Varjo Aero: General guide for new owners

[Supmua]

12 hours ago, motoadve said:

Will Open XR toolkit increase performance?

I am pretty happy with how DCS looks in the Varjo Aero, not bother to modify the look, but if this can increase performance then I am in.

Yes with the right settings.
Fixed foveated rendering will drop your GPU FT by 1 ms (quality/wide setting).  Downsampling via resolution override can drop both CPU and GPU frametime depending on the setting.  Use these correctly and there should be minimal degradation in visuals, these are some of the things I do to help maintain 90 fps in single player missions.

Also, OXRTK log file can give you a lot of useful information.  For example, current OpenXR runtime (SteamVR, Varjo, etc.), currently active OpenXR extensions/layers (e.g. quad_views), and resolution (if you upscale or downscale via DCS PD setting it will show the pixel numbers as well as the pixel setting on the VB).

Edited March 18, 2023 by Supmua

[dburne]

Well did some comparisons today on my end on running either with Varjo's Open XR or with Steam's Open XR.

They are pretty close to each other, I think Steam VR's Open XR has little less in performance but is maybe little more consistent in frametimes. I see more of the occasional frametime spikes in Varjo's Open XR than in Steam's. Not enough to really sway me one over the other, but since performance seems little better in Varjo Open XR think I will leave it be for now with that. Both though with the new MT from DCS are quite good.

[Willdass]

Just got my fourth Aero... (Third one got dead pixels). After flying for about 40min with the new one I got an overheating message... with the fan running. Anyone experienced this?

Never happened before and I have flown for hours with the same ambient temperature.

[Supmua]

OK, mbucchia has released DFR support for the Aero's quad view mode.  Check it out.  Note that this is not compatible with OXRTK, and the quad view off extension wrapper will need to be removed as well.  This is only for Varjo OpenXR runtime as Steam runtime does not have quad view support.  Major performance increase compared to stereo view even at the highest setting due to proper dynamic foveation support.

Home · mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated Wiki · GitHub

Edited March 18, 2023 by Supmua

[Supmua]

2 hours ago, Willdass said:

Just got my fourth Aero... (Third one got dead pixels). After flying for about 40min with the new one I got an overheating message... with the fan running. Anyone experienced this?

Never happened before and I have flown for hours with the same ambient temperature.

I rarely got this message but it went away after a few seconds, and I didn't have to do anything else about it.

[mbucchia]

48 minutes ago, Supmua said:

OK, mbucchia has released DFR support for the Aero's quad view mode.  Check it out.  Note that this is not compatible with OXRTK, and the quad view off extension wrapper will need to be removed as well.  This is only for Varjo OpenXR runtime as Steam runtime does not have quad view support.  Major performance increase compared to stereo view even at the highest setting due to proper dynamic foveation support.

Home · mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated Wiki · GitHub

 

Thanks for posting this!

I don't want to take all the credit here, because the foundation (ie: implementing the Varjo quad views) is all done by Eagle Dynamics, and that is frankly THE complex part, that they have achieved without anything from me. Adding the foveated rendering on top was quite easy.

@BIGNEWY I always love to share some useful feedback for the dev team, so maybe you could forward some of this to them:

1) With XR_VARJO_quad_views working, adding XR_VARJO_foveated_rendering is really super simple! The dev team should check out the OpenXR spec for details. It's very straightforward, just need to add a few things here and there to make a great feature! This is all my program does really. Let's wait for feedback, but I feel it is well worth the effort to implement inside the game for all Varjo users. My code is also open source and can be used as reference (see link). My code is more complex than if it was done in-game, and implementation in the engine is likely < 50 lines of code total.

2) I did find what looks like a bug in the engine, that made things a little more tricky: it seems that with multithreading, the engine is sometimes mixing up the FOV values that it submits with each frame. This causes the FOV values queried to render frame N+1 to be submitted for frame N instead. The trace below shows an example of it (see the "display time" values and how the submitted FOV values for view 2 and 3 do not match the correct frame display time? Red arrow shows what needs to be done instead). This bug breaks foveated rendering because it introduces a 1-frame warp of the focus area, and I put a workaround for it in my program (that literally does what the red arrow shows, by matching the FOV values with the correct frame display time).

