j9murphy

I *think* smart smoothing is still bugged in the latest firmware (at least at 72hz) not sure about 120/90. I have it turned off.

I updated my settings in my original post. Based on the some feedback here, I'm now using 120hz at half frame frate. So far its pretty smooth in almost every situation. I havnt tried MP or a complex mission yet but the early results are encouraging. The cockpit is very clear, the terrain outside the cockpit is not quite as clear it seems when compared to my last settings? only slightly so? I also changed the name of the topic to "Fast CPU" since it seemed we didnt get many takers on the 13900k settings.

I'll re-verify the behavior when I get home on Sunday night.

I get 90 at altitude as well, but near the ground I get stutters in Syria and the PG. @Tusk.V could you look at the settings I posted in the 13900k/4090/Pimax thread and let us know where your setting are different?

no worries not a deal breaker, i can relate to the workload - I'm swamped as well. When I set to 61.5 DCS it shows as 63.5 in updater. When I set 61.5 in updater *I think* it goes to 63.5 in dcs.... i'd have to verify that last part.

I think it may have something to do with not using a WMR headset (pimax crystal) and using pimax XR?

i've tried that setting both on and off, as well as full screen in the main options

no matter what the VR view on my desktop is not the vertical full screen render, its either full screen (edge to edge) or windowed. What causes this?

setting the IPD distance in the VR tab seems to cause different values in the launcher than in dcs

it also looks like DLAA is not applied on the menu screens, so shimmering in the peripheral view is very pronounced in the menu, but disappear once you are in the plane. no takers on sharing yet:) It's a long list of items above... I guess that's why tuning is so difficult and why we get such different results from each other many times.

yes, DLAA eliminates that shimmering in your peripheral view for low values in QVFR. Without DLAA it's pretty distracting.

There are several of us running this configuration, so I thought it might be helpful for us to try and compare settings more objectively. I put the most common items we tinker with below. To respond in the thread, just copy what's below and update with your settings and results to share with the group. Feel free to add a setting if you think it's material to your results. This should at least give a few of us a way to learn more directly from each other's experiences. Will be interesting to see if we can replicate each other's results… Settings ======= PC/BIOS Settings Hyperthreading: Off VTx Support: On OC Applied: Y RAM: 32 GB CPU: 13900K Windows Settings Windows Version: 11 Game Mode: Off HAGS: Off Idle CPU Usage (No DCS): 1-2% Process Lasso: No Core parking: Disabled Nvidia Settings (my fps improved by forcing the global 3d settings back to default) All Default except… Power Management Mode: Prefer Max Performance Virtual Reality Pre-Rendered Frames: 3 PiMax Play Settings Refresh Rate: 90Hz Eye Tracking: On Render Quality: Maximum FFR: Off Smart Smoothing: Off Hidden Area Mask: Off Pimax XR QuadViews/QVFR QuadViews Version 1.1.3 Enabled: Y OpenXR Toolkit Enabled: Y All Defaults, except… Display Resolution (per eye): 3600x4260 DCS Settings: DCS Version: Open Beta 2.9.0.47168 Multi-Threaded: Y PD: 1.0 Anti Aliasing: DLAA Upscaling: Off Sharpening: .5 Shadows: Medium Flat Shadows Blur: Off Secondary Shadows: Off Visible Range: Ultra Clouds: High Water: High SSAO: Off SSLR: Off Anisotropic Filtering: 16x Terrain Object Shadows: Flat Results Discussion: My goal was smoothness, I'm willing to dial down quality to get smoothness. Free Flight in Caucus is 90fps, flying low over cities in PG drops me to 70-80. Mostly smooth, good render resolution.

I like the off ear design, and think the sound is on par with the G2 which is pretty decent - but I like to be aware of the room in addition to decent game sound.

the panels in the crystal do not take up that entire space. The size of the headset was selected based on the upcoming pimax 12k so they didnt have to design/build separate headsets.

my intuition tells me that having the game render at a higher resolution would be higher in resource cost (and quality) than scaling what the game has already rendered.... but I really have no specific knowledge that would tell me that's right... any one else?

