VR FPS (2.5.1.16543.355)

[falken76]

I haven’t tried the new release but I’ve always flown with DS on in VR and wouldn’t want to turn it off anymore. For me MSAA in VR only reduces the range of spotting tatgets so I rather opt for moving the density slider up. I guess it is a matter of personal preference.

 

 

That's how I play it. I have a 1060 6 GB and this still plays fine for me in VR. I must be used to the performance using DS since I've always had it on. And since I have MSAA set to off I don't notice a difference. My card couldn't handle MSAA very well in the first place and I couldn't see as far which is important in a game like this.

[falken76]

I play only VR with a 1070 and keep deferred shading always on, but I'm forced to put It off for nightime missions, since night lighting with DS on is still bugged. Apart from that, and some cockpit render that IMHO is better with DS off, the difference in graphics with DS on and off is day and night, much much way better with DS on. To keep a stable frame rate I play with PD 1 and MSAA only 2x, but I think It worths and is absolutely playable even with a 1070. So I'm ok with ED choice, except for what night lighting is concerned. I have stable installed so I do not know if the last 2.5.1 corrects night lighting. If not, It is not a good thing, but only because night missions with DS on are still unplayable, and setting It off permits you to play them.

 

Give it a try, worst case scenerio you opt out and go back to official release. I have a 1060, your card is much better. 2.5.1 seems to play night missions well for me so far.

[falken76]

Turn MSAA off and force it through the Nvidia CP.

 

I've tried, if I have to say "I think I see a difference" but I'm not sure, it's not even worth it. I don't think any changes in Nvidia CP have an effect now after I spent so much time tweaking settings and seeing no difference no matter what I changed.

[Flighter]

Try again to attache the file.

 

Rename .zip in .nip

 

Hi Jef.

Many thanks for the file.

I have imported your file into NVIDIA profile inspector and activated it.

Unfortunately it has no effect on my Oculus system.

If there is any other trick that I have (for so long) missed, on how to change the oculus AA method outside DCS, let me know.

 

Cheers

Edited May 2, 2018 by Flighter

[sze5003]

Hi Jef.

Many thanks for the file.

I have imported your file into NVIDIA profile inspector and activated it.

Unfortunately it has no effect on my Oculus system.

If there is any other trick that I have (for so long) missed, on how to change the oculus AA method outside DCS, let me know.

 

Cheers

Unfortunately any change done through the Nvidia settings does not take effect in VR. You would need to use the occulus tool tray but that only let's you turn off asw/show statistics.

[Flighter]

Unfortunately any change done through the Nvidia settings does not take effect in VR. You would need to use the occulus tool tray but that only let's you turn off asw/show statistics.

 

I was under the same impression until I saw Jef's post.

Unfortunately after testing with NVIDIA profile inspector, nothing changed.

Unless I am still missing something, I can verify that AA at least, cannot be modified outside DCS (DCS + Oculus runtime).

If anyone knows any dirty tricks talk now !

[MurderOne]

Out of curiosity, what do you have your "Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames" in the Nvidia control panel set to? I have mine at "Use the 3D application Setting".

[Wolf8312]

Yes it's frustrating. But its a misconception that other VR games do not also have problems. The entire VR thing is in a constant state of change and flux as the games themslves are updated, and broken or slowly improved.

 

BOS after the update also had its share of complaints and problems in VR as well. Indeed at this time of writing due to fps drops and flashes in BOS I am sticking mostly to DCS where I can better tailor the experience to my specifications with the editor.

 

VR flight sim sure are frustrating as minimum requirements have taken a huge leap in both sims.

 

DCS has major problems but you just have to find your own way to play and enjoy it. For me that means helicopters with the mission editor. Fantastic experience. Besides that consider updating your rig.

 

VR communuity badly needs to start designing missions that are tailor made and streamlined with VR performance in mind. All the tools are at our fingertips to make this game perform as well, or as badly as we want it to. This is something BOS lacks.

