SteamVR motion smoothing not working?

[Youda]

I'm playing with the settings to make the VR experience as good as possible with my hardware, but i've run into a weird issue.

I have a standalone installation of DCS. I enabled Motion Smoothing in the SteamVR global settings, but subjectively it seems to do nothing.

When i look into the sky, my FPS reaches 90 and i can feel the smooth movement of the 90 Hz. When i look at the terrain, FPS drops down to 45 as expected, but i can feel noticable stuttering when moving my head, as if the headset was really producing only 45 frames per second with no extrapolated frames at all.

Do you experience the same issue? Is the Motion Smoothing not working for standalone DCS?

[eaglecash867]

WMR headsets like the G2 do "Motion Reprojection" and that is turned on/off by a different method than the SteamVR settings.

 

I just copied and pasted this from another thread I had it posted in:

 

1.  Go to your Steam folder>steamapps>common>MixedRealityDriver>bin>win64 and double-click on OpenVRSettingsUX.exe

2. Click the "Graphics" button on the left side of that window, and then click on the "Motion Vector" button.  This will force reprojection on.  Setting it to Auto will also work, but I have found that to cause a little bit of hitching as Motion Reprojection is automatically turned on and off.

 

You'll only have to do the above once.  It will stay turned on after that.

[Leader98]

Strange, there is no MixRealityDriver folder in my Steam folder>steamapps>common>...

There is a SteamVR folder on that location but there is no OpenVRSettingsUX.exe in Steam folder>steamapps>common>SteamVR>bin>win64

 

EDIT: Found the wanted file on Steam folder>steamapps>common>MixedRealityDriver>bin>win64>OpenVRSettingsUX.exe on another drive (was initially checking the C-drive only).

Edited September 27, 2021 by Leader98
Update

[Youda]

Oh, i indeed have a Reverb G2, didn't know there were other hidden settings that override the SteamVR settings. Thanks a lot.

However it still isn't working. I enabled the motion reprojection status indicator, and when i start a mission it goes red, which according to this means my FPS is lower than half the refresh rate (45 FPS), which according to fpsVR is not true - it shows frame time ~18 ms which should be enough for 45 FPS (22 ms).

I have no idea why it things the FPS is too low.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Youda

[eaglecash867]

Enabling the status indicator isn't going to solve your problem.  Please review my previous post and follow the instructions there.

[Youda]

Eh, i did of course. You have very low confidence in me

I'm telling you what happened afterwards.

[lefuneste01]

Disable reprojection and see how many fps you have. If <45 fps  (with margin) lower your settings and/or set frequency of HMD to 60 Hz. Then reproj will be setup at 30 fps, you may have greater margin.

There will be a lot if missions where you won't be able to achieve 45 fps in VR with "normal" settings.

[Lurker]

Let me get this straight Motion Vector (reprojection) in Steam VMR is not the same as Steam VR motion smoothing? 

[eaglecash867]

4 hours ago, Lurker said:

Let me get this straight Motion Vector (reprojection) in Steam VMR is not the same as Steam VR motion smoothing? 

No.  They're not the same thing when you have a WMR headset.

[Lurker]

25 minutes ago, eaglecash867 said:

No.  They're not the same thing when you have a WMR headset.

 

I'm a fairly recent owner of the G2, so could you please elaborate on which is better to use and why, or rather what is the difference between the two? I assumed that they did the same thing, analogue to ASW in the Oculus software. 

[Digitalvole]

This is new to me, I had it set to let steam vr handle it and it worked. Could enable, disable and force on through steam.

[eaglecash867]

3 hours ago, Lurker said:

 

I'm a fairly recent owner of the G2, so could you please elaborate on which is better to use and why, or rather what is the difference between the two? I assumed that they did the same thing, analogue to ASW in the Oculus software. 

Just try it out and see what you think of it.  It only takes a few minutes, and isn't permanent.

[Digitalvole]

Is there any difference between the two? 

[ShaunX]

For a WMR headset, the SteamVR settings just allow you finer and per-application control over WMR for SteamVR motion reprojection. It's not a different algorythm. The choice you have is between Auto, where it will only cut in if whenever you can't maintain 90FPS, or Motion Vector, where it constantly attempts to maintain 45FPS with reprojection.

 

extract from Microsoft ..

 

"

Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR has an experimental motion reprojection feature to make 90 FPS reprojection more smooth.

When motion reprojection is enabled, all Steam VR games will render nominally at ½ frame rate (45 fps instead of 90 FPS) while Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR uses motion vectors generated by the GPU to extrapolate the next frame. For SteamVR games that reliably hit 60 FPS+ on a given PC, this should result in a solid 90 FPS experience with occasional artifacts while maintaining a comfortable experience.

