Foveated Rendering Support for DCS

[hannibal]

Now that the recent open beta patch has brought native OpenXR support to DCS..

is there a possibility of foveated rendering support for DCS?

especially for Varjo Aero, Meta Quest Pro users, and what ever headsets that have eye tracking technology...

@NineLine @Flappie @mbucchia

[RealDCSpilot]

Yes, with the new version of OpenXR toolkit you can finetune the native OpenXR pipeline and see if it helps you getting a couple more FPS (at least fixed foveated rendering for all supported headsets).

Edited February 1, 2023 by RealDCSpilot

[Supmua]

With OXRTK, Fixed foveation works. Eye tracking foveation has some issues with the Aero especially the right eye. Quest Pro currently doesn’t support PCVR eye tracking (only mobile).

[mbucchia]

1 hour ago, Supmua said:

Eye tracking foveation has some issues with the Aero especially the right eye

It was disabled entirely in 1.2.4 since it doesn't work properly. 

1 hour ago, Supmua said:

Quest Pro currently doesn’t support PCVR eye tracking (only mobile).

Quest Pro only supports "eye tracking for social interactions" today, think like "to render high fidelity avatars". This works on both PC and mobile, however 1) it uses a non-standard extension 2) the support for social interactions looks insufficient to do foveated rendering, due to additional filtering of the eye tracking data for smoothness and convergence corrections to make the avatars look natural.

[skypickle]

so how does one set this up for the G2? is there a zone of 'in focus' that can be set?

[edmuss]

3 hours ago, skypickle said:

so how does one set this up for the G2? is there a zone of 'in focus' that can be set?

DFR (Dynamic Foveated Rendering) will only work on a G2 omnicept (or any other headset) which has compatible eyetracking.  For the normal G2 you can use FFR (Fixed Foveated Rendering) to lower your GPU frametimes, I've seen 1-3ms saving depending on the setting.  Typically I run the quality/wide preset with my G2, this give a small uplift with almost imperceptible loss of image quality

[Glide]

Just a shout out to the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept owners. Watch for being able to set BOTH eye tracking and FFR together.  It's working quite well on the other sim.  This is a must have, IMHO.  Thanks again to the devs.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Glide

[mbucchia]

7 hours ago, Glide said:

Just a shout out to the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept owners, you can enable eye tracking with FFR as per @mbucchia 's website.  Be sure to set the permissions in the Omnicept tray settings.  This is a must have, IMHO.  Thanks again to the devs.

I'm a bit confused by your observation. When I tested with 1.2.3, I confirmed that eye tracking foveated rendering did not work properly. 

Out of the 38 render passes observed (as delimited by "switching render target"), 3 of them were misclassified (left instead of right, or vice-versa). This completely kills the effect of foveated rendering unfortunately, because the final pass for each eye used the wrong mask, therefore narrowing the inner ring to be almost inexistent.

As a result, in 1.2.4, I force-disable eye tracking in DCS, so it's no longer advertised.

[Glide]

7 hours ago, mbucchia said:

As a result, in 1.2.4, I force-disable eye tracking in DCS, so it's no longer advertised.

How odd!  I'll test again after I have my coffee!  After that comment, I switched from OpenXR 75% to 100% with 77% NIS scaling.  I was thinking it was amazing it all worked so well.  Check back soon!

EDIT: thanks for jumping in to correct my mistake.  That last test did not have the eye tracking.  One test too many last night.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Glide

[Willie Nelson]

On 2/3/2023 at 5:21 PM, mbucchia said:

I'm a bit confused by your observation. When I tested with 1.2.3, I confirmed that eye tracking foveated rendering did not work properly. 

Out of the 38 render passes observed (as delimited by "switching render target"), 3 of them were misclassified (left instead of right, or vice-versa). This completely kills the effect of foveated rendering unfortunately, because the final pass for each eye used the wrong mask, therefore narrowing the inner ring to be almost inexistent.

As a result, in 1.2.4, I force-disable eye tracking in DCS, so it's no longer advertised.

So is the Omnicept's DFR not going to be available for DCS?

[hannibal]

guys.. im not talking about fixed fovated rendering.. 

im talking about actual fovated rendering (NOT FIXED) so that headsets with eye tracking can take advantage of the hardware for increased performance...

ED please gib, 

[mbucchia]

4 hours ago, Willie Nelson said:

So is the Omnicept's DFR not going to be available for DCS?

No, none of the devices today can support DFR in DCS via OpenXR Toolkit. This isn't a limitation of the devices, this is a limitation of OpenXR Toolkit not being able to identify left/right eye rendering from the game. 

Edited February 15, 2023 by mbucchia

[mbucchia]

44 minutes ago, hannibal said:

guys.. im not talking about fixed fovated rendering.. 

im talking about actual fovated rendering (NOT FIXED) so that headsets with eye tracking can take advantage of the hardware for increased performance...

ED please gib, 

To be fair though, don't expect a significant increase in performance going from Fixed to Dynamic Foveated Rendering anyway.

We've proven that with MSFS and iRacing. Going from FFR to DFR is an extremely small performance gain compared to just enabling FFR in the first place.

DFR vs FFR isn't about performance, it's about getting the same gains but with less noticeable degradation in quality (perhaps even unnoticeable we could say).

