Vr headsets and gpus

[Dave317]

I've been running a reverb g1 and 6800xt for years with pretty good results but I'm looking to upgrade. 

I recently got a pico4 and had really high hopes but it just wasn't as good visually as the g1 even with it tethered.  Unfortunately I had to send it back. 

From all the things I've read it seems the pico 4 needs a really high end gpu to run it at acceptable visual quality. 

Does the same apply to all vr headsets now?  For example if I got a quest pro would I also need a better gpu or is this just a pico 4 thing? 

[dburne]

13 minutes ago, Dave317 said:

I've been running a reverb g1 and 6800xt for years with pretty good results but I'm looking to upgrade. 

I recently got a pico4 and had really high hopes but it just wasn't as good visually as the g1 even with it tethered.  Unfortunately I had to send it back. 

From all the things I've read it seems the pico 4 needs a really high end gpu to run it at acceptable visual quality. 

Does the same apply to all vr headsets now?  For example if I got a quest pro would I also need a better gpu or is this just a pico 4 thing? 

 

You will need the best you can reasonably afford. VR is very GPU hungry. I would go 4080 and up.

Edited September 22, 2023 by dburne

[Qcumber]

I can run my Pico 4 on an rtx 4070 and get pretty good results at 72 fps with Godlike, if I reduce in-game settings. Locked at 40fps I get usable results with high settings and plenty of GPU headroom. I only play single player though. I also use QVFR which improves fps a lot.

I personally can't justify the price of an rtx 4080 or 4090, when we will probably get similar performance at a fraction of the price in a year or two.

[NAM]

My Pico4 on AMD 6900Xt, streaming with Virtual desktop. I also able to get 72fps (or locked 36fps ASW/Motion Reprojection) which is smoother than my other headset G2 or Pimax 8kx

 

Your AMD 6800Xt, you should able to run on at least Virtual Desktop Ultra mode (may be Godlike) and get 72fps or (36 AWS reprojection). You will find Pico4 be lot smoother stutter free compare to your HP G1.

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by NAM

[Qcumber]

35 minutes ago, NAM said:

My Pico4 on AMD 6900Xt, streaming with Virtual desktop. I also able to get 72fps (or locked 36fps ASW/Motion Reprojection) which is smoother than my other headset G2 or Pimax 8kx

I don't get very good results with SSW at 36/72 fps on the Pico 4. Locking at 40-50 fps without SSW is better. At 36/72 there are significant movement artifacts and a black mask when moving my head. Do you have any suggestions about how to improve this?

[NAM]

23 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

I don't get very good results with SSW at 36/72 fps on the Pico 4. Locking at 40-50 fps without SSW is better. At 36/72 there are significant movement artifacts and a black mask when moving my head. Do you have any suggestions about how to improve this?

I remember getting unstable and black mask when moving head. My thought that due to frame rate go up and down i.e moving between 30-50 fps. then I use OXR toolkits to locked at 36fps so that SSW be kicked on.  It certainly help to reduce artifact/black mark.

Lately I no longer need to locked at 36fps.. this due to I manage to get it stable without locked the frame rate. By going DCS options and adjust setting to get 36fps-40fps. If you get frame rate somewhere north of 36fps.. then Virtual desktop SSW reprojection will automatically kick on.

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by NAM

[Qcumber]

2 minutes ago, NAM said:

I remember getting unstable and black mask when moving head. My thought that due to frame rate go up and down i.e moving between 30-50 fps. then I use OXR toolkits to locked at 36fps so that SSW be kicked on.  It certainly help to reduce artifact/black mark.

Lately I no longer need to locked at 36fps.. this due to I manage to get it stable without locked the frame rate. By going DCS options and adjust setting to get 36fps-40fps by fine tune the options in DCS to make Virtual desktop use SSW.

 

Thanks. I'll give this a go.

[Dave317]

On 9/22/2023 at 7:31 PM, dburne said:

 

You will need the best you can reasonably afford. VR is very GPU hungry. I would go 4080 and up.

 

Yes I get that and I will upgrade at some point but these things funny come cheap at the minute. 

The question is, is pico 4 particularly power hungry over other headsets? 

[Qcumber]

5 minutes ago, Dave317 said:

The question is, is pico 4 particularly power hungry over other headsets? 

Do you mean headset battery life or GPU performance? 

[Dave317]

Gpu performance. 

 

[Qcumber]

25 minutes ago, Dave317 said:

Gpu performance. 

 

GPU performance should be the same as for any other headset rendering at 3120x3120 pixels. However it is a bit more complex as the Pico 4 has no display port so the image needs to be compressed then decompressed in the headset. Virtual desktop overlay shows you the various latencies so you can see the bottlenecks. Game latency directly relates to DCS game settings and GPU performance. The other latencies are caused by encoding, networking and decoding. These latencies do not have a massive additional load on the GPU (if any?) as the decoding is done by the headset. Any performance issues (in my experience) are usually a result of the game pushing the GPU too much or router issues leading to increased networking latency. Increased encoding and decoding latencies are usually a knock-on effect from the game and networking issues as you are trying to push too much information through a slow connection. As long as the overall latency stays below about 60ms, and you make the target FPS, then you shouldn't really notice any difference compared to a headset with a display port. The caveat here is subjective experience of compression artifacts which I don't really notice. 

When I set my rift s to 3120x3120 I get the same GPU performance as with my Pico 4 at the same resolution. The only difference is that oculus asynchronous space warp works very well, but VD synchronous space warp causes annoying movement artifacts (as I mentioned above). I find that locking at 40-50fps for both headsets works very well at smoothing the performance without the need for ASW or SSW. At 40 fps I can keep GPU performance to about 70% in most situations which gives plenty of headroom. I even push it up to 72 fps when at high altitude.

It's not really possible to do proper benchmarks due the big variation in individual systems etc. However if we look at raw performance then the 4080 should give a 50-60% increase over the 4070. In terms of DCS in VR I'm not convinced there is that much gain (purely based on what I have read on this forum, so I'm happy to stand corrected). What the 4080 will give you though is the ability to maintain the GPU headroom for more complex situations when there are lots of assets etc. Getting the best GPU you can afford, and are willing to spend money on, always seems the best advice. But, you need to also look at what you want from the game. Sometimes getting the more expensive option is not necessarily the best choice. If I was buying a whole new system then I would probably go for a 4080 or even a 4090. As I was just upgrading the GPU I found a 4070 was the right balance, without needing a new PSU and CPU. 

Sorry for the long answer. I hope it makes sense. The simple summary is you can get reasonable performance from a mid range GPU using a Pico 4. 

[Koziolek]

how do you lock fps without SSW. Some external program?

[Qcumber]

2 hours ago, Koziolek said:

how do you lock fps without SSW. Some external program?

I use openxr toolkit but you can use NVIDIA control panel or the AMD equivalent. OXRTK is easiest as you can easily adjust from within the game. 

Edited September 25, 2023 by Qcumber

[Koziolek]

Sorry, I must be blind or just dense, but I have no idea where that option is in OXRTK. Unless you mean lowering the graphics so the game always stays above 50 fps

[Qcumber]

3 minutes ago, Koziolek said:

4 minutes ago, Koziolek said:

Sorry, I must be blind or just dense, but I have no idea where that option is in OXRTK. Unless you mean lowering the graphics so the game always stays above 50 fps

 

In OXRTK there is "frame rate throttling" under the performance tab which can be used to cap frame rate. You can easily adjust this in game. 

https://mbucchia.github.io/OpenXR-Toolkit/other-features.html#frame-rate-throttling

[Koziolek]

Damn, I missed that, thanks a lot