2.5 Video Settings - VR Quality/Performance Balance

[StrongHarm]

Added link to OP with info about PD.

[Brewnix]

Added link to OP with info about PD.

 

Interesting read! Did you happen to look at the webpage for Sensics zSight in the compare table.

this is cool!

http://sensics.com/portfolio-posts/zsight-fl/

[nessuno0505]

Did some testing since I got 1070 and not 1080ti as many of you; I've found 1.2 PD and AA 2x the best in visuals, but not solid 45 fps (even though quite smooth anyway and fully playable); PD 1 and AA 2x is solid 45 fps even with submaximal settings (textures high, DS on, preload radius and trees to the right, visibility range more than high but not extreme, cockpit illumination on, shadows medium or low, terrain shadows flat). I've found a good balance in setting PD 1.1 with AA 2x, but I play only caucasus; maybe if I'll get nevada and I'll have frame drops I'll set PD to 1, since I agree PD 1 and AA 2x is the best performance without sacrifying too much visuals.

[StrongHarm]

That is cool! The military gets all the coolest toys. I've been out since the late 90s, but ever since then every time something cool comes out for the public, I'm aware that the military is a decade ahead. Optics is a big one. I had an opportunity to use the HMD on an early iteration of the Apache during the desert storm era, and I have to say that even back then it was really good. Not long ago I had the opportunity to look at the latest gen HMD for the Apache at a DOD lab and it blew my mind. As for optics for newer aircraft, I have it on *good authority that the distributed aperture system and sensor fusion suite through augmented reality is everything they brag about and more. The best this civilian can hope to get his hands on is HoloLens and 8k VR.

[FragBum]

Okay I was messing around with settings as I wasn't able to get my new 1080Ti to do much more than about 50 to 60% utilisation where as the old 980Ti was usually pegged at 90 to 99%.

 

Anyway I turned ASW of and tweaked some more and ended up with around 90% GPU utilisation with the 1080Ti . One thing I noticed was frame rates where variable usually around 60 on ground and back up to 90 away from objects. However there was a bit of a synchronising issue between frame rates and the Rift display as the frame rates changed which caused a slight stop frame effect.

 

So after optimising settings with ASW off and latter reenabling ASW I now get very smooth frame rates 45 FPS and sometimes 90 FPS on the ground and usually locks to 90 when away from the ground fairly quickly. The advantage now with ASW on is I get 80% plus GPU utilisation and the distortion of fine patterns(rows and columns of windows etc) caused by ASW is now minimised.

 

My guess is tweaking with ASW on masks the processing the the GPU needs to do where as tweaking with ASW off allows you to optimise settings so that the GPU can do more before ASW kicks in.

 

Goota say with ASW off and looking ate building looks great without the distortion of the windows and other fine patterns.

 

All testing only in helicopters. :D

 

Interested to see if anyone else can confirm this.

[0414 Wee Neal]

Hi FragBum

 

can you please advise how to do the tweaks with or without ASW? I am not sure how to manipulate ASW on or off as I cannot seem to get Occulus tray tool to work?

 

ta

 

Neal

[FragBum]

Control plus num 1

 

Then check that your frame rate changes proportionately i.e. it goes from 45 46 .. 60 61.. 80..90 smoothly in other words it changes incrementally and not simply 45 to 90 and back down.

 

More info here

 

As I said I'm keen to see if this is repeatable by others. :thumbup:

[dogbite]

Hi FragBum

 

can you please advise how to do the tweaks with or without ASW? I am not sure how to manipulate ASW on or off as I cannot seem to get Occulus tray tool to work?

 

ta

 

 

Neal

 

CTRL+KP1 - Disable ASW and USE ATW

CTRL+KP2 - Force apps to 45hz, DISABLE ASW

CTRL+KP3 - Force apps to 45hz, ENABLE ASW

CTRL+KP4 - Enable ASW to operate automatically

Just make sure your numlock is on.

[StrongHarm]

Added to OP:

 

ADDITIONAL TEST NOTES, HARDWARE:

With the same settings that I'm using in VR, I tested my system with a monitor at 1080 and 4k. 1080 averaged 173 FPS in the same tests, and 4k averaged 78 FPS. What really surprised me was that the visual quality was still superb on a monitor with the modified VR settings.

