VR stutter in latest 2.9 patch

[Mav]

Last patch (Broken or not) I was able to figure out the stuttering problem. Deleted metashaders and FXO folders, set oculus tray tool settings and ran openXR. Also did a repair build just in case. SOMEHOW, one or all of those solved my VR microstutter issues. I update today, glad to see some fixes and the VR hand controllers back, and the stutter is back. I don't have the best build so forgive me in advance, but I was able to get a solid over 60FPS with zero stutters on VR last update, now I'm not. Really losing hope here. Any help would be great. Using OTT, quad views, process lasso. Build is a 1080TI and i9 9900K with a Quest 2 (yeah not great but works lol). Any ideas? Thanks! Also have 32gb ram.

Edited July 23, 2024 by Mav

[Panzerlang]

FWIW, 13900k and 4090 with Crystal and quadviews, I had bad jerking and stuttering looking left-right out the cockpit at trees and buildings at low level. The last big update fixed that, though I thought it was sandboxman's fixed API dll that did it. Original dll back in place and still smooth as silk.

I have no idea how you can run DCS VR with a 1080ti though. 

[Mav]

I just re installed the original dll. Doing another repair as well. I'll update! You'd be surprised, the 1080Ti has been awesome for me. Wish I had the time and budget for another card but it does the job. I made it work last update, just wish it was so finicky making VR smooth in general.

[Glide]

If you are happy with everything else, easy test is to lower Pixel Density in game settings.  Try .7 through .9 and see how it goes.

[Mav]

Had everything the same from last settings used with last update. 1.4 pixel density only set through OTT and 1 for in game. Still stuttering even after rebuild/repair. Very frustrating. Nothing changed at all settings wise except for updated sim version. 

Edited July 23, 2024 by Mav

[Panzerlang]

17 minutes ago, Glide said:

If you are happy with everything else, easy test is to lower Pixel Density in game settings.  Try .7 through .9 and see how it goes.

Minefield alert. Lol. I've yet to see a single tutorial on this VR resolution stuff, maybe because everyone thinks it's low-tier obvious.

Different headsets and runtimes require different solutions obviously. With steamvr and the pimax Crystal with DCS there are THREE resolution settings/systems that conflict and impact.

SteamVR has it's own resolution.
Crystal has its own.
DCS has its own.

With openXR only the Crystal and DCS come into play.

You have to choose which one you want to operate the rez, though it does no harm to set a secondary LOWER than base. In my case I have the Crystal at max and DCS pixel Density at 1.0 (base). When I was running steamVR I had that at 100% (base) too.

I have no idea if one is better than another, just that once stuff is running perfectly I feel no need for further experimentation.

9 minutes ago, Mav said:

Had everything the same from last settings used with last update. 1.4 pixel density only set through OTT and 1 for in game. Still stuttering even after rebuild/repair. Very frustrating. Nothing changed at all settings wise except for updated sim version. 

 

Put every rez setting you have to as low as possible and see what happens.

Edited July 23, 2024 by Panzerlang

[Mav]

Done, still stutters. Swapped the dll’s for quad views and everything. I can launch DCS with 30Hz ASW on 1.3 or 1.4 and the stutter is significantly less but still noticeable at times. I was able to run it without ASW on last patch through tray tool. Weird. Out of ideas. 

[Mav]

Do I still need to launch openXR or quad views companion? I launch both and OTT as well. Should I launch with or without one or the other? 

[Panzerlang]

1 hour ago, Mav said:

Do I still need to launch openXR or quad views companion? I launch both and OTT as well. Should I launch with or without one or the other? 

I know it's frustrating, that it worked before but doesn't now with the same settings. So every time you get a suggestion to try something new it kind of makes no sense. But there are a bunch of goalposts and different software providers have a liking for shifting them. Which kind of leaves us unfortunate players effectively trying to score goals with blindfolds on and our shoelaces tied together.

VRAM seems to be quite a significant factor and I read that cockpit textures set too high can flood it. It's clearly not a rez issue at least. Next suggestion, go through each graphics setting and reduce it to its lowest and test (start with cockpit textures). If one on its lowest doesn't change the stutter, leave it on lowest and set the next one. Work methodically through each one and hope to find a culprit.

NB: With my Crystal I don't need to open XR, quad views or companion, once set they run automatically in the background. All I have visibly running is the Pimax software (if that's not open in the taskbar the Crystal is dead).

Edited July 23, 2024 by Panzerlang

[Mav]

33 minutes ago, Panzerlang said:

I know it's frustrating, that it worked before but doesn't now with the same settings. So every time you get a suggestion to try something new it kind of makes no sense. But there are a bunch of goalposts and different software providers have a liking for shifting them. Which kind of leaves us unfortunate players effectively trying to score goals with blindfolds on and our shoelaces tied together.

VRAM seems to be quite a significant factor and I read that cockpit textures set too high can flood it. It's clearly not a rez issue at least. Next suggestion, go through each graphics setting and reduce it to its lowest and test (start with cockpit textures). If one on its lowest doesn't change the stutter, leave it on lowest and set the next one. Work methodically through each one and hope to find a culprit.

NB: With my Crystal I don't need to open XR, quad views or companion, once set they run automatically in the background. All I have visibly running is the Pimax software (if that's not open in the taskbar the Crystal is dead).

 

Once I get back home I’ll mess with textures a bit. Frustrating but also expected. VR can be a mess. Lots of tweaking to do. 

[Glide]

12 hours ago, Panzerlang said:

Minefield alert. Lol. I've yet to see a single tutorial on this VR resolution stuff, maybe because everyone thinks it's low-tier obvious.

