DeltaMike

^Yeah I waded in to that discussion yesterday (it was that or do my taxes) and I thought my brain was going to melt. What I took home was, basically when you cap frame rates you're telling the CPU to wait, which will make your CPU times look longer but as long as it isn't doing anything that shouldn't hurt you. Only problem is, CPU scheduling is a very complex matter in VR and there are potential problems if you mess with that timing, among them it can increase your latency considerably. SVR is such a mess to begin with, I'm not sure you could screw it up any more than it already is. Back in the day (what, a month ago?) people were getting OK results in SVR by locking frames, to me it was meh but it definitely did something. In OXR, I dunno. I do think we run into synch issues, which range from minor to highly annoying. I get the feeling, those of us with lower power GPUs don't get it as bad, and that's because we are used to squeezing every last electron out of those things. If you're really close to your frame-rate target I don't think you get as many synch issues and you don't need to lock your frame rates. For those of you with 3090 or 3080ti I imagine the synch issues can get dreadful at times. Couple of ways to approach that. Personally I think ya'll should try loading up your GPU. Crank up settings, crank up resolution, whatever it takes to get your frame times up to like 20ms, not much more than that but not much less than that either. That may be all you have to do, in other words you shouldn't need frame caps or motion smoothing if you're right in that golden range. And you'll get an awesome image, shoot I'll take supersampling over MSAA every day of the week if I had that option. Which, I don't -- you do. Shadows, clouds, textures -- go wild. Bet my own money it works. I got five cents right here

If you're using motion reprojection, I would agree, SVR is smoother. Without it, I feel OXR is smoother. Two main things I like about OXR, one is the quality of the image. Among other thins, quite a bit less shimmering. The other is simplicity. Way fewer moving parts no matter how you cut it. The only thing that's more work in OXR is, I think you have to be a little more careful with your FPS target. So if you want to run 60fps your frame times have to be consistently 16ms or less, but not too much less. Otherwise you'll run into synchronization problems that can get really annoying. In terms of settings, I can run at full res but I only get to crank up one of these: MSAA, shadows, or clouds. If I want two I would have to undersample. My settings are here, and that gets me right at 46fps near the ground on the Syria map. That whole thread is worth reading.

OH ok. fholger's ScaleFactor was by axis, the companion app is by total frame size. Gotcha. That made my other conversation... weird I guess. The argument was, 200%/60% using FSR was really fast and looked awesome. I benchmarked it against 100%/83% and was surprised the first one was slower. Shouldn't have been, though; my DCS frame was 44% bigger. It didn't look exactly awesome either. It did answer my question though, which is whether supersampling can erase the jaggies caused by scaling. It doesn't. Funny thing is, dude turned right around and said "oh no, I retested it and 200/60 is WAY faster than native resolution." It would be (and is) quite a bit faster in SVR, but in OXR, I don't see how that's possible Makes me feel a little better I guess, I was pretty sure I wasn't hallucinating. Still probably gonna kick it to the curb in MSFS, the jaggies are pretty bad. DCS on the other hand is looking really good these days, without trickery

oh you're talking about the setting in wmr I think, the one that launches steam automatically. Yeah that needs to be off

Yeah there's a place in SVR settings where you can change the runtime, I wouldn't go there if I were you OXR bypasses SVR altogether, you could uninstall SVR and still run DCS with OpenCompositeACC. All it needs is the SVR API which has been thoughtfully provided by ED Got a nickel says @daemon1808 has a "--force_steam_VR" flag in there somewhere. That's gotta go

Not as much as it should ime. Look at it this way... 150%/.6 should run circles around 75% performance wise. Very predictable performance impact in SVR. Not so much in OXR.

