fixed 2.9.6 quad views foveated Varjo Aero issue under 90fps

[LePaul]

1 hour ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXDO023CfsM

Disclaimer! I don't make that video!!!

Okay but still curious what @mbucchia would advise!

[mbucchia]

2 hours ago, LePaul said:

Okay but still curious what @mbucchia would advise!

My recommendation is to skip the band-aid and to keep making noise for ED to fix the real issue. There's never going to take responsibility and commit to deliver a robust product if they keep getting bailed out by 3rd party developers. 

[Bullant]

15 hours ago, pastranario3 said:

 

Champion, this has been doing my head in since the last patch, completely destroyed my Pimax Crystal setup.

[ButterSausage]

@BIGNEWY

Has this been resolved yet???? 

You make us spend a fortune on models and maps, motion rigs etc, and all of a sudden you make the whole soup totally unplayable for so many players. 

I am getting really really fed up with it. This weekend two friends actually flew in to try the rig with DCS. 

Worst timing ever. I have a feeling they were not so very impressed by this. The only thing that I am very impressed of is @mbucchia who actually helps you keeping this simulator alive... 

Sorry, but you need to do things different futurewise to keep simmers interested.... 

 

Edited July 13, 2024 by iboalex

[Alf973]

9 hours ago, mbucchia said:

My recommendation is to skip the band-aid and to keep making noise for ED to fix the real issue. There's never going to take responsibility and commit to deliver a robust product if they keep getting bailed out by 3rd party developers. 

Actually it is pretty unstable on complex maps. I had few DCS crashes.

[Jarhead0331]

10 hours ago, mbucchia said:

My recommendation is to skip the band-aid and to keep making noise for ED to fix the real issue. There's never going to take responsibility and commit to deliver a robust product if they keep getting bailed out by 3rd party developers. 

Why can't we do both? Skipping the "band-aid" is sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It prevents us from being able to enjoy the sim as it is intended and to no good end really.

Having people with your expertise in our community is critical. You and those like you are invaluable assets. But I feel like you've let the issue with ED get too personal, which I understand, and now the entire community is left suffering.

I don't think having third-parties with the right know-how finding interim solutions to the problem and loudly demanding that ED take action to repair the underlying issue are mutually exclusive. I hope you'll come around to seeing it that way because we really need you, bro.

Edited July 13, 2024 by Jarhead0331

[Sizzle]

8 minutes ago, Jarhead0331 said:

Why can't we do both? Skipping the "band-aid" is sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It prevents us from being able to enjoy the sim as it is intended and to no good end really.

Having people with your expertise in our community is critical. You and those like you are invaluable assets. But I feel like you've let the issue with ED get too personal, which I understand, and now the entire community is left suffering.

I don't think having third-parties with the right know-how finding interim solutions to the problem and loudly demanding that ED take action to repair the underlying issue are mutually exclusive. I hope you'll come around to seeing it that way because we really need you, bro.

 

A rhetorical question: Why do we think this problem in ED's code still exists after he reported the problem to ED over a year ago? If ED didn't happen to change the app name, would the bug still be simmering below the surface and remain unfixed waiting to rise up later?

[nilpointer]

Unless I'm missing something, which I'm confident I'm not an even bigger ticking time bomb is that foveated rendering and eye tracking are not natively implemented by DCS. Not only have the many users of supporting headsets become reliant on @mbucchia to provide the high level of goodwill he already has, but should there ever be some additional change that renders QVF unusable we're back at square one.

I love DCS but have also grown weary of the dice roll of it working between patches on the thousands upon thousands of dollars of hardware.

[mmike87]

I took a leap of faith (big mistake) and installed the new version this morning. Removed all mods, did a clean, etc. Deleted shader folders. Started up Varjo Base, started the game, crash as soon as it tried to enter VR.

I am using Varjo Foveated and not Quad Views. I uninstalled VF and the game starts, but I only see the mirror window which tracks with the headset, but there is nothing in the headset of the Varjo Base "headset view". Re-installed VF and back to crashing.