This is correct, "smoothness" is not only based on fps, but on whether or not those frames arrive at the same interval or not. (fps is to some extent an average over some time interval) anything over 30fps can be perceived as smooth if the frames arrive at precise intervals (until you add motion - panning your vision introduces motion blur at 30fps). Essentially what we are trying to do is get frames at regular intervals at a high enough rate not to introduce motion blur.

I'm not in front of my computer at the moment but I think I've already lowered the resolution in oxrtk to 3500...

max in PimaxPlay

I went from a G2 to a crystal. My experience with the G2 was very good, using motion smoothing, msaax2, and 90hz I was able to get exceptional smoothness. I wanted, however, more FOV and a clearer picture. I have not (yet) been able to attain the level of smoothness with my crystal that I got with my G2, although the picture is MUCH better. Motion smoothing with the crystal is "broken" from what I understand in the current version. There is a fix coming and maybe that will give the smoothness I want, and when 72hz mode is available, maybe that will help too. I couldn't do 60hz on the G2, made my eyes tired pretty quickly. I dont use any AA (no msaa, dlss, dlaa..) because I find that the resolution of the lenses overcomes most of the need for AA (ymmv, its a personal thing of course). I do use QVFR and sampling in the OXRTK, but those are a work in progress as I continue to experiment. My only gripe at this point is smoothness, but I think the next pimax update will solve that for me. (13900k/4090/32GB/GPU Bound)

another post pointed out that for FFR OpenXR toolkit has bigger CPU impact, and QVFR has bigger GPU impact so you should choose the one more appropriate to where you have the headroom.

if you have open composite, get rid of that or make sure it's not selected for steam with dcs, also you need 2 hyphens not one as you have above. --force... not -force

+1

This is way off topic, but the best way to OC a 13900K is to use adaptive voltage and loadline calibration to create the headroom to do a larger overclock on a smaller number of cores rather than overclocking all of the cores at once. in other words if you are only using 4 cores then maybe your overclock is 6ghz, but if you are using 6 cores your oc is 5.8, and 8 cores it's 5.6... this avoids the thermal problem with the 13900K you mention if done properly. (of course maybe you knew all of this already) if you really want to dive deep, this is the resource... This guide was written for ASUS motherboards, but the concepts apply to any motherboard with the 13900k. Mine does not run hot at all in this configuration. Click "See More" under the first post. https://www.overclock.net/threads/asus-maximus-z790-and-intel-i9-13900k-14900k-an-overclocking-and-tuning-guide.1801569/ welcome to yet another rabbit hole...

if you want to use eye tracking then only QVFR will provide that, correct? or do I have that wrong...

I'm starting to ask the same question... There are so many places to set resolution.. DCS PD, Pimax Play, QVFR, OpenXR Toolkit... I've lost track of how to use these together in a coherent way lol, but I'm convinced that's why people have such different experiences on similar hardware. would love a tuning "recipe" which said 'start here', then have branches of what to do next based on what you see, but now we've added even more permutations with DLAA/DLSS/TAA/MSAA etc... I get that its always a game of quality vs performance but I always seem to be chasing my tail. Another factor with the pimax is that the high resolution of the display is both your friend and enemy compared to other headsets. I can run the pimax with no msaa because the resolution of the display doesnt create shimmering and aliasing (ymmv) like I saw in the G2. but since I dont need msaa (again ymmv) dlss/dlaa/taa just add more overhead than just running without, so why use them unless I can render at lower resolution and upscale with one of those to create more room to turn more gpu candy on, which I'm struggling to do.. Xplane has a great addon tool which dynamically adjusts the level of detail based on the frame rate. This is a great thing in my opinion because as the number of things to render goes up it will maintain fps and smoothness by lowering the quality to maintain a minimum frame rate and vice versa. it does this by adjusting the render distance, the cockpit stays clear, but objects in the distance are rendered at less detail. I find this to be an acceptable tradeoff for me because studders and jitters destroy the immersion for me faster than minor changes in quality (imho). anyway, I digress...