I get the feeling a lot of Steam version users are running in to problems with command line parameters. If so, you can either figure that stuff out, or let Skatezilla's app handle all that for you. You still need to select the SteamVR runtime in Skatezilla, that'll get you running the right API. From there, OpenComposite will take care of the rest. If that doesn't work you might need to look at your OXR install but I'd try that first

^Awesome. I guess FSR is just not helpful at all in OXR. I'm running in to the same thing in MSFS, I can get it smooth-ish with FSR but it undoes all that fine anti-aliasing. Back to adjusting resolution and testures I guess

fyp Awesome! Yeah I mean in spite of page full of instructions, OXR is cleaner with fewer moving parts

some might benefit from getting this tattooed to the back of their hand @edmuss should get a medal for the work he's done with the 3070, where FSR was put to good use. But if you have a GPU that'll drive the G2 at native resolution, I don't know why you wouldn't want to do that. It's glorious Information is king. One way of looking at it is, all your information is contained in the frame DCS renders. You don't have all the information until your frame size is 3100x3100. No amount of number-shuffling is going to change that

yeah it comes on by itself when it feels like it, regardless of whether you're in svr or oxr. only good news is, you don't need controllers to run oxr. fire up wmr, peek out from under the hood and start dcs, done. leave the controllers off and stuck in the cabinet and they won't do that

Like with gesture recognition? Yeah that would be pretty cool. Miles's Point-Ctrl device has a set of buttons you mount to the side of your HMD, you can map "salute" to one of those buttons and whack it when you salute I have a three way switch to control lights, I mapped "salute" to the middle position. So it seems realistic at night anyways, I turn on the lights and they get me off the deck

FSR is kind of borked in OpenXR, turn that off if you're using it. Depends on the platform I guess but in general it seems MFD's aren't coming across at high resolution. I've found contrast settings help some but bottom line is, you're not alone.

I spent a couple hours messing with it after your last post and I just don't see a way to eliminate all the stuttering in OXR. I can get it to where I personally don't notice it if I'm not specifically looking for it, but I can't make it go away completely. You know, there's nothing wrong with WMR/SVR, I think we all agree it's got the best MR in the business and the Steam Console (with desktop access) is mighty handy at times. In terms of the image, look up ReShade, there's a couple of threads on this forum. A variety of tools that allow you to sharpen up the image, adjust color, even do anti-aliasing (SMAA doesn't work half bad actually). Likewise accessible through the SVR console. As for OXR, I still think the key to the whole ballgame is to tune your GPU to a target. So we are no longer gonna say, "the faster the FPS the better." It's more a question of whether your mean + 2sd is above some specific threshold. In your case, clearly you can't consistently beat 90fps, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. Next question: can you consistently beat 60fps? Then try setting your headset to 60hz and see what shakes out. That should take care of it. If not, then you're like the rest of us, you're shooting for 45. The key is to get as close to 45 as you can without going under. As for locking frames, I dunno man. This is now the second time we've been through this and it's still not clear to me that it does anything. Back in the day, my RiftS literally would not run at 50 or 60fps. It could only do 80 or 40, and maybe 20. And that's it. I've heard the G2 is the same way, so when your FPS counter is saying you know exactly 67.5fps, all that means is, half the time you're running at 90 and the other half at 45. if so, that's why you're getting stutters. Dollars to donuts, the people who enjoy OXR the most -- I would bet my own money on this -- are consistently running 46fps close to the ground. Regardless of Chill or whatever they are using. Try this. Get on the Syria map, and start dialing up your resolution (in the OpenXR Toolkit from the Microsoft Store) until you consistently hold 45fps near the ground. Do the final tune by eye. Turn it up until you see stutters, then turn it back down until they go away. Done.* I don't even bother to turn on my FPS counter any more. I can tell just from looking at the ground how often I'm flipping between 45 and 30fps, it's that obvious. Up in the air you'll be running higher FPS, but then you can't see the stuttering up there anyway, so you're golden. If you can live with that, welcome to OXR. If you can't, there's nothing wrong with SVR, especially now that we have native ReShade support. Nothing to sneeze at there, not at all. ------- That SVR console is pretty unique, other than that, I've never seen any way to pull up anything in DCS, while in VR, other than DCS. Easy enough to pull up the desktop in WMR, and I imagine we could get Virtual Desktop working with OpenComposite (hm... gotta try that) but the problem is, getting at it while DCS is running (and then being able to get back into DCS -- which I've tried. If my headset goes to sleep, it'll wake up in WMR home, and I can interact with the desktop, but I can't figure out how to get back into DCS from there) -------- *(Try it without MSAA. Once your resolution starts getting to the 150% range, the shimmering starts to go away. It looks pretty awesome actually.)

