Compare the two...

[RackMonkey]

Can somebody explain definitively what the difference is between SteamVR per eye resolution and DCS PD.
The closest I can see is that PD makes larger jumps between resolutions where SteamVR is more granular. It's impossible to decide which one to use if you don't really know the difference. Or maybe a combination of both will g2ive the best performance at a given resolution.

[speed-of-heat]

Here is a spreadsheet that shows the difference between them , hope it helps

PDSSCalc.xlsx

[Supmua]

To me, SteamVR SS is similar to how you set the display resolution of a monitor (VR headset in this case) in Window display setting with fixed resolution options besides percentage, except there're also per-app settings.  DCS PD setting is the equivalent of in-game resolution factor, similar to NVIDIA's DSR setting.  Both can get you from point A or point B.  Now upscaling or downscaling performance (fps, frametime) and visual quality (aliasing, shimmering, etc.) of either approach may not be the exact same so use your own judgement and pick whatever suits you the best.  I typically stick with SteamVR SS as it is more flexible in terms of resolution options.

[dburne]

Yeah I only use Steam VR resolution settings and leave PD at 1.0 in DCS.

Allows for some much finer adjustments.

[DeltaMike]

Both (usually) refer to over sampling or "super sampling."

Lets say your headset has two teeny monitors in it, one for each eye, each with 2000x2000 pixels.  If you increase PD to 1.5, you are now rendering 3000x3000 or 9m pixels per eye. Which is more than 200% far as steam is concerned. Steam is measuring total pixels rendered, PD is looking at pixels rendered *per axis.*

Back in the day we used supersampling to trick the eye into believing you were looking at a high resolution world through a screen door (long as you kept your head moving).

That's less of a thing now that we have high resolution headsets. Now everybody is all stoked to undersample, using fancy protocols to scale things up to native resolution attractively.  

Current technology allows you to render at say 2.4 million pixels, scale it up to 4m pixels, and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.  Brave new world we live in.  

At any rate. Keep your sanity. You might have as many as four numbers working with (or against) each other to determine how many pixels to render, all basically doing the same thing. Just change one at a time.  

Edited February 14, 2022 by DeltaMike