Oculus Rift and DCS World Discussion

[cichlidfan]

Look at all the trouble that most people have to achieve acceptable fps levels in DCS. Not to mention the stability of those fps.

 

I would consider DCS a poor example in that regard.

[cichlidfan]

In what sense? In general I consider flight simulators very hard to make them run smoothly, specially compared to normal games.

 

DCS has too many areas that are FPS issues beyond what can be attributed to large view distances.

[mhe]

Perhaps EDGE will come with Oculus support already working from day 1? One can dream... And perhaps it even does away with a lot of the graphics performance problems. After all, I recall Wags himself saying that the renderer is as advanced if not even more so than the one used in Outerra.

[maddabboyahoo.com]

Better stereo settings try these

 

I'm still tweaking my stereo use but this is even better and more natural on my eyes. A bit more relaxed focusing and more natural. With the increased seperation I used to have set my eyes actually had to refocus on each depth from near to far. This is much more natural setting that looks right and works from near to far for me.

 

I also increased my game res from 1280x800 to 1366x768 and upped AA to 4x. I'm getting playable fps but the image is much improved. I've got many tracks now and could make a video if anyone wants to see it on youtube. I can also make red/blue 3d video for youtube for those that don't have a rift but want to see the 3D. Any interest in videos on youtube?

 

Better stereo settings try these:

 

_ = function(p) return p; end;

name = _('Stereo');

Description = 'Stereo render two viewports for left and right eye respectivelly'

Viewports =

{

Left =

{

x = 0;

y = 0;

width = screen.width * 0.5;

height = screen.height;

viewDx = -0.12;

viewDy = 0;

aspect = screen.aspect / 2;

eye_shift = -0.025;

},

Right =

{

x = screen.width * 0.5;

y = 0;

width = screen.width * 0.5;

height = screen.height;

viewDx = 0.12;

viewDy = 0;

aspect = screen.aspect / 2;

eye_shift = 0.025;

}

}

[ReviZorro]

...

I've got many tracks now and could make a video if anyone wants to see it on youtube. I can also make red/blue 3d video for youtube for those that don't have a rift but want to see the 3D. Any interest in videos on youtube?

...

Big thx for sharing your settings.

IMHO, both video formats - for Rifters and anaglyph - will be on demand.

 

And how is problem with cursor positioning on the controls in the cockpit?

(I found no problem if the mouse cursor is on the right screen).

[maddabboyahoo.com]

Stereo FPS

 

Here are some FPS benchmarks for my machine in stereo with the oculus rift running:

Lenovo x220t i7 8GB 512SSD EGPU Nvidia GTX660TI

 

average fps from many p-51 instant action ground attack runs:

min 13

max 53

avg 26

 

Playable for me but definitely on the low end and still tweaking trade-offs. I need more power. For sure DCS threads nicely. If I turn off hyperthreading performance dies! I have not tried single core no threading. I may try to pop physX to CPU and GPU to see the difference. Does DCS use PhysX? Does DCS benefit from 2 SLI cards? Does it like 3 SLI cards?

 

Here's what I don't understand. CPU is only averaging 62% usage, GPU is only averaging 41% usage. GPU isn't near max and CPU isn't near max. I'm not sure what the bottleneck is. Any ideas. I'm not sure how a faster machine would help if the CPU isn't maxed out and the GPU isn't maxed out how can performance improve??

 

CPU% GPU GPUTDP FPS

MIN 46 27 42 9

MAX 73 94 74 47

AVG 62 41 59 22

 

Tex H

Scene H

Traffic L

Water H

Vis H

Heat On

Shadow L

1366x768

Stereo

AA 4x

HDR Normal

Clutter 800

Trees 6000

Preload 150000

Aero Disabled

Tree Shad On

Vsync On

Fullscreen On

Cockpit Shadows On

TSAA Off

[maddabboyahoo.com]

Your other right

 

Big thx for sharing your settings.

IMHO, both video formats - for Rifters and anaglyph - will be on demand.

 

And how is problem with cursor positioning on the controls in the cockpit?

(I found no problem if the mouse cursor is on the right screen).

 

Right as in Right Side or Right as in correct side?

 

I have major problems in stereo using mouse cursor to click cockpit controls. But I have not tried to close one Eye. Maybe that's what I should try to do but I think based on the stereo it the cursor is in the wrong spot somewhere in-between the stereo settings that varies where you look off to the sides. I think the DXVIEW value is probably throwing it more than eye shift but I'm not sure.

-mikey

[maddabboyahoo.com]

Dominant Eye

 

I'm not quite sure how dominant eye works but I'm guessing the dominant eye looks mostly straight to infinity and the non-dominant eye crosses varying amounts based on depth.

 

A dominant eye stereo might be possible by shifting the same distances but only away from the dominant eye which would have no shift. This might make that eye work properly for cursor control.

 

I'm going to try it tonight when I get home.

 

Any thoughts?

-mikey

[maddabboyahoo.com]

DCS performance

 

The official answer to complains on DCS performance is that it's very demanding on the CPU because of the physics and AI simulation. But when I said that the CPU is only half used while DCS is running I couldn't get an answer.

It looks like the CPU and the GPU spent their time idling waiting for something (waiting for each other to finish some job or data transfer perhaps?). Even more, you can verify that the lower the fps the lower the CPU and GPU load. Very frustrating.

 

Fascinating! So what happens on a faster machines vs slower machines? Are we all getting about the same framerates? Or does this dance of waiting for threads still occur much faster on faster machines?

 

If nobodies started a performance thread yet we should add one where people can post results and machine specs using a known track. Everyone places the same track file with the SU-25T with the same settings in game.

 

Using fraps and hwinfo we could map the performance and what the CPU GPUS are doing.

