VR Shaders for IC Pass, Clear Water and Texture fixes

[BMGZ06]

I installed the mod but I am not seeing any difference in VR FPS in the F18 or F16. I see the file folders did overwrite in the default BAzar/Shaders folder though. I do not notice a difference with the water either for some reason.

 

I also have the universal shaders mod installed. Not sure if that conflicts.

Edited July 2, 2021 by BMGZ06

[Sr.]

1 hour ago, BMGZ06 said:

I installed the mod but I am not seeing any difference in VR FPS in the F18 or F16. I see the file folders did overwrite in the default BAzar/Shaders folder though. I do not notice a difference with the water either for some reason.

 

I also have the universal shaders mod installed. Not sure if that conflicts.

 

Have you cleared out the  C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\fxo and metashaders2 folders?

 

Doing so will cause them to be recompiled, and will take "some time". This will need to be done per map and aircraft.

Edited July 2, 2021 by Sr.

[speed-of-heat]

4 hours ago, BMGZ06 said:

I installed the mod but I am not seeing any difference in VR FPS in the F18 or F16. I see the file folders did overwrite in the default BAzar/Shaders folder though. I do not notice a difference with the water either for some reason.

 

I also have the universal shaders mod installed. Not sure if that conflicts.

 

something that i find catches people out is motion smoothing or similar,  will often mask any absolute improvement in performance, so i normally suggest turning it off to test for performance changes... if you get 45 fps and this takes you to say 50 then you will never see the 50 with motion smoothing... what should happen is that you should see less instances of dropping below 45... 

 

if you are using the CW version of the mod, you wont see a difference the water thats the point, the standard version effectively reduces you to medium water .. 

Edited July 2, 2021 by speed-of-heat

[BMGZ06]

2 hours ago, speed-of-heat said:

something that i find catches people out is motion smoothing or similar,  will often mask any absolute improvement in performance, so i normally suggest turning it off to test for performance changes... if you get 45 fps and this takes you to say 50 then you will never see the 50 with motion smoothing... what should happen is that you should see less instances of dropping below 45... 

 

if you are using the CW version of the mod, you wont see a difference the water thats the point, the standard version effectively reduces you to medium water .. 

 

Ya I tried to turn off motion smoothing to see and with motion vector on or set to auto it basically will stay at 45 or lower. I am seeing an increase in getting kicked out of steamvr in the F16 and F14 instant missions. I tried both WMR beta version and non beta and it does it in both. F18 seems to be fine for some reason. This was happening before I tried the shader mod. I am using the sharder mod version with clear water but I am not noticing any difference with water at all. I cleared FXO and metashader folders as well and restarted but still do not notice anything. The F14 instant mission for AAR in caucasus runs horrible for me with motion vector on or off and motion smoothing on or off. The clouds just kill it I guess. Ran it on standard, high and ultra and it all just runs the same. F18 mission for CASE 1 or AAR in caucasus and PG run smooth though.

[speed-of-heat]

So let’s break this down.

clear water 

There are three versions of the mod, Kegetys, Clearwater and ic pass,in Kegetys mod, the performance is best, but the water is essentially forced to medium (or lower) regardless of your setting.

 

In my two versions of the mod, you can still have the “clear water” of the high water setting, you can test this most easily in the Persian gulf, where in the coastal shallows you can see the sand bar beneath the surface of the water, if you have water setting at high. 
 

if you cannot see this effect, then you have either not set water to high, or have incorrectly installed the mod. Or are expecting a different effect?
 

f-14/16 crashing

if it was happening before, the mod is unlikely to stabilise it.  NMCNMM.

 

Only seeing 45 FPS or less.

if you are not seeing FPS above 45 ever, you have not successfully turned off motion smoothing, there are 4 places you should check, steamvr for the application, steamvr general, wmr for steam vr settings (check my 3090 guide for the places to set these) and the legacy default.vrsettings file (check my 1080ti guide).

 

Overall performance improvement.

If you are seeing no decrease in gpu frame time, with motion smoothing disabled, you have not correctly installed the mod.

