AMD 6900xt tuning and settings for VR in dcs. My optimal recipe.

[MorphoV]

18 hours ago, TED said:

I get no warping or ghosting. Definitely I don’t use Radeon chill. U use either default or under vault.

Sorry, I don't get it. How you set up the max fps then? It's not the "Frame rate target control", is it?

The GPU is undervolted, yes. It's been on this setting for a long time now. I agree it helped a bit, but even with everything green on fpsVR, I can still see stuttering.

18 hours ago, TED said:

early on I did get warping with mv but force dx11 sorted this I think. 

Yes, right, it's definitely helping. I can still see artifacts though. It's mostly visible when moving my head on menus, but also very noticeable when I'm close to other aircrafts.

18 hours ago, TED said:

There are just so many variables it sometimes gets a bit hard to know exactly what affects what, but I’m trying to slowly break it down and simplify it. Right now it’s all working good.

Yes, it's so cumbersome. I spending all my available time for DCS trying to make it playable, with very little success. I'm glad it's working well for you and hope I'll eventually get a good experience too. It's very frustrating because games which are well developed for VR are working perfectly. Just to seeing the flickering DCS loading screens on VR is a proof that VR hasn't been a priority for ED yet. Hopefully they'll get on to it this year. 

So far, what helped the most reducing the stuttering was:

-Deactivating hyperthreading and overclocking my CPU (i9 9900K)

-Going 60Hz on the G2

-Using VR shaders. 

-Undervolting the GPU.

[DeltaMike]

So far so good, I have the beast running. It does not appear that "one click" undervolting does anything.  Followed this guide to manually undervolt and temps went down 10%, performance up 3% under Unigine Superposition.  Wasn't able to push power limit as I can't keep the durn thing cool but it's better than nothing and puts me in the pack.  Pretty sure fan profile had the most effect.

Starting with anti-lag, fast VRAM timing, and SAM.  That's about it.  Next to wrangle the G2 setup.

Edited January 25, 2022 by DeltaMike

[MorphoV]

48 minutes ago, DeltaMike said:

Followed this guide to manually undervolt and temps went down 10%, performance up 3% under Unigine Superposition. 

Good guide, thank you.

Please let me know if you find a way to set the max fps to 45 without motion smoothing. I've seen it was possible the old Adrenalin software, not the latest.

Yesterday I tried with Riva Tuner Static Server. It worked, but increased the GPU frametime from around 10 to 18ms

[edmuss]

You do realise that setting max FPS to 45 will result in 22ms gpu frametimes? That's in the realms of uncomfortable without motion smoothing taking up the slack. Aim for 55fps (18ms) max without smoothing and it should be much more agreeable on the eyes.

[DeltaMike]

15 hours ago, edmuss said:

You do realise that setting max FPS to 45 will result in 22ms gpu frametimes? That's in the realms of uncomfortable without motion smoothing taking up the slack. Aim for 55fps (18ms) max without smoothing and it should be much more agreeable on the eyes.

Just because you have 22ms between frames doesn't mean your frame time is 22ms.  You can theoretically paint the picture in 11ms, and only display it 45 times per second.  

Several things contribute to discomfort.  It depends on what kind of game you're playing, for example. Frame rate isn't one of them. Minecraft will make ya puke every time, even at 90fps.  

Way I look at it, you're gonna watch Top Gun at 30fps, and you'll like it.  You could also watch it at 90Hz, but if it kept dropping frames, stuttering and flipping between 90Hz and 30Hz, it could get pretty annoying.  That's the problem we are trying to solve here.  

Think about it.  If only 1% of your frames are rendered in say 21ms, at 45fps you'll never drop a frame.  At 90fps you'll drop a frame every second.

Oculus figured that out a long time ago, it's always locked at 45fps.  They specify a 90Hz monitor because of the response rate.  How quickly you can turn a pixel on or off affects latency, which is the main factor that makes you puke.  You don't want to be turning your head while the world is standing still, or (heaven forbid) the opposite.  That'll send you to the Gents-or-Ladies quickly.  

Question is, what to do with this  hot mess.  I feel OP has a key insight; we need to figure out how to cap this beast at 45fps.  Either by forcing motion reprojection, or by setting limits in Adrenaline (and there are a couple of places to do that). 

Throwing money at the problem ($3K for a 3090? Ouch!) is an answer, but it's not the answer.  There is no way anybody is gonna run DCS in VR with a consistent 11ms frame time.  It's not just that we are driving the equivalent of two 4K monitors; the CPU has to render each frame twice.  We gotta figure something out, and we will. 

