Blurry shadows in VR

[Phantom711]

An issue that bothers me for while now is, that some shadows in VR ar blurry or sometimes flickering. At least for the blurry ones I have screenshot now.

But the funny thing is, that this is not even consistent. If I move my head, so that said shadows are in my peripheral view, they become absolutely crisp. Just as one would want them.

Pic 1: blurry shadows on the carrier island.

Pic 2: shadows now very crisp in peripheral view

Pic 3: my DCS settings (which I think could not be better with regards to shadow quality, right?)

 

Specs: i7 13700 / 4090 / Quest Pro via cabled link at 500mbps

Edited July 10, 2024 by Phantom711

[Phantom711]

Two more pictures.

Pic 4: shows the boundery from poorly to crisp shadows (righ/left) going through that golden wing on the carrier island (vertical)

Pic 5: this also works on the top and bottom peripheral vision. Boundary again going through the golden wing there (horizontal)

When I move my head around, I can see, that there seems to be a round part in the center of the screen, which covers the most part of the whole image, where the shadows are rendered poorly.

I tried this now with Quad Views on initally but also turned it off. I tried with Oculus Link, SteamVR and Virtual Desktop (all with the OXR runtime). It happend in all of them.

Everything else looks equally good through the whole screen...it´s only the shadows that seem to have a reversed logic.

 

If someone wants to replicate the conditions: Marianns, CV heading ~030, Time 09:30ish, Date: 10/5/2024 (if that is the 10th of May or the 5th of October, I don´t know).

Edited July 10, 2024 by Phantom711

[Phantom711]

!!!

I just tested in 2D and the problem appears there as well...so in that regard, my thread is not at the right place, but maybe someone has an idea anyways, what is wrong here. I am more than happy, if it is just a stupid setting on my part somewhere.

[TFS]

I often get this issue at low hover popping in and out on trees and aircraft at a certain height. I saw this thread after you posted this, I remember reading someone with suggestions for shadows on higher end pcs. I've been searching since your post. I'm curious about this too. 

[LucShep]

Without going into much detail (not even trying to know what I don't!), real-time shadow mapping has always been very expensive on resources, affecting performance.
DCS uses cascaded shadow mapping, which means that the more distant, the less resolution (in steps) it'll be on shadows.  This is what you're seeing.
This is unavoidable, unfortunately, and it's been the same for nearly every other sim/game (FWIW). It just becomes more obvious with flight sims like DCS because it renders objects at very far distances (farther than other games) and a compromise must be met. Otherwise, the game would run to a crawl.

Now, if you imagine "circles within circles", where the center is your plane, you may now understand that at some point, and if you look for it, you can see where the "steps" are, where the higher resolution shadow ends and the lower one starts, and then the same for that one to the following one and etc (with some flickering at times). 
One scenario where you can easily see this effect is when flying low over forests (if you use tree shadows, that is), it's like you're inside a ring.   
This is the "cascades" effect that you see there too.

If you are not playing on online servers that disallow mods (or if it's for single player only), then I'd suggest trying a mod that was initially started by @Kegetys years ago in these forums, that I've adapted for DCS 2.8 (and also 2.9) and works wonders also in VR.
It provides better performance (less impact) with reduced cascades, for which you can also increase/decrease shadow resolution as you see fit (follow the "Read Me"):

 

Edited July 11, 2024 by LucShep

[Phantom711]

@LucShep @TFS

Thanks both of you for your answers.

I can very well imagine, that things like shadows or textures and objects in general are processed/rendered at a lower quality when further away, but in my given example, I am not changing my distance to that carrier isle. I just turn my head left/right and up/down and can see the quality of the shadows on that structure change from "really nice" to crappy.

And all that in a way that makes no sense: nice shadows in my peripheral vision, but crappy in the center and actually the most part of the screen. As if someone reversed the logic there of how on might want to do if one would want to save some processing power and still have nice graphics for the most part. (Kinda like Foveated Rendering...but reversed)

What´s the benefit of high quality shadows if I literally have to "side-eye" them?

I will check out the mods. Thanks.

[Phantom711]

To whom it may concern:

I ended up trying this mod which a guy from my virtual squadron recommended to me.

Problem is gone. 
 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3332639/