[Frustrated] Any way to improve DCS experience in the Vive?

[Kirin]

Edit: I am even more frustrated now because I lost 30min worth of text because of a misclick. I try to reproduce.

 

Greetings aces

 

Ever since the consumer VR HMDs were announced I felt my dream of finally being able to roam the virtual skies at it meant to be to come true. Reality was a rather rough landing.

 

A little background on me. I am halfway computer savvy and used to build my own rigs for almost three decades now. Currently I run an i7-6700k@4.7, Geforce 1080, 16GB Ram DDR4 2666, Samsung SSD 850. I know my way around the forums, reddit and other sources of information. I am willing and able to tweak and test.

 

I opted for pre-ordering a Vive because Valve/Steam backed it and the Oculus pre-order system was a mess at the time. I regret my decision now. Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the Vive is the better device with the better environment for developers and gamers alike. But for DCS in particular it apparently comes in second place by a long shot. The experience in the Vive is degraded in such a way that I would go as far as having DCS removed from the Steam VR section.

 

My problem is that I cannot maintain 90FPS in DCS no matter what tweaks and settings I use. Reprojection is not an option because its side-effects are not tolerable. The ghosting is really bad - mostly visible when rolling near other objects. I haven’t experienced it first hand but ATW is said to do a much better job - at least for seated experience. In either case both technologies are only a safety mechanism and should not be considered the standard experience. Will DCS receive further improvements to make it VR viable without ATW? Probably - but I kinda doubt it will be enough to enjoy DCS on the current hardware generation.

 

It’s frustrating. Especially since there are other games/sims that pull it off. Warthunder is absolutely smooth at the highest settings. Yes, I know, it’s nowhere near a high fidelity simulation as DCS but at least it let’s me enjoy flying and dogfighting in VR.

 

I am open to any suggestion and tweaks the community has to find the holy grail of 90FPS. But this is also a plea to ED and Valve to maybe get their heads together and figure out the technicalities. DCS is listed as an official Steam VR title. In the current state it does not deliver an optimized experience (at least not on the Vive). It’s a pity because it is, without a doubt, the best modern era flight simulator.

 

 

 

 

Kirin out

[Enduro14]

Their is no computer that can maintain 90fps period. Wait for more optimization....

[Gman109]

Hey Kirin (Aces High Kirin I assume).

 

I bought the Vive and Rift, and got the Vive a couple days before the Rift. I have a similar experience and opinion to yours with the Vive - the Rift is far superior for DCS right now IMO I'm afraid, for various reasons as many have stated in the forums already.

 

I think it's a case of just having to wait until the DCS/ED team catches up with the Vive. I think the Vive for everything OTHER than cockpit games is much superior to the Rift right now, but for DCS, Elite, Aces High, WT even, and others - the Rift is just a better more mature system drivers/function wise for these types of games.

[JLX]

<snip> ...I still think that the Vive is the better device with the better environment for developers and gamers alike. But for DCS in particular it apparently comes in second place by a long shot. The experience in the Vive is degraded in such a way that I would go as far as having DCS removed from the Steam VR section.

 

My problem is that I cannot maintain 90FPS in DCS no matter what tweaks and settings I use... <snip>

 

It’s frustrating. Especially since there are other games/sims that pull it off. Warthunder is absolutely smooth at the highest settings. Yes, I know, it’s nowhere near a high fidelity simulation as DCS but at least it let’s me enjoy flying and dogfighting in VR.

 

I am open to any suggestion and tweaks the community has to find the holy grail of 90FPS. But this is also a plea to ED and Valve to maybe get their heads together and figure out the technicalities. DCS is listed as an official Steam VR title. In the current state it does not deliver an optimized experience (at least not on the Vive). It’s a pity because it is, without a doubt, the best modern era flight simulator.

 

I've been meaning to chime in on this thread for a while and a little surprised it hasn't got more replies/attention.

 

I'm also running a solid system (3570K w/ 16G + 1070) and get 85-90FPS over the Nevada strip with literally everything maxed at 1440p. However, with the Vive (using the VR preset and ground clutter/trees reduced to 0 as well as turning off all shadows) 45FPS is the absolute max I can get with dips to 30 !?!!

 

Considering that the Vive is rendering 2160x1200 (1080x1200 per eye) it's pushing 2.6 million pixels and struggling to maintain 45 FPS. At 1440p you need to push 3.7 million (40% more!) yet the framerate is double the Vive with way more eye-candy as well! I do realize that for VR you aren't just increasing the pixels rendered from a single camera and have to render 2 scenes for each eye. While this requires additional overhead, I'm surprised just how much performance is lost!

 

Also, it seems the Vive is locked to stepped values of 30/45/90FPS and I don't yet understand why that is. I'm hoping that I'm actually pushing something like 80FPS and the Vive is "rounding down" to 45 and future optimization will unlock more of it's potential.

 

I'm enjoying many different VR titles and also believe the Vive to be superior at present with it's tracking system and hand controllers (and lack of exclusives). However, the VR title I'm MOST interested in is DCS. At present I share the OP's frustration and while I recognize that VR implementation is still in beta, I hope Vive performance can be significantly improved in the not to distant future.

 

I'd also welcome any additional information about this that I might have missed. Thanks!

[hansangb]

I would throw in the fact that I was able to fly DCS with DK1. Resolution sucked, for sure, but ED got about 18 months, 2 years? head start with Rift. And while Rift support from ED is great, it's still not *AWESOME*. Its great, don't get me wrong, but it's still behind FlyInside for example. So I guess time is what ED needs to improve the VR experience in general.

[Thisdale]

Im in Rift, and i go from 55 to 25 per eye, depending on a slew of different events (look at towns, look at too many clouds, look at explosion...).

 

Unfortunately, this is in DCS's hands. They need to optimise their engine more.

Sad.