Lack of effective AA option in VR

[St4rgun]

Dear devs and community, I'm a long time DCS user. I'm swithced from 2D to VR since my Rift CV1, now I'm using Reverb G2.

But even with the G2 the visuals of the VR version compared to the 2D is like two totally different games.

 

The long dreaded lack of proper VR anti-aliasing is really hurting my eyes. Is there ANY working solution to get rid of all the jaggies and shimmering in VR? The in-game MSAA implementation currently is performance hog with no real help to the massive shimmering.

Actually if I watch a DCS 2D tutorial video on YouTube and set it to 720p (or even 480p) it still looks SO MUCH better than what I see ingame in my G2 headset - in terms of anti-aliasing.

 

As changing to the Vulkan API is around the corner (hopefully this year, maybe next) is there ANY small hint for the hope for us, VR users to get rid of these jaggies and massive aliasing at some point with the redesigned graphic engine?

Edited July 14, 2021 by St4rgun

[St4rgun]

Any news on the VR AA topic? Tons of new features emerge week-by-week but this fundamental feature seems quite neglected in VR.

Am I doing something wrong?

[MelkorBorgir]

@St4rgunare you running super sampling? what video card?

[Vintageflyer01]

14 hours ago, St4rgun said:

Any news on the VR AA topic? Tons of new features emerge week-by-week but this fundamental feature seems quite neglected in VR.

Am I doing something wrong?

 

I see you have the same problem as I  have noticed. While so much techniques for VR are available to cope these aspects without losing to much performance.  I’m afraid that most gamers who are doing the 2weeks try out  in VR will eventually not buy this game because of this huge shimmer and jaggies.  Even when upgrading  to Vulkan or DirectX12.1 you still need those technology to cope this.  

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Vintageflyer01

[St4rgun]

17 hours ago, MelkorBorgir said:

@St4rgunare you running super sampling? what video card?

Right now unfortunately I have to use my spare GTX 1070 only (10700k, 32 GB) with the Reverb G2, so I have to use 50% resolution set in SteamVR. PD is 1.0 in DCS to be able to play with usable framerates.

But in my case the framerate is not the main issure, I know the heavy GPU bottleneck right now, but I'm solely talking about picture quality.

 

It does not matter if I set MSAA 4x with SSAA on and even 100% resolution in SteamVR so to watch a slideshow on my GTX 1070, but the picutre still shimmers heavily.

 

Actually it seems like that some parts of the picture not antialiased AT ALL: like edges of the the projectors of the HUD, the contours of the trees, the painted lines on the airports's concrete, the horizon, the low clouds (this is a known phenomenon, so not count here), the shadows of the planes, some parts of the contours of the planes, the water shoreline etc.

 

Shimmering EVERYWHERE, but in VR ONLY. Very annoying indeed.

On 2D it's totally different, so I think something somehow does NOT work properly with the AA in VR.

 

That's why I hope that somewhere during the edge engine change to Vulkan maybe the rendering process will be refined also to eliminate this issue.

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by St4rgun

[Svsmokey]

This is my biggest problem with vr in DCS as well . I have never flown pancake since , but the shimmering , sparkling and flickering are often impossible to overlook , even at 4x MSAA and pd 1.4 . Combine those with the very close level of detail settings , and i can (almost) understand why people go back to a monitor .

I know nothing of rendering pipelines in vr , or of graphics implementations generally , but i feel that merely throwing hardware at the problem has proven to be largely ineffective , despite the huge (at least for me) expense .

 

[zildac]

32 minutes ago, Svsmokey said:

This is my biggest problem with vr in DCS as well . I have never flown pancake since , but the shimmering , sparkling and flickering are often impossible to overlook , even at 4x MSAA and pd 1.4 . Combine those with the very close level of detail settings , and i can (almost) understand why people go back to a monitor .
I know nothing of rendering pipelines in vr , or of graphics implementations generally , but i feel that merely throwing hardware at the problem has proven to be largely ineffective , despite the huge (at least for me) expense .
 