I also tested overclocking the CPU and Vidcard while in 4k:

i7-5960x - from 3.4ghz to 4.3ghz - about 10FPS gained across the board

1080ti FTW3 - from 1500/5500 to 2050/5800 - about 5FPS gained across the board

I've always known that DCS has a CPU bottleneck due to the huge amount of physics calcs that ED has blessed us with. I was not however, expecting that with the new graphics I would still gain more performance from a CPU overclock than a GPU overclock. These results surprised me.

[FragBum]

I'm thinking here it's likely that the OCéd CPU can feed the GPU more data to crunch.

 

[dbpetrol]

I've tried most settings with my GTX 1070 and I prefer a smooth sim experience and a clear view (my eyes don't like blurry pictures). So I turned deferred shading OFF, no shadows, PD 1.7 and MSAA 2x, textures high. It works really well and good performance. I have no problem reading the chat in MP or looking at the radar, for example.

 

Sure I would like to fly with deferred shading ON but for now I prefer performance over nice lighting effects. The lower contrast with deferred shading off really helps with clarity in the Rift displays.

 

Trees look ugly in the summer with deferred shading off. When in a jet I turn them off for better performance. When upp in the skies I don't see the trees anyway :smilewink:

[FragBum]

I've tried most settings with my GTX 1070 and I prefer a smooth sim experience and a clear view (my eyes don't like blurry pictures). So I turned deferred shading OFF, no shadows, PD 1.7 and MSAA 2x, textures high. It works really well and good performance. I have no problem reading the chat in MP or looking at the radar, for example.

 

Sure I would like to fly with deferred shading ON but for now I prefer performance over nice lighting effects. The lower contrast with deferred shading off really helps with clarity in the Rift displays.

 

Trees look ugly in the summer with deferred shading off. When in a jet I turn them off for better performance. When upp in the skies I don't see the trees anyway :smilewink:

 

 

Try turning ASW off, you can then "reduce" some settings maybe off or down and still get higher FPS's and good rendering.

 

YMMV,.. :D

[StrongHarm]

dbpetrol, deferred shading off is of course a personal preference. Regardless, 1.7PD and 2xMSAA is really high. I'm personally very happy with 1.7PD without MSAA if I'm not using deferred shading. Have you tried to lower the PD to see how it looks? MSAA compensates some when in a lower PD. At 1.2PD 2xMSAA I can read the gauges very clearly. If you look at the chart, you're trading 6 points of performance for 2 points of quality when using 1.7PD 2xMSAA. With deferred shading off you shouldn't need to tweak for quality that much. Again, every system is different and it's largely a matter of personal preference, but you might be able to increase your performance greatly.

 

Turning ASW off is a bad idea unless you have your settings real low and you have a monster system. Yes, it does lock your FPS, but it significantly decreases the resources needed to achieve similar quality results. In other words, it makes everything smoother at a higher quality. In the gaming world we've been conditioned to believe that there's nothing more important than hitting a certain FPS. That's misleading, especially with consideration to VR. Read more about ASW here: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-spacewarp/ . I'll add that link to OP as well.

Edited February 15, 2018 by StrongHarm

[dogbite]

After getting a heads up on Nvidia drivers issues with the Rift after 388.59 I rolled back my driver with DDU and found DCS to be smoother.

 

 

[hansangb]

I'm just getting around to upgrading to390. we'll see what happens

[Buckeye]

After getting a heads up on Nvidia drivers issues with the Rift after 388.59 I rolled back my driver with DDU and found DCS to be smoother.

 

 

 

I rolled back to 388.71 and found an improvement versus the latest driver. Wonder if it's worth rolling back even further? :huh:

[dogbite]

I rolled back to 388.71 and found an improvement versus the latest driver. Wonder if it's worth rolling back even further? :huh:

 

 

FWIW I rolled back from 388.71. I was having lighting issues in Elite Dangerous which got solved as far as I can tell. I then went back to tweaking DCS 2.5 and immediately noticed it was smoother at the setting I left off at.

