Pico 4: how to set it up for DCS?

[5ephir0th]

8 hours ago, Bearskin said:

So I just got DCS world running again without SteamVR, so for anyone who is interested, download open composite launcher, the link can be found on the openxr toolkit page under the step by step chapter. Extract it and open up opencomposite. Press switch to opencomposite. Start virtual desktop, then open the virtual desktop streamer icon on your taskbar. Then long click with the right vr controller on the virtual desktop streamer icon on the taskbar and a pop up should appear, click launch game, a pop up error will appear along with a window titled launch game. In this window go to your DCS world folder, then open the Bin folder and click the DCS world.exe. There is no need to download the openxr toolkit, just the open composite launcher.

With the open composite launcher it stores all your games as you use them for the first time since installing opencomposite, so you have to go into configure and click each game to start with Opencomposite or steam, I have only got DCS world so far running without steam VR so the rest of my games I switch to Steam.

I cant make OpenXR Toolkit work with Pico, no matter how i launched theres no way i push Alt+F2 and Toolkit menu doesnt appears, it works for you?

It works perfect with my Quest 2 but not in my Pico 4

[RealDCSpilot]

@Lange_666 Virtual Desktop actually emulates a Quest headset. So you have the choice to play DCS via SteamVR and the OpenVR API or via Oculus VR API.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

First I think the default hot key for OpenXR Toolkit is CTRL+F2, of course you can change it.

And @RealDCSpilothas explained this brilliantly.

[Bearskin]

9 hours ago, 5ephir0th said:

I cant make OpenXR Toolkit work with Pico, no matter how i launched theres no way i push Alt+F2 and Toolkit menu doesnt appears, it works for you?

It works perfect with my Quest 2 but not in my Pico 4

When I first tried the openxr toolkit and opencomposite, I never even tried the openxr toolkit menu, I was just so happy to not have to use SteamVR. This time though I didn't download  openxr toolkit just open composite. 

[Mr_sukebe]

9 hours ago, Bearskin said:

When I first tried the openxr toolkit and opencomposite, I never even tried the openxr toolkit menu, I was just so happy to not have to use SteamVR. This time though I didn't download  openxr toolkit just open composite. 

 

Just so I understand, you saying that you can fire up DCS on your Pico 4, running OpenXR?

Can you bring up the OpenXR toolkit screen to show the options available?

 

 

[propeler]

Through the lense. Just VD on ultra, 150Mb. SteamVR without any dirty hacks. Why to bother with OpenXR? 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by propeler

[Bearskin]

1 hour ago, Mr_sukebe said:

 

Just so I understand, you saying that you can fire up DCS on your Pico 4, running OpenXR?

Can you bring up the OpenXR toolkit screen to show the options available?

 

 

No, I am firing up DCS world with opencomposite only, as far as I know the PICO doesn't natively support openxr yet.

I didn't download the openxr toolkit, it says you can use the toolkit with opencomposite to tweak your games, but it seems, on these forums, no one has been able to get the menu to work. As long as I can use DCS without Steam VR I am happy and I can put VD setting from Medium to High with a 2080, and still get more FPS than SteamVR on medium. YMMV.

[RealDCSpilot]

12 hours ago, Bearskin said:

No, I am firing up DCS world with opencomposite only,

Sheesh, i know, from the outside all these OpenXR, OpenComposite and whatever VR API stuff might look quite confusing. But what you are doing there is basically this:

Let's have a quick look what OpenComposite is: https://gitlab.com/znixian/OpenOVR
"Reimplementation of OpenVR, passing all calls directly to LibOVR."
It was made for VR games, that were only compiled with OpenVR support (for SteamVR native HMDs) so that Oculus users could run those games without having to use -- LibOVR (Oculus API) through SteamVR (OpenVR API) -- to get them running on their headsets.
Since DCS is running both APIs, LibOVR and OpenVR, you don't need to put anything else in this pipeline!
Coming back to the Pico 4, how it can hook into PCVR:
Pico 4 -> Virtual Desktop -> LibOVR games (directly via using Oculus Software installed, the VR compositor for Oculus PCVR Headsets)
and / or
Pico 4 -> Virtual Desktop -> OpenVR games (directly via using SteamVR installed, the VR compositor for SteamVR headsets)
and
Pico 4 -> Virtual Desktop -> OpenXR games (again, i only know of MSFS2020 being a native OpenXR game - via SteamVR or Oculus Software)

