First thread - squeezing out fps in VR - 3060Ti

[plasma1945]

Hi Everyone,

First post in the forum - and please come and shoot me down online rather than flame me here - I am usually growling on the sidewinder server

Let me know if you have any tips beyond the ones below? For improving online play mainly. Shader replacement seems so so, as sometimes I fail to pass check so I stopped that approach. 

 

----I have an old Dell workstation 32gb ram i7-3770 (9 year old cpu) - for other games it keeps up - but DCS. The CPU is my bottleneck. 

Config: For VR i got a G2 Reverb and 3060Ti to replace my 1060 (non VR the rig was 50-80fps on the 1060). I figured I would document and share my experience at getting FPS out of my rig, as best as I can and some tweaks which perhaps can be helpful to others.

 

> Pixel density 1.2, Shadows Flat, Ground @ Low  - Grass Off - (no heat no dirt) - hotplug disabled

 

> Steam VR resolution set to 1900x1900 or so - no smoothing, as that seems to make things jittery

 

> To get extra 45% in FPS (single player from 30 -> 50fps) (multi from 15/20 -> 35/40 fps) :: SMT Hyperthread disable totally helped

> To get extra 5 FPS and minimize ram on the VR - went to download Skyscenes and installed "Empty Room" as default Windows Mixed Reality Starting space > VRAM use went from 3.2gb to 2.5gb (with no game running)

> To get extra 5 fps  > disabled secondary monitor and set primary monitor to 1920x1080 and right click on desktop - hide desktop icons

 

> To get extra 3-4 fps and prevent memory swapping into video memory modified default Hanger to NOT load anything in VR (this prevents your VRAM getting slammed with a pretty hangar..oooh..who cares) I cut out all models from loading:  DCS World OpenBeta\Scripts\DemoScenes\sceneVR.lua
(backup your file as a copy before you modify it)

 

bottom line, GPU FPS is ok.. but still my CPU is getting nailed. in single player its happy, in multi it gets destroyed and brings the fps down..but at least I can still fly for another year or so until I get a new mobo/cpu/ram on this rig at around 45-50fps in multiplayer. 

Cheers everyone!

Shawn 

 

 

>>> DCS World OpenBeta\Scripts\DemoScenes\sceneVR.lua

-----
 

package.path = package.path ..';./Scripts/DemoScenes/?.lua;'
local sceneEnvironment = require("demosceneEnvironment")

scene = {} -- ñþäà êëàäåì âñå ñîçäàííûå îáúåêòû

function loadScene(scenePtr)
    sceneAPI = sceneEnvironment.getInterface(scenePtr)
    sceneAPI:setUpdateFunc('sceneVRUpdate')
    sceneAPI:setEnvironmentMap("Bazar/Graphics/VRMainScene.dds",0.9);
    sceneAPI:setSun(math.rad(-90), math.rad(0)) -- ñàæàåì ñîëíöå çà ãîðèçîíò ÷òîá íå ñâåòèëî

    local cam_level = 1.8

    scene.cam        = sceneAPI:addCamera(3, cam_level , 3)
    scene.cam:setFarClip(1000.0)
    scene.cam:setFov(90)
    scene.cam.transform:lookAtPoint(-10.0, cam_level, 0);

    scene.L1            = sceneAPI:addLightOmni(0, 25, 0,    1,0.8,0.5);
    scene.L1:setRadius(200);
    scene.L1:setAmount(1);

    scene.cam:setActive()
end

--[0;1]
local function pingpong(length, t)
    local tt = (t%length)*2/length
    if tt>1 then tt = 2-tt end
    return tt
end

function sceneVRUpdate(t, dt)

end

-----

game settings added as screenshot - might need to play with trees as they kind of Roll-pop-in

 

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by plasma1945
game settings added as attachment

[Gryzor]

Please can you attach your modified scenevr.lua file? thanks

[plasma1945]

attaching the script file and screenshot without the jet sceneVR.lua

 

[captainHelmet]

I'll have to try the empty house and see what happens.  You can make things easier on yourself by setting your pixel density to 1.0, and then just adjusting the resolution in steamVR in a single place.

[AlpineGTA]

Interesting. I'm also running an i7-3770 on an old upgraded Dell workstation, but with a slightly weaker AMD 5700 XT, 32GB DDR3 RAM, 1Tb SSD drive and I had no problem running my G2 - until it broke. At least I think it's broken, I'm waiting on a new cable from HP to test.

 

The G2 actually ran better than my Quest2 does. The Link cable seems to take up more computing resources.

[plasma1945]

1 hour ago, AlpineGTA said:

Interesting. I'm also running an i7-3770 on an old upgraded Dell workstation, but with a slightly weaker AMD 5700 XT, 32GB DDR3 RAM, 1Tb SSD drive and I had no problem running my G2 - until it broke. At least I think it's broken, I'm waiting on a new cable from HP to test.

