New To VR - Poor Performance Question

[Hammir]

I have been toying with my Quest 2 for a week or so, it runs great on my setup so far which is a i7 9700 K@5 ghz, RTX 2060, and 16 gigs of ram. All the Oculus App store stuff runs great, it was good fun (much less demanidng, I know). So, I set off to set up VR for Steam (which took some doing), which is why I really wanted purchase a VR set.

I get SteamVR working. Great. I start it up, it seems to run fine in my "home" or whatever Steam calls it. I start DCS world, and it gets janky immediately. I am wresting with the controls; the mouse seems to want to work against the quest controllers, menus are flashing, etc. I manage to get into fly the base game with the SU25 only to experience approximately 5 frames a second. Quite frustrating.

Based on my computer specs, is that the I should expect? Or is some underlying issue? I know there is a way to cut the Oculus software out of the chain of play, will that increase performance? I would think there are other tweaks I could perform to help. I did not tweak graphic settings at all in the game, I don't believe the issues were in-game graphics related as the menus and such were wonky as soon as I started. I have not tried any other Steam games at this point, so this is my baseline.

Is this what I should expect with my setup? Or is there something amiss I can fix?

[Ho Chi]

be careful where you set pixel settings , in quest 2 i have Occulus tray tool set for 1.6 and 30hz AWS ... steam VR set at 100% and DCS @ 1.0 ... mileage may vary but setting too high will tank your frames.

[Ho Chi]

too low will look awful and pixelated too so its a fine balance between visual and performance.

[Jharvis]

Basics:
try to match your resolution in steamvr and the native quest 2 resolution (found 1832x1920 on the internet for your device).
check that DCS Pixel Density is only 1.0 (in VR menu in DCS), disable msaa, ssla, sslr, change shadows to flat. If you're still low on fps, change anything to low and try to figure out, what impacts most

Advanced and mods:
if you don't mind some rendering glitches and artifacts (Heatblur not in stereoscope, river rendering artifacts on the sea, some bugs with shadows), they are only minor, but ymmv, try to find autoexec.cfg in Saved Games/DCS/Config. If it's not there create it and write "options.graphics.stereo_mode_use_shared_parser = true", it is experimental frustum culling.

If you don't mind some mods, try kegetys VR Shaders and Mustangs shadow shaders:

Kegetys:
https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/183659-shaders-mod-for-better-vr-performance-experimental
Mustang:
https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/241412-256xxxxx-adjusted-shaders/?tab=comments#comment-242261


You could try to adapt this guide for your HMD:
https://vr4dcs.com/2020/12/24/how-to-nail-reverb-setup/

Edit:
if you're not using your oculus controllers for flying i would disable them in the dcs vr menu and use mouse for menu control

[Hammir]

Originally posted by Jharvis:

Basics:
try to match your resolution in steamvr and the native quest 2 resolution (found 1832x1920 on the internet for your device).
check that DCS Pixel Density is only 1.0 (in VR menu in DCS), disable msaa, ssla, sslr, change shadows to flat. If you're still low on fps, change anything to low and try to figure out, what impacts most

Advanced and mods:
if you don't mind some rendering glitches and artifacts (Heatblur not in stereoscope, river rendering artifacts on the sea, some bugs with shadows), they are only minor, but ymmv, try to find autoexec.cfg in Saved Games/DCS/Config. If it's not there create it and write "options.graphics.stereo_mode_use_shared_parser = true", it is experimental frustum culling.

If you don't mind some mods, try kegetys VR Shaders and Mustangs shadow shaders:

Kegetys:
https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/183659-shaders-mod-for-better-vr-performance-experimental
Mustang:
https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/241412-256xxxxx-adjusted-shaders/?tab=comments#comment-242261


You could try to adapt this guide for your HMD:
https://vr4dcs.com/2020/12/24/how-to-nail-reverb-setup/

Edit:
if you're not using your oculus controllers for flying i would disable them in the dcs vr menu and use mouse for menu control

Wow, that is a lot to process - I will give it a go. Thank you for the detailed response. I did manage to Get Elite Dangerous running, and that ran great as far as I can tell.

[Hammir]

Originally posted by Ho Chi Minge:

be careful where you set pixel settings , in quest 2 i have Occulus tray tool set for 1.6 and 30hz AWS ... steam VR set at 100% and DCS @ 1.0 ... mileage may vary but setting too high will tank your frames.

I have done some research on pixel settings, at some point I will have to roll my sleeves up and give that go. Thanks for the tip.

[VRFlightGuyInPJPants]

Welcome to another game of its own -- VR tuning.

I have similar rig -- a Dell G5-15 laptop with slower CPU, same GPU and RAM.

First of all, do not expect 95 to 65 fps those big guys are running at. Our rig is simply subpar, but much better than Star Wars Squadrons.

If you aim for around 35 fps with a quite readable HUD, I can share some setting with you, but bear in mind, YMMV.

I am sorry I am going to type a longish message, so I be patience.

These are a few layers of tuning you can do:

1. Hardware - CPU and GPU : this involves overclocking and lowering the voltage. I do not know how to and since mine is a laptop, I suspect there are not much I can do. But make sure that all CPU cores are assigned to the game.

