DCS and Pimax

[melchionda]

Do we have to run PiTool and SteamVR to use our Pimax headsets or can we just run SteamVR? Ive been running both because I thought that we had to.

[mhe]

30 % impreovement is great. But does DCS support eye tracking at the moment?

 

It doesn't need to. The foveated rendering is activated in PiTool and is done on driver level via nvidias hardware support in the RTX cards.

[Supmua]

30 % impreovement is great. But does DCS support eye tracking at the moment?

 

My understanding is that it's a dynamic version of NVIDIA's fixed foveated rendering, which doesn't require any support from any particular game. They have already demonstrated this with Skyrim, Half-Life Alyx, etc.

 

The Pimax's solution which is a combination of hardware and software module would detect the location of your pupils and dictate location of the circular area that would receive full rendering resolution. So theoretically you will never see any pixelated area, since if you glance left the left area will get full rendering, and so on. With the NVIDIA's fixed rendering, when you glance to the side or up/down there will be pixelated areas.

 

Since the entire FOV doesn't need full rendering, you can have better framerate. So, this is an exciting technology if done right.

[dburne]

My understanding is that it's a dynamic version of NVIDIA's fixed foveated rendering, which doesn't require any support from any particular game. They have already demonstrated this with Skyrim, Half-Life Alyx, etc.

 

The Pimax's solution which is a combination of hardware and software module would detect the location of your pupils and dictate location of the circular area that would receive full rendering resolution. So theoretically you will never see any pixelated area, since if you glance left the left area will get full rendering, and so on. With the NVIDIA's fixed rendering, when you glance to the side or up/down there will be pixelated areas.

 

Since the entire FOV doesn't need full rendering, you can have better framerate. So, this is an exciting technology if done right.

 

Yeah will be interesting to see if Pimax is the company that can get this right.

Kudos to them for spreading their wings and going for it already though.

[Supmua]

Early reviews are coming in.

https://community.openmr.ai/t/8kx-user-reviews/29113/8

[Phantom88]

....for what it's worth.....:)

 

[darkman222]

So do we have someone in this thread owning an 8KX already? I am really curious about the frame rate and how much likely it is to achieve a solid 45 fps motion smoothed.

[Phantom88]

So do we have someone in this thread owning an 8KX already? I am really curious about the frame rate and how much likely it is to achieve a solid 45 fps motion smoothed.

 

The 8kx owners getting their headsets now are original Pimax Kickstarter backers from 2+ yrs ago...So very few will have them now,Majority of users will get theirs late summer/early fall

[Darrylx444]

FYI, the brand-new Pitool v262 gives a huge 30% fps boost in DCS World (and other sims) compared to v260/261. Remember to uninstall the previous version first, and also I had to install the new one as administrator or else it failed. I was already using FW v264, which I had from last month.

YMMV, but I was totally blown away by the change.

[Snake122]

FYI, the brand-new Pitool v262 gives a huge 30% fps boost in DCS World (and other sims) compared to v260/261. Remember to uninstall the previous version first, and also I had to install the new one as administrator or else it failed. I was already using FW v264, which I had from last month.

YMMV, but I was totally blown away by the change.

I haven't really checked the fps with it yet. I run large FOV and I tend to be stuck on 45fps with Smart Smoothing since I can't make the 90 most of the time. I do know it failed at first and had a "this device is illegal" error and had to reinstall 260 then upgrade again, so uninstalling first is a good idea. But I don't see v262 listed On the website, did you just install it from where PiTool downloaded it to?

[Darrylx444]

But I don't see v262 listed On the website, did you just install it from where PiTool downloaded it to?

 

 

Here is the official forum source for it: https://community.openmr.ai/t/pitool-1-0-1-262-july-20-2020/29625

 

 

Yes, for fair testing I disabled smart-smoothing first, so I wouldn't just get fps-capped at 60 (in 120Hz mode). Oddly, it seemed a bit less smooth when I re-enabled sm-sm later on, but I didn't restart the game (or Pitool) immediately so it could have been due to that. Or possibly the random mission I was messing with by that time. I used a simple 4-plane / no ground unit mission for testing originally.

[SneakyBastd]

Thankyou DarrylX444!

I just tried it and got a large performance boost. Caucasus instant action freeflight in hornet, went from almost 60fps to 80fps. GPU usage is well up, at about 95% now.

I can even go to full fov from medium, and still get 10fps more than previously.

 

It seems to stutter slightly for me though, when pulling hard through a turn for example, which I didn't have before even though running at the lower framerate. Smartsmoothing fixes that, but I don't like smartsmoothing, It warps the image and introduces artifacts I find distracting.

Still, it's a great improvement and will keep it. I'll update when I've had more time to play with it.

 

Update, I did the heavy cpu benchmark (su25 lowlevel) and it made a huge difference. From 43fps now up to 67fps! I'm stunned.

GPU frametimes went from the 15-19ms bracket down to 11-15ms.

 

Spawning on supercarrier with hornet in multiplayer (empty server though), 60fps now. Used to be about 35. Once up and running, ready to taxi, it's 50fps. Back to 60 once looking forward on the cats.