 

The G2 actually ran better than my Quest2 does. The Link cable seems to take up more computing resources.

I wonder if you are running the exact same workstation as I do ive got a Dell Precision T1650 got it as a refurb - 

What FPS were you getting ?

 

Shoot me what settings you had in your VR.

 

A huge upgrade for me was to buy a PCI-Express adapter which lets you install NVME storage and a 500gb NVME Samsung 860? or 870 card. This is for us poor old folks without onboard NVME. But the speeds on NVME is about 5-8 times faster than SSD.

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX80490 thats the card I got and put in the https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX76115 

3 hours ago, captainHelmet said:

I'll have to try the empty house and see what happens.  You can make things easier on yourself by setting your pixel density to 1.0, and then just adjusting the resolution in steamVR in a single place.

It doesnt load up the memory right away, I dont know if it helps the game, since it doesnt have to unload/reload textures -- But usually programs are (unless they are well written) bad at memory clean up. Also it gets you to the choose mission screen a few moments faster I found.

 

[Harlikwin]

Thanks for posting this, I always find that necessity is the mother of messing with obscure system settings. When I first started in DCS I used a CV1 and 980m, so I really really had to optimize that. But it worked surprisingly well once I did. So there is always hope for lower end systems in DCS and VR.

 

 

 

[plasma1945]

@Harlikwin Ill add any other notes and observations as well  here.

Funny, thing, I used to fly in Flaming Cliffs in 2009/2010 on .. some kind of a video card maybe it was a Gefore3? and old core 2, then dropped it for about 10 years and got back into it recently thanks to "the unspecified global event" - and boy did dcs get pretty since 2009.. 

Edited March 3, 2021 by plasma1945

[AlpineGTA]

On 3/2/2021 at 10:38 PM, plasma1945 said:

I wonder if you are running the exact same workstation as I do ive got a Dell Precision T1650 got it as a refurb - 

What FPS were you getting ?

 

Shoot me what settings you had in your VR.

 

A huge upgrade for me was to buy a PCI-Express adapter which lets you install NVME storage and a 500gb NVME Samsung 860? or 870 card. This is for us poor old folks without onboard NVME. But the speeds on NVME is about 5-8 times faster than SSD.

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX80490 thats the card I got and put in the https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX76115 

It doesnt load up the memory right away, I dont know if it helps the game, since it doesnt have to unload/reload textures -- But usually programs are (unless they are well written) bad at memory clean up. Also it gets you to the choose mission screen a few moments faster I found.

 

 

I'm using an upgraded Dell XPS 85000. I had my work PC replaced and having no PC at home I decided to take the old one home just to try out some PC gaming on the cheap. I discovered DCS and it soon became a whole lot less cheap! I've replaced the GPU, RAM, power supply and hard drive with an SSD. I'll eventually also replace the CPU, motherboard and case, so eventually it'll become an entirely new PC.

 

Regarding my G2, unfortunately it's not working at the moment. I'm waiting for a new cable from HP, so I can't screenshot my settings and I've tweaked them a bit since to run my Quest2, but if I remember correctly, I'm running:

 

• Textures: High
• Terrain Textures: Low (Don't notice much difference but gain some FPS)
• Civ. Traffic: Off
• Water: High (I like those reflections)
• Visib Range: High
• Heat Blur: Low (or might be off - not sure)
• Shadows: Flat (or low - whatever is the lowest setting)
• Res. of Cockpit Displays: 1024
• MSAA: x2
• Lens Effects: Flare
• Anisotropic Filtering: x4
• Terrain Object Shadows: Not sure - might be Off or Flat
• Cockpit Global Illumination: Off

I'm getting approx. 30 - 55 FPS with my Quest2, depending on the mission and was getting similar with the G2. I think I was running about 54% per-app resolution in Steam VR.

[schmiefel]

On 3/2/2021 at 11:01 PM, plasma1945 said:

attaching the script file and screenshot without the jet sceneVR.lua

 

 

I can support this and it can have further side effects. Not knowing that DCS keeps the VR start menu background in memory I used to use a slightly modified hangar scene for VR - until yesterday. Then I suddenly got this disturbing effect when flying in darkening conditions:

 

 

From the second view I came to the conclusion that some settings of my modified "sceneVR.lua" showing this kind of hangar scene

 

made DCS blend this image into the main game graphics.

This was the modded scene I used: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/de/files/2026782/

 

Reverting back to the original hangar scene settings the effect was gone.

 

This was in the latest 2.7 open beta version.

 

Maybe worth a look for DCS devs, too, to increase performance if such things can get unloaded when game session starts?