The game logs don't show anything obvious, but the VF logs have the "xrEndFrame failed with XR_ERROR_HANDLE_INVALID" entry three times in a row as the last entry.

I swear this game is like being in an abusive relationship.

[actually_fred]

3 hours ago, nilpointer said:

Unless I'm missing something, which I'm confident I'm not an even bigger ticking time bomb is that foveated rendering and eye tracking are not natively implemented by DCS. Not only have the many users of supporting headsets become reliant on @mbucchia to provide the high level of goodwill he already has, but should there ever be some additional change that renders QVF unusable we're back at square one.

I love DCS but have also grown weary of the dice roll of it working between patches on the thousands upon thousands of dollars of hardware.

DCS natively implements foveated rendering using the OpenXR quad views extension; however, something else must provide support for that extension/technology. The quad views API layer is one option, as is Varjo's own runtime, along with mbucchia's varjo-foveated runtime. There are a few caveats with DCS's use of the quad views extension:

• the original bug which mbucchia detailed above and over a year ago: the FOV submission is incorrect. This is worked-around (not fixed, just a band-aid) either by varjo-foveated or the quad-views-foveated API layer. It is a bug in DCS and should be fixed by ED.
• it depends on something else (the OpenXR runtime, or another API layer) supporting quad views (two per eye) and turning it into the usual 'two views' - one per eye. This is done by the varjo OpenXR runtime, or by the quad-views-foveated API layer. Other runtimes may end up supporting it without the layer in the future, especially it's no-longer considered a vendor extension in OpenXR 1.1 (renamed to 'STEREO_WITH_FOVEATED_INSET') - though it remains an optional part that vendors do not have to support. This is not a bug in DCS, but implementing quad views on runtimes that don't have their own support would be a nice feature for ED to implement, and would make the massive performance gains more accessible for non-expert users
• Varjo-specific: it only uses Quad Views for fixed foveated rendering; from a code perspective, it is trivial to turn this into dynamic foveated rendering via XR_VARJO_foveated_rendering - mbucchia's varjo-foveated and quad-views-foveated projects do this, and DCS (until this patch) work fine with it. This is - for now - specific to Varjo. If other vendors implement STEREO_WITH_FOVEATED_INSET, the standard does not require that it is or is not eye-tracked, but if the hardware supports it, it seems more likely than not that vendors would implement it as eye-tracked. Varjo chose to require a separate opt-in for eye-tracked quad views instead of FFR quad-views, however this has always been clearly documented along with quad views itself. Not technically a 'bug' in DCS: it is either an intentional choice, or an oversight - but IMO really should be changed by ED - it is extremely straightforward to do, and DFR is a huge improvement over FFR. The Varjo runtime is performing in the way that DCS asks it to, as documented.

That said - as mbucchia pointed out - even a trivial code fix can still be a complicated change to make when considering non-code factors, such as testing, release management, etc.

Edited July 13, 2024 by actually_fred

[actually_fred]

2 hours ago, actually_fred said:

it depends on something else (the OpenXR runtime, or another API layer) supporting quad views (two per eye) and turning it into the usual 'two views' - one per eye. This is done by the varjo OpenXR runtime, or by the quad-views-foveated API layer. Other runtimes may end up supporting it without the layer in the future, especially it's no-longer considered a vendor extension in OpenXR 1.1 (renamed to 'STEREO_WITH_FOVEATED_INSET') - though it remains an optional part that vendors do not have to support. This is not a bug in DCS, but implementing quad views on runtimes that don't have their own support would be a nice feature for ED to implement, and would make the massive performance gains more accessible for non-expert users

To clarify this, while it would be great for ED to do this, it would be even better for the various other OpenXR runtimes (from Meta, Valve, Virtual Desktop etc) to implement the quad views/stereo-with-foveated-inset extensions.

