Valve Index Hands On

[Nagilem]

So I've been working quite a bit to figure out how to get the best performance I can from my index. I do subscribe to SteamVR beta.

 

For my settings, I keep all of the image processing outside of DCS - no MSAA or AF, PD @1.0, shadows flat, water med, terrain set low, with other textures high, put preload and visibility to max (150000 and extreme)

 

I've setup steamvr to use a global setting of 100% with motion smoothing on, and an app setting of 200% for DCS.exe. I run @90hz.

 

I have also done some work through Process Lasso to set 2 processors (8 and 10 with their HT counterparts checked) for DCS, and remove the VRCompositor and VRserver processes from those same processors. I've set all three to higher priority settings to keep the data flowing.

 

What I am getting from all of this is 45+ frames flying low in Dubai with frame times ranging between 16ms to ~19ms, mostly yellow with very few reds.

Mostly getting good visuals inside the game with some warping / tearing looking to the sides as buildings and scene go by fast. I get *some* shimmer from aliasing, but overall the aliasing is not bad. The only thing that is tough is getting up close to aircraft or moving my head tends to make those things fuzzy or look like double vision - with more significant ghosting the faster the objects are moving in relation to me.

 

I guess I should count my blessings as I am getting decent performance with very few issues. I haven not really had the vertical line issue, and overall the experience with the index has been great.

 

Anyone have any other thoughts on how to improve the warping / ghosting issues? any other thoughts on settings to improve performance?

Edited August 28, 2019 by Nagilem

[RealDCSpilot]

@Nagilem

 

 

In process lasso, the virtual cores should be unchecked (in your case 9 and 11).

[Wicked.-]

So I've been working quite a bit to figure out how to get the best performance I can from my index. I do subscribe to SteamVR beta.

 

For my settings, I keep all of the image processing outside of DCS - no MSAA or AF, PD @1.0, shadows flat, water med, terrain set low, with other textures high, put preload and visibility to max (150000 and extreme)

 

I've setup steamvr to use a global setting of 100% with motion smoothing on, and an app setting of 200% for DCS.exe. I run @90hz.

 

I have also done some work through Process Lasso to set 2 processors (8 and 10 with their HT counterparts checked) for DCS, and remove the VRCompositor and VRserver processes from those same processors. I've set all three to higher priority settings to keep the data flowing.

 

What I am getting from all of this is 45+ frames flying low in Dubai with frame times ranging between 16ms to ~19ms, mostly yellow with very few reds.

Mostly getting good visuals inside the game with some warping / tearing looking to the sides as buildings and scene go by fast. I get *some* shimmer from aliasing, but overall the aliasing is not bad. The only thing that is tough is getting up close to aircraft or moving my head tends to make those things fuzzy or look like double vision - with more significant ghosting the faster the objects are moving in relation to me.

 

I guess I should count my blessings as I am getting decent performance with very few issues. I haven not really had the vertical line issue, and overall the experience with the index has been great.

 

Anyone have any other thoughts on how to improve the warping / ghosting issues? any other thoughts on settings to improve performance?

 

I keep preload at 150000 but visibility at high. If you think about it, visibility set to ultra or extreme adds quite a bit more to be drawn and honestly for me it's not worth it when it won't actually help you spot targets quicker. Otherwise, my settings that seem to be the best balance of visual clarity and framerates are PD @ 1.0, Application SS @ 100%, SteamVR SS at 100%, custom resolution under video tab at 204%, FSAA @ 2X, AF @ 16X, visibility high, textures high, water high, terrain textures high, shadows off, terrain shadows off, motion blur, depth of field, SSAA all off, heat shimmer off, trees 80%, grass clutter 180, civic traffic off, chimney smoke off, cockpit global lighting off, rain drops on. 90hz refresh rate seems to work best for me and I have it locked at 45 FPS with occasional drops to 30FPS. I keep coming back to these settings after I've trying the most recent suggestions. I have not updated firmware again since changing back to the newest beta but I'll retry the above mentioned settings again once I do.

 

Lastly, this rig does 2 things DCS and that other Viper simulator and neither can use more than one core and 2 threads. Therefore, I've disabled hyperthreading at bios which eliminates a significant amount of heat and allows for higher over clocks. I have CPU affinity in Process Lasso set to real time for DCS and SteamVR.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Wicked.-

[Nagilem]

@Alec DeLorean - Thank you for the suggestion...

 

I tried disabling the HT procs for 9 and 11 and found my performance in frame times got significantly worse. Many more late frames (red) in frame time graph than with the HT processors on. With HT enabled on the procs, Dubai flows smoothly by at ~18ms frame times with very late (red) frames.

