VR Checklist Uncommon Tips for maximized performance V3

I have made a no-nonsense guide for optimum performance in DCS VR. It's made in a checklist format for easy readability.

Pre Introduction Notes : Current Events Notation

September 9 2020

This section is kind of a report on recent findings, and things that have been uncovered.
1. I have been doing ALL of my testing in the MiG-21 pretty much and that was a mistake. I had recently done a recent round of hard core tweaking (found in here) and was really unhappy with the results. Yesterday I switched to the F-86, FW-190A8, and was shocked. I have a surplus of performance in those planes... better than good, but when it came to the MiG-21 it seemed to eat performance. This may be the case with other jets such as the F-14, AV-8B and others. So summary: It's not that hard to get good framerate in older planes without radar and advanced systems.

Which may yield hope since the future patchnotes mentions some work to be done on planes with radar to increase framerate... fingers crossed.

September 5 2020

1. I came here in a hurry to see if I accidentally gave false info about changing a Windows Graphics setting, and I was glad to see I didn't. Make sure you update your Graphics Driver. One from a couple months ago 7/2020 I believe, was absolutely horrible. The new drivers are back to normal.

2. I am just not happy in general with the performance of DCS in VR. They are SO close to getting it right, but checking the roadmap it doesn't look like we are going to see improvement expedited. I also see the trouble with spotting planes has been frenzily complained about since 2008 without a single attempt to make the situation better. I could say more, but it's none of my business.

3. Looking at a bunch of cross-talk, I'm seeing that Radar is possibly one cause of FPS drop, and I'm finding this to be true. Not Radar in general, just the displays in the cockpit. If I look to the left or right of my MiG-21 cockpit, it's pretty okay, but I get a "skip" when I look forward. They say this is actually being addressed. I hear similar things about other planes with Radar.

4. I would say most game tweakers will agree that we've reached a bit of a limit of what can be done and it's just barely workable... even pleasant for the most part. But it's still not stellar. I'm not opposed to using shaders and mods to further improve things. In the end, the goal of DCS in VR will be to make DCS into a VR game, which would be a bit different than DCS on desktop.

5. Last friendly note. Don't fall into that envy trap of worrying about buying a new GPU if you don't need to. I went all in on the biggest GPU at the time and it didn't give any giant improvement over the 1080 mini I was using before. It's not the hardware...

Guide Version 3 Introduction

Highstriker's VR for DCS Optimization Guide version 3 (Revision start date July 29 2020)

Okay! I've finally returned to the world of VR and just so happen to be optimizing DCS World again. I'll be writing a new guide because things have done a 180 to 360 in the world of VR. Things have been becoming a lot simpler, and new things discovered.


Changelog/Layout (perhaps to give early arrivers a guide of