DCS Causing SteamVR Fail | Description, evidence and how to replicate

[RealDCSpilot]

@Stal2k

 

For science, did you also tried to test Steam VR against the latest Steam VR beta? There maybe differences. (I'm on Steam VR beta since 2016)

[Stal2k]

@Stal2k

 

For science, did you also tried to test Steam VR against the latest Steam VR beta? There maybe differences. (I'm on Steam VR beta since 2016)

 

Yep I went back and forth between release and beta just to test. The crash still happens with just Oculus software, not Oculus via SteamVR which is a strong indicator it ain't SteamVR.

 

I don't have a WMR headset so I can only go off what others have said in so much that it also bricks the WMR software. I will say that anecdotally it's a bit more difficult to do this intentionally with just the Oculus software running.

[RealDCSpilot]

@Stal2k

 

Okay, found out how to show real VRAM usage per process in Afterburner. As you can see VRAM usage is way too high for 11GB cards at very high VR settings (ingame and SteamVR SS). Switching to F10 map costs more than 1 GB extra.

 

If you want to examine what is happening on your end:

Edited October 13, 2020 by Alec Delorean

[Woody01]

That is consistent with what I am getting, main crashes for me are role selection menu and F10 map view. SUPER frustrating!

 

i7 8700, 2080 Super, 32G RAM, M2 SSD, HP Reverb.

[Stal2k]

@Stal2k

 

Okay, found out how to show real VRAM usage per process in Afterburner. As you can see VRAM usage is way too high for 11GB cards at very high VR settings (ingame and SteamVR SS). Switching to F10 map costs more than 1 GB extra.

 

If you want to examine what is happening on your end:

 

Thanks Alec, that goes in line (I think) with my initial speculation this has to do with rapid memory I/O or I guess based on your testing overstuffing.

 

Bignewy, do you have any update on this in terms of the testers? Is this still considered closed because you can't replicate or is information like Alec is supplying helpful and the effort is ongoing?

 

My assumption is that even as this thread continues to grow the official status on this is "Unable to replicate," is that accurate?

[RealDCSpilot]

Yep, the needed data swapping for shared video memory on disk and RAM is more of an emergency state than normal operation. Pretty bad for performance.

[BIGNEWY]

We are investigating, if I have anything to share I will post.

 

thanks

[Grontar]

Yep I went back and forth between release and beta just to test. The crash still happens with just Oculus software, not Oculus via SteamVR which is a strong indicator it ain't SteamVR.

 

I don't have a WMR headset so I can only go off what others have said in so much that it also bricks the WMR software. I will say that anecdotally it's a bit more difficult to do this intentionally with just the Oculus software running.

 

 

 

I am a WMR user and I can also confirm that crashes also happen there.

 

Thank you very much in advance for your time, investigation and efforts.

[Pikey]

Not sure if it helps but i was asked for input. I have Steam VR with an HP Reverb, i5 8600K, 32GB RAM, 2080Super and I run DCS on NVMe which is different to my OS (Samsung SSD, Samsung EVO plus 500GB)

I see a period of stuttering when first moving to F10. There is definitely somehting to optimise there. It seems initially worse than subsequently, like new texture load.

I have 3-5 occasions (didnt count), in the last three months where the HMD crashed and went black but the game continued running. These werent connected with anything specific that I recall. I never had anything like that on Occulus, this is a crash of the HMD software, but the cause I couldn't say, If I were to make a wild guess I'd say it was high system usage causing something to break on the VR side.

 

I am saying, whilst I see very little crashes, these are not at all common, and i regularly prepare for multiplayer by restarting my PC and shutting down extraneous applications.

 

I'd be happy to work with ther OP in a like-for-like example with steps to reproduce with the aim of getting reprodcucible steps (OP video does not reproduce for me) but I cannot engage in performance or tuning related guesses with optimisations and tweaks as a solution. The game is already being iterated on monthly, if it's not clear cut where the issue is there is no point everyone keeping on saying "+1" and adding no data, people need to be VERY specific, provide exact steps and configurations or this is just doing circles.

Thanks.