 

Also tried turning motion smoothing off to see if ghosting on other AC went away. And while turning it off lessened the ghosting with planes ever so slightly, having it off also caused ground objects (buildings and terrain) to judder badly and also lost some of the sharpness.

 

WIth motion smoothing on, I see the ghosting around other AC and not buildings or other static objects that move relative to me or my AC. It seems the computations for relative motion between my AC which is moving in one plane of motion, and the other object moving in another plane of motion is the main correlation I can find to ghosting. With motion smoothing on and static objects moving in relation to my plane of motion have no ghosting issues.

[RealDCSpilot]

@Nagilem

 

Normally, hyperthreading does not help much with CPU bound games. But DCS's optimal CPU usage is still a mystery ED like keep to themselves. Maybe you can also try to give the game 2 additional cores (real ones, e.g. 12 and 14...).

[Nahemoth]

@Alec DeLorean - Thank you for the suggestion...

 

I tried disabling the HT procs for 9 and 11 and found my performance in frame times got significantly worse. Many more late frames (red) in frame time graph than with the HT processors on. With HT enabled on the procs, Dubai flows smoothly by at ~18ms frame times with very late (red) frames.

 

Also tried turning motion smoothing off to see if ghosting on other AC went away. And while turning it off lessened the ghosting with planes ever so slightly, having it off also caused ground objects (buildings and terrain) to judder badly and also lost some of the sharpness.

 

WIth motion smoothing on, I see the ghosting around other AC and not buildings or other static objects that move relative to me or my AC. It seems the computations for relative motion between my AC which is moving in one plane of motion, and the other object moving in another plane of motion is the main correlation I can find to ghosting. With motion smoothing on and static objects moving in relation to my plane of motion have no ghosting issues.

 

I'm getting exactly the same effects.

[Nahemoth]

@Nagilem

 

Normally, hyperthreading does not help much with CPU bound games. But DCS's optimal CPU usage is still a mystery ED like keep to themselves. Maybe you can also try to give the game 2 additional cores (real ones, e.g. 12 and 14...).

 

I have a i7 9700K processor, what are HT settings that I should configure?

[dburne]

I have a i7 9700K processor, what are HT settings that I should configure?

 

I myself never run hyperthreading, I don't have any multi threaded intensive applications that would benefit from it.

Plus gives a little more headroom in the CPU core temps.

[Supmua]

Some observations on the newest SteamVR beta (1.7.10).

 

The headset brightness control is neat, you can actually increase it beyond default setting (1.0)--it goes from 0 to 1.1. This is quite handy as you can do it in real-time, anywhere, even while playing.

 

I played with the vertical column correction a bit and was able to induce vertical artifacts when I drag the slider to +5. Now I know what people were talking about. Dragging the slider the other way to -5 doesn't seem to have any positive or negative effects on my screen.

 

The newest beta seems to drop my avg FPS by about 3-4, compared to the previous beta but it doesn't cause crazy temperature increase or GPU utilization. My avg FPS seems about the same as the stable version.

 

Supersampling via DCS PD setting seems to be slightly better in terms of shimmering reduction compared to SteamVR custom resolution but slightly worse in terms of clarity and performance. I think they might be using different algorithms to arrive at this.

 

SteamVR developers do listen to customers, and this is a good sign. And they show that they're willing to implement changes quickly based on feedbacks.

[Nahemoth]

I myself never run hyperthreading, I don't have any multi threaded intensive applications that would benefit from it.

Plus gives a little more headroom in the CPU core temps.

 

Do you mean that it is better to disable HT feature in the motherboard configuration?

[Wicked.-]

Do you mean that it is better to disable HT feature in the motherboard configuration?

 

I disabled hyperthreading on my rig through the BIOS. I have absolutely no need for it and it will bring your temps down by around 10c.

[Nahemoth]

I disabled hyperthreading on my rig through the BIOS. I have absolutely no need for it and it will bring your temps down by around 10c.

 

Perfect, I will try it later on.

[Nahemoth]

@Alec DeLorean - Thank you for the suggestion...

 

I tried disabling the HT procs for 9 and 11 and found my performance in frame times got significantly worse. Many more late frames (red) in frame time graph than with the HT processors on. With HT enabled on the procs, Dubai flows smoothly by at ~18ms frame times with very late (red) frames.

 

Also tried turning motion smoothing off to see if ghosting on other AC went away. And while turning it off lessened the ghosting with planes ever so slightly, having it off also caused ground objects (buildings and terrain) to judder badly and also lost some of the sharpness.

