Possibly a silly question regarding motion reprojection

[Digitalvole]

Ok I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this already (it’s a big fat: No) but I’m going to ask it anyway because I’m desperate. 
 
Is there any way to affect where the artifacts produced by motion reprojection appear?

I ask because with my G2 I always get them on the hud symbology and I find it really breaks the immersion as the flight path marker wobbles and flickers as well as other hud elements (and it’s doing my head in.) With my Rift S it was on the wingtips and sometimes the mfd buttons and therefore easy to ignore.

Does anyone else get this?

Odly it only starts once I go past 20k feet and my gpu frame time drops to 12ms. If I’m down low with a frame time of say 15ms the hud is rock solid. It’s the same with forced on or just enabled.

This is probably a daft post that I already know the answer to but it’s worth a try, right? 

[edmuss]

I think your problem might be because motion smoothing is switching on and off.

Assuming you're @90hz I think the 12ms might be close enough to the threshold for it to turn off smoothing at which point you'll get artifacts. At 15ms you're well within the motion smoothing active range (60-90fps) so it will always be turned on with a blue square on the indicator.

If you run the headset @60hz then the smoothing should stay off assuming you can handle the initial refresh rate flicker till you get used to it.

I think there is an option to force smoothing on all the time in the wmr menu in steamvr, not too sure if it works though. It might be worthwhile enabling the smoothing indicator of you don't already so you can see what's going on.

[Digitalvole]

Thanks for the suggestions edmuss, the motion smoothing switching on and off was what I thought it would be  too, but when I force it on it’s the same. 
I suspect it’s just bad luck that that’s where it appears.

[edmuss]

Have you got the smoothing indicator turned on in the headset?

Ideally you want solid blue for smoothing on or solid green for above refresh rate. Perhaps turn your graphical settings up to move your frametimes into the always smoothing range (12-24ms I think @90hz) so that you are consistently forcing smoothing? Added bonus it looks better

[dureiken]

Hi

I have exactly the same problem : when I force ON RP on desktop, HUGE amount of bubbles and artifacts. With 6900XT and 3080Ti finally.

In game, I also have these problems when FPS are high, and it reduces when they are below a certain value (don't kno which one)

So I can't use RP for now, because even with high settings I have sometimes with artifacts

[edmuss]

I've only ever noticed artifacts in DCS when the indicator has skipped from green to blue and vice versa.

I may be wrong, but from my recollection: -

@90hz headset 50-89fps will motion smooth with a blue square, DCS fps counter will read 45fps when the square is blue.  Below around 50fps (20ms) the smoothing will turn off altogether.

@60hz headset 33-59fps will motion smooth with a blue square, DCS fps counter will read 30fps when the square is blue.  Below around 33fps (30ms) the smoothing will turn off altogether.

I think the software needs just a couple of frames above refresh rate in order to generate the synthetic frames which are then inserted, from my guestimated figures above it's about 55% of refresh rate.  Hence why you need to maintain higher than half refresh rate in order motion smooth.

I seem to remember that trying to force smoothing on in wmr steamvr menu is bugged and it only properly works on auto.  I can't say for certain as I've been without my G2 for over a week as it decided to stop working immediately after I got my 3070FE, HP warrantied the headset and the replacement should be with me today

When I had my 1070 I found that the best balance for me was @60hz headset with 60% resolution, smoothing auto and I would get around 22-26ms down low and 18-20ms up high with generally high settings all round.  There simply wasn't enough horsepower to push more than 50fps consistently so the smoothing would jump on an off (as you're witnessing) @90hz.  Dropped down to @60hz and because I could keep above the minimum smoothing threshold it would be buttery smooth with no artifacts but stuck at 30fps.  I'm very fortunate that I don't suffer from low framerates in VR or the @60hz refresh flicker.