Edited July 3, 2021 by speed-of-heat

[BMGZ06]

16 hours ago, speed-of-heat said:

So let’s break this down.

clear water 

There are three versions of the mod, Kegetys, Clearwater and ic pass,in Kegetys mod, the performance is best, but the water is essentially forced to medium (or lower) regardless of your setting.

 

In my two versions of the mod, you can still have the “clear water” of the high water setting, you can test this most easily in the Persian gulf, where in the coastal shallows you can see the sand bar beneath the surface of the water, if you have water setting at high. 
 

if you cannot see this effect, then you have either not set water to high, or have incorrectly installed the mod. Or are expecting a different effect?
 

f-14/16 crashing

if it was happening before, the mod is unlikely to stabilise it.  NMCNMM.

 

Only seeing 45 FPS or less.

if you are not seeing FPS above 45 ever, you have not successfully turned off motion smoothing, there are 4 places you should check, steamvr for the application, steamvr general, wmr for steam vr settings (check my 3090 guide for the places to set these) and the legacy default.vrsettings file (check my 1080ti guide).

 

Overall performance improvement.

If you are seeing no decrease in gpu frame time, with motion smoothing disabled, you have not correctly installed the mod.

 

I started over from scratch and used OVGME to install this time and cleared shaders and still not seeing anything with or without motion smoothing off nor motion vector on or off. Still seeing the same frametimes. I used your modified version and the water in PG in the shallows looked exactly the same with or without the mod. Is it possible that the universal shader mod is the problem? I will have to remove it later and see.

 

The issue with steamvr crashing is random it seems. Also can't run as high of an OC on my 2080ti since 2.7 came out or I get BSODs.

[speed-of-heat]

I’m sorry, I have had a really long day.

 

what are you expecting to see visually with the clear water mod… they should be exactly the same… before and after that’s the point.

[speed-of-heat]

To my certain knowledge the universal shader mod does not conflict

[ATONESIR]

On 6/30/2021 at 3:49 PM, Dirt_Merchant said:

 

The SU-25T is included for free in the base game.

Yep. would be great if the dev/OP could test it.

[speed-of-heat]

14 minutes ago, ATONESIR said:

Yep. would be great if the dev/OP could test it.

it takes you about 5 mins to test it ... yourself... 

NMCNMM

 

[zildac]

Yep. would be great if the dev/OP could test it.

Er, why wouldn't you?

[ATONESIR]

No.

 

ABASDKNFSERFIOSJRGISNFVKSFNVFI

[GrapeFruiT]

Hello Wingmen!

 

The VR shader mod runs very well, DCS VR Shaders mod for 2.7.0.4625 (Clear Water).

Most time like 95% i fly just in mp and in with my flight squadron. 

 

I have a simple or maybe not simple question.

After every update from DCS, i have to reactive the shader mod via JSMGE/ (is nearly the same like OVMGE)

Does work out.

Usually i dont have to delete FXO and the metacache folders in C:\Users\Blabla\Saved Games\....

And the map folders in DCS Main Folder. You know what i mean.

 

But when i first start the game, after a fresh update of the dcs beta client,

It tooks very very long to start the game, very very long to load a terrain for the first time (SP + MP)

Then when im in the game, i have first invisible cockpit, and the weapons are missing, after like 10 minutes, everything works properly.

Someday i had read somewhere why it does take so long...and that this could be fixed(Is issues where things load, and repeats some stuff for 4-to 5 times...- Programm Lua C++ stuff and way to high for me.

Does anyone know or does anyone work to get a new reworked version of the shadermod without loading times up to 10-20 minutes for the first time? 

Any possible solution?

Thanks for your replies in advance! 

 

Missile Launch, 12 o' clock!

Edited July 9, 2021 by GrapeFruiT

[speed-of-heat]

see my response to your other post with the same question

[GrapeFruiT]

Thanks for your reply.

 

I understand.

 

Let's see when Vulkan Api arrives and multicore support for using more than 2-3 cores... hopefully this will increase performance especially for VR Users.

