Say, "No" to the RTX 5090 card - Definitely the generation to skip over for DCS VR

[Tensorial_Architect]

3 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Are both of those numbers with or without framegen? Because if half of that 70% is fake frames, it'd look a lot less impressive. For what it's worth, DCS doesn't even support frame generation.

Without framegen. Take a look back at the the reviews released right around the time the RTX 4090 launched (places like Tom's Hardware, AnandTech, Tweaktown, Guru3D, etc ...) where they would show averages across 20 or more major titles at different resolutions. In 4k, RTX 4090 was beating the 3090 Ti by roughly 50 to 70% iirc. Occasionally, the 4090 would pull a low score where it only beat the 3090 Ti by 35% or so, ... but in another title, it would double the frame rates. Long story short, ... the 4090 was a "good" release. In comparison, so far, the 5090 is turning out to be (at least from the perspective of a DCS VR user) a "poor" release.

[SimHog]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Are both of those numbers with or without framegen? Because if half of that 70% is fake frames, it'd look a lot less impressive. For what it's worth, DCS doesn't even support frame generation.

I suspect you wouldn't want frame-gen on when in VR anyway, it would just add to latency of the the real frames. Pure ratsterization performance is what is needed for VR.

Edited February 4 by SimHog

[jackmckay]

im not in vr but giving 2.5k for 3 ventilators and some plastics that will expire in 3years max is just beyond common sense. you can buy rl flying machine for that money. its just insane, not to mention the fact that nvidia stocks are going down in flames expecting them to lose the profit and not being able to sell their stuff. wait a year or less theyll give them up for free.

[Dragon1-1]

55 minutes ago, SimHog said:

I suspect you wouldn't want frame-gen on when in VR anyway, it would just add to latency of the the real frames. Pure ratsterization performance is what is needed for VR.

That's exactly why I'm asking. Frame-gen is a cheap way to inflate FPS numbers, but in VR, it'd just add too much latency, and even in 2D it doesn't always work well. Rasterization performance is where it's at.

23 minutes ago, jackmckay said:

im not in vr but giving 2.5k for 3 ventilators and some plastics that will expire in 3years max is just beyond common sense. 

Honestly, given the size of that cooler, the sheer amount of copper and aluminum in there probably accounts for a chunk of that price.  My 3090 already comes with a stand, and it doesn't look like weight and bulk had gotten any better.

Speaking of which, had anyone actually tried running two 3090s using NVLink? It's be an absolutely massive power hog and good luck finding a case for it, but given that 3090s are relatively easy to get by at this point, and they do retain the connector, could that be the way to upgrade from an existing 3090-based rig without spending a ton? Then again, I do recall that tech being problematic in practice, not sure if DCS would benefit.

Edited February 4 by Dragon1-1

[Tensorial_Architect]

@Dragon - DCS has never been coded to take advantage of Nvidia's SLI technology.

@Hippo - Fixed the percentiles to be readable. (Thanks, ... I like guys who notice the fine details.)

[Dragon1-1]

3 minutes ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

@Dragon - DCS has never been coded to take advantage of Nvidia's SLI technology.

I know, but wasn't there a way of forcing that in the driver, particularly for Vulkan? Or does it have to be specifically implemented? I know DCS isn't using Vulkan, but it's being worked on, and it's far more parallelized than DX11.

[LucShep]

44 minutes ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

DCS has never been coded to take advantage of Nvidia's SLI technology.

Actually, and AFAIK, Nvidia SLI and AMD Crossfire worked in DCS with versions upto 2.5.6 (stopped working with 2.7). 

 

Edited February 4 by LucShep

[Tensorial_Architect]

Vulkan has less chance of becoming a reality than men landing on Mars by 2035 or Duke Nukem returning for his third major sequel in 2041. 

It is a mirage. People have been mentioning that $%#! since I (believe) at least 2017. 

 

[warmachine79]

13 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Are both of those numbers with or without framegen? Because if half of that 70% is fake frames, it'd look a lot less impressive. For what it's worth, DCS doesn't even support frame generation.

No, that's raw power regarding the advantage of 4090 over 3090TI. 

[okopanja]

9 hours ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

Vulkan has less chance of becoming a reality than men landing on Mars by 2035 or Duke Nukem returning for his third major sequel in 2041. 

