Any Quest 2 users should give Virtual Desktop another try after it's recent performance update.

[MoleUK]

VD has always had pretty poor performance with DCS, it wouldn't fully utilize the GPU for whatever reason. A few days ago an update for VD dropped claiming to increase some PCVR performance that was left on the table, up to 20%. In DCS however my performance has skyrocketed. In MP I can hit up to just under 100 FPS without reprojection, depending on the resolution and airframe selected. This is on a 5800X and 3070.

You want/need to launch DCS in VD directly to get the most benefit, not via Oculus or SteamVR. To do this, create a new shortcut to the DCS.exe. Bring up it's properties, and add -force_oculus to the end of the "Target" line, with a space after the DCS.exe.

Connect to your PC via VD as usual, then right click virtual desktop (in the extended task bar) and select launch game and point it towards the new DCS shortcut. DCS should launch without triggering either steamVR or Oculus software. Once in game, if you bring up the VD performance overlay you should see that you're running the Oculus API.

With the new update i'm getting the GPU to peg at 98%-ish usage and stay there, so it should scale up fine for higher GPU's. 100FPS seems to be about the limit of my 5800X on the lowest resolution setting, anything above that and my GPU starts to bottleneck. Only server that I found to be the exception was Enigmas cold war where I had to turn shadows from medium to off or the CPU would bottleneck again regardless of other settings.

It's worth noting that VD's reprojection technique is performed on the Q2 itself not your CPU/GPU, so it is essentially "free" if you need the extra performance. Not a huge fan of some of the artifacting vs Oculus' ASW, but free is free and it's a fluid reprojection not locked so it literally just doubles whatever frame-rate you can hit.

Edited December 12, 2022 by MoleUK

[RoboHackfeld]

Thanks for this Info. I will give this a try on thursday.

[Flyingfish]

I've tried this but I can't stop steam vr from starting up. I have the steam version of DCS, not the standalone so could this be causing the problem?

[RoboHackfeld]

Same over here.

Tried to start it via VD, right click on VD in Taskbar, directly via shortcut. All with the shortcut and the implementation of " -force_oculus" behind the Target path.

Its always forcing Steam VR to start and the performance is way worse than it is via Oculus Link.

[MoleUK]

On 12/15/2022 at 9:56 AM, Flyingfish said:

I've tried this but I can't stop steam vr from starting up. I have the steam version of DCS, not the standalone so could this be causing the problem?

Standalone, i'm guessing trying to do it on the steam install would require another workaround to get it to not launch steamVR.

[Pande4360]

Hi there, so yeah there has been arguments that the steamversion isnt supported as of now. Other than that using the standalone should involve simply launching it via app.

Make sure you have a good enough router. I tried 3 in all kind of different modes and settings AX/AC/g/n and they all perform very differently. So the router and the perfect setting for the specific model play an important role. Some routers wont probably work at all. For more information on good routers and further help, you can join the VD discord. If your router runs poor on AX you migh wanna try AC instead,

Furthermore install NVidia´s latest drivers. I think that also helped a lot. For AMD go to the discord there is more information available.

There is also a beta avaiable which might futher improve performance.

Edited December 16, 2022 by Pande4360

[MoleUK]

The VD devs appear to be working on getting the DCS steam install to launch in VD rather than steamVR, it should now be included in the next VD patch so you may want to wait for that rather than switch to the standalone install.

Edited December 16, 2022 by MoleUK

[Flyingfish]

Cool, thanks. I'll wait till the next vd update and try again then

[ShaunOfTheFuzz]

Have you been using airlink wirelessly previously or wired PCVR on Q2? Have you used openXR, open-composite, etc? What kind of bandwidth and VD quality settings are you using, because going from 500Mb bandwidth, 1:1 encode resolution wired PCVR to VD in the past has looked pretty terrible in my experience. 

There's a lot of detail required here to make this post useful more broadly for those of us who have optimised our setups to within an inch of their lives. 

[MoleUK]

7 hours ago, ShaunOfTheFuzz said:

Have you been using airlink wirelessly previously or wired PCVR on Q2? Have you used openXR, open-composite, etc? What kind of bandwidth and VD quality settings are you using, because going from 500Mb bandwidth, 1:1 encode resolution wired PCVR to VD in the past has looked pretty terrible in my experience. 

There's a lot of detail required here to make this post useful more broadly for those of us who have optimised our setups to within an inch of their lives. 

Was originall on wired link but switched to air link a long time back. I was using opencomposite and later openxr.

VD Settings attached in SS, though I only bumped the bitrate from 100 to 125 recently.

You do want a router that plays nice with VD, one that's not being used by any other device, and one that's using a channel that isn't at all congested.

Edited December 17, 2022 by MoleUK

[pelton]

Is it possible that the performance gain is due to VD running at a lower resolution/pixel density that native Link?
The image is perhaps (subjectively) improved in VD but maybe due to a softening due to lower-res and a then a sharpening filter.

[MoleUK]

1 hour ago, pelton said:

Is it possible that the performance gain is due to VD running at a lower resolution/pixel density that native Link?
The image is perhaps (subjectively) improved in VD but maybe due to a softening due to lower-res and a then a sharpening filter.

