community advice Dynamic Foveated Rendering - Everything in one page

[mbucchia]

Hey all -

There seems to be a lot of confusion still around Dynamic Foveated Rendering support and information is spread over multiple threads specific to each headset, with the same questions asked over and over again.

So hopefully this will make things easier.

I use a Varjo and I don't know/want to use OpenXR Toolkit or OpenXR OBSMirror

• You want to install a tool called Varjo-Foveated, FOLLOW ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS HERE: https://github.com/mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated/wiki

I use a Pimax Crystal, Meta Quest Pro, Vive Pro Eye or HP Reverb G2 Omnicept
or
I use a Varjo and I want to also use OpenXR Toolkit or OpenXR OBSMirror

• You want to install a tool called Quad-Views-Foveated, FOLLOW ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS HERE: https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki/DCS-World

I am already using Foveated Rendering but something does not work

• Go and read the instructions again. There is a 99% chance the answer to your question/issue is in the instructions.
• In the unlikely case you are in the 1% with a real issue that is not a misconfiguration or something overlooked while following the instructions, you may post a log file (from Quad-Views-Foveated) for support. I will ignore all requests made without a log file.

I want to use Foveated Rendering but I do not know how to follow instructions

• Do not try using Foveated Rendering. There is some reading/understanding to do and if you cannot do that, you will not be successful. Enjoy the game and keep things simple.

 

Please let's keep this thread on topic. No headset trolling. No unnecessary discussions about your CPU, GPU or your MSAA settings. No posts off-topic.

Thanks.

Edited September 12, 2023 by mbucchia

[mbucchia]

@BIGNEWY, any opportunity to pin this post so it keeps near the top? Thanks.

[BIGNEWY]

Done. 

thanks

[dburne]

Nice!

[Peedee]

First off, thank so much mbucchia!! I can now really enjoy my Pimax Crystal, also got the eyetracking working with the Pimax updates yesterday. I checked a bit with the debug_eye_gaze=1 in the settings.cfg file, and inside DCS I was surprised to see how well eyetracking worked   

It was a bit to read, but I got working good in the end. Just a question, on the wiki page for advanced instructions it says: 

Quote

the resolution settings in the configuration file are multipliers for the resolution configured through your platform, for example:

---

Pimax Crystal/5K/8K: Pimax Client

and that means in my case, Pimax play application for Crystal in Win 11.

Now, for some reason Pimax play doesn't allow you to set your resolution directly, instead it uses terms like  Balanced, Maximum and so on, or you can set a number manually like 0.5, 0.75 1.0 ... which then translates to specific resolution in the headset. I set mine at "Maxium" in Pimax Play - which translates to something like 4500x5100 or some crazy high number like that. So, inside OpenXR Toolkit I used the "Overide Resolution" and lowered my resolution to 3800x(something). 3800x4400 ish... close to that anyway. 

So to my question (took a while  ) from the quote above - do I understand it correctly now that the resolution settings in the Quad view configuration file in my case are multiplayers of my resolution value set through OpenXR Toolkit "Override resolution" which I have set at 3800x4400 ? 

Not sure if I make myself understood, English is not my native language (- and that means also it takes some time to read through all the instructions and hopefully understand them correctly)   

 

 

[mbucchia]

5 hours ago, Peedee said:

So to my question (took a while  ) from the quote above - do I understand it correctly now that the resolution settings in the Quad view configuration file in my case are multiplayers of my resolution value set through OpenXR Toolkit "Override resolution" which I have set at 3800x4400

Yes those multipliers in the configuration file will take the resolution DCS was about to use. When you use OpenXR Toolkit Resolution Override, that setting sets that final resolution directly. 

One thing I never checked is what happened if you set Pixel Density to something other than 1.0 in DCS. Idk if anybody knows.

[Burt]

Bravo Zulu >

[Stellatny45]

2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: XR_APILAYER_MBUCCHIA_varjo_foveated layer (v0.2.0) is active
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Using layer: XR_APILAYER_MBUCCHIA_varjo_foveated
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Requested extension: XR_KHR_D3D11_enable
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Requested extension: XR_KHR_visibility_mask
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Requested extension: XR_VARJO_quad_views
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Requesting extension: XR_VARJO_foveated_rendering
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Application: DCS World
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Using OpenXR runtime: Varjo OpenXR Runtime 3.10.1
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Using OpenXR system: AERO
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: supportsFoveatedRendering = 1
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Trying to locate configuration file at 'C:\Users\Dan\AppData\Local\Varjo-Foveated\settings.cfg'...
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'peripheral_multiplier=0.7'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'focus_multiplier=1.3'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'horizontal_focus_scale=1'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'vertical_focus_scale=1'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'turbo_mode=1'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'no_eye_tracking=0'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Peripheral resolution: 1534x1316 (multiplier: 0.700)
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Focus resolution 1560x1560 (multiplier: 1.300/1.300)
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Peripheral resolution: 1534x1316 (multiplier: 0.700)
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Focus resolution 1560x1560 (multiplier: 1.300/1.300)
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1840x1580
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1840x1580
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1560x1560
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1560x1560
2023-09-13 07:58:32 -0700: Application is using Quad Views for this session.