(Note, I've figured out how the human brain works, but not how a GPU works, so take this with a grain of salt)

Edited January 26, 2022 by DeltaMike

[edmuss]

Is that not the inverse of how vr smoothing works though?
The GPU is rendering frames faster than 22ms/45fps but the smoothing is using the spare frames to interpolate synthetic frames to make up to the 11ms/90fps so it appears smooth.  If you are close to refresh rate (90fps) then there are less synthetic frames to generate and less artifacts.

If you're locking the GPU to render a maximum of 45fps then the frametime surely is 22ms and there are no spare frames to interpolate from.  If you disable smoothing and fly somewhere with 45 fps it's just about doable but it's not pleasant compared to 45 fps smoothed up to 90 fps.  Rendering at 45 fps the GPU will be working at probably only half capacity, this will of course allow you to increase settings accordingly though.  I am very tolerant to unsmoothed vr and low framerates but anything much below 50fps unsmoothed isn't pleasant.

Agree the constant switching of refresh rate is jarring though, better to lock the smoothing on and let the GPU work as hard as it can to keep up with refresh rate.

Edited January 26, 2022 by edmuss

[DeltaMike]

Yeah but the question is, what's the active ingredient?  The frame rate cap, or the synthetic images? 

A lot of DCS'ers hate the synthetic images and turn em off.  Which works with Oculus, at least in the Rift/S era.   Back in the day, Oculus only gave you two choices, basically.  45 or 90fps (or 40/80 with the Rift S iirc).  Challenge was to maintain 45fps on the ground, and there was basically no way to maintain 90 anywhere in DCS so with a nice 1080ti and the right settings you could make it work.  (We drove the developers nuts.  "No matter what you do, my framerate is still only 45!")  Not so with the Reverb, evidently.  Which near as I can tell, runs at whatever frame rate it wants.   

If you go back and look at that tuning series I linked above, you can see the problem with the 6900xt, which is "spikes" in your render time.  The average render time ain't bad; in MSFS for example, the 6900XT can keep up with a 3090 on average.  Question is, what to do with the spikes. How do you smooth it out.  That's the problem Ted is trying to solve, I think. 

-----

Reverb is up and running.  I did get the "black screen" problem, fixed it by unplugging my HDMI monitor.   I forgot to take the film off the lenses and it was still better than my old Rift S.  Pretty awesome, but I'll state for the record, the aggregate user interface is a complete cluster****.     At default settings everywhere except for the undervolt and memory timings, there was a lot of stuttering in DCS 2.5 but that was with my old shader files, and high quality shadows (which I fear may still be a bridge too far).  Presently playing around with environments in Steam Home while a years' worth of DCS updates download at a glacial pace.  

Edited January 26, 2022 by DeltaMike

[edmuss]

Ah yes, the WMR interface

I run the G2 @60Hz because I simply do not have the horsepower to consistently keep it above 55fps (any lower and WMR switches off motion smoothing when run @90Hz), I can however run DCS at maximum settings and it's fully smooth with zero spiking, however the frametimes are getting too close to threshold to kicking out smoothing (33fps) at which point it gets janky.  At maximum settings I will get about 38-40fps with occasionaly drops due to smoke/craters etc.

I've tested without motion smoothing and it's wonderful when over 60hz but much below 50 is horrible, note that this is with zero spiking, frametimes are constant but everything is jerky if you move your head. At lower settings (the DCS VR preset funnily enough) I can get over 100fps at angels10+ but then it's making compromises in the visual clarity/immersion that I'm a sucker for!  With high textures/shadows, medium water and MSAAx2 I can comfortably get 50fps low down which is well within the smoothing envelope for 60Hz.

Without smoothing the headset will run at whatever the GPU can supply it with up until it hits refresh rate, the same should apply to oculus as well if you turn off ASW.  If you can't brute force 50fps minimum or are able to accept 60Hz refresh then you have to rely on smoothing to keep DCS VR comfortable.

I flew my diamondback scout to saggitarius A* the long way round in a rift DK2 powered by a GTX780 with no motion smoothing, DCS with the reverb in comparison is unreal

Edited January 26, 2022 by edmuss

[DeltaMike]

OK well I got impatient and tried it in 2.5.  Three trials: 

• Radeon chill locked at 45 (min and max), motion vector off
• "Frame rate target control" set at 48 (hard to get it right on 45), motion vector off (Settings... Graphics... Advanced)
• Adrenaline set at defaults, motion vector locked on

Regardless, my frames were in the range of 40-55 (with my precious shadows)

Observations:

• Looking out to the side, zipping along close to the ground, it's stuttery no matter what you do.  I've noticed the same thing at the movie theater watching at 30fps, so I think you're right about that.  30-40 fps isn't quite enough to keep up with that kinda motion.
• The worst option is to just let the G2 runs how it wants to, it's stuttering all over the place.  I can see why people get frustrated with it. 
• Between the three options above, they are roughly equivalent to me.  Each is associated with its own weaknesses.  In general, looking outside, motion vector works the best.  Reading cockpit instruments, Chill worked the best for me. 
• ASW has its issues -- propellers are just comically bad -- but motion vector is even worse, even just looking around the cockpit makes things jump and shimmer.  That part needs some work.

