Pimax 5K+ DCS review and 2080ti benchmarks

Yea I give you a lot **** back then if I remember correctly glad it worked out for you :thumbup:

People had a bit of recent money in headsets back then, saying that none of them including my own was good enough, only the good we could get at the time, was against general opinion.

I think VR- players today are looking for something new, and for me the 5k+ is that. I said that I would trow away my Pimax 4k as soon as there was a better system. Yesterday I gave the 4k to a friend. The plan is to lure him to play DCS so I get a wingman :smilewink:

As to performance, I get decent frame rates when in fair weather and not to many things to render on the ground, or perhaps it is so that you just don't see the stutters under these conditions. Everyones opinion varies as to what is acceptable performance, so remember that I was born in olden times, and have played flight sims on 486 computers. Your mileage may wary.

Either way, the 5k+ has been huge fun and for me, when you compare the price to say a monitor or a gfx card, it's a no brainer.

That's true of 2D in DCS, but in VR, GPU makes a significant difference in how much stuff you can turn up. The first upgrade I did after getting my Rift was to upgrade my GPU from a 980ti to a 1080ti. Didn't change anything else in my machine, and the difference was night and day. Shortly after that, I upgraded the CPU from a 5960X to an 8700K, and the performance is roughly the same. That part isn't necessarily a fair comparison though, because the 5960X and 8700K are pretty closely matched in the areas that DCS seems to run in. But, in VR, GPU made a big difference with the same CPU.

You are partially right here in saying that a 1080 is not good enough (and I agree) However, my point is that a 2080ti is still not good enough, so I am not spending on that. I will only spend that kind of money if I know that I pass the performance threshold. That is why I say I will wait for ED to upgrade the engine, to see what kind of gfx card I need.

One thing I want to mention; My machine is pro built gamer from ca 1,5 years ago. Both Windows and DCS is installed on a fast SSD drive. I thus get zero hard drive lag/stutter. And yeah, I can overclock the whole thing but leave it stock just to have a quiet machine.

Regarding performance, don't take me wrong. DCS is useful with Pimax, especially at small FOV (which is still light years ahead of Oculus), but you need to make some compromises with settings. You won't get same smoothness as with Oculus, but it is a very pleasant experience, nonetheless. I will never fly DCS with Oculus again. It is just there is lot of room for improvement in performance department.

You are partially right here in saying that a 1080 is not good enough (and I agree) However, my point is that a 2080ti is still not good enough, so I am not spending on that.

I agree with you there. The 2080ti is supposed to yield a modest improvement over my 1080ti, but I don't think the marginal performance increase is worth $1500.00. It was worth it to go from the 980ti to 1080ti though. And now they released the Titan RTX, for $2500.00, which only benchmarks marginally higher for games than the 2080ti. I think ED is starting to progress on their intentions to improve VR performance. I noticed a little bit of an improvement on that front with the latest version of 2.5.4. But, that's all relative, since the first incarnation of it dumped performance in the toilet. Now the AGM-65D is borked too, but I know things will get fixed there.

Performance update:

Have been flying the F-86 for the major part since I got the 5k+ The game runs fluent and smooth in normal view. Just tried the F-18 however, and the game now has below acceptable frame rate and I can not recommend this module with the extra juice needed for the 5k+

This leads me to conclude that it is the Windows and DCS on a SSD that gives me the performance needed, rather than the 1080. The F-18 has a lot more systems to process and I think it is the mostly single core limit of DCS that is holding it back.

Try the F-86, it's great :thumbup:

People had a bit of recent money in headsets back then, saying that none of them including my own was good enough, only the good we could get at the time, was against general opinion.

 

I think VR- players today are looking for something new, and for me the 5k+ is that. I said that I would trow away my Pimax 4k as soon as there was a better system. Yesterday I gave the 4k to a friend. The plan is to lure him to play DCS so I get a wingman :smilewink:

 

As to performance, I get decent frame rates when in fair weather and not to many things to render on the ground, or perhaps it is so that you just don't see the stutters under these conditions. Everyones opinion varies as to what is acceptable performance, so remember that I was born in olden times, and have played flight sims on 486 computers. Your mileage may wary.

 

Either way, the 5k+ has been huge fun and for me, when you compare the price to say a monitor or a gfx card, it's a no brainer.

Totally agree I started on the spectrum Amiga PC e.t.c still own all my flight sims I remember ef2000 on a dx50 upgraded my gfx to vesa local bus and was in heaven.

Totally agree I started on the spectrum Amiga PC e.t.c

Amiga is Amiga, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum is completely different thing. I started with Spectrum too.

Totally agree I started on the spectrum Amiga PC e.t.c still own all my flight sims I remember ef2000 on a dx50 upgraded my gfx to vesa local bus and was in heaven.

Amiga is Amiga, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum is completely different thing. I started with Spectrum too.

Obviously they are I am saying I have had flight sims on all formats I missed out the "punctuation mark".

Spectrum,Amiga,PC also I left out the commodore 64/128 I owned I still have a boxed gunship for the 64.

lol nice I was into Falcon on the Amiga.