Despite that, IMO it would still be a good thing for ED to do until (if?) support becomes widespread as:
- for users, it doesn't depend on their runtime vendor doing it, with no timeline for vendors
- for ED, it means that the performance benefits are available to all of their users, rather than offering different combinations of features/performance depending on the headset vendor, or potentially offering different instructions for each runtime vendor. This potentially reduces support and testing costs and time.

Edited July 13, 2024 by actually_fred
Clarify who 'other OpenXR runtimes' means

[mbucchia]

2 hours ago, mmike87 said:

The game logs don't show anything obvious, but the VF logs have the "xrEndFrame failed with XR_ERROR_HANDLE_INVALID" entry three times in a row as the last entry.

You are getting this error because you must have OpenXR Toolkit installed. When you followed the instructions for Varjo-Foveated, you disabled OpenXR Toolkit for "DCS World".

Because they renamed the game "name" to "DCS" in this release, you now have to go back to OpenXR Toolkit Companion app and disable it for "DCS". This should resolve your problem and let you use Varjo-Foveated without issue.

4 hours ago, Jarhead0331 said:

Why can't we do both? Skipping the "band-aid" is sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face

The band aid that was provided by another community member, as I explained, will break every other OpenXR game that uses anti-cheat (due to digital signing issues). So that's not really a good band-aid.

Most people will forget that they have the bandaid and will start getting unexplained errors in those games. That's not a very good solution. Stop bleeding in one place and start bleeding on others, I don't even call that a band-aid

I don't have an option to do code signing at this time, but @actually_fred is sharing his expertise on the topic with me so perhaps I will be able to do that again in the future.

[mbucchia]

3 hours ago, Sizzle said:

A rhetorical question: Why do we think this problem in ED's code still exists after he reported the problem to ED over a year ago? If ED didn't happen to change the app name, would the bug still be simmering below the surface and remain unfixed waiting to rise up later?

You can see my earlier post. I installed today's version of DCS and provided a very specific capture of the problem, proving without any possible doubt that the issue is still there after 18 months.

 

[LePaul]

14 hours ago, mbucchia said:

My recommendation is to skip the band-aid and to keep making noise for ED to fix the real issue. There's never going to take responsibility and commit to deliver a robust product if they keep getting bailed out by 3rd party developers. 

You got an AMEN from me!

Looks like I'll shelve DCS for a few days!

[mbucchia]

3 hours ago, nilpointer said:

an even bigger ticking time bomb is that foveated rendering and eye tracking are not natively implemented by DCS.

Fred provided a very good reply to you, you can also go read my detailed explanation here:

For short: ED is mostly doing the right thing already (minus the bugs :D) and there is a bigger chunk of the pie that isn't "on them" to provide, but on the headset vendors. Today only Varjo provides it, and perhaps Somnium I am told. Other vendors rely on my API layer. That's a platform vendor deficiency, not and ED deficiency. 

[mbucchia]

4 hours ago, Jarhead0331 said:

But I feel like you've let the issue with ED get too personal, which I understand, and now the entire community is left suffering

Addressing this separately btw -

I left the VR industry about 1.5 months ago. What I mean by "left the industry" is I quit my job as a professional XR developer.

Why did I? I don't really believe in this industry at this time. Point proven as follows:

- game developers don't care. I think today's situation is an evidence. PCVR gets very little attention from them. For most developers today it appears that "VR support" means "the game runs (even poorly) on a Quest 2". This is because of the volume on the market.

- platforms vendors don't care. You can see that Varjo, Microsoft, left. As for Meta they are clearly only interested in wireless (standalone) and glasses, and they haven't really done anything positive for PCVR in forever. Worse: they are currently creating a silo'ed ecosystem with the help of game developers, through something called "OVRPlugin" which basically nullifies all of the benefits and work that the industry has done with OpenXR in the last few years. Most games released so far in 2024 use OVRPlugin instead of OpenXR: this means they cannot run with OpenXR on non-Meta headsets.

- game developers and platform vendors really don't care. I've brought attention about the problems above on many occasions, reported issues, I've created "band-aids" for these issues, and nobody else in the industry has cared. The amount of details you saw on my report of the bug to ED, that's about the large majority of what I've been doing for over 8 months now. Spending hours of my personal time at 1:00 in the morning documenting other people's issues and recommending fixes. And none for them get acted on by game developers and platform vendors.