I guess we just need to pick our poison.  

Appreciate your thoughts re: 60Hz.  I'll give that a try.  Gotta go throw up first tho. 

Edited January 26, 2022 by DeltaMike

[edmuss]

Should be buttery smooth with smoothing enabled, set it to auto not motion vector.  You are only setting smoothing through the WMR for steamvr menu aren't you?  The steamvr native smoothing won't affect the G2.

Slightly below refresh rate unsmoothed you will get away with but you need to be at about 85-90% of refresh rate I think.

What frametimes are you getting?  At 90Hz you need to be absolutely minimum 50fps equivalent (20ms) otherwise the WMR smoothing will disengage and it will be stuttery/jumpy.  I think the minimum threshold is about 55% of refresh rate for WMR smoothing to be enabled.

For a baseline, set steamvr supersampling to 100% and PD to 1.0 within DCS, by default I think steam will set your SS to 150% based on the GPU hardware, it does with my 3070.  I do run fholgers vrperfkit @ 75 render scale and the clearwater shader mod which knocks a good 4-5ms off the frametimes.

 

[DeltaMike]

CPU and GPU frame times are in the teens.  If fpsVR gives you a total frame time, I didn't see it.  Down low to the ground I know for a fact I wasn't holding 50fps tho. 
 

Edited January 26, 2022 by DeltaMike

[edmuss]

Yeah, that will be stuttery because WMR smoothing has turned off assuming that you're on 90Hz, if your eyes can stomach 60Hz with it's associated refresh flicker then that will give you a huge bunch of extra overhead.  I don't think the CPU/GPU frametimes need to be considered to be combined, as long as one isn't above your smoothing threshold then you should be good.

At baseline (100% steamvr PD1.0 and VR preset) you should be able to pull plenty of frames to keep the smoothing engaged.  Check that there isn't some other form of supersampling going on at a driver level.

edit: if you enable the smoothing status display it will tell you what the smoothing is doing.  Green square is good, blue square is smoothing, cyan square is CPU bottleneck and red square is off.

Edited January 26, 2022 by edmuss

[DishDoggie]

I just got a Power Color RX 6900 XT Red Devil with a 1000w PS and will be going with new 64g Corsair Memory 3600mhz 2x32 on a x570 Gaming x Bios Current Version. I have at this point in time a 3950x AMD CPU my VR is the G2. I have been a life long Nvidia user BUT don't want to give them any of my money anymore so I got the Radeon. Do You Guys Install the Software or just the Drivers. Nvidia I only installed the Drivers. Did You use DDU to remove the GPU drivers before the Install? I do Video editing too so What about the Encoder issue I think I understand AMD Radeon does not have. Any issues or problems I need to know about? I fly the UH-1 Huey all the time so I'm low to the ground all the time and I am hoping to have a way better VR going from a 2080 TI 12g Factory OC card. I hate turning things to low I want the Juice of HIGH settings. What a dream DCS is in VR. Man it's hard to run. 

[TED]

5 hours ago, DishDoggie said:

I just got a Power Color RX 6900 XT Red Devil with a 1000w PS and will be going with new 64g Corsair Memory 3600mhz 2x32 on a x570 Gaming x Bios Current Version. I have at this point in time a 3950x AMD CPU my VR is the G2. I have been a life long Nvidia user BUT don't want to give them any of my money anymore so I got the Radeon. Do You Guys Install the Software or just the Drivers. Nvidia I only installed the Drivers. Did You use DDU to remove the GPU drivers before the Install? I do Video editing too so What about the Encoder issue I think I understand AMD Radeon does not have. Any issues or problems I need to know about? I fly the UH-1 Huey all the time so I'm low to the ground all the time and I am hoping to have a way better VR going from a 2080 TI 12g Factory OC card. I hate turning things to low I want the Juice of HIGH settings. What a dream DCS is in VR. Man it's hard to run. 

