VR Performance in DCS World

[hansangb]

I've just done FPS comparison between VR and nonVR mode using the same scenario - Ka50 free flight over Sukhumi. Very simple mission with almost non existent AI.

I was flying straight towards the town. At the start of the flight FPS were just over 200 (nonVR) and gradually dropped to about 150 when I was over the town. In VR mode I took the same flying path and FPS dropped from 90 (locked) to 50.

 

I am using graphics settings from this thread https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=172537. It means most settings are low, off or minimum. My PC specs are: i7 6700K@4.5GHz, GTX 980ti OC, 16GB 2400Mhz RAM.

 

My conclusion is simple. This game is unplayable in VR mode. I doubt GTX 1080 would make a big difference. Whoever is saying that he has stable 90FPS is either lying or using NASA supercomputer.

 

Which VR are you using. With ATW and ASW, I'm enjoying the hell out of my Rift. Would never go back to 2D screen. 45 with ASW is more than smooth with Rift.

[Precog]

I have a 970 with shadows on low and pixel density set to 1.5 and average around 45 most of the time. It is very playable even when frames drop below 45 ... Doesn't really bother me. My main gripe is resolution. I also fly fsx and the DCS vr experience is way better. Tbh, after 3 months I'm still blown away. The future is going to be incredible for this hobby of ours.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Precog

[Paratus]

This is a bit (or a lot) of a necro but a lot of people in here have said they've seen no noticeable improvement going to the 10x series of cards from nVidia in VR. This has been a very different experience for me. I have a 980Ti and performance in VR (i7 @ 4.2 ghz) was less than ideal. It was playable for sure but a lot of ghosting artifacts from low FPS on the Vive.

 

I'm running a 1080Ti now and it's smooth as butter, with no noticeable ghosting or stuttering, even in DCS 2.0. I'm also running 2.0 pixel density, although shadows are off as I haven't tried turning them back on after the upgrade.

 

Other than the video card my only change was an overclock from 4.2GHz to 4.3GHz, but such a small overclock couldn't have a huge impact.. perhaps a bit though. DCS does seem to be a CPU heavy game so some of you could maybe do well buying a cheap but effective water cooler (Corsair are nice) and boost your CPU a bit. I think they run for like $30-$40.

[Nascar]

This is a bit (or a lot) of a necro but a lot of people in here have said they've seen no noticeable improvement going to the 10x series of cards from nVidia in VR. This has been a very different experience for me. I have a 980Ti and performance in VR (i7 @ 4.2 ghz) was less than ideal. It was playable for sure but a lot of ghosting artifacts from low FPS on the Vive.

 

I'm running a 1080Ti now and it's smooth as butter, with no noticeable ghosting or stuttering, even in DCS 2.0. I'm also running 2.0 pixel density, although shadows are off as I haven't tried turning them back on after the upgrade.

 

Other than the video card my only change was an overclock from 4.2GHz to 4.3GHz, but such a small overclock couldn't have a huge impact.. perhaps a bit though. DCS does seem to be a CPU heavy game so some of you could maybe do well buying a cheap but effective water cooler (Corsair are nice) and boost your CPU a bit. I think they run for like $30-$40.

 

Good to hear.

How much ram do you have?

The 2.0 pixel density doesn't wash out the colors anymore?

Have you played any WW2 multiplayer servers with a lot of AA going off?

[Wolf8312]

Good to hear.

How much ram do you have?

The 2.0 pixel density doesn't wash out the colors anymore?

Have you played any WW2 multiplayer servers with a lot of AA going off?

 

 

And what about with alot of carpet bombings going on? Is the 1080Ti experience flawless now? If you run a mission like 'battle' for example with the KA-50 how are the frame rates then?

 

Sounds a great improvement but to be honest from what I've heard it seems like there is no fundamental problem with my 980Ti just that the game is not utilizing it properly and the same with my CPU (i7-4770).

 

The VR Vive experience has improved so much since the beggining that its hard to beleive it wont get better still, and to upgrade now, and basically hedge everything on the 1080Ti seems a bit risky if like me you're wishing your next rig to pretty much future proof a game like DCS 2.0.

 

I want my next rig to play DCS perfectly with no ifs or buts. I kinda jumped too early on the 980Ti to be honest, but dont wish to make that mistake again and want to wait a little while to see how the optimizations go. With DCS being so under utilized and optimized I just dont think its worth so much money, especially when VR itself has not really taken off yet and the dust hasnt setteled yet...

 

If I was seriously unsatisfied with the experience I might not be able to control myself but as I am into single player only at the moment, I find that using the mission editor can create for myself a pretty close to flawless expereince anyway, I mean I am seriously loving it, and it does seem to get better all the time.

