Varjo Aero: General guide for new owners

[Gordy]

Someone pointed out to me that you can spot distant aircraft more easily in lower resolution... so I tried stepping down from the highest (39 ppd) to the default ("high", 35 PPD) setting, and am annoyed that, indeed, I can spot distant aircraft more easily.  I think it's because you'll always see at least a pixel, and the pixels you'll see are now larger.

Anyway... the terrain hasn't suffered much, in part because the textures are coarse enough when you get close to them that the high res doesn't make much difference anyway.   The tradeoffs include that it is now harder to spot *ground* units, particularly infantry, some extra jaggies, and a little extra shimmer. 

But the upside is better spotting of aircraft, and my fps went from 30-50 to 40-70.    If you're exclusively doing air-to-air or targeting the ground via a TGP, the lower resolution and higher fps are definitely 'better'.

[Supmua]

On 8/18/2022 at 10:54 PM, Gordy said:

Someone pointed out to me that you can spot distant aircraft more easily in lower resolution... so I tried stepping down from the highest (39 ppd) to the default ("high", 35 PPD) setting, and am annoyed that, indeed, I can spot distant aircraft more easily.  I think it's because you'll always see at least a pixel, and the pixels you'll see are now larger.

Anyway... the terrain hasn't suffered much, in part because the textures are coarse enough when you get close to them that the high res doesn't make much difference anyway.   The tradeoffs include that it is now harder to spot *ground* units, particularly infantry, some extra jaggies, and a little extra shimmer. 

But the upside is better spotting of aircraft, and my fps went from 30-50 to 40-70.    If you're exclusively doing air-to-air or targeting the ground via a TGP, the lower resolution and higher fps are definitely 'better'.

This happens with flat screen also.  It's the pixel size that helps with spotting in DCS.  I still prefer to play in higher res, though.

[fastf1nger]

Does it give us (at the moment) significant better results when running lower PPD and upscaling?
Lets say for example with NIS or inside NVidia Control Panel? Me personally - i also agree with
you @Supmua i prefer to play in higher res (at the current state) before we get motion reprojection,
what i really hope

[Supmua]

VB software version 3.6.2.19 is out.  First impression is pretty good.  The sharpness is similar to 3.5.1 and much better than 3.6.1.  I see moderate amount of chromatic aberration on white texts/black background, not very noticeable in games but very apparent on web browser.  I haven't played in a while so my brain isn't adjusted to the amount of CA this headset has so it might be more noticeable than usual.  It's relatively distortion free compared to 3.5.1.  So this version might be a keeper.  Apache cockpit looks great.  Tested with OpenXR mode only with brightness setting at 75%, will try OpenVR mode at a later date.

[rweaves6]

I’ve recently switched to the Aero and I’m absolutely loving it. I’ve had a Rift, Reverb G2, and Vive Pro 2, and this headset blows them all out of the water in my opinion. 

MSFS and il2 work great with it. Does anyone know if Varjo plans on making this title work without us having to modify things?

edit*
I followed the steps in the initial post and it worked very well, the sim looks great!

 

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by rweaves6

[dburne]

9 hours ago, rweaves6 said:

I’ve recently switched to the Aero and I’m absolutely loving it. I’ve had a Rift, Reverb G2, and Vive Pro 2, and this headset blows them all out of the water in my opinion. 

MSFS and il2 work great with it. Does anyone know if Varjo plans on making this title work without us having to modify things?

 

 

 

I am with you there I came from the same headsets and absolutely love my Aero.

Not sure I follow on that last question though? I am having a blast with DCS and run no Mods.

[fastf1nger]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb dburne:

I am with you there I came from the same headsets and absolutely love my Aero.

Not sure I follow on that last question though? I am having a blast with DCS and run no Mods.

@dburne same here Do you experience any differences since the last update (DCS + Varjo Base)??
What settings give you best results at the moment? Still tweaking here ..... Cheerz from Austria!