Possible, but i'm now running at a higher resolution on VD than I was on link and still getting vastly more frames.

[whitav8]

I just tried the most recent Virtual Desktop - still get more clarity on Airlink (200Mbps) and unfortunately, I get more head lateral movement stutters with VD.

[cordite]

Internet connection required to start each time. No thanks.

[IronStar95]

I've just adopted the last version of Virtual Desktop which generates much less stuttering than the Oculus Air Link... with a better FPS!

[diamond26]

It's an interesting case this one. I've only tested VD with my gaming Laptop (i79750, RTX 2060) due to connectivity issues with PC.

In my case the picture clarity in VD was lacking compared to both Link and Airlink despite trrying the highest resolution possible. It had a blurry filter. FPS wasn't better when used the Ultra resoloution which is close to full resolution I use in Oculus for Link and Airlink

[MoleUK]

1 hour ago, diamond26 said:

It's an interesting case this one. I've only tested VD with my gaming Laptop (i79750, RTX 2060) due to connectivity issues with PC.

In my case the picture clarity in VD was lacking compared to both Link and Airlink despite trrying the highest resolution possible. It had a blurry filter. FPS wasn't better when used the Ultra resoloution which is close to full resolution I use in Oculus for Link and Airlink

Might be worth playing around with the sharpening slider to see if you can clear it up any.

It might end up being the case that VD (post performance patch) works as an ok alternative for those running the resolution completely maxed out, but a very good alternative for those running in lower resolutions looking to get more frames. Especially in MP.

VRAM might also be another consideration, i'm limited to 8 (3070) and VD definitely uses up less of it. So that might be less of a bottleneck for me on VD than it was on link.

Edited December 19, 2022 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

On 12/16/2022 at 12:23 PM, Flyingfish said:

Cool, thanks. I'll wait till the next vd update and try again then

Just updated now with DCS support.

18 hours ago, cordite said:

Internet connection required to start each time. No thanks.

Introduced in the last patch due to people pirating VD iirc. Think they're discussing some alternative methods.

Edited December 19, 2022 by MoleUK

[Flyingfish]

It's still starting steam vr for me

[diamond26]

40 minutes ago, Flyingfish said:

It's still starting steam vr for me

The trick is to launch the game using right click on VD streamer icon and launch game option. Then you use the shortcut MoleUK mentions in his first post

[Flyingfish]

Yeah, I did that but still no luck unfortunately 

[MoleUK]

13 hours ago, Flyingfish said:

It's still starting steam vr for me

Worth asking on the VD discord as they're very responsive. Might be another step you have to go through with the steam version.

https://discord.gg/wmFKjXXv

You're launching from the games tab inside VD right? Think that's the process you're meant to do for the steam install version, not the right click launch that you do with standalone.

Edited December 20, 2022 by MoleUK

[Flyingfish]

Thanks. I was launching dcs by right clicking vd in the task bar so looks like that's where I was going wrong. I'll try launching from the games tab when I next get a chance. Thanks for the help

[Namonid_2020]

I have a Standalone version, but it simply does not work. I do really hope that I get the above mentioned WOW effect, but when I start DCS from Virtual Desktop, it launches but in 2D. Quite annoying :-(

BTW I do not recommend Quest 2 to anyone, who would like to use it for DCS. You can buy it to your daughter for virtual chatting, but it is not suitable for flight simming. Even with an RTX 3090Ti is not enough clear, and the distant objects are hardly visible. You will waiste your times with reading dozens of articles about settings, VR tricks etc., but finnally the picture will remain basically the same (blurry and non-satrisfying). 

And DCS is also failed to solve the VR issues, I do not believe that they are not able to improve this. 

[MoleUK]

I can only continue to recommend VD for any Q2 or Pico 4 users that haven't tried it with DCS yet. You no longer need to tweak the shortcut, just right click VD and point to DCS shortcut on standalone, or with a steam install just start DCS from within the games tab in VD.

New GPU, current performance on a fairly busy MP server (though just after reset) with shadows and reprojection off. In-game settings in video, "medium" on VD is roughly 2000x2100, "high" is roughly 2500x2600 per eye. On link that is 4000x2100 or 5000x2600.

 

 

On 2/4/2023 at 4:45 PM, Namonid_2020 said:

I have a Standalone version, but it simply does not work. I do really hope that I get the above mentioned WOW effect, but when I start DCS from Virtual Desktop, it launches but in 2D. Quite annoying :-(

BTW I do not recommend Quest 2 to anyone, who would like to use it for DCS. You can buy it to your daughter for virtual chatting, but it is not suitable for flight simming. Even with an RTX 3090Ti is not enough clear, and the distant objects are hardly visible. You will waiste your times with reading dozens of articles about settings, VR tricks etc., but finnally the picture will remain basically the same (blurry and non-satrisfying). 

And DCS is also failed to solve the VR issues, I do not believe that they are not able to improve this. 

If you're on DCS standalone, you need to right click VD in the task bar and point it towards DCS shortcut to launch. If on steam install, you need to launch DCS from within the games tab inside VD.

The Q2 isn't perfect, but the current tradeoffs make it worth considering. Though the Pico 4 frankly has it beat on all fronts atm.

Edited March 3, 2023 by MoleUK