[Neo-ST]

This is a bit (or a lot) of a necro but a lot of people in here have said they've seen no noticeable improvement going to the 10x series of cards from nVidia in VR. This has been a very different experience for me. I have a 980Ti and performance in VR (i7 @ 4.2 ghz) was less than ideal. It was playable for sure but a lot of ghosting artifacts from low FPS on the Vive.

 

I'm running a 1080Ti now and it's smooth as butter, with no noticeable ghosting or stuttering, even in DCS 2.0. I'm also running 2.0 pixel density, although shadows are off as I haven't tried turning them back on after the upgrade.

 

Other than the video card my only change was an overclock from 4.2GHz to 4.3GHz, but such a small overclock couldn't have a huge impact.. perhaps a bit though. DCS does seem to be a CPU heavy game so some of you could maybe do well buying a cheap but effective water cooler (Corsair are nice) and boost your CPU a bit. I think they run for like $30-$40.

 

Hi.

When you say it's "smooth as butter", does it mean you're running at constant 90fps without ASW/reprojection kicking in ?

 

Because this is my experience:

 

DCS World 2.0

Oculus Rift CV1

i7-7700K@4.5

16GB RAM

Asus Strix 1080Ti OC

 

 

Case 1:

Supersampling (SS) at 1.0, graphics settings at VR preset.

In-game weather: clear

Result: running at almost always 90fps

 

Case 2:

Supersampling (SS) at 1.2, graphics settings at VR preset.

In-game weather: clear

Result: running at almost always 90fps, with occasional dips to 45

 

 

Case 3:

Supersampling (SS) at 1.3, graphics settings at VR preset.

In-game weather: clear

Result: running at almost always 90fps, but dips to 45 when looking at buildings while flying low or on runway

 

- Anything above 1.3 just creates less than 90fps experience -

 

Case 4:

Supersampling (SS) at 1.0, graphics settings at VR preset.

In-game weather: cloudy

Result: running at barely 30fps

 

- Haven't tried going above 1.0 SS for obvious reasons -

 

Case 5:

Supersampling (SS) at 1.0, graphics settings at everything low.

In-game weather: cloudy

Result: still running at barely 30fps

 

Case 6:

Supersampling (SS) at 1.0, graphics settings at VR preset.

In-game weather: clear

Result: running at almost always 90fps, but getting near to any cloud in the sky dips it to 45fps

 

 

Conclusion:

 

This game has serious issues with clouds. They seem to hit performance the most, regardless of other graphics settings.

 

Using Oculus performance HUD, where I can see current FPS, performance headroom, etc., I've come to conclusion that if I wanted to maintain true 90fps in more than 90% cases, the maximum of settings I can aim for is:

 

SS at 1.0-1.2

Graphics settings: VR

In-game weather: always clear

 

Anything more than that and I'm inviting ASW to kick in often, which creates weird artifacts since artificial frames are being injected in.

 

So, reading that you're running at SS 2.0, I'm genuinely interested to know how's that possible and are you running at constantly true 90fps or below ?

 

Thanks

[Vullcan]

Your tests are right on the money.

 

Some people dont notice when ASW kicks in, or just assume thats how its supposed to work because they've always played with ASW.

Another group of people fly around in the Nevada map with just a few units spawned in.

 

As soon as you take VR online to a user created mission with lots of stuff going on, and heaven forbid they added clouds, its ASW city, and sometimes below 30FPS.

 

The game just isn't optimized well enough for VR yet but hopefully they will make progress in the coming year.

IMO you need 1.5-1.7 pixel density just to make the cockpits easier to read if nothing else.

[Kayos]

I know this is obvious but make sure you turn your mirrors off in VR. It will double your FPS in some cases.

[simo1000rr]

i run dcs 1.5 on oculus cv1 .

 

my supersampling is at 1.6 and i force ASW to disabled by the oculus debug tool . i only play online on the 104th and i always get smooth performance . if the mission has clouds then the performance drops but still very playable like 40 to 60 fps.

 

bottom line is if you want good performance in VR

 

turn all shadows off

turn mirrors off

keep trees and grass to minimum

 

you should see the difference

[Neo-ST]

Indeed, turned off completely all trees, grass, shadows and mirrors and now I can run it above 1.3 SS.

1.5 is on the verge of maintaining 90fps, depending on the scenery.

[Nascar]

Then a 1080ti isn't really worth the upgrade from a 980ti.

[boedha68]

+1 i think i wait for Q3 this year. GTX 2070 and GTX 2080.

[Neo-ST]

Then a 1080ti isn't really worth the upgrade from a 980ti.

 

I didn't have a 980Ti, but 1080Ti is a beast.

It's just this game that is unoptimized, not really card's fault.

Other VR games have no performance issues like this one, I pretty much run them all with high/ultra settings at constant 90fps.