[rweaves6]

On 9/3/2022 at 4:27 AM, dburne said:

Not sure I follow on that last question though? I am having a blast with DCS and run no Mods.

I got it working. I thought maybe it would be beyond my skill level to implement the debug tool…etc to get it working but it turned out to be straight forward. 
The sim looks amazing on the Aero, just wow. 

Edited September 6, 2022 by rweaves6

[RePhil]

Had to reinstall DCS and OS when I added  "--force_steam_VR" prior to this all worked no I get The Error shown here

[zildac]

Had to reinstall DCS and OS when I added  "--force_steam_VR" prior to this all worked no I get The Error shown here

You added to dcs.exe shortcut, not the updater.exe? You need to run dcs.exe with that flag not the updater.

[RePhil]

Yep realized my error thanks

[Supmua]

First impression on the new Varjo Base update 3.7.0.5.  Improved chromatic aberration but still noticeable on texts.  Sharpness is good I have no complaint, same goes for geometric distortion which is minimal.  The 60% default brightness is neat but too dim for me, I like it at 70% and will stick with this for DCS.  The Workspace gamma level is still off perhaps slightly better but you can still see significant black crush and white out on black and white level charts especially when compared against other desktop apps such as Steam overlay or Virtual Desktop.  Overall I think it's a good update and would recommend it over older versions.  Also, motion prediction is coming in 3.8 beta according to discord announcement, so that's something to look forward to.

Some interesting observations on SteamVR vs OpenXR mode.  With the latest DCS beta, NVIDIA driver, OXRTK, etc. I see 2ms frametime reduction with OpenXR, at the expense of 1-1.5ms increase in CPU frametime (Harrier Caucasus Freeflight).  Have to do more testings over time to check reproducibility.  Necksafer XR beta4 is still not working for me, beta2 is the last working version for my setup.

Edit: In more taxing scenario (Apache Syria Hotramp) where I tuned my settings so CPU and GPU FT stay below 21ms on ramp, GPU FT advantage reduced to 1.0-1.5ms while CPU FT was exactly the same between OpenXR (with OXRTK) vs SteamVR (with Reshade 5 and fpsVR).  This is roughly similar to past findings with older software.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Supmua

[Darpa]

I may be behind the times here... but I have 2 icons to start DCS. One has the force steam VR parameter and the other does not. If I use the force steam VR startup then all looks great in game and everything works. If I use the "non" force steam VR startup then all looks great in game (really great!) but I still get the broken cursor (2 cross cursors and no proper click point) and the 2D monitor is still screwed up (4 images). I am running latest stable DCS and Base 3.6.2 and nothing else. Does this sound about right or is there something I have missed. Thanks

[Supmua]

2 hours ago, Darpa said:

I may be behind the times here... but I have 2 icons to start DCS. One has the force steam VR parameter and the other does not. If I use the force steam VR startup then all looks great in game and everything works. If I use the "non" force steam VR startup then all looks great in game (really great!) but I still get the broken cursor (2 cross cursors and no proper click point) and the 2D monitor is still screwed up (4 images). I am running latest stable DCS and Base 3.6.2 and nothing else. Does this sound about right or is there something I have missed. Thanks

If you don’t force SteamVR it runs in Quad screen rendering mode (very very good visuals but terrible framerate and interface issues), stick with force SteamVR for now and maybe update the Varjo Base software to 3.7 too.

Edited October 12, 2022 by Supmua

[dburne]

11 minutes ago, Supmua said:

If you don’t force SteamVR it runs in Quad screen rendering mode (very very good visuals but terrible framerate and interface issues), stick with force SteamVR for now and maybe update the Varjo Base software to 3.7 too.

 

I don't use my shortcut on desktop any more for Steam VR that has that force option applied, I just start it from Varjo Desktop with the new button they have for it now. Works fine every time for me. Maybe it is still using that force shortcut I have who knows, but I just click on Steam VR now from within Varjo desktop.

