DCS VR Performance Optimization

[Ready]

I started this topic to track and discuss challenges with getting the best performance out of the system. I usually test each setting a couple of times.

27-1-2025 Nvidia 571.96 DLSS 4.0

Installed the new drivers. 

25-1-2025 Adjusted GPU Overclock

Increased CPU PBO Scalar and reduced some of the GPU overclock to further increase fps and frametimes. Time will tell if it also stays stable on the MP-servers. 

18-1-2025 Clean W10

Complete reinstall of W10 returned another 5fps and better frametimes. Over the years the system got bloated with all sorts of traces from old hardware that I upgraded (2x GPU and CPU) and software that I tried and not fully removed. The system is snappy and clean again! I considered W11, but there are too many bad stories out there, no clear advantage for AMD and GUI modifications with taskbar etc W10 is easier. 

The only thing I still notice is that it seems that when I hit the FPS limit some sort of trouble in FPS and frametimes appears. When I stay a bit below 90, like 88fps, it is more stable.

27-12-2024 Current Overclock settings

• 64GB ----- EXPO: ON (timings default as stated on the DIMMS)
• 9800X3D ----- Turbo Game Mode: ON PBO: +200 Curve Optimizer: -20, FCLK Infinity Fabric: 2200 UCLK DIV1 Mode: UCLK=MEMCLK, SCALAR 10X
• 4090 ----- Core Voltage: +100 Core Clock: +120Mhz Memory Clock: +900Mhz, Fan: Power Limit 133%, Temp Limit 84.
  This GPU overclock is stable and gives me 4-5 extra FPS, even when i am CPU bound.

My setup

1. Windows 10 - latest version - Windows 11 will not happen until I will get serious latency advantages.
2. Motherboard: ROG STRIX X870E-E Gaming WIFI Systemboard
3. VR Headset: Varjo Aero
4. SSD for DCS and Windows, separated

DCS Settings

• Most are set to the max.
• SSS, Secondary Shadows, SSAO, SSLR are disabled; they do not bring much visually.
• Visibility Range Extreme. I have Visible Range set to High. Increasing this further is not bringing much visual improvement and really takes away performance. 
• MSAA Mask Size 0.42 is my sweetspot. 

Testing Setup and approach

My Windows has been heavily tweaked and optimized and I am currently still running the same Windows I started with 5 years ago. I upgraded my systemboard, CPU and GPU a couple of times but did not reinstall Windows. I think at certain moments in the past I even went too far with tweaking and should have dialed back and better register what I was doing. So a clean install will be somewhere in the near future because I am certain I have left quite some performance on the table.

For the basic quick test of setting adjustments or hardware/software updates I start a the default A-10C mission Runway Startup on the Marianas Map. I use Marianas because this mission is quite demanding and quite stable almost from the start with AI not doing much. I let it run a couple of times for 20 seconds and track the performance with CapFrameX to calculate the average FPS, 1% and 0.2% lows of the runs. Many other missions give me 90FPS, so adjusting settings with such missions will not give me noticeable visible differences.

If I want to visually see the performance I open up the the FPS overlay inside DCS. I sometimes also open up the new XRFrameTools application to visualize my frametimes.

Once a setting looks pretty okay I log into our Wing's Multiplayer server, startup OBS recording and give it a spin to see how it goes. I usually get 90FPS flat in this setup, while running OBS recording. 

Testing log

From now on I will start adding my complete testing logs to this main posting. Where relevant I will add charts to visualize the difference between certain options. Certain tests were eye-openers. It was/is a dreadful process going through all the settings and quite a few settings were insignificant in my case.

Frame Times, average FPS, 1% and 0.2% Lows 

My main goal is to find the ones that will bring more stability (reduction of intrusive stutters) and performance (increase of FPS/frametimes). Sometimes it is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Seeing the settings that made a difference might bring quick wins to others as well. Overall the average FPS is not improving that much by all the tweaking, it is easy though to screw up your system and reduce FPS. But once the FPS are pretty decent it is hard to get substantial improvements. My biggest wins are with the 1% and 0.2% lows, reducing these give a much better overall experience than to have 1-2 more average FPS. The overall FPS can be high, but when you have a few microstutters here and there it is very annoying and for me breaks the immersion in VR.

Caution

Please be careful, not all what works for me might work for you. Do everything at your own risk. I had some crashes, especially with the overclocking, so always make backups and restore points. I also don't have my overclock software start automatically anymore when tweaking, because that also caused an issue once causing me to keep rebooting into a crashing configuration. 