If it weren't for you I would have never realised that they actually released a game after Duke Nukem 3D....

"Shake it baby!"

[nikoel]

9 hours ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

Vulkan has less chance of becoming a reality than men landing on Mars by 2035 or Duke Nukem returning for his third major sequel in 2041. 

It is a mirage. People have been mentioning that $%#! since I (believe) at least 2017. 

 

Wait-a-second. Those two things are not that improbable. Hollywood has been reviving corpses of all the old titles and the gaming industry is taking notes, and Musky boi is raiding the US treasury. Besides getting to mars is not *that* hard, its staying alive there for an extended period of time that seems to be a problem

See you in 2026

[Dragon1-1]

On 2/4/2025 at 3:31 AM, Tensorial_Architect said:

It is a mirage. People have been mentioning that $%#! since I (believe) at least 2017. 

I don't think so. Notice how significant graphical improvements have slowed down significantly as of late. So either ED fired their graphics team, or they're working on something big. Given that this "something big" seems to be holding up a significant batch of fixes and improvements, we might finally be closing on DCS 3.0. 

I know it's been talked about since forever, but it seems to be getting done. A few details of the implementation have been discussed.

On 2/4/2025 at 2:59 AM, LucShep said:

Actually, and AFAIK, Nvidia SLI and AMD Crossfire worked in DCS with versions upto 2.5.6 (stopped working with 2.7). 

Interesting, I guess 2.7 came around after the time when those techs were at their peak. Pity that there isn't a way to combine two GPUs into one "virtual GPU", but I guess it's a more difficult problem than just alternating what one or the other rendered.

Although, for VR specifically, why not render one eye with one GPU, and the other with another? They likely wouldn't even need the NVLink interface that way. This seems like something that Vulkan could, in principle, be capable of. Of course, actually coding that would probably be hard, but IMO, the idea of using two cheap cards instead of one massively expensive one is worth exploring. Plus, you'd get more VRAM than even a 5090 has (though split between GPUs).

Edited February 6 by Dragon1-1

[Tensorial_Architect]

Dragon, when it comes to DCS finally incorporating Vulkan, a particular image from the movie, Sex Drive comes to mind:

 

Edited February 4 by Tensorial_Architect

[Jimmy8x]

I'm going to encourage Tensorial_Architect to post some proof that all of these 'tests' are not fabricated.

 

Others are reporting 5090 does not work at all with Pimax and Varjo headsets. So I'm not going to accept this as anything other than attention seeking forum trolling unless provided some demonstration that you are actually using a 5090 with these devices.

 

 

[Tensorial_Architect]

You're under no obligation to believe in a free online forum. Test yourself. (You will find the same stats I found)

What I can say is that I got the G2, Quest 3, Quest Pro (and ole' Valve Index) working right off the bat. The Aero took a great deal of cussing and six hours of fiddling with to get it working with the 5090. (Please remember for theses tests that I used an ASUS TUF 5090 and not the far more common Nvidia reference card.) The Crystal worked fine for me on Sunday although very oddly I had to connect it to the middle Displayport (of the three - on the back end of the ASUS TUF card) Any other connecter, and I had a dead screen. On Monday, sadly, (and perhaps like you), ... I am back to a black screen. ... Zip. ... Normally, at this stage, I would spend whatever time was needed to get it working but after long experience with Pimax, their software, their "support" team, ... this is one problem I will not be coming back to. (To be fair, out of all the headsets we have here, it was the Crystal I most expected not to work. It is extremely temperamental to say the least. Now that it is not working again, .... not my concern. I ran out of goats last week and have no plans to secure more to sacrifice at the local Temple of Apollo to get the f$%#er working again.)

Edited February 5 by Tensorial_Architect

[Jimmy8x]

My uncle works at Nintendo and my girlfriend is real, she just goes to a different school.

 

 

[Hippo]

8 hours ago, Jimmy8x said:

attention seeking forum trolling

Pots, kettles...?  I might more diplomatically suggest that T_A could better support his results by posting his DCS settings and testing methodology.  And I'm rather more concerned about his activities with goats.

At least he hasn't gone with my own pet peeve of a contextless "that 5090 is awesome, I now get 10 more fps", which is far more common than it should be.