[Pikey]

I've just tried to force this to happen and I got a 20 minute long video with perfect F10 map scrolling, FPS 55-60 in cockpit as reported by game and FPSVR, GPU remaining in the orange times at 15-16ms frametime, CPU in the green and no issues. I think I had two micro stutters after loading the Jeff but I went through f18, 16, 14, Jeff, 21 and F10 on each and it's just not happening. There was a brief period where my frames went to 22 for some reason until I swapped aircraft but when I came back to the same aircraft after another, it returned to 55-60FPS. It might have been the recording process.

 

So best to explain the steps to reproduce exactly and I'll return my findings. This include configuration in detail.

[Stal2k]

Not sure if it helps but i was asked for input. I have Steam VR with an HP Reverb, i5 8600K, 32GB RAM, 2080Super and I run DCS on NVMe which is different to my OS (Samsung SSD, Samsung EVO plus 500GB)

I see a period of stuttering when first moving to F10. There is definitely somehting to optimise there. It seems initially worse than subsequently, like new texture load.

I have 3-5 occasions (didnt count), in the last three months where the HMD crashed and went black but the game continued running. These werent connected with anything specific that I recall. I never had anything like that on Occulus, this is a crash of the HMD software, but the cause I couldn't say, If I were to make a wild guess I'd say it was high system usage causing something to break on the VR side.

 

I am saying, whilst I see very little crashes, these are not at all common, and i regularly prepare for multiplayer by restarting my PC and shutting down extraneous applications.

 

I'd be happy to work with ther OP in a like-for-like example with steps to reproduce with the aim of getting reprodcucible steps (OP video does not reproduce for me) but I cannot engage in performance or tuning related guesses with optimisations and tweaks as a solution. The game is already being iterated on monthly, if it's not clear cut where the issue is there is no point everyone keeping on saying "+1" and adding no data, people need to be VERY specific, provide exact steps and configurations or this is just doing circles.

Thanks.

 

Great, what is the best way to get in touch - discord? So you are experiencing the crash, just less frequent. I'm aligned with you on the a lot of what your saying, this seemed to start when they made changes to the way F-10 was handled a few months back. I'm totally with you as I have been from the early pages in that I don't want to turn this into a performance or tuning excercise as that isn't helpful.

 

I've just tried to force this to happen and I got a 20 minute long video with perfect F10 map scrolling, FPS 55-60 in cockpit as reported by game and FPSVR, GPU remaining in the orange times at 15-16ms frametime, CPU in the green and no issues. I think I had two micro stutters after loading the Jeff but I went through f18, 16, 14, Jeff, 21 and F10 on each and it's just not happening. There was a brief period where my frames went to 22 for some reason until I swapped aircraft but when I came back to the same aircraft after another, it returned to 55-60FPS. It might have been the recording process.

 

So best to explain the steps to reproduce exactly and I'll return my findings. This include configuration in detail.

 

Ok, when you are doing this are are you using your own mission, the one I provided, a multiplayer server etc? If you just load up a blank mission with all the planes it's unlikely to happen because there needs to be other stuff going on. Use a DCS liberation Syria mission or TTI Syria map if you need something easily accessible that will have the right other conditions required. Also if you could share or PM your config I'll replicate it as close as possible to ease effort on your end.

[GrapeFruiT]

Hey guys, again for today i had 3 VR HMD crashes in a row.

 

For the first Mulitplayer flight session, i could nearly fly for an hour, we had been practicing case 1 approaches, marshal stacks, with more flight groups etc. After leaving marshal stack for "signal is charlie" ... we were on srs, had our catc, lso and everything, then my VR HMD crashed.

 

 

 

HMD goes black. DCS Mirror still runs, but no tracking. Then restart Steam VR, caused crash Error 203.

 

Then restart Steam VR, restart DCS, rejoin and then in a short time it happend again, and again.

This time every 5 minutes.

 

I ve been NEARLY CLOSE TO FREAK THE **** OUT, cause of this ERROR.

 

 

 

Still no solution, and this error is definetely reproducable. I am, a Steam VR (Valve Index HMD) Owner. I don't use WMR, never need to, and i don't use any ocolus software.

This has definitely something to do with DCS and its use of memory, vram etc.