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Edited April 7 by Ready

[Mr_sukebe]

In my opinion:

 - Within OpenXR, enable FSR

 - Pre-load radius to around 45%

 - Clutter/grass and forrest details to around 30%

 - Shadows OFF

 - Water HIGH

 - For complex missions:  Install the dedicated server.  Run the dedicated server on the same PC (it will use around 6GB of RAM and a different CPU core to the main DCS client) and then login to the mission as you would join any online server.  That will offload AI calculations to a different CPU core

[edmuss]

Slightly off topic, but why on earth are people with 4090s getting such low min fps on heaven?  I get 51fps minimum with my 3080ti, granted my average is only about 285 and high about 590.

For sharpening I would recommend using CAS from the openxr toolkit, it doesn't upscale at all but the sharpening is really nice; not sure how it might compare to 3Dmigoto performance wise though.

[Ready]

19 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

In my opinion:

 - Within OpenXR, enable FSR

 - Pre-load radius to around 45%

 - Clutter/grass and forrest details to around 30%

 - Shadows OFF

 - Water HIGH

 - For complex missions:  Install the dedicated server.  Run the dedicated server on the same PC (it will use around 6GB of RAM and a different CPU core to the main DCS client) and then login to the mission as you would join any online server.  That will offload AI calculations to a different CPU core

Thanks! I mostly play Multiplayer. When I enable FSR I see a degradation in visual quality. What is your FRS setting?

With smaller pre-load radius I don't see a noticeable difference.

Clutter/grass gives me no noticeable difference.

Reducing forrest gives me a difference, but because I mainly fly on NTTR (with hardly any trees) I have it set to max.

Shadows I have set to medium because I really like the cockpit experience. Medium is enough, High does not give me much extra.

Water I have set to low because I am mainly in the desert. It brings me not much extra. 

11 minutes ago, edmuss said:

Slightly off topic, but why on earth are people with 4090s getting such low min fps on heaven?  I get 51fps minimum with my 3080ti, granted my average is only about 285 and high about 590.

For sharpening I would recommend using CAS from the openxr toolkit, it doesn't upscale at all but the sharpening is really nice; not sure how it might compare to 3Dmigoto performance wise though.

No idea about the min FPS. Strange indeed.

Will try CAS instead of 3dMigoto. 3dMigoto takes up a couple of FPS. I switched it back on because of my upgraded CPU and GPU, just for the heck of it. When I was on my 3080 I had it switched off because it was taking up too many resources and even with reprojection on it was problematic. 

By the way, we spoke on Discord about my performance in the reverb-hmd channel. Since then I have cleared all my settings in NVCP and NvidiaProfileInspector and this sorted out a lot. I think I over-configured before. Reduced my Anti-aliasing drastically. Still not completely happy, but at least it is no stutter-fest anymore on our server.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Ready

[Brainfreeze]

Quite frankly I would not bother with most of the tinkering as you end up spending your life on it for very little incremental benefit.  Adjust the main DCS settings to your liking ( I find MSAA 2x is enough as is Anisotropic at 8x or even 4x) but I like clouds on ultra and visib range as well).  Your system should be very smooth with your hardware. Possibly look into process lasso to make sure the vr compositor and other vr related processes are always given high priority if you experience some stutters.

[Ready]

52 minutes ago, Brainfreeze said:

Quite frankly I would not bother with most of the tinkering as you end up spending your life on it for very little incremental benefit.  Adjust the main DCS settings to your liking ( I find MSAA 2x is enough as is Anisotropic at 8x or even 4x) but I like clouds on ultra and visib range as well).  Your system should be very smooth with your hardware. Possibly look into process lasso to make sure the vr compositor and other vr related processes are always given high priority if you experience some stutters.

Yeah tinkering can take up a lot of time. The challenge for me was to find the right settings that bring a reward. With my previous setup it took me quite some time to get the best bang for the buck, running dozens of track files with analysis of fpsVR logs in excel. After my hardware upgrade things got a bit easier, but I am still trying to get things smooth without reprojection, because of all the artifacts that reprojection introduces.

vr compositor I don't use anymore, in process lasso I had it set to high priority and I had it separated from the cores that DCS is using. MSAA 2X gives me jaggies that I don't like. Will try lowering anisotropic. Clouds low are already fairly nice to me, same for visib range high. My challenge is that our group flies on certain evenings and I have no opportunity to play around with my settings then. Because my setup is CPU-bound it really is a challenge to find stuff to reduce CPU load, until we receive the much anticipated DCS enhancements.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Ready

[Brun]

There's a windows update to fix the holographic shell thing. In 11 at least, I've just applied it now.