Selfishly, I might even suggest that he could replicate my test and post graphs of gpu util + frame rate + frame time just for for me.

Edited February 5 by Hippo

[Tensorial_Architect]

Guys, I teach full time at uni, have a family, and a child. I was fortunate to even get a weekend to myself where my wife and son went off for his fencing regional. I will be lucky to get another weekend like the past during this semester. If the information I listed in the first post of this thread is helpful, ... great. If it is not, ... or you distrust it, ... I suggest either waiting till more DCS VR users acquire 5090s or purchasing one for yourself. You will confirm what I have found.

Edited February 5 by Tensorial_Architect

[Hippo]

8 minutes ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

Guys, I teach full time at uni, have a family, and a child. I was fortunate to even get a weekend to myself where my wife and son went off for his fencing regional. I will be lucky to get another weekend like the past during this semester. If the information I listed in the first post of this thread is helpful, ... great. If it is not, ... or you distrust it, ... I suggest either waiting till more DCS VR users acquire 5090s or purchasing one for yourself. You will confirm what I have found.

I think you might need to reevaluate your priorities.  I would suggest: DCS -> family -> work.

()

[Bazz_Mulder]

At what resolution you were running test with Quest Pro?

[Tensorial_Architect]

I set the Pixel Density from within DCS up to 1.7, ... so 3060 x 3264. (On the desktop, from Meta's Link software, I left my slider at 1.0)

(I also tried the obverse, setting the Link slider to 1.5 and then adding on a bit from Pixel Density from within DCS. The results were analogous.)

I can run the Quest Pro at 72 or 80 Hz with everything in DCS maxed. I am just a tiny bit short of being able to run everything at 90 Hz. No, ... I didn't try every map or every plane. 90% of my testing has been with the Hornet on the Syria, Dubai, or Marianas maps.

(A common mistake I see here at the forums is believing that the next flagship graphics card will allow someone to run X headset with everything in DCS maxed at 90 Hz. If you have the 4090 and were hoping that the 5090 would finally allow enough headroom to run the Somnium, Crystal, or Aero at 90 Hz with all DCS settings maxed, ... you are going to be badly disappointed. Unless, DCS implements DLSS 4 (a' la Cyberpunk 2077), you will not be able to run the Somnium, Aero, or Crystal at native or higher resolution with everything in DCS on highest/ultra settings at 90 Hz. It just does not have the ceiling for it.)

If you own a 4090, the 5090 provides very little extra headroom. As one of the other members noted, ... if you have been waiting four years to upgrade your 3060 and finally have $2500 (well, ... with the possible tariff situation unstable, ... say, ... $2800 (wait, .... weren't prices supposed to begin dropping? ... every price I see continues to climb)) laying around, and your town happens to be close to a nuclear power plant, ... have at it.

Edited February 6 by Tensorial_Architect

[Hippo]

13 hours ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

If you have the 4090 and were hoping that the 5090 would finally allow enough headroom to run the Somnium, Crystal, or Aero at 90 Hz with all DCS settings maxed, ... you are going to be badly disappointed.

Alternatively, you can run with reprojection, fly at 30,000 ft over the sea and post YT videos demonstrating how you can a run a Pimax Crystal Super on a 4070 no worries...

13 hours ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

I can run the Quest Pro at 72 or 80 Hz with everything in DCS maxed

Please could you post the QVFR settings you're using for QP, and which AA you're using?

Edited February 7 by Hippo

[Hippo]

13 hours ago, Tensorial_Architect said:

I also tried the obverse, setting the Link slider to 1.5 and then adding on a bit from Pixel Density from within DCS

My Link slider maxes out at 1.3 (5408 x 2752).   Is that what you meant?  How much is "a bit"?

I'm sorry if I appear combative, I don't mean to.  I'm just trying to work out what your results would mean for me and the way I like to set things up, and those details matter.  Thank you for your posts, which I believe are genuine, and for your time and patience.

P.S.

On 2/5/2025 at 9:46 AM, Tensorial_Architect said:

or purchasing one for yourself.

Where, at my local store that also stocks unicorns?  Consider yourself very, very fortunate if you managed to buy a 5090 through normal channels.

Edited February 7 by Hippo

[BIGNEWY]

thread moderated, please remember to treat each other with respect, rules can be found at the top of the forum 

thank you