For over 8 months now I had no opportunity to innovate and do the things I actually enjoyed doing (like back in the early OpenXR Toolkit and QVFR days). Instead it's been trying to salvage what I now believe is unsalvageable (again, I am speaking broadly, not specifically about ED/DCS).

This week is the most time I've spent on XR stuff since I left my job, and it was unsurprisingly, negative and uninteresting to me.

I'm currently doing some wrap-up/life support on VDXR, but my plan is a full exit, not only professionally, but also from all of this open source/community work, in the next few months, so that I can focus on my new job (which is the real gaming industry and not the XR farce), my sleep/health, my new house, my hobbies and my future. That's a lot of "my" stuff I haven't done in 3 years now.

[hannibal]

23 minutes ago, mbucchia said:

Addressing this separately btw -

I left the VR industry about 1.5 months ago. What I mean by "left the industry" is I quit my job as a professional XR developer.

Why did I? I don't really believe in this industry at this time. Point proven as follows:

- game developers don't care. I think today's situation is an evidence. PCVR gets very little attention from them. For most developers today it appears that "VR support" means "the game runs (even poorly) on a Quest 2". This is because of the volume on the market.

- platforms vendors don't care. You can see that Varjo, Microsoft, left. As for Meta they are clearly only interested in wireless (standalone) and glasses, and they haven't really done anything positive for PCVR in forever. Worse: they are currently creating a silo'ed ecosystem with the help of game developers, through something called "OVRPlugin" which basically nullifies all of the benefits and work that the industry has done with OpenXR in the last few years. Most games released so far in 2024 use OVRPlugin instead of OpenXR: this means they cannot run with OpenXR on non-Meta headsets.

- game developers and platform vendors really don't care. I've brought attention about the problems above on many occasions, reported issues, I've created "band-aids" for these issues, and nobody else in the industry has cared. The amount of details you saw on my report of the bug to ED, that's about the large majority of what I've been doing for over 8 months now. Spending hours of my personal time at 1:00 in the morning documenting other people's issues and recommending fixes. And none for them get acted on by game developers and platform vendors.

For over 8 months now I had no opportunity to innovate and do the things I actually enjoyed doing (like back in the early OpenXR Toolkit and QVFR days). Instead it's been trying to salvage what I now believe is unsalvageable (again, I am speaking broadly, not specifically about ED/DCS).

This week is the most time I've spent on XR stuff since I left my job, and it was unsurprisingly, negative and uninteresting to me.

I'm currently doing some wrap-up/life support on VDXR, but my plan is a full exit, not only professionally, but also from all of this open source/community work, in the next few months, so that I can focus on my new job (which is the real gaming industry and not the XR farce), my sleep/health, my new house, my hobbies and my future. That's a lot of "my" stuff I haven't done in 3 years now.

new pet perhaps too! 

thank you for what you have done for the VR community. wish u happy life! hope can stop in once in a while!

[mmike87]

1 hour ago, mbucchia said:

You are getting this error because you must have OpenXR Toolkit installed. When you followed the instructions for Varjo-Foveated, you disabled OpenXR Toolkit for "DCS World".

Because they renamed the game "name" to "DCS" in this release, you now have to go back to OpenXR Toolkit Companion app and disable it for "DCS". This should resolve your problem and let you use Varjo-Foveated without issue.

The band aid that was provided by another community member, as I explained, will break every other OpenXR game that uses anti-cheat (due to digital signing issues). So that's not really a good band-aid.

Most people will forget that they have the bandaid and will start getting unexplained errors in those games. That's not a very good solution. Stop bleeding in one place and start bleeding on others, I don't even call that a band-aid

I don't have an option to do code signing at this time, but @actually_fred is sharing his expertise on the topic with me so perhaps I will be able to do that again in the future.

Ah, OK - that makes sense. I'll try that. Thanks!

