Rift S stuttering after update

[Blue Sky]

Hi, I am new here but not new to DCS.

I didn't play DCS VR for a couple of months and after I started it up it downloaded a massive update of around 40 Gig. After the update DCS is stuttering, especially at low level and detailed ground. When flying over the Nevada mountains (with almost no detail) it runs as smooth as butter. So I guess the problem is in the detailed ground but after spending hour after hour trying to solve the problem I'm out of options. I even went back to win 10 and I had a complete backup of the SSD with DCS. I can't play DCS after I installed the backup because its updating imediately, again  around 50 Gig. All drivers are up to date, I've done every step advised on this forum to solve the problem but nothings works. I even tried the new MT option but it makes no difference. I have a couple of games in VR like Star Wars Squadrons and Project Cars which all run smooth except for DCS. Without VR I achieve a frame rate up to 105 fps, in VR 35. GPU load around 95 % Any ideas?

My specs: HP Omen laptop with an I7-9750H, 16 GB RAM, RTX 2070 maxQ , 1 TB SSD and Rift S. This combo provided very smooth VR flying before the update.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Blue Sky

[Rifter]

According to the sounds of pain on the forum the last big VR performance drop occurred when DCS went from 2.7.x to 2.8.x. Looking at the feedback in the forum the latest update (single thread version!) did not result in VR performance break-ins - in a lot of cases it seemed to be the opposite.

From my own experience the Rift S can be a pain in the a$$ with regards to sudden performance drops (mostly stuttering) because of updates (be it a Windows update, an Oculus/Meta update or a DCS update).

If everything was fine before it is not advisable to try every performance gaining hint and tip which can be found on the forum.

Make sure that your Nvidia-driver is the same as you had a couple of month ago (when you last played DCS and everything was smooth). You don’t need the newest driver to assure performance (the opposite can be the case!).

Check your DCS settings carefully - perhaps something was cranked up in course of the update or one of your old settings has to be adjusted. Also check wether device hot plug is off. Check memory usage - perhaps the newest DCS version is more memory hungry - you only have 16GB. You could also roll back the DCS version to see wether it’s really the newest version which causes the problems.

Check update history of Windows and Oculus/Meta (though for the latter it is hard to make a rollback).

If the new DCS version is not the naughty boy something else must have been changed on your system.

[flyingcyrus]

Do you use OpenXR natively (motion reprojection is known to be prone to stutter and ghosting) or with SteamVR (works much better) ?

[Sparviero1978]

I confirm the stuttering, but I got 3 options: steamVR, native oculus and MT. Selecting MT the VR works, but I cannot select the steamVr.

However, the main problem with the rift s + MT is the controller, because the laser pointer doesnt work well

Edited March 13, 2023 by Sparviero1978

[Rifter]

At the moment the MT version of DCS forces the use of OpenXR with Oculus. Start with native Oculus is not possible with MT. So if the use of OpenXR causes stuttering on the Rift S nothing can be done against that right now.

The standard version of DCS has none of those restrictions and works as before.

[Blue Sky]

Thanks for the replies. I am playing with Steam VR and Oculus Tray Tool. Memory usage is about 95 %. I noticed a litlle bit better performance today but still stuttering. GPU load over mountains is about 60 % but over densely areas it hits 95% and sometimes 100%. CPU load is about 45%. Maybe the GPU is the bottleneck or the memory. I can upgrade to 32 GB of memory but I can't change the GPU because its embedded in the laptop, HP Omen 15 DH-0750ND with the 250 Gb SSD replaced by a 1000 Gb Samsung EVO 970.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Blue Sky

[fab.13]

Hello,

I have started some test about stutter that i met too only in MT version ( Rift user here )

I succeded to reduce many stutter by disabling HyperThreading in BIOS ( core i5 10th  6 core - 6 threads )
Some little stutter stay, but is very much confortable with this BIOS Setting.

So give a try to disable HyperThreading in your BIOS ( don't remember the name on AMD rig )