Virtual Desktop - is it really a must?

[Qcumber]

13 minutes ago, TED said:

Had a good test of link and in my opinion VD is just way better. It seems much clearer, much better performance and more user friendly.

Are you sure you are comparing the same resolutions? Also factor in different sharpness settings etc. I find that at the same final resolution they are both very similar in terms of quality. 

[Qcumber]

19 minutes ago, TED said:

godlike resolution and 1.0 in oculus debug

What is your slider setting in the Link app? To compare with VD godlike you need the overall scaling set to at least 1.45. It's easiest to do this in one place so leave it at 1x in the Link app and set it to 1.45 in ODT  Otherwise you are running at native resolution of 2064 x 2208. VD Godlike is about 3072 x 3216. 

[Mr_sukebe]

Are you using the stock USB cable supplied with the Quest?

I vaguely seem to remember someone saying that it was a pretty low quality and didn't support full fat USB3.1.

I bought a decent aftermarket USB cable, and have not had an issue.

 

[TED]

I have an aftermarket usb c cable I bought that is good quality. 

Im not sure what else could be accounting for such a large discrepancy in quality. The main difference is in smoothness. Link just seems very choppy compared to vd. Would u mind posting your odt settings?

Edited April 3 by TED

[Qcumber]

2 minutes ago, TED said:

I have an aftermarket usb c cable I bought that is good quality.

Have you done the cable check test on the link app? It's in the device settings. I'll post my settings in a few minutes. 

[Qcumber]

These are my settings for the Quest Pro. The native resolution is 1808 x 1856 per eye. With a 1.73 Pixel override this is now 3127 x 3210. This is close to the Godlike resolution of 3072 x 3216. For the Q3 you will need a pixel override of 1.45 (native 2064 x 2208, x1.45 = 2993 x 3201. The values might be different when you look on the link app. I got these from a Google search. If you can't manage the 960 bitrate then try dropping to about 800. Its still a lot higher than you can get with VD. 

 

 

 

nullnull

[TED]

Thanks again. 

Tested the cable. All is good.

Used the exact same settings as you and still just looks terrible compared to vd. Looks very low resolution too. Something is not right somewhere in my settings. 

Probably i will just stick to vd as it just seems to work without any messing about. 

[Qcumber]

I have done a comparison of VD versus Meta link in terms of performance. Quality is subjective but I could not see much difference between the two. To make sure that all settings were comparable I used OXRTK to override the resolution to 3072 x 3216. Both are run at 72Hz refresh. 

Link cable is using the settings above (but ignore the pixel setting as OXRTK has overridden it). 

VD is H.264+ at 200 mbps. WiFi 6 router with cat 6 ethernet cables. 

QVFR

smoothen_focus_view_edges=0.1
sharpen_focus_view=0.2
horizontal_focus_section=0.25
vertical_focus_section=0.25
peripheral_multiplier=0.5
focus_multiplier=1.1

All DCS settings are identical. 

I ran a recorded track of an F-16 flying low over Syria (instant action free flight) for 60 seconds. 

These are the results. They are shown as a measure of GPU latency logged into bins of 0.1 ms. Each frame is counted and then allocated to the relevant bin. The taller parts of the chart show a higher number of frames falling into that bin. I ran each test three times. The purple traces (T1, 5 and 6) are the ones run using cable link. The blue ones (T2,3 and 4) are run using VD. This is a surprising result. I expected performance to be equal but clearly the meta link gives better performance. A mean GPU frametime of 9.62 ms vs 13.04 ms. A 3.42 ms difference. The red dotted lines show the 13.9 ms cut-off for 72 fps. Anything above this will result in missed frames. 

This is what the frametimes look like over the full 60 seconds. As you can see the VD trace (blue) is consistently higher latency with a lot more random spikes. 