It's my only gripe with VR too. It was the first thing I noticed when moving from 2D and it still really bugs me, but as many others have said it's offset by the immersion. I'm sure it's a fundamental limitation of the existing engine but it would be a huge leap if it could be addressed once and for all. But I suspect it's no small task.

Edited July 24, 2021 by zildac

[St4rgun]

35 minutes ago, zildac said:

It's my only gripe with VR too. It was the first thing I noticed when moving from 2D and it still really bugs me, but as many others have said it's offset by the immersion. I'm sure it's a fundamental limitation of the existing engine but it would be a huge leap if it could be addressed once and for all. But I suspect it's no small task.

 

Nowadays I'm waiting for the next "holy grail" open beta update week-by-week to see something magical in the development notes... With no luck.

It's really sad to see a seriously very long list of every itty-bitty small feature's polishing (like the AIM-120 missile guidance fine tuning, or changing the fuse time of a specific weapon) every week while the FUNDAMENTALS of the visuals is not resolved in VR.

 

I feel somehow that the VR branch is somehow neglected by the devs. I would really like to see the STELLAR image quality of this game in 2D to be able to get in VR as well.

 

Devs, any comments on this topic?

Can we have any small hint from the future development roadmap of the VR-specific development?

Will the Vulkan API help us?

Do we have ANY hope in the next months or years to change this situation?

 

I'm using DCS in VR on a daily basis, but getting tired of this unresolved issue.

[zildac]

I can understand. Albeit a crazy idea perhaps, but I would really like to see a VR specific branch/fork, with VR specific visual enhancements/fixes at the top of the sprint backlog items. However, I appreciate the logistics of this are probably very complex.  I'd happily live with some  "fixed" quirks in the base game versus VR fidelity. And before anyone calls  me another VR winger early adopter, this is in the VR forum

[Supmua]

For me the ideal AA for DCS would be TAA, plus CAS for sharpening to counter some blurriness from TAA.  Since we don’t have that, MSAA + CAS is your best bet albeit at higher performance cost. 

 

Running a high res headset such as the G2 or the Vive Pro 2 can also help reduce shimmering artifacts. 
 

it should be interesting to see what happens with the upcoming performance update of the other flightsim, to see what technique they implement for performance gain. 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Supmua

[St4rgun]

The problem is not the quality difference between TAA and MSAA, but the issue, that some of the objects on the picture is NOT anti-aliased AT ALL in VR, even with MSAA 2x and SSAA.

It can be related to some transparent textures and can have correlation with the heavy aliasing of the new clouds at the distance.

 

Somehow the horizon is what aliasing more but only in certain circumstances (the open water at the horizon anti-aliased perfectly, while the mountain ridge line aliased much more).

 

I'm trying to classify which objects or parts are not anti-aliased properly.

[captainHelmet]

Without going back to play 2.5 it feels like MSAA broke when they fixed the MSAA mask in 2.7. The mask used to do nothing but now you can swipe it and see the difference visually as well as get a small fps boost at lower values. But as has been said already, it seems like MSAA isn’t being applied consistently in the center of your view. 

[St4rgun]

I managed to play with all the nVidia control panel parameters just to find out that the followind settings REALLY DOES HELP with the AA issue at least with my Reverb G2:

• Antialiasing – Settings - ENHANCED
• Texture filtering – anisotropic sample optimization - OFF
• Texture filtering – Quality - HIGH QUALITY
• Texture Filtering – Negative LOD Bias - CLAMP
• Multi-Frame Sampled AA - OFF (causes graphical elements jittering if switched ON)
• Antialiasing Transparency - 8x SSAA

 

I use ingame MSAA 2x which can be handled well even by my poor GTX 1070 (Reverb G2 resolution set to 50% in SteamVR, 1.0 PD ingame).

The ingame SSAA 1.5x or 2.0x does NOT do anything on the picture in VR (at least for me), but it's taxing on the framerate, so it should be held OFF.

 

With all these settings the yellow lines on the airports' concrete no longer shimmer at all. the contours of the trees are also perfect.