[Gryzor]

It seems that in latest OB patch, the kneeboard numbers disappears (only happens with this mod). Please could you update it?

[speed-of-heat]

nope. Thats going to have to be with Kegetys.

for clarity, I only do gross butchery of Kegtys original mod.

[zildac]

4 hours ago, Gryzor said:

It seems that in latest OB patch, the kneeboard numbers disappears (only happens with this mod). Please could you update it?

 

Not had time to try and reproduce this as yet, but ultimately it would require asking @Kegetys nicely to look at the issue.

[captainHelmet]

After doing some testing I found that the most performant version of this mod was causing the shimmer and aliasing that I was getting on the Hornet ddi's.  No amount of resolution increase or anti-aliasing would get rid of it.  Switching to the IC Pass version of the mod fixed the ddi's while letting me still use the other features of the mod.

 

I saw mentions of this scattered around various threads but thought I would mention it again here in case you're like me and automatically enable this mod and might not know that the artifact isn't the vanilla install.

[zildac]

@captainHelmet I hadn't actually seen this discussed before. So I tried the base mod, the clearwater Mod (which I usually run) and also the IC pass version. The MFD shimmer/wobble  is definitely worse with the base and non-IC pass clearwater versions in comparison to the IC pass version. I used the grid lines on the FCS MFD page as a reference for testing.  The performance  hit of the IC pass version is quite heavy, unfortunately. A good balance for me is @speed-of-heat clearwater version (Non IC pass). So I'm back where I started 

[zildac]

It seems there is another tweaked version of Kegetys base mod here:

 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3317762/

 

Not tried it myself as yet, and there's no real detail as to what's changed over the base mod. Looks like it is aimed at pancake mode, but states it *should* work with VR. Will try and have a play later.

 

 

[speed-of-heat]

yes testing it now 

[zildac]

yes testing it now 

Be interested in your opinion. Won't have a chance to look until later. Was going to diff against yours and base to try and get an idea of changes. Did notice that config file doesn't have a number of the optimisations enabled by default.

Sent from my GM1913 using Tapatalk

[speed-of-heat]

This this purely quantitative:

			Frametime in ms			Delta From Baseline
Ver	Test	Baseline	GPU	CPU	GPU Usage	GPU	CPU	Changes
2.7.4.9847	69	Test 69	12.83	7.23	90.23			Baseline test no Shaders
2.7.4.9847	70	Test 69	11.26	6.97	92.46	1.57	0.27	Simplex Shaders
2.7.4.9847	71	Test 69	10.72	7.23	92.06	2.11	0.00	Kegetys Shaders
2.7.4.9847	72	Test 69	10.84	6.98	92.69	1.99	0.26	Clear Water Shaders
2.7.4.9847	73	Test 69	11.52	7.31	91.39	1.31	-0.07	IC Pass Shaders

 

I havent had a chance to look through the lens, but, broadly a little faster than my IC pass variant, slower than my clear water, but with the advantage of fast loading missions, initially there is quite a toll on mission load as the shaders are built each time 

Edited August 1, 2021 by speed-of-heat

[zildac]

This this purely quantitative:

			Frametime in ms			Delta From Baseline
Ver	Test	Baseline	GPU	CPU	GPU Usage	GPU	CPU	Changes
2.7.4.9847	69	Test 69	12.83	7.23	90.23			Baseline test no Shaders
2.7.4.9847	70	Test 69	11.26	6.97	92.46	1.57	0.27	Simplex Shaders
2.7.4.9847	71	Test 69	10.72	7.23	92.06	2.11	0.00	Kegetys Shaders
2.7.4.9847	72	Test 69	10.84	6.98	92.69	1.99	0.26	Clear Water Shaders
2.7.4.9847	73	Test 69	11.52	7.31	91.39	1.31	-0.07	IC Pass Shaders

 
I havent had a chance to look through the lens, but, broadly a little faster than my IC pass variant, slower than my clear water, but with the advantage of fast loading missions, initially there is quite a toll on mission load as the shaders are built each time 

Thanks for the write up, really useful! Will have a look and see how the visuals compare too.