VR Shaders mod for better VR experience

[zildac]

1 hour ago, diamond26 said:

Are you using any upscaling method (FSR,NIS,CAS)? These usually introduce some shimmering! 

No, just OXRTK, no upscaling. The shimmering has been there forever, it's just worse in 2.8

[diamond26]

2 hours ago, zildac said:

No, just OXRTK, no upscaling. The shimmering has been there forever, it's just worse in 2.8

I guess I'm lucky with Quest2 then, as since the latest updates in Oculus and DCS I see an improvement  

[Fuggzy]

On 10/29/2022 at 3:30 AM, Fiztex said:

Public of course not. But no one forbids you to run a dedicated server yourself or rent one with your friends. Actually, most of the time I play heavy SP stuff (e.g. Liberation) I do that running a dedicated server on my laptop (pretty basic one) and it's miles better in VR performance than flying pure SP. It's actually miles better than most of the public servers too.

Even more, if you got enough RAM you can even run a dedicated server simultaneously with the game on one PC for not very heavy stuff and it will be surprisingly better than flying pure SP. That's how bad DCS engine really is.

 

I need to make sure I'm understanding correctly, @Fiztex -- I just can't run some SP stuff if it's got too many units, like any of the WWII campaigns.  Would running a server on a different machine and playing in VR from main PC make it possible?  And this draws attention to it being a CPU bottleneck, no?  I can't figure that out as I thought my CPU ( i9-10980XE extreme edition) shouldn't be part of the equation -- maybe it is. I think I'd like to try what you're cookin'.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Fuggzy

[Fiztex]

4 часа назад, Fuggzy сказал:

I need to make sure I'm understanding correctly, @Fiztex -- I just can't run some SP stuff if it's got too many units, like any of the WWII campaigns.  Would running a server on a different machine and playing in VR from main PC make it possible?  And this draws attention to it being a CPU bottleneck, no?  I can't figure that out as I thought my CPU ( i9-10980XE extreme edition) shouldn't be part of the equation -- maybe it is. I think I'd like to try what you're cookin'.

There is no CPU in existence which is not going to bottleneck in DCS at some point, anything faster than i5 **600kf of current generation is burning money for DCS. Engine cannot handle multithreading, so it's all up to single core performance and those normally differ between generations more than they differ between an i5 and i9 in the same generation, and it is still typically a measly 10% difference. 

Basically, by using a dedicated server you transfer all units and objects under it's control and the server doesn't need to do some of the CPU-intensive graphics calculations, so it can handle more of those objects. If your server is going to struggle, you on your client side won't be seeing major fps drops, but instead you may encounter desync issues which will look like stuff teleporting or jumping around briefly, but that is in my opinion still miles better than low fps in VR. Your computer will be fully busy with graphics and your own flight + networking (syncing the work results of the server with your client and sending back) giving your a smoother experience. 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Fiztex

[WipeUout]

8 hours ago, Fiztex said:

Basically, by using a dedicated server you transfer all units and objects under it's control and the server doesn't need to do some of the CPU-intensive graphics calculations, so it can handle more of those objects. If your server is going to struggle, you on your client side won't be seeing major fps drops, but instead you may encounter desync issues which will look like stuff teleporting or jumping around briefly, but that is in my opinion still miles better than low fps in VR. Your computer will be fully busy with graphics and your own flight + networking (syncing the work results of the server with your client and sending back) giving your a smoother experience. 

Using a dedicated server make a huge difference in some scenarios.  Bellow are two screenshot I took while running the attached mission which is full of action and units shooting at each other.  You can see that running local has a lot of spikes in the CPU frame time graph, while running the mission on a server is much flatter with a 3ms reduction in the CPU frame time.  In these example, the GPU is heavily bottlenecked so FPS is not relevant, nevertheless things run much smoother and with less stutters.

 

I use an i7-8700 as my server with a GTX1060 connected to my home network.  You do not need a whole lot of horse power to run a dedicated server but it make a difference!     

plazma_torture_map_2022_flanker.miz

[Tusk.V]

@Taz1004 Is there any way to get albedo working again with 2.8? I'm missing it!

[Sapper31]

I isolated just the NVG portion of this mod because it actually makes NVGs work and look like they do in real life.

 

However I randomly get a bug where the "noise mask" is not aligned with the NVG tubes so I get an effect that looks like the uploaded image. Seems like it might have something to do with the alignment of the VR headset when the game opens or something? Not too sure.

 

 

Anyone have ideas to fix this?

 

 

 

[laertesson]

Thanks Taz, Kegetys, And speedofheat. 
 

this mod had a great life breathing more performance into my experience. RIP to a great effort.
 

with my 3090 Ti and 13700K, I only need OpenVR and my experience is great.