Overall the image is much more pleasant than before, so it worth a try to check out.

 

Unfortunatelly I still can't resolve the aliasing of the buildings' shadows, they are not anti-aliased at all. Also the edges of some objects are problematic (edges of some of the elements of the cockpit, like the HUD etc).

Edited July 26, 2021 by St4rgun

[Thundercat710]

On 7/24/2021 at 8:11 AM, St4rgun said:

I feel somehow that the VR branch is somehow neglected by the devs.

 

Devs, any comments on this topic?

Can we have any small hint from the future development roadmap of the VR-specific development?

Will the Vulkan API help us?

Do we have ANY hope in the next months or years to change this situation?

 

Q. What's the number one priority for ED besides bug fixes?

A. Other aspects of game's graphics in general, and then "Graphics cards are performing better in leaps and bounds, and we need to be able to take advantage of that tech. And VR is becoming so important that we really have to enhance our graphics experience if we're to compete."

 

So they do acknowledge they have to improve it to stay alive. 

[St4rgun]

First I was using my trusty Rift CV1 with my 2080 in DCS for more than a year and I get use to "ignore" the screendoor-effect of that HMD.

I was pre-ordered Reverb G2 back in July 2020 and patiently waited to get any performance measurements whether I have to change my 2080 to a 3080 or not.

But I was on the unlucky side: my 2080 died just a week before I got my G2 in the middle of December 2020.

 

I immediately switched to the "spare" 1070 but try to imagine the comprimises I had to make to get it work with the G2 with reasonable framerate. DCS was a stuttering mess then.

 

Because of the holidays it took more than a month to get my money back for the 2080 under the warranty at the end of January 2021.

But during that period the VGA crysis already escalated with insane prices, so now I stuck with my 1070.

 

The good news, that the latest 2.7 version DCS is pretty much fine with the G2 even with the 1070. You can see my settings above, the framerate is mostly 30ish which can be handled perfectly by SteamVR's motion reprojection (G2 set to 90 Hz).

The single best setting was the forced DX11 mode in SteamVR, I think this helps a lot in my case, when the GPU is much weaker than my CPU (10700k).

 

With all these settings I can play DCS with the G2 for hours, but only offline missions.

The Mi-24 module is the only one with significantly lower framerate (20ish), so any optimization for that is highly welcome.

 

Anyhow the immersion in VR is a blast with G2. I hope that in the future I will be able to reach a rock solid 45fps which is pretty perfect for me with my HMD.

But the image quality difference between the pancake and VR version is night and day. All is caused mainly by the lack of proper AA.

 

The "other simulator" uses TAA which is taxing on my 1070 but the AA is wastly superior. Unfortunately the clarity can suffer because of the blurring in the distance, so DCS is better in this field.

Sometimes I switch my SteamVR and OpenXR to set my G2 to 100% res and see what to expect in picture quality. This is a slideshow, but "the other sim" is simple breathtaking, while DCS is really cool, but plagued by shimmering.

 

I think if ED can finally implement proper AA then DCS will be paramount in VR.

All we can hope that the arrival of the Vulkan is closer than we think. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by St4rgun

[zildac]

Agreed, the number one issue in terms of visual clarity in VR at present seems to be AA related. And it also seems to have been exacerbated by the introduction of 2.7, clouds, and possibly some lighting changes. I really have no other gripes aside from this one in regard to the VR experience. Yes, it requires a monster rig to run at an acceptable frame rate but that is unfortunately the legacy of a 10-year-old+ engine that has been adapted to support VR.

[St4rgun]

I have high hopes that the heavy aliasing of the new clouds on the horizon is not solved by ED yet because they already try to figure out the AA concept as a whole anyway.

They won't allocate resources on solving the clouds aliasing alone when maybe a modernized engine is close with proper AA.

 

I will be really disappointed if the present situation stay with us more than half a year...

Edited August 7, 2021 by St4rgun

[Germane]

+1

[hazzer]

Would much appreciate some decent aa options for vr. Currently the shimmering is just not great. 

