Varjo Aero and 4090

[Bouli306]

After suffering from stutters when I installed the 4090 I wrote a support ticket, with the following response from Varjo:

Hello,
 
Thank you for contacting Varjo support, I'm sorry to see you're having issues with your new 4090.
 
We are aware of the issues that the 4090 cards are having with our HMDs. We are currently looking into it and will update you as soon as we have any additional information. We recommend using another GPU for now if you would like to use the Aero.
 
We thank you for your patience.

Regards,

Thomas
Customer Service Specialist
Varjo Technologies

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Bouli306
Verbage

[OG84]

thx for the info. same issue here. Also in the other flightsim.

[Bouli306]

Yep stepped back to the PIMAX 8KX for now

[zildac]

2 hours ago, Bouli306 said:

Yep stepped back to the PIMAX 8KX for now

Should likely see the same issue if you set it to max FOV...

[Supmua]

So Pimax also stutters at max FOV?  What's the common denominator here, NVIDIA software?

[zildac]

10 minutes ago, Supmua said:

So Pimax also stutters at max FOV?  What's the common denominator here, NVIDIA software?

I think the current line of thought is it's a driver issue at high throughput..possibly DSC related. Which likely means an Nvidia fix

Edited October 14, 2022 by zildac

[Supmua]

For now don’t move your head around too much or too quickly when you fly, lol. 

[zildac]

18 minutes ago, Supmua said:

For now don’t move your head around too much or too quickly when you fly, lol. 

And bring a sick bag In all honesty I haven't noticed it too much in DCS only in the Menus, but it is there. It's almost as though there are frames being rendered out of order, very odd tbh.

Edited October 14, 2022 by zildac

[Supmua]

1 hour ago, zildac said:

And bring a sick bag In all honesty I haven't noticed it too much in DCS only in the Menus, but it is there. It's almost as though there are frames being rendered out of order, very odd tbh.

 

Looking forward to experiencing it myself lol.

EDIT:  Actually, I'm experiencing this now with the 3090 after the new driver update 522.25.  Just ran some tests and tearing now occurs in the yaw axis (rotating head side to side), there was no such behavior with the previous driver (In the past only movement in straight forward motion (up-down, left-right) would induce tearing but never rotational such as with yaw or pitch axis.  I see this in both OpenVR and OpenXR mode in DCS.  This also happens with VR desktop apps especially when foveation is used (more pronounced in Varjo's Workspace vs Virtual Desktop app).  This might be the same issue that people with 4090 are experiencing, maybe to a lesser degree on the 3090.  It almost feels like a latency issue, but the reported display latency is 19.5ms in the analytics window which seems alright.  This is also independent from framerate, occurs event at 90 fps.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Supmua

[Spite]

Dont forget to inform Nvidia if you experience the same issues with 4090 and your Varjo HMD here:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/502444/geforce-grd-52225-feedback-thread-released-101222/

There are already quite a few reports, but the more the higher the chancen that it will get Nvidias attention.

 

[Bouli306]

On 10/14/2022 at 11:06 PM, zildac said:

Should likely see the same issue if you set it to max FOV...

Nope PIMAX is running perfectly

[zildac]

Nope PIMAX is running perfectly

Guess you got lucky then....

[Supmua]

23 minutes ago, zildac said:

27 minutes ago, Bouli306 said:

Nope PIMAX is running perfectly

Guess you got lucky then....

Do me a favor.  In NV control panel, change VR latency (might be called pre-rendering frames) to 3 or higher and VSync to fast.  See if that affects the stuttering behavior?

Edited October 16, 2022 by Supmua

[dburne]

Posted on Varjo Discord this morning by Varjo:

Quote

Arch — Today at 7:45 AM
An update from the team
we are observing some change in flip behavior with new generation gpu that could be a cause for the stutters
We are testing possible fix later today

 

[zildac]

Hopefully there will be a beta patch soonish that may address the problem. Will keep you posted.

[Supmua]

That would be nice although I’m still waiting for my 4090, lol.  Will definitely need the extra GPU power especially for the upcoming motion smoothing option.