@Sr. haha I did the exact same thing yesterday, kind of on a bet. Went back into SVR, ran it up to 200% with FSR running and, you know, it ran. Afterwards I felt... I dunno. Like I wanted to take a shower. It's like LA on a smoggy day, you know? Dropped back into OXR and it's like the sun came out or something. I love messing with this stuff but there's a purity and clarity that comes from just running the G2 at native resolution, of not trying to tart it up with all kinda weird combinations of supersampling, aa, scaling, yada yada. Just let the durn thing run, I mean right out of the box it's a pretty amazing view I have convinced myself that ED is slipping in VR optimizations without saying anything. I spawned in to my NTTR test run the other day and was showing 90FPS on the counter right at the beginning. wtf, I didn't do anything... at least I don't think I did...

Here are the questions you want to be asking yourself -- What resolution do I want to run? Your headset is 2650x1440, so, it's like it has two really nice High-Def TV's in there. Speaking of TV's -- not every channel on my TV is high def, in fact most aren't, but even so it still looks pretty good. Likewise, you're probably not gonna be able to play DCS in extreme high-def but it should still look pretty durn good. So, turn your resolution down a little. One way to adjust resolution is with pixel density, however that's not the best way -- that gets out of hand real quick, as you've seen. 1.4 doesn't sound like a big number, but it's making your GPU work twice as hard. MSAA has much the same effect. Put your pixel density back down to 1.0, turn off MSAA for now, and turn your resolution down a little in the Pimax software. Which seems like really great software, pound for pound it seems quite a bit more efficient that WMR etc. Sounds like you're on the right track. What textures can my GPU handle? We have some recent reports from 2000 series users that lowering textures can help. I'd definitely turn terrain textures down, all looks the same to me and really woke my headset up when I did it. You also might try cutting back on anisotropic filtering (?8x) and see what that does for ya. I hate to turn down cockpit textures, see if you can get away with leaving that on high. How much can my CPU handle? Probably a fair amount -- Ryzen has always played well with DCS -- but until you get this sorted, I'd consider turning shadows completely off, put water and clouds low, turn off civ traffic. Those things kinda flog your CPU. Walk before you run. Get your headset running first before you start experimenting with MSAA, shadows, water and clouds and such. Welcome home. We'll get you flying.

I'm sure ED will pick up OXR eventually, but they can't right now. OXR isn't quite done yet; it needs a little more time in the oven. It's getting there. Meanwhile... you gotta put something in between DCS and the G2. It's either gonna be WMR/WMR4SVR/SVR or OpenComposite... I'd suggest the latter. Much cleaner imo. Fewer moving parts.

Agree. Especially given the asking price. Which if recent experience is any guide, isn't going to have much to do with market price... I wouldn't be surprised if it helps in complex SP missions, but I bought a whole nuther computer for less than that... To me the interesting question is, how it handles MP. On the client, or on the server.

Price has come down a lot on the 6700XT, have talked to a couple of people lately who are considering it for VR. I'm sure these folks would love to hear how yours is running, I'm kinda curious myself. In particular -- Which headset? Which runtime? (ie OpenXR, SVR, Oculus, PiTool) Resolution settings? (Resolution, pixel density, if you're using a scaler like NIS or FSR, what's your scale factor) Texture settings?

There's quite a bit less shimmering in OpenXR.

Don't forget to make the changes to the .ini file First, you make a folder where you can keep a backup of the .dll and .ini files that work for you, and drag em over after DCS updates. Then you'll wonder if there's a way to automate that process. There is.