The available motion reprojection modes are as follows:

• SteamVR per-app setting: Allows you to control motion reprojection through the SteamVR Settings UI. You can then open SteamVR Settings, go to Video > Per-Application Video Settings, and select an option for "Motion Smoothing."
• Auto: Enables motion reprojection to turn on automatically when a game is rendering too slowly to maintain 90 FPS. When a game begins to maintain 90 FPS or starts rendering at less than 45 FPS, motion reprojection will turn off. Asynchronous rotational reprojection is enabled always.
• Motion Vector: Forces the application to always run at half-framerate with motion vector reprojection.
• None: Disables motion reprojection.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/enthusiast-guide/using-steamvr-with-windows-mixed-reality

"

 

Personally, and following the DCS clouds release (and the fact I like to run with msaa x 2) I always have it fixed on at 45FPS.

[Digitalvole]

Gotcha, so it’s basically the same as Force On, but not a different “type” of motion smoothing/reprojection/asw etc.

 

thanks

[Youda]

@Digitalvole I think what he meant was a difference when you use headset natively built for SteamVR such as Valve Index compared to headset made for WMR.

Native SteamVR headsets will use SteamVR's own motion smoothing, whereas native WMR headsets will allow SteamVR to enable/disable motion smoothing, but in the background the SteamVR will delegate this functionality to WMR instead of doing it by itself.

At least that's how i think it works, it might be wrong.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Youda

[Lurker]

I'm gonna have to experiment with this a little bit. So far I've been using speed for heat's guide and just left it on SteamVR per app setting. Thanks for the replies guys. 

[ShaunX]

38 minutes ago, Youda said:

@Digitalvole I think what he meant was a difference when you use headset natively built for SteamVR such as Vive Index compared to headset made for WMR.

Native SteamVR headsets will use SteamVR's own motion smoothing, whereas native WMR headsets will allow SteamVR to enable/disable motion smoothing, but in the background the SteamVR will delegate this functionality to WMR instead of doing it by itself.

At least that's how i think it works, it might be wrong.

 

 

Exactly. If you select "Motion Vector" in the WMR for SteamVR settings then it's locked on for all your apps, if you select "SteamVR per app Setting" then you can set it individually for each app via the the SteamVR settings. That's the only difference.

[Digitalvole]

2 hours ago, Youda said:

@Digitalvole I think what he meant was a difference when you use headset natively built for SteamVR such as Vive Index compared to headset made for WMR.

Native SteamVR headsets will use SteamVR's own motion smoothing, whereas native WMR headsets will allow SteamVR to enable/disable motion smoothing, but in the background the SteamVR will delegate this functionality to WMR instead of doing it by itself.

At least that's how i think it works, it might be wrong.

 

 

Ah ok, thanks for the clarification. I think my tired old brain has finally grasped the concept.

 

looking forward to open xr implementation for dcs. I know it’s not been confirmed but it’s bound to happen eventually if the plan is for it to be an industry standard. I’ve not used it before but it’ll be one less program running in the background, which has gotta be a good thing.

[eaglecash867]

2 hours ago, Lurker said:

I'm gonna have to experiment with this a little bit. So far I've been using speed for heat's guide and just left it on SteamVR per app setting. Thanks for the replies guys. 

That's what it takes sometimes.  There really isn't any current, official or reliable information as to the differences between Motion Smoothing and Motion Reprojection (aside from guesses on internet forums), so as the saying goes "There's only one way to find out."  For my setup, if Motion Smoothing actually does anything, there's enough of a difference to make it appear as if it doesn't.  For me, enabling Motion Reprojection makes a night and day difference in what I see.  Can't really say that I see any indication of "Motion Smoothing" actually doing anything from the FPS counter either, since it goes up and down, but should be locked at 45FPS (its actually 90 with the interpolated frames, but the FPS counter can't measure those).  When I set the OpenVR setting to Motion Vector, the counter is then locked at 45, and looks much smoother to me.  That's with my "rapid lateral movement" test in the cockpit, while I look for smearing of the cockpit features.

Edited October 1, 2021 by eaglecash867

[Youda]

1 hour ago, Digitalvole said:

Ah ok, thanks for the clarification. I think my tired old brain has finally grasped the concept.

Nothing wrong with your brain, this is a (typical comercial) mess. I had to spend whole weekend googling stuff before i started to understand how this is all done and how i should properly set it up to run DCS.

[Iggy]

Hi Youda - did you get it running sweet in the end - i am just starting out.

[Youda]

@Iggy I have switched to OpenXR via this guide

 

[Iggy]

Thanks for that bud.  Did you see any improvements. Have to say i can't get DCS_UPdater.exe to do anything at the moment lol.

Edited June 23, 2022 by Iggy

[Youda]

I have somewhat more FPS now, but it does not seem to be a drastic improvements like the author suggests.