[dburne]

As the resolution in the devices continue to increase the need for that AA starts to decrease.

I am quite happily running DCS in my Vive Pro 2 now with no AA on.

I am running at around 3200 per eye in Steam VR.

[St4rgun]

The headset resolution is only half part of the problem.

Aliasing can and will occur at high resolution also, but this time the problem is not only aliasing of the edges, but some kind of flickering aliasing which shimmers a LOT.

Without AA it's unevitable that some parts of objects on the scene will be smaller than the pixel size (subpixel resolution).

In that case if the movement of the viewer or the object causes this size to be bigger than one pixel then this pixel is shown, but is hidden otherwise.

This phenomemon called shimmering, flickering of object pixels.

 

For the eyes it's really bad to focus on the important parts of the scene while a LOT of unimportant moving noise can be seen at the not-antialiased shimmering edges.

If you don't use AA, then the filtering is done by your brain which induce fatigue.

 

If you don't use AA but set the resolutoin much higher then the supersampling done the job of the AA while downsampling to the native resolution of the HMD.

 

What is really strange for me in DCS, that 2x MSAA quality looks pretty much perfect for me using my G2 at only 50% resolution.

Where it works, it works perfectly. But somehow some parts of the whole image is not antialiased AT ALL. Thats the problem.

 

There are always edges here and there whose resolution is just horrible. Not too much, but enough to ruin the whole experience.

 

If only we could get some 2x MSAA level of antialiasing done right for the whole scene every time, then I'd be happy.

Edited August 28, 2021 by St4rgun

[Enduro14]

Roll your head left and right, you will see jaggies disappear and reappear.  Something odd about this graphics engine.

[St4rgun]

I made some interesting observations during my investigation of this AA issue.

With 2x MSAA it seems that every edge which is part of an object is antialiased AGAINST THE SAME OBJECT perfectly, but NOT ANTIALIASED against other objects or the background.

I have no idea how the rendering engine works but it seems that the antialiasing is done on object level before all the objects are assembled in the final picture.

 

But why is this happening only in VR?

 

Example: in the Mi8 cockpit try to examine one of the cyclics joystick, or any of the instruments' bezel.

The bezel's outer edge is not antialiased against the left console blue body, but the instruments scales are perfectly antialiased (maybe the are textures, so that's why they are filtered perfectly).

 

The extreme example is the engineers' console: the small white text at the switches aliases very badly when changing viewing distance (unreadable from the copilot seat).

Maybe these small white letters are separate objects not simple texture.

Meanwhile the MIN-MAX lettering of the throttle handle on the collective the text are perfectly antialiased regardless of the viewing distance.

 

There are some reflective materials where the outer edge is absolutely bad: like the window heaters cables in the Mi8 cockpit frame: the outer edges are LIGHT BLUE (like they are antialiased against the blue sky), while having a dark background. Weird.

 

I have not seen appearing and disappearing antialiasing effect at all.

Some edges are always antialiased but others are not and they are shimmering constantly.

Edited September 3, 2021 by St4rgun

[FoxTwo]

On 8/29/2021 at 3:38 PM, Enduro14 said:

Roll your head left and right, you will see jaggies disappear and reappear.  Something odd about this graphics engine.

 

There's a reason deferred rendering is not preferred for most VR games.

Edited September 4, 2021 by FoxTwo

[St4rgun]

I've found an interesting technique here (I hope it is allowed to link another company's tech here): https://www.livenda.com

It seems it can eliminate the biggest drawback of TAA: blurring the distance.

So There should be some modern AA technique which is compatible with VR and deferred shading.

 

Another solution would be VRSS which is nVidia tech, so vendor dependent (https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-vrss-a-zero-effort-way-to-improve-your-vr-image-quality/).

 

The ingame SSAA would be really nice but at least for me it simple does not work: if I switch off MSAA and turn SSAA to 2x then the GPU load will be higher without visible antialiasing effects.

 

I have really high hopes in the dev team. I'm sure they will sort it out somehow. 

Edited September 4, 2021 by St4rgun