VR quality settings

[Zigaitis]

10 hours ago, bigalsunit said:

This is the same thing I have noticed with the water quality settings. Just like the cloud quality, in VR the low, medium, and high option settings for water don’t visibly change anything anymore. I am in agreement with the post above. We need clarification as to whether or not these issues are bugs or if they are, in fact, by design. Clearly someone on the team has to know. Right?!

 

Water quality setting?  Where is that?  I too have really dull waves and thought I was missing something

[Cooler07]

Not sure if this will help anyone but here’s what I getting in 2.7

 

I9 9900KS 5.0g 32g DDR4 3400 EVGA 1070ti and Rift 2gen. nvidia setting are default.

Clouds 8 caucuses map. 

 

Pictures say everything, lose a few FPS while on carrier “a lot on activity”

Most of the time it's 45FPS 

But all in all very nice work ED!  

 

No the clouds are not perfect but then again I do a recurrent every year in a level 4 sim costing a lot and the clouds in it are CRAP!!!!

 

On a side note seeing a SA11 coming up out of the cloud right a you is something to SEE!

It really get you going!

 

Again well done ED……’S’

Edited April 16, 2021 by Cooler07

[M1Combat]

Hmm...  real clouds...  Just to put things in perspective folks...

 

Yeah we've all seen the 4K pics with curated lighting with likely post effects and all that...  And they're super cool...  but lets just sit back for a sec and take a look at some real clouds...

 

Here...  both taken on the same day just maybe 20 minutes from each other...  Clearly there are VR clouds IRL too...  

 

Yeah I know...  We "only" get the VR clouds in VR... I get it...  They will be tuning them and honestly there will be users digging into the config files and likely figuring out how to add contrast etc...  but look...  There are crappy clouds IRL too...  They aren't ALL the magnificently inspiring clouds we imagine in our dreams :)...

 

 

 

 

[Canada_Moose]

Well, the wispy cirrus stuff isn't really the problem from my perspective. The post from cooler07 shows the issues. If it looked like your photo I would be happy.

 

Anyway, Im sure ED will get this sorted.

[M1Combat]

I understand...  I'm just saying that in some cases there's some real "This crappy crap sucks you suck ED" going on and really...  that's not the case...  They've done a bang up job for a first "OPEN BETA" release and they've specifically said "There are issues, we're still working on it".

 

It's just that the "crappy crap" folks get on my nerves.

 

This is the type of thing that has the potential to change the way ED works and interacts with the client base in a very negative way.  I've been around long enough to have seen this happen before and it's not cool.

 

I'm just encouraging people to sit back, state your concern in a respectful way (I mean..  they've spent thousands of hours bringing us a first release and we need to understand that and not be dismissive jerks.  I get that it's not everything everyone wanted...  maybe not even on a first release...  but it's damn fine IMO as a first OPEN BETA release :).

 

Not all clouds are like my top pic up there :).

[exnihilodub]

can confirm there's no visible difference between VR cloud settings. If this is a tuning made by taking performance into account, I think VR should be given the same detailed clouds with the desktop version. At least on Ultra/High.

[kinglevel]

8 minutes ago, M1Combat said:

It's just that the "crappy crap" folks get on my nerves.

 

 

Yeah, show some love to the amazing developers

They are well aware of all this and probably has it on top of the to-do list.

 

They have done a brilliant job on the clouds, this is amazing, i tought this would never be possible at acceptable frame rates at all, but they clearly have made a spectacular job keeping the performance!

 

Lets hope for a small patch in the future so we can adjust the settings and let our GPUs cry even more

 

Living the vr-lifestyle....

[A2597]

I consider this a bug thread. In a bug thread, we talk about the bugs, we share our settings / criticism, because that's the point of this thread.

There are other threads for praising the clouds / other updates (because on a whole, this was an AMAZING update across the board!). But the devs also need to know what issues people are having to make a better product. So long as the criticism is constructive, and kept to the appropriate threads / forums, there's no issues IMHO.

[nrosko]

Yes the white knighting of DCS in the bugs & problems thread is tedious. If you are happy with the product then go & play with it. 

[SGT Coyle]

Clouds in VR were much better in 2.6

 

[Jafergon]

I'm very grateful for the amazing work the team has done on this patch and how beautiful and realistic clouds look (as a matter of fact everytime a major patch is released, I buy an ED module, even without the intention to use it, just to support the team).

 

We are just trying to get some answers on a very specific question, the fact that changing quality settings of clouds in VR doesn't seem to have any real effect. I understand there must be a very good reason behind, just want to know why and if it's something we can expect to be fixed soon.