Almost the same set up I have. The only difference is I have a 3800xt cpu. You should be able to get very good vr performance with that setup. Smooth and jitter free pretty much at at least 100% svr res and pd 1.0. 
i say that because I am getting that. I download the whole Radeon software. You can use msi afterburner as well if you prefer it but I just find it all simper to use Radeon own software for over clocking, undervaulting, tweaking and messing. Definitely use something like ddu to remove absolutely all nvidia drivers and software. 
I have been continuing the testing and now focusing more on single player performance as mp server is so variable depending on factors outside my control. It’s at the point now on mp that sometimes it’s fantastic performance, then the server mod changes something and performance drops a bit. Generally always very playable now and stable though.

In sp I’m now using mv auto and motion smoothing in svr, 100% svr res, and sometimes higher. All settings high. 
A few other things I’ve done and realized. Empty room for wmr helps a bit. Making sure the wmr portal is in pause and minimized helps a bit. Cpu affinities to separate dcs and svr, wmr. General windows health stuff with as little running in background as possible, gpu performances set to dcs as highest possible, everything else power saving. I’ve also installed the fholger openfsr and that helps quite a lot. Took a bit of adjusting the settings for sharpness and radius but now looks really good. Generally I use msaa x 2 now as well to try control some of the jagged edges. Turn of fpsvr - it seems to definitely cause spikes when it’s open. 
all in all now sp performance is “butter smooth” even looking out the side, low level in a harrier or a10c with lots of ai. Flying around in gazelle or ka50 is very smooth so I’d expect the Huey to be as good or better due to the lack of any other screens in the cockpit. 

[DeltaMike]

So far so good, you guys are the bomb.

Couple of additional observations -- 

-- Seems like there are a couple of different artifacts we are going after.  "Judder" is a big one I think, which near as I can tell has two definitions, both relevant:

• The strobe effect that comes from panning a camera too quickly relative to FPS.  In a flight sim, that would be the stuttering when you look out to the side, for example. Or when you're doing a snap roll. 
• Mismatch between FPS and refresh rate. 

Interesting discussion here from a film-geek's perspective. 

As for the first, I'm drawn to the conclusion that frame rate does matter.  Not so much for motion sickness (which is my primary interest) but for judder.  Suspect the second is also relevant to us.  Between the two, there's a strong argument I think for using motion reprojection, and perhaps for keeping it locked on.  

-- Interesting, to me anyway, how undersampling (in the per-app settings) doesn't seem to degrade the image very much.  I was initially against undersampling, figuring it would have been easier and a little cheaper to buy an Oculus.  But, I'm surprised how good things look, and how well things work at 70%.  Flabbergasted actually.  It's weird.  Interested to try out the FSR mod. 

-- Looking back at the MSFS 6900 vs 3090 vid, the 6900xt could only keep up when undersampled.  At native resolution, the stronger card pulled out ahead, as we would expect.   I wonder if the additional "smoothness" of the 3090, at the beginning of the video, wasn't the fact it was running quite a bit closer to 30fps, which I guess would reduce the second kind of judder, no? 

-----

Here, I diverge mmmm somewhat from Thud's guide.  I would not go so far as to say framerate doesn't matter.  Oculus taught me to pick a framerate, and tune to that. Probably still good advice. 

That's part of what held me back from buying a new GPU for my Rift S, with the question being, what would it take to drive that thing at 80hz?  Nothing that was on the market at the time.  Likewise, that was part of my theory in going with the 6900XT to match up with the G2.  I wouldn't mind having a 3080ti, if I could get my paws on one.  But in reality, there's really no advantage in being able to run say 65fps vs 47fps.  For all practical purposes, it doesn't change game play.  (Unless you can stand to run your headset at 60hz, and even then, good luck in MP.)   By the same token, there's no particular reason to favor the 6900XT vs say a 6800XT or a 3080, just a matter of what you can get your hands on.

Good news is, it seems the 6900XT can hold 45fps easy as pie.  So, for me anyway --   

• Tune the card (and keep it cool)
• Turn on SAM; otherwise, there really isn't anything in bios or Adrenaline that matters
• PD 1.0, MSAA no more than 2x; otherwise it's kinda hard to screw up DCS settings (in SP anyway)
• Turn motion vector on
• Start with SS Global 100% and SS Per App say 80%, enjoy your first flight and then tweak from there

Thanks, Ted!  You saved me $300! Sort of! (As I'm not sure if Newegg really had a 3080ti to sell, or if they were just jiving me)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by DeltaMike

[WipeUout]

After a few months trying to research, tweek and test in order to find the perfect setting (for me),  I though I could share where I am now and hope this might help someone else.