Fighter Pilot was the first on the spectrum for me :)

Copy protection in the game Falcon on the Amiga was when on the runway and tried to take off three bullet holes would appear on the HUD and you could not carry on :D

One Saturday a friend & I photocopied the manual for TFX for the Amiga in the local library :music_whistling:

Thank God, the good old days have left us !

Thank God, the good old days have left us !

And the same will be said in another 20 or 30 years time,

Quick update on performance. Tried beta Pitool with beta brainwarp. And I can tell, they are definitely getting there! When it active, world seems almost as smooth as it was with Oculus Rift. Unfortunately, it is not always ON on very demanding scenes (such as a low level flight over a city on F-18C in Caucasus map), probably because fps is not sufficient for it to work. Or maybe it is just a bug of current implementation. Lowering HMD refresh rate helps, on lower refresh rate BW is ON most of the time, even on very demanding scenery and plane (F-18C, low level flight over city) and world is almost perfectly smooth. So, just a little more, and we will be there. Was testing with pretty much everything maxed out. Only MSAA and SSAA were off, and terrain objects shadows were flat. Pimax FOV was set to normal (very easy to check your six!).

Quick update on performance. Tried beta Pitool with beta brainwarp. And I can tell, they are definitely getting there! When it active, world seems almost as smooth as it was with Oculus Rift. Unfortunately, it is not always ON on very demanding scenes (such as a low level flight over a city on F-18C in Caucasus map), probably because fps is not sufficient for it to work. Or maybe it is just a bug of current implementation. Lowering HMD refresh rate helps, on lower refresh rate BW is ON most of the time, even on very demanding scenery and plane (F-18C, low level flight over city) and world is almost perfectly smooth. So, just a little more, and we will be there. Was testing with pretty much everything maxed out. Only MSAA and SSAA were off, and terrain objects shadows were flat. Pimax FOV was set to normal (very easy to check your six!).

What about Fixed Foveated rendering? This should save a few FPS as well.

Are you guys using the shader mod?

Foveat renderering do not work for me, screens on HMD just turned black and stayed black until power off-on. Do not recommend it to try.

No, I do not use any mods.

If I could, I would give you some rep for your review.

:thumbup:

Anyway, after reading through it, I think I´m gonna switch to the 5K+ once I can get my hands on a 2080ti..

If I could, I would give you some rep for your review.

:thumbup:

 

Anyway, after reading through it, I think I´m gonna switch to the 5K+ once I can get my hands on a 2080ti..

I preordered a 5k+ too and hoping mine comes without the black dots on the LCD screen. There are two displays out there, one with and one without so cross figures I get a new one with out the issue since my preorder was very recent. Its reported, 8k does not have this issue so you may not want to switch. If you get the blackdots, Pimax will not RMA it unless it has dead pixels.

https://forum.pimaxvr.com/t/about-the-pimax-5k-black-dots/13809/6

Excellent review of your experience with new Pimax 5k+ Rage! I just received mine and have had the HTC Vive Pro for 6 months now, and so far in my experience Vive Pro ( considered Generation 1) has better overall performance than Pimax 5+. I am still trying different settings on Pimax

as I am not losing hope. Right off the bat however Pimax 5k+ stands out in two very important areas, sense of speed and FOV. The sense of speed is more realistic with Pimax 5K+ I find, meaning that when flying at 800 Knots at 100 feet AGL , things do seem to pass by faster than when in same

configuration using Vive Pro. And the FOV with Pimax is great!

I been reading forums and youtube on " best settings". So far I've done and taken all the suggestions. Best thing so far is what Rage suggested of increasing Anisotropic Filtering to 16x (a setting I usually left at 2x) and setting lower in-game VR of even less than 0.9. This raised my FPS on Pimax 5k+

from 18 FPS to 30-33 FPS. Those same settings on Vive Pro yielded way better results with FPS 45 to 90 depending on terrain detail and altitude flying over Caucasus Map. On ramp Rage’s settings gave me FPS 45 with Vive Pro and fluctuated between 65 and 90 FPS at altitudes over 20, 000 Feet, I

had never seen such smoother and immersive experience, so thanks to Rage for posting settings!

My Hardware: ASUS STRIX Z370, I -7 8086K 5.0 GHZ 6 core, Titan V 12GB, RIPJAWSV-16GB-3000 mhz-DDR4 and NVIDIA driver version 399.24 ( Notice I noted NVIDIA Driver Version 399.24 , almost a year old version of NVIDIA Driver that helped me break FPS 30

and up to FPS 40 on my Vive Pro.

In summary, before reading Rages’s settings, HTC Vive PRO would top at FPS 30 to now between FPS 45 to 90. Pimax 5k+ before your settings FPS 18, and after applying your settings FPS 30-33, huge improvement.

Other things worth mentioning , connecting and setting up Pimax 5k+ with PiTool was easy and there were no issues with two HTC Lighthouses, I wonder if a third would help improve. HTC Vive Pro comes with built in headphones which is a big plus.

