VR Shaders mod for better VR experience

[cmskinner]

use JSGME

DCS version 50793

only mod i have

guess im screwed.

[speed-of-heat]

what is the error message you are getting?

[cmskinner]

not getting error message.

[cmskinner]

got it working. now to get the mask size proper.

[speed-of-heat]

oh yes and you have to wait a long time the first time it loads.... and the first time it loads a plane and the first time you load a terrain

[TomcatFly]

then i dont know what to tell you im running it now...

 

my advice is uninstall the mod, repair dcs, delete fxo and metashaders2 from saved games and then reapply the mod .. as per the instructions in the readme

 

 

I have last OB, I tested all 3 and stick now on base shaders (no clear water) and no problems running all 3.

 

That work great, as always.

[cmskinner]

That i got figured out.

[squirrelmeister]

use JSGME

DCS version 50793

only mod i have

guess im screwed.

 

 

Here is another option maybe:

 

 

 

I don't know how the mod thingy jsgme works but deinstall the mod first with it when you have installed it with this tool.

 

 

 

After that delete the whole "*:*DCSWorld\Bazar\shaders" - folder;

 

 

 

delete the DCS-Folder in: *:\DCSWorld\Mods\terrains\*mapname*\misc\metacache (keep the dcs.lua!);

 

 

 

delete everything in *:\DCSWorld\Mods\terrains\*mapname*\misc\shadercache;

 

 

 

 

Repair your DCS installation which should bring back the shaders folder. Do not start DCS. Copy the shader (whatever version you prefer but make sure it is the newest one!) folder of the "Shader Mod" over to the bazar folder in DCSWorld and overwrite when asked. Start DCS and wait for it to load into the menu. After that open the mission editor, choose any map and place a plane you can fly. Start/test mission and wait again for it to load. After you have been loaded into the mission you can experience some stutters and some drops due to more shaders being loaded as you're flying through the map. Repeat for every map and it should be good to go. Keep in mind that you actually don't have to do the things with the mission editor, you can just hop in any mission and do it that way.

 

 

The most important part is that it can take a very long time loading the shaders depending on your rig and CPU. Even if you think it crashed, do not close it and wait for it to finish its thing.

 

 

 

 

Maybe this helps you because without this mod VR wouldn't be as much enjoyable as it is with this mod installed!

 

 

 

Big thanks to kegetys and speed-of-heat for making DCS playable in VR! :thumbup::smartass:

 

 

 

 

Cheers

[cmskinner]

Thanks got it. Now to adjust the mask size. If i recall it was a pain in the arse. i remember my setting hope its still the same.

[cmskinner]

Well i got it working. Works great if i don't look at the cockpit but as soon as i do bam stutters. Turned everything all way down and still the same. Guess ill just have to wait till next OB to see if that helps. Because with out this mod DCS is no playable.

Edited June 13, 2020 by cmskinner

[USA_Recon]

The butcher is in session ...

 

Clearwater version and IC Pass with Clear Water of @Kegteys awesome mod

 

I'm getting errors with latest patch and shader mod 2.5.6.50321

 

baraz/shaders/deferred/Compose.fx failed to compile (something about effects deprecated for D3DCompiler_47common/lighting.hlsl

[USA_Recon]

I'm getting errors with latest patch and shader mod 2.5.6.50321

 

baraz/shaders/deferred/Compose.fx failed to compile (something about effects deprecated for D3DCompiler_47common/lighting.hlsl

 

odd, redownloaded from your sig, removed what i add, used this and it works.

 

so no worries :)

[texas_moto_maniac]

Well i got it working. Works great if i don't look at the cockpit but as soon as i do bam stutters. Turned everything all way down and still the same. Guess ill just have to wait till next OB to see if that helps. Because with out this mod DCS is no playable.

 

I am not sure what your rig's hardware consists of. But I would definitely set up both your DCS system & VR settings along with the NVIDIA Control Panel settings as shown in the links that are in speed-of-heat's signature. If that doesn't work, turn things down from there starting with shadows and Antistropic Filtering. If you look in my sig, I do not have a slouch for a PC. Even with a 3090x and 2080 Ti, i can't really do more than S-O-H's settings and maintain a consistent framerate.

[texas_moto_maniac]

If the circle is not there, the mod probably isn't working.