 

I feel for the OP and others like him. If I was on my old rig I would feel a bit cheated as I bought most of my modules for VR and the old system requirements. If anything we were strongly led to believe that the new update would vastly improve performance.

[Flighter]

Out of curiosity, what do you have your "Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames" in the Nvidia control panel set to? I have mine at "Use the 3D application Setting".

 

I also have it a "Use the 3D application Setting".

[Wolf8312]

Notice people saying that before without DS they were able to crank up PD to 1.5 etc, but to be honest I've found with DS on that 1.2 suffices.

 

For me I only really need a splash of PD, and find MSSA much more important.

 

I run on MSSA 4, and PD on 1.2. Am getting very nice performance, and god does it look beautiful on the right map at the right time.

 

The mountain caucasus forrests and valleys at sunrise in a helicopter is a sight to behold!

 

Without DS could get nowhere near to what feels at times (if you discount the cities) to almost photorealistic levels of immersion, its jaw droppingly gorgeous!

 

I dont have any problem flying at night (I just up gamma) but the lights still have a problem of congealing into square grids of graphical corruption from a certain height.

 

So honestly on the whole, I find performance is better if anything, but I dont know if it would be so on my old rig.

 

Anyone think the volta TI will be the answer to flight sim perfection? I have to say I kinda think not but that will probably be my next GPU. One thing I have learned with VR, always go for the TI!

[sze5003]

You mean one thing you learn from Nvidia is go for their Ti models all the time or esle you are just spending more money over time each year.

[SWE-Timberwolf]

Notice people saying that before without DS they were able to crank up PD to 1.5 etc, but to be honest I've found with DS on that 1.2 suffices.

 

For me I only really need a splash of PD, and find MSSA much more important.

 

I run on MSSA 4, and PD on 1.2. Am getting very nice performance, and god does it look beautiful on the right map at the right time.

 

The mountain caucasus forrests and valleys at sunrise in a helicopter is a sight to behold!

 

Without DS could get nowhere near to what feels at times (if you discount the cities) to almost photorealistic levels of immersion, its jaw droppingly gorgeous!

 

I dont have any problem flying at night (I just up gamma) but the lights still have a problem of congealing into square grids of graphical corruption from a certain height.

 

So honestly on the whole, I find performance is better if anything, but I dont know if it would be so on my old rig.

 

Anyone think the volta TI will be the answer to flight sim perfection? I have to say I kinda think not but that will probably be my next GPU. One thing I have learned with VR, always go for the TI!

 

I have noticed the same thing in regards to PD. I have always been using PD 1.5, but the other day I turned all graphics options down to minimum and PD to 1.0 to see how many FPS my old computer could handle (got a little bit over 90 :) ). I immediately noticed that I was still able to read the text and numbers on my instruments. Good to know it wasn't just my imagination :).

[Flighter]

Notice people saying that before without DS they were able to crank up PD to 1.5 etc, but to be honest I've found with DS on that 1.2 suffices.

 

For me I only really need a splash of PD, and find MSSA much more important.

 

I run on MSSA 4, and PD on 1.2. Am getting very nice performance, and god does it look beautiful on the right map at the right time.

 

Wolf, it does look nice indeed.

I have attached my measurements. See what performance you would be getting with your settings... The comparison says it all really.

The new version is slower on every single combination (of interest to me at least). Let's hope the implementation is faulty and we get a nice surprise soon. Or the old rendered as an option.

MSAA is also very important to my taste.

Cheers

 

Edited May 2, 2018 by Flighter

[westr]

Hi All.

Always use sunscreen.

 

For the tl;dr :

- with DS, my VR experience is bad no matter the tweaking.

- On line streaming is out of the question (Oculus mirror).

- Deferred Shading does not produce better results. Bad implementations produce bad results.

- D.S. may be the wrong selection for a flight simulator. Creates more problems that solves.

- We have more than enough computing power to have excellent VR experiences and performance.