 

 

 

Before of the release and 2 updates of DCS this error never appeared. It doesn't only happen on the syria maps, this can happen on every map.

Easiest way to reproduce it, is to just join a 4ya server or any other servers with 20 players+ to start on a carrier, best pvp and or pve, with a heavy load.

Then just fly, switch to external views, to a plane far away in a heavy load scene, then switch back to your cockpit view, than to a flying missile view... repeat that,

and then it's just a matter of seconds that your HMD goes black.

 

 

 

 

 

HELP HELP, DCS is not playable anymore without a solution.

Edited October 15, 2020 by GrapeFruiT

[Pikey]

I take this very seriously, I have spent hours on it today.

 

[snip]If you just load up a blank mission with all the planes it's unlikely to happen because there needs to be other stuff going on. Use a DCS liberation Syria mission or TTI Syria map if you need something easily accessible that will have the right other conditions required. [snip]

 

Here we have the heart of it. What conditions? It's never said. This is why these threads don't do well.

We need steps to reproduce.

1,2,3, BAM

And if these cannot be found, the thread just collects random people with a broad range of issues and becomes a dumping ground for performance related stuff.

 

 

You said:

• Using the F-10 map, especially if toggling quickly

• Switching modules, especially to the F-14 and ESPECIALLY when it’s on the Super Carrier

• Bringing up the VR overlay (Steam or Oculus)

 

That's not steps to re produce because I did that and it doesnt happen. All except messing about with VR overlays. I'm not accepting playing with overlays is any part of proving there is a bug with DCS code, leave it alone, its not part of the problem.

 

I spent hours today producing proper data and succeded in demonstrating that DCS is performing absolutely amazing in VR. I never set out to do anything but make it crash. Frankly I think Steam VR and WMR is absolutely dogpoop, based on it crashing without DCS and it losing tracking, losing two axis of tracking but not others until reset, some builds in Steam better than others etc. Yet today it behaved and recently that's my findings.

 

Seriously that's all I can show for it.

 

You attached a mission.

You never said that is part of the reproduction step. That's important.

 

I made a video. 20 minutes long, on a 1300 unit multiplayer server, entering multiple cockpits, checking F10, all worked perfectly. No wait... surprisingly bloody amazing considering the state it was in in March. 60FPS in VR, with shadows, cockpit shadows, extreme distance, in multiplayer, with a 1300 unit mission. On the cheapest 2080 I could find for sale. And I was recording, in 4K, no downsampling, in CQP level 14 bitrate on Max quality profile at 60 frames. It's taken me the best part of today to edit, compress, render, upload, and i'm still waiting for YT to actually process it.

 

 

This isn't evidence that says you dont have a problem, or others dont, I believe it, I really do. But you have to show us why this is a problem with the game and not something you did with your computers, because there are many others who dont have issues or at least not without the same

 

... Conditions ...

 

And that brings us back to...

 

What ... Are ... They?

 

Show me, I will follow. Steps to reproduce, in the simplest form, exact, no guessing, a miz, I can host if its only multiplayer. You never even said it had to be multiplayer in your OP.

 

Here's a bug report format:

 

 

 

• Description of the problem in ONE sentence
  
• Steps to reproduce
  
• 1,2,3.
  
• Expected outcome
  
• Actual outcome
  
• Data, like a mission, a trackfile
  

 

Everything else is just conversation and distraction. Sorry. Loved the post really :) But I know developers, and they don't love this type of post!

 

So. If you use the mission you attached to the OP, does it work immediately or straight away? Do you have to go between several cockpits? How many? Specific ones? Do you have to fly from a certain slot in a certain place, whats going on in the mission?

Does the problem happen all the time? If not... you do NOT have steps to reproduce, something else apart from the steps is occuring. That's what has to be identified.

[Stal2k]

I

Here we have the heart of it. What conditions? It's never said. This is why these threads don't do well.

We need steps to reproduce.

1,2,3, BAM

And if these cannot be found, the thread just collects random people with a broad range of issues and becomes a dumping ground for performance related stuff.

