DCS Stand-alone in VR through Steam Link and Steam VR

[RafaPolit]

Good afternoon friends!

I have been a DCS player for a couple of years, just bought the Quest 3 recently.

i have been able to play with Cable Link without an issue, but I think that wireless *may* be enough for me.  I have used Virtual Desktop with almost complete success, but there are some “ghosting” or wobbly artifacts on planes flying at certain distances.  I see this same “wobbly” effect on videos played in Steam Home screens, so I’m inclined to think there is something with Virtual Desktop that is sharpening or affecting this.  I’ll look into that on my own.

To discard Virtual Desktop, I’m trying to run DCS VR through Quest Steam Link.  It launches as a 2D app.  I have tried:

- launching DCS through a desktop link with the VR flags added
- adding DCS MT as an external program to Steam and launching through that (that worked for Arcade Time Capsule, for example) without any flags
- adding the flags to the Steam “game” in library

 

All these efforts  launch the game in 2D from Steam, never go inside VR this way.

What could be happening? How do you launch DCS standalone in VR through SteamLink in Quest? Thanks.

 

Best regards,

Rafa.

[Phantom711]

I‘ve never tried that, so my comment is not very well educated here:

Do you have SteamVR set as your OpenXR runtime?

[Qcumber]

7 hours ago, RafaPolit said:

I have used Virtual Desktop with almost complete success, but there are some “ghosting” or wobbly artifacts on planes flying at certain distances.  I see this same “wobbly” effect on videos played in Steam Home screens, so I’m inclined to think there is something with Virtual Desktop that is sharpening or affecting this.

Do you have SSW enabled with VD? This produces some strange artifacts when rolling the plane that you don't see with oculus and ASW. Try disabling SSW and see if that looks any better. Are you running VD through steam VR or using VDXR? If you have not tried VDXR then give it a go. It's better than using steam as it is less layers of software. 

[RafaPolit]

8 hours ago, Phantom711 said:

I‘ve never tried that, so my comment is not very well educated here:

Do you have SteamVR set as your OpenXR runtime?

This is going to be a "weird" thank you, but it is a thank you nonetheless!  This, indeed, worked.  I selected SteamVR as the default XR runtime, it opened... worked really weirdly with a black box around the area (like if I had less FOV) which was "stuck" in space (if I panned with my head the box will stay in space and only the middle would get rendered), then I reopened VD, it apparently reassigned the VD XR Bundled runtime, and then everything just worked within SteamVR and SteamLink.  No "ghosting", a little higher FPS, I like it better than what I had with VD, but the fixed foveated rendering is a bit much and some screens are hard to see, specially on the F-15E. The warbirds are a dream!

So, thanks a lot, not sure what process was different, it's working (mostly) as I would have liked it to work.  I really appreciate your "into the dark" guess, it worked, even if returning to the previous state works as well now. No idea what's going on... but if not's broke...?

Thanks again.

Rafa.

Edited March 13, 2024 by RafaPolit

[RafaPolit]

53 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

Do you have SSW enabled with VD? This produces some strange artifacts when rolling the plane that you don't see with oculus and ASW. Try disabling SSW and see if that looks any better. Are you running VD through steam VR or using VDXR? If you have not tried VDXR then give it a go. It's better than using steam as it is less layers of software. 

Thanks, I have been trying to toy with different settings, from godlike to even low settings and nothing helped... I thought that SSW was kind of a "must" to get good performance in DCS.  Obvioulsy SteamLink (or SteamVR, not sure who's responsible) is not doing that, and FPSs are not capped at 45fps.  So, yeah, this is a good thing to try and see if that "frees up" this behavior, as I agree with you that, for everything else, VD has just been the superior tool: much better text, much better desktop rendition (albeit only one monitor), passthrough of remote keyboard AND mouse (which no other platform does), so yeah... if I can get VD to work as I would like, that would me my preference as well!

The other only *very minor* grip is that, being an amateur 3D artist, I wanted to create my own environment, to which the VD guys have replied "can't do it on the native app", and I have already made my "home" in SteamVR, so yeah... I like "visiting" my own creation to launch games, but I could do it the "other way around" and launch SteamVR from VD and not SteamLink and have the games run from VD as well.  Yeah, thanks, I'll give it a try and report back.