 

	GPU	VRAM	FPS
Meta	9.62	7.22	72.1
VD	13.04	7.91	72.6
ms diff	3.42	0.69	0.58

VRAM was a little lower with meta link but mean FPS was the same. Basically, both meta link and VD can maintain 72 FPS, but VD is prone to much more variation in GPU frametimes which can lead to more jitter. 

EDIT: Fred Emmott has advised that it is difficult to directly compare GPU render times between different run times so please interpret this with caution. 

Edited April 4 by Qcumber

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, TED said:

Thanks again. 

Tested the cable. All is good.

Used the exact same settings as you and still just looks terrible compared to vd. Looks very low resolution too. Something is not right somewhere in my settings. 

Probably i will just stick to vd as it just seems to work without any messing about. 

It does sound like something is not set up correctly. If you have OXRTK installed then you could override the resolution as I did above. Try setting it to 3072 x 3216 so that you know it is comparable. 

[TED]

I'm really not sure what's going on. To be honest I'm very happy with VD and it was more our of curiosity to try link. 

I have OXRTK disabled so theoretically I'm running the same resolution, however it looks very different. 

I think if nothing else this just kind of proves the power of vd as an amazing product in that it just works with minimal fuss. 

I may have another look later at link and try to see where its going wrong. I noticed as well that I can't seem to get dynamic foviated rendering working properly in link. No problem at all with VD. This shouldn't affect the difference I'm seeing anyway as the fixed foviated render is working in link. 

I'm even starting to wonder if the oculus debug tool is actually doing anything. If I adjust the resolution up and down in link it is a clear difference but when I set default resolution in link, the 1.73 in oculus debug it looked like very low res. 

Edited April 3 by TED

[nachinus]

hace 29 minutos, TED dijo:

I'm even starting to wonder if the oculus debug tool is actually doing anything. If I adjust the resolution up and down in link it is a clear difference but when I set default resolution in link, the 1.73 in oculus debug it looked like very low res. 

That particular setting definitely isn't working for me either. I'm having the exact same experience as you, with the link slider working just fine but not when when leaving the slider in 1x and using the debug tool override parameter instead. 

Also, I'm seeing that many parameters don't save and I have to write them again every time I launch it.

Edited April 3 by nachinus

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, TED said:

I have OXRTK disabled so theoretically I'm running the same resolution, however it looks very different. 

Try enabling OXRTK and override the resolution there. Then you will have exactly the same resolution with meta and VD. Or just stick with VD if you are happy. 

After my testing above I am going to stick with meta app as this gives me significantly better performance and a more stable latency. 

[Qcumber]

This is a more extreme track. An F-4 take off from Syria. The results between the two runtimes are much closer although there is still more variation in GPU frametimes with VD. T12 is run using meta cable link (grey), T13 is with VD (green). 

Mean GPU time is 13.49 ms (Meta) vs 13.73 ms (VD).

Mean FPS is 72.6 (Meta) and 71.4 (VD)

Missed frames (those that exceed 13.9 ms) are 25% for Meta and 43% for VD

Subjectively the experience was virtually identical between the two runs in terms of quality. 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 4 by Qcumber

[TED]

I had a other play around with both today and my experience is just very different from yours. 

The image quality of meta is way worse than that of vd. I've found vd to be mostly smoother but probably very little difference. 

The killer though is just the silly set up process and procedures with link. I also cannot get h265 to work without it freaking out totally. HEVC works perfectly in vd. 

Honestly if it wasn't for VD I'd have returned my quest pro as to me the meta software is a disaster compared to VD. 

I have my pc connected via ethernet to my router and a fast wifi6 network so wireless VD works really well and that will be my only used method. 

[Qcumber]

29 minutes ago, TED said:

I had a other play around with both today and my experience is just very different from yours. 

The image quality of meta is way worse than that of vd. I've found vd to be mostly smoother but probably very little difference. 

The killer though is just the silly set up process and procedures with link. I also cannot get h265 to work without it freaking out totally. HEVC works perfectly in vd. 