Edited November 24, 2022 by laertesson

[Gravy Jones]

Why the movement to abandon these shaders?   They are a huge improvement in VR performance.  I’m not following why these need to be put to pasture……??

[drewm3i]

2 hours ago, Gravy Jones said:

Why the movement to abandon these shaders?   They are a huge improvement in VR performance.  I’m not following why these need to be put to pasture……??

Agreed.

[DerKlausi]

I would very very much like to see them continued as well. Willing to donate to @Taz1004 and @speed-of-heat, drop me a PM if this would help changing your minds, and I'm sure other long-time users would follow!

 

Cheers,
DK

[speed-of-heat]

48 minutes ago, DerKlausi said:

I would very very much like to see them continued as well. Willing to donate to @Taz1004 and @speed-of-heat, drop me a PM if this would help changing your minds, and I'm sure other long-time users would follow!

 

Cheers,
DK

 

Alas I was always just a hacker, I can't speak for Taz, but all I did was play with some of the variables in the lua to make things work.   The person who did the real work was @Kegetys in creating them.

As to why i personally moved on from these, for a number of reasons, I am using open composite which seems to have reduced the need for me and my hardware has progressed to a level where the compromise of compile time vs performance gain is no longer worth it for me for the benefit that they give in performance.

So in my case, it's not money or time (though i could always use more of both) it's just sheer ability, sorry to disappoint. 

[Tusk.V]

12 minutes ago, speed-of-heat said:

 

Alas I was always just a hacker, I can't speak for Taz, but all I did was play with some of the variables in the lua to make things work.   The person who did the real work was @Kegetys in creating them.

As to why i personally moved on from these, for a number of reasons, I am using open composite which seems to have reduced the need for me and my hardware has progressed to a level where the compromise of compile time vs performance gain is no longer worth it for me for the benefit that they give in performance.

So in my case, it's not money or time (though i could always use more of both) it's just sheer ability, sorry to disappoint. 

Albedo SS was huge for me. Why don’t we see it more in current shaders?

[speed-of-heat]

That's something to take up with ED.

[Bucic]

2.8 OB: deleting any shaders causes a compile error. Is there a way to go around that?

[Hammer1-1]

4 hours ago, Bucic said:

2.8 OB: deleting any shaders causes a compile error. Is there a way to go around that?

yeah you dont need to delete them anymore.

[Bucic]

7 minutes ago, Hammer1-1 said:

yeah you dont need to delete them anymore.

It was a kind of OT question since I don't intend to use the mod. My initial plan was to find the offending shaders and delete them but after reading a bit more on the subject my guess is that servers with integrity check enabled will catch that anyway. I wanted to delete one of the unoptimized ground explosion effects and the ridiculous hdr bloom.

[Hammer1-1]

so you're looking for specific parts of the mod to delete?

[Bucic]

3 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

so you're looking for specific parts of the mod to delete?

No. As I said, it's kind of OT. I'm asking whether you know how to make DCS not return compile errors when I delete shaders unrelated to the Kegetys mod. Cause you guys know a lot

[Bubi]

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[Hammer1-1]

those that state failed to compile are those that need to be pulled. That means those shaders have depreciated and are no longer airworthy. Youll have to manually delete them if you want to fly, youll have to wait for a further update. Not saying you have to uninstall the shaders as a whole, just the defective ones. From the looks of it, its reflections.fx, atmosphere.hlsl (19,80-94(thats the range of shaders you need to pull)), and shaders.hlsl (19,2-95). That very well could be the entire mod, but its been a while since I last used it. From the looks of it, strictly weather related shaders.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Hammer1-1

[SPAS79]

Are we still alive?

[StarLightPL]

These days I myself use only 3dmigoto mod for haze removal and a bit of sharpening + simplex mod which is now ancient. But to be honest, vanilla DCS is pretty ok right now with a 3080. YMMV. Sadly 3dmigoto currently is not (yet) fully compatible with multithreading.

Edited March 12, 2023 by StarLightPL

[zildac]

There appears to be very little if any benefit to running this mod any more. Albedo SS hasn't worked for some time, which was the main hook for me. Canopy glass, and haze reduction can all be achieved using separate mods now and without the looooong initial compile time. I haven't actually re-enabled this mod since the latest OB. As others have mentioned, 3DMigoto seems to be a great substitute, but one I’ve yet to play with to any great extent.

[StarLightPL]

1 hour ago, zildac said:

Canopy glass, and haze reduction can all be achieved using separate mods now

You can even disable canopy/mfd reflections from DCS Special menu now for F18 and F16.