[SGT Coyle]

Do the new clouds work with the dynamic weather system?  I can't stand any of the presets.
I appreciate all the work that went into this, but these clouds look nothing like what was shown in videos.

 

[havok2]

On 4/14/2021 at 11:22 PM, Jafergon said:

Besides from the jumping clouds issue one thing that I've noticed is that regardless of the quality setting I select in VR, the clouds look the same with no difference or very litte in detail between LOW and ULTRA. Maybe this is related with the jumping bug, but I was curious about this and if anyone else have the same impression. Other than that they look amazing in 2D and performance is incredible!

 

Hello Jafergon, Hello Community,
I did some research today and found out the following connection. The clouds in DCS are rendered separately as I understand it. That is, the game world is rendered, then the clouds and then everything is merged. Ok so far no miraculous insight however I noticed that the cloud quality no matter with which VR resolution (in Steam) always looks the same. Ergo, the clouds are always simulated with a defined resolution regardless of the resolution of the game. This looks very good in 2D and unfortunately not quite as sharp in VR. Here it simply needs a higher resolution. If you quickly rotate the camera around the aircraft in the exterior view far away from the aircraft and stop, you can partially see the individual voxels, these are then quickly smoothed. I think this temporal smoothing is currently also the devil, whereby just the perspective of the clouds gets an offset to the world and wobbles. The settings Low-Ultra seem to change almost nothing. Possibly a placeholder of the BETA? 

But then I noticed, if you change the pixel density in the settings of DCS, the resolution of the clouds is also scaled. So if I set the resolution in Steam from 200% to 100% and set the pixel density to 2.0, the clouds are sharper. However, my system [5900x, 32GB 3200 CL14, MSI RTX 3090 Trio X] then breaks down to 40Fps and lower in 80Hz mode.... Too bad, it looks really nice. Of course, it also works the other way around. I have currently decreased the pixel density to 0.8 and the resolution in Steam (DCS 270-290% | Global 100%), so that I have a similarly good resolution in the game, except for the clouds. But this way I have a stable 80fps with 2746*3050px per eye. Unfortunately, at least on my index, the quality is a bit worse than with pixel density 1.0, but that's because I don't use AA and SteamVR uses an Advanced Supersampling filter. However, it is a very good compromise between optics and performance. Attached are my settings. 

 

& I am using the shader Mod as well.

Edited April 17, 2021 by havok2
Added the fact, that I using the shader Mod.

[Not_G]

Seems like some people have missed the purpose of this thread, this isn't a "ED your clouds sucks, fix it thread" but rather that there is an adjustable setting for clouds that has no effect in VR but does in 2D and people are just curious if the DEVs are aware of it.  The jittery clouds has been verified as a bug where this issue has not.  I don't think this issue qualifies as being too nit picky.

[Eldur]

Also noticed a vast difference between VR and Pancake with the clouds. Even when I set them to low on both. They seem to be much less "shapy" in VR (CV1 here BTW), and I don't see that gorgeous light play at all in VR, they're mosty just white while they have some nice shadowing around them, and especially underneath when looked at from certain angles in pancake. In VR - nothing of that is to be seen. Certainly not right.

 

But anyway, they're still far better than what we had before.

 

7 hours ago, havok2 said:

 

 

OK, who's responsible for the translation?

 

"Crop to rectangle" literally became "Crop to triangle" here. Very much misleading although the original one also doesn't exactly tell what it does since the mirror is a rectangle anyway. Rectangle would be "Rechteck".

[TOMCATZ]

German is nice, isn`t ? 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by TOMCATZ

[=Mac=]

oops, wrong topic...

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by =Mac=

[Bog9y]

Is it reasonable to believe that the performance boost some people are seeing in VR is because of the lower quality clouds? So it stands to reason that if they fix the low quality and improve it we can expect VR performance to go down the drain?  

 

Personally I can't really tell if my performance is better...it kind of feels the same as 2.5.6 without a shaders mod. 2080S card , 5900X & Reverb G1. 

 

The water does seem too dark though, as do the shaded areas under the clouds.  Turning the gamma up makes everything too bright when you are in the sunny areas. 

[Danny_P]

22 minutes ago, Bbow said:

Is it reasonable to believe that the performance boost some people are seeing in VR is because of the lower quality clouds? So it stands to reason that if they fix the low quality and improve it we can expect VR performance to go down the drain?  

 

Personally I can't really tell if my performance is better...it kind of feels the same as 2.5.6 without a shaders mod. 2080S card , 5900X & Reverb G1. 

 

The water does seem too dark though, as do the shaded areas under the clouds.  Turning the gamma up makes everything too bright when you are in the sunny areas. 