I have tried all the settings suggested by SweViver with PiTools at 1.0 and changed settings for DCS on NVIDIA control panel to preferred maximum power and maximum pre-rendered frames to 3 and I am getting less than FPS 30 with Pimax 5k+. I also updated

my NVIDIA to a newer version and that also helped somewhat. Maybe there is an NVIDIA version that is more suitable for Pimax 5K that may NOT be necessarily the latest version, as I went through this initially with Vive Pro. I tried different versions and again NVIDIA Driver

Version 399.24 was the best for my hardware and Vive Pro.

For few months NVIDIA's Version 399.24 gave me the best resolution with my hardware and I was able to read the gauges on the Hornet’s cockpit . Newer versions of NVIDIA driver yielded poor VR experience, very low FPS and unreadable cockpit in VR.

Since most of us have different CPU and GPUs, tweaking between different settings WILL be required due to the interplay between all the hardware and software and their respective version , will have a direct effect on resolution and overall gaming experience in DCS. What works for me , might

not be the case for someone else. But these settings posted by DCS Pilots are great starting points and certainly helps go in the right direction. I wanted and did indeed turn off the automatic updater in Win 10 for my NVIDIA Driver.

Also I feel Eagle Dynamics should for us VR enthusiasts throw us a bone here and there by advising what settings to use. Settings for Radeon GPU has to be very different than for NVIDIA GPU. The interplay of it all is what will determine ones ability to get a good FPS in DCS.

Meaning you can have top notch GPU 2080ti or a Titan, and still have less quality resolution overall than a 1080ti that has been adjusted properly with right Driver version, PiTool game settings etc.

Also from my very limited understanding of computers and how they work, this would be more a question to Eagle Dynamics, since DCS I believe is a UNI - thread game, does this just simply mean it will not EVER be great for VR? And would this mean that getting top notch GPU and CPU will

not make big difference because of this? I may be wrong, if I am someone please correct me. Kind of sad to think that such a great game like DCS World was not made with VR in mind, or that if that is the case, that can not design a DCS format specifically for VR. I must be asking for too much.

Thanks to Eagle Dynamics, Sweviver , Sebastian, Rage and ALL of those who have shared their settings as they have been very useful. My settings just upgraded to Rages, so if I get better settings, I will be posting. In the meantime, I will NOT give up on Pimax 5k+

due to it’s great FOV, it’s worth the continued search for the perfect combination of it all ( GPU driver versions, and settings, In game settings and VR, PiTool or Steam SS , type of CPU whether it’s a I5, I 7 or I 9. Again I am an ignorant with how exactly all these moving parts interact

with each other and how or why certain settings yield no result and why others do. This is very worth the study out of mere technological and scientific curiosity. And I will continue to try different settings and document and share. I’m a private pilot ( Cirrus SR22 ) and new in DCS and still learning

the Hornet. I been waiting for years for this technology to arrive, now let’s see how it al continue to unfold. Very exciting times for VR enthusiasts no doubt!

Which settings do you mean, the ones on the first page?

And yeah it would be great if ED could give folks some clue as to an optimal baseline settings for VR (and yes I know there is pre-sets), it would be nice if they told us which settings to tweak and not touch too.

Pimax 5K+ DCS review and 2080ti benchmarks

fyi - most companies will not provide “best settings” guidance because it varies too much, depending on hardware and software.

you’ve experienced this yourself, the forums are filled with various and sometimes conflicting “best settings”. heck, even your wingman buddies use different settings than you do.

i understand the desire, just saying it’s not likely to happen.

it would also being limited use since things change so fast.

fyi - most companies will not provide “best settings” guidance because it varies too much, depending on hardware and software.

 

you’ve experienced this yourself, the forums are filled with various and sometimes conflicting “best settings”. heck, even your wingman buddies use different settings than you do.

 

i understand the desire, just saying it’s not likely to happen.

 

it would also being limited use since things change so fast.

.....to say nothing of personal preferences . I burn a lot of my GPU horsepower on anti-aliasing , for example . Another with exactly the same setup might prioritise view distances , textures , cockpit shadow quality etc .

Oh I get it, but a list of which settings eat the most frames i.e. MSAA eats alot, Trees eat alot, draw distance eats alot, textures don't eat alot etc. would be nice. yes I know folks here have made those measurements, but it would be nice to know from the guys who actually wrote the engine.

So, I did more tweaking with DCS, and I can share what I came out with. I have some things I do not want to compromise on, such as ultimate visibility range or shadows. Other thing I found to be necessary is MSAA, at least 2x. Because currently DCS on Pimax 5K+ can't take it all even on very powerful system, other compromises need to be make. So, for me it came to SteamVR supersampling to go as low as 55% (PiTool and DCS at 1.0) and HMD refresh rate as low as 72 Hz. Currently, those are the best compromise between imagery and performance I came out.

Oh I get it, but a list of which settings eat the most frames i.e. MSAA eats alot, Trees eat alot, draw distance eats alot, textures don't eat alot etc. would be nice. yes I know folks here have made those measurements, but it would be nice to know from the guys who actually wrote the engine.

don't forget about shadows