Again, I appreciate the help and the "patience", I know that guiding newbies can get frustrating, so I really appreciate this.  Bets regards,
Rafa.

[Qcumber]

23 minutes ago, RafaPolit said:

Thanks, I have been trying to toy with different settings, from godlike to even low settings and nothing helped... I thought that SSW was kind of a "must" to get good performance in DCS.  Obvioulsy SteamLink (or SteamVR, not sure who's responsible) is not doing that, and FPSs are not capped at 45fps.  So, yeah, this is a good thing to try and see if that "frees up" this behavior, as I agree with you that, for everything else, VD has just been the superior tool: much better text, much better desktop rendition (albeit only one monitor), passthrough of remote keyboard AND mouse (which no other platform does), so yeah... if I can get VD to work as I would like, that would me my preference as well!

The other only *very minor* grip is that, being an amateur 3D artist, I wanted to create my own environment, to which the VD guys have replied "can't do it on the native app", and I have already made my "home" in SteamVR, so yeah... I like "visiting" my own creation to launch games, but I could do it the "other way around" and launch SteamVR from VD and not SteamLink and have the games run from VD as well.  Yeah, thanks, I'll give it a try and report back.

Again, I appreciate the help and the "patience", I know that guiding newbies can get frustrating, so I really appreciate this.  Bets regards,
Rafa.

Happy to help. I would recommend continuing to play with various platforms and settings to find what works best for you. I should warn you that VR is very addictive and takes some tinkering to optimise. This is a rapidly developing area and so needs continuous "toying". Enjoy! 

[SebastianR]

Steamlink with manual settings. Bitrate 150mb, encode bar full right. No openxr toolkit (eats some fps), steam vr 200%, dlss quality. This is my actual quest 3 settings

[RafaPolit]

Thanks! Those look reasonable, depending on the actual settings in DCS. But:  maybe I'm missing a config screen: I know how to access the SteamVR settings, where do I configure the Steam Link settings?  Within the Quest?  Where?  I don't think I have access to those.  Thanks.

[SebastianR]

When steam link is active, configuration options are activated within steamvr settings. First two lines are in auto. Set to manual. 150 first, max the second one

[RafaPolit]

Ok, thanks, then I have seen those.  I thought it was in a different place.

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, SebastianR said:

No openxr toolkit (eats some fps)

I didn't think this had much effect. How much FPS difference are you seeing? 

[SebastianR]

15 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

I didn't think this had much effect. How much FPS difference are you seeing? 

6-8 

[Qcumber]

15 minutes ago, SebastianR said:

6-8 

That's quite a lot. I need to check mine without OXRTK as I only really use it for contrast, saturation etc. 

[SebastianR]

11 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

That's quite a lot. I need to check mine without OXRTK as I only really use it for contrast, saturation etc. 

Contrast can be changed from headset menu

[RafaPolit]

10 hours ago, Qcumber said:

Do you have SSW enabled with VD? This produces some strange artifacts when rolling the plane that you don't see with oculus and ASW. Try disabling SSW and see if that looks any better. Are you running VD through steam VR or using VDXR? If you have not tried VDXR then give it a go. It's better than using steam as it is less layers of software. 

Yeap! This did the trick.  SSW was actually the setting that was screwing the "temporal" wobbly behaviors.  I appreciate the feedback.  Now I need to know why I am having black flashes (more on one eye than the other) on certain meshes / textures, this didn't happen before.  But it looks like I am getting more consistent results.

Indeed, VD is the better tool with the better results, no matter the environment: productivity, games, maybe media watching is better achieved via other platforms.  

Thanks again.

[RafaPolit]

Well, what do you know.  One day after all these discussions, the people from VD have fixed the SSW "wobbliness" in today's release.  All things mostly working as expected now, within VD and with SSW enabled to give some legroom to the GPU.  Let's see.  Thanks again,

Rafa.

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, RafaPolit said:

Well, what do you know.  One day after all these discussions, the people from VD have fixed the SSW "wobbliness" in today's release.  All things mostly working as expected now, within VD and with SSW enabled to give some legroom to the GPU.  Let's see.  Thanks again,

Rafa.

I've not tried the latest VD update yet. Sounds great.