[Brainfreeze]

1 minute ago, Ready said:

Yeah tinkering can take up a lot of time. The challenge for me was to find the right settings that bring a reward. With my previous setup it took me quite some time to get the best bang for the buck, running dozens of track files with analysis of fpsVR logs in excel. After my hardware upgrade things got a bit easier, but I am still trying to get things smooth without reprojection, because of all the artifacts that reprojection introduces.

vr compositor I don't use anymore, in process lasso I had it set to high priority and I had it separated from the cores that DCS is using. MSAA 2X gives me jaggies that I don't like. Will try lowering anisotropic. Clouds low are already fairly nice to me, same for visib range high. My challenge is that our group flies on certain evenings and I have no opportunity to play around with my settings then. Because my setup is CPU-bound it really is a challenge to find stuff to reduce CPU load, until we get our much anticipated DCS enhancements.

hehe yes and the hours spent tinkering have to be repeated each time DCS makes an update or windows does or Nvidia does    

Without reprojection I suppose you need >90fps for a smooth experience and I do not think you'll ever get it. 

[Ready]

46 minutes ago, Brainfreeze said:

hehe yes and the hours spent tinkering have to be repeated each time DCS makes an update or windows does or Nvidia does    

Without reprojection I suppose you need >90fps for a smooth experience and I do not think you'll ever get it. 

Yes exactly. Disable mods->turn off VaicomPro->DCS update->clear shaders cache->update Nvidia ProfileInspector->Turn on mods->run track file->get dissapointed and tinker some more. 

Luckily when I am in the air I am getting many times 90FPS now, but still get some judders here and there, for example while looking at terrain while banking.

I frequently also get an FPS hit, probably because somewhere across the other side of the map (far outside of my range) a script is starting and some ground units start doing their thing. My DCS then gets a 30FPS hit, while my GPU is doing nothing. This also happens when I am in the air in the dark, looking into a clear black sky. 

48 minutes ago, Brun said:

There's a windows update to fix the holographic shell thing. In 11 at least, I've just applied it now.

tnx, will take a look. 

Edit: Could not find it yet. Created a scheduled batch file that stops the HolographicShell event trace session, so for the time being it should be no factor. (I don't even know if it is a W10 issue), but just in case. Thanks to zerosuneuphoria:  https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/win-11-update-causing-stutters/543631/127

Edited November 30, 2022 by Ready

[Ready]

Normally approx. 90FPS stable, but at night on our NTTR server strange behaviour. Increased Visibility range to Ultra

Edited December 1, 2022 by Ready

[Ready]

Changed:

1. Disabled 3dMigoto
2. Enabled CAS 30% sharpening inside OpenXR
3. NvidiaProfileInspector SGSSAA - Sparse Grid Supersampling 4X - Beautiful but heavy impact
4. Nvidia Control Panel: MFAA 2X (extra visuals at no extra performance when MSAA is on?)
5. Processor scheduling changed to Background Services (https://www.thewindowsclub.com/processor-scheduling-in-windows-7-8)

Items tried with no visible advantage:

1. Frame limiter in NVCP and OpenXR-Toolkit - Removes Judder but gives terrible ghosting
2. VSync
3. Adjusting DCS Desktop window size
4. Game Mode ON
5. 60Hz in the headset (eyes can't take it)

Items still to try:

1. Undervolting the 4090
2. Get a 3rd SSD and have OBS record to this SSD.
3. Reducing OpenXR-Toolkit: shaking reduction
4. OpenXR - FSR 80%
5. Clouds Ultra

Edited December 1, 2022 by Ready

[Ready]

My current performance is about 45 FPS on the ground (476th NTTR DS1 server) and about 90FPS in the air. Reprojection turned off and with current Anti-aliasing settings very clear. At some areas on the NTTR Map I do get CPU bound (like doing target practice and overflying the range, or while looking towards certain area's at Nellis). Will tinker more to see if I can further reduce the CPU load in these areas. Will try to stay away from Reprojection because of the introduction of too many wobbles and artifacts, which are very distracting while using a VR kneeboard.

Additional items tested;

1. Tried Clouds at Ultra - It removes shimmers but increases frametime. Reduced back to Low. Good enough for my puposes
2. OpenXR Toolkit Shaking reduction - The only visible impact is lag while quickly panning when going above 40%. Leave it between 20-30 for more stable recordings.
3. OpenXR-Toolkit FRS - tried at 80%, but great decrease in clarity and not too much visible gain in performance. Reverted back to CAS. 
4. Processor scheduling - switch back to programs priority. Had no visible gain and got the impression the response of the game was a bit lower, but no hard data.
5. Anisotropic Filtering - tried lowering, but no clear gain, so left it at 16x.

