day your beliefs come true, and ED rolls out a VOIP solution that is equal to or better than SRS. Heck, why waste time liaising with the creator of an already perfect solution that would be relatively easy to integrate into the base game, when you can do all the hard work yourself, using your ample resources! Hopefully the multithreaded optimisation that has been promised for at least five years comes into fruition by then too.

Btw, it's very sad to see this suggestion got moved to an obscure part of the forum where it won't be noticed. Oh well, hopefully Dice will consider what the community desires.

Umm, most major pieces of software development leverage multiple external tools, plug-ins and code. I've worked on several in the past, and this was standard practice...

As the title asks, why doesn't ED work with the creator of SRS to integrate this piece of software into DCS? Here's why I think it makes perfect sense to do so: 1.) SRS has years of development and refinement behind it, and is widely recognised as being basically perfect for DCS. ED can't hope to match the quality and features of SRS without several years of effort. 2.) Due to the fact that SRS is so good, nobody is using the extremely limited VOIP feature that ED has recently deployed. The community will not migrate to an inferior solution. 3.) The creator has expressed that he'd love for SRS to be integrated into DCS. So then, why is ED trying to reinvent the wheel when there's a brilliant solution already available, and which the creator of has expressed willingness to include within DCS? I'm sure the community would love to hear what ED's thoughts are on this matter.

There is absolutely no eye tracking in the Xtal. It can measure retina position to adjust the IPD, but actual foveated rendering via eye tracking is not included, and I really doubt it ever will. BTW, great review there Aurelius, but as a former reviewer, I think your scores are rather weird ;). Given the Xtal price, which is a key point in any product review, I'd suggest the Xtal is lucky to get even a 5/10.

CPU for sure. With your system, DCS would be bottlenecked by the CPU.

Hey IronMike Thanks again for your reply - it's specifically when I look down vertically from the HUD, so that the cockpit fills almost all of my screen. I think it may have to do with the TV system being enabled, as when it's off the fps drop is only approximately 10%. I'll try to get a track for you in the next few days. It's also not so bad when I have textures set to low, which I believe uses lower res textures for the cockpit? And just to reinforce my praise for you guys - the Tomcat is by far the best aircraft in DCS , and I don't expect it to work perfectly in VR as all aircraft have issues using VR. It's just that the beautifully detailed F-14 cockpit seems to cause further performance issues on top of the existing VR performance issues. I would still wholeheartedly recommend this module for all DCS flyers.

G'day IronMike, thanks for your detailed response. As you can see from the specs in my signature (which is missing the info that my CPU is overclocked to 5GHz, while the GPU is overclocked by 10% - all running 100% perfectly with no slowdown from thermal or current issues), I am running the fastest PC available on the market when it comes to DCS VR performance. I was going to chuck another RTX 2080 Ti in, but found out that it makes no difference in DCS or Battlefield 5, my two favourite titles on the PC. I'm surprised to hear that you have already optimised the cockpit, as it's got some weird performance issues. Regardless of whether I run everything at low detail or max, I get around a 40% frame drop simply by turning my gaze down into the cockpit - yet looking straight ahead it's quite acceptable. I don't get anywhere near that kind of performance drop when using other aircraft. Before anyone wants to jump in and say that they're running perfectly smooth at 45fps, you should note that you're actually pumping out 50% fake frames due to async reprojection - this causes huge ghosting on nearby aircraft and also trees if you're flying low. It sounds like there's no easy solution for HMDs with a resolution as high as the Reverb, other than ED doing some major optimisation of the core engine. Until then, it looks like my Reverb is going to continue to gather dust, as I'll be running 100fps on a 3440 x 1440 Ultrawide panel. Thanks again for your response, and I look forward to the day when I can enjoy flying the Tomcat in VR. In the meantime it's back to 2D for me.

