Pimax Crystal and steam VR....I dont want steam vr to start...but it does.

[unpilot1]

I had put my Pimax crystal on the shelf and gave up on VR.

But as always happens, a YouTube video got me all excited again...so I tried to make a go of it again.

Well, after about 20 dead chickens thrown over my left shoulder I got it working...sort of.

The issue is Steam vr starts whenever I run DCS. Now from what I have read IF you use openXR and pimaxXR then no need for steam VR.

The last go around I remember I had downloaded opencomposite  but I deleted it...Is it possible that some .dll or something is still alive and kicking somewhere, forcing steam vr to start?

As usual, I spend 10 hours farting around trying to get VR to run in DCS....HELP!

[PawlaczGMD]

Yeah, this is a pain. I had it working fine initially by adding the game .exe to "imported" games in Pimax Home. Try this.

But after a system reinstall, it doesn't work well.

What still works is if I launch from DCS Updater GUI Utility. Download it (free tool) and launch in OpenXR, using the launch VR button.

Also download PimaxXR control center and deselect SteamVR there.

Go ahead and try these things.

[Nedum]

Hi,

 

what version of DCS you are using? Steam or Standalone?

How do you start DCS?

What tools you are using?

Did you read this Thread?

In most cases (if you don't use Steam-DCS and the Standalone version activates Steam VR) SteamVR was activated as the main OpenXR runtime environment.

I don't know for sure, but if you have ever activated SteamVR as an active OpenXR runtime environment, and you deinstall Steam after that without undoing the change, the "trigger" will stay.

 

I hope this will give you a hint.

[Peedee]

14 hours ago, unpilot1 said:

I had put my Pimax crystal on the shelf and gave up on VR.

But as always happens, a YouTube video got me all excited again...so I tried to make a go of it again.

Well, after about 20 dead chickens thrown over my left shoulder I got it working...sort of.

The issue is Steam vr starts whenever I run DCS. Now from what I have read IF you use openXR and pimaxXR then no need for steam VR.

The last go around I remember I had downloaded opencomposite  but I deleted it...Is it possible that some .dll or something is still alive and kicking somewhere, forcing steam vr to start?

As usual, I spend 10 hours farting around trying to get VR to run in DCS....HELP!

Sorry to hear your issues with it. Hope I dont makes things feeling worse for you when I say it is very easy for me to get it working - and without SteamVR. There must be something that you have missed in the instructions on how to do this. But hard to tell what it is from what you are writing.

You are correct - there is now no need for Open composite amymore. It's been quite a while since that was needed.

This is what I do to play in VR with the crystal.

(0). Pimax Play starts during Windows 11 start up. And I have it configured as I like from before, so I don't have to do anything there. I have i set at 72hz btw, enabled eye tracking (but not foveated rendering as that is done by Quadview). Anyway don't let this confuse you, once you have it set up like you want, it is launched when windows starts and forget..unless I want to recalibrate eye tracking which sometimes I do.

1. I press the button on my VR headset to turn it on

2. I click my DCS shortcut on my Desktop. And DCS starts. In VR. With no SteamVR running.  My shortcut is like this: "C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\bin-mt\DCS.exe"    So you see, I am using the Beta version. And I don't need to write anything special in the shortcut. This is because inside DCS options menu I have the setting "Use VR" ticked.

That is all there is to do for me after I have booted up my PC. 

You mention OpenXR and PimaxXR. And yes, before launching DCS you have to start the program PimaxXR and make sure that in the top where it says "Select active OpenXR runtime" - make sure PimaxXR is ticked and NOT SteamVR.  IF you for some reason has this value changed to SteamVR (maybe some other game suggest it or reccomend it, or ... somehow it happens), then you have to open PimaxXR program and make sure that it is correctly ticked in use PimaxXR again before launching DCS the next time.  You really don't need OpenXR Toolkit installed or other stuff installed at all to make it work. You get your OpenXR support either through PimaxXR - when the tickbox is set correctly in the PimaxXR program - or SteamVR  - which is what is happening for you now for some reason. OpenXR toolkit is just to tweak stuff further.

I use in addition to Pimax Play (needed) and PimaxXR (needed and set correctly) a program called QuadViews (not needed) which enhances the performance, great fps without seeing loss of quality. And that is a story by itself. But once dialed in, it is there and you can forget it. But try to get DCS with Pimax VR headset to work before doing any other steps. Like I said, once set, boot PC, turn on headset, double click DCS icon.  But make sure PimaxXR program has set itself to use PimaxXR. 

Edited February 16 by Peedee

[unpilot1]

Thanks for the responses...yeah I should have given more info....but I wrote my first post AFTER all the dead chickens.

I started with Flight sims back when IF you had a 3DvoodooFX card you could get engine pylons on the tanker in Falcon4.

But I digress....so I have PimaxXR running, and it is set to be the runtime XR.

I am running the stand-alone version (Not steam) of DCS and have tried both the bin-mt\DCS.exe ....and the non-multithreaded DCS.exe ....both start steam VR

I may just uninstall steamVR and give that a go.

But GF is here and i am out of dead chickens, so might be a day or two.

[hsth]

@unpilot1 if you had OpenComposite installed before and removed it now I would strongly suggest to do a DCS repair to make sure that no dll file is left from the OpenComposite install.