Black screens - Somehow one of my modifications introduced blackscreens while opening certain documents (for example just opening MS-Word and MS-Excel and MS Onenote). Screen stays black, until ALT-F4 to close it and then screen returns to normal. reverted to older Nvidia drivers, but no visible improvement.

Server disconnects - Had one server disconnect and about 10percent packet loss, which was caused by server-side issue. Server restart fixed it. The last 12 months had various server time-outs and disconnects, which have been fixed by adjusting many LAN settings and replacing hardware and adjusting cabling. Also bufferbloat has been resolved by changing router and introducing QOS - traffic shaping. 

Edited December 8, 2022 by Ready

[WipeUout]

Not sure your Uningine results are where they should be, my results with my 4080 are bellow.

Looking at your nvidia CP settings, you might want to set power management to max performance.
 

Have you compared SteamVR vs OpenXR?  For me OpenXR is more stable, I was getting occasional stuttering with SteamVR.

As far as setting in OpenXR TK, I find that using Fix Foveated Rendering provides a nicer result than NIS or FSR in performance and image quality.

Edited December 11, 2022 by WipeUout
Typo

[Ready]

3 hours ago, WipeUout said:

Not sure your Uningine results are where they should be, my results with my 4080 are bellow.

Looking at your nvidia CP settings, you might want to set power management to max performance.
 

Have you compared SteamVR vs OpenXR?  For me OpenXR is more stable, I was getting occasional stuttering with SteamVR.

As far as setting in OpenXR TK, I find that using Fix Foveated Rendering provides a nicer result than NIS or FSR in performance and image quality.

 

 

Nice catch! I don't know why my power management was on 'normal'. Maybe because after clearing everything to defaults I forgot to put it back to max performance.

I compared SteamVR vs OpenXR. I tried switching back to SteamVR a couple of weeks ago, but could not get it stable. I am so used to the user friendliness of OpenXR, so I quickly went back to OpenXR. I do miss fspVR and my VR kneeboard overlay in OBS though. If a future SteamVR update would be more stable I might switch back again.

Foveated rendering improves performance a bit, but gives me quite degraded visuals, even when I set it to the lowest settings. I see the lower resolution in the corner of my eyes and it really distracts me. Also when I look back at recordings I don't like that lower resolution in the corners of the recording. I had it switched on when on the 3080, but now I can live without it most of the times. 

[WipeUout]

14 hours ago, Ready said:

Foveated rendering improves performance a bit, but gives me quite degraded visuals, even when I set it to the lowest settings. I see the lower resolution in the corner of my eyes and it really distracts me.

Oh, I did not experienced this since I use a Pimax with wider field of view.  Foveated is definitely more suited for wide field of view.  Thank for the feedback and useful information on your quest to better visuals/performance.

[Ready]

Next OpenXR settings to try (thanks @edmuss)

- 3300 resolution override

- NIS75%

- FFR quality/wide

- Turbo mode on

- FPS locked to 55fps

[GunSlingerOZ]

Fantastic post, this is the level of detail required to do accurate benchmarking. By the way, I believe NVIDIA control panel MSAA does not work in DCS. 

So it looks like you get around 45fps on the ground, but then 90fps up in the air? Is the latter still true when you're in a furball with multiple other aircraft? I have an identical PC setup to you, and despise the reprojection artefacts, so need at least 75fps to maintain a level of fluidity.

Edited December 23, 2022 by GunSlingerOZ

[Tusk.V]

1 hour ago, Ready said:

Next OpenXR settings to try (thanks @edmuss)

- 3300 resolution override

- NIS75%

- FFR quality/wide

- Turbo mode on

- FPS locked to 55fps

Are you going to leave 3dmigoto off?

[Ready]

13 minutes ago, Tusk.V said:

Are you going to leave 3dmigoto off?

I had it on before and will try with/without. I was using it for sharpening and some color improvements.

[Ready]

57 minutes ago, GunSlingerOZ said:

Fantastic post, this is the level of detail required to do accurate benchmarking. By the way, I believe NVIDIA control panel MSAA does not work in DCS. 

So it looks like you get around 45fps on the ground, but then 90fps up in the air? Is the latter still true when you're in a furball with multiple other aircraft? I have an identical PC setup to you, and despise the reprojection artefacts, so need at least 75fps to maintain a level of fluidity.

