StrongHarm

Jacks, post a screen shot of your DCS vid settings please. Did you get new memory to go with your new CPU? Ref video in my last post. Razer Cortex isn't a "game enhancer" gimmick. It will without question free up resources as it stops unneeded services such as the print spooler. It should free up at least 1g of RAM and 100+ threads. However, I didn't suggest it to simply free up resources, but rather so it might shut down something hooking your performance that you don't know about, as a troubleshooting step. If you run Cortex and find that your stutters are gone, you know you need to look deeper into your processes and services to find out what's interfering. Good luck.

Jacks, post a screenshot of your DCS video settings. What's your PD at? When you upgraded to the 8700k, did you get new RAM or stick with the same 1600mhz DDR3? The older RAM with the 8700k can cause a bottleneck. . Here are some fixes I've seen for micro stutter. I'd try them one at a time so you'll know which one solved your problem. Replying with this information might help someone else. If you find a solution that's not in the list, be sure to reply with that too. Make sure your BIOS is updated to the latest version. I know this sounds trivial, but I assure you that it can cause some seriously weird issues if you're on an old BIOS version while using newer drivers for components that are plugged into your MB. Perform a clean install of the nVidia drivers. When you're doing the install you'll see a checkmark at the bottom of the screen for 'Clean Install'. Be aware, this will delete any 3d profiles you have set in the nVidia control panel, but it also refreshes all DLLs and gets rid of files from previous driver versions. Make sure that your Rift Sensor is connected to a USB 3.0 connection rather than a 2.0. This can cause stutters and edge bleed. Reinstall the Rift Drivers. If you're using Windows 10, make sure you turn off Game Mode in the OS settings. **This is a common one Download and install Razer Cortex. This app has a database of known 'unneeded tasks and services' that may be running on your system that could interfere with game performance. When you left click on the tray icon and engage 'boost' it automatically ends task and stops services that aren't required, freeing resources for games. After you're done flying, simply left click on the tray icon and select 'Restore Now' and it will restart all the tasks and services it stopped. This is a safe application that has never stopped a service that I actually needed, and has never caused me any issues. It frees up system resources. I recommend this because you may have something running in the background that is causing your issue, but why search for a needle in a haystack when you can burn the haystack down. If you've 'Set Affinity' to specific CPU cores, remove it and choose all cores. Setting affinity can be a good thing if it's done right, but removing it will eliminate affinity as root cause. Delete the files from "..\Saved Games\DCS\FXO and .\metashaders" Bring Preload Radius all the way to low. Test in 10% increments until you receive desired performance I know it sounds crazy, but try hitting ALT+ENTER to make the mirrored view on your monitor go full screen. I know it shouldn't have an effect, and I don't understand it, but I've seen this fix stutters for more than one person. Read this post for ver2.5 VR tweaks https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=201647 Does anyone have any other potential fixes to add to this list?

I have an enormous head. 70 IPD is a bit too small for me. The Brooks Brothers glasses I linked above fit me nicely and I can't even feel them with the Rift on. They're perfect.. at least for me. Highly recommended. The glasses I wear normally are Oakleys. I just swap out the Brooks Brothers before flying in VR.

I use the lean forward method myself. Another option is to use snap view methods to alter your default view. http://en.wiki.eagle.ru/wiki/Snap_views This gets much more complicated. I use snap views for getting a locked view of each MFCD and the CDU in the A-10C, and a single locked view of the ABRIS and IT23 in the KA-50, but the same functions can be used to alter your default views.

Here's a full analysis of 2.5 Video Settings - VR Quality/Performance Balance if you're interested.

Edited OP: Also (I guess this would be categorized as hardware), I found the perfect set of eye glasses for use with the Rift. They fit well into the enclosure and perfectly cover the Rift lenses.

I think he's saying that he doesn't like the default head position. When starting a mission I personally crane my neck forward and down a little and recenter. When I lean back to normal position my virtual head is in a more natural position and I have a wider field of view of the cockpit.

Jabbers, I'm a Business Intelligence Architect so I like to use weighted measures. Scale of 1-10 is something simple that most people can relate to. I didn't want to disable ASW to get literal FPS values as I thought it might alter my tests. I'm not on the ED test team anymore, so I don't put these together often, and I really try to avoid the DCS boards these days because of all the contention, but next time I put one together I'll better consider my analysis scale. Good advice. You're right about system specs creating a huge number of variables. In my full analysis I mention this. My system is very well maintained. I'm usually high on the 3DMark and BOINC lists as I've been in tech for 30yrs. Even with my system power though, I find that MSAAx4 cuts my performance in half, but MSAAx2 with PD1.2 looks and performs better than 1.8 MSAAx0 for me. You're right though, perception and system fitness can create different results.

UFC is the Up Front Controller. It's the box with buttons just below the heads up display:

FragBum, I did some more testing on ASW. The reason your GPU isn't topped out when using ASW is because ASW requires less resources to do the same thing. It's a good thing. Not using ASW causes edge bleed and double vision, which may give you VR sickness. Here's a good way to reproduce the effects so you can see what I'm talking about: 1. Get in A-10C on the ramp 2. Leave ASW on and look at your UFC numbers 3. Move your head back and forth ala Stevie Wonder while looking at your UFC 4. You should see no edge bleed or double vision 5. Hit CTRL+Num1 to disable ASW and "Stevie Wonder" the UFC again 6. You'll notice obvious double vision and edge bleed 7. Hit CTRL+Num4 to re-enable ASW, the edge bleed and double vision should go away The purpose of ASW is to prevent VR sickness and eye strain caused by edge bleed and double vision. With ASW off, you may not clearly see it happening everywhere like you do when you "Stevie Wonder the UFC", but it's still there and it still affects you. Disclaimer: I'm not telling you what to do. Feel free to extend your finger at my post and disable ASW at me.