What a mess ED has created and allowed to continue ...

[mbucchia]

4 minutes ago, hannibal said:

new pet perhaps too! 

My wife and I rescued a 2nd abandoned bunny from the street last year. I think we have full house now

[Ready]

38 minutes ago, mbucchia said:

Addressing this separately btw -

I left the VR industry about 1.5 months ago. What I mean by "left the industry" is I quit my job as a professional XR developer.

Why did I? I don't really believe in this industry at this time. Point proven as follows:

- game developers don't care. I think today's situation is an evidence. PCVR gets very little attention from them. For most developers today it appears that "VR support" means "the game runs (even poorly) on a Quest 2". This is because of the volume on the market.

- platforms vendors don't care. You can see that Varjo, Microsoft, left. As for Meta they are clearly only interested in wireless (standalone) and glasses, and they haven't really done anything positive for PCVR in forever. Worse: they are currently creating a silo'ed ecosystem with the help of game developers, through something called "OVRPlugin" which basically nullifies all of the benefits and work that the industry has done with OpenXR in the last few years. Most games released so far in 2024 use OVRPlugin instead of OpenXR: this means they cannot run with OpenXR on non-Meta headsets.

- game developers and platform vendors really don't care. I've brought attention about the problems above on many occasions, reported issues, I've created "band-aids" for these issues, and nobody else in the industry has cared. The amount of details you saw on my report of the bug to ED, that's about the large majority of what I've been doing for over 8 months now. Spending hours of my personal time at 1:00 in the morning documenting other people's issues and recommending fixes. And none for them get acted on by game developers and platform vendors.

For over 8 months now I had no opportunity to innovate and do the things I actually enjoyed doing (like back in the early OpenXR Toolkit and QVFR days). Instead it's been trying to salvage what I now believe is unsalvageable (again, I am speaking broadly, not specifically about ED/DCS).

This week is the most time I've spent on XR stuff since I left my job, and it was unsurprisingly, negative and uninteresting to me.

I'm currently doing some wrap-up/life support on VDXR, but my plan is a full exit, not only professionally, but also from all of this open source/community work, in the next few months, so that I can focus on my new job (which is the real gaming industry and not the XR farce), my sleep/health, my new house, my hobbies and my future. That's a lot of "my" stuff I haven't done in 3 years now.

Really a shame that developers and vendors don't care as much as we do. What is that real gaming industry you are talking about? I hope you will have a much better time there than in XR. You will be sorely missed bud.

[T24_Martin]

I really hope, we get proper VR support in this and other sims. I love flying in VR and could never go back. We all spent a fortune for our passion to feel as much immersed as possible. This means settings maxed out, clear visuals and no stutter at max FPS. Then you forget, that you are not in a real cockpit. 

The better the software and options to overcome GPU/CPU bottlenecks, the more people will be able to join, who can not afford 4090s and 1000$ CPUs.

For me it is the only way to enjoy virtual flights. I tried, but I can't get back to flat screen. So at least for me VR should be the main priority in developing, or at least in every aspect on the same level like flat screen.

So please ED give high end VR the proper attention and standing in your development, because this is the difference to SIM flight 15 years ago. People here give their knowledge and support and you clearly see our passion.

[gonvise]

@mbucchia, if you have been able to make DCS able to benefit from a technology like Quad Views, working in your free time... ED should have been able to do it too. Perfect, manufacturers are moving towards standalone glasses, big game developers are also moving on from VR... And who cares? The people around here have spent thousands of euros on equipment, VR googles and of course, on DCS modules. I think most of us want to fly DCS as realistically as possible; There are those who can spend more, there are those who can spend less, but DCS should have already realized that whoever tries VR does not go back. 

I believe that any of us would be able to pay for a DCS "module" that would allow those of us who have purchased glasses with eye tracking to be able to use Quad views, without having to resort to people like you who use their free time and give it to others. Myself, when I am paying for a module like the CH-47F, which I know that when it comes out I am going to take a flight and little else, I am paying for this, so that they do everything possible to fly the modules that really interest me with as much realism as possible and using my hardware in the best way.