If your hardware configuration is such that it's always dancing around the threshold range 85-90 fps then try turning settings up to drag it kicking and screaming down into the 70 fps range and get it to force smoothing that way

Edited December 8, 2021 by edmuss

[dureiken]

did you achieve to have 30fps constant with RP forced ON and Reverb on 60hz ? I didn't

[edmuss]

Yup, Blue indicator solid, DCS fps counter pegged to 30 fps and fpsvr frametimes varying from 22-30ms.  Absolutely buttery smooth for me - note that this is on singleplayer only and my smooth might be your janky.

On the rare occasion that I would top 60 fps (16ms), above the clouds and looking up at blue sky then back down to cockpit I would see artifacts as the smoothing turned back on.  There is another setting in steamvr for motion smoothing, I don't recall what it is off hand but assuming I get my replacement reverb back today and it all works correctly I'll check my settings and report back.

In my experience the windows WMR works really nicely, once it's locked into a state it doesn't artifact at all and is really smooth.

Edited December 8, 2021 by edmuss

[Digitalvole]

I’ve got to send my G2 back due to a dead pixel (luckily I have 6 days left on my warranty) but when I get it back I’ll try 60hz mode. I’m borrowing a friends Quest 2 to see what it’s like, I (think) I’m willing to sacrifice some resolution to get a smoother experience. As long as I can read the mfds in the f16 and the tiny labels in the f14 I’ll be happy.

Unless one can get a solid 90fps then some reprojection artifacts are to be expected and for the most part with my Rift S I could ignore them because the hud symbology remained solid, (I’ve given up trying to get 90fps with the G2, may be possible but not with readable mfds) it’s just where I get them with the G2 that is unfortunate. Wobbly hud symbology is an immersion killer for me. Also that they get worse as my frame time improves is a bit of a head scratcher.
 

When I get the replacement headset I’ll do more testing, but I have to say with the G2 all I seem to have done is play with the settings. What I’d give for an Oculus headset  with better resolution!

 

[edmuss]

Try reducing the resolution a touch and using kegety's/speed of heat's vr shader mods, the alpha texture filtering makes all of the text in the cockpit infinitely better so you can run much lower resolution.  Essentially it keeps the hud text crisp instead of becoming blocky.

Only downside for me is there is a load of reflected baked in glare apparent from the guages glass in certain lighting conditions.

[Digitalvole]

Again thanks for the suggestions edmuss, I currently use the VR shader mod (clear water) FSR and sharper eye, oh and the one that reduces the impact of cockpit shadows. My Frame times are pretty good in general (though they were better a couple of patches ago). I don’t think there is a solution to my problem, I knew starting this thread was clutching at straws. I just think it’s the nature WMR and it’s ASW equivalent.
 

I thought the G2 was going to be the last VR headset I’d need for a long time but it’s turned out to be a bit of a pain in the arse if I’m honest. Looks great but, for me, that’s about it. Oh well, I’m sure something better will come out sooner or latter, and I’m sure ED have some improvements for us in the pipeline.

edit. For what it’s worth I found I got the best balance between performance and visuals with MSAA off and steam SS at 100%. Any lower and the sweet spot starts shrinking noticeably. It looked great and up until the old version of the shader mod stopped working I had gpu frame times in the low teens flying low over cypress in the F14. Still had the wobbly hud in the f16/18 though.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Digitalvole

[edmuss]

Have you tested increasing the resolution/PD to force the framerates down?

My experience with the G2 (till it failed) and my 1070 was great in dcs once I'd tweaked and tested but that's more to do with me driving it with suboptimal gpu.  In elite dangerous and halflife alyx it was an absolute joy to use because it just worked, no faffing trying to eke out the last few ms of frametime.  Just put on the headset, WMR portal boots itself, steamvr boots itself and off you go.  When I got my 3070 I swapped it over and something failed in the headset, new cable didn't solve it so HP have warrantied it with only a couple of weeks left!

[edmuss]

I now have my warranty headset and tested it for the first time with the 3070.

