Stepped into the looking glass

Couldn’t wait any longer so I broke open the box and set up my index. Having never been in the world of VR to say I was absolutely flabbergasted would be an understatement. Holly crap!!

I made the settings mirror some that I have seen in posts. Set it for 120mhz and 1.1 pd. Smooth as butter but just a tad blurry. Upped it to max and looked amazing but very fine jitters were unbearable. Finally ended up with 1.6 and looked really good and ran smooth (f18 in Caucuses btw).

Have to say a bit of fine focus would still be welcome especially in mid range. Cockpit looks sharp but was right up behind a mig and it was blurry. Any thoughts on which of the bazillion settings might help? Almost all DCS settings on high.

Thanks

This is a very short thread but I give initial settings to use with the Index including my own. Oh yeah, welcome to club of VR and the Index!

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=257532

This is a very short thread but I give initial settings to use with the Index including my own. Oh yeah, welcome to club of VR and the Index!

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=257532

Yep, you were one I was following, thanks. Instill need to go back and shut down all the windows crap to hopefully get some additional ability to get Pd up. Question, you initially say Dcs PD to 1.0 then say set dcs to 1.4 to 1.6. Is their a typo or am I misreading?

Im assuming the objective is to squeeze the most PD out to balance clarity with smoothness?

@biggs - Welcome to the wonderful world of trial and error to make your headset perform better! LOL

I'll give you my settings below, but first wanted to state there are many settings that can be changed and will give different levels of performance. For me, my litmus test is flying the standard PG free flight in Dubai in the F-18. I look to fly the AC down the line of railway tracks from one end of Dubai to the other with the frame time graph up in the HMD. I look for a consistant 18-20MS with NO RED during the flight with maneuvering - usually a few slow barrel rolls in the part between city scapes since there are so many small buildings.

You can always make the game look prettier, but it comes at a cost (one which I am unwilling to pay :) ).

Personally, I do very little image adjustment in DCS. I put all textures to high, no msaa or ssaa, both shadows to flat, Anisiotropic filtering to 4x, grass off, trees at 60%, with preload max and object visibility set to high. PD stays at 1.

For me, setting the nvidia settings of FXAA on and Negative LOD set to clamp is working well. People will say FXAA hurts spotting - and while that is true, again, for me, I need some AA (and all AA hurts spotting). Aliasing with no AA kills the immersion for me with major shimmering. I also tried MSAA with MFAA and just MSAA - both of those pushed my frame times up 2-4 MS on average, which caused stuttering and other artifacts unless I dropped the over all resolution down to 150%/100% in Steam (which still caused Frame times in the 19-20MS range and noticeably less clarity). FXAA seems to take down the some of the shimmer without killing the performance. I also put some of the other texture settings on quality to help with how things look in game and set the card for max performance.

The big fix for me is to set up Steam for 148% video super sampling with 138% app and also set the motion smooth to always on. You will always get motion smoothing, like it or not, but forcing it on actually works better in my mind because the switch from no MS to MS causes stuttering. I think I left the advanced super sampling slider on steam as well. I also don't push the headset beyond 80hz since I never get un-motion smoothed flights at 80 frames throughout the flight and I cannot really see much difference between 40 and 45 frames.

These settings give a nice balance of in game performance with little aliasing or shimmer. I can take a low flight over the streets of Dubai with frame times in the 16-20 MS range, little to no stuttering, no red frame times, and FPS sticking at 40 frames.

YMMV

Thanks, does dropping the headset from 120 to 90 free up resources that can then be used upping something else? At what cost? Still trying to comprehend what each of these functions actually accomplishes.

Well, unless you turn it off, you will get motion smoothing to kick in which will half the frame rate. To me, turning it off does not work since I get microstutters without it.

So with Motion Smoothing on, the refresh rate halves when the GPU can't keep up.

80 --> 40

90 --> 45

And while 90-->45 sounds better, the overhead for 5 frames extra a second when GPU or CPU bound is a lot. I have found personally that I sometimes cannot consistently maintain 45 frames with reasonable visuals, but I can get 40 frames much more consistently.