 

I ended up removing the mod, deleting fxo and metashaders2, terrain DCS folder contents, using the DCS repair utility and then reinstalling using speed-of-heat's mod package. Mask is back and running smooth as butter.

[TomcatFly]

Any indication about the ideal "MASKSIZE" in _HMD.hlsl for the Oculus RIft-S ? In last shaders I see 0.525 ...

 

Thank you

Edited June 13, 2020 by DenisFerrari

[Hammer1-1]

personally I think .525 short sold a lot of HMDs, as I had to use .625 for the Rift CV1. I use .675 for the reverb.

[imacken]

personally I think .525 short sold a lot of HMDs, as I had to use .625 for the Rift CV1. I use .675 for the reverb.

 

When I used this mod, I had 0.525 for the Reverb. Seems to depend on your face, IPD, etc.

 

Trial and error is the way.

[TomcatFly]

When I used this mod, I had 0.525 for the Reverb. Seems to depend on your face, IPD, etc.

 

Trial and error is the way.

 

At 0.525 I do not see any dark or not rendered edges around in VR...so with my IPD (63.5) it would seem I could try to reduce little bit more, right?

 

No need to empty fxo and metashaders2 in this case, right?

 

Another thing I need to clarify is which masksize is dominant with these shaders mod?

 

One in DCS VR settings or only MASKSIZE in _HMD.hlsl file?

 

Or these are maybe 2 different settings?

 

Thanks again!

[Kazansky222]

With the Pimax 5k+ on Normal FoV I found mask size of .725 to be about right. If anybody else has been trying to dial it in.

 

Has anybody tried large FoV? I haven't because I run in 144hz mode. But I'm curious of what the mask size is for large FoV

[Eldur]

I've been able to make this mod run eventually. Having to restart DCS and let the rest of the shaders recompile was the key.

 

But well, I don't get any performance improvement at all by this. Absolutely nothing. Caucasus at 45fps with no AI, down to 22 with a few AI units active, and just 7fps on the Channel. VR performance in DCS is absolutely pathetic...

[speed-of-heat]

At 0.525 I do not see any dark or not rendered edges around in VR...so with my IPD (63.5) it would seem I could try to reduce little bit more, right?

 

No need to empty fxo and metashaders2 in this case, right?

 

Another thing I need to clarify is which masksize is dominant with these shaders mod?

 

One in DCS VR settings or only MASKSIZE in _HMD.hlsl file?

 

Or these are maybe 2 different settings?

 

Thanks again!

What two masksize are you looking at there is only one now in_hmd.hlsl afaik?

[speed-of-heat]

I've been able to make this mod run eventually. Having to restart DCS and let the rest of the shaders recompile was the key.

 

But well, I don't get any performance improvement at all by this. Absolutely nothing. Caucasus at 45fps with no AI, down to 22 with a few AI units active, and just 7fps on the Channel. VR performance in DCS is absolutely pathetic...

 

I’m not quite sure I understand this...

 

What are your specs, what are your settings, what mods do you have applied, how are you measuring improvement?

 

The bit I really don’t understand is the delta you are seeing under what circumstances between Caucasus and Channel... Channel is beta and bugged, but I get 38 to 45 with occasional spikes into slide ware as I turn into built up areas. I’m not suggesting it’s playable

 

My suggestion is you remove all the mods you have, run repair, because some of them do interfere with each other, start with low settings , and measure using frame times with FPSVR not displayed FPS as these numbers are typically pegged by asw or motion vectoring. And then apply the mod, and then adjust one setting and proceed and repeat..

[Dunx]

I don't know if the Windows Performance tab is the best tool to use but I ran another test this morning with and without the shaders MOD (speed-of-heat's version).

 

Most of my threads were about the same, but thread 0 (zero) is the one that DCS hammers.

 

Without MOD = approx. 87%

With MOD = approx. 90%

 

I wonder if something has changed because this MOD used to give me better performance over raw DCS. I repeated this comparison twice, both times the MOD increased utilization by about 3%.

 

The Test :

• Clear fxo and metashaders2 folders
  
• Start Steam, WMR, StreamVR, task manager, Word, DCS
  
• Launch F/A-18C Free Flight in Caucasus
  
• Active Pause
  
• Wait 5 minutes for thread graphs to level
  
• Screenshot and paste into Word
  

[Eldur]

I’m not quite sure I understand this...

 

What are your specs, what are your settings, what mods do you have applied, how are you measuring improvement?

 

The bit I really don’t understand is the delta you are seeing under what circumstances between Caucasus and Channel... Channel is beta and bugged, but I get 38 to 45 with occasional spikes into slide ware as I turn into built up areas. I’m not suggesting it’s playable

 

My suggestion is you remove all the mods you have, run repair, because some of them do interfere with each other, start with low settings , and measure using frame times with FPSVR not displayed FPS as these numbers are typically pegged by asw or motion vectoring. And then apply the mod, and then adjust one setting and proceed and repeat..

 

I think I've posted my specs several times in the performance threads, but I'm planning to add those to my profile page somehow, along with the settings, so it's probably going to be some screenshots with all the info. Makes it easier to have those there all the time anyway. My specs are here. Differences are the 442.19 drivers and some settings. Haven't upped my drivers since the 445s have been known for dropping the fps a lot in DCS. I set the shadows to flat only when the SC arrived and because of the ultra-low fps on the channel I lowered the visibility range to medium (some history here: Was on med on my 970, cranked to high on the 1080 and when the Tomcat dropped with some major fps hit of around 60% I saw it made no difference in fps when set to extreme at which I left it until recently), water and htblr to low and displays to 512 - just to see what I get. Made absolutely no difference in VR though, but that's probably the reason I get up to 200fps in pancake mode now - with the settings as seen in the thread I linked I usually was around 90-120 there. My guess is that my 8yo CPU literally is bottlenecking the whole system here especially considering some AI units around (instant action missions) make the performance drop like a rock, but I won't be able to replace my hardware within ~ a year.

 

One thing really is I don't use a standardized testing scenario. Most values I post are from my Caucasus training map which is just every flyable plane set at Senaki as client, somewhere around 32 trucks on the cross base, a few solo Strelas and Shilkas scattered east of Sukhumi and some combined surface to air sites of different types east of Senaki at various distances, as well as some artillery units. Nothing moves there. In case of the Channel, I've just put the P-47, the Edge 540 and a Huey, again, as selectable "client") as of yet at Hawkinge, otherwise the map is completely spartan. When testing with active AI units, I usually just fire up one of the instant action engagements that come with the Hornet and Viper.

 

Also, I turn of ASW completely with either Oculus Debug Tool or Tray Tool, cross checking since I suspect it doesn't work reliably since my fps often keeps sticking hard to 45, 30, 22 or 15 anyway.

 

For measuring I still rely on the built-in fps counter and guesstimate an average value (that's why I mostly post different values at/around Senaki or flying around). I've seen fpsvr on Steam - does it work without SteamVR as well? I suspect it would be rather pointless to run the whole thing with SteamVR where I have a lot less fps than without in DCS...

 

As for mods, it's just a bunch of community planes (A-4E, MB339, Edge 540 and some others deactivated like the Su-57, MiG-23UB, Su-35 and Grinnelli F-22), but none of them are loaded in the missions I use to check my framerate, unless I say so. And, of course, some alterations to input luas which shouldn't change performance at all. Did a repair prior to activating the kegetys mod last time, after updating to the latest version and wiping fxo and metashaders2.

[speed-of-heat]

so your running on an i5-3570 is that at native or have you tried OC'ing, you should be able to get at least 4ghz out of that with a good cooler and a 1080. You are running on much weaker hardware and running way higher settings than me.

 

I can't speak to the mods, but i would seriously recommend uninstalling them for the moment... I have seen mods do very odd things just buy being installed ... you can always add them back later.

 

I would strongly suggest dropping the following shadows to low/medium if you absolutely must, grass to 750, take cockpit res down to 1024 , you dont need every frame, turn heat blur to low, terrain textures to low its doubtful you will notice the difference, and drop heat blur to low, smoke drop to 1 or zero, Terrain Object Shadows ... i'd turn off for the moment... and see about the rest.

 

However what is absolutely killing your FPS are three things;

 

Cockpit Global Illumination ... turn it off

Visibility Range set it to High , and likely medium (i see you have done that already good)

Shadows turn them to medium at most i would suggest low on your spec or off preferably

 

these last three are going to absolutely give you poor perf... remember to restart after apply changes

 

 

I would absolutely recommend doing something in consistent in the same plane to test settings.

 

you dont say what your PD is but i would set it to 1 to start with and adjust scaling later through your oracle tool tray, but that is not an area i'm familiar with.

 

Good luck