VR Crashes

[BoundaryLayer]

Hi everyone, so I'm now having crash issues with VR.

My PC and VR sets are: i5-9600K, Z390 board, RTX3060Ti, 16GB RAM and PICO4. DCS is installed on SSD.

I have been playing DCS (F-16, without any mods) at ultra high graphics settings on 2K. FPS is always 60 in flight and occasionally drops below 30 when close to ground.

Today I bought the PICO4 VR set, and DCS conditionally crashes a lot:

1. Main menu is always good, but at the end of loading right after World Preload 60/60, DCS crashes. The last one seems to be View Initialization or something else that I've never paid attention to before (since this last one is done really fast). In VR mode, it crashes and the display flashes so I cannot really see what it is.
2. If luckily I entered the game, everything looks good, unless I call the radio chat by '\', such as 'request to startup'. Here the game would crash too.
3. Or if I go to options - VR, it crashes again.

I've checked the log files but really couldn't find a clue from hundreds of lines.

I've seen videos that many people paly in VR without or with very little chance of crashing, but for me I cannot even load into the game, or play it very carefully. It's really sad.

Hope there could be some help or advices from you!

[Hoirtel]

51 minutes ago, BoundaryLayer said:

Hi everyone, so I'm now having crash issues with VR.

My PC and VR sets are: i5-9600K, Z390 board, RTX3060Ti, 16GB RAM and PICO4. DCS is installed on SSD.

I have been playing DCS (F-16, without any mods) at ultra high graphics settings on 2K. FPS is always 60 in flight and occasionally drops below 30 when close to ground.

Today I bought the PICO4 VR set, and DCS conditionally crashes a lot:

1. Main menu is always good, but at the end of loading right after World Preload 60/60, DCS crashes. The last one seems to be View Initialization or something else that I've never paid attention to before (since this last one is done really fast). In VR mode, it crashes and the display flashes so I cannot really see what it is.
2. If luckily I entered the game, everything looks good, unless I call the radio chat by '\', such as 'request to startup'. Here the game would crash too.
3. Or if I go to options - VR, it crashes again.

I've checked the log files but really couldn't find a clue from hundreds of lines.

I've seen videos that many people paly in VR without or with very little chance of crashing, but for me I cannot even load into the game, or play it very carefully. It's really sad.

Hope there could be some help or advices from you!

Check windows pagefile options, ensure its large and set on a fast storage drive (solid state and NvMe ideally) You have quite low system RAM for DCS VR, an upgrade to 32gb would not be wasted. Probably reduce texture to low as well.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Hoirtel

[BoundaryLayer]

30分钟前，Hoirtel说：

Check windows pagefile options, ensure its large and set on a fast storage drive (solid state and NvMe ideally) You have quite low system RAM for DCS VR, an upgrade to 32gb would not be wasted. Probably reduce texture to low as well.

 

Hoirtel, thank you for your reply! Indeed now I can load into game after reducing the graphics settings, but it still crashes in some cases, I will try to find a balance between performance and graphics. 

Now I have another problem, wondering if you can help. The joystick seems to have a conflict with the virtual in-game cockpit stick, while I want to control the aircraft by the actual joystick instead of virtually "holding" the in-game cockpit stick by the VR palm grip. But the input of the joystick is immediately overriden even though I was not virtually holding the cockpit stick by VR palm grip. I ticked "Hand Controllers use Cockpit Stick" and "... Throttle" (I assume this means joystick will be the major input), but it doesn't work.

[speed-of-heat]

If your 2d experience is 60fps and below at 2k then your VR experience on the same settings will between 1/3 and 1/2 the performance you get in 2d as a rule of thumb. The pico 4 is driving way more pixels than your 2d monitor and doing at faster refresh rate, and likely over a less performant link.

I agree on making sure you have a large enough page file (I would suggest 2.5 x ram at least) and extra ram, and with lowering settings.

I would also suggest you might want to do some machine hygiene, to remove processes that may be taking away memory and performance.

 

[Hoirtel]

3 minutes ago, BoundaryLayer said:

Hoirtel, thank you for your reply! Indeed now I can load into game after reducing the graphics settings, but it still crashes in some cases, I will try to find a balance between performance and graphics. 

Now I have another problem, wondering if you can help. The joystick seems to have a conflict with the virtual in-game cockpit stick, while I want to control the aircraft by the actual joystick instead of virtually "holding" the in-game cockpit stick by the VR palm grip. But the input of the joystick is immediately overriden even though I was not virtually holding the cockpit stick by VR palm grip. I ticked "Hand Controllers use Cockpit Stick" and "... Throttle" (I assume this means joystick will be the major input), but it doesn't work.

I don't use the VR controllers at all so have that unchecked. HOTASAM for me! Hands On Throttle And Stick And Mouse.

[BoundaryLayer]

7分钟前，speed-of-heat说：

If your 2d experience is 60fps and below at 2k then your VR experience on the same settings will between 1/3 and 1/2 the performance you get in 2d as a rule of thumb. The pico 4 is driving way more pixels than your 2d monitor and doing at faster refresh rate, and likely over a less performant link.

I agree on making sure you have a large enough page file (I would suggest 2.5 x ram at least) and extra ram, and with lowering settings.

I would also suggest you might want to do some machine hygiene, to remove processes that may be taking away memory and performance.

 

Thank you for your reply. I have set the page file to two times of my RAM, and I have always been running DCS as the only process plus steam. I also noticed the RAM usage by DCS is indeed insane before I play with VR at 2D, but I've never expected that VR would make it way much worse, lol. Maybe in the short future, I will upgrade my CPU as well as RAM to the latest.

8分钟前，Hoirtel说：

I don't use the VR controllers at all so have that unchecked. HOTASAM for me! Hands On Throttle And Stick And Mouse.

Well, I forgot I got a mouse, haha. But it's really a fun with the VR palm grip during startup that I can reach my hand to those panels. If eventually the palm grip and joystick won't work together, I will go for mouse too.

[speed-of-heat]

22 minutes ago, BoundaryLayer said:

Thank you for your reply. I have set the page file to two times of my RAM, and I have always been running DCS as the only process plus steam. I also noticed the RAM usage by DCS is indeed insane before I play with VR at 2D, but I've never expected that VR would make it way much worse, lol. Maybe in the short future, I will upgrade my CPU as well as RAM to the latest.

I guarantee you have other processes running... But I would certainly recommend a ram upgrade, even the. I have 64gb and a 32gb pagefile still.

Vram is a much also a factor here with 8gb you are need to think about reducing some of your settings...  

[BoundaryLayer]

3分钟前，speed-of-heat说：

I guarantee you have other processes running... But I would certainly recommend a ram upgrade, even the. I have 64gb and a 32gb pagefile still.

Vram is a much also a factor here with 8gb you are need to think about reducing some of your settings...  

The rest are system processes I think, which I don't dare to shut down. Usually at startup of Win11, it takes 25-30% of my RAM, and DCS in 2D geos to 80-90%. The VRAM on my 3060Ti is indeed fully consumed even in 2D but this is for ultra high settings.

Btw, is there any tips for the graphic settings? The default VR setting by DCS is not quite clear, I doubt if I can spot any aircraft in air by visual.

[speed-of-heat]

 this is a little out of date, but , the main difference is i am not running any shadows at present for some reason it completely mullers my perf , i know others who it does not , YMMV ... syria for example will use upwards of 14GB of VRAM in some missions.

So things that will be problematic,  will be things that drive LED's and some apps like Razer Coretx , or nVidia's/xbox's game recording software etc...