Unhappy with my vr experience (2080ti)

[james111333]

I seem to have spent forever trying to work out why my VR experience is so disappointing, I have a few questions that hopefully can help manage my expectations.

My system is 4790k@ 4.7ghz, Msi 2080ti @ 2100mhz and +900mhz vram 16gb ddr3 @ 2400mhz, Samsung evo SSD.

I use a Samsung odyssey plus but in DCS I seem to be losing so much potential FPS somewhere as I average about 50% utilisation on my GPU and my CPU fluctuates around 35-50% usage. When I set core affinity to 2 cores, it's still not 100% on either of those cores.

I'll screenshot my settings later but I just can't get more usage from my system. The shimmering is getting to me and is taking some enjoyment away. I play unpopulated no combat single player or multiplayer with just me, a friend and a tanker flying about.

I have installed the shades mod but it made little difference as I can crank MSAA from 0 to 4x without affecting fps as I guess the 2080ti has no issue with it.

 

I'm thinking maybe CPU or memory so would initially like to discuss which settings destroy those potential bottle necks.

 

I know it's hard to recommend anything until I post my settings so I'll do that as soon as I can.

 

Thanks for any input and suggestions.

 

Also, I've seen people achieve much higher FPS albeit with a newer CPU but I can run my 4790k at 5ghz and still no difference which I assume isn't miles away from a lower clocked 9700k is it?

[amazingme]

Hmm.. You should be the king of fps with your setup. The stuttering could be caused by your head tracking, as we all have these mini stutters because of TrackIR.

Can you paste the settings from DCS and your gfx card? Thanks!

[Harlikwin]

Cpu is not all abou ghz. Cache size, memory bandwidth make a big difference.

 

But i typically see about 20/30% cpu use. DCS uses one core for the most part. Gpu wise my frames tend to be 45fps dictated by ASW with anywhere from 50-100% usage. You want some headroom for VR.

[boedha68]

Bouncing in. :D Well more ram makes a difference here. I came from 16 to 24 gb. tweak settings from very low and shadows only flat!!! On left and right side of the settings screen!!! Pd settings? In a few days i got the reverb and i am confident to get reasonable framerate. Hope that the vr boost make his way to us this wednesday. :D

[nessuno0505]

Pixel density?

[Tippis]

So… what, exactly, is the experience? Aside from a vague mention of “shimmering”, it's very unclear what the issue is.

 

Low frame rate (how low)? Flickering? Detail and sharpness? Artefacting?

[Headwarp]

your 2080Ti's default fan speeds will let it get pretty hot. I set my 2080Ti's fans to spin up to 100% by 45C, 70% by 35 or 40C.. not sure how to set up a custom fan curve in MSI Afterburner, but I have mine set through EVGA Precision. SOMETIMES, after a driver update or something my custom curves get deleted and I'm not getting the performance i'm used to.

 

Also in nvidia control panel make sure your profile for dcs.exe is set to prefer max performance not optimal.

 

Ultimately though, most of your time spent even with my rig @ 5.0ghz and a 2080Ti, I don't exceed 45fps using 1.5Pixel density and 2x MSAA. but I also don't dip below 45fps. That's motion reprojection, and as long as it's on you won't see high gpu usage, and you may have some artifacting but gameplay should be smooth. I will say, I have the reprojection indicators turned on in my settings file to for WMR for steam, and even with my 8700k @ 5.0ghz paired with my overclocked 2080Ti, I still get the light blue CPU limitation box, right next to the dark blue gpu limitation box using the motion reprojection status indicator. Which tells me, the 2080Ti could benefit from even faster cpu's than we have available below a certain resolution. But it's pretty close, as raising the resolution to be completely gpu limited with my Odyssey offers a lower framerate than I'm getting with current settings.

 

If for some reason I'm not at least at 45fps or very close to it when flying low to the ground my fan curves are the first thing I check and generally the culprit, if not that it's the nv control panel setting for power management, otherwise I'd check and make sure C: drive and whatever drive DCS is on aren't completely full personally.

 

100% fan speed on my gpu keeps the card at about 45-50C where using default fan curves I've seen the thing hit 80-88C, at which point it is likely throttling'

 

One other thing to check is SteamVR's video resolution. By default, it will try to guess how high the rendered resolution should be based on your hardware, it's generally too high for DCS or other sims that use VR. Under the video tab in SteamVR settings, I recommend ensuring the "manual" box is checked and set custom resolution to 100% (native) and using DCS's in game pixel density setting to about 1.5 (or 150%), or whatever lets you maintain a minimum of 45fps. For other VR titles you may access through steam, you can use the dropdown box and slider within the Applications tab to individually set different resolutions for specific titles that might not have their own setting built into their game.

 

If it's none of these, do try a dcs repair.

 

Hopefully we see a nice increase whenever ED gets around to fixing the VR optimization that they weren't able to implement in the 06/06 patch. Til then 45fps with motion reprojection on auto in the wmr for steam settings file is about the best I'm able to get atm. Still some slight "shimmers" but less than msaa off with higher pixel density settings.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Headwarp