 

I am seeing a double cursor. If I use a 1.2 focus multiplier the switch activation point is between the cursors whereas with 1.3 multiplier I can place the bright cursor on the switch to activate the switch/knob. If however I increase ppd above the default "high" setting the switch activation point again lies somewhere between the bright and dim cursors. Is there any way to get a single cursor?

[mbucchia]

4 hours ago, Stellatny45 said:

2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: XR_APILAYER_MBUCCHIA_varjo_foveated layer (v0.2.0) is active
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Using layer: XR_APILAYER_MBUCCHIA_varjo_foveated
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Requested extension: XR_KHR_D3D11_enable
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Requested extension: XR_KHR_visibility_mask
2023-09-13 07:58:20 -0700: Requested extension: XR_VARJO_quad_views
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Requesting extension: XR_VARJO_foveated_rendering
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Application: DCS World
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Using OpenXR runtime: Varjo OpenXR Runtime 3.10.1
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Using OpenXR system: AERO
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: supportsFoveatedRendering = 1
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Trying to locate configuration file at 'C:\Users\Dan\AppData\Local\Varjo-Foveated\settings.cfg'...
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'peripheral_multiplier=0.7'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'focus_multiplier=1.3'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'horizontal_focus_scale=1'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'vertical_focus_scale=1'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'turbo_mode=1'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700:   Found option 'no_eye_tracking=0'
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Peripheral resolution: 1534x1316 (multiplier: 0.700)
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Focus resolution 1560x1560 (multiplier: 1.300/1.300)
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Peripheral resolution: 1534x1316 (multiplier: 0.700)
2023-09-13 07:58:23 -0700: Focus resolution 1560x1560 (multiplier: 1.300/1.300)
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1840x1580
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1840x1580
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1560x1560
2023-09-13 07:58:29 -0700: Creating swapchain with resolution: 1560x1560
2023-09-13 07:58:32 -0700: Application is using Quad Views for this session.

 

I am seeing a double cursor. If I use a 1.2 focus multiplier the switch activation point is between the cursors whereas with 1.3 multiplier I can place the bright cursor on the switch to activate the switch/knob. If however I increase ppd above the default "high" setting the switch activation point again lies somewhere between the bright and dim cursors. Is there any way to get a single cursor?

Double cursor means you are not running DCS multithreaded.

It's explained in the instructions: https://github.com/mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated/wiki#dcs-world.

null

[Stellatny45]

1 hour ago, mbucchia said:

Double cursor means you are not running DCS multithreaded.

It's explained in the instructions: https://github.com/mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated/wiki#dcs-world.

null

This is the path I'm using to start DCS:    F:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\DCSWorld\bin-mt\DCS.exe --force_OpenXR

There must be something in the instructions I'm missing.

[mbucchia]

2 hours ago, Stellatny45 said:

This is the path I'm using to start DCS:    F:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\DCSWorld\bin-mt\DCS.exe --force_OpenXR

There must be something in the instructions I'm missing.

Nope, nothing missing. This bit down here is not obvious and you have to read carefully!
 

(Doing this solved the problem for the last ~5 people who had this issue, so I'm confident it will work for you too)

BTW @BIGNEWY this caveat above has confused a lot of users. Not sure why things are that way, but apparently with the Steam edition, if you run the executable in bin-mt outside of Steam it still runs ST. This is very very confusing and could be improved.

Edited September 14, 2023 by mbucchia

[Stellatny45]

Thanks! I had checked my Steam settings before posting. I had set the "Play MT Preview" switch months ago so unfortunately that isn't the cause of my double cursor issue. Another thing I noted is that the Varjo Foveated app did not create a log file until I added " --force_OpenXR" to the bin-mt exe. Also, I wasn't able to change the settings.cfg in the VF app folder. I kept getting Win10 notification that don't have admin privileges to do so. That was puzzling.

[mbucchia]

47 minutes ago, Stellatny45 said:

Thanks! I had checked my Steam settings before posting. I had set the "Play MT Preview" switch months ago so unfortunately that isn't the cause of my double cursor issue. Another thing I noted is that the Varjo Foveated app did not create a log file until I added " --force_OpenXR" to the bin-mt exe. Also, I wasn't able to change the settings.cfg in the VF app folder. I kept getting Win10 notification that don't have admin privileges to do so. That was puzzling.

The MT version only supports OpenXR, so if you need `--force_OpenXR` then it further proves that somehow your game is running ST. The cursor isses only happen with ST, this has been confirmed many times, and every time users having issues eventually found out they run ST.

You can be sure by looking for the watermark in the menu (see below).