Using the same settings as previous*  apart from 100% resolution I get a solid 13-18ms, when set to 90hz it still kicks motion smoothing off occasionally (blue square changes to red square) and it starts to get a little jumpy.  I've switched back to the 60hz I was using before and it's now motion smoothing down to 30fps, but still pulling the same frametime.  Because I now have more overhead I've turned up a couple of graphical settings, disbaled openvrfsr to test for now and I've disabled the simple glass shader in kegetys to remove the glare; it's now sitting at 50-55 fps, smoothing down to 30fps.  GPU is only running at around 65% so much cooler and quieter.

Motion smoothing it turned on in steamvr menu and reprojection is set to auto in the wmr steamvr menu.

All buttery smooth and the only artifact I've seen so far is the tip of the pitot tube on the right wing of the the A10 bends when rolling

*50% resolution, openvrfsr and kegetys vr mod

[Digitalvole]

Hey edmuss can I ask you a question about your G2 return? 
im waiting for a replacement to arrive in the next couple of days (very quick turnaround) but there’s no mention of what they want me to do with the old headset. What did you do? Im in the UK too btw.

Glad your new one is working nicely

[edmuss]

They want me to return what was in the box, that is the headset without speakers but with the face gasket. They didn't want the old cable back, I'll keep it anyway as a backup because it was actually the headset that failed not specifically the cable (although it was flaky). The new cable is much better though and just works as the original should have done.

Delivery took a couple of days with DHL but the HP support has been great, did have to carry out a load of testing including fresh installs of windows and alternative machines but they had no issues once done.

[Digitalvole]

Ah ok thanks, was wondering if they would be picking up the old one when they drop off the new one? They’ve said nothing to me other than the new one would be here in a couple of days.

I just told them I had a dead pixel and that was that. With something like 6 days left on the warranty.

[edmuss]

They pack a returns label with the paperwork on the box it'll come in, just pop your old headset in, put the label on and I presume you then have to let DHL know it's ready for collection.

I haven't a clue really, I've not looked at it at all due to being too excited to get a headset back and to test out the 3070

Slightly annoyingly my new headset appears to have a speck of fluff behind the right lens, guess it's stuck with static but it's not shifting! Mentioned it to HP for reference but I said it's not worth another warranty. They did say that if it gets too annoying then they'll look into it. I suspect that it'll become invisible within a week or so but credit due to HP, their product support has been spot on.

[RvL]

You ever play multiplayer Edmuss?

I remember you replied on my topic me having stutters and you had a 1070 back then.

Im an MP guy myself and running also a 3070 with a Ryzen 5 5600x at 4.8mhz with 32GB ram at 3400mhz it still giving me bad frametime into the 20's with fps going into the 30's with steamvr SS at 60% and mssa at 2x with most other options at vr preset or lower.

Also giving me pretty massive ghosting from motion reprojection. It certainly aint a toally smooth experience specially at times where big stutters appear for seconds or even minuten before going back normal again. A few months ago it worked way better. I really hope Vulkan and VR optimalisation will be released soon.

I really feel like my VR experience is differend every time i play. Sometimes it feels smooth, oher times its a stuttershow and i wonder what have changed. Cant seem to put my finger on it. I wish to have a 100% smooth experience which looks like something unrealistic at the moment for VR.

Edited December 11, 2021 by RvL

[edmuss]

To be honest, no, my flight skills aren't up there enough to do mp (in other words even after all these years I've not been able to dedicate enough time to solidly learn a module)

I know that there are other issues mp performance andi dare say that my super smooth sp experience may well be marred otherwise.

Is the mp framerate in DCS linked to the performance of the server? In Arma 3 all of the client framerates would suffer if the server was struggling, no matter the clients hardware. I could pull 80fps on sp but get 35 on a server.

[RvL]

1 hour ago, edmuss said:

To be honest, no, my flight skills aren't up there enough to do mp (in other words even after all these years I've not been able to dedicate enough time to solidly learn a module)

I know that there are other issues mp performance andi dare say that my super smooth sp experience may well be marred otherwise.