 

 

You said:

• Using the F-10 map, especially if toggling quickly

• Switching modules, especially to the F-14 and ESPECIALLY when it’s on the Super Carrier

• Bringing up the VR overlay (Steam or Oculus)

 

That's not steps to re produce because I did that and it doesnt happen. snip

 

Listen, I may be reading 'tone' that isn't here, but from how this reads I'll attribute it to you being annoyed you were looped in and it didn't crash for you? If you did in fact read the very next line after the bullets you just listed. you would see it literally says "But this doesn't happen to me" and adds context. So I don't know what you really want me to say here? I'm sorry there was some confusion but c'mon.

 

(excerpt from original post)“But this doesn’t happen to me / I've not had any problems”

******This seems to only happen on missions/servers where the game is stressed and moving a lot of things into and out of memory.********* This is exacerbated by.....

 

Seriously that's all I can show for it.

 

You attached a mission.

You never said that is part of the reproduction step. That's important.

 

I attached the mission I used in the video in case someone wanted to use the same one or just didn't have access to a suitable mission outlined in the context I just covered off on. It's not neccessarily part of the steps, I made it available in case whomever wanted to replicate *exactly* what I did in the video.

 

This isn't evidence that says you dont have a problem, or others dont, I believe it, I really do. But you have to show us why this is a problem with the game and not something you did with your computers, because there are many others who dont have issues or at least not without the same

 

For sure, and as we collect data in terms of commonalities amongst those sharing, which we have already learned a lot if you read the whole thread (I did, not asking you to). The thought process is after ___ amount of people report the same thing what is the number before the assumption is no longer we are idiots that messed up our computers in the exact same way at roughly the same time? Being as it's clearly hard to narrow down an issue like this, that is the purpose of a thread like this. I agree with you it can be a lot of noise, but just getting an assessment of how many people are impacted is important. Believe it or not, I did think it was something I caused myself for a long time, even considered an RMA.

 

Even without an explicit path to get the result 100% of the time on an issue like this, you can't just wipe your ass with user accounts of vary value. If a developer sees this and knows they made some large change to the areas, like (unless I'm totally making this up) the way the F10 map and memory was managed ~2 months or so ago; it would at least be beyond pure worthless conjecture that hey, the issue may have been introduced here and maybe we should roll this back until we can figure it out?

 

 

 

• Description of the problem in ONE sentence
  
• Steps to reproduce
  
• 1,2,3.
  
• Expected outcome
  
• Actual outcome
  
• Data, like a mission, a trackfile
  

 

 

I will do my best to clean up the original post based on what we've already learned, and if you think it'd be helpful I'll add in the steps Alec is showing above in regards to VRAM and the associated spikes.

 

So. If you use the mission you attached to the OP, does it work immediately or straight away? Do you have to go between several cockpits? How many? Specific ones? Do you have to fly from a certain slot in a certain place, whats going on in the mission?

Does the problem happen all the time? If not... you do NOT have steps to reproduce, something else apart from the steps is occuring. That's what has to be identified.

 

From the first post, the video inlined should answer

• does it work immediately or straight away? (I can do this on purposes fairly quick, it took ~2 minutes in original video)
  
• Do you have to go between several cockpits? How Many? Specific Ones? (Did it with just the hornet and tomcat, it depends but cockpit/module switching excaserbates the issue)
  
• Do you have to fly from a certain slot in a certain place? (no)
  

 

Beyond the video...

 

Q:Whats going on in the mission?

A: It's just starting up, so some random CAPs are spawning, however the issue isn't exclusive to that mission I can do the same thing on a different map or public server like TTI

 

Q: Does the problem happen all the time?

A: Yeah, pretty much if I load that mission and replicate the actions I take, it will happen. It might take an extra F-10 vs just spawning ito an F-14 slot but yeah. That is as precise as I could make it, and at the time hoped it would suffice.

 

On Syria/PG, pretty much will happen 90% of the time if I play longer than 5 minutes. Switching modules or hitting F10 is basically rolling a dice of diminishing returns on if it will crash or not. Personally, like many of the others in this thread have developed a "feel" for avoiding things likely to cause the crash. It's not as bad on Caucasus, for example I spent several hours in a lower key Krasnodar Ground Strike mission and didn't have the issues.

