Open XR runtime support

[dburne]

I would love to see DCS offer support for running VR in the Open XR runtime. It has really come a long way, and along with now the toolkit one of the developers offers for it allows for much more tweaking of the image to help increase clarity along with performance.

All WMR headsets support Open XR ( which Reverb G2 is very popular and used by many with DCS) and also Varjo Aero has support for it as well. Does great with MSFS 2020.

So ED I so wish you could take a look at supporting Open XR runtime for DCS as well. The improvement in performance for DCS in VR would be a very good thing.

Edited March 7, 2022 by dburne

[winghunter]

OpenXR toolkit is a game changer for VR performance. I second this, openXR > openVR

[dburne]

2 minutes ago, winghunter said:

OpenXR toolkit is a game changer for VR performance. I second this, openXR > openVR

Yes indeed it is a game changer and would really benefit DCS VR on the performance side. 

[Rosebud47]

OpenXR is a part of the Vulkan API, afaik, so I would assume OpenXR support in DCS be coming with the implementation of Vulkan.

[dburne]

1 hour ago, Rosebud47 said:

OpenXR is a part of the Vulkan API, afaik, so I would assume OpenXR support in DCS be coming with the implementation of Vulkan.

Hmm can't say I have ever heard that one.  MSFS 2020 has Open XR runtime and does great with Reverb and Aero. Not sure it has Vulkan.

Edited March 7, 2022 by dburne

[Supmua]

Microsoft games will not utilize Vulkan (a successor to OpenGL) since they develop and use their own Direct X API.  You can bet that OpenXR will eventually come to DCS, as it is the new (unified) VR standard that is being pushed and supported by all major parties (MS, Steam, Meta).

Edited March 7, 2022 by Supmua

[Rosebud47]

Hmm, reversed logic doesn´t work for everything . With MSFS 2020 they a surely following their DirectX graphics API, as it is a Microsoft thing. Once the WMR headsets came out, Microsoft wanted to build up an independent VR API to Steam and Oculus, but somewhere on official statements for Vulkan was mentioned that OpenXR is an elemental part of newest Vulkan graphics API. But please don´t ask me to google it again .

As far as it concerns DCS, I would say, it´s not absolutely sure, that DCS will support OpenXR through Vulkan. I guess you could implement Vulkan in different ways and with different integral features, but it would be a pity if ED would leave the OpneXR integration in Vulkan aside, when supporting Vulkan in DCS.  

Edit: Oh, Supmua just had some similar thoughts. Isn´t there a flight simulator, which does support Vulkan? Might be interesting to know, if that one flight sim with Vulkan also supports OpenXR... ?

 

Edited March 7, 2022 by Rosebud47

[Supmua]

XPlane supports Vulkan (royalty-free).  VR implementation is a separate thing independent of Direct X or Vulkan or OpenGL, devs can use whatever runtime they want (oculus, OpenVR, openXR).

Edited March 7, 2022 by Supmua

[Supmua]

What we need for now is a good implementation of fixed foveated rendering for DCS.  It’s been proven that when done correctly the fps goes up dramatically.  I gained extra 20-25 fps easily in MSFS which is just crazy, and the author of the mod said this will get even better. 

[dburne]

15 minutes ago, Supmua said:

What we need for now is a good implementation of fixed foveated rendering for DCS.  It’s been proven that when done correctly the fps goes up dramatically.  I gained extra 20-25 fps easily in MSFS which is just crazy, and the author of the mod said this will get even better. 

Pretty sure if DCS supported Open XR we would have that ability.

[BlackSharkAce]

Check this out by amazing jabbah: https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/openxr-for-wmr.70825/

He did it for ACC, now it supports DCS !

[dburne]

Nah I would want "native" support for Open XR.

Maybe someday...

I know ED has had some dialogue with the Varjo gang so perhaps there might be hope.

Edited March 9, 2022 by dburne

[BlackSharkAce]

Well this bypassed steamVR completely, it’s a performance gain even if not native per se :)

[zildac]

This link is far easier to use... V0.4 note the comments re DCS support.

https://gitlab.com/Jabbah/open-composite-acc/-/releases

OK, a very quick test, initial findings below:

1) DOES NOT work with VRPerfkit.

