Reverb G2

[captainHelmet]

Fortunately, I had an idea of what I was getting into.  The G2 is clearly at the cutting edge of what is possible for consumer vr.  The headset itself could have used another iteration to fix some of its weaknesses. But really we are running an old game engine designed before vr was popular, it’s a miracle ed have gotten it to run as well as it does considering it was never written with vr in mind in the first place.  The engine then goes through steamvr, then windows mixed reality, and then of course your graphics drivers.   Im hoping for a firmware update for the device and more improvements to wmr and steamvr that improve their compatibility now that they have sold so many of these things.  Nvidia still hasnt released a driver that works well with the headset. So I’m hoping all of those moving parts can catch up to the capabilities of the headset.  It would have been nice if there had been a more coordinated rollout, but there we are in the midst of a pandemic after all. 
 

As far as the lenses and sweet spot I have found the headset to be very sensitive to positioning. It’ really important to get the top strap adjusted so it hangs the headset off of your face at the right angle.  Im pretty happy with the clarity and ive experimented with removing the gasket and getting my eyes closer to the lenses which gave me a much wider fov. Ill probably get a new wider gasket with thinner padding at some point. But for now im pretty happy. Back to tinkering. 

[Burt]

Well I was going to give my G2 another go yesterday and do some tweaking and try to get some clarity and get rid of the white line circles while in the hornet. So I did nvidia control panel adjustments restarted then hooked up power to G2, shutdown wmr... open steam then steamvr beta then steam wmr made some adjustments. when I fired up DCS I got in the hanger and the menu was to the floor way down by my feet.... so I shut down because I didn’t want to get the G2 frustration on a Sunday. 
back to pancake again. 

[Drac]

I agree with captainHelmet - I get a better sweet spot with the G2 further down my nose.

[vonbane]

1 hour ago, Burt said:

when I fired up DCS I got in the hanger and the menu was to the floor way down by my feet.... so I shut down because I didn’t want to get the G2 frustration on a Sunday. 

I've had this happen.  There is a key binding to re-center your vr view.  That should re-center the view to be looking at the menu again.  I don't recall but I may have had to hit that key a few times to get it to re-center to the menu.

[Dunx]

1 hour ago, Drac said:

I agree with captainHelmet - I get a better sweet spot with the G2 further down my nose.

 

I have the same with my G1. I also have to tilt the headset slightly upward to get the correct perspective/distance from the cockpit to the ground.

[Drac]

4 hours ago, Dunx said:

 

I have the same with my G1. I also have to tilt the headset slightly upward to get the correct perspective/distance from the cockpit to the ground.

Also have to tilt as well.  Makes a big difference.

[BMGZ06]

4 hours ago, Drac said:

Also have to tilt as well.  Makes a big difference.

So you are tilting it up as well. I tried it and dont notice much. I also got the FOV test software to see what FOV is. My Horizontal FOV seems normal at 98ish but the Vertical is only 88 and Mixed Reality TV on youtube did the test and he was getting well over 100 Vertical. No clue what the issue it on mine then. That could by why my sweet spot seems way to small.

[Drac]

48 minutes ago, BMGZ06 said:

So you are tilting it up as well. I tried it and dont notice much. I also got the FOV test software to see what FOV is. My Horizontal FOV seems normal at 98ish but the Vertical is only 88 and Mixed Reality TV on youtube did the test and he was getting well over 100 Vertical. No clue what the issue it on mine then. That could by why my sweet spot seems way to small.

In my case, I have to tilt down slightly.  It may be different for others.

[Notso]

On 2/5/2021 at 6:29 AM, pimp said:

On 2/3/2021 at 4:49 PM, Notso said:

Is this maybe a 3080 card issue with the G2?  I have a G2 running on a 2080Ti and have zero issues with any of the above described behavior.  FPS are solid and I'm running 100% SS across the board and MSAA at 2x.  Nice clear, stable and hi rez image with none of the shimmering - as I expected the G2 to be.  It is definitely better than the G1 and the G1 I still have was/is very good.  

How is this possible? Can you please provide a screenshot of your DCS settings? I don't see how you're running the G2 @ 100%SS, 2x MSAA, on a 2080ti with no shimmering. Over water I could see that but not on the SC or airbases.