I have now basically two settings like most, one for single-player(sp) and one for multi-player(mp).  Since mp is more demanding, I need to scale down settings to stay within the comfort zone but there are situations that causes massive demand on the hardware such as flying over explosions and smoke in a F-16.  That will result in stutters and drop beyond the limit for a smooth video.  The module you use will impact the framerate, just like in pancake mode.

Let's start with my setup which is a bit different and could have very different results for others:

CPU.  i9-9900KF OC'ed at 5.0 Ghz on all cores.  This is an area where I feel I could still improve but not much, and I need a better cooler...  I did use the processor in stock mode and overclocking to 5 GHz did not bring much difference in DCS.

GPU.  ASUS TUF GAMING RX 6900XT OC'ed at 2,825 Mhz.  After extensive testing, this is the fastest and very much stable limit for my card.  I also tried to increase VRAM speed but did not get any significant improvement, using fast timing is quite enough and most important "stable".  The critical thing here is to ensure your minimum frequency is 100 Mhz lower than the max.  It will keep the GPU on "high alert" and reduce a lot of lag and stutters. This could be very different on another card, you will have to experiment.  Here are my tuning settings:

Playing DCS with these settings for me keeps the GPU under 75 degree all the time and under 70 degree most of the time.  Another important point is to check regularly that the settings are still applied, especially after a system crash.  Save your profile for easy re-load.

As far as other settings in Adrenaline, I found they have very little positive effect (if any?) in DCS.  This is a bit of a disappointment as there are several interesting features that I would use in DCS.  Hopefully when AMD implements FSR at the driver level, this will help.

HMD.  My choice went for the Pimax Vision 5k Super because I wanted a smooth video, wide field of view and decent level of details.  I tried many HMD and for me the immersion experience was the most important factor.  with a 150 degree field of view, I really feel I'm in a cockpit.  The 5k Super is certainly not generating the most clear, crisp and SDE free image but it can spit frames like crazy and with a great field of view.  Here are my settings with the PiTool: 

As indicated above, I use 150 degree field of view (normal).  I could go to large (170 degree) but it becomes very taxing.  Not showing above is my rendering frequency which is set at 90hz.  No need to go any higher, unless the graphic engine of DCS gets greatly optimized or a new significantly more powerful GPU becomes available, I will stick with 90Hz.  Hitting 90 FPS has been the holy grail for me.  I can achieve it but to the expense of details and eye candy.  In some specific sp mission that are not too demanding, I will disable compulsive smoothing and use my mp settings as I can sustain 90 FPS most of the time with good level of details (see my sp/mp setting for DCS bellow) but this is not achievable online so far.  I am bit picky and can't stand stutters.

The PiTool smart smoothing is simply awful in DCS, introducing artifacts and weird distortions.  Compulsive smoothing is much better but to the expense of ghosting which for me is not a big problem.  This feature is motion based re-projection and will substitute every second frame.  At 90hz, the GPU generates 45 FPS only and the result is a butter smooth experience.  Of course I wish I could avoid using it but the hardware is not there yet.  Nevertheless it allows me to bump up significantly the image quality and level of details.

SteamVR.  Here I tried so many combination and found that 100% is the sweet spot.  Supersampling will provide more clarity but cost a lot.  Tweeking PD in DCS and supersampling in steam VR will not improve performance whatsoever.  Sometime you get the illusion that things are faster but when you start doing the math to determine what is your final rendering resolution, you realize that you just decreased resolution.  My advice here is keep everything at 100%.  If clarity is something you want to improve, use a universal reshader (https://github.com/fholger/reshade/releases/tag/openvr_alpha2).  This had the biggest impact in image quality in VR for me.  It is a must (even in pancake mode it is very good) and has no impact of your framerate.  Here are my Steam VR settings:

  

As mentioned above, keep resolution at 100%.  Using motion smoothing in SteamVR did not have any impact for me, not sure why but might be a pitool vs steamvr thing. 

DCS.  Here is the bulk of the tweeking you can do in order to increase quality or performance.  You will find that it is a lot of work to find the sweet spot.  I has been many hours for me at least and I'm still testing options. Here are my setting for both sp and mp, followed with some comments:

MULTIPLAYER

SINGLE PLAYER

MSAA will eat a lot of frames.  In my case it is a 10% framerate drop from no MSAA to 2X and another 10% framerate drop from 2X to 4X. I must use it as shimmering is an issue without it since my HMD has a low resolution.  The best solution I found to counteract this loss is to use a shader.  I use SIMPLEX and it still work very well with 2.7.10 with a solid 10% increase in framerate.  You can find this mod easily in the forum.  As much as this is fantastic with VR, you will find it not so good if you still use pancake mode.  Make sure you use OVGME for easy enabling/disabling.

