VR enable HMD mask - is this still useful?

[Glide]

With Quadviews and Dynamic Foveated Rendering fairly common these days, is the VR setting "Enable HMD Mask" still useful for anything?  When would you use it?

[Qcumber]

12 hours ago, Glide said:

With Quadviews and Dynamic Foveated Rendering fairly common these days, is the VR setting "Enable HMD Mask" still useful for anything?  When would you use it?

It does not appear to do anything in VR. 

[draconus]

On 5/11/2024 at 9:41 AM, Qcumber said:

It does not appear to do anything in VR. 

Check the mirror screen. If it's cut out it works.

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

Check the mirror screen. If it's cut out it works.

I didn't notice any performance difference when I changed settings previously but I'll go back and try again. 

[Glide]

1 hour ago, draconus said:

If it's cut out it works.

What do you mean by "cut out"?

[draconus]

20 minutes ago, Glide said:

What do you mean by "cut out"?

Like that:

[Glide]

So, it makes the mirror lighter weight by adding the mask around the edges.

[draconus]

20 minutes ago, Glide said:

So, it makes the mirror lighter weight by adding the mask around the edges.

The idea was to not render these parts as you won't see them in your headset and save a bit of performance that way.

[Glide]

I thought it was some kind of foveated rendering trick where only the center got MSAA applied to it.  Thank for clarifying.

[draconus]

26 minutes ago, Glide said:

I thought it was some kind of foveated rendering trick where only the center got MSAA applied to it.

No, there's the slider above for this.

[Qcumber]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

The idea was to not render these parts as you won't see them in your headset and save a bit of performance that way.

Do you notice any change in performance? 

[Qcumber]

10 hours ago, draconus said:

Check the mirror screen. If it's cut out it works.

I've tried this setting again and it does not make any difference for me. The mirror screen is uncropped even when HMD mask is enabled. I've tried restarting. The MSSA mask does nothing either. Any ideas? 

[draconus]

26 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

I've tried this setting again and it does not make any difference for me. The mirror screen is uncropped even when HMD mask is enabled. I've tried restarting. The MSSA mask does nothing either. Any ideas? 

I don't use MSAA but the HMD mask crop was visible on mirror - obviously you can't notice it wearing headset because it's outside of the visible area. Can't tell the performance difference - it's minimal if any.

[Taterbootz]

On 5/15/2024 at 3:55 PM, Qcumber said:

I've tried this setting again and it does not make any difference for me. The mirror screen is uncropped even when HMD mask is enabled. I've tried restarting. The MSSA mask does nothing either. Any ideas? 

It doesnt make a difference.  I fly with it off as once I turn it off, I can see the black bars disappear in my headset.  But my frametimes remain enough to maintain 90FPS with a G2 and everything on high or ultra.  

[mrsylvestre]

On 5/15/2024 at 9:55 PM, Qcumber said:

I've tried this setting again and it does not make any difference for me. The mirror screen is uncropped even when HMD mask is enabled. I've tried restarting. The MSSA mask does nothing either. Any ideas? 

It did crop the mirror screen on my system in the past but now it doesn't. I suspect this is because I now use QuadViews (fixed) foveated rendering. The part of the implementation of QuadViews that is built in DCS probable disables the cropping as it would otherwise apply an unwanted mask on the center (or focus, if the HMD supports eye tracking) region.

Edited May 24, 2024 by mrsylvestre