[dburne]

An update from Varjo this morning, may be up to two weeks for a fix.

https://discord.com/channels/839478779256897546/852037353035005964/1032218076445413417

[Supmua]

26 minutes ago, dburne said:

An update from Varjo this morning, may be up to two weeks for a fix.

https://discord.com/channels/839478779256897546/852037353035005964/1032218076445413417

That's a long time, lol.  I'm pretty much ready to do some benchmarkings but not sure if the 4090 numbers will reflect the true performance without the fix.  Already have some numbers from the current setup on what I want to test.  It's actually fairly easy to fudge the data or introduce errors into the test though.  For example, with current 9900K/3090 setup just taking off the headset and place it somewhere will instantly drop the performance (both CPU and GPU frametimes).  So this would underestimate the real world performance during actual gameplay when you are wearing the headset.  Also if you hit pause to grab the readings in-game, the CPU frametime can drop by a few ms as well thus overestimating the performance.  Now these behaviors may or may not happen with faster GPU or CPU, but we'll see since I have both GPU and CPU (5800X3D) coming my way.  I won't upgrade my CPU right away so you can have some 9900K data.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Supmua

[dburne]

It will be interesting to hear of your performance gain going to 4090 with the 9900k cpu. I am concerned if I did the same on my end I would be cpu bottlenecked and I have not plan for a new system for about another year.

[Supmua]

Yeah, when you look at my numbers don’t compared it to your own as we still don’t have the exact same setup and background apps even though I’ll be using the standard VR preset. Instead, look at the performance differences between my old and new setup and this way you can approximate how much gain you can expect with your setup. 
EDIT: Took apart my PC today to upgrade to gen5 PSU with the new 16-pin connector, took forever as my old cables are a huge clump of mess in the back of the PC, but now I’m ready for the 4090 tomorrow.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Supmua

[darkman222]

Same issue here too. Varjo Aero + 4090 = stutters.

I also tried the studio drivers with no success.

Please feel free to post a heads up here if someone finds a solution or if new varjo drivers or Nvidia drivers are rolled out to solve the issue.

[zildac]

The issue is already reported and Varjo are working on it.

https://discord.com/channels/839478779256897546/1032387354025013348

Edited October 20, 2022 by zildac

[Supmua]

They're doing closed beta testing, hopefully new software release soon.  I read that there was a fix already.

[Supmua]

K I installed my 4090 (OC a bit +200 MHz both GPU and Memory) and yep the stuttering is very prominent in DCS in all axes.  In Varjo desktop app, it only occurs in pitch/yaw axis but not in horizontal/vertical axis which is interesting.  This is similar to what I saw with 3090 with the new NVIDIA update but 10x worse.  It seems to be some sort of image retention artifacts.  My new GPU is a regular Asus TUF card, but it has no trouble hitting 3GHz with overclock, so it's a good one.

The good news is that I'm getting steady 90 fps in Harrier Caucasus free flight,  That's right, with VR preset my GPU FT is 6-7ms and CPU FT is 8-9ms.  So my speculation is correct that I can hit 90 fps when it comes to light flying.  More testing to do but the Aero is killing me with all the tearing and stuttering mess.

More on stuttering.  Certain apps cause severe stuttering such as web browser, while native Varjo base or desktop window cause minimal issue.  The stuttering can also induce GPU FT spike in DCS especially when I move around quickly.

On avg, I gain 5-9ms in GPU FT reduction and 1ms in CPU FT reduction so far,  Haven't done a lot yet but yes it's an improvement in both GPU and CPU FT with the upgrade, huge on GPU and a little bit on CPU.  In stressful map such as Apache Syria Hot Ramp my GPU FT is 12.5ms which is really good while CPU is around 20.5, this still puts me at comfortable >45 fps...and this is without CPU upgrade which is also coming.

Edited October 21, 2022 by Supmua

[Supmua]

It looks like I’m going to dig up my Vive Pro for weekend flying as the Aero is pretty much no good.  Now I regret letting go of the Pro 2, lol.