SSAA seem to have very little effect and is no substitute for MSAA, not sure why or if it is related to AMD.  Full screen on or off may also have an impact but for me it does nothing, disabling windows full screen optimization either.

Clouds are simply and unfortunately featureless in VR, leave it to standard. 

As far as VR settings, here is what I use:

Here is also an option that has massive effect on your framerate: The PD.  From my testing, I gain about 10% framerate for each 0.1 drop of the PD.  This cost a lot though in terms of image quality.  I leave it to 1.0.

The default setting for IPD is not realistic and probably different depending on the filed of view?  After doing a bit of research, I found that an IPD of 0.5 does not make me feel like I am sitting in a baby jet.  Might be different for you but recommend you play with this setting a bit.

Finally, the MSAA mask can also make a difference on performance, you can scale it down quite a bit if you field of view is lower as you will move your head more.  In my case, 60% is ok.

In conclusion, I think that the RX 6900XT is a great GPU for DCS VR.  Coupled with a Pimax 5kS, it is the most immersive flight experience I had so far. 

[TED]

On 1/28/2022 at 3:02 PM, DeltaMike said:

So far so good, you guys are the bomb.

Couple of additional observations -- 

-- Seems like there are a couple of different artifacts we are going after.  "Judder" is a big one I think, which near as I can tell has two definitions, both relevant:

• The strobe effect that comes from panning a camera too quickly relative to FPS.  In a flight sim, that would be the stuttering when you look out to the side, for example. Or when you're doing a snap roll. 
• Mismatch between FPS and refresh rate. 

Interesting discussion here from a film-geek's perspective. 

As for the first, I'm drawn to the conclusion that frame rate does matter.  Not so much for motion sickness (which is my primary interest) but for judder.  Suspect the second is also relevant to us.  Between the two, there's a strong argument I think for using motion reprojection, and perhaps for keeping it locked on.  

-- Interesting, to me anyway, how undersampling (in the per-app settings) doesn't seem to degrade the image very much.  I was initially against undersampling, figuring it would have been easier and a little cheaper to buy an Oculus.  But, I'm surprised how good things look, and how well things work at 70%.  Flabbergasted actually.  It's weird.  Interested to try out the FSR mod. 

-- Looking back at the MSFS 6900 vs 3090 vid, the 6900xt could only keep up when undersampled.  At native resolution, the stronger card pulled out ahead, as we would expect.   I wonder if the additional "smoothness" of the 3090, at the beginning of the video, wasn't the fact it was running quite a bit closer to 30fps, which I guess would reduce the second kind of judder, no? 

-----

Here, I diverge mmmm somewhat from Thud's guide.  I would not go so far as to say framerate doesn't matter.  Oculus taught me to pick a framerate, and tune to that. Probably still good advice. 

That's part of what held me back from buying a new GPU for my Rift S, with the question being, what would it take to drive that thing at 80hz?  Nothing that was on the market at the time.  Likewise, that was part of my theory in going with the 6900XT to match up with the G2.  I wouldn't mind having a 3080ti, if I could get my paws on one.  But in reality, there's really no advantage in being able to run say 65fps vs 47fps.  For all practical purposes, it doesn't change game play.  (Unless you can stand to run your headset at 60hz, and even then, good luck in MP.)   By the same token, there's no particular reason to favor the 6900XT vs say a 6800XT or a 3080, just a matter of what you can get your hands on.

Good news is, it seems the 6900XT can hold 45fps easy as pie.  So, for me anyway --   

• Tune the card (and keep it cool)
• Turn on SAM; otherwise, there really isn't anything in bios or Adrenaline that matters
• PD 1.0, MSAA no more than 2x; otherwise it's kinda hard to screw up DCS settings (in SP anyway)
• Turn motion vector on
• Start with SS Global 100% and SS Per App say 80%, enjoy your first flight and then tweak from there