- DCS seems in a permanent state of "work in progress"; including all (?) modules; prepaid W.I.P. that never get finished.

 

Still awake ? read on, we'll fix that.

I spent the entire weekend trying to find a set-up that will let me use the new scheme. Unfortunately, although I tried to see only the positive side, I was left with disappointment. The previous "experience quality" (for VR) is not comparable to the new one.

 

I was toying with on-line streaming. I did a couple of tests and all was fine. I use Oculus mirror to create another window with proper ratio, let's say 16:9. Then capture, compress and stream that; while playing is VR. Well,,, you can forget that now. Plus the sacrificed visual quality is BAD on a monitor.

 

While searching the forums for any missed tips, I noticed an interesting trend. People defend Deferred Shading because "it produces better image quality". I do not know how on earth this came about, at least on the technical side. Both available rendering pipelines (and many many more), IF WELL IMPLEMENTED, should be able to produce indistinguishable results.

And like any tool, each one is better at one thing or the other.

The strong point of deferred shading is the ability to produce lighting and shadows from many many light sources quite fast. That's about it.

Now think, is this an FPS game, let's say Battlefield, where multiple light sources illuminating the scene (and producing shadows), really make a difference in the scene itself (and immersion) ? Is THIS the one thing that is missing from DCS ? Why on earth do you want that on a flight simulator ? We cannot even use "Cockpit Global Illumination" because of the extra FPS hit.

And the biggest irony of all is that in order to have a decent frame rate in VR, you should turn off shadows completely (has even been suggested above !!!!!) Why the hell do I need DS in the first place then ? half of it's job is gone wasted.

 

Another misconception is that at the moment there is not enough computing power to have a decent VR experience. This is very far from the truth. We have two key components, massive processing power and parallelism. If used properly the results may be amazing.

I saw Aerofly FS2 mentioned elsewhere. I have this title and although of a totally different nature, is amazing in visual quality.

IL-2 (I have almost all of them) are very, very good when it comes to VR quality.

Even prepar3d v4 is getting very good at VR. And they have one unique and valuable feature : you can switch between monitor/ VR headset mid-game.

But the title that is the golden standard (for me) of VR performance is Combat Air Patrol 2 (another title I bought). It demonstrates the capability of VR. Has to be flown to be believed. The fluidity at PD of 1.5 and everything maxed out, makes for an unforgettable experience.

 

So, everybody is improving and DCS is going in reverse ? It's my favorite flight simulator for God's sake. I pay and run two servers for them, I talk with actions not simply words.

 

Anyway, I still hope that they will rethink their decision and will at least give people the choice. Even if it costs them extra man-hours.

 

I also hope that for a change we start seeing things finished. Anything I see in DCS is half done. Pre-paid and half done that is.

There is no sense or "production grade" product; the type that you do not touch before you have tested thoroughly.

Let's hope that they realize this never ending trouble pattern and put a stop to it.

 

And as the famous song says, the sunscreen advice is the only sure thing about this post; everything else is my personal opinion and I reserve the right to be very, very wrong.

Keep smiling !

 

You make some fair points. I paid a fortune for my headset and am desperate to play DCS to its potential in VR. The inability to have decent antialiasing and FPS is frustrating.

[westr]

Hi Jef.

Many thanks for the file.

I have imported your file into NVIDIA profile inspector and activated it.

Unfortunately it has no effect on my Oculus system.

If there is any other trick that I have (for so long) missed, on how to change the oculus AA method outside DCS, let me know.

 

Cheers

 

There is a settings option in the Oculus menu at the bottom of the screen when you put the headset on. This is before you launch DCS. There is an option to turn antialiasing on/off on this, I hadn’t noticed it until recently. Unfortunately I didn’t notice any difference in my DCS. Maybe it could improve yours though if you dont already have it enabled?

[Flighter]

Wolf, it does look nice indeed.

I have attached my measurements. See what performance you would be getting with your settings... The comparison says it all really.