 

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm actually able to somewhat consisentantly cause the crash by opening larger missions in the mission editor consecutively.

 

Rolling all this back, I am an end user with a problem that a (seemingly) non insignificant amount of people are experiencing. I'm doing my absolute best to be as thorough and detailed as possible, and in fact did provide in some capacity many of the things you're asking for. As I said, I'll try to clean it up and get even more definitive actions as you outlined

 

I don't know what your affilliation is with ED, I'm assuming by your tone and the "I was asked to help with this" comment you are a prominent community (moose dev?) member and tester of some capacity? I've also spent a considerable amount of time not only getting to the point where I could make it happen on *my* system at will, but getting folks to report in this thread to hopefully validate that it's not just a me thing.

 

That being said, I'll ask again if you would like to work together on this would it make sense to organize a more streamlined way to communicate, i.e. discord? I'm pretty sure I can figure out who you are on the ED discord and can just send you a PM, my name is the same here and there.

 

I'll review your video and see if I see any major things that are allowing you to inadvertantly sidestep the issue. To your point, I'm sure SteamVR or WMR or whatever could be much better, so to make sure I understand - let me phrase the question a different way.

 

If DCS was causing windows to blue screen, that would be Windows crashing not DCS right? Does that mean we just say windows is dogpoo and shrug our shoulders and move on? Or would it make sense to maybe look at engineering around the issue to prevent users that aren't obligated to be experts from running face first into it?

 

I'm not accepting playing with overlays is any part of proving there is a bug with DCS code, leave it alone, its not part of the problem.

 

A point of clarity on terminology here, to make sure I'm saying the right thing and understand what you mean. When I say overlay, I mean when you hit the system button on the controller or HMD to bring up the SteamVR "overlay" or the Oculus dashboard etc. There really isn't a way to not do that so I assume you mean an overlay like FpsVR technically is, or OVR toolkit or something 3rd party along those lines - if so I'm totally aligned with you there and hope I didn't unintentionally seem like I was making that case.

 

However, If we are just going to leave the blame at Steam/WMR/Oculus because their overlay crashes, I'd argue there is some onus on the developer by supporting the platform(s) to make a reasonable effort to work around an issue like this which is only happening to DCS.

[Pikey]

You need to do what I asked. Don't worry about percieved tone.

 

Steps to reproduce. That is all.

[RealDCSpilot]

@Pikey

 

Good video with lot's of important information. The only thing that's missing are your exact system specs and DCS settings.

What i can clearly see before the 6th minute, your system resources are about to collapse. Your VRAM (8GB) and RAM (32GB) usage is maxed out already, all it needed was to switch back to the cockpit and that was the last drop. Your HD started to try to swap memory from the pagefile back and forth, trying to manage the overflow of RAM and VRAM simultaneously, because there isn't enough memory left in RAM and VRAM. It starts to bite it's tail here, VRAM is full - the system wants to use RAM for sharing video memory, but RAM is already full and starts to make more use of the pagefile on disk. Every I/O is at full load and starts to chase another problem. In certain cases, Steam VR's own part of allocated VRAM seems to fail there, because no resources are left.

 

Edit: ok, just watched more of the video and saw the ingame settings... They are already pretty low. If you would go higher, you should be able to trigger the problem earlier. Atm, only more RAM and VRAM seems to help there.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Alec Delorean

[VirusAM]

Hi guys...I admit I have not read all the 7 pages...but trying to help with my CB tester fellas (some of us have VR, but only few of us a WMR one) , I would like to reproduce the issue.

I have an Index, 32gb ram and 2080ti with 11gb (full specs in the signature)...

I use 100% SteamVR SS (200% of index physical res and staemvr reports 2016x2260 per eye)

DCS settings are pretty high for VR (high visibility, shadows on low, texture high, terrain textures low) in similar situation to the one described by the OP, I got very high ram and vram usage...with very low FPS (in similar situations I got the usual 40fps). Usually restarting DCS, or sometimes also just ALT-TABBING seemed to solve the issue.

But I never got a CTD in this same situation.