 

WIth motion smoothing on, I see the ghosting around other AC and not buildings or other static objects that move relative to me or my AC. It seems the computations for relative motion between my AC which is moving in one plane of motion, and the other object moving in another plane of motion is the main correlation I can find to ghosting. With motion smoothing on and static objects moving in relation to my plane of motion have no ghosting issues.

 

Do you experience the same effect with SteamVR stable and beta version?

[RealDCSpilot]

I also disabled HT in bios recently, made custom bios profiles for gaming and working (HT off and HT on).

[imacken]

I have a i7 9700K processor, what are HT settings that I should configure?

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure your CPU doesn’t have Hyperthreading.

 

Personally, neither disabling HT nor using Project Lasso made any difference at all when I tried them some time ago.

[Supmua]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure your CPU doesn’t have Hyperthreading.

 

 

 

Personally, neither disabling HT nor using Project Lasso made any difference at all when I tried them some time ago.

 

 

 

Yep, unlike the 8700K it replaces the 9700K does not have HT.

[dburne]

Do you mean that it is better to disable HT feature in the motherboard configuration?

 

Edit: Ah I forgot the 9700k probably does not have HT.

[Johnny Dioxin]

Haven't seen a performance change at all on my set-up. Still enjoying my Index - been doing the Huey rescue missions around Dubai and lots of fun! - In fact, with my new(ish) T50 HOTAS and Index, it's the best PC helicopter fun I've ever had.

 

Just need to get Caucasus sorted, which looks and runs pretty awful and has done for me for some time.

[Supmua]

Valve Index Hands On

 

Index Teardown

 

https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-index-teardown-disassembly-lenses-optics-diffuser-ipd-mechansim/

 

Showing the novel dual-lens element in its glory...as well as a screen diffuser which helps reduce SDE (would never have guessed it has one).

[Supmua]

FYI, fpsVR doesn’t play well with the latest SteamVR 1.7.11 beta with incorrect tracking of FPS and frame time. The author said not to use it or use the stable SteamVR branch instead.

 

Frankly, I can’t keep up with all these beta updates since whenever I test I can’t play. Going to stick with the stable branch for now, I’ll miss the brightness control but that can wait.

[imacken]

FYI, fpsVR doesn’t play well with the latest SteamVR 1.7.11 beta with incorrect tracking of FPS and frame time. The author said not to use it or use the stable SteamVR branch instead.

 

Frankly, I can’t keep up with all these beta updates since whenever I test I can’t play. Going to stick with the stable branch for now, I’ll miss the brightness control but that can wait.

 

Yep, fpsVR is screwed on this new SteamVR beta.

 

It's all becoming a real pita.

[Johnny Dioxin]

One thing not reported in the beta notes is that the range of adjustment for SDE/Vertical lines issue has been doubled.

 

Seems most users are now reporting their issue resolved. I haven't tried it, yet, but when I came off the alpha and went onto the beta, the lines were back as bad as ever. -5 on each lens gave me the same results I'd had with the alpha (gone on one screen, greatly reduced in the other).

 

Many others were reporting exactly the same after 4.10 and were asking for more adjustment. The response was very quick - unless they had been planning it, anyway and just got the confirmation after 4.10.

[imacken]

One thing not reported in the beta notes is that the range of adjustment for SDE/Vertical lines issue has been doubled.

 

Seems most users are now reporting their issue resolved. I haven't tried it, yet, but when I came off the alpha and went onto the beta, the lines were back as bad as ever. -5 on each lens gave me the same results I'd had with the alpha (gone on one screen, greatly reduced in the other).

 

Many others were reporting exactly the same after 4.10 and were asking for more adjustment. The response was very quick - unless they had been planning it, anyway and just got the confirmation after 4.10.

 

Sorry to ask, but what 4.10 are we talking about here?

[Wicked.-]

I just fired up DCS with the new beta 1.7.11 and went into free flight F-18 which is where I do all my testing. Once I start flying I'm at 45FPS but part of my test is flying low over a lot of trees and I'll drop down to 30FPS while I'm over a large area. This is normal behavior for it but usually once I look up or get away from them it jumps back to 45. Today once it hits 30 it stays there. Even when I exit the mission and go back to the UI it's still stuck at 30. I made no changes to my settings from last night where I was getting solid 45 in PG MP. Oh well, back to stable.

[RealDCSpilot]

Low Latency on Ultra is a new interesting driver feature from Nvidia, seems to work pretty well on SteamVR beta 1.7.11.

ED should focus on other frame drop issues now, like having several AI aircraft in vicinity with framerate dropping down to hell.