I also made sure that no flightsim (DCS/Il-2,MSFS) is connectet to Pimas Play. I have only the common settings available in Pimax Play. Although I still have Steam installed on my system it won't start SteamVR when I use my desktop shortcut for DCS. Or any other flightsim for that matter.

[unpilot1]

Okeedokee...this is weird....fired up DCS and bang no SteamVR.

Maybe 1 chicken was still alive...but then died?

As far as I know, I did not change anything.

New question for quad view ...in my limited testing it seems to make text look...grainy?

Anyone else have that?

[PawlaczGMD]

6 hours ago, unpilot1 said:

Okeedokee...this is weird....fired up DCS and bang no SteamVR.

Maybe 1 chicken was still alive...but then died?

As far as I know, I did not change anything.

New question for quad view ...in my limited testing it seems to make text look...grainy?

Anyone else have that?

Make sure your eye tracking is calibrated. It should definitely not make text look worse.

However I do observe some bugs with quadviews. In some lighting, weird square outlines are visible, mostly looking towards the sun. Also, ground crew sometimes do a weird texture flicker as they enter/leave the high res area. Not sure if anyone else has similar experience.

You can try quadviews companion app to tune the parameters like resolution, sharpness, transition, area of high res square...

Edited February 17 by PawlaczGMD

[Peedee]

11 hours ago, unpilot1 said:

Okeedokee...this is weird....fired up DCS and bang no SteamVR.

Maybe 1 chicken was still alive...but then died?

As far as I know, I did not change anything.

New question for quad view ...in my limited testing it seems to make text look...grainy?

Anyone else have that?

Good that you got rid of SteamVR

But nope, text is supposed to be sharp with Quadviews, just like everything else you are looking at - if everything is done correctly. And I mean everything!  The instructions for Quadviews are very detailed and every step has to be done exactly as instructed to make it work correctly. And some guys miss one step, or add something or misunderstand something- and voila it’s not working like it should. I know because I was struggling a bit myself. And PawlaczGMD too over my post here too probably has missed or forgotten a step since he has some artifacts. He says:

Quote

However I do observe some bugs with quadviews. In some lighting, weird square outlines are visible, mostly looking towards the sun. Also, ground crew sometimes do a weird texture flicker as they enter/leave the high res area

This is not normal. Not sure why he has this problem. But it sounds like he has forgotten to turn off a setting or two inside DCS own graphics settings. Don’t remember exactly which graphic settings that are not compatible with Quadviews, but it’s noted inside the Quadviews instructions somewhere. It’s a common error And easy to miss, and it causes artifacts.

Ok, now you’re rid of SteamVr. Next step is to do Quadviews correctly. It can be a pain at first, but once it’s done it will be worthwhile. And when tweaked correctly- set and forget  

I am amazed what I can experience inside my Crystal headset - and how easy it is after I had it all done correctly. No reason for me here to repeat the Quadviews instructions- you find them over at the homepage for the app. But follow them exactly, do every step in the right sequence, and it will work. I thought I had done that, but I was wrong of course, got disappointed by the experience. Tried again- reading more carefully and it worked - without artifacts too. 
 

Tweaking Quadviews… that’s another thing. Different opinions. I suggest going for the default/recommended first, and experiment from there. 

[Qcumber]

14 hours ago, unpilot1 said:

Okeedokee...this is weird....fired up DCS and bang no SteamVR.

This might be just a reallocation of your open XR layers from steam VR to your pimax runtime. Not sure why it took a while to set itself. You can see your open XR layers with this useful app. 

https://github.com/fredemmott/OpenXR-API-Layers-GUI/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md

 

[PawlaczGMD]

12 hours ago, Peedee said:

Good that you got rid of SteamVR

But nope, text is supposed to be sharp with Quadviews, just like everything else you are looking at - if everything is done correctly. And I mean everything!  The instructions for Quadviews are very detailed and every step has to be done exactly as instructed to make it work correctly. And some guys miss one step, or add something or misunderstand something- and voila it’s not working like it should. I know because I was struggling a bit myself. And PawlaczGMD too over my post here too probably has missed or forgotten a step since he has some artifacts. He says:

This is not normal. Not sure why he has this problem. But it sounds like he has forgotten to turn off a setting or two inside DCS own graphics settings. Don’t remember exactly which graphic settings that are not compatible with Quadviews, but it’s noted inside the Quadviews instructions somewhere. It’s a common error And easy to miss, and it causes artifacts.

Ok, now you’re rid of SteamVr. Next step is to do Quadviews correctly. It can be a pain at first, but once it’s done it will be worthwhile. And when tweaked correctly- set and forget  

I am amazed what I can experience inside my Crystal headset - and how easy it is after I had it all done correctly. No reason for me here to repeat the Quadviews instructions- you find them over at the homepage for the app. But follow them exactly, do every step in the right sequence, and it will work. I thought I had done that, but I was wrong of course, got disappointed by the experience. Tried again- reading more carefully and it worked - without artifacts too. 
 

Tweaking Quadviews… that’s another thing. Different opinions. I suggest going for the default/recommended first, and experiment from there. 

You were correct, the bloom setting was maliciously hidden in the VR tab.