 

I wish fpsVR was working, so I could get some hard data via a csv file. I know there is a functionality available but haven't found the time to tinker with it yet. Will see if I can get my trackfile going again so I get some hard data.

My FPS depends on where I am and what our server is doing and what other pilots are doing. When on the ground on our NTTR MP server I get wishy washy performance, sometimes 60-70, but it can also drop down to 30-ish. That's because I am CPU-bound all the time nowadays. In the air the same thing. When on one of our ranges FPS drops to 40's and when just enroute I get great performance, because low CPU. I haven't done many furballing because I mainly fly the hog and am practicing A2G things in our training pipeline.

[hannibal]

with a M.2 drive, i have lowered my preload radius to 25000 which is close to 0.. no where near max

also set NVIDA CP low latency mode to Ultra..

also DCS executable properties, i set disable full screen optimizations.

Edited December 23, 2022 by hannibal

[Ready]

34 minutes ago, hannibal said:

with a M.2 drive, i have lowered my preload radius to 25000 which is close to 0.. no where near max

also set NVIDA CP low latency mode to Ultra..

also DCS executable properties, i set disable full screen optimizations.

 

Thanks. Full screen optimizations are set. Will try the others.

[Tusk.V]

12 hours ago, Ready said:

I had it on before and will try with/without. I was using it for sharpening and some color improvements.

These are my current settings. I don't quite have the horsepower you do. My specs are in my signature.

• 120% render resolution in OXR Tools
• FSR at 75% (I have sharpening on but can't really tell a difference)
• FFV on Quality/Wide
• Reprojection on and set to Auto
• 3dmigoto used for +1.3 cockpit/HUD sharpening and +0.2 haze reduction
• DCS settings
  • Textures: High
  • Terrain Textures: High
  • Water: High
  • Vis Range: Medium
  • Shadows: Medium
  • MSAA: 2x
  • Anistropic Filtering: 16x
  • Terrain Shadows: Off

I know most people leave render res at 100% but I'm able to turn it up a bit since I use reprojection. The clarity is so good! I stay locked at 45fps in free flights.

VR Flight Sim Guy released this video a few hours ago. Maybe try playing with the resolution?

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Tusk.V

[dburne]

56 minutes ago, Tusk.V said:

These are my current settings. I don't quite have the horsepower you do. My specs are in my signature.

• 120% render resolution in OXR Tools
• FSR at 75% (I have sharpening on but can't really tell a difference)
• FFV on Quality/Wide
• Reprojection on and set to Auto
• 3dmigoto used for +1.3 cockpit/HUD sharpening and +0.2 haze reduction
• DCS settings
  • Textures: High
  • Terrain Textures: High
  • Water: High
  • Vis Range: Medium
  • Shadows: Medium
  • MSAA: 2x
  • Anistropic Filtering: 16x
  • Terrain Shadows: Off

I know most people leave render res at 100% but I'm able to turn it up a bit since I use reprojection. The clarity is so good! I stay locked at 45fps in free flights.

VR Flight Sim Guy released this video a few hours ago. Maybe try playing with the resolution?

 

 

 

I like VR Flight Sim Guy and enjoy his videos and the enthusiasm he brings to them. However after his extreme high praise on Varjo's new Motion Smoothing for the Aero during his visit to their facility I am not going to put as much stock into what he says going forward. Varjo's new Motion Smoothing is a total wreck and pathetic , worse than any I have ever seen... That thing should have never been released in the state it currently is in. 

[Wolf8312]

20 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

I like VR Flight Sim Guy and enjoy his videos and the enthusiasm he brings to them. However after his extreme high praise on Varjo's new Motion Smoothing for the Aero during his visit to their facility I am not going to put as much stock into what he says going forward. Varjo's new Motion Smoothing is a total wreck and pathetic , worse than any I have ever seen... That thing should have never been released in the state it currently is in. 

Very few well established commentators on YT are all that trustworthy. I'm not sure I'd trust myself to remain objective either if someone was (maybe) sending me a headset like that for free! I don't even believe they do it on purpose most of the time, and I'm sure theres a good chance he fully believed the MS was great! But I'm sure as with the VIVE it will be worth it in the end if they can get it sorted quickly! I went for about two years with the original vive and it's inferior reprojection, being very jealous of occulus at the time (as well as suffering horrible momentary loading screens in DCS whenever things exploded)! Though I hadn't dropped two grand on *that* headset!

Edited December 23, 2022 by Wolf8312