Hey folks Firstly, have to say what an absolute masterpiece the F-14 is. It's without question my favourite module for DCS, and I've even bought a few copies for friends. However, it's extremely demanding in VR; moreso than any other airframe in DCS, to the point where it's very difficult to get smooth VR gameplay in most F-14 missions and campaigns, even with a 5GHz i7 and 2080 Ti. This is in contrast to other airframes such as the F-18 and F-16. Not only does it really hurt framerates, it's also incredibly hard to read some of the cockpit labels, even when using a high res HMD like the Reverb. It would be simply amazing if Heatblur could put together a VR optimised version of this beautiful bird, that is both less demanding on PCs, and also more legible. I for one would be very happy to pay extra for this feature; I figure that VR users are likely a smaller audience than non-VR users (though we're rapidly catching up, as evidenced by the explosive popularity of the VR subforum here), so Heatblur doesn't "owe" us anything. But if we could make the work worthwhile via paying for a VR module, they might consider it? So, what do you guys think? And Heatblur peeps - do you think this is a reasonable request? Look forward to your thoughts.

I had the exact same issue. It's a dead HMD I'm afraid. Get it replaced asap.

Sorry mate, but the only thing that is magic here is the placebo effect. The xtal does stretch those pixels across the full FOV, as clearly stated in the specs. I've now spoken to a few people who have tried both the Xtal and the Reverb, and the consensus is unanimous - the Reverb has far superior image quality due to its higher pixelbcount spread over a smaller field of view. There's no way to get around the lower res of the Xtal, not even foveated rendering will increase pixels per inch; even if it does come to the Xtal, all it may do is deliver performance benefits, as the entire screen won't need to be high res. I get the feeling that you're trying to justify to yourself that the high price was worth it, but I'm sorry to say it's simply an inferior HMD compared to the Reverb.

Hey guys Reverb owners are probably well aware of how washed-out the colors look using this HMD. Boosting the color saturation by your gfx card's control panel doesn't seem to work, at least not for me on my 2080 Ti. However, I've finally found a way to make colors pop, but it'll cost you about $5 for this fix. First, buy fpsVR on Steam, which costs approx. $5, and then load it before you load DCS. On the main fpsVR screen, click the setting menu option, then go to Advanced in the new menu that pops up. From here you can see an option called Color Gain. Change each of RGB sliders to 1.45, then restart SteamVR and fpsVR (not sure this is actually needed, but better safe than sorry). Then fire up DCS, and under the graphics option, change Gamma to 1.8. Voila, DCS color will now look much richer – in fact, a setting of 1.45 for the color grain might be a tad much, but I love the way it looks now. Hope this helps y’all!

Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth - was about to post the exact same issue about VR performance in the Tomcat. I'm running an RTX 2080 Ti overclocked by 10%, and an i7-9700 overclocked to 5GHz, along with 32GB of DDR4 2666Mhz memory. Unfortunately performance in the F-14 is pretty horrible, and there's nothing we can really do about it. It'd be amazing if the Heatblur guys could do a VR version of it that is less demanding, but I doubt they'll have the time or inclination to do so (not saying Heatblur aren't amazing - they are - but it'd require a lot of work for them to optimise just for VR people. Until the base DCS engine is optimised, or a graphics card that is at least 1.5 times the performance of a 2080 Ti, we're sh$t outta luck.

You can get lenses here: https://vroptician.com/prescription-lens-inserts/hp-reverb/

So, an update - I'm retiring my Reverb. It's just too ugly compared to a good display, with terrible reprojection artifacts, poor visibility, narrow FOV, and other issues. Luckily mine is now showing 2 dead pixels, so they're going to refund me for it.

My apologies for assuming you work for the makers of the Xtal - you just came across as evasive about working for them, and very gushy about the product. Can I ask a few questions? 1.) What frame rate are you getting in the game - I'm guessing half that of the HMD's refresh rate? 2.) Could you run VRfps for us, and tell us how it performs relating to dropped frames? 3.)Have you ever tried the HP Reverb? If so, how do they compare - from what I've heard, the Reverb is the better of the two? Hope you can answer these questions, as I've given up on the Reverb due to the horrible reprojection issues.

Nice to hear there are some other realistic people here...

Ahhh, thanks for the correction, appreciated.

Because certain information I was given was contrary to this. Hence why I then researched it and educated myself.

Thanks Toykilla for confirming that, yes, your WMR HMD is indeed using reprojection, as seen by your locked 45fps. And thus you must also experience the very same artifacts that the designers of this technology have talked about about in numerous articles, interviews and white papers. Now before you ask me to send you this information, try this https://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+motion+reprojection&s=g Unless you have a secret version of WMR or SteamVR that we don't know about? ;)