 

Sorry for the delay in responding to this question.  I haven't had much time to get on the computer.  But I loaded up a SC module and while sitting on the cat ready for launch in a Hornet, I looked around quite a bit and really concentrated on the visuals.  And nope, I didn't see any blurring, shimmering along the edge of the flight deck or any of the other described issues.  I dunno what to tell you, but I'm not seeing any of the aforementioned issues.  Everything looked clear and crisp to me.  The deck was well defined, the deck crew were all in focus, etc.  I did some cats and traps and even sat on the deck after my #2 wire pass (&*&%$$**) and watched my wingman come in and trap behind me.  Everything looked fine.  I'll see if I can post up my settings here in a bit when I get on again in a few minutes......

Edited February 12, 2021 by Notso

[Notso]

On 2/8/2021 at 4:38 PM, Drac said:

In my case, I have to tilt down slightly.  It may be different for others.

Same here.  I ease the strap on top a little and pull the back of the head piece a bit further down on my head and then tilt the headset down slightly to get the sweet spot just right.  If I get it positioned correctly, its really good visuals.  Positioning on the face is super critical with this HMD.  

[dburne]

12 minutes ago, Notso said:

Same here.  I ease the strap on top a little and pull the back of the head piece a bit further down on my head and then tilt the headset down slightly to get the sweet spot just right.  If I get it positioned correctly, its really good visuals.  Positioning on the face is super critical with this HMD.  

 

Same way I do it here.

[Notso]

So, back to the shimmering.....  I went back again last night and started up the supercarrier launch mission.  This time, while sitting on the cat I really looked around and stared hard at objects.  By really staring at something for a bit, I did notice some shimmering.  There's a vertical pole right by Cat #1 and if I really looked at it hard, I could really make out a bit of shimmer.  Same with the edge of the deck.  But if I was just doing a mission and looking around normally getting ready to launch or when in the groove on final - I honestly don't notice it at all.  Certainly nothing that detracts from game play IMHO. 

 

Personally, if you're staring at objects that closely and nitpicking the visual and blaming it on the headset - I think you all are missing the point of both DCS and VR entirely.  I have a G1 and I find the G2 slightly better in every way.  The fit, the clarity, the color, etc all add up to a better overall experience.  The G1 is really good and G2 is better.  But not a generational leap better.  I think for those who are expecting it to be an entire new level of WOW are going to be disappointed.  It likely should be called Reverb Gen 1.5.  

 

YMMV

Edited February 12, 2021 by Notso

[Burt]

Excuse me but I just gotta ask. Ok so my gpu 2080super has I believe 3 display port interfaces and I have 1 running my 240hz monitor and using 1 for the G2. If I were to switch my monitor to a hdmi port and have only the G2 on a display port will that make any difference ? All display port power and attention going to the G2. As I’m not home to test this but just wondering if anyone has tried this. I’m not experienced i the technical part of all this either.

 

Thanks

[Viktor_UHPK]

I'd like to return to the original topic. Komrad described the problem as "a shocking case of aliasing". Unfortunately I share the experience. I have tried different AA settings and resolutions with no success.

 

If someone comes up with a solution, please let us know.

[captainHelmet]

I run an overclocked 2070 with an amd 3900x at stock speeds.  Lately I have been running my G2 at 54% resolution and an MSAA of 2x.  This doesn't fix all of the shimmers but it helps tremendously.  4x is even better but it affected performance enough that I switched back to 2x.  Before making this change trying to fly into Nellis at sunset the runway lighting sizzled all over the place and was really distracting.  Now flying over the city at night looks pretty smooth.  Also setting your water quality below "high" results in lots of aliasing artifacts around water.  My goal is to optimize as much as I can so that I can run 70% resolution and at least MSAA of 2x.  That seems to really be the sweet spot of performance and quality. 

 

Unfortunately I also like having shadows on and there seems to be a real inefficiency with the way shadow maps are handled.  It probably has to do with some sort of complex timing of the shadow map being computed on the cpu and then handed off to the gpu.  It seems to be resolution independent, there is just a large shadow penalty.  I also think some of the shimmering issues are exacerbated by the ghosting that occurs between the left and right eye and as far as I can tell no setting tweaks will fix that.

 

In my experience 54% resolution with MSAA looks better and is more performant that 100% and no MSAA.

 

So my recommendation:

Resolution: 54-70%.

MSAA: 2x.

Water: High.