2. Windows 10 -- turn off game bar, game mode in the Settings, and make sure you disable "full-screen optimisation" of the DCS.EXE Also, if there is no autoexec.cfg at the Saved Games\DCS\Config, create one and add these 2 lines:
no_device_hotplug = true
options.graphics.stereo_mode_use_shared_parser = true

3. Networking - if you are not using Oculus Link, then you better have a dedicated subnet for both the game PC and the OQ2. WiFi6 router would be ideal, but I am using a WiFi5 router running at 866Mbps and the networking lag is minimal

Also, you need to change the settings on Virtual Desktop but I can share the settings there if you are also flying wirelessly.

4. nVidia Control Panel - I only turn on:
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction
CDUA -GPUs - All
Power Management Mode - Perform maximum performance
Shader Cache - On
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD bias - Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality - High Performance
Trilinear Filter - On
Threaded optimisation - On

Turn everything other than above off

5. Install Oculus Tray Tool
Default Super Sampling - 1.6x
Default ASW mode - 18Hz
Power setting - all High performance

And have it run when either you start your rig or before playing DCS

6. SteamVR - do not turn on any motion smoothing nor super sampling. Change the game resolution, I am playing it at 250%

Consider purchasing fpsVR, which measures performance, also the GPU usage, GPU RAM usages, CPU usage and RAM usage %. Great to know which settings are helping.

7. Install the shaders mod recommended above

8. DCS - turn off all setting which make up of 4 letters. but keep the visual range to medium. Keep both shadow options as low as possible. The mirrors are useless, either turn them off or keep the "cockpit" resolution as low as possible. For VR PD setting, I cannot go beyond 0.7 to keep good balance between frame rate with acceptable quality of textures.

When you are tuning, try and keep to change one setting at a time. Then do a test flight. If it is does not help with the balance between performance and display quality, revert it.

Good luck and enjoy the extra game at not much cost.

[Hammir]

Originally posted by VRFlightGuyInPJPants:

Welcome to another game of its own -- VR tuning.

I have similar rig -- a Dell G5-15 laptop with slower CPU, same GPU and RAM.

First of all, do not expect 95 to 65 fps those big guys are running at. Our rig is simply subpar, but much better than Star Wars Squadrons.

If you aim for around 35 fps with a quite readable HUD, I can share some setting with you, but bear in mind, YMMV.

I am sorry I am going to type a longish message, so I be patience.

These are a few layers of tuning you can do:

1. Hardware - CPU and GPU : this involves overclocking and lowering the voltage. I do not know how to and since mine is a laptop, I suspect there are not much I can do. But make sure that all CPU cores are assigned to the game.

2. Windows 10 -- turn off game bar, game mode in the Settings, and make sure you disable "full-screen optimisation" of the DCS.EXE Also, if there is no autoexec.cfg at the Saved Games\DCS\Config, create one and add these 2 lines:
no_device_hotplug = true
options.graphics.stereo_mode_use_shared_parser = true

3. Networking - if you are not using Oculus Link, then you better have a dedicated subnet for both the game PC and the OQ2. WiFi6 router would be ideal, but I am using a WiFi5 router running at 866Mbps and the networking lag is minimal

Also, you need to change the settings on Virtual Desktop but I can share the settings there if you are also flying wirelessly.

4. nVidia Control Panel - I only turn on:
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction
CDUA -GPUs - All
Power Management Mode - Perform maximum performance
Shader Cache - On
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD bias - Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality - High Performance
Trilinear Filter - On
Threaded optimisation - On

Turn everything other than above off

5. Install Oculus Tray Tool
Default Super Sampling - 1.6x
Default ASW mode - 18Hz
Power setting - all High performance

And have it run when either you start your rig or before playing DCS

6. SteamVR - do not turn on any motion smoothing nor super sampling. Change the game resolution, I am playing it at 250%

Consider purchasing fpsVR, which measures performance, also the GPU usage, GPU RAM usages, CPU usage and RAM usage %. Great to know which settings are helping.

7. Install the shaders mod recommended above

8. DCS - turn off all setting which make up of 4 letters. but keep the visual range to medium. Keep both shadow options as low as possible. The mirrors are useless, either turn them off or keep the "cockpit" resolution as low as possible. For VR PD setting, I cannot go beyond 0.7 to keep good balance between frame rate with acceptable quality of textures.

When you are tuning, try and keep to change one setting at a time. Then do a test flight. If it is does not help with the balance between performance and display quality, revert it.

Good luck and enjoy the extra game at not much cost.

Wow - thank you. Some of those tweaks I have already performed, some I am familiar with but have not had the time to research and or implement, and some are new to me. You put it together and wrapped it up tightly, and presented it perfectly - thanks! I am still figuring the VR thing out (I have been building computers for 3 decades) but I am a VR neophyte.

I sincerely appreciate the help, and I will spend next weekend giving it the sophomore try!

[VRFlightGuyInPJPants]

I started seriously flying F/A-18C after Xmas sale (cough) and there is nothing like flying in VR and since my rig is so, well, and I just have time to try things around. I basically stop doing this right now since the other game is more fun. Also a lot of people here and on the official Discord help out a lot.