2) Reprojection not supported (SteamVR bypassed).

3) Cannot launch FPSVR as obviously SteamVR is NOT used.

Edited March 10, 2022 by zildac

[BlackSharkAce]

This link is far easier to use... V0.4 note the comments re DCS support.
https://gitlab.com/Jabbah/open-composite-acc/-/releases
OK, a very quick test, initial findings below:
1) DOES NOT work with VRPerfkit.
2) Reprojection not supported (SteamVR bypassed).
3) Cannot launch FPSVR as obviously SteamVR is NOT used.

You can use the motion reprojection from openXR, it allows to « upsample » from 30 or 45 fps. Or you can disable it and run 90.

[zildac]

15 minutes ago, BlackSharkAce said:

You can use the motion reprojection from openXR, it allows to « upsample » from 30 or 45 fps. Or you can disable it and run 90.

Interesting, so in the OpenXR Dev tools program? As that is already set to auto (for FS2020) and it's jumping between 45 & 70fFPS in DCS so it doesn't appear to be working.

[BlackSharkAce]

Interesting, so in the OpenXR Dev tools program? As that is already set to auto (for FS2020) and it's jumping between 45 & 70fFPS in DCS so it doesn't appear to be working.

Set it to « enabled » or « forced » so it will always be active (45 or 30 fps). It gives more stable results than if it’s jumping between 90+ and 45 in « automatic ».

I say 90 because I have a reverb g2, might be 70 for other headsets.

[zildac]

16 minutes ago, BlackSharkAce said:

Set it to « enabled » or « forced » so it will always be active (45 or 30 fps). It gives more stable results than if it’s jumping between 90+ and 45 in « automatic ».

I say 90 because I have a reverb g2, might be 70 for other headsets.

Hi, I understand, however setting it to always on or enabled the framerate still jumps around. I, too have a G2. Are you talking about the OpenXR settings here:

[BlackSharkAce]

Hi, I understand, however setting it to always on or enabled the framerate still jumps around. I, too have a G2. Are you talking about the OpenXR settings here:

Yes it’s this setting ! I run it without preview mode, but that shouldn’t affect it.

[zildac]

21 minutes ago, BlackSharkAce said:

Yes it’s this setting ! I run it without preview mode, but that shouldn’t affect it.

Odd, it didn't seem to work. I'll try and do some more testing later. The fact that it precludes the use of FPSVR (for meaningful performance comparison) and VRPerfkit is a bit of a turn off for me though.

[BlackSharkAce]

Odd, it didn't seem to work. I'll try and do some more testing later. The fact that it precludes the use of FPSVR (for meaningful performance comparison) and VRPerfkit is a bit of a turn off for me though.

There is another program called OBS for performance measurement that should work. Not sure about VRPerfkit.

Edit: not OBS, but CapFrameX. People are using it to graph frame times and fps. https://www.capframex.com/

[Greekbull]

On 3/10/2022 at 3:40 AM, zildac said:

This link is far easier to use... V0.4 note the comments re DCS support.

https://gitlab.com/Jabbah/open-composite-acc/-/releases

OK, a very quick test, initial findings below:

1) DOES NOT work with VRPerfkit.

2) Reprojection not supported (SteamVR bypassed).

3) Cannot launch FPSVR as obviously SteamVR is NOT used.

 

So by using this you can use Open XR toolkit with DCS?  Do you just run Open XR(instead of Steam VR?) and then DCS?

[zildac]

So by using this you can use Open XR toolkit with DCS?  Do you just run Open XR(instead of Steam VR?) and then DCS?

In theory yes, but I've not tried it.

[dburne]

Boy now if that would allow using the Open XR runtime rather than the Steam VR runtime along with the Toolkit now that would be something.

But as DCS does not have native Open XR runtime support then the results might be very different. The ideal situation would be if ED could add native Open XR support same as MSFS 2020 has. Then throw in DCS also offering TAA then all that would greatly enhance the VR experience with DCS.

Edited March 14, 2022 by dburne

[FoxTwo]

This is an old. Old. OLD. Request.

And probably at least half dependent on vulkan.

So don't expect much if any traction until they change the entire rendering engine.