[Burt]

I was probably the most frustrated guy in here with my G2 but when I dedicated the time I finally got it to were I had that wow! Experience. But captainHelmet when I dialed the res to 48 and MSAA x2 and also in the NVidia Control panel I put the my gpu setting to preferred Max Performance with sharpening on ... restarted everything and I was good to go finally! I was getting these white line circles in the cockpit in the hornet that drove me crazy and after alittle research I was able to go in WMR and clear the environment and now the circles are gone. I have played both single and multiplayer for a few hours after doing all the tweaking which was a minor tweak but I can finally say with all the help from everyone in here I got my G2 playable looks good enough and runs smooth @ 35 to 45 FPS in most cases. 
But it’s kinda like Golf , you just got to take what it gives you. I’m pretty confident that DCS is gonna get better and more stable with VR in the near future, hopefully by the end of the year. 

[parxuk]

27 minutes ago, Burt said:

I was probably the most frustrated guy in here with my G2 but when I dedicated the time I finally got it to were I had that wow! Experience. But captainHelmet when I dialed the res to 48 and MSAA x2 and also in the NVidia Control panel I put the my gpu setting to preferred Max Performance with sharpening on ... restarted everything and I was good to go finally! I was getting these white line circles in the cockpit in the hornet that drove me crazy and after alittle research I was able to go in WMR and clear the environment and now the circles are gone. I have played both single and multiplayer for a few hours after doing all the tweaking which was a minor tweak but I can finally say with all the help from everyone in here I got my G2 playable looks good enough and runs smooth @ 35 to 45 FPS in most cases. 
But it’s kinda like Golf , you just got to take what it gives you. I’m pretty confident that DCS is gonna get better and more stable with VR in the near future, hopefully by the end of the year. 

I got my G2 on Monday and am having a hellish time. I have looked at 14 pages of threads in this VR forum (since the G2 came out) and lots online. Followed the various guides on tuning Windows and turning various features off, and have been totally confused by numbers, percentages and where to set them.

 

When you say "I dialed the res to 48" was this in SteamVR on the global page, or have you left global at 100% and set 48 specifically against DCS?

 

Thx

[Burt]

Yes, in streamVR beta resolution I set to 48% which is the closest I can get to the 2160 res of the G2 from what I gathered and then in the steamvr beta video settings on the multiplier I keep that @ 100 

I really don’t understand the multiplier so kept that at 100 but I will test it maybe at a lower setting like may 75-80. I see you have a 1080ti so you can maybe test your steamvr resolution alittle higher due to your higher card vram. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Burt

[Burt]

This was great video concerning nvidia control panel. Go to 2:26:05 first

 

 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Burt

[parxuk]

21 minutes ago, Burt said:

Yes, in streamVR beta resolution I set to 48% which is the closest I can get to the 2160 res of the G2 from what I gathered and then in the steamvr beta video settings on the multiplier I keep that @ 100 

I really don’t understand the multiplier so kept that at 100 but I will test it maybe at a lower setting like may 75-80. I see you have a 1080ti so you can maybe test your steamvr resolution alittle higher due to your higher card vram. 

 

Burt

 

Thanks for the reply and the link. So do you set 48% at both the global level and DCS app? I cant figure out what resolution/percentage I should be setting on SteamVR?

 

Thx 

 

[Burt]

Just try 48 or 50 % res in stremvr in the general settings. In the steamvr video section in the res multiplier leave it at 100% just to try it. Again I haven’t tested the multiplier settings yet

 

in DCS setting turn msaa to x2 

texture and terrain I think I had on medium as well as water. on medium and then don’t forget to restart steamvr for the settings to take. 

[parxuk]

4 hours ago, Burt said:

Just try 48 or 50 % res in stremvr in the general settings. In the steamvr video section in the res multiplier leave it at 100% just to try it. Again I haven’t tested the multiplier settings yet

 

in DCS setting turn msaa to x2 

texture and terrain I think I had on medium as well as water. on medium and then don’t forget to restart steamvr for the settings to take. 

Thanks Burt, I am grateful for your help. 

 

Can I ask what settings you have in the Windows Mixed Reality portal?

 

Thanks again

 

[Burt]

2 hours ago, parxuk said:

Thanks Burt, I am grateful for your help. 

 

Can I ask what settings you have in the Windows Mixed Reality portal?

