flying with 3d googles, ATI4870x2 and iz3d driver, performance issues

[dickagm]

Hi there,

I recently got a pair of headplay pcs goggles which are supporting 120hz sequential 3D mode at 1024x768. For this to work the game must give minimum of 60 fps (30 fps per eye) or the 3d effect is teared out, actually it switches the left/right eyes at every time the fps drops below that minimum so when look at some heavy scenery place the left/right eyes are begin to flicker constantly which make the game unplayable in that mode.

My rig is q6600@3.1Ghz, ATI 4870x2, 8Gb ram, Windows 7 ultimate x64, Catalyst 10.3

Until now I have played the game with all in game settings to high, (1920x1200)on a 60hz display and the catalyst settings to high, only the AA was set to a lower value like Edge detect 8x. With those settings I'm getting between 20-35 fps without any cfg or lua tweaks and I was satisfied by now. I know that some more fps can be achieved by tweaking of the cfg and lua files but wasn't necessary until now.

I expected that if I lower the resolution about twice that the game performance will go up around twice but it looks that's not happening at all. So when everything is set at high (game settings and video settings) and 1920x1280 display I got ~25 fps, but when I change only the display resolution to 1024x768 the resulted fps was about ~35 fps. Hmm I feel this is to little improvement for such big difference in first case around 2 million pixels have to be calculated and in second case only 800K pixels have to be calculated, anyway I tried to switch everything to low (game settings and video settings) and the result was maximum 50 fps.

I can see here in the forum that people are stating that have reached a lot more than 60 fps when the display refresh rate support it of course with similar hardware like mine, before I start of tweaking the cfg and lua files can somebody tell me what can be the reason for so slow performance in my case? I feel that a lot more can be taken from that hardware without change the processor but something is limiting it. Can that be windows 7 or ati drivers problem?

Additionally when start using the iz3d driver in 3d mode the performance is going down about twice again, so for using the goggles in 3d mode I need at least 60fps in standard 2D mode so when switch to 3d mode the fps to be at least 30 fps to avoid the flickering.

Is there anyone who can share his experience with 3d goggles and or iz3d driver please? I'll appreciate if someone with hardware like mine share his thoughts about too.

Please excuse my English and the long explanation.

 

 

EDIT:

I'm not sure how happened but right now whatever changes I made I can't get anything different than a constant 30fps (in normal 2D mode on my monitor), when I check with rivatuner monitoring I see that GPU 0 usage is at about 15% when dcs run at 1024x768 and on 27% when at 1920x1200. It looks something is locking the fps to 30, the vertical sync is off (when switched to on it's the same) and maxFps = 0 (I tried different maxfps values but nothing). How I can make the GPU to be used at 100% or just some how to get out of that fps lock?

 

Thanks,

Niki

Edited May 12, 2010 by dickagm

[ZQuickSilverZ]

Not trying to be rude but googles is spelled goggles. Might want to edit that.

[LIONPRIDE]

Hi there,

I recently got a pair of headplay pcs googles which are supporting 120hz sequential 3D mode at 1024x768. For this to work the game must give minimum of 60 fps (30 fps per eye) or the 3d effect is teared out, actually it switches the left/right eyes at every time the fps drops below that minimum so when look at some heavy scenery place the left/right eyes are begin to flicker constantly which make the game unplayable in that mode.

My rig is q6600@3.1Ghz, ATI 4870x2, 8Gb ram, Windows 7 ultimate x64, Catalyst 10.3

...

 

... How I can make the GPU to be used at 100% or just some how to get out of that fps lock?

 

Thanks,

Niki

 

I think you arent taking into account the fact the sim is modeling an absurd amount of systems that would easily bring your older CPU down no matter the resolution. Your CPU has to model the Wepon, Nav, Chaffe, Flir, ...etc. Not like flying MS-Flight Simulator.

 

 

 

 

.

[dickagm]

Thanks for the attention guys!

 

In the middle of my experiments my system get to a total mess so I even wasn't able to log on and deactivate DCS and I have left with only one activation. I hope to have the luck and not loose it too.

Anyway after a fresh install of windows 7 and catalyst 10.4 the locked fps problem is gone and I finally managed to achieve 60-70 fps without AA and middle graphic settings in game.

I know that my cpu is not the best for this situation but also I can see that other peoples are achieving similar results as I do. Unfortunately I didn't found what caused the fps to stay locked at 30 fps even with vsync off and maxfps = 0, it may be the iz3d driver to be messed up with catalyst driver?

 

Anyway Is there anybody playing with goggles, please share what are your pc configurations (hardware/software), some opinion?

