VRS Foveated Rendering (OpenXR Toolkit Eye Tracking) working after last DCS update?

[gonvise]

I open this post so as not to distort the original post about the problem with quad views introduced in the latest DCS update.

After the latest ED update, it seems that the VRS Foveated Rendering (Eye Tracking) of @mbucchia toolkit has started working.

Activating foveated rendering eye tracking in the toolkit works apparently like expected; Unistalling mbucchia QVFR if is installed, and leaving only mbucchia toolkit and enabling this option, works "in my system and perception" with similar increase in performance and fluidity as with mbucchia QVFR. Furthermore, by changing the values of the inner ring and outer ring in real time through the menu, as well as the division of the resolution in each ring (1/4, 1/8, 1/16), the changes are clearly perceptible in the peripheral vision and, of course, they are dynamic following the direction where the eyes are looking. Tested with Quest Pro v67. 

These are the comments from mbuchia:

21 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Time will tell you if it breaks in some scenarios, I'd expect it will. I gave instructions like 2.5years ago to ED on how to make OpenXR Toolkit FR work, and guess what they did? The same thing they always did with anything I wrote to them: they ignored it. Even if it might work in today's update, good luck with next month update...

Regardless, VRS foveated rendering (OpenXR Toolkit) will give you much much less of a gain than quad views, unless you have very little CPU headroom. You're not going to see the +50 +100% boosts of quad views. Perhaps +20% at best.

Taking into account that, currently, mbucchia QVFR does not work after the last patch and it is something that ED must fix, I think VRS foveated rendering (OpenXR Toolkit) is an option to try since, as I say, in my case, it works apparently the same, also, without the rectangular shading that is observed between the limits of the resolution change. But of course, this may stop working in the next patch, who knows!

Comments?

Edited July 13, 2024 by gonvise

[Whistler_RIO]

This was really helpful info. thanks for sharing

[gonvise]

1 hour ago, Whistler_RIO said:

This was really helpful info. thanks for sharing

It's not my discovery, other users reported this in the original post, thanks must be given to mbucchia again and again. Don't get me wrong, ED's work is sublime in offering us a simulator with these characteristics, but when it comes to VR they take a long time to make changes that help performance, while thanks to mbuchia we have quad views FR and a performance in VR that I never would have expected.

[Toro]

Ive tried it today before updating the temporary fix so I can use QVFR.

 

I found the IQ to be lower. The transition areas between circles was more noticeable than on QVFR, that only shows a rectangle on very specific situations. Performancewise  i would get less fps (5-10fps less in free flight caucasus on the F16c) than with QVFR but the fps achieved dropped less. This is quite likely due to my setup where I sometimes am cpu limited with a 5700x when using QVFR. 

I am overall happy but if i had to chose right now, I would stick with QVFR.

Edited July 13, 2024 by Toro

[Pyrocumulous]

Thanks for this @gonvise. Seems to be working alright for me with OpenXR Toolkit and PimaxXR with my Pimax Crystal as long as I have it set to Preset, but the center of my gaze is rendering very low resolution at 1x resolution. Eye tracking is definitely working. Ideas?

[oz555]

Turbo mode in the Toolkit also seems to be causing frame drops for me at least. Running a G2@60hz with no issues for at least 12 months with it on. Now it causes stutters.  

[gonvise]

12 hours ago, Toro said:

Ive tried it today before updating the temporary fix so I can use QVFR.

 

I found the IQ to be lower. The transition areas between circles was more noticeable than on QVFR, that only shows a rectangle on very specific situations. Performancewise  i would get less fps (5-10fps less in free flight caucasus on the F16c) than with QVFR but the fps achieved dropped less. This is quite likely due to my setup where I sometimes am cpu limited with a 5700x when using QVFR. 

I am overall happy but if i had to chose right now, I would stick with QVFR.

 

I'm pretty happy with this config... can you try it please?

8 hours ago, Pyrocumulous said:

Thanks for this @gonvise. Seems to be working alright for me with OpenXR Toolkit and PimaxXR with my Pimax Crystal as long as I have it set to Preset, but the center of my gaze is rendering very low resolution at 1x resolution. Eye tracking is definitely working. Ideas?

Strangely, the inner circle should be at the same resolution as if the FR were not activated, that is, exactly the resolution at which you have the googles configured. Can you test my config?

[gonvise]

6 hours ago, oz555 said:

Turbo mode in the Toolkit also seems to be causing frame drops for me at least. Running a G2@60hz with no issues for at least 12 months with it on. Now it causes stutters.  

Working as usual here, but be careful, the new simhaptic software causes tremendous stutters with the turbo mode enabled, so I have come to the conclusion that any external plugin that adds a line in the export.lua "can" interfere with the turbo mode in "certain situations".

[Toro]

On 7/14/2024 at 12:02 PM, gonvise said:

I'm pretty happy with this config... can you try it please?