Edited March 18, 2023 by mbucchia

[Supmua]

This is a great start for Dynamic FR implementation moving forward for Varjo owners.  The performance and image quality in this mode is just bonkers, the optional multiplication factors settings for rendering res for both focus and peripheral screens are also available.  I'm getting smooth 90 fps in F-16 Persian Gulf free fight (which is more taxing than the Syria free flight, btw), by simply lowering the focus res to 0.9 and peripheral to 0.7 (at 37PPD setting in VB).  To me this is as big as DCS MT release, and it will only get better once we have some more tools equivalent to OXRTK for this.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Supmua

[Willdass]

This is incredible! Tested with 0.9 focus and 0.7 peripheral as well, insanely sharp and better performance. Need to do more testing tomorrow. Probably increase the peripheral multiplier a bit because I could see the outlines of the focus area if I move my head but not my eyes.
Huge thanks to @mbucchia and the beta testers!

[dburne]

31 minutes ago, Supmua said:

This is a great start for Dynamic FR implementation moving forward for Varjo owners.  The performance and image quality in this mode is just bonkers, the optional multiplication factors settings for rendering res for both focus and peripheral screens are also available.  I'm getting smooth 90 fps in F-16 Persian Gulf free fight (which is more taxing than the Syria free flight, btw), by simply lowering the focus res to 0.9 and peripheral to 0.7 (at 37PPD setting in VB).  To me this is as big as DCS MT release, and it will only get better once we have some more tools equivalent to OXRTK for this.

 

 

I will probably wait a while and let that part of the cake bake a little longer. Don't want to disrupt my newfound performance using the MT version and great display using Open XR along with the Toolkit.

[Supmua]

I'm getting reproducible crashes with motion smoothing, if multiplication factors setting is not 1.  So be careful, but it's not a big deal.  If you experience similar crash change the factors back to 1 or don't use motion smoothing.  On the other hand no issue so far with reducing PD setting with motion smoothing.  Varjo Gaze Tracking can also use up to 7% of CPU, might cause a problem with older CPUs.

Update:  No crash with motion smoothing as long as multiplication factor is 1.0 or higher.  Crashes with factor below 1.0 when motion smoothing is on.

1 hour ago, dburne said:

 

I will probably wait a while and let that part of the cake bake a little longer. Don't want to disrupt my newfound performance using the MT version and great display using Open XR along with the Toolkit.

Yeah wait a couple of days for things to settle down.  But you will likely get better performance and better visuals with DFR.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Supmua

[mbucchia]

1 hour ago, Supmua said:

I'm getting reproducible crashes with motion smoothing, if multiplication factors setting is not 1

Can you check with the testers on Varjo discord? None seen that so it's a bit surprising.

Of anything, I would think turbo_mode=1 would cause issues, not the multiplier tweaks...

[motoadve]

27 minutes ago, mbucchia said:

Can you check with the testers on Varjo discord? None seen that so it's a bit surprising.

Of anything, I would think turbo_mode=1 would cause issues, not the multiplier tweaks...

I just tried 1.1 with Motion Smoothness and no crashes 

[Supmua]

10 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Can you check with the testers on Varjo discord? None seen that so it's a bit surprising.

Of anything, I would think turbo_mode=1 would cause issues, not the multiplier tweaks...

Thx. I’ll try turbo off tomorrow spent way too much time on this got some real work to do.

9 hours ago, motoadve said:

I just tried 1.1 with Motion Smoothness and no crashes 

See if u can reproduce my crash.  Focus 0.9, peripheral 0.7, Vsync 45 fps, MS always enabled, PPD 37.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Supmua

[Supmua]

Did some more testings and interestingly no crash at 35 or 39 PPD settings with either Turbo on/off.  So far my specific crash conditions are motion smoothing with PPD at 37 and multiplication factors below 1.

[Supmua]

It looks like we're still getting double cursor in the quad view, but only at specific locations on the screen typically around the HUD or cockpit perimeter.  Not that big of a deal since this doesn't happen inside the cockpit but it's there.

[dburne]

Ok so I know I am not fully awake yet - but why you say it does not happen in cockpit when your screen shot shows it inside the cockpit?