[Willie Nelson]

21 hours ago, mbucchia said:

No, none of the devices today can support DFR in DCS via OpenXR Toolkit. This isn't a limitation of the devices, this is a limitation of OpenXR Toolkit not being able to identify left/right eye rendering from the game. 

 

Gotcha, thanks. 

[Dentedend10]

Is this something that could be worked out on ED’s part? DFR works great in MSFS and would be great to have in DCS not just for Aero uses but for other devices with eye tracking as well. - Quest Pro user

[mbucchia]

2 hours ago, Dentedend10 said:

Is this something that could be worked out on ED’s part? DFR works great in MSFS and would be great to have in DCS not just for Aero uses but for other devices with eye tracking as well. - Quest Pro user

 

See https://forum.dcs.world/topic/299598-trying-to-connect-the-individuals-that-made-the-performance-enhancement-in-vr-to-the-dcs-devs/ for getting MSFS-like DFR.

That was ignored for over a year.

Anyway even with that, you wouldn't be getting anywhere near the gains we are getting on Aero (where I used a completely different technique than the one I used for MSFS, which yields much much better gains).

The set of features supported on Quest Pro is just very poor when it comes to implementing this stuff, and their prerequisites for enable eye tracking are super bogus. Quest Pro is obviously in my opinion not a platform that Meta wants to succeed for PCVR. 

Do yourself a favor and swap it for an Aero if you want to enjoy good DFR in DCS and great PCVR in all games!

[Dentedend10]

5 hours ago, mbucchia said:

 

See https://forum.dcs.world/topic/299598-trying-to-connect-the-individuals-that-made-the-performance-enhancement-in-vr-to-the-dcs-devs/ for getting MSFS-like DFR.

That was ignored for over a year.

Anyway even with that, you wouldn't be getting anywhere near the gains we are getting on Aero (where I used a completely different technique than the one I used for MSFS, which yields much much better gains).

The set of features supported on Quest Pro is just very poor when it comes to implementing this stuff, and their prerequisites for enable eye tracking are super bogus. Quest Pro is obviously in my opinion not a platform that Meta wants to succeed for PCVR. 

Do yourself a favor and swap it for an Aero if you want to enjoy good DFR in DCS and great PCVR in all games!

Thank you, disappointing to read that. OpenXR Toolkit and its features allow us to enjoy VR much more. Unfortunately Aero is still double the cost of the QPro (with trackers and controllers). Maybe next year when more headsets come to the market the cost will start coming down or other alternatives appear

[mbucchia]

On 6/11/2023 at 7:44 AM, Dentedend10 said:

Thank you, disappointing to read that.

Well your disappointment would be short I hope. Due to the persistence of a certain user on my Discord (who should remain nameless ), I have implemented the quad views support extensions for Quest Pro.

It is currently in final beta testing and should be released in the next few days.

So far the feedback is pretty good so hopefully it will make it worth your while and also signal Meta to wake up when it comes to supporting feature on their PCVR runtime.

[Dentedend10]

2 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Well your disappointment would be short I hope. Due to the persistence of a certain user on my Discord (who should remain nameless ), I have implemented the quad views support extensions for Quest Pro.

It is currently in final beta testing and should be released in the next few days.

So far the feedback is pretty good so hopefully it will make it worth your while and also signal Meta to wake up when it comes to supporting feature on their PCVR runtime.

Amazing!! Can’t wait to try it

[Werewolf_fs]

hace 13 horas, mbucchia dijo:

Well your disappointment would be short I hope. Due to the persistence of a certain user on my Discord (who should remain nameless ), I have implemented the quad views support extensions for Quest Pro.

It is currently in final beta testing and should be released in the next few days.

So far the feedback is pretty good so hopefully it will make it worth your while and also signal Meta to wake up when it comes to supporting feature on their PCVR runtime.

 

[Mr_sukebe]

16 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Well your disappointment would be short I hope. Due to the persistence of a certain user on my Discord (who should remain nameless ), I have implemented the quad views support extensions for Quest Pro.

It is currently in final beta testing and should be released in the next few days.

So far the feedback is pretty good so hopefully it will make it worth your while and also signal Meta to wake up when it comes to supporting feature on their PCVR runtime.

Oooooooooooooooooo!!!

you sir, are a superstar

[skywalker22]

17 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Well your disappointment would be short I hope. Due to the persistence of a certain user on my Discord (who should remain nameless ), I have implemented the quad views support extensions for Quest Pro.

It is currently in final beta testing and should be released in the next few days.

So far the feedback is pretty good so hopefully it will make it worth your while and also signal Meta to wake up when it comes to supporting feature on their PCVR runtime.

Will this be a part of OpenXR Toolkit?

[Tepnox]

17 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Well your disappointment would be short I hope. Due to the persistence of a certain user on my Discord (who should remain nameless ), I have implemented the quad views support extensions for Quest Pro.

It is currently in final beta testing and should be released in the next few days.

So far the feedback is pretty good so hopefully it will make it worth your while and also signal Meta to wake up when it comes to supporting feature on their PCVR runtime.

My superstar as well. Thank you for your efforts! 

[Sile]

vor einer Stunde schrieb skywalker22:

Will this be a part of OpenXR Toolkit?

No, seperate Tool. But Turbo Mode and sharpening option included and set by config file.

[freehand]

27 minutes ago, Sile said:

No, seperate Tool. But Turbo Mode and sharpening option included and set by config file.

I like that Idea for sure.