Thanks, Ted!  You saved me $300! Sort of! (As I'm not sure if Newegg really had a 3080ti to sell, or if they were just jiving me)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glad its all working out for you. There’s so much to learn and try, especially as we are all still a bit nvidia biased in our thinking, but I totally agree - the 6900xt is very well suited to dcs. I have no beef i the argument, I’m just a lucky bastard who happened to end up with both a 3080 and 6900 and got to play extensively with both. Thoroughly enjoyed it too, but I have to sell one as I will only use one. After several months it’s just obvious to me now the 6900 is the better card. I’d have been totally happy with the 3080 as well if I hadn’t had the choice. 
I just flew one of my test missions in the a10c2 - Syria, a couple Sam sites, some btr groups, all low level, over the trees, through the canyons and valleys, engage the sams , the; onto the btrs then low level back to ramat. Smooth as can be, no jitters, judders, spikes, even low, through tight canyons looking 90 degrees to the side - just a dream come true. I’m so damned happy with my setup and dcs right now that I’m enjoying my sim flying more than my real life job flying . 
I couldnt ask for better performance right now to be honest. It’s just doing everything I want.  I feel for the likes of @BIGNEWYand others, constantly in the receiving end of complaints, but the reality is the variables in all our systems that are hard to factor for, but if a complete idiot like me can get it to work with some tuning and tweaking and a lot of trial and error anyone can, so I’ll keep posting my findings and hopefully will save someone some time and money and they can enjoy this crazy hobby as much as I am right now. 
The latest settings I’m running are 100% svr and per app res. 1.0 pd, msaa x2. Fholger fsr, mv auto, motion smooth on, all dcs on max, cpu core affinity to separate dcs and steam vr, the amd tuning as per the video linked, amd software min freq 2100 max 2650, power set to +15. 
All tested, same results with a10, f16, AV8B, ka50. F…… awesome, and I’m ocd about jitters and stuttering so anything and I notice it!

 

Amd tuning

Edited January 29, 2022 by TED

[BIGNEWY]

Yep. 
Everyone's machines are different, even with the ones with the same spec  

It's the gauntlet we face as PC users everytime we buy a chip 

[edmuss]

Have you tested the CAS option instead of FSR using vrperfkit?  I seem to get around 2ms lower frametimes with fairly comparable image quality.  I can currently run Caucasus A10C easy instant action all around 13-14ms unless a cbu gets dropped

That is with MSAA off at the moment, still on the fence about it, low over Syrian cities it's a godsend because it eliminates most of the shimmering but at the expense of about 3ms; however for Caucasus and open country in Syria I don't see the requirement for it as the shimmers are far less apparent.

[TED]

20 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

Yep. 
Everyone's machines are different, even with the ones with the same spec  

It's the gauntlet we face as PC users everytime we buy a chip 

Yep, I agree. But we often also fry our systems with so much other junk ,apps,software, settings and dont realise what it's doing. Then blame dcs for the problem! . Don't get me wrong, I don't easily or often defecate rainbows. I'm quick to voice my issues if I think somethings not right. But credit where its due, and for me dcs is running beautifully right now, so u guys have done something pretty damn right. I couldn't be happier with dcs right now. Onward and upward. Can't wait to see what other improvements are in the pipeline.

15 minutes ago, edmuss said:

Have you tested the CAS option instead of FSR using vrperfkit?  I seem to get around 2ms lower frametimes with fairly comparable image quality.  I can currently run Caucasus A10C easy instant action all around 13-14ms unless a cbu gets dropped

That is with MSAA off at the moment, still on the fence about it, low over Syrian cities it's a godsend because it eliminates most of the shimmering but at the expense of about 3ms; however for Caucasus and open country in Syria I don't see the requirement for it as the shimmers are far less apparent.

Not yet, but thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. 

Edited January 29, 2022 by TED

[DeltaMike]

Undersampling does seem to affect spotting distance. At 46% (approx 2200x2200, what many mistake for native resolution) I can just barely see a tanker at 16nm.  10 to be able to join up visually ie without a radar lock. Doesn't seem to matter whether that's set in global or per app settings.  At 100% I can see the thing at 20, and can join visually from 16.  

Which is fine, I can run full res without msaa and by taking it easy in the cloud department.

Speaking of which, I see the clouds don't dance and twirl around like they used to. Not gonna miss that, except to the extent it reminds one of a goa gil concert. (Believe me, a little of that goes a long way)

[DishDoggie]

On 1/27/2022 at 4:39 AM, TED said:

Almost the same set up I have. The only difference is I have a 3800xt cpu. You should be able to get very good vr performance with that setup. Smooth and jitter free pretty much at at least 100% svr res and pd 1.0. 
i say that because I am getting that. I download the whole Radeon software. You can use msi afterburner as well if you prefer it but I just find it all simper to use Radeon own software for over clocking, undervaulting, tweaking and messing. Definitely use something like ddu to remove absolutely all nvidia drivers and software. 
I have been continuing the testing and now focusing more on single player performance as mp server is so variable depending on factors outside my control. It’s at the point now on mp that sometimes it’s fantastic performance, then the server mod changes something and performance drops a bit. Generally always very playable now and stable though.