 

-michael

[ReviZorro]

Right as in Right Side or Right as in correct side?

 

I have major problems in stereo using mouse cursor to click cockpit controls. But I have not tried to close one Eye. Maybe that's what I should try to do but I think based on the stereo it the cursor is in the wrong spot somewhere in-between the stereo settings that varies where you look off to the sides. I think the DXVIEW value is probably throwing it more than eye shift but I'm not sure.

-mikey

 

Meant Right as opposite to Left.

 

Please, notice - this is only one mouse cursor for both two screens.

 

If cursor located on right screen - it reacts to controls just under it.

If cursor located on left screen - it reacts with large displacement to left side from top of a control.

 

On both screenshots control is meant as ADI Pitch Trim Knob.

(Sorry for iPhone shots - PrintScreen ignores mouse cursor).

Edited March 21, 2014 by ReviZorro

[maddabboyahoo.com]

THANKS!

[maddabboyahoo.com]

thanks mouse cursor working for me

 

[quote name=Please, notice - that is only one mouse cursor for both two screens.

 

If cursor located on right screen - it reacts to controls just under it.

If cursor located on left screen - it reacts with large displacement to left side from top of a control.

 

On both screenshots control is meant as ADI Pitch Trim Knob.

(Sorry for iPhone shots - PrintScreen ignores mouse cursor).[/quote]

 

Thanks!!

 

Now if I position in right view cursor works great!

 

I can even center it right view leave it there and use head tracking to click things somewhat.

 

Very cool!

-michael

[pacotito]

Since dcs is only two core software it wont max your CPU. I usually see around 35-40% usage. I'm not sure what CPU your are using but dcs is better on Intel due to higher ipc. Even with a matching clock spped Intel CPUs do more work than AMDs.

[ReviZorro]

THANKS!

 

You welcome :)

 

And big thanks for viewDx and eye_shift setting - saving a lot of time for me :)

0.12/0.025 is very relaxing for eyes.

[maddabboyahoo.com]

Great

 

You welcome :)

 

And big thanks for viewDx and eye_shift setting - saving a lot of time for me :)

0.12/0.025 is very relaxing for eyes.

 

:thumbup:

 

Great glad our eyes are similar. Probably means me spending hours in the rift isn't screwing up my eyes to badly if you find it relaxed also.

[maddabboyahoo.com]

no need to build cockpits anymore

 

I will still build physical cockpits to use with the Rift.

 

I was thinking. For racing games I'll just drag my steering wheel and my laptop out to my car in the Garage and hook the steering wheel up in the passenger side. No need for a racing pit any more. Real car can be used for racing.

I'm only half joking. The same is true for flight sim really. Just need laptop desk setup to mount stick or wheel too.

 

-mikey

[maddabboyahoo.com]

I'm seeing lot's of news about 5.5" smart phones with 2560x1440 resolution.

If samsung has 2K panels at that size in numbers to produce a phone I'm guessing oculus will hold out on the commercial until they can get 2k panels in numbers for the rift.

 

This is great for resolution but bad for GPU power. If DCS is going to be a premiere experience on the rift and most people can't get solid 40fps out of it doing stereo at current res there's going to need to be some miracles in optimization to do 2K stereo. That's 1280x1440 2x / frame at full detail. You'll also want 60-90fps minimum to meet the goals of oculus.

 

2K panels in the rift size are going to be available really soon. Power and optimized code to produce stereo rift worlds is going to take some time.

 

-mikey

[mhe]

Since DCS is mostly CPU limited in many cases and modern graphics cards cannot unleash their power because the rendering engine is really dated and does not utilize a lot of the more modern optimization methods, I expect this problem to be remedied when

 

a) when the engine itself becomes more threaded to utilize modern CPUs better (which is a ridiculous amount of coding work to achieve),

 

b) they get proper Multi-GPU support (which should also come with the new renderer I suppose, but won't solve being CPU-limited, only shift some workload from CPU to GPU)

 

c) they include Mantle support (which is also a lot of work and only helps with AMD GPUs)

 

VR is a highly demanding area, so you need beefy hardware to get a decent experience. Not supporting VR because many people lack the hardware to have it running perfectly is not an option and waiting for the hardware to run it properly on everybody's machine is also not an option. Something's gotta give here.

[blksolo]

This will help a lot with the controls issues http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/05/oculus-rift-and-thalmics-myo-armband-are-a-match-made-in-heaven-say-founders-and-investors/

[SkateZilla]

In theory Mantle is for any brand.

Yes, graphics detail level.

 

Mantle is only supported by AMD GCN GPU Currently, but they want to support nVidia Kepler+ GPUs too.

[mhe]

That myo looks interesting.

 

And I think I don't want to sacrifice detail at this point. Perhaps EDGE will make it possible to run high details at better framerates, but so far we are fairly CPU limited. So I won't hold my breath. As long as there are 60fps, I am happy. And that is possible already in fullscreen (only with Window mode and Helios, FPS drops).

[Wags]

Just a little update: we now have two dev kits with our Moscow studio.

 

Before you ask, I have no idea at this time when we might see native Rift support in DCS. When there is news on this front, I will drop a note.

[ReviZorro]

Just a little update: we now have two dev kits with our Moscow studio.

...

Two HD Dev Kits or two old (1280x800) Dev Kits?

[SkateZilla]

he already had the DK1, lol.

[blksolo]

Just a little update: we now have two dev kits with our Moscow studio.

 

Before you ask, I have no idea at this time when we might see native Rift support in DCS. When there is news on this front, I will drop a note.

Thanks for the update,I'm thinking the guys in Moscow will be playing with demos for a few weeks before they start anything lol