--
Since a couple of years the Oculus Software and SteamVR as VR compositors are also able to run games that are compiled with the OpenXR API only (MSFS2020) which is the latest general standard unified API for PCVR. Basically, DCS only needs to adopt OpenXR so LibOVR and OpenVR support will get deprecated instantly.
For the Pico 4 this means, it get's OpenXR support automatically because you can run an OpenXR-only VR game via the Oculus compositor or the SteamVR compositor which get's managed by Virtual Desktop.
--
Now it get's tricky, the "OpenXR" component of OpenComposite basically originated from the problem Microsoft introduced: Windows Mixed Reality. A third VR compositor for WMR headsets like the HP Reverb G, only compatible with (basically non-existent) WMR API games and OpenXR games (MSFS2020). To make WMR headsets able to play other VR games (the majority of VR games used to have only LibOVR and OpenVR support) they introduced the "Windows Mixed Reality plugin for SteamVR" where all the performance troubles started, especially in the flight sim community, because the Reverb G'series had excellent hardware specs and pricing, but nobody cared about it's poor VR API support when buying it. So all this "OpenXR" development was started by open-source developers, to solve the problem and bring some more features in for tuning. But it's all "middleman translator software", mainly bringing benefits only for HP Reverb owners or VR headset owners with weaker hardware and willing to tune the image quality options even more down to squeeze out some more performance for specific titles. If you don't have a WMR headset, the probability for placebo effect is high. Unless you are really using and needing to turn down rendering options with fixed foveated rendering and stuff.

Edited January 3, 2023 by RealDCSpilot

[Mr_sukebe]

11 hours ago, Bearskin said:

No, I am firing up DCS world with opencomposite only, as far as I know the PICO doesn't natively support openxr yet.

I didn't download the openxr toolkit, it says you can use the toolkit with opencomposite to tweak your games, but it seems, on these forums, no one has been able to get the menu to work. As long as I can use DCS without Steam VR I am happy and I can put VD setting from Medium to High with a 2080, and still get more FPS than SteamVR on medium. YMMV.

Thanks for the clarity.

The important thing for me was not just OpenXR, rather the functionality that is the available, ie:

- VRnecksafer

- upsampling using NIS or FSR

- fixed foveated rendering

[RealDCSpilot]

Yes, but for those features you can also try the OpenVR hacks by fholger: https://github.com/fholger

I tried this all, back then, when i still had my Valve Index. Now with the Pico 4, Virtual Desktop's performance options are simply enough and it runs much better than with my Index and all those "old" tweaks.

In the end, it's really about time that ED comes up with multi-core support for DCS. All these hacks simply try to workaround the main problem, this old engine...

Edited January 3, 2023 by RealDCSpilot

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

An old Chinese philosopher once said something like this "It is better the fishes forget each other in the river and lakes, rather than humidifying each other by their own saliva on dry land."

We here like more or less DCS World, but it is not very much built for VR, let alone multi-core CPU. So, we have all these confusing mods, hacks, utilities and so on. Sigh. Let's hope it gets better Soon^TM

Oh, btw, even MSFS2K needs OpenXR to run better, what could we do?

One more thing: just one more flight sim, which I shall not name, finally gets official VR support in the past 7 days or so. I am checking if it could use OpenXR also.

[dburne]

29 minutes ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

An old Chinese philosopher once said something like this "It is better the fishes forget each other in the river and lakes, rather than humidifying each other by their own saliva on dry land."

We here like more or less DCS World, but it is not very much built for VR, let alone multi-core CPU. So, we have all these confusing mods, hacks, utilities and so on. Sigh. Let's hope it gets better Soon^TM

Oh, btw, even MSFS2K needs OpenXR to run better, what could we do?