Honestly if it wasn't for VD I'd have returned my quest pro as to me the meta software is a disaster compared to VD. 

I have my pc connected via ethernet to my router and a fast wifi6 network so wireless VD works really well and that will be my only used method. 

It is strange how different setups can behave so differently. I would prefer to use VD but I just cannot get it to work as well as meta link. What Bitrate are you managing on your network? I wonder if my router is an issue. I can't get above 200 with WiFi without a big increase in latency and there are lots of frame spikes. With an ethernet cable I can manage 400 Mbps and it's smoother but still not as good as with Meta. 

Edited April 4 by Qcumber

[TED]

6 hours ago, Qcumber said:

It is strange how different setups can behave so differently. I would prefer to use VD but I just cannot get it to work as well as meta link. What Bitrate are you managing on your network? I wonder if my router is an issue. I can't get above 200 with WiFi without a big increase in latency and there are lots of frame spikes. With an ethernet cable I can manage 400 Mbps and it's smoother but still not as good as with Meta. 

I get very solid bit rate. I've found HEVC to be best and set it to 150.

If I use h264+ I easily manage 350.

Might be worth checking your router. I replaced mine last year and made a big difference. Also I use a separate 5ghz router only for DCS.

[Qcumber]

1 minute ago, TED said:

I get very solid bit rate. I've found HEVC to be best and set it to 150.

If I use h264+ I easily manage 350.

Might be worth checking your router. I replaced mine last year and made a big difference. Also I use a separate 5ghz router only for DCS.

Thanks. I do use a dedicated router. I can get around 350-360 Mbps but the network latency is to high and the deciding latency becomes high and/or very unstable. HEVC works fine at 150 but again the decoding latency causes too much lag. This is especially noticeable when you move your head quickly. I found the optimal setup is h264+ at 200 Mbps. The only way to overcome these limitations is to use an ethernet cable (it requires an Android hack of the headset but it works). I can then get 400 Mbps and a low network/decode latency. However, this still lags behind the Meta app at 960 Mbps. The image quality of the two is comparable but the difference in latency and variation in frame times is noticeable. 

Are you sure that when using the meta app your are at the same resolution as VD Godlike? 

[TED]

Strange. I do t get any of that latency using VD, even moving my head, it's very smooth. Flying low level in the spitfire from bigin Hill in the Normandy 2 map with a formation and looking out the side, all is still very smooth. 

Definitely had the same resolution in meta. But definitely worse visually and in terms of performance.

[Qcumber]

7 hours ago, TED said:

Strange. I do t get any of that latency using VD, even moving my head, it's very smooth. Flying low level in the spitfire from bigin Hill in the Normandy 2 map with a formation and looking out the side, all is still very smooth. 

Definitely had the same resolution in meta. But definitely worse visually and in terms of performance.

I think I have discovered the issues I have been having with VD. Everything is much better with HEVC. With my 4070 h264+ was always a better choice as HEVC had too long a decode latency. With the 5080 this latency is much lower. h264+ is not very stable with the 5080. I wonder if it a driver issue? 

[nachinus]

Sadly I'm not managing to get settings to a sweet spot that works for me. For some reason I'm having CPU bound fps drops from 72 to 36 according to DCS fps counter, even whith active pause on in a simple 1vs2 P51 dogfight caucasus scenario. Of course it works perfectly smooth in 2d.

Edited April 6 by nachinus

[Qcumber]

55 minutes ago, nachinus said:

Sadly I'm not managing to get settings to a sweet spot that works for me. For some reason I'm having CPU bound fps drops from 72 to 36 according to DCS fps counter, even whith active pause on in a simple 1vs2 P51 dogfight caucasus scenario. Of course it works perfectly smooth in 2d.

It sounds like Asynchronous Space Warp us kicking in. Try disabling this in Oculus Debug Tool. 