Well yes, if ultra in VR was the same as 2d you'll see a performance hit for sure

[Csgo GE oh yeah]

I find it hard to believe anyone is seeing performance inprovement in VR ? Who said they did ?

[BIGNEWY]

4 minutes ago, Csgo GE oh yeah said:

I find it hard to believe anyone is seeing performance inprovement in VR ? Who said they did ?

 

Plenty of people, forums and social media. Feed back has been very positive. 

 

We still have work to do, we have already acknowledged the VR issues in the change logs, and we will continue to improve. 

 

My FPS have not changed from 2.5.6 to 2.7 still getting great frames in VR. 

Edit:

 

just to add, if you are seeing issues with frame rate, 

 

rename your dcs folder in saved games ( keep it as a backup )

 

restart dcs

redo your desired settings. 

test frame rate. 

 

you can always return to the backup

 

 

[Marklar]

12 hours ago, SGT Coyle said:

Do the new clouds work with the dynamic weather system?

 

Not yet.

[Bog9y]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

 

Plenty of people, forums and social media. Feed back has been very positive. 

 

We still have work to do, we have already acknowledged the VR issues in the change logs, and we will continue to improve. 

 

My FPS have not changed from 2.5.6 to 2.7 still getting great frames in VR. 

Edit:

 

just to add, if you are seeing issues with frame rate, 

 

rename your dcs folder in saved games ( keep it as a backup )

 

restart dcs

redo your desired settings. 

test frame rate. 

 

you can always return to the backup

 

 

What do you lose by doing this?  I can think of the following:

 

- kneeboard pages

- mods

- saved missions (?)

 

 

Do you keep your control option keybinds? 

 

Is there anything else to consider before doing this?

[havok2]

3 hours ago, average_pilot said:

Not an attempt at fixing anything, but a curiosity. Touching things I don't understand in clouds.lua I managed to get this fancy clouds. This is the 'Overcast and Rain 1' preset. Although whatever I did made the clouds to have less "geometric" detail let's say, the individual puffs they are made of look more small and detailed, closer to how they look like in 2D.

The point is that I don't think the problem really depends on Pixel Density as suggested. It looks more like whatever parameters DCS is changing when selecting cloud details from "low" to "ultra" in 2D are not being applied in VR.

 

 

Yeah you decreased the noise size. I also think that it is a kind of parameter optimization. They are too bright in VR, so the details are lost and burned out to white. But I did not managed to find the shader that controle these. When creating fractal noise in After Effects you have a slider that controles contrast, brightness, ecolution, offset and size for example. If someone could find the file we had to edit, we can tune them. The clouds.lua just are presets that you can select in the game. But these are just values that controles the min & max height and primary the placement of the cloudlets - not the shadong of each cloud itself. (but yeah we can create our own cloudpresets here, maybe sometimes there comes a preview viewer like for plane where we get all sliders that controles the cloud system)

[FupDuck]

12 hours ago, havok2 said:

 

Hello Jafergon, Hello Community,
I did some research today and found out the following connection. The clouds in DCS are rendered separately as I understand it. That is, the game world is rendered, then the clouds and then everything is merged. Ok so far no miraculous insight however I noticed that the cloud quality no matter with which VR resolution (in Steam) always looks the same. Ergo, the clouds are always simulated with a defined resolution regardless of the resolution of the game. This looks very good in 2D and unfortunately not quite as sharp in VR. Here it simply needs a higher resolution. If you quickly rotate the camera around the aircraft in the exterior view far away from the aircraft and stop, you can partially see the individual voxels, these are then quickly smoothed. I think this temporal smoothing is currently also the devil, whereby just the perspective of the clouds gets an offset to the world and wobbles. The settings Low-Ultra seem to change almost nothing. Possibly a placeholder of the BETA? 

But then I noticed, if you change the pixel density in the settings of DCS, the resolution of the clouds is also scaled. So if I set the resolution in Steam from 200% to 100% and set the pixel density to 2.0, the clouds are sharper. However, my system [5900x, 32GB 3200 CL14, MSI RTX 3090 Trio X] then breaks down to 40Fps and lower in 80Hz mode.... Too bad, it looks really nice. Of course, it also works the other way around. I have currently decreased the pixel density to 0.8 and the resolution in Steam (DCS 270-290% | Global 100%), so that I have a similarly good resolution in the game, except for the clouds. But this way I have a stable 80fps with 2746*3050px per eye. Unfortunately, at least on my index, the quality is a bit worse than with pixel density 1.0, but that's because I don't use AA and SteamVR uses an Advanced Supersampling filter. However, it is a very good compromise between optics and performance. Attached are my settings. 

 

& I am using the shader Mod as well.

 

Are you able to use the 2.5.6 shader mod with 2.7?