[Supmua]

57 minutes ago, dburne said:

Ok so I know I am not fully awake yet - but why you say it does not happen in cockpit when your screen shot shows it inside the cockpit?

Doesn't happen where you need to operate the switches.  It's only around the border which isn't a big deal.

Overall, though, the experience has been great with both DCS mt and mbucchia's DFR mode.  The combination provides a leap in both performance and visual quality.  Lots of testings to do though especially with other mods.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Supmua

[alfred2704]

Did some tests: Ka-50 III Gulf free flight, F-18 Syria free flight, F-14 SC Quals and improvements are there and you really can see them. With VB 39 I got 60-80 FPS and mostly smooth pic.

Before in the same test scenarios my FPS were 50-65.

Thank you @mbucchia.

[Supmua]

7 minutes ago, alfred2704 said:

Did some tests: Ka-50 III Gulf free flight, F-18 Syria free flight, F-14 SC Quals and improvements are there and you really can see them. With VB 39 I got 60-80 FPS and mostly smooth pic.

Before in the same test scenarios my FPS were 50-65.

Thank you @mbucchia.

If you reduce pixel density setting in DCS to 0.8 or 0.9 you’ll see even better fps  The image is slightly softer but more performance gain.  I’m running Hornet Syria campaign, will see how it goes. 

Edited March 19, 2023 by Supmua

[alfred2704]

38 minutes ago, Supmua said:

If you reduce pixel density setting in DCS to 0.8 or 0.9 you’ll see even better fps  The image is slightly softer but more performance gain.  I’m running Hornet Syria campaign, will see how it goes. 

 

I prefer visuals to FPS. Did some other test, setting focus_multiplier=1.25 which is 2740 just to get closer to what I had with toolkit 2800. The cost is 5-8 FPS but quality in the focused area improved. PS. did not change peripheral_multiplier so maybe reducing it a little could increase overall FPS.

[alfred2704]

This what I see with 1.25 multiplier:

2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100:   Found option 'peripheral_multiplier=1'
2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100:   Found option 'focus_multiplier=1.25'
2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100:   Found option 'turbo_mode=1'
2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100:   Found option 'no_eye_tracking=0'
2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100: Peripheral resolution: 2192x1880 (multiplier: 1.000)
2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100: Focus resolution 1500x1500 (multiplier: 1.250)
2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100: Peripheral resolution: 2192x1880 (multiplier: 1.000)
2023-03-19 16:38:18 +0100: Focus resolution 1500x1500 (multiplier: 1.250)
2023-03-19 16:38:22 +0100: Creating swapchain with resolution: 2192x1880
2023-03-19 16:38:22 +0100: Creating swapchain with resolution: 2192x1880
2023-03-19 16:38:22 +0100: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1500x1500
2023-03-19 16:38:22 +0100: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1500x1500

Ps. I also can reproduce double cursor for F-18.

Edited March 19, 2023 by alfred2704

[Supmua]

I’m more of an fps snob, so I usually don’t max out my settings. But this is a good thing about PCVR, we have choices and options. For console or mobile VR the choices are very limited. 

[alfred2704]

Found option 'peripheral_multiplier=1.25'
Found option 'focus_multiplier=1.25'
Found option 'turbo_mode=1'
Found option 'no_eye_tracking=0'
Peripheral resolution: 2740x2350 (multiplier: 1.250)
Focus resolution 1500x1500 (multiplier: 1.250)
Peripheral resolution: 2740x2350 (multiplier: 1.250)
Focus resolution 1500x1500 (multiplier: 1.250)
Creating swapchain with resolution: 2740x2350
Creating swapchain with resolution: 2740x2350
Creating swapchain with resolution: 1500x1500
Creating swapchain with resolution: 1500x1500

 

Still playable but at the limit

[alfred2704]

@mbucchia could you explain which table is to be applied ?

https://varjo.com/use-center/get-to-know-your-headset/getting-the-perfect-image-quality/

4. Varjo Aero running a Varjo native application with foveated rendering (eye tracking calibrated)

or

5. Varjo Aero running a Varjo native application in quad view mode

Number 4 right?

Thank you.

 

[dartagnan]

Does any changes need to be made to the dcs.exe when using the Aero with this new ED UPDATE FOR MULTI THREADING? If so please help. Thanks in advance.