The game will not perform at 90 or 120 frames for longer than a few seconds at a time. If I look up into the sky with no cockpit and nothing above me I may get 90 FPS but as soon as I look at the cockpit and any other objects it drops.

This is all subjective. Some here value quality of image over smoothness, others performance and spotting over quality of image. What I value is consistency - I want smooth and stutterless flying, even if I can't have high resolution with it.

Which setting makes the trees stop growing right before your eyes as you fly thu the mountains? Is it just low fps?

Thanks

Which setting makes the trees stop growing right before your eyes as you fly thu the mountains? Is it just low fps?

Thanks

There is a slider for tree distance in the system (graphics) page . I find that 65-70% works well

Yep, you were one I was following, thanks. Instill need to go back and shut down all the windows crap to hopefully get some additional ability to get Pd up. Question, you initially say Dcs PD to 1.0 then say set dcs to 1.4 to 1.6. Is their a typo or am I misreading?

Im assuming the objective is to squeeze the most PD out to balance clarity with smoothness?

When you're using SteamVR Settings Video Custom Resolution set to anything higher than 150%, leave your in game Pixel Density at 1.0.

If you want to instead use in game Pixel Density for super sampling you need to set SteamVR and all other settings in SteamVR to 100%. Then you can use the in game Pixel Density and set it as high as your system can handle it. It's basically one or the other. In that other thread I explain a third hybrid way to set it up as well.

Which setting makes the trees stop growing right before your eyes as you fly thu the mountains? Is it just low fps?

Thanks

Agree with Svsmokey but I've found anything lower than 70 and they will grow in front of you.

@biggs - Welcome to the wonderful world of trial and error to make your headset perform better! LOL

 

I'll give you my settings below, but first wanted to state there are many settings that can be changed and will give different levels of performance. For me, my litmus test is flying the standard PG free flight in Dubai in the F-18. I look to fly the AC down the line of railway tracks from one end of Dubai to the other with the frame time graph up in the HMD. I look for a consistant 18-20MS with NO RED during the flight with maneuvering - usually a few slow barrel rolls in the part between city scapes since there are so many small buildings.

 

You can always make the game look prettier, but it comes at a cost (one which I am unwilling to pay :) ).

 

Personally, I do very little image adjustment in DCS. I put all textures to high, no msaa or ssaa, both shadows to flat, Anisiotropic filtering to 4x, grass off, trees at 60%, with preload max and object visibility set to high. PD stays at 1.

 

For me, setting the nvidia settings of FXAA on and Negative LOD set to clamp is working well. People will say FXAA hurts spotting - and while that is true, again, for me, I need some AA (and all AA hurts spotting). Aliasing with no AA kills the immersion for me with major shimmering. I also tried MSAA with MFAA and just MSAA - both of those pushed my frame times up 2-4 MS on average, which caused stuttering and other artifacts unless I dropped the over all resolution down to 150%/100% in Steam (which still caused Frame times in the 19-20MS range and noticeably less clarity). FXAA seems to take down the some of the shimmer without killing the performance. I also put some of the other texture settings on quality to help with how things look in game and set the card for max performance.

 

The big fix for me is to set up Steam for 148% video super sampling with 138% app and also set the motion smooth to always on. You will always get motion smoothing, like it or not, but forcing it on actually works better in my mind because the switch from no MS to MS causes stuttering. I think I left the advanced super sampling slider on steam as well. I also don't push the headset beyond 80hz since I never get un-motion smoothed flights at 80 frames throughout the flight and I cannot really see much difference between 40 and 45 frames.

 

These settings give a nice balance of in game performance with little aliasing or shimmer. I can take a low flight over the streets of Dubai with frame times in the 16-20 MS range, little to no stuttering, no red frame times, and FPS sticking at 40 frames.

 

YMMV

The above is the third hybrid way I mentioned and like Nagilem I use this method as well. I tend to use the 148% CR / 138% DCS Application SS or 204% CR only and everything else at 100% depending on SteamVR beta and DCS updates and their effects.