 

Thanks again

 

Sorry I’m not on my rig to give you an accurate answer but I think I’m running at 90hz and I didn’t do to much I. WMR I left everything as default. When I get to my rig I’ll check and get back to you. But I do know for sure that I’m running wmr for steam beta. When I first hook my G2 up and the regular wmr boots up I shut it down then open streamVR beta version and then wmr beta steam version boots up. 
anywho I’ll check and give you a more accurate setting for wmr

[captainHelmet]

Getting DCS running well in VR is a lot of work, some of that is DCS and some of it isn't.

 

For Windows settings make sure Game Mode, Game DVR, and Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) are turned off.  You can google these, it's easy.

In the nvidia control panel choose "Prefer Maximum Performance" and set latency to "Ultra" for good luck.

In windows WMR settings set Headset Display -> Experience Options -> Best Visual Quality.

Install speed-of-heat updated VR shader mods and delete the contents of the fxo and metashaders2 dir in your user/Saved Games/Dcs. folder for superstition.  This is optional but it really does buy you a chunk of fps.

(If you delete the contents of this directory when you start dcs and load either a new plane or map it will take a few minutes to recompile shaders (this is what pooled tasks are))

Launch SteamVR.

In the bottom left corner of the SteamVr window there is a button for WMR for SteamVr Settings.  In graphics set it to SteamVR Per Ap Setting.  This lets different games use different graphics settings.

In the bottom right corner of SteamVr hit the gear icon to adjust graphics settings for steamVr and aps like DCS that use it to run in VR.

Set steamVR resolution to 100%.

Set DCS resolution to 54% as a starting point and I like to force reprojection off when I'm testing so I know what my true fps is.

*Note it is possible that if you launch DCS out of the SteamVr window, or launch it from the desktop it may launch with a different internal name in steamVr and use different settings.

 

In DCS I enable the shared parser and disable hotplugging in my autoexec file.  The parser buys you some fps, but some things only render in one eye like flood lights in cockpits.

Make sure to use the experimental cross eye fix tool.  There is something wrong with the way the G2 displays are calibrated with DCS.

 

DCS settings:  After changing settings I like to restart DCS to make sure that they take effect.

Visibility Range: Has a big impact on performance.  I try to keep it on High so trees popping in at low level are less distracting.  Medium will buy you a few fps.  I can't go above High in VR.

Shadows: These are your cockpit shadows and they are big for immersion.  I don't see a big fps difference with quality settings.  It's just turning them on at all that is expensive.

Ground Shadows: I leave this on flat and use the flat shadow remove mod.  This gives me terrain shadows without building and individual tree shadows.  Wish I could have tree shadows but alas.

MSAA: Try to have this on at least 2x.  4x even better.  MSAA looks better than increased res, so I would prioritize it over pushing up the resolution percentage.

Heat Blur: Doesn't work with the shared parser auto exec setting so I leave it off.

Water: High I like to keep water on high, otherwise it is really noisy and distracting.

Anisotropic Filtering:   Texture filtering to improve textures seen at a distance, like runway lines.  Supposedly on later cards 16x is basically free, haven't tested this.  I use 4x.

Global Illumination:  Secondary bounces of light in the cockpit.  Looks really pretty but subtle when you see it.  Best to leave it off in VR.  Looks nice but not worth the fps.

SSAA: I don't THINK this does anything in VR.  If you want to super sample, increase your resolution percentage.

SSLR: Screen Space local reflection.  Gives you rough reflections of terrain and things in water.  Noisy but looks pretty.  This was a real fps killer in VR for me but I could keep it on in 2d.

Preload Distance: I have 64 gigs of ram so I max this out.

 

In the VR panel i would keep pixel density at 1.0 and just adjust resolution in a single place in the SteamVR settings menu.

If you are using MSAA, you can adjust the MSAA mask live while playing the game and it has a visual impact.  Sadly, I notice no performance benefit from it.  Nevertheless I think I have it set around .4

 

 

I hope someone finds this rambling helpful.

 

[Swamp Fox Loader]

You guys are correct on the usage of MSAA x2 or x4.  When I first started my long journey of setting up my G2, I kept seeing other folks suggesting not using any MSAA.  I guess it looked good on their systems, but not mine.  Buildings on the other side of the airfield at Nellis looked pretty distorted.  When I added in MSAA,  the surroundings looked much better.  My GPU is a 2080 super and with 54% resolution, I get in the neighborhood of 43 to 60 fps depending on my altitude.  Nevada is the best map for VR, and Syria needs some work to run smooth on my setup.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Swamp Fox Loader