No contrast with new clouds (2.7 / Reverb G2)

[Negativghostrdr]

Ugh....I was looking forward to the beautiful clouds I've been seeing on Youtube.  Of course, not VR footage.  I'm confident they'll get it there, but for now it's unplayable IMO.  It's the nature of this deal.  I've got a Quest 2.  (among others) I'm sure since that's the popular headset right now, a fix is coming.  I just figured out how to run the Quest 2 wirelessly with DCS this last weekend.  It was kick ass yesterday!  Not so much today.

[Spetz]

19 hours ago, Negativghostrdr said:

Ugh....I was looking forward to the beautiful clouds I've been seeing on Youtube.  Of course, not VR footage.  I'm confident they'll get it there, but for now it's unplayable IMO.  It's the nature of this deal.  I've got a Quest 2.  (among others) I'm sure since that's the popular headset right now, a fix is coming.  I just figured out how to run the Quest 2 wirelessly with DCS this last weekend.  It was kick ass yesterday!  Not so much today.

Mind letting us know how you got it to work wirelessly? Any bandwidth lagging at all? I love the Quest 2, but that wire...jeebus...

[fab.13]

Hello,

 

I had the same feeling of no contrast in my first test in 2.7 VR

 

Give a try tho this simple setting method ( given by BN and successful tested by some guys including me )

 

 

[dburne]

1 hour ago, Spetz said:

Mind letting us know how you got it to work wirelessly? Any bandwidth lagging at all? I love the Quest 2, but that wire...jeebus...

 

Oculus are also now working on the Quest 2 to support wireless natively.

Oculus Air Link.

 

Folks using it wirelessly now are using Virtual Desktop to get it wireless.

I am sure others will provide more detail.

[Spetz]

Thanks for the heads up. Just checked my beta tab and that air link option isn't there yet, so I guess it hasn't been released yet.

 

I think I'll wait for that instead of dropping $$ on the app.. Cheers

[Negativghostrdr]

Ugh....I was looking forward to the beautiful clouds I've been seeing on Youtube.  Of course, not VR footage.  I'm confident they'll get it there, but for now it's unplayable IMO.  It's the nature of this deal.  I've got a Quest 2.  (among others) I'm sure since that's the popular headset right now, a fix is coming.  I just figured out how to run the Quest 2 wirelessly with DCS this last weekend.  It was kick ass yesterday!  Not so much today.

Hey Spetz,

 

You just need the virtual desktop app on the Quest 2, and the Virtual streamer app on your PC.  I learned about it in this thread...  It works AWESOME!!  I had no idea.  Enjoy!

 

 

[Toumal]

Unfortunately I have the same issue. Here's a comparison screenshot:

 

[Jafergon]

Coulds look so amazing in 2D, that I simply can't fly in VR these days in their current state, so I've reinstalled my old TrackIR that I haven't used in years. At least until they are fixed in terms fo level of detail and contrast.

[M1Combat]

On 4/15/2021 at 12:50 PM, Vanguard said:

Maybe not for you, it made an immediate impact for me. I can run PD 0.5 and SS 400% at the same FPS as PD 1.0 and SS 100%.

No.

 

 

[Blackdog]

On 4/15/2021 at 12:50 PM, Vanguard said:

Maybe not for you, it made an immediate impact for me. I can run PD 0.5 and SS 400% at the same FPS as PD 1.0 and SS 100%.

It's great you are getting the performance you like, but it is because you are pushing about half the total number of pixels.

 

(with a G2 for example)

.5 DCS PD + 400% Steam SS = 2160x2160 (native G2 resolution)

1.0 DCS PD + 51% Steam SS = 2160x2160 (native G2 resolution)

1.0 DCS PD + 100% Steam SS = 3024x3024 (default amount of supersampling with the G2 for barrel distortion compensation)

 

You're probably better off running PD 1.0 and having more fine-grained control of the SS via Steam to get the balance of framerate and visual quality you like best --  but if you are happy with the visuals/performance you are getting with your settings, then by all means use them... just understand why the performance is better.

[Vanguard]

Curious where the math comes from, I couldn't find a source. How does .5 PD + 400% SS = 2160?

 

For G2, using his spreadsheet I would assume I get 1.0 PD @ 100% SS = 3160

and at PD 0.5 @ 400% SS (6324) I get... 3162

 

In both those scenarios, I get quite a difference in FPS, and most of the comments to the original video saying they noticed a difference were coming from G2 users. What am I missing?