Edited October 12, 2022 by dburne

[zildac]

There's an issue with 4090s and VB currently. It's being investigated, at present using a 4090 with VB and a number of titles causes "ghosting". Varjo are aware, and it's in open discussion on their discord.

https://discord.com/channels/839478779256897546/852037353035005964

 

[Supmua]

1 hour ago, zildac said:

There's an issue with 4090s and VB currently. It's being investigated, at present using a 4090 with VB and a number of titles causes "ghosting". Varjo are aware, and it's in open discussion on their discord.

https://discord.com/channels/839478779256897546/852037353035005964

 

Is this reported by multiple people?  I’ll check the discord.

[zildac]

7 minutes ago, Supmua said:

Is this reported by multiple people?  I’ll check the discord.

Yes

[Supmua]

14 minutes ago, zildac said:

Yes

Hopefully it doesn’t that a month or two for them to fix this.  Is the stutter from sudden framedrop (frametime spike by either CPU or GPU) or from reprojection issue or with SteamVR itself.  So many ways to test for this including disabling Varjo’s OpenXR and OpenVR, lock frame to 45 via analytical window, Varjo vsync on/off, run 2D games via desktop app, etc.  I’ll definite mess around with all the settings as soon as my 4090 arrives.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Supmua

[zildac]

2 minutes ago, Supmua said:

Hopefully it doesn’t that a month or two for them to fix this.

I hope so, I have an expensive paperweight sitting here at the minute

[Supmua]

12 minutes ago, zildac said:

I hope so, I have an expensive paperweight sitting here at the minute

Oh u already have the 4090, is your system win10 or 11?  Does it happen with all games?  If you have fpsVR what does the frametime graph look like when it happened.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Supmua

[zildac]

Just now, Supmua said:

Oh u already have the 4090, is your system win10 or 11?  Does it happen with all games?  If you have fpsVR what does the frametime graph look like when it occurs.

Not installed...sitting in the box. Saw the convo on discord this morning and decided to hold off installing. I'm using OpenXR and OXRTK. I have some CPU and GPU framertime figures I grabbed yesterday evening using my 3090ti though so will compare if/when the issues get sorted.

 

[Supmua]

3 hours ago, zildac said:

Not installed...sitting in the box. Saw the convo on discord this morning and decided to hold off installing. I'm using OpenXR and OXRTK. I have some CPU and GPU framertime figures I grabbed yesterday evening using my 3090ti though so will compare if/when the issues get sorted.

 

Hard for me to comment since I still don't have the card, but as an early adopter this isn't anything new especially with a brand new product like this.  There's bound to be glitches, but the real question is can you do something right now as a workaround to make it work until the problem is fixed.

[zildac]

2 minutes ago, Supmua said:

Hard for me to comment since I still don't have the card, but as an early adopter this isn't anything new especially with a brand new product like this.  There's bound to be glitches, but the real question is can you do something right now as a workaround to make it work until the problem is fixed.

Completely agree, I guess I made the assumption that all the vendors received these to "play" with. I now understand this wasn't the case (through no fault on Varjos part I hasten to add). A "workaround" would be great, mine's sitting on the bench in my office at present.

[dburne]

Beware, this was posted over on Varjo Discord:

Quote

Hello Everyone,

We at Varjo are excited to see the release of the Nividia 40 series GPUs. As such, we are aware of some issues noted by customers who have received their GPUs and are trying them out. We are currently working to resolve these issues; however, at this time, we want to continue to recommend to our customers to use one of our currently recommended GPUs https://varjo.com/use-center/get-started/varjo-headsets/system-requirements/aero/.

We will update once we can officially recommend the Nvidia 40 series GPUs for use with our headsets.

Thank you!

 

https://discord.com/channels/839478779256897546/953295284841115709/1030137008120680499