Pixel density of 1.4 is too much for that card.  That should be low-tier obvious.

[Mav]

55 minutes ago, Glide said:

Pixel density of 1.4 is too much for that card.  That should be low-tier obvious.

That may be the case. I’ll tone it down and see how it works. Thanks 

[Mav]

Just an update for anyone with similar specs and build. Set everything to low, launched OTT with 30Hz ASW and 1.0 PD. Game ran smooth. Upped textures a bit to the medium(ish) range and increased PD to 1.3 and stuck with 30Hz ASW, buttery smooth. Occasional stutter but barely noticeable and only when flying into a heavily populated building area such as a city. Will continue to mess around and test. 

[Phantom711]

Am 23.7.2024 um 13:29 schrieb Mav:

 

Do I still need to launch openXR or quad views companion? I launch both and OTT as well. Should I launch with or without one or the other?

 

There is nothing to be „launched“ about OpenXR. If you mean the OpenXR toolkit companion, it is active, unless you deactivate it by the respective checkmark.

QuadViewsCompanion: This is only a tool to change the settings of QuadViews. You only need to open it if you want to change the settings. It doesn‘t need to run in the background.

OTT: yes, this needs to be running in the background if you want it‘s settings to be applied. As far as I understand, it needs to be opened BEFORE the MetaApp is opened on the PC.

[Mav]

2 hours ago, Phantom711 said:

There is nothing to be „launched“ about OpenXR. If you mean the OpenXR toolkit companion, it is active, unless you deactivate it by the respective checkmark.

QuadViewsCompanion: This is only a tool to change the settings of QuadViews. You only need to open it if you want to change the settings. It doesn‘t need to run in the background.

OTT: yes, this needs to be running in the background if you want it‘s settings to be applied. As far as I understand, it needs to be opened BEFORE the MetaApp is opened on the PC.

Thanks for the info. I knew OTT had to be running in the background, just new and trying to figure out how to tweak and mess with the others. Got everything working though! OTT seems to run just fine regardless of when launched which is nice. Thanks again. 

[Sirbum]

I will say that before this patch I would run my crystal in 72HZ mode and was doing fine in that it always pegged 72, If I tried to use 90 it would hover in the 80-85 range so still was not bad but would not stay at 90.

Now, I just tried it at 90 Hz because I forgot I had changed it trying to get quadview to work in the last update and I was pegging 90 the whole entire flight. never changed anything graphics wise from before, so they obviously did something good that changed how the pimax works. Im elated with it. Hell I may even try 120 just for giggles, all though with a 4070TI I dont assume it will be able to run that, but I am happy with 90 as 72 was even fine with me.

[Mav]

12 hours ago, Sirbum said:

I will say that before this patch I would run my crystal in 72HZ mode and was doing fine in that it always pegged 72, If I tried to use 90 it would hover in the 80-85 range so still was not bad but would not stay at 90.

Now, I just tried it at 90 Hz because I forgot I had changed it trying to get quadview to work in the last update and I was pegging 90 the whole entire flight. never changed anything graphics wise from before, so they obviously did something good that changed how the pimax works. Im elated with it. Hell I may even try 120 just for giggles, all though with a 4070TI I dont assume it will be able to run that, but I am happy with 90 as 72 was even fine with me.

Nice! I switched to 90Hz to test yesterday and had some lag surprisingly. Switched back to 72 and had none. Also disabled quad views turbo though after switching back to 72 so I may switch to 90 and see if there is a difference there. Can’t really see the difference with 90 and 72Hz to be honest.

[Maddaawg]

FWIW when I run Quadviews my FPS drops and I get stuttering. It takes a hit on the CPU and I am already CPU bound with a i9-10900k. I also have some settings higher so that may just be it too.

[peachmonkey]

I also started to get the stutters with my 5800x3d after the latest update (July update+hotfix). And after a while I noticed that when the CPU is pegged at %96-99 I start getting serious stutters. The CPU gets pegged when I approach the AI, be it ground or air. Based on the patch text it appears ED has introduced a separate thread scheduler for the AI calcs, and that essentially increases the overall CPU utilization on my rig.

I was running 5800x3d + 4090, with Varjo Aero at 39ppd and DFR with 1.4 multiplier in the focus area and 0.7 in the periphery using mbuccia's VarjoFoveated. Per mbuccia himself the VarjoFoveated (and Quadview foveated app from him) are putting a lot of additional strain on the cpu since CPU needs to render the same scene twice (to overcome DCS's bug before the latest patch).

To fix the stutter I had to stop using VarjoFoveated and instead enabled Varjo Aero native DFR (via registry config, there's a blog post on their website). The native DFR doesn't allow to oversample the focus area (there's no way to change it) so the resolution is a bit lower, but because there's no more need for the CPU to render the scene twice the overall CPU utilization has gone down 10-15%, which is enough of head room for my rig to have no stutters period.

Edited July 26, 2024 by peachmonkey

[KoN]

On 7/23/2024 at 1:35 AM, Panzerlang said:

FWIW, 13900k and 4090 with Crystal and quadviews, I had bad jerking and stuttering looking left-right out the cockpit at trees and buildings at low level. The last big update fixed that, though I thought it was sandboxman's fixed API dll that did it. Original dll back in place and still smooth as silk.

I have no idea how you can run DCS VR with a 1080ti though. 

So what are you saying, for him to go out and buy a 4090 . Maybe if DCS sorted out there bad coding . <profanity> VR spotting and micro stuttering that's been going on for years . There was a time you can run DCS on a 1080 and have dam good fun . Now it's just Satan .