 

Not sure why he couldn't make it simpler... He's got 140% in his Global settings, although according to him, 100% already has 40% for barrel distortion, but then he sets his to 140% anyway. With 100% global and 150% per app, I would expect per app. With 50% Global and 200% per app, do we get 100%? If so, why would you run tests at 140% of 140% in a proof test?

Edited April 20, 2021 by Vanguard

[ShaunOfTheFuzz]

13 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

Curious where the math comes from, I couldn't find a source. How does .5 PD + 400% SS = 2160?

 

For G2, using his spreadsheet I would assume I get 1.0 PD @ 100% SS = 3160

and at PD 0.5 @ 400% SS (6324) I get... 3162

 

In both those scenarios, I get quite a difference in FPS, and most of the comments to the original video saying they noticed a difference were coming from G2 users. What am I missing? 

 

 

If you watch the video Jabbers will literally do the math for you, it's not calculated the way you think it is. It's a shame the PD/SS thing doesn't work, but it just flat out doesn't. Likely the improved performance you're feeling from tuning down your PD is outweighing the hit you're taking in fidelity, so it just feels better to you. 

On PD 0.5, as bad as the clouds look right now, BN was very clear that from internal testing, they scale *very poorly* with lower PD and the minimum PD recommended is 1.0.

[Vanguard]

@ShaunOfTheFuzz sorry you were replying just as I was making an edit. Could you take a look. And I took screens of my mirror and the quality is definitely improved with less shimmers using 0.5 @ 400%, unless I'm on some serious placebo drugs.

 

Major waste of time on that video anyway. I'm not arguing one way or another, but seriously... all that time to explain that on his particular rig, and the orig author, he was comparing 2666 vs 3337, or an effective PD of 1.12, so maybe that explains it, but he didn't bother carrying out the sentiment of the test, setting 0.5 PD and setting an SS to match the equivalent value and then test the FPS!? Therefore, not debunking, just adding more speculation to the mix. *facepalm*

Edited April 20, 2021 by Vanguard

[M1Combat]

"setting 0.5 PD and setting an SS to match the equivalent value and then test the FPS!? "

 

I believe he did exactly that...

 

Also...

 

Even so...

 

"Setting an equivalent value" was never part of the suggestion with the whole PD at .5 thing.  That's the whole point.  The guy was saying "Turn PD down to .5, then crank steam SS up to 200%."

 

Well...  That doesn't render the same number of pixels.  Far from it.  THAT is where the perf gain people kept reporting came from.  They were just rendering less pixels but thinking they were rendering the same number and it was somehow faster...  It wasn't.  They were rendering less pixels.  Some people then cranked the steam SS up farther saying "Hey...  thanks for the free performance now I can crank steam higher to get back to the same frame rate...

 

THEN they were back to rendering the same number of pixels.

Edited April 20, 2021 by M1Combat

[M1Combat]

Not aimed at anyone in particular.......

 

 

 

 

The disconnect is that 2.0PD is (Hx2)x(Wx2) pixels.

 

2160x2)x(2160x2  = 18,662,400

 

200% Steam SS is Pixels x 2.  It's magic...  It just says...  "Exactly what resolution do I need to render in order to be rendering EXACTLY 200% of the pixels I'm currently rendering???"  In this particular case...  It's actually 3054.7x3054.7...  You may recognize that as the Square root of the actual number of pixels being rendered in this scenario.

 

2160x2160)x(2 = 9,331,200

 

 

Also...

 

DCS renders all the pixels.  Some people claim that the "steam renderer" is more efficient than the "DCS Renderer"...  so add the least amount of pixels via DCS PD and the most via Steam SS...

 

No.

 

All the PD's and SS's and everything that has anything to do with resolution is calculated before the frame starts being rendered...  Then it's just rendered by the DCS Graphics engine at the assigned resolution (of everything...  not of DCS PD setting).

 

If DCS rendered at .5PD, THEN steam somehow added onto that...  Where the eff did steam get the info for each pixel.

 

That's like looking at a 640x480 pic and saying "Enhance..."

 

[Vanguard]

He unlisted the video, so I can't quote it, but I'm fairly certain he literally started the video with, you can get equivalent resolution with more FPS, but alas, it doesn't really matter, it was pretty negligible anyway and far from the real issue in DCS. It's not square root, it's just half, so yeah, PD 1 @ 100% = PD 0.5 @ 400%, which most peeps agree with those settings, they get about the same performance. And yes, I completely agree, PD and SS is added up and DCS engine does the render, albeit, there is the potential that the DCS engine is making decisions based on PD number for optimizations, etc, not the aggregate pixels, so who knows. All I know is that I can't even get 90 FPS on the main menu anymore after 2.7, and I'm done wasting my time banging this thing with a hammer. White knights and praises for days, so again, either I'm smoking something, or I need to get what they're smoking, cause, its nothing but frustration here. Cross-eyed, black screens, blue screens, steam VR has crashed, cotton balls for days in the sky, unreal.