 

For now I'm pretty busy at my work to continue testing those 3d goggles but for the short time that I have managed to achieve (around 1 minute) of flight without the worse flickering to appear I can say that it was very very fun especially when combining with trackIR I can say that everything in the cockpit as well as the hud is pretty clean visible, but for now I'm to far from targeting and firing (I have the feeling that this will be the "dark" side of playing with goggles). I see that all that stuff is pretty tricky to put everything to work together seamlessly and a lot of time will pass until I make everything to serve as well as possible. So any help will be appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Niki

[dickagm]

Finally managed it to work at a constant 30fps in 3D mode, in short I can say I'm very happy with the result even without any buildings in the scenery, the 3d effect and the head movement gives awesome sense for speed and space.

I'll try to make a quick summarize of the situation, which I hope will be in help for others that are trying to fly with 3d goggles.

 

First part - initial setup

First of all I started with a clean install of windows 7, ati 10.4, dcs 1.0 updated to 1.0.1.

Modman - performance Flares mod and no cloud shadows mod.

The game was set at medium graphic settings @ 1920x1200@60hz

The catalyst 3d settings was set to best quality only the smoothvision and AA was turned to "use application settings" and vsync was totally off.

The result was between 64-70 fps, Great Performance!

 

Second part - IZ3D driver

After just installing the iz3d driver the things where changed a lot. The performance dropped to about 37fps in 2D mode, when switched to 3D mode (shutter/simple, for my goggles) the performance drops to about 27fps.

There's needed minimum 30fps when your device/monitor is working @ 60hz or for example if your device is working @ 85hz the minimum needed fps is 42.5 or the synchronization between the eyes will be lost and a bad flickering between the eyes will happen until the fps get back to 30!

From this point any kind of changes (lowering of the settings) on the ATI catalyst will not have effect over the performance, only the game settings are influencing the performance!

 

Third part - tweaking the graphics.cfg and options.lua

Please note that those settings are not final and I think they can be tweaked in another way but a lot more tests have to be made.

I'll appreciate if someone while looking the changes I have made have ideas for making the scenery more beautiful while keeping the performance. Actually currently the performance is very close to the edge and sometime it happens to flick up the eyes for a moment but it's very very rarely. Part of the tests I made from a recorded track from mission "Kaldahar", it's very playable with those settings, other parts are tested with the mission "hard day" which is pretty light scene but have a lot of atmosphere, haze, clouds.

here are the file modifications:

 

graphics.cfg

 

------------------------------------------

Medium

{

near_clip = 0.5;

middle_clip = 4;

far_clip = 45000;

 

structures = {10, 1000};

trees = {100, 2000};

dynamic = {10, 1000};

objects = {1000, 15000};

mirage = {3000, 15000};

surface = {7000, 15000};

lights = {100, 7000};

 

lodMult = 0.5;

lodAdd = 100;

-------------------------------------------

 

LandLodDistances

{

LandDay

{

L01 = 10000;

L12 = 20000;

}

LandNight

{

L01 = 8000;

L12 = 20000;

}

Map

{

L01 = 30000;

L12 = 90000;

L23 = 180000;

L34 = 300000;

L45 = 400000;

}

MapAlt

{

L01 = 30000;

L12 = 90000;

L23 = 180000;

L34 = 300000;

L45 = 400000;

}

MapTex

{

L01 = 30000;

L12 = 90000;

L23 = 180000;

L34 = 300000;

L45 = 400000;

}

MFD

{

L01 = 7000;

L12 = 14000;

}

}

----------------------------------------

 

maxFps = 0

----------------------------------------

 

 

 

 

options.lua

 

["views"] =

{

["cockpit"] =

{

["mirrors"] = false,

["reflections"] = false,

["avionics"] = 1,

["russianHud"] = false,

}, -- end of ["cockpit"]

}, -- end of ["views"]

----------------------------------------

["graphics"] =

{

["multiMonitorSetup"] = "1camera",

["color"] = "32",

["heatBlr"] = 0,

["scenes"] = "medium",

["water"] = 1,

["fullScreen"] = true,

["visibRange"] = "Medium",

["aspect"] = 1.3333333333333,

["textures"] = 1,

["shadows"] = 0,

["display_mode"] =

{

["avi"] =

{

["bpp"] = 32,

["resolution"] = "640x480",

["full_screen"] = false,

["aspect"] = 1.333333333,

["height"] = 480,

["width"] = 640,

}, -- end of ["avi"]

}, -- end of ["display_mode"]

["effects"] = 3,

["lights"] = 1,

["haze"] = 1,

["terrPrld"] = "20",

["height"] = 768,

["resolution"] = "1024x768",

["civTraffic"] = 0,

["width"] = 1024,

}, -- end of ["graphics"]

 

Best,

Niki