[Highwayman-Ed]

Seriously, until we see DCS 2.5 and the holy merge, I've taken up with BOS in VR. It's glorious!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Euan Emblin]

Yes, my approach exactly. BoS/BoM in VR has been a revelation, the implementation, optimisation and performance is excellent and puts the 'me' back into immersion.

[ram0506]

Then a 1080ti isn't really worth the upgrade from a 980ti.

Well, depends. I upgrated from a GTX980Ti to the GTX1080Ti.

In DCS1.5 the improvements are rather small. You get the same performance drops in some areas of the map as before. But there is still hope for DCS 2.5 with an (hopefully) optimized map.

In DCS2.0 the improvements in performance are more noticeable. I recorded a flight over Vegas in an A-10C and did a rough comparison of frame rates with unchanged graphics settings.

While I saw minimums of fps in the city centre of 30 with the 980Ti, the frames remained constantly at 45 (ASW on) with the 1080Ti. But still no 90fps possible.

In the suburbs of Vegas where I had 45fps with the 980Ti I now get 90fps.

Playing in VR at 45fps with ASW enabled is absolutely ok for me. So I was able to crank up the graphics settings now to highest values (except AA to 4x, shadows medium, view distance ultra, PD 1.7) whereas I had only medium settings with the 980Ti.

It is obvious that the game still needs optimizations especially when it comes to usage of CPU.

While my GPU is running at 70 to 100% usage, the CPU is only at 30-40% on all cores.

[funkyfranky]

I've just upgraded my 980 ti to a 1080 ti. Before that I recorded two tracks - one in DCS 1.5 over Batumi and one in DCS 2.0 over Las Vegas (latest versions) so that I could make a good comparison.

 

Bottom line is that performance improvement in DCS 1.5 is rather small but I get nearly twice the FPS in DCS 2.0, i.e. going from 45 to 90 most of the time.

 

I made a quick video so that you can better see what is actually compared :) System specs, settings etc. are at the end. Pixel density was set to 1.8.

 

[Neo-ST]

There's no way I could achieve those FPS, with those detail settings and 1.8 SS.

And I have a newer processor and the same graphics card.

How's that possible?

[ram0506]

Did you see that in the game settings the visibility range is set to low? This has a high impact on frames. I can confirm those high fps over Vegas with the GTX1080Ti.

[funkyfranky]

Did you see that in the game settings the visibility range is set to low? This has a high impact on frames. I can confirm those high fps over Vegas with the GTX1080Ti.

^^This! And no shadows are also important I presume. I'm still in the process of figuring out how far I can go. The settings I used when testing were the ones which worked okay with the 980 ti.

[Neo-ST]

Did you see that in the game settings the visibility range is set to low? This has a high impact on frames. I can confirm those high fps over Vegas with the GTX1080Ti.

 

Nice spot, I missed that one.

Will try it out.

 

EDIT: It does seem to improve fps somewhat.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Neo-ST

[mariner3302]

Hello everyone, I'm one of the noob boobs with more money than knowledge. I bought the highest spec'd stuff I could get at the time (May 2017) for the express purpose of flight sims with the Oculus Rift. Giving it to the stock market wasn't getting anywhere. In real life I can fly fixed and rotary wing aircraft so DCS and Flightgear are fun to play with on the Rift.

So what's my point? It seems to me that I'm getting lots of stuttering, the cockpit instruments aren't clear, and overall it just seems that the scenery and cockpit are a bit behind what I am doing at any given time.

Is there a guide that puts all the information into one place as folks figure out what works for them with specific hardware levels? I didn't know you COULD turn off the replay thing, much less how. It's not what I don't know that is the problem, I can learn that... It's what you don't know that you don't know that gets ya killed... I DO know my system isn't tuned up or tuned in but I am at a loss as to how to set it up right.

[dburne]

Hard to get a better system then you have for VR currently.

 

Just keep in mind DCS 2.1 is still an early Alpha, much new tech introduced into it recently. Hopefully as we march forward and more optimizations made, VR performance will improve. About all you can do now is to lower your settings to the bare minimum, and start working up slowly from there. Strive to maintain a min of 45 fps and strike a balance.

 

Probably the biggest performance killer currently in DCS for VR is using MSAA in the game. Try to run a higher Pixel Density, say around 1.5-1.8, and see if you can live with no MSAA.

Shadows too are a big hit on performance, start with turning them all off.

[hansangb]

But as a first step, I would renamed the SAVED GAMES - under C:\USERS\... - folder that DCS uses and see if that helps. Many have reported improvements. Don't delete it since the CONFIG folder has the bindings you modified. You can copy the CONFIG folder back over after DCS recreates the SAVED folder.

[some1]

For a first step, I would start with VR in 1.5. Don't waste your time on DCS 2.1 if you have VR.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=189375