 

I also just noticed, because I was messing about with the settings and resting my HMD on top of my head, so my view was pushed really far back, and I was staring at the fabric on top of the seat of the a-10, and I was like, wow, that looks really nice. Then I looked at the dash, sparkle sparkle, razzle dazzle. Hmm, look at the ground, looks good, but buildings shimmering like its hot. Back to the seat cover, hmmm, really really looks nice. Like, HL: Alyx nice. Back to the cockpit dash, sparkle sparkle. Then I realized, it's only the white pixels, sparkling out of control, white rooftops, white needles on the gauges, on the edge of... everything. Seems to me a big part of the issue here with shimmering is perhaps over exposure or something.

[Rampster]

Just to add: In VR the clouds are like described, but if you use the rear view mirrors in VR and look into the mirrors, the clouds are fine.

[Munkwolf]

On 4/20/2021 at 3:15 PM, M1Combat said:

Not aimed at anyone in particular.......

...

That's like looking at a 640x480 pic and saying "Enhance..."

 

 

Great post. I bet it sure brings in the views though. "Try this one weird trick to increase your frames!".

[M1Combat]

8 minutes ago, Monkwolf said:

 

Great post. I bet it sure brings in the views though. "Try this one weird trick to increase your frames!".

 

Exactly.

[Pikas62]

On 4/15/2021 at 5:16 PM, Doolz said:

Agree with others. Clouds look blown out and low quality even in ultra, they bounce/jitter up and down - giving motion sickness.

 

100% this. The bounce/jitter is the most anoying thing (G2 here).

[sirrah]

19 hours ago, Pikas62 said:

 

100% this. The bounce/jitter is the most anoying thing (G2 here).

 

We all know ED is working on the jitter problem, as they stated it's on their high priority list. This thread is about cloud contrast, or actually the lack of it.

 

Sorry if I missed it in this thread, or in any of the other threads about this issue, but did ED respond at all on this contrast/"all white" issue? Did they acknowledge the problem at any point?

 

 

(oh and fwiw, this issue does not limit to the G2 as the title of this thread might suggest)

Edited April 29, 2021 by sirrah

[despinoza]

Has ED aware of this issue? it`s really annoying 

[Eldur]

On 4/15/2021 at 9:56 AM, Silvern said:

Overall the entire VR is noticeably more blurry & washed out than it was.

 

Pretty much this. And I also think it got a bit worse with 2.7 - but it started exactly at the update that brought the Channel map. The Mustang shader mod always helped a good bit since by reducing the haze a lot, but even with that one in the mix everything still is kinda mushy. Now with 2.7 the difference to pancake mode is exceptionally huge within the cloud shadows. I can crank my gamma to 2.8 in VR and I have an extremely hard time even seeing runways in there, especially though the HUD glass. No problem at all with just 1.6 on a screen. Lower values in VR just make it almost like pitch black in return. Now what I also noticed about it, it heavily depends on resolution - the lower, the worse it gets. I'm really getting headaches from flying in my CV1 with how it currently is, I bumped up PD from 1 to 1.5 already to counteract it a bit (that actually helped some), and using my Quest instead with medium graphics setting via VD makes it even better, but costs me about half of my fps over the CV1. Lowering that to low or even potato makes the blurryness MUCH worse and I'm basically flying blind even on a clear day then whereas in the CV1 it's "just" like looking through a cataract (I know because I literally went through that and the phacos to have it "fixed").

 

Nevertheless flying in VR still is fun for me, but I have to be bloody honest here now: I totally can't fight with that, period.

 

By the way I noticed the same issue happening in pancake with lower res (like 1280x768), just much less pronounced.

[Vanguard]

There is a slight improvement with the latest patch contrast wise, but they didn't mention it in the notes, so hopefully this isn't the final outcome, as it still needs a ways to go IMO. 

[thelawse]

Resolution is lower/blurry and uncomfortable to look at. Overall there's a lack of contrast in the cockpit too making HUD, instruments, MFD's, etc. hard to read. My wingman 4aces also noticed it. We both use Valve Indexes.