I wear bifocals as well, but for my rift glasses I'm using standard lenses with the computer anodized coating only. These glasses fit perfectly into the rift and perfectly cover the rift lenses: https://www.framesdirect.com/framesfp/Brooks_Brothers-lakaphnh/r.html

Resolution should have no effect on VR. Your Rift runs at a preset resolution and can't be changed. To change your field of view you can do one of two things; 1. Force IPD on the VR page or 2. Lead forward a little and use your key for recenter VR. If you don't have the key set for recenter VR, it's in your controls page under UI Layer. For Force IPD you need the value that your IPD on your rift is set to. If the physical slider is all the way to the right, that's 70 IPD.

My analysis isn't gospel, it's just an attempt at being helpful. I hope you find something useful. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3382525#post3382525

FragBum, I'll look deeper into it. Thanks a bunch.

fargo007 you're right, preferences are no doubt subjective. My intention was to save you some time with that analysis. You're the first person to report such a departure from the results. Different hardware builds do create unseen variables. My apologies for insinuating otherwise. Settings in the nVidia control panel and inspector don't effect VR in DCS, and this should not be subjective based upon hardware. As far as I know, and it's been verified by many others; the only setting that will effect DCS (minimal) is 'Power Management Mode'. If you've found a way around it and have enhanced DCS through the NCP or NI, it would be really helpful if you could write up how you did it.

fargo007, be aware that nVidia control panel (or inspector) settings have no effect on VR. If you bring your PD down to 1.2 you can raise your other settings and it will look better and perform better. Full analysis.

Spot on. In 2.5, with MSAA enabled, any PD setting over 1.2 has hugely diminishing returns. I use Rift CV1 with 1.2PD and 2xMSAA and never see lag, edge bleed, or blurry gauges.. plus the lighting and graphics look superb.

dbpetrol, deferred shading off is of course a personal preference. Regardless, 1.7PD and 2xMSAA is really high. I'm personally very happy with 1.7PD without MSAA if I'm not using deferred shading. Have you tried to lower the PD to see how it looks? MSAA compensates some when in a lower PD. At 1.2PD 2xMSAA I can read the gauges very clearly. If you look at the chart, you're trading 6 points of performance for 2 points of quality when using 1.7PD 2xMSAA. With deferred shading off you shouldn't need to tweak for quality that much. Again, every system is different and it's largely a matter of personal preference, but you might be able to increase your performance greatly. Turning ASW off is a bad idea unless you have your settings real low and you have a monster system. Yes, it does lock your FPS, but it significantly decreases the resources needed to achieve similar quality results. In other words, it makes everything smoother at a higher quality. In the gaming world we've been conditioned to believe that there's nothing more important than hitting a certain FPS. That's misleading, especially with consideration to VR. Read more about ASW here: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-spacewarp/ . I'll add that link to OP as well.

Added to OP: ADDITIONAL TEST NOTES, HARDWARE: With the same settings that I'm using in VR, I tested my system with a monitor at 1080 and 4k. 1080 averaged 173 FPS in the same tests, and 4k averaged 78 FPS. What really surprised me was that the visual quality was still superb on a monitor with the modified VR settings. I also tested overclocking the CPU and Vidcard while in 4k: i7-5960x - from 3.4ghz to 4.3ghz - about 10FPS gained across the board 1080ti FTW3 - from 1500/5500 to 2050/5800 - about 5FPS gained across the board I've always known that DCS has a CPU bottleneck due to the huge amount of physics calcs that ED has blessed us with. I was not however, expecting that with the new graphics I would still gain more performance from a CPU overclock than a GPU overclock. These results surprised me.

None of the nVidia hardware settings in the NCP will effect VR. Only the software based settings from within DCS effect quality/performance. For more information, see full analysis in quote link:

In the 'similar products' below I saw a bomber gyro for sale. I hope someone doesn't buy that and try to apply power to it. Spinning gyros that aren't bolted to airframes are not your friend. We had an AT unbolt one from a bird that had been on the deck for a long time so he didn't think it was still spinning... it was still spinning. It broke the last bolt off and pinged around the inside of the bird like a pinball. Nearly killed him.

That is cool! The military gets all the coolest toys. I've been out since the late 90s, but ever since then every time something cool comes out for the public, I'm aware that the military is a decade ahead. Optics is a big one. I had an opportunity to use the HMD on an early iteration of the Apache during the desert storm era, and I have to say that even back then it was really good. Not long ago I had the opportunity to look at the latest gen HMD for the Apache at a DOD lab and it blew my mind. As for optics for newer aircraft, I have it on *good authority that the distributed aperture system and sensor fusion suite through augmented reality is everything they brag about and more. The best this civilian can hope to get his hands on is HoloLens and 8k VR.

VR specific analysis done with high end system. i7-5960x extreme CPU, EVGA 1080ti FTW, 16g RAM, dedicated EVO Pro 1tb SSD, Rift CV1. Settings I settled on give me enhanced quality with stable 90 or 45 fps with no edge bleed or sensor blur, dropping below 45 only in very extreme situations. The key was 1.2PD and 2xMSAA. See link for full analysis:

MSAA and MFAA don't have to scale entire frames as FSAA did. MSAA has an algorithm that upscales only the necessary pixels, which makes it less expensive than FSAA. MFAA has a much more efficient algorithm to perform a similar operation, which makes it even less expensive than MSAA. This is the 30k ft view summary. There's more info in the video Sideslip linked or the nVidia site for those who want the NOE details.

Agreed Sideslip, I like the purist approach to settings you did in the OP analysis. Truly outstanding work. Thanks again.