Varjo Aero stutter vs. tracking

[MAThrasher]

I came from the Reverb G2 headset.  I recently purchased my Aero, and I really love the way things look.  I am having only one issue that I need to fix.  

I have been doing all of my initial testing on simple single player missions and I maintain a constant 90 fps.  I am using the Native openXR and I have a 12700K cpu and 4090 gpu.  Every 30 to 60 seconds it seems that the screen freezes for about 1-2 seconds and then rapidly moves to catch up to where I am looking.  I can't decide if this is some stutter issue or a tracking issue.  I am including a photo of my office to show where I mounted the base stations.  One base station is directly above my monitor and the other is 90 degrees to my left.  

Does anyone see a problem with the mount locations of the base stations?  How can I determine if this is a tracking issue or some other stutter issue?  

[edmuss]

I this is happening whilst facing forwards then it sounds more like an I/O issue with DCS reading/paging data than headset tracking; typically if the headset loses track of the lighthouses it relies on its IMUs to guess where it's going and picks up again when the lighthouse connection is made again.  As you have one to the front and left then the only time it should lose itself is if you're checking six over your right shoulder.

Worthwhile checking that your system is fully sanitised and tuned for maximum performance, check out VR4DCS and follow the guids for system tuning if you haven't already.  It could be something stupid like a live desktop image stealing CPU cycles

[Burt]

I always take edmuss’s advice. I’m new to the Aero and also coming from a G2 not having that issue. They say about 6 feet up on the trackers. I have 1 up high in front of me / Aero and over my Stevie Ray Vaughan framed picture and 1 right behind same height 6 ft of me facing my small play area and front tracker and both angled down about 45 degrees. 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Burt

[MAThrasher]

Thanks for all the input.  I just saw the VR4DCS and it looks like there is a lot of good info there.  I will go through it in detail.

[Rodeo]

@MAThrasher… well we both have same taste in VR headsets and our office’s wall coloring … it seems like a tracking issue and I’m curious if the glass off your frames may be causing interference. I had to remove one that was interfering when I looked hard left and caused some issues. Just an idea

[edmuss]

4 hours ago, Rodeo said:

@MAThrasher… well we both have same taste in VR headsets and our office’s wall coloring … it seems like a tracking issue and I’m curious if the glass off your frames may be causing interference. I had to remove one that was interfering when I looked hard left and caused some issues. Just an idea

Ah yes, completely forgot about the reflective surfaces! Try covering them as any reflected laser light from the lighthouse can mess it up.

But still check your system is running optimally

[dburne]

I run two base stations diagnal to my position. One on upper left facing me and one on right rear facing behind me. I have them both pointed at each other. They are on tripods about 6ft high angled downward.  Zero tracking issues. My room is fairly dark and bland walls as well as I am in my garage.

[Burt]

Dang it ! So now I’m worried about the one behind me it’s angled down but the glass framed picture might be an issue. It’s not pointing directly at it but still has me alittle worried I may have to move Stevie. I can see his rear left tracker could be an issue as it’s pointing at this glass frames.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Burt

[Burt]

Doesn’t seem that glass hurts the tracking in this picture of Varjo setup. 

[edmuss]

1 hour ago, Burt said:

Dang it ! So now I’m worried about the one behind me it’s angled down but the glass framed picture might be an issue. It’s not pointing directly at it but still has me alittle worried I may have to move Stevie. I can see his rear left tracker could be an issue as it’s pointing at this glass frames.

 

Suck it and see, if you do experience tracking oddities then it's something to look into.  I only have one base station (mounted centre above the monitor) currently and tracking is perfect apart from sometimes when turning right round it does lose it for a second.  I've ordered another along with the index controllers and will have both to the side, facing diagonally in and down so that they should capture all possibilities.

edit: note that due to my space constraints I physically cannot get my base stations more than a little over 5 foot off the floor, however they are still about 9" above the headset when seated (which is all I use it for) which still ties into the 6.5 foot recommendation for standing use.

