UncleZam

I guess this talk about subscription models in this thread is a bit offtopic, so I am risking to participate, sorry about that. It is good to keep in mind that some things just cannot be hurried by throwing more money at them. Of course greater resources help, but it is nowhere linear gain in production speed. I am not so sure that the lack of funding is even the problem here. Some things you just have to wait and enjoy what you have right now.

Just subjective gut feeling that VR performance has been improving with the two latest updates. Nice to see we are now on right track, hopefully developers can squeeze more FPS in coming updates also. There are still occasional stutters, which may be AI computations or something not graphics related.

Good points there. I am also a SW engineer and I have also been contemplating the state of the quality assurance in this project. First, I suspect the breadth of the features in this project is huge. There are so many little details involved and there are also some scientifically complex features like flight modelling, radar operations and artificial intelligence. The scope alone means that one must use very light processes, and heavily prioritize tasks. I suspect that there just is not time to write automated testing for majority of code. After all, automated testing for a piece of software can double the effort plus the maintenance burden for the tests. Second, automated testing is not well suited for all parts of software. For example, UI related functionality testing is much harder to test automatically. Many times one have to rely on human driven functional testing.Lately many issues have been UI related (lighting, VR rendering). Even though I have pointed out some possible reasons for reduced automated testing, I strongly believe it should be used in places where it is applicable and beneficial. One such area could be performance regression testing, where certain performance level would be requirement for new feature to pass in to a release.

Thank You for the response. I noticed the easiest way to reproduce this issue is to start Viggen instant action "Cold and Dark" in Caucasus map. Then just look around the clouds while sitting parked in starting position. The issue should be evident. Thanks.

This got me thinking and I decided to test with MiG-15 free flight mission over Las Vegas daytime. It is true that colors look quite bland and washed out with gamma setting 1.6 versus 1.0, which is contrasty with colors popping out. Gamma 1.0 definitely looks nicer and more vibrant. Then I searched Youtube for aerial photography videos over the Las Vegas. The videos I found mostly had bland, washed out colors and also the haze was present many times. So, while I agree that 1.0 gamma looks better, it could well be that gamma 1.6 is closer to real world. I would love to hear comments from someone who had the privilege to witness that area from the air with own eyes.

To be fair, I think some things look more realistic now. The environment lighting feels more natural both day and night. I also noticed the degraded visibility, maybe toning the haze down could help. Then there are the synthetic lights: MFDs, indicator lights etc. Those are hit and miss depending on aircraft. For example Harrier night time MFD map display is almost blinding white, you cannot make any details from it, while other indicator lights were fine. On the other hand in MiG-19 all lightbulb indicator lights look so dull as if they were made of colored paper, definitely need lot of tuning. My point here is that there are so many interdependent variables that need tuning after any change in global lighting. I wish the critic is constructive pointing out the things needing tuning and not just judging all development. P.S. I think bloom is definitely better than before. It used to be too strong for simple indicator lights. Now it is noticeable for dim lights only in the dark, and for very bright sun reflections during daytime. Edit: I am using gamma 1.6 and HP Reverb HMD.

Good explanation, makes sense. I wonder if it would be feasible to use the third method in your linked diagram. Or is it computationally too intensive to calculate eclidean distances for all the objects.

I found this to be the best settings for me too (8700K@4.9Ghz, 2080ti). I prefer the fixed 45fps over adaptive, which seems to cause some stutters.

I think the user experience in DCS is more system performance limited. DCS with The Reverb, 150% SS, 4x MSAA and reasonable high ingame settings can be breathtaking and beautiful experience. Too bad there is no system on the market that could run it 90fps or even reprojected 45fps without occasional frame drops. But we are already close with highest end systems. Maybe next gen GPUs solve this problem already. Of course I would welcome even higher resolution VR HMDs, but right now in DCS you would still be performance bottlenecked.

Did further testing with following findings: - It seems the offending clouds disappear in the center of the view when rotating my head. Cannot understand the logic behind this. - MSAA and/or the new MSAA mask settings do not make any difference. - Visibility range setting to extreme does not help.

+1 Noticeably flickering clouds for me too. Also some clouds rendered in one eye only when turning head, which makes for very weird feeling in VR. I would rank this the biggest issue for VR use at the moment (aside of the general performance issues).

I welcome the new VR settings. They helped me to strike good balance between MSAA and SteamVr resolution. I now use 2x MSAA and 130% SteamVR resolution with the new VR settings Bloom off and MSAA mask at 20%, which seems to cover the sweet spot of Reverb nicely. The FPS gain may not be huge, but can make all the difference between stable 45 fps or constant frame drops.

You can find some instant action missions including supercarrier in F14 instant action.

I have a setup with similar performance level and I can say that you have to use very modest graphics settings when using Reverb with 150% SS. Maybe you can post detailed list of your DCS settings so we can take a look. Edit: Judging your frame times, the occasional stutter could be related to other performance issues that other users have noticed. See this thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=265709 Although it is nothing definitive there could be some evidence of AI causing CPU performance issues.

See post #5193 in this thread (https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4252193&postcount=5193).

This is due to incomplete HMD tracking calibration. You should first start Mixed Reality Portal and follow the instructions: "Look to sides and to the floor...". This calibrates the HMD tracking. Then start DCS and everything should be fine. Also it is possible that the calibration is lost during the usage. This may be due to insufficient room lighting in order to do camera tracking (which basically enables the use of 6 DOF movement). Hope this helps!

Thanks, excellent info! I learned that WMR config file setting for MP must be commented out to allow SteamVR MP setting to fuction. @imacken To make DCS visible in SteamVR "per application video settings" you have to have DCS World in Steam library. If you use DCS standalone version, you can add it to Steam library as external non-steam game. This is my experience at least.

Thanks, I had not even noticed that the file structure had changed.

Could you elaborate how it is outdated. I am still using the configuration file as described, because the reprojection setting in SteamVR settings does not seem to have any effect for me.

There is also Microsoft documentation, which covers the configuration options: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/enthusiast-guide/using-steamvr-with-windows-mixed-reality

Did you notice that in game statistics only value that goes up when fps goes down is the "Main: ..., simulation" field. Could this be the culprit of the issue? It would also be interesting to test this same mission run on server (even on same computer to offload some of the calculations to separate process) and see if there is similar fps drop for the client.

I think you have a point here! It is also my personal feeling that stutters occur when AI aircrafts are active and near. One can only speculate the exact cause of the performance drop, but everything suggests CPU bound activity. It could be that GPU has to wait AI control logic to finish its calculations if it is done sequentially. Maybe scripting also makes GPU wait causing stutters. Either way the solution might require architetural level changes and optimizations to parallelize these tasks.

Can confirm, fixed for me too now.

Same here, disappointing.

Good/Cheap/Fast - Pick Two! There are loud voices demanding both faster releases and better quality, which leaves only one free variable - the price. Maybe increasing the budget, we could expect better quality releases in quicker succession. One could argue that the price of the modules is not exactly cheap, but then you would think free market would spawn more competition. So we are safe to assume that the price is indeed cheap for this kind of product.