One more thing: just one more flight sim, which I shall not name, finally gets official VR support in the past 7 days or so. I am checking if it could use OpenXR also.

 

MSFS 2020 supports Open XR natively. 

Other flight sims have to hack it in to use it. It would be nice if DCS added native support.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

Sorry, I hope I do not sound arguing, I know MSFS 2020 is native OpenXR, what I said is it still needs OpenXR...I know all the headsets which WMR will be great out of the box with it and all those unfortunately souls using Quest2 or Pico4 needs the get the OpenXR Toolkit et al to enjoy its benefit.

[Lange_666]

And after reading all of this above, the already growing VR forest of trees grew into a dense VR jungle.
I'll just stick to my Rift-S. Start Oculus software and done. Can't be simpler.

Edited January 3, 2023 by Lange_666

[Bearskin]

It seems like some people are now jumping onto propelors bandwagon and his twisted logic that openxr/opencomposite are "Dirty Hacks", this must be the only forum to call said programmes Hacks. I wouldn't think the software makers would be too happy of the liberal use of the word Hack in this forum when describing their software. 

 

Opencomposite : this will translate openvr to openxr and avoid going through Steam. No aim-bot here, no no-fog here, no ESP here, no god mode here, no speed hack here, blah blah, blah. This is an emulation software, and if this is a hack then so too is Virtual Desktop. Using Virtual Desktop to bypass the Pico streaming software. 

 

Hypocrite : a person who pretends to have virtues or qualities that he or she does not have

 

Have a nice day.  

Edited January 3, 2023 by Bearskin

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

I dunno, but I fly the way I like to. I find OpenXR is great for what it is.

Good day!

[Bearskin]

2 hours ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

I dunno, but I fly the way I like to. I find OpenXR is great for what it is.

Good day!

Amen to that.

[RealDCSpilot]

@Bearskin It's actually not about someone's bandwagon, it's about understanding the technology. With the Pico 4 you don't need any of the tampered OpenVR files. And Virtual Desktop is the current best streaming solution for mobile headsets. Guy Godin, the developer, is the current technology leader, he also was the first who introduced this feature. He worked together with Qualcomm to figure out the best practices to get the best out of the XR chipsets for realtime decoding etc.
---

And please let's not fill this thread with false information, the Pico 4 runs native OpenXR PCVR titles without problems. There is no need to "avoid Steam", and SteamVR supports OpenXR natively for more than 2 years now. SteamVR is just a VR compositor, it takes care of the two per-eye images and all the tracking data that are provided by the API, OpenVR or OpenXR and sends them forth and back through the connected VR HMD...
Eventually DCS will switch to OpenXR, there is no way around it because it's the most modern standard. I expect to see this with the new upcoming DCS engine. My only concern is how the term "OpenXR" is handled nowadays, in the sim community it's used way to much "colloqiual" for the methods of signal wrappers and not for what it truly is, a unified VR API.

Edited January 4, 2023 by RealDCSpilot

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

To me, it is not about bandwagon, it is not about personal believe or whatever. I just want to know why in my setup, SteamVR is so much worse than the other 2 methods -- Oculus Runtime and OpenComposite. Check my video for proof.

I assume some of you guys are rational people, that don't just drop a image and claim whatsoever without any context, any explanation, or any details on how it is done. I can do that too, presenting 90 fps in OpenComposite DCS, in PG map in a dogfight scenario:

:

Does this make any sense? No.

Is this helpful? No.

Is this gaslighting? Probably not, cause at least I can always present my setting and setup.

Am I starting an flame war? Not my intention.

If anyone can tell me how to achieve, at least in par with other methods without changing much of other setup, using SteamVR, I am all ears.

Edited January 4, 2023 by VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants

[RealDCSpilot]

@VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants It's right there in the numbers of fpsVR: 120% ss resolution only. This is pretty low. Most people use 150% and more for sharper image quality. If it's enough for you, why not?