So what I ask here...is it specifically a WMR/Reverb issue. Or the users reporting those crashes are using also other kind of headsets?

Thanks

Edited October 16, 2020 by VirusAM

[VirusAM]

You need to do what I asked. Don't worry about percieved tone.

 

Steps to reproduce. That is all.

 

Yeah exactly, as my good friend Pikey stated we need precise steps to try to be helpful here.

Thanks

[RealDCSpilot]

@VirusAM

 

I have a Valve Index and had a 2080ti before, had the sudden frame drop issue and occasional SteamVR crashes over the last couple of patches since the introduction of the Syria map. But i was also always driving the limits of highest possible visual quality settings the whole time and knew that will cause issues.

 

DCS isn't a normal game however, most games are designed to fit in a certain spec range of hardware. DCS just uses everything it get's, the need for 32GB of RAM for instance is quite unusual. But on the other hand, it wasn't designed for highend VR in the first place.

[Pikey]

Alec can you help with the steps to reproduce. Also you said I need to increase my settings. Which settings? The OP has said someconfusding things like he can get it to happen nearly all the time, but he doesnt say how and it's muddy around this point.

 

 

Just to be clear to everyone what steps to reproduce are. Looks like this:

 

1) Use these settings and confuiguration: List of settings required to make it crash

2) Load this mission attached in VR as if you would play

3) Take this slot. Do not wait, take this slot

4) Repeat step 3 until the HMD goes black

 

 

Please do not try to troubleshoot the issue. We are stuck in the game loop without access to code. The next step is to give the steps to a developer who can then have the code in front of him and step through the process with a debugger. All our conversation is not helping unless it is giving steps to reproduce. To make better code, the dev doesn't need to know anything except how to see the fault. The tighter, the shorter, the least complex, the most specific, the better.

 

 

I'm sorry this stage of T/S is so boring but this is what it is.

 

 

Yes we know... it's not easy.

 

 

Also you need to know, you will get very little feedback. Most fixes don't even get a mention in changelogs. This is normal, it's an unsatisfying process. Try doing it for years :/

 

Steps please guys :)

[robgraham]

Can I offer a suggestion as well, those whom are having this happen:

 

Post not only your steps to reproduce, but also go and get your STEAMVR logs and post those as well, when this happens, as these give the steam vr client side of what is happening and might help.. also post your DCS settings and PC settings, SteamVR settings etc.

 

I've hazarded an opinion privately that it's due to a time out likely happening when the scene changes, but with out it being able to be reliably reproduced its very hard for any programmer to ever look at it.. and I mean I've had the issue myself..

 

 

The Steam logs you can find here normally:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\logs

 

you'll see a bunch of vrclient_xxx.txt and vr_vrcompositor.txt, vrserver.txt files.. these are the logs for steamvr.

 

but again as pikes, newy etc are all pointing out and there not being condecending etc they really want to get to the bottom of this, with out repeatable steps that testers and programmers can get to happen and system info etc.. driver versions, (Dxdiag report easiest way here) it's kinda hard for it to be solved if the issue can't be caught on a dev machine.. and Trust me I've had this happen for 2 years and I can't even reproduce it all the time. so I get their frustration.

[RealDCSpilot]

I can't trigger this issue anymore because my GPU now has 24GB VRAM. I already had 64GB RAM before i upgraded from a 2080ti with 11GB VRAM. So VRAM needs to be watched closely, it's the only factor that changed on my end.

 

Steps to reproduce were:

 

1. a) use high settings that demand more VRAM (textures high, terrain textures high, water high, vibility range high, heatblur low or high ...)

b) raise SteamVR render resolution between 150%-200%, ingame PD setting at 1.0 at all times (somewhere is the sweetspot for your system, restart is always required to apply changes)

c) having a bunch of other windows open will also help slightly raising VRAM usage (discord, simshaker ...)

 

2. choose a server with a big mission like TTI on Syria

 

3. choose any aircraft, jump to cockpit, choose next aircraft (F/A-18 or F-14 on supercarrier to have the biggest impact), jump into cockpit, check external views, switch to F10 map, switch back to cockpit, switch to F4 external view of other aircraft a couple of times.