Edited July 24, 2020 by SneakyBastd

[Milopapa]

So do we have someone in this thread owning an 8KX already? I am really curious about the frame rate and how much likely it is to achieve a solid 45 fps motion smoothed.

 

I have one, just posted my initial impressions here:

https://community.openmr.ai/t/backer-441-initial-8k-x-impressions-milopapa/29758

[Snake122]

I have one, just posted my initial impressions here:

https://community.openmr.ai/t/backer-441-initial-8k-x-impressions-milopapa/29758

 

Thanks for that! Have you used fpsVR or something else to show CPU frametimes with DCS? Yes, DCS using more cores will help, but on my system it's still my video card limiting the frametimes even though it doesn't get up to even 90% GPU load. It is GPU pipeline problems in these simple missions that is showing the engine's issues. I agree in more complicated missions it becomes more CPU bound, but there is something with how the GPU is utilized at the basic level with VR+high resolutions that is bottlenecking the GPU.

[SneakyBastd]

Snake122, did you try pitool 262? Every version of pitool before this one left my GPU severely under used. But with 262 it is now 95% or more.

Yes DCS has performance issues, but pitool was clearly a serious bottleneck also.

[Snake122]

I thought I was running .262 but the with reinstall process back to 261 I had to do from the "Illegal Device" error the first time I tried it, I apparently didn't install it. I thought I wasn't seeing it since I use Smart Smoothing and hadn't taken the time to benchmark yet.

 

So I was able to do a clean comparison right now. Yes, I finally get a 95% GPU utilization rate and about 25% framerates boost!

 

I was also worried that this is Pimax leaving on some GPU Catalyst, which it always gave me artifacts even at the .25 setting but also always gave extra performance, but with these first few benchmarks I'm not seeing any so far.

 

So yes, the bottleneck was Pimax's fault in this case. Sorry ED!

 

I would point out that in the SU-25T free flight mission, fpsVR still says I am GPU limited with my CPU frametimes staying below 10ms until I take control and go fly low.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Snake122

[SneakyBastd]

Good to hear Snake122! It's so nice to know your GPU is finally pulling its weight haha.

And yes, I also have 1080Ti and can benefit from lower GPU frametimes.

[darkman222]

Hey snake. Could you do me a favor and try the Su 25 free flight mission with everything set to low ( the low preset DCS comes with) and smart smoothing off.

 

How many real FPS can you get with that setting using native 8K mode?

 

I want to compare it to my setup with a 5K. Thanks in advance.

[Snake122]

Hey snake. Could you do me a favor and try the Su 25 free flight mission with everything set to low ( the low preset DCS comes with) and smart smoothing off.

 

How many real FPS can you get with that setting using native 8K mode?

 

I want to compare it to my setup with a 5K. Thanks in advance.

I just have a 5k+, but would be happy to do that again since we haven't done that since the new version of PiTool

 

Sent from my LM-G850 using Tapatalk

[darkman222]

Sorry. I meant Milopapa who has a 8K.

 

Could you do me a favor and try the Su 25 free flight mission with everything set to low ( the low preset DCS comes with) and smart smoothing off.

 

How many real FPS can you get with that setting using native 8K mode?

 

I want to compare it to my setup with a 5K. Thanks in advance.

[Pinello]

[darkman222]

That looks awesome! What frame rates do you get without motion smooting? You could use fpsVR to check that. Or you could simply use the fps counter from nvidia showing it in the top corner of your monitor output.

[melchionda]

hi folks, I'm not super happy with the visibility of the hud symbology in the A10C using my Pimax 8K+. For me the sky has too much white glare and looks really washed out. The hud symbology is lost in all the glare of the sky. What I'm hoping for are some settings to make the sky color darker so that there is more contrast with the hud symbology. Does anyone have good settings for that?

[ReviZorro]

hi folks, I'm not super happy with the visibility of the hud symbology in the A10C using my Pimax 8K+. For me the sky has too much white glare and looks really washed out. The hud symbology is lost in all the glare of the sky. What I'm hoping for are some settings to make the sky color darker so that there is more contrast with the hud symbology. Does anyone have good settings for that?

 

What gamma settings do you use?

[melchionda]

What gamma settings do you use?

 

I've been playing around with these

 

Contrast in PitTool:

It was originally set at 0, but in an attempt to make the HUD more visible I've moved it to -2. Strangely when I was increasing the contrast things got more "washed out" which I would consider "less" contrast. So its the opposite of what I thought it would be,

 

Brightness in PiTool

This one worked as I expected. Increasing the brightness made the world in DCS more bight. I have it now set to -1

 

Gamma in DCS

At first I had it at 1.8... then 2.2. Weirdly, increasing the gamma seemed to decrease its effect. ie- things became more washed out at higher Gamma. At Lower Gamma the cockpit got too dark.

 

Unless there is some setting combination that I've yet to find this seems to be a compromise between being able to see the hud symbology against the sky vs being able to see the details in the cockpit.

 

I'd be interested to hear if there is a set of settings available that can thread that neddle.

 

 

Sean

Edited August 5, 2020 by melchionda