You can also change these on the fly with these keybinds 

CTRL+KP1 - Disable ASW and USE ATW

CTRL+KP2 - Force apps to 45hz, DISABLE ASW

CTRL+KP3 - Force apps to 45hz, ENABLE ASW

CTRL+KP4 - Enable ASW to operate automatically

I would advise looking at your CPU and GPU latencies in the DCS FPS game overlay or better still using OXRTK. This will let you know how close you are to maintaining 72 FPS. The magic number for you GPU is 13.88ms. 

Having recently had chance to try the 5070ti you should be able to maintain 72 fps in most situations. 

Don't forget that VR is like running two 4k monitors so it is very demanding. 

[nachinus]

hace 51 minutos, Qcumber dijo:

It sounds like Asynchronous Space Warp us kicking in. Try disabling this in Oculus Debug Tool. 

You can also change these on the fly with these keybinds 

CTRL+KP1 - Disable ASW and USE ATW

CTRL+KP2 - Force apps to 45hz, DISABLE ASW

CTRL+KP3 - Force apps to 45hz, ENABLE ASW

CTRL+KP4 - Enable ASW to operate automatically

I would advise looking at your CPU and GPU latencies in the DCS FPS game overlay or better still using OXRTK. This will let you know how close you are to maintaining 72 FPS. The magic number for you GPU is 13.88ms. 

Having recently had chance to try the 5070ti you should be able to maintain 72 fps in most situations. 

Don't forget that VR is like running two 4k monitors so it is very demanding. 

Thank you, I'll try that.

I knew it was going to be demanding, but I thought that the GPU was going to be the limiting factor, not the CPU.

I havent tried Open XT toolkit yet. Does it supersede Meta Oculus Debug Tool? 

[Qcumber]

14 minutes ago, nachinus said:

I knew it was going to be demanding, but I thought that the GPU was going to be the limiting factor, not the CPU.

Being CPU limited in the DCS monitor does not necessarily mean that what you might think. It's best to look at your CPU and GPU render times in OXRTK or XRFrametools (or similar). This will give you a much better idea if how much load is on your CPU and GPU. Also look at individual core performance of your CPU to see if a single core is maxed out. 

OXRTK is an add on tool. It does not replace ODT. Although it is no longer officially supported it still has some useful tools. 

[Hiob]

11 hours ago, nachinus said:

Thank you, I'll try that.

I knew it was going to be demanding, but I thought that the GPU was going to be the limiting factor, not the CPU.

I havent tried Open XT toolkit yet. Does it supersede Meta Oculus Debug Tool? 

Any kind of fixed refresh rate is usually enforced by CPU. Which will then be shown as CPU bound/limited. That doesn’t (*necessarily) mean it doesn't have excess performance.

Edited April 7 by Hiob

[nachinus]

En 6/4/2025 a las 22:00, Qcumber dijo:

It sounds like Asynchronous Space Warp us kicking in. Try disabling this in Oculus Debug Tool. 

You can also change these on the fly with these keybinds 

CTRL+KP1 - Disable ASW and USE ATW

CTRL+KP2 - Force apps to 45hz, DISABLE ASW

CTRL+KP3 - Force apps to 45hz, ENABLE ASW

CTRL+KP4 - Enable ASW to operate automatically

I would advise looking at your CPU and GPU latencies in the DCS FPS game overlay or better still using OXRTK. This will let you know how close you are to maintaining 72 FPS. The magic number for you GPU is 13.88ms. 

Having recently had chance to try the 5070ti you should be able to maintain 72 fps in most situations. 

Don't forget that VR is like running two 4k monitors so it is very demanding. 

It turns out ASW was already disabled in the Debug Tool, but it seems that ODT settings are being ignored, they just don't work. I had already noticed that the Pixel Override didn't work because I could only notice better resolution when increasing the Quest Link slider, but I just tried to lower FOV multipier all the way to 50;50 and didn't notice any change. It seems pretty obvious that the tool isn't working. I don't know if I missed something, any previous step that I should've done to make the Debug Tool work.

Edited April 8 by nachinus