Unfortunately there is not much I can do, this is a game issue. The method I gave you has worked for everyone (you must run the game from your Steam library and not from a shortcut like you said yoi are doing). The only consistent way I know today go use MT is to uninstall the Steam version and to use the standalone OpenBeta, which does not have these weird issues

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by mbucchia

[Stellatny45]

38 minutes ago, mbucchia said:

(you must run the game from your Steam library and not from a shortcut like you said yoi are doing).

Thanks again! Yes that cured the double cursor and got rid of multiple artifacts

[mbucchia]

2 hours ago, Stellatny45 said:

Thanks again! Yes that cured the double cursor and got rid of multiple artifacts

Great to hear this is solved.

[Guyamn]

This is an amazing addition to DCS!  It makes my immersion so fantastic to have so many settings ramped so high up!   

 

I do wonder if there are settings within Quad-Views-Fov that I should be changing?  Out of the box support is terrific, so I don't mean to be asking for more, just trying to understand all the ins-n-outs of this awesome tool.  Thanks again!

[zildac]

1 hour ago, Guyamn said:

This is an amazing addition to DCS!  It makes my immersion so fantastic to have so many settings ramped so high up!   

 

I do wonder if there are settings within Quad-Views-Fov that I should be changing?  Out of the box support is terrific, so I don't mean to be asking for more, just trying to understand all the ins-n-outs of this awesome tool.  Thanks again!

https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki/Advanced-Configuration

[Vitallini]

Hi,

 

I’ve been experimenting with quad view and have it working, but have a few questions.

when using the eye gaze debug mode I don’t see the purple dots in the centre of where I’m looking, but they are a bit below my centre focus. At least so far below that it made me think something was wrong with eye tracking calibration. The experience is good though and if I hadn’t tried the eye gaze mode I don’t think I would have thought about it. Is this how it is supposed to be?

Secondly adjusting resolutions, both in focus area and/or general (maximum vs balanced in pimax play) does not seem to make that much of a difference as far as fps is concerned? This is compared to what I experience when not using DFR and I adjust the resolution up or down. Granted I haven’t done a thorough or thoughtful test yet. That said the clarity in the centre focus area is amazing. So amazing that I tried to sacrifice a bit of clarity to see if I could reach 90 fps in my test scenario.

[Peedee]

On 9/17/2023 at 4:24 PM, Vitallini said:

Hi,

 

I’ve been experimenting with quad view and have it working, but have a few questions.

when using the eye gaze debug mode I don’t see the purple dots in the centre of where I’m looking, but they are a bit below my centre focus. At least so far below that it made me think something was wrong with eye tracking calibration. The experience is good though and if I hadn’t tried the eye gaze mode I don’t think I would have thought about it. Is this how it is supposed to be?

Secondly adjusting resolutions, both in focus area and/or general (maximum vs balanced in pimax play) does not seem to make that much of a difference as far as fps is concerned? This is compared to what I experience when not using DFR and I adjust the resolution up or down. Granted I haven’t done a thorough or thoughtful test yet. That said the clarity in the centre focus area is amazing. So amazing that I tried to sacrifice a bit of clarity to see if I could reach 90 fps in my test scenario.

I have the Pimax crystal and I think that maybe it is needed to calibrate the eyetracking every time I turn the headset power on. Not sure. But I have noticed that if check the first picture in eye calibration tool, you know where you see those points forming a circle and you can look at them to check calibration, the dot the doesn't move as fast and accurate as it should. But if I then continue through with the eye full calibration and complete it by watching the dot move across the black screen and then then white screen, and afterwards go into the check calibration picture - the dot behaves as it should and go to the posistion I look very fast and reliable.

About adjusting resolutions... I think that if you at this point are CPU limitied, then I think maybe there won't be that much fps to gain? I could be wrong though.

 

[Peedee]

Jaapgrolleman from Pimax posted this link in another thread here, I think it's a good addition to Mbucchia's guide

https://pimax.com/quad-views-foveated-rendering-for-pimax-crystal/

 

[Guyamn]

On 9/17/2023 at 1:05 AM, zildac said:

https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki/Advanced-Configuration

ty.  turns out the defaults are perfect for me.  65 fps+, fully fidelity, on the TTI Socal MP servers.  I love this!!!!  VR ftw.. I can't imagine playing this game w/out it.

[witwas]

Received my varjo aero yesterday, what a great device. Followed al the stept from the tutorial. But how do I know it is working?

I never used eye tracking before as this is my first headset with the capability. 

[dburne]

1 hour ago, witwas said:

Received my varjo aero yesterday, what a great device. Followed al the stept from the tutorial. But how do I know it is working?

I never used eye tracking before as this is my first headset with the capability. 

 

Turn it off and compare fps numbers with it off versus on should tell you pretty quickly.

[witwas]

Thanks, it works!

Something I discovered: when flying the spitfire when the sun is in the correct angel, you can see scratches on the cockpit windows. Apparently, the area only rendered in squares. if you then look around (with your eyes only) you can se the squares moving and you know the eye tracking is working

[Stellatny45]

my error

Edited September 25, 2023 by Stellatny45
error