Need advice on Oculus Rift

[Schmidtfire]

I recently got back into VR (Oculus Rift). Looking for advice to make it as good setup as possible. My hardware is as follows: i7 4.4Ghz, 32GB RAM, 11GB 1080TI STRIX, SSD, DCS stand alone 2.5 OpenBeta.

 

Currently running with MSAAx2, PD 1.3, Visibility - Medium, Ground textures - Low, Flat shadows only. No shader mod.

 

At the moment I have a lot of ASW artifacts. Warping and judders around the MFD buttons on the A-10C etc.

 

So anyone got good advice on how I can get a smoother experience in the Rift? DCS settings? Should I disable the ASW function? Running Rift through SteamVR instead?

 

 

Thanks!

[dburne]

I prefer to fly with ASW off.

You might give it a try and see how it does for you.

When you get in cockpit hit CTRL+Numpad 1 to turn it off.

[Reflected]

No SteamVR. Disable ASW. Lower your PD to 1.2 or 1.1, you won't see a lot of difference with MSAA at 2x. High ground textures only cost VRAM, very little FPS impact, so go for it. Also, you can turn shadows to "Low" and leave terrain shadows at "Flat". Lowering the preload radius to around 20000 helped my performance a lot. Your rig is better than mine, and I get a stable 45 FPS unless in a really busy environment, in which case it drops to 30.

[Schmidtfire]

Ok thanks a lot for the advice! I have tried lowering the PD but 1.3 I think is ok for reading cockpit text, gauges etc. Might try lowering it to 1.2.

 

What about the shaders mod. Does it work ok in MP nowdays?

[Reflected]

The thing with PD at 1.3 vs 1.2/1 is that you won't notice much difference in quality with MSAA on, but it's very, very FPS costly.

 

I don't use the shaders mod as a) it doesn't work for me and b) I'm hoping ED will come up with official improvements.

[Hippo]

Disable ASW. ... you won't see a lot of difference with MSAA at 2x ... in which case it drops to 30...

...

 

The thing with PD at 1.3 vs 1.2/1 is that you won't notice much difference in quality with MSAA on

 

Other opinions are available... here's mine:

 

VR without MSAA has appalling aliasing artifacts (jaggies). They are so distracting to me that I refuse to run DCS without it. I would really like MSAAx4, but could live with x2.

 

Increasing PD I find increases clarity, but doesn't do as much for jaggies. To see this, load the A-10C mission "Free Flight - Black Sea - Runway Start". Looking at 2 o'clock observe the taxiways (especially the "thin" one) and four light towers. In cockpit check the edges of the compass and accelerometer casings, and the buttons around the MFDs and UFCP. An atrocious shimmering mess without MSAA, much much better with it turned on.

 

Unfortunately, MSAAx4 with the new engine causes a severe fps drop.

 

If your thing is the A-10C, one option is to try 1.5 and see how that goes. You will get much improved fps. Unfotunately, the terrain looks worse, and the trees are a horrible lime green colour. Also, you will be missing out on any new features. Night is horrible.

 

Shadows are another fps killer, you might try to see if you can live without them.

 

IMHO (and Oculus's), proper VR should be at 90 fps. Very hard to achieve without lowering settings to minimums. You can try running something like MSI afterburner and calibrate setting based on GPU and CPU % performance. You need to look at the specific CPU core that's doing the work (on my system, for some reason it's always 12). What I do is load a mission with very little going on and configure settings so that neither go over around 70% with 90 fps. This gives some headroom for when things get busy - as soon as either gets close to 100% ASW will kick in and you'll be down to 45 fps - CPU and GPU will also (obviously) reduce at this point. I try to aim for 90 fps most of the time, whilst having a fall back to ASW when things get busier.

 

I wouldn't recommend turning ASW off, or running below 45 fps. The people who can tolerate this are obviously mutant supermen, and are frying their brains.

 

The Kegetys mod definitely works, and gave me a 25% improvement in fps. I just got a bit bored with having to uninstall and reinstall it every time an update was released.

 

***

 

After enjoying DCS (and predecessors) for more years than I care to admit, I'm afraid I've just reached the limits of my patience with all this faffing about, and have, just now, decided to wipe it from my hard disk.

 

Until recently I was perfectly happy with DCS in VR, until ED decided to remove the forward rendering option.

Edited November 8, 2018 by Hippo