Is the mp framerate in DCS linked to the performance of the server? In Arma 3 all of the client framerates would suffer if the server was struggling, no matter the clients hardware. I could pull 80fps on sp but get 35 on a server.

Up untill last year playing only singleplayer i decided to jump into multiplayer, but im only enjoying PVE servers which are also a great place to learn your aircraft and being in contact with other players flying missions together.

It does tax your system having lots of AI on the ground and air.

But since playing MP there is no going back to SP even having stutters and what not in MP.

 

[Digitalvole]

On 12/10/2021 at 8:28 PM, edmuss said:

They pack a returns label with the paperwork on the box it'll come in, just pop your old headset in, put the label on and I presume you then have to let DHL know it's ready for collection.

I haven't a clue really, I've not looked at it at all due to being too excited to get a headset back and to test out the 3070

Slightly annoyingly my new headset appears to have a speck of fluff behind the right lens, guess it's stuck with static but it's not shifting! Mentioned it to HP for reference but I said it's not worth another warranty. They did say that if it gets too annoying then they'll look into it. I suspect that it'll become invisible within a week or so but credit due to HP, their product support has been spot on.

Mine arrived yesterday, and yeah it’s just like you said. A small part of me thought maybe they won’t want the old ones back. haha yeah right!

hope that fluff behind the lens sorts itself out, I’d find that very annoying.

In other news, strange things are afoot. Turned on DCS yesterday as normal and it crashed to desktop twice, which was odd. I had a look in the Steam VR settings and for some reason unbeknown to me 100% SS was now 4000x4000 (roughly, can’t  remember exact numbers). So I’ve had to lower it to 65% to get as close to native res as I can.

Interestingly fpsvr says my SS is at 97%. But my gpu frame times have gone down by about 3ms! This is fantastic, now my performance is better than it has been since, well as long as I can remember. When I turn off motion reprojection  I’m getting fps in the high 80s most of the time (soo close, yet so far). 

The fact I don’t know why this has happened makes my a little uncomfortable, as it may stop happening at any time, but in the mean time it’s bloody brilliant.

was there a Steam update recently that may be responsible?

Edited December 15, 2021 by Digitalvole

[edmuss]

Don't equate the steamvr resolution with the headset resolution, it's a red herring!

Steamvr adds additional resolution to account for lost display area do to barrel distortion and the like, setting the G2 to 100% is something like 3860x3860 in steamvr but that is correctly displaying the 2160x2160 native res of the headset.  Really confusing but has been confirmed by HP technical.

Running the headset at 65% of native resolution will obviously give you massive framerate increases, try turning it back up to 100 and see how the balance between clarity and performance is.  I tested 80% and 150% last night, going down didn't make a significant impact on performance but there was much more aliasing where as 150% readily murdered it

[Digitalvole]

What’s odd is that up until yesterday 100% SS was correct, then for no reason I can tell of 100% SS was much higher res and 65% SS got me back to the res I had the day before or near enough (97% rather than 100%). But with much improved performance, a performance boost that doesn’t correspond with a 3% drop in SS.
 

I’ve been tinkering with settings and different levels of SS for months now in my quest for decent performance/clarity and this is definitely something new. I always have fpsvr on and am paying close attention to the numbers.
 

Up until yesterday 100% SS in steam vr = 100% SS indicated in fpsvr, now 65% SS in steam vr = 97% SS indicated in fpsvr. I’m certainly very happy about this, I just can’t work out how it happened. I think there must have been a steam update that changed things.
 

I’ll try to remember to get the exact figures I’m seeing for various percentages of SS, but I remember, from yesterday, 100% is now 4xxx X 4xxx.

 

This stuff isn’t easy to explain is it? They really out did themselves in making it more complicated than it needs to be.

Im not going to look a gift horse in the mouth though, so for now my general feeling about it all is WoooooHooooo!!

Edited December 15, 2021 by Digitalvole