Anti-Aliasing Improvements (Especially for VR) with the EDGE/Vulkan/Multithreading Engine Changes

[Kreutzberg]

There are a number of exciting changes coming to the core DCS engine with the upcoming EDGE Engine, the Vulkan API and multithreading support. This should provide an opportunity to make a lot of improvements that would really help modernize DCS. Some of those changes are clearly happening, like DLSS.  That's extremely promising.

As VR player, the biggest immersion killer in my view is the relatively limited anti-aliasing.  The 2D cinematic videos are absolutely beautiful, but VR is far less visually impressive.  Hopefully, that's already in the pipeline to be included with the upcoming engine changes, but I haven't seen any discussions other than very old requests for TAA.

Better anti-aliasing could take DCS VR to the next level!

Edited January 8, 2023 by Kreutzberg

[Hoirtel]

4 minutes ago, Kreutzberg said:

There are a number of exciting changes coming to the core DCS engine with the upcoming EDGE Engine, the Vulkan API and multithreading support. This should provide an opportunity to make a lot of improvements that would really help modernize DCS. Some of those changes are clearly happening, like DLSS.  That's extremely 

As VR player, the biggest immersion killer in my view is the relatively limited anti-aliasing.  The 2D cinematic videos are absolutely beautiful, but VR as far less visually impressive.  Hopefully, that's already in the pipeline to be included with the upcoming engine changes, but I haven't seen any discussions other than very old requests for TAA.

Better anti-aliasing could take DCS VR to the next level!

I argee but also VR headset have not been providing the required pixels per degree to do this properly, that is until quite recently. Over the next year or two this will change with the release of new gen headsets. 

 

[SkateZilla]

2 hours ago, gortex said:

The VR experience has become worse over the last year, not better.  Now DCS is behind the curve for VR performance compared to other flight sims.

Considering DX11 was never designed to do what it's doing.. 

[Dragon1-1]

Yeah, hopefully the switch to Vulkan will help with that. I only hope that the work that went into making DX11 stuff work on Vulkan won't end up dragging the implementation down. This is such a paradigm shift that I'm surprised what they did is even possible.

[peachmonkey]

MSAAx2 used to do the trick before 2.8. Not anymore. The same smoothness can only be achieved with x4 now. 

[5ephir0th]

Knowing we will have DLSS, maybe we get TAA...

[zildac]

Agreed. And hopefully the shimmering will also get fixed / significantly reduced as a result.

[Mateo]

Improvement would be appreciated not only for VR pilots. Currently advised MSAAx2+SSAAx1.5 compromise result in performance drop that sometimes is just too much for average hardware.

[despinoza]

DLSS already manage shimmering very well cause like TAA it uses motion vectors. 

[javipamp]

On 1/8/2023 at 6:43 PM, Hoirtel said:

I argee but also VR headset have not been providing the required pixels per degree to do this properly, that is until quite recently. Over the next year or two this will change with the release of new gen headsets. 

 

Well, with Pimax 8k in msfs2020 not a problem with dlss or taa.

[FupDuck]

This would be great! I game also found that the only way to get rid of shimmering is to set MSAA to 4x, but to do so I have to turn down clouds to medium (from ultra before), and terrain shadows had to go off completely. So shimmering is gone in general, but no shadows, and clouds look extra <profanity>ty.