In sp I’m now using mv auto and motion smoothing in svr, 100% svr res, and sometimes higher. All settings high. 
A few other things I’ve done and realized. Empty room for wmr helps a bit. Making sure the wmr portal is in pause and minimized helps a bit. Cpu affinities to separate dcs and svr, wmr. General windows health stuff with as little running in background as possible, gpu performances set to dcs as highest possible, everything else power saving. I’ve also installed the fholger openfsr and that helps quite a lot. Took a bit of adjusting the settings for sharpness and radius but now looks really good. Generally I use msaa x 2 now as well to try control some of the jagged edges. Turn of fpsvr - it seems to definitely cause spikes when it’s open. 
all in all now sp performance is “butter smooth” even looking out the side, low level in a harrier or a10c with lots of ai. Flying around in gazelle or ka50 is very smooth so I’d expect the Huey to be as good or better due to the lack of any other screens in the cockpit. 

Hey Thank You for your Reply Big Help I am working on getting Your message Items for a DCS Profile in Radeon Software and Windows Setup Tonight. SO my Question to you is have you done anything with the Radeon Software under SETTINGS - Devices : Steam VR Integration ENABLE Option? I Did this but had some kind of G2 headset (Old Cable) Black scree then reboot issue startup on me NOT sure if That did it but After enabling it WMR screen was not useable locked up and not responding. It is now Disabled but I can not find any info on this option in the software. I understand the Wireless device Radeon (ReLive) can do but this looks to be for Wired Connected VR headsets. I still need to install the FSR GetHub file for Steam OpenVR for DCS install. It is late and I'm stopping here tonight but You have been a big help I used the Video link you added and fallowed that tonight. Thanks Again. I am so Shocked at the 3 8pin Separate  POWER cables needed for this card. I need to order Pretty Extensions now the stock cables are so bad looking POWER PLANTS have less cables running into them than my GPU does now. I understand the 1000W Power supply now.

[TED]

19 hours ago, DishDoggie said:

Hey Thank You for your Reply Big Help I am working on getting Your message Items for a DCS Profile in Radeon Software and Windows Setup Tonight. SO my Question to you is have you done anything with the Radeon Software under SETTINGS - Devices : Steam VR Integration ENABLE Option? I Did this but had some kind of G2 headset (Old Cable) Black scree then reboot issue startup on me NOT sure if That did it but After enabling it WMR screen was not useable locked up and not responding. It is now Disabled but I can not find any info on this option in the software. I understand the Wireless device Radeon (ReLive) can do but this looks to be for Wired Connected VR headsets. I still need to install the FSR GetHub file for Steam OpenVR for DCS install. It is late and I'm stopping here tonight but You have been a big help I used the Video link you added and fallowed that tonight. Thanks Again. I am so Shocked at the 3 8pin Separate  POWER cables needed for this card. I need to order Pretty Extensions now the stock cables are so bad looking POWER PLANTS have less cables running into them than my GPU does now. I understand the 1000W Power supply now.

Nope, I didn’t touch any of those settings in Radeon software. The only thing I have now enabled is in custom tuning - setting minimum frequency to 2100mhz and upping the power to +15%. There is a lot in the Radeon software that has no effect in dcs. 
I don’t think steam vr integration works for dcs and g2 so never used it. To be honest I do the minimum necessary in the Radeon software. I’m not using steam openvr either. Other than that I’m just using wmr for steam and it’s works perfectly fine. 

[DishDoggie]

2 minutes ago, TED said:

Nope, I didn’t touch any of those settings in Radeon software. The only thing I have now enabled is in custom tuning - setting minimum frequency to 2100mhz and upping the power to +15%. There is a lot in the Radeon software that has no effect in dcs. 
I don’t think steam vr integration works for dcs and g2 so never used it. To be honest I do the minimum necessary in the Radeon software. I’m not using steam openvr either. Other than that I’m just using wmr for steam and it’s works perfectly fine. 

What FSR settings are you using? I'm so unclear how to set my Steam Resolution for the talked about upscale FSR will do??? I'm so new and unclear on how to set this up...

[edmuss]

1 minute ago, DishDoggie said:

What FSR settings are you using? I'm so unclear how to set my Steam Resolution for the talked about upscale FSR will do??? I'm so new and unclear on how to set this up...

Set the steamvr resolution to what you want, start at 100% for a G2 and adjust accordingly.  What FSR does is render the image at a scaled down version of what the output resolution is and then use the GPU to scale it up using interpolation and trickery!

Essentially if you set FSR to 0.7 then it will render the frame at 70% of the steamvr resolution and then upscale it to 100% using magic which is less resource intensive than rendering it at 100% in the first place.  Some image quality is lost, personally I don't like to drop much below 0.7 on FSR.