2.9 completely exhausted and out of ideas. Stuttering in VR. Can't get smooth frames. need help.

[Skael]

I've been trying to get back to 2.8 visuals since 2.9 came out and nothing seems to work. I keep getting stuttering frames and it makes flying near cities or looking at them up close nauseating. I can't tell you how many hours and things I've tried, nothing seems to work. I'm running way lower settings than 2.8 and its still hot garbage.

I've been reading and following other peoples issues since release, none of them seems to fix my issue.

I've tried, disabling certain p-cores, disabling e-cores, deleting the metashaders2 and fxo folders, followed many settings from youtubers, even motion reprojection isn't smooth. My system should be able to handle this...

13900k

4090

64GB DDR 5 5600

2TB Samsung 990 m.2

Reverb G2

Please help, I just want the game to work!

Video of the saw tooth graph, flying over a city in Syria, graphics settings attached.

https://clipchamp.com/watch/DBA1jjbvfFV

Help me, @BIGNEWY; you're my only hope.

DxDiag.txt

[LucShep]

Well, you got a beastly machine, that's for sure. But optimizations issues within DCS itself, especially in VR, can not be cured by hardware horsepower. 

One small mistake that I see already - you should never, ever, enforce Antialising mode and settings in the NVIDIA driver profile for DX11 games (llike DCS is).
You placed that at "Enhance The Application Setting" and following one at "2x". That gives no benefit, it creates a conflict within game settings, and impacts performance.
Always leave Antialising mode and setting at "Application Controlled" for DX11 games (different story for older DX9 games, but that's irrelevant here now).
The sole exceptions are "Gamma Correction", "Line Gamma" and "MFAA", which can be enabled/disabled to own preference.

Anyways.... you got nothing to lose, might as well experiment a little.

We'll go in parts. 
First, the NVIDIA profile settings. 
Second, after it, I'll opiniate a bit (a few notes) about in-game settings that you may want to experiment as well.

One important setting to change in the NVIDIA Global Settings seems to be already okay (the Shader Cache Size at 10GB is a "must do").
The thing is, you should costumize the specific profile for DCS, in the NVIDIA specific settings for the game.

So, let's go in steps (please bare with me)...

First of all, open the NVIDIA control panel, and once in the "Manage 3D Settings"....

- Leave the "Global Settings" as is for now. 
- Go to the "Program Settings" (at the imediate right of the Global Settings).
- Search then select "Digital Combat Simulator: Black Shark (dcs.exe)"  (this is the profile that NVIDIA identifies and applies things for DCS World).
- Click "Restore", so that it reverts things as a clean sheet for the specific profile of DCS (it'll do so only for the selected game profile).

Now, try my settings as in the image below, exactly as they are (obviously, feel free to experiment after). 
Do pay attention to the following - my global settings may be different to yours.
So, when you see "Use Global Setting" in my settings there, pay special attention to what appears inside parenthesis right after it (it's what the setting is at).
Change accordingly.
Once you finish with the changes, click "Apply" on the bottom.

NOTE: If at some point you wish to revert to default DCS profile settings, and start all over again (for whatever reason), then click "Restore".
And you'll have a DCS profile clean sheet again.

(click on image to enlarge it)



Finally, looking at your specs, and your current DCS System settings (the game options) as they are as a basis, try changing these in there and see how it goes:

•  "Visib Range" - - - - - - - - - - - >  MEDIUM  (good enough detail for VR that doesn't bog down performance)
•  "Shadows" - - - - - - - - - - - - - >  MEDIUM  (good enough detail for VR that doesn't bog down performance)
•  "Lens Effects" - - - - - - - - - - - >  Flare  (clean and natural sun effects, with no BS camera lens bubbles) 
•  "Clutter/Grass" - - - - - - - - - - >  1100  (nice enough detail for VR that doesn't bog down performance)
•  "Forest Visibility" - - - - - - - - - >  100%  (so at maximum, this will balance and mask somewhat the tree-popping by limited Visib Range) 
•  "Forest Details Factor"  - - - - - >  0.4  (this is a LOD switch for details, avoid more than 0.5) 
•  "Scenery Details Factor" - - - - >  0.4  (this is a LOD switch for details, avoid more than 0.5)
•  "Preload Radius"  - - - - - - - - - >  75000  (even with 64GB of RAM, more than "90000" the loading times become long and impacts RAM + pagefile)
•  "Chimney SMoke Density" - - - >  1  (this is the number of chimneys in a radius, at minimum is best also for lower repetition pattern)
•  "Anisotropic Filtering"   - - - - - >  8x  (you don't need more than this in DCS, be it for VR or 2D screen, and can impact performance)
•  "Terrain Object Shadows"  - - - >  OFF  (this is important to avoid stuttering in VR, "Flat" or "Default" is used only when performance is really good in VR)

Anyways, that's what works out for me, for DCS in VR. Not sure (no guarantees) but it may be usefull for you and others.

And if nothing else seems to work.... heck, revert to a previous version of DCS that works better for you, if you do feel that's better.
I actually ended up reverting to a much older version - that one in my sig - and it's been the best DCS VR experience yet for me.

Edited June 13, 2024 by LucShep

[Pavlin_33]

I don't think there's anything you can do on your end to fix this.
We just need to wait for ED to come up with a fix.
I've asked this other people also: does the stutter go away when there are no objects near by, like in the middle of the sea or at the edge of a land map?

[jurinko]

Do you use OpenXR toolkit? To get smooth performance on my 4080 I need to

1) use SteamVR as OpenXR runtime

2) switch on reprojection and limit the fps to 90 in OpenXR toolkit first page

3) check both reprojection rendering settings on OpenXR tools.

Try DLSS quality antialiasing, this allows me to fly at PD 1.5 with excellent results and visuals compared to MSAA.

Also try resetting the nvidia panel to default settings as suggested above.

[Skael]

@LucShep Fantastic work in explaining your changes and settings. I was using program specific settings for DCS but they weren't what you had. I tried them, unfortunately no improvement, but I appreciate all the time you put in answering some rando on the internet. how do I go back to an older version? I think that's where I am at.

@Pavlin_33 Yeah you're right. in Caucus there seems to be no problem, although I haven't flown around a major city yet. and in Syria and PG it does smooth out when high or around not around a city or detailed objects.

@jurinko I use openXR toolkit. I have heard that SteamVR as OpenXR was inferior but I can try to install it. That seems counter intuitive to me as I run an HP Reverb which uses Windows mixed reality naturally. honestly going back to reprojection does make it smooth, but I can't stand the choppiness of the pieces of the cockpit or areas of the aircraft that "rip" away while going fast over terrain. Frankly this wasn't needed in 2.8, so I don't understand why I have to go potato mode with all my graphics just to get similar frames to 2.8, it seems ridiculous and like a big step backward to get "dust and grass moving" effects when close to the ground in a helo, that honestly seems like the only improvement. 

[LucShep]

55 minutes ago, Skael said:

@LucShep Fantastic work in explaining your changes and settings. I was using program specific settings for DCS but they weren't what you had. I tried them, unfortunately no improvement, but I appreciate all the time you put in answering some rando on the internet. how do I go back to an older version? I think that's where I am at.

No problem.

If you just want get back to 2.8, then maybe just download and install the current Stable version - that's still 2.8.

If you're looking to rollback your current installation to a specific OpenBeta version, then it's a little more involved... 
I covered that in another thread recently, the principle is the same as in HERE.   You just look for the desired version ID, and follow those same guidelines for it.


 

[desolunatic]

@Skael In Nvidia control panel change "Virtual per-rendered frames" to 1. Your current setting of 3 puts unnecessary strain on CPU and should be used only with weak GPUs, yours isn't weak (so using 3 as pre-rendered frames only creates a problem that people then try to solve by lowering settings that affect CPU).

Also I find it that for whatever reason flat ground shadows don't perform well. Put Regular Shadows to high, terrain shadows to default. Lower the pre-load radius to something like dunno 60000-80000.