[Mr_sukebe]

Here's the response that I've had from Neo about OpenXR support for the Pico 4.  I've removed my email for fairly obvious reasons:

===========================================

Dear Mike,

 

Thank you for contacting again our PICO customer service.

 

An exact date for the release of the collaboration with OpenXR is already not yet available.

 

However, we have sent your suggestions to our internal developers department, we are always happy to receive new ideas.

 

We are sorry for the inconvenience this might create.We appreciate your patience.

 

Stay tuned for our updates!   

 

Feel free to contact us for further inquiries.  

 

Best Regards,

Mohamed

 

 

On Mon, 26 Dec at 9:04 AM , Mike  wrote:

Hi, and happy Xmas.

 

Any news on OpenXR support with the Pico 4?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from Mail for Windows

 

From: Pico Interactive Inc
Sent: 14 November 2022 14:21
To: 
Subject: Re: [#16715]

 

Dear Mike,

 

Thank you for contacting our PICO customer service, we appreciate your suggestions.

 

An exact date for the release of the collaboration with OpenXR  is not yet available.

 

We have sent your suggestions to our internal developers department, we are always happy to receive new ideas.

 

We work constantly to improve our devices and expand the content, services and implement more features for your best experience.  

 

Stay tuned for our updates!   

Feel free to contact us for further inquiries.  

 

Best Regards,

Mohamed

 

 

 

On Mon, 14 Nov at 5:52 AM , Mike <> wrote:

Hi,

When will your VR headsets (Pico 4 and Pico 3 link) support OpenXR?

Regards

Mike

 

[RealDCSpilot]

@Mr_sukebe You asked the wrong question. His answer is about OpenXR support for native Android VR apps running on the device. This is in experimental state: https://developer-global.pico-interactive.com/sdk?deviceId=1&platformId=1&itemId=7153484514247917573

OpenXR for PCVR is not in Pico's hands and doesn't need to be because both streaming solutions take care of this by connecting to SteamVR or Oculus VR on PC (Streaming Assistant or Virtual Desktop). And as i told you already, i'm easily playing MSFS2020 the whole time with VD and the Pico 4 and MSFS2020 does only support OpenXR. Please learn about the difference of a VR compositor and a VR API first.

This is OpenXR (an API): https://www.khronos.org/openxr/
This is just a software translating or "talking" to OpenXR (it is not OpenXR!): https://mbucchia.github.io/OpenXR-Toolkit/opencomposite.html

All known standard VR compositors can "talk" to OpenXR for a couple of years already (SteamVR, Oculus Runtime, WMR runtime...).

Edited January 4, 2023 by RealDCSpilot

[RealDCSpilot]

@VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants I took our screenshots to compare resolution quality, it's quite obvious that you run at much lower supersampling. There is no magic, only sacrifices to make to trade in more fps. I zoomed in a little to make it more visible, your cockpit readability suffers pretty much. On top of that, i took my screenshot on ground which costs extra fps. I'm personally happy with 60 fps without extra fiddling and nearly all ingame settings on ultra. SteamVR SS is around 3060x3060 per eye.
 

[Bearskin]

I used to be a server admin in a clan playing BF2, I used clanforge to take regular screenshots of all the players on the server and if I suspected someone of aimbot I could record thier play and see them spinning on the spot. Some nights I wouldn't even play BF2 and just spend hours watching clanforge. It made me sick to my stomach how many cheats there were that I had to ban and that was just one server out of the hundreds of BF2 servers. So when some moron comes on here and accuses me of using "dirty hacks" without any idea of what he/she is talking about then that offends me.

I have used Steam since I played counter strike source back in the mid noughties and personally I have never liked it, IMO it causes more conflict than it should, maybe it isn't Steams fault, maybe it is the game coders not fully adapting to Steam, but whatever it is I tend to have more game crashes using Steam/SteamVR than anything else.

 

So anything I can use to bypass SteamVR is a godsend.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2023 by Bearskin

[RealDCSpilot]

SteamVR and Steam are technically two completely different things. Valve is the much lesser evil if you go down that road. Look at the Microsoft store or the one from Epic...