The new version is slower on every single combination (of interest to me at least). Let's hope the implementation is faulty and we get a nice surprise soon. Or the old rendered as an option.

MSAA is also very important to my taste.

Cheers

 

 

From latest ED update newsletter :

We are currently preparing and testing an update to the 2.5.1 Open Beta. This update should address a number of issues like the metashader error, VR audio device selection, A-10C and Ka-50 datalink errors, FLIR image quality, and others.

Could this be it ? Anybody has any more info to share ?

Cheers !

[sze5003]

From latest ED update newsletter :

Could this be it ? Anybody has any more info to share ?

Cheers !

This most likely has nothing to do with improving performance on VR with msaa and deferred shading. It was in the email newsletter that at least the tgp for the A10 will fixed.

[AMEDooley]

I just got back from a six month deployment and before I left I was getting 35-45 FPS with moderately high settings. I was using DS the whole time as it was so much nicer. But now in 2.5 I’m getting 20 FPS max no matter the settings. All settings on High 20 FPS, all settings on low 20 FPS. Something is seriously wrong.

[AMEDooley]

I have I-5 motherboard, 32gb of ddr4 ram, and a 1080ti. I should not be getting that bad of frame rate, let alone one that won’t change no matter the setting.

[Flighter]

I just got back from a six month deployment and before I left I was getting 35-45 FPS with moderately high settings. I was using DS the whole time as it was so much nicer. But now in 2.5 I’m getting 20 FPS max no matter the settings. All settings on High 20 FPS, all settings on low 20 FPS. Something is seriously wrong.

 

Hi there.

Do you have Oculus ?

Are you sure that some external utility (OculusTray for example) is not messing about with your settings ?

Do you have 2.5 or 2.5.1 ?

Changing deferred shading with MSAA x4 should make a hell of a difference.

Or you have somehow an active fps limiter.

Cheers

[muehlema]

In general I have 45fps and while high @FL300+ I get around 90fps. This really is fluid. No stutters. This is important.

 

 

 

i7 @4.5Ghz

1080 8GB

32GB Ram

 

 

I think if you go with the VR setting, then this is a startpoint. I started from there and then I started adding more objects, more visibility

[sze5003]

I just got back from a six month deployment and before I left I was getting 35-45 FPS with moderately high settings. I was using DS the whole time as it was so much nicer. But now in 2.5 I’m getting 20 FPS max no matter the settings. All settings on High 20 FPS, all settings on low 20 FPS. Something is seriously wrong.

If you are using stable 2.5 then try going into your saved games directory, backup the config/inputs folder, missions folder, and mission editor folder to somewhere safe. I remember you saying you were going through the maple flag campaign so if you don't backup the mission editor folder you lose your logbook.lua and all your progress.

 

Then rename the DCS folder that's inside your saved games directory to something like DCS.old.

 

Relaunch dcs and it will rebuild the shaders and meta shaders structure again from scratch. Throw the folders you backed up in the appropriate locations and reboot dcs and see if it's made a difference.

 

Your system is similar to mine so going from low to high settings and adding more msaa should show a big difference in performance, at least in VR.

 

I'm on beta 2.5.1 and noticed that performance did take a hit compared to 2.5. Fps is not as good but still playable if you adjust settings.

 

Also make sure to get the latest Nvidia drivers too.

[lemoen]

I've stopped caring about how it looks, I just want it to run at 45 in VR and in MP it doesn't. Vulcan where are you!?

[AMEDooley]

So I did a clean install when I got back. I deleted everything and started fresh. I don’t have any applications running in the back ground outside of Oculus, not the tool tray just the application to run the HMD, SRS, and Voice Attack. None of which should effect my frame rates. I haven’t taken off yet so let me see if it’s just an on the ground thing or not.

[AMEDooley]

So I’ll do a repair on my game and see if that helps anything, but I did take off and I’m still getting only 15-25 FPS. THis is quite frustrating as I’ve been jonesing for DCS for the last 5 months.