These 3 things should fix your issues - the only other setting that really affects CPU significantly is view distance (and I guess secondary shadows but not everyone likes how they look so I usually skip that) but your CPU is strong enough to handle high and even ultra comfortably. On modern CPUs other settings are pretty much only dependent on GPU so you can turn them up for some eye-candy (I also recommend checking out DLAA with some proper super sampling set on your headset, looks really cool imho). If you will try DLAA, turn off MSAA x2 in Nvidia control panel.

EDIT:

In addition to above you can also use new experimental setting that BigNewy proposed for stuttering:
 

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by desolunatic

[LucShep]

On 11/15/2023 at 10:42 PM, desolunatic said:

In Nvidia control panel change "Virtual per-rendered frames" to 1. Your current setting of 3 puts unnecessary strain on CPU and should be used only with weak GPUs, yours isn't weak (so using 3 as pre-rendered frames only creates a problem that people then try to solve by lowering settings that affect CPU).
 

Yes, pre-rendered frames depend on CPU but it actually works the opposite way - more pre-rendered frames aliviates the CPU. Adding pre-rendered 3 (and up to 4) lets your GPU stack them up, at a small cost of latency (unnoticed in a flight sim - i.e, no downside in this aspect). 
So if your CPU ever struggles to keep up (likely case in DCS), you can tell the GPU to let X amount of frames pre-render.

Pre-rendered value at 1 would be ideal in a world where this sim never, ever, stutters or hitches. But alas.... "DCS"   Pretty much everybody in DCS VR is, unfortunately, running the game smoothly for a limited time only, with the odd hitch or stutter always creeping in. Therefore should try setting it to either 2, 3 or 4 frames to help smooth them over. 
I think benefits vary between values, and can be debatable (through empirical and quantitative testing, etc).
Best way is to try it out yourself and see what looks/feels better. For me, it certainly makes a difference, for the better (prefer it set at 3).
 

On 11/15/2023 at 10:42 PM, desolunatic said:

Also I find it that for whatever reason flat ground shadows don't perform well. Put Regular Shadows to high, terrain shadows to default.

Could be different with 13900K + RTX4090, but it won't necessarily work better.
"Default" adds performance penalty, more stressful due its higher projected accuracy. Even if with lower cascades (mod in my sig).

The odd thing for me is that, Terrain Shadows from OFF to FLAT with game versions up to 2.5.6 used to get virtual zero GPU frametime cost. But they can cost about 15%~25% ever since version 2.7 got out, and it remains like that with 2.9 today (and 2.8 before). Therefore why I always use them OFF and recommend so, for VR.

...one reason (among various other reasons) why I got back to version 2.5.6 for VR and never looked back -  Terrain Shadows (Default or FLAT) can be used with far less issues.

Edited November 18, 2023 by LucShep

[BMGZ06]

I have had the same FPS issues since 2.9. I upgraded ram to 64gb as well. But in VR the only way I can get a smooth experience is to play ST version and force Steamvr. OpenXR in ST or MT versions is a total mess. I tried repair and clean and I made a new savedgame file. Turned off all settings that hit FPS harder like MSAA and shadows and still get FPS drops in Welcome screen to zero for several seconds then will spike to 90 then back to zero. 

[Glide]

As mentioned, restore defaults in the NCP.  Also, disable "prefer framerate over latency"; you don't need the boost with a 4090, and latency is smoother than high fps. 

High textures and AF x16 put a lot of load on that part of the graphics pipeline. 

Note the forest details settings. 

You should experiment with setting your G2 to 60hz and enabling Motion Reprojection Best Framerate with either TAA or DLAA.  Disable Nvidia Optical Flow as your motion sensors in the G2 are excellent.  MR is working fairly well with the F-16 and AH-64 if you stay above 60fps.

See my settings below.  These settings are all about smooth flying experience.  They are not designed for screenshots or low and slow flights.  3080Ti 11700K

Edited November 19, 2023 by Glide

[Czar66]

Any chance OP have Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling ON?

Turn that OFF > Restart PC > See if it helps