[FragBum]

 

Turning ASW off is a bad idea unless you have your settings real low and you have a monster system. Yes, it does lock your FPS, but it significantly decreases the resources needed to achieve similar quality results. In other words, it makes everything smoother at a higher quality. In the gaming world we've been conditioned to believe that there's nothing more important than hitting a certain FPS. That's misleading, especially with consideration to VR. Read more about ASW here: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-spacewarp/ . I'll add that link to OP as well.

 

Except what I am seeing is ASW tends to throttle GPU usage with ASW on I was only seeing 50 to 60 % GPU usage and 16% CPU usage I initially thought after upgrading to 1080Ti my CPU was limiting performance after turning ASW off and adjusting settings I now have near 100% GPU usage with same/similar 16% CPU usage and also usually always 90FPS in VR. The other aspect here is there is way less artefacts with ASW off and honestly it is still very smooth. At best ASW seems more like a gimmick.

 

I guess the point is with my old 980Ti it was almost always at 100% and the 1070 should also be somewhere around that level of performance I'm sure some more performance could be had by turning ASW off and tweaking settings.

 

 

See previous post here

[StrongHarm]

FragBum, I'll look deeper into it. Thanks a bunch.

[Wicked.-]

Question. I set up a new Rift touch today. Prior to that I was running a 50" 4KUHD Samsung at 3840x2160 and a 27" Acer touch panel with Helios for a combined res of 5760x2160. After installing the Rift I didn't bother changing the resolution from 5760x2160 to 1024x768 or whatever res the Rift is supposed to run. I was also using a custom monitor.lua for the touch screen which I didn't bother changing either.

I fired up A10C and it looked gorgeous. When I realized I hadn't changed my old settings I went back and set it to single monitor but took the resolution to 4096x2160. It started making me nauseous lol but I kept flying and adjusting my headset trying to get it better but no joy.

After this I set it back to 5760x2160 with Three Monitor selected..... HOLY SHIT! Everything looks f'ing awesome. Looking out backwards at the wing the plane is true to scale. It's also smooth as silk. I've used 3 Monitor with the TV and the 3 seams are glaringly noticeable but with the Rift there's no bending when looking around at all.

Now if this is how everyone is setting theirs up please forgive my recently lost VR virginity. I only ask after reading this thread and seeing that the original poster has a GTX1080 but was running at 1080 resolution. My specs are: i7 6700k @ 4.2ghz, 16gb mem, 1tb ssd, Asus Strix GTX1060 6gb card on an Asus Maximus Hero 8 board.

After reading this thread I went back and changed to the recommended settings and did not get good results.

I'm running at 5760x2160 res which I typed in instead of choosing and it works. 3Monitor configuration from the drop down. MSAA off, PD 1.5, 4X AF and pretty much medium or higher for the rest.

What I can't figure out is how to zoom out or elongate the cockpit where I sit a little further back.

Sorry for the long post but I've flown Falcon since 2000 through all of its incarnations and for me the holy grail was always exported MFD's. But even with YAME and Helios or a military accurate 3 projector simulator for that matter, DCS and a Rift is simply outstanding and blows them away! The only thing better is the real deal. Need haptic gloves though lol.

Edited February 16, 2018 by Wicked.-

[FragBum]

Rough and ready right.:D

 

I have only set up Rift for seated position (V-Sim in the making) and only have a single sensor after going through the setup procedure. The sensor is at arms length and I physically shift the sensor, rotate, angle and height of it to fine tune seated position in the aircraft. Likely totally wrong but it works for me. :)

[RePhil]

anyone have advice on making cockpit clear I wear Bi-Foculs so can get a prescription for Oculus and the writing and things like channel list next to radio in F-5 are just a blur

[Wicked.-]

I have slightly bad eyesight up close (over 40 ;) ) so it's a littlle blurry until I lean in closer. Other than that I'm still tweaking mine but I'm pretty sure you will need to get the Rift prescription.

[Wicked.-]

I've tried that several times but no joy. I bound keys to zoom in and out but they do not function. Work in progress...

[Haukka81]

I've tried that several times but no joy. I bound keys to zoom in and out but they do not function. Work in progress...

 

 

 

Only VR zoom works , and you can sift your postion in pit and save it. (Numpad keys with control or was it altctrl , cant check it now in work. )

 

 

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