Here's a tip from a Discord member: set resolution at 200% and downscale using FSR at a scale factor of 0.59. Supersampling to the tune of 200% is good anti-aliasing in anybody's book. But it's expensive. Will this strategy work? Maybe. Here is a good discussion of how scaling works. + Let's pretend the runtime is the boss, DCS is the worker, and FSR is the union representative. The boss calls down and says, "I want 200% this cycle!" The union representative tells DCS, "Don't listen to him. Just work at about 70% of your normal pace, and we'll make up numbers to make it look like you worked at 200%." The question is, what are we going to do with those made-up numbers? And the answer is, we are going to average them all together to smooth things out. I like running at native resolution, so I made one pass at 200%, scale factor 0.83. That means I'm rendering at 98% and I'm hoping to get a free pass of antialiasing. Here's the results: Native resolution, no scaling. FPS 46. I'm using OpenXR now and it actually doesn't have a terrible amount of shimmering, so let's say it's "ok." 200% + scale factor 0.7. Performance should be the same; instead, it dropped. FPS 40, which is really bad, this introduces a lot of stuttering. Shimmering is about the same. 200% + 0.59. (recommended setting). FPS showing 47 but there's a lot of stuttering. Image looks terrible with ghosting, double images, blurry textures. And the shimmering was even worse than running at native resolution with no AA. 100% x 0.83. Although theoretically this should result in the same performance, FPS went up to 54. Image quality is actually quite a bit better but the shimmering was still worse than baseline. 200% with no scaling. This looks nice! Very little shimmering. But my FPS tanked to 32. There's still no such thing as a free lunch. ETA To be fair, I went back through some of these runs in SVR. In SVR my baseline performance is 45fps. I did get the performance gains from FSR, into the 53FPS range. But, the more scaling involved, the worse the shimmering. 200/.59 had worse shimmering than 100/.83, even though the performance was the same. ETA2: FFS made a math error. Turns out, FSR scales differently in OXR than it does in SVR. So, in OXR, running at 200% with a scale factor of 60%, you're actually supersampling, ie increasing your DCS frame size to about 120% net of everything. So it should run slower. Conclusion is the same. Supersampling doesn't erase the jaggies you get from scaling algo's like FSR. Suspect nothing does.

https://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-focus-3-openxr-public-beta/

Took a trip down memory lane and flew through Vegas in SVR/WMR. Also took a spin in MSFS, same run. WMR's motion reprojection is really pretty good, it's super smooth. I liked ASW back in the day but it's been a while; people who have tried em back to back say WMR 's motion vector is better, see comments here. OTOH OpenXR's motion reprojection just doesn't cut the mustard IMO. I can't tell that it's actually doing anything other than causing artifact. Is what it is I guess.

That makes me feel better Went for a flight today. I don't think locking frames in the companion app does anything unless MR is on Number one biggest cause of "stutters" I'll bet is switching from one frame rate to another. Even with MR on, I think it's flipping between 30 and 45fps. WHich is where the companion app comes in; it would probably be smoother if I locked it at 30. I'm so irritated with MR I couldn't make myself do it; I think the artifact is worse now than it used to be and it seems to be dragging my performance down. Radeon chill doesn't seem to hurt anything, I'm just not sure I'm seeing a huge difference. There was a big difference is SVR I thought, but not so much with OpenXR. Perhaps all @Salter10 needs to do is turn his settings UP. Get away from that 90fps inflection point. Might smooth things out a bunch. Not totally but a lot, I'll bet. Or try 60hz I think you're right. I'd consider just turning down terrain texture, all looks the same to me but definitely unlocks performance and a lot of it. I don't like turning down cockpit textures though, I can definitely see the difference. I am a bit surprised turning down textures affected your performance that much, I mean you've got VRAM and bandwidth and TMU's galore. I guess every time ya remove one bottleneck, another pops up, don't it