 

4. repeat step 3 and at some point SteamVR should crash. The more different modules you own/can to jump into, the better...

Edited October 16, 2020 by Alec Delorean

[Pikey]

I can't trigger this issue anymore because my GPU now has 24GB VRAM. I already had 64GB RAM before i upgraded from a 2080ti with 11GB VRAM. So VRAM needs to be watched closely, it's the only factor that changed on my end.

 

Steps to reproduce were:

 

1. a) use high settings that demand more VRAM (textures high, terrain textures high, water high, vibility range high, heatblur low or high ...)

b) raise SteamVR render resolution between 150%-200% (somewhere is the sweetspot for your system, restart is always required to apply changes)

c) having a bunch of other windows open will also help slightly raising VRAM usage (discord, simshaker ...)

 

2. choose a server with a big mission like TTI on Syria

 

3. choose any aircraft, jump to cockpit, choose next aircraft (F/A-18 or F-14 on supercarrier to have the biggest impact), jump into cockpit, check external views, switch to F10 map, switch back to cockpit, switch to F4 external view of other aircraft a couple of times.

 

4. repeat step 3 and at some point SteamVR should crash. The more different modules you own/can to jump into, the better...

 

 

I need the mission.

The OP has a mission but it has mods in it. That's not going to fly down the line, so it's out.

Can you specifiy.. single or multiplayer?

Can you specifiy, what settings? You said mine were too low. I dont think they are. What is the specific thing that makes the VRAM used more, I can't assume I know that or it's the issue, leave nothing to doubt. Is it the SS in steam? I had 149% set in my 20 minute video. Imagine you are trying to teach your mother how to execute a xsite SQL injection hack on a server. Give them the exact details. :)

 

 

 

I'm trying not to sound like a broken record but this process WILL work because it gets your mind focused on what is required to encapsulate the problem. Too many people coming by and saying "+1" and being of no help, too much chat, too little data. Dont try to solve the issue, just allow the issue to be experienced by anyone with simple instructions. I wouldnt ask if I didnt need to because my video demonstrates I get 60FPS cockpit switching, F10 views, and it's fantastic and thats the setup I want. We want a mission, a set of instructions, with any config and nothing left to misinterpretations. The testers will validate that, it WILL get logged to Jira and seen to by devs once it works, but none of them, or us, can reliably reproduce, even if I do recall a couple of crashes myself. Nothing like everyone else though, so it must be some huge difference between my config and others.

[RealDCSpilot]

@Pikey

 

Hi mum, try to ... ;)

 

Use the ingame settings i posted under 1.a) set all on "high". Choose maybe 170% SS in Steam VR - it's all about provoking the issue. Just look for a multiplayer server with almost all modules included. It's not depending on a specific mission! Public Training servers hosting the Syria map, like from "Havoc", "Kirk's Hangar" just to name a few. They all have a certain amount of ground vehicle activity, all modules available including the supercarrier plus tankers and AWACS in the air. If the framerate starts to drop like in the 6th minute of your video, you are almost there. One of the next attempts to switch to another aircraft or the F10 map might trigger SteamVR (and it's WMR plugin) to fail again.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Alec Delorean

[VirusAM]

@VirusAM

 

I have a Valve Index and had a 2080ti before, had the sudden frame drop issue and occasional SteamVR crashes over the last couple of patches since the introduction of the Syria map. But i was also always driving the limits of highest possible visual quality settings the whole time and knew that will cause issues.

 

DCS isn't a normal game however, most games are designed to fit in a certain spec range of hardware. DCS just uses everything it get's, the need for 32GB of RAM for instance is quite unusual. But on the other hand, it wasn't designed for highend VR in the first place.

 

Thanks Alec....So not only WMR users get this situation.

Usually when we are doing these kind of tests, we are quite pushing the boundaries of DCS...

Lately Syria map with many units, triggers, an insane number of AI ground units....Not all the testers use VR, but a few of us are.

I didn't manage to get a single CTD right now, but the worse situation I got is an fps slideshow (only after a while, and usually changing slots and switching views).

I will try to rise my SS values and DCS settings for the next run of tests.