Strangely, the inner circle should be at the same resolution as if the FR were not activated, that is, exactly the resolution at which you have the googles configured. Can you test my config?

Those settings yielded 72fps quite constant with little drops compared to caucasus, but to me the IQ was very poor. Increased middle  resolution to 1/2 and was much better but i'd say similar performance to quadviews. In all fairness,  quadviews runs typically at 170% on foveated area (15% otherwise) so its not right to compare ( i think?). I upped PD in game quickly to 1.3 and that gave similar, if not beter IQ than I'd get with quadviews and ~65fps to 50fps. I probably can tune that down. 

My case might be different to other people as quadviews is quite taxing on my not-so-great CPU compared to my GPU.

[gonvise]

@mbucchia, impose upon your time once again, could you briefly try to explain to me why with the eye tracking of the toolkit my performance is clearly superior compared to QVFR, with much fewer stutters and stability, especially noticeable in very populated areas such as airfields and cities? I still don't understand why this has been able to work after the last DCS update, but it is so far my best experience in terms of fluidity...

Tested on a computer with 10900K, 4090, Quest Pro, 45 AWS.

Toolkit with eye track config:

QVFR config:

Thanks again and again!

[Maddaawg]

2 hours ago, gonvise said:

@mbucchia, impose upon your time once again, could you briefly try to explain to me why with the eye tracking of the toolkit my performance is clearly superior compared to QVFR, with much fewer stutters and stability, especially noticeable in very populated areas such as airfields and cities? I still don't understand why this has been able to work after the last DCS update, but it is so far my best experience in terms of fluidity...

Tested on a computer with 10900K, 4090, Quest Pro, 45 AWS.

Toolkit with eye track config:

QVFR config:

Thanks again and again!

I have the same CPU and here is what I noticed. Without any foviated rendering prior to the update in the caucasus I was CPU bound(red). After the update I became GPU bound(green). When I put QVFR on to use for FFR my system tanked. CPU bound and dropping frames so much it was not usable.

QVFR and OXRTK's FR are CPU intensive. I was going to upgrade my GPU from 3080ti to 4000 series but now I see my CPU needs to be upgraded first. I can't run FR without using the lowest graphics possible.

[mbucchia]

3 hours ago, gonvise said:

impose upon your time once again, could you briefly try to explain to me why with the eye tracking of the toolkit my performance is clearly superior compared to QVFR,

Because you are likely CPU-limited when using QVFR (which requires the game to submit the geometry twice).

[gonvise]

1 hour ago, mbucchia said:

Because you are likely CPU-limited when using QVFR (which requires the game to submit the geometry twice).

And why the FR of toolkit (eye tracking) works so well for me?

 

1 hour ago, Maddaawg said:

I have the same CPU and here is what I noticed. Without any foviated rendering prior to the update in the caucasus I was CPU bound(red). After the update I became GPU bound(green). When I put QVFR on to use for FFR my system tanked. CPU bound and dropping frames so much it was not usable.

QVFR and OXRTK's FR are CPU intensive. I was going to upgrade my GPU from 3080ti to 4000 series but now I see my CPU needs to be upgraded first. I can't run FR without using the lowest graphics possible.

Any idea what the best CPU for DCS is these days? 

[Maddaawg]

26 minutes ago, gonvise said:

And why the FR of toolkit (eye tracking) works so well for me?

 

Any idea what the best CPU for DCS is these days? 

Unfortunately you and I are at a dead-end with intel. I'm looking at AMD since upgrade support is longer. I'm waiting for the new AMD.

[lolof1]

Hi 

@gonviser

You have a Quest pro !

better soft what Pimax Play with Quadview ?

aplushhss

Edited July 17, 2024 by lolof1

[gonvise]

27 minutes ago, lolof1 said:

Hi 

@gonviser

You have a Quest pro !

better soft what Pimax Play with Quadview ?

aplushhss

 

Sorry, I don`t understand your question

[Hartsblade]

2 hours ago, gonvise said:

And why the FR of toolkit (eye tracking) works so well for me?

 

Any idea what the best CPU for DCS is these days? 

With VR currently it's AMD for the CPU and nvidia for the GPU.

The current best CPU for games/VR is the 7800x3d.  As  side note, the 9800x3d is rumored to drop by the end of the year.

[mbucchia]

3 hours ago, gonvise said:

And why the FR of toolkit (eye tracking) works so well for me?

OpenXR Toolkit VRS foveated rendering is 100% different technique from Quad Views foveated rendering. 

VRS is low-medium GPU gains at no CPU cost.

Quad Views is high GPU gains at medium-high CPU cost.

In your case the trade-off doesn't play well with QVFR and the CPU cost outweighs your GPU gains. There is no such problem with VRS since you have no CPU cost, so you only reap the GPU gains.

 

https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki/What-is-Quad-Views-rendering%3F