Edited July 13, 2024 by gonvise

[zildac]

It's sad and disheartening...this should all be an "ED" problem to fix. But unfortuantely it's individuals like @mbucchia that have been bullding on and pushing forward the VR eperience in this sim to cover the shortfalls that the vendor has blatantly ignored or put to the back of the backlog to address , whilst focusing on "stuff" that generates revenue, whilst paying lip service to the real issues. A bug report with the level of detail provided, that is so fundamental to the VR experience should not still be outstanding after nearly two years, that's madnes! Or it's just not considered a priortity, which quite frankly is even more worrying. All DCS users , but especially VR DCS users have a huge financial and emotional investment in the platform, we really need to be treated as such and deserve to have these fundamental issues addressed. Most frustratingly , the issues hve been explained and documented in great detail and include all of the remediation steps. At this point it's just crackers that it's not been latched on to and sorted. It's basically free consultancy from an industry expert, that's  just then igonored! Horse to water and all that!

Edited July 13, 2024 by zildac

[Hawkeye_UK]

4 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Addressing this separately btw -

I left the VR industry about 1.5 months ago. What I mean by "left the industry" is I quit my job as a professional XR developer.

Why did I? I don't really believe in this industry at this time. Point proven as follows:

- game developers don't care. I think today's situation is an evidence. PCVR gets very little attention from them. For most developers today it appears that "VR support" means "the game runs (even poorly) on a Quest 2". This is because of the volume on the market.

- platforms vendors don't care. You can see that Varjo, Microsoft, left. As for Meta they are clearly only interested in wireless (standalone) and glasses, and they haven't really done anything positive for PCVR in forever. Worse: they are currently creating a silo'ed ecosystem with the help of game developers, through something called "OVRPlugin" which basically nullifies all of the benefits and work that the industry has done with OpenXR in the last few years. Most games released so far in 2024 use OVRPlugin instead of OpenXR: this means they cannot run with OpenXR on non-Meta headsets.

- game developers and platform vendors really don't care. I've brought attention about the problems above on many occasions, reported issues, I've created "band-aids" for these issues, and nobody else in the industry has cared. The amount of details you saw on my report of the bug to ED, that's about the large majority of what I've been doing for over 8 months now. Spending hours of my personal time at 1:00 in the morning documenting other people's issues and recommending fixes. And none for them get acted on by game developers and platform vendors.

For over 8 months now I had no opportunity to innovate and do the things I actually enjoyed doing (like back in the early OpenXR Toolkit and QVFR days). Instead it's been trying to salvage what I now believe is unsalvageable (again, I am speaking broadly, not specifically about ED/DCS).

This week is the most time I've spent on XR stuff since I left my job, and it was unsurprisingly, negative and uninteresting to me.

I'm currently doing some wrap-up/life support on VDXR, but my plan is a full exit, not only professionally, but also from all of this open source/community work, in the next few months, so that I can focus on my new job (which is the real gaming industry and not the XR farce), my sleep/health, my new house, my hobbies and my future. That's a lot of "my" stuff I haven't done in 3 years now.

@NineLine@BIGNEWY Are ED going to explain why this highly valued contributor to the community who provides critial support for latest gen headsets was completely ignored to an extent he's now no longer willing to help.  We also need to hear the short and long term plan for VR and if ED are going to support properly. 

Please also can you confirm are you in a position to actually get the resource base this requires and have the ability to get the dev's to implement this - or do we need to start addressing our concerns directly to Kate/Matt?  This is fine i just don't want to waste my time, if your not the people that can assist.

Without VR and getting the communication process improved to avoid shortcomings that this latest game patch has exposed, you will lose alot of high spending customers, this is not a debate point, just fact.

[nilpointer]

Appreciate all the informative replies here from @mbucchia and @actually_fred

For me this is close to a final nail in the coffin of DCS, it’s sad to hear how unimportant this is.

Edited July 13, 2024 by nilpointer