Edited June 12, 2023 by edmuss

[Burt]

Rgrt

[MAThrasher]

Based on @edmuss original post, I am leaning towards it being a performance issue.   Just to the right of my setup, I have two french doors with glass panes in them.  When I first started using the Aero, those doors were open.  This means the left mounted base station was pointing directly to the glass.  The interference would cause me to just randomly start translating until I was completely out of the cockpit.  Once I closed those doors, the interference stopped.   The main point being that it was a "smooth" translation interference.

The interference behaved different than this complete pause I have now.  My computer has never been optimized in any way.  When I had the G2 everything worked smoothly so I didn't do anything.  Heck,  I would even run DCS and never close Chrome and other apps.  This is the reason that I know I need to be performance focused.  

I ran the Heaven benchmarking tool for "extreme" testing and my score seemed a little low compared to other computers.  My score was 10666.  I will do some optimization and see how it affects things.

[Loopan]

On 6/11/2023 at 9:35 PM, MAThrasher said:

I came from the Reverb G2 headset.  I recently purchased my Aero, and I really love the way things look.  I am having only one issue that I need to fix.  

I have been doing all of my initial testing on simple single player missions and I maintain a constant 90 fps.  I am using the Native openXR and I have a 12700K cpu and 4090 gpu.  Every 30 to 60 seconds it seems that the screen freezes for about 1-2 seconds and then rapidly moves to catch up to where I am looking.  I can't decide if this is some stutter issue or a tracking issue.  I am including a photo of my office to show where I mounted the base stations.  One base station is directly above my monitor and the other is 90 degrees to my left.  

Does anyone see a problem with the mount locations of the base stations?  How can I determine if this is a tracking issue or some other stutter issue?  

Hi
I'm not sure but you seem to have a similar problem I had, when I first tried my Aero in DCS. I had a stutter and tried to cover surfaces to avoid reflections. But that didn't do the trick for me, it was the "enable the HMD Mask" checkbox in the DCS options! As soon I disabled it, all my problems were gone. Maybe you could give it a try, hope it helps you too. Greetings from switzerland...Loopan

[MAThrasher]

Thanks @Loopan.  I checked my settings and the "enable the HMD Mask" is checked.  I will disable it and give that a test.

[MAThrasher]

I unchecked the "enable HMD Mask" and I flew a 15 minute mission without any hiccups!  I guess I will spend the next couple of days doing nothing but performance optimization.

[prancibald]

Are you running dynamic foveated rendering?  It made a big performance difference for me.  

https://github.com/mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated/releases

 

[MAThrasher]

@prancibald I am running the native openXR, MT, DFR openbeta DCS.  With all these great features, I picked a good time to get on the Aero wagon! 

[dburne]

1 hour ago, MAThrasher said:

@prancibald I am running the native openXR, MT, DFR openbeta DCS.  With all these great features, I picked a good time to get on the Aero wagon! 

Indeed you did! It is pretty freakin awesome!

[Burt]

@MAThrasher " the screen freezes for about 1-2 seconds and then rapidly moves to catch up to where I am looking. 

Did a quick test flight / BFM mission in the Sinia map over Cairo where the pyramids are located " Beautiful !!! " with the hmd mask both enabled and disabled and was experiencing this pause like image it gets alittle blurry and then re-focuses. It's  frustrating ! it's like the DFR is getting confused where I'm looking especially in a dogfight where your head is on a swivel and fast movements throws something off. Does the changing of the HMD mask require a restart?  Maybe I'll try that this evening. 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Burt

[dburne]

11 minutes ago, Burt said:

@MAThrasher " the screen freezes for about 1-2 seconds and then rapidly moves to catch up to where I am looking. 

Did a quick test flight / BFM mission in the Sinia map over Cairo where the pyramids are located " Beautiful !!! " with the hmd mask both enabled and disabled and was experiencing this pause like image it gets alittle blurry and then re-focuses. It's  frustrating ! it's like the DFR is getting confused where I'm looking especially in a dogfight where your head is on a swivel and fast movements throws something off. Does the changing of the HMD mask require a restart?  Maybe I'll try that this evening. 

 

 

Have you tried re-calibrating the Aero eye tracking?

Why use the VR mask in DCS ? Aero is already somewhat limited in FOV department.

 

[Burt]

I’ll keep that in mind Don and I guess I’ll go ahead and disable the HMD mask then. 
 

Thx !

Edited June 14, 2023 by Burt