turning off monitors whiile in VR...

[fitness88]

To see if there would be a FPS gain I tried turning off my 3 monitors while flying in VR to save my graphic card from rendering to my monitors.

Has anyone tried running VR with monitors off...if so what did you find?

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

edit: no difference noted with monitors on or off

Edited September 7, 2018 by fitness88

[toutenglisse]

1 thing I tried at a time was to use a secondary gpu non sli to plug my screen on it, and VR plugged on main gpu. For games that worked with that (DCS didn't) I saw a max 3% gpu usage on secondary gpu with screen. Did that unloaded usage on main gpu ? idk. But max 3% if so.

 

Oculus home or some games (ETS2...If my virtual pilot license get revoqued I can drive a truck…) don't have a mirror on screen, so there should be a way to get rid of it everytime. But for what gain ?

 

I also tried different resolution for screen with VR mirror but found no variation (1280x1024 to 4K, same fps perf / gpu usage)

 

I don't think that turning off monitor also turns off mirror's calculation/rendering.

[fitness88]

1 thing I tried at a time was to use a secondary gpu non sli to plug my screen on it, and VR plugged on main gpu. For games that worked with that (DCS didn't) I saw a max 3% gpu usage on secondary gpu with screen. Did that unloaded usage on main gpu ? idk. But max 3% if so.

 

Oculus home or some games (ETS2...If my virtual pilot license get revoqued I can drive a truck…) don't have a mirror on screen, so there should be a way to get rid of it everytime. But for what gain ?

 

I also tried different resolution for screen with VR mirror but found no variation (1280x1024 to 4K, same fps perf / gpu usage)

 

I don't think that turning off monitor also turns off mirror's calculation/rendering.

 

 

Interesting what you wrote. What I find confusing, if rendering dcs on 3 screens reduces the FPS by around 1/3 over using only 1 screen why wouldn't that apply when using Oculus and closing the 3 monitors. I understand that I don't run dcs on my 3 monitors at the same time I run Oculus but 3 monitors with mirror should use more than only 3%.

[toutenglisse]

It's because the mirror is already calculated by Rft before being distorted and all to be used by Rift. The only thing that runs in addition, for you to have a mirror, is something like a media player, but very light/poor image quality (compared to a movie f.e.)

 

Btw if you turn off your monitor your gpu is still calulating things for it because it is plugged in. Not receiving the frames doesn't mean that they are not sent.

[fitness88]

It's because the mirror is already calculated by Rft before being distorted and all to be used by Rift. The only thing that runs in addition, for you to have a mirror, is something like a media player, but very light/poor image quality (compared to a movie f.e.)

 

Btw if you turn off your monitor your gpu is still calulating things for it because it is plugged in. Not receiving the frames doesn't mean that they are not sent.

 

 

 

So unplugging the 3 DP cables from the graphic card would be necessary?

[E-Rock]

If your graphic card is connected to the motherboard and running in windows, it will render the 2D mirror no matter what you do.

[kunterbunt]

Wasnˋt there an Option in the oculus debug tool to turn the mirroring off?

[toutenglisse]

With older SDK there were command lines that you put in an oculus.ini created file, in your game folder, to enable mirror with left, right, both eyes or no mirror.

 

This don't work anymore and I don't know other mean that works, like -nomirror extension.

 

fitness88 yes if you unplugg your device, whatever it is, there will be no calculation for it but you need a screen to be able to launch an oculus app. Launching a game in VR and than unplugging the screen, I've never tried that. But there certainy will be more consequences than just turning off monitor. For exemple DCS VR will refuse to launch if a VR device and screen are not plugged into the same gpu. You could also have a crash, or maybe gain 3% perf with your gpu…. That I've not tried.

[fitness88]

With older SDK there were command lines that you put in an oculus.ini created file, in your game folder, to enable mirror with left, right, both eyes or no mirror.

 

This don't work anymore and I don't know other mean that works, like -nomirror extension.

 

fitness88 yes if you unplugg your device, whatever it is, there will be no calculation for it but you need a screen to be able to launch an oculus app. Launching a game in VR and than unplugging the screen, I've never tried that. But there certainy will be more consequences than just turning off monitor. For exemple DCS VR will refuse to launch if a VR device and screen are not plugged into the same gpu. You could also have a crash, or maybe gain 3% perf with your gpu…. That I've not tried.

 

 

 

Only once launched I turn off the 3 monitors and all works well...but as mentioned I saw no performance change. So what E-Rock wrote sounds like what's happening.

I should mention in single play I really run smooth with no jitter...it's a bit more of a challenge in multi-play with other planes.

[E-Rock]

I upgraded from windows 7 to 10 recently and noticed gains in fps when using the rift. If you are not running W10 I would highly recommend it.

[etherbattx]

that’s because some of the changes in windows 10 are around general and even game performance.

[Jabbers_]

Presenting a frame to the monitor is not a performance intensive task, the work has already been done, rendering a 1080x1200 window is literally a tiny fraction of a second. All this work to try and remove the desktop mirror is rather silly, you will not see a performance boost.

[dburne]

Presenting a frame to the monitor is not a performance intensive task, the work has already been done, rendering a 1080x1200 window is literally a tiny fraction of a second. All this work to try and remove the desktop mirror is rather silly, you will not see a performance boost.

 

Fully agree, nothing more than a mirror image.

[fitness88]

Presenting a frame to the monitor is not a performance intensive task, the work has already been done, rendering a 1080x1200 window is literally a tiny fraction of a second. All this work to try and remove the desktop mirror is rather silly, you will not see a performance boost.

 

 

 

This makes sense once understanding that the rendering has already been done by the graphic card whether or not you display it.

[Doum76]

I'm been reading on forums quite a bit for this a few weeks ago, and no matter which forums i went, the end answer was, you can get a small gain, but so small that doing it is not even worth it.

 

 

 

Should I use multiple monitors?

 

With additional resources dedicated to outputting a second or third monitor, there may be a slight difference in performance if we're being pedantic. In almost all cases a second screen will have little to no effect, potentially dropping a couple of frames per second as a result. Considering virtual reality already requires a relatively high-end GPU in the first place, extra monitors shouldn't noticeably impact your experience in any way.

 

However, depending on the content displayed on the other monitors, taking the focus away from your VR game may result in a performance drop. Especially on lower-end VR hardware, using resources on unnecessary browser tabs, video editing suites and other hefty programs may absorb some much-needed resources. To prevent this, we simply recommend closing unused programs before booting up your VR headset.

 

While it might save you a couple of frames, it's not worth the time of unplugging/disabling your monitors ahead of a VR session. The performance benefits are close to non-existent unless taxing programs running on these displays are weighing down your system.

[skywalker22]

So Monitor is turned on (still) when VR is on? And cannot be tuned off?