Pimax 8KX Text Clarity

[Panny]

Hi there,

Hope all's well. I've had the Pimax 8KX for around a year, but have noticed over the last few months that the quality of clarity in DCS has reduced. I'm not sure what specific update it was. I typically fly the F-14, but without changing any settings I have found text on the Tactical Information Display to be far blurrier than it used to be. I have tried adjusting the VR resolution in DCS settings, but have found that while overall resolution improves, small text remains blurry. I have also attempted increasing resolution via SteamVR, but find no visual improvement(although GPU workload increases).

Is there a particular setting I may be missing that can improve text clarity, since moving the typical sliders are not helping.

I will also cross check if the issue is prevalent in my Reverb G2; however I am reasonably sure that the blurry text is not a limitation of 8KX's pixel density.

Thanks,

Peter

[WipeUout]

Could be several things but share your hardware info, this will help.

Before going any further, have a look at the following two posts:

 

Clarity is first and foremost influenced by resolution.  Check your Pimax client setting to ensure you are on native resolution (vs upscale) and your render quality slider is set at 1 for DCS (or global settings).  Next, ensure you have also the DCS pixel density set to 1 and do not modify resolution in OpenXR toolkit.  The object is to use the 8KX at 100% resolution which will give the best possible visuals.  4k per eye is a beautiful thing!

Another setting that will greatly help with clarity is in OpenXR toolkit :  CAS Sharpening.  I set the sharpening at 100% which makes a huge difference.  If you are not using OpenXR as your runtime, install a reshade mod to increase sharpening.  Unfortunately, DCS by itself is blurry in VR and you need to sharpen quite a bit.

Another feature that makes things a bit blurry is the atmospheric haze but that is for outside view only.  If you want to reduce it, try to set the DCS gamma setting to 1.3 and have your backlit and brightness cranked up in Pimax client options.  It will not eliminate all the haze but will reduce it quite a bit.

This is assuming you have the horsepower to drive the 8KX at native resolution.  If your hardware can't pump those 2 x 4k pixels at a sustained rate, then you will have to reduce quality settings and refresh rate if possible.  Depending on your 8KX model, you may have the option of 60hz and 75hz for refresh rate which is way less demanding than 90hz.  Pimax Smart smoothing also can help but then it is a compromise between "blurry smooth framerate" or "clear stutters".  

[Xtorris]

I ended up making a mod, which removed some mipmap options. Here's the before and after:

[WipeUout]

1 hour ago, Xtorris said:

I ended up making a mod

Looks interesting, where can we find your mod?

 

[Xtorris]

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3330576/

 

Just be warned, it won't pass a Texture IC, it will pass all others though (client, models, script).

Edited May 17, 2023 by Xtorris

[Slammin]

@PannyI've run into this after using my G2 on my 8kx rig.  Running the G2 seems to always default my C:\Steam\config\steamvr.settings - "maxRecommendedResolution" : 3240,

For my 8kx, I always need to set it back to "maxRecommendedResolution" : 16384, to get things back to normal on the 8kx when using SteamVR.

Note that the location of the file may be different on your rig, but you should be able to easily find it.  As far as I can tell, this is a WMR thing.

[Panny]

8 hours ago, Slammin said:

@PannyI've run into this after using my G2 on my 8kx rig.  Running the G2 seems to always default my C:\Steam\config\steamvr.settings - "maxRecommendedResolution" : 3240,

For my 8kx, I always need to set it back to "maxRecommendedResolution" : 16384, to get things back to normal on the 8kx when using SteamVR.

Note that the location of the file may be different on your rig, but you should be able to easily find it.  As far as I can tell, this is a WMR thing.

This was the solution. The moment is brought it to 16384 it was like I was using a new headset. I was actually quite annoyed at the fact that it's this sort of setting that affects it. Thank you so much for sharing this, I would not have found it myself.

 

16 hours ago, WipeUout said:

Could be several things but share your hardware info, this will help.

Before going any further, have a look at the following two posts:

 

Clarity is first and foremost influenced by resolution.  Check your Pimax client setting to ensure you are on native resolution (vs upscale) and your render quality slider is set at 1 for DCS (or global settings).  Next, ensure you have also the DCS pixel density set to 1 and do not modify resolution in OpenXR toolkit.  The object is to use the 8KX at 100% resolution which will give the best possible visuals.  4k per eye is a beautiful thing!

Another setting that will greatly help with clarity is in OpenXR toolkit :  CAS Sharpening.  I set the sharpening at 100% which makes a huge difference.  If you are not using OpenXR as your runtime, install a reshade mod to increase sharpening.  Unfortunately, DCS by itself is blurry in VR and you need to sharpen quite a bit.

Another feature that makes things a bit blurry is the atmospheric haze but that is for outside view only.  If you want to reduce it, try to set the DCS gamma setting to 1.3 and have your backlit and brightness cranked up in Pimax client options.  It will not eliminate all the haze but will reduce it quite a bit.

This is assuming you have the horsepower to drive the 8KX at native resolution.  If your hardware can't pump those 2 x 4k pixels at a sustained rate, then you will have to reduce quality settings and refresh rate if possible.  Depending on your 8KX model, you may have the option of 60hz and 75hz for refresh rate which is way less demanding than 90hz.  Pimax Smart smoothing also can help but then it is a compromise between "blurry smooth framerate" or "clear stutters".  

Thanks for your feedback and time in any case. As said, it seems to be a unique scenario of WMR overriding SteamVR. That said, I did have to double over all of my settings since I realised I was forcing such a high resolution while being artifically limited by SteamVR. So basically reset everything and in the F-14 I'm getting ~70FPS.

For reference I have a 4090, 7900X CPU, 64GB DDR5 RAM etc., so shouldn't be an issue of horsepower. That said, I am still GPU limited according to FPSVR.

 

Thanks to all for helping me.

[WipeUout]

12 minutes ago, Panny said:

That said, I am still GPU limited according to FPSVR.

This is the target situation, you want your GPU to work fully and not be limited by the CPU.  That is not to say that a little bit of headroom is required, I personnaly dial down some setting to ensure my GPU is running between 70 and 80% on average and can cope with flying lower or over dense/detailed terrain.

But why are you still using SteamVR?  OpenXR offers such better performance and quality of visuals!  It is about 1.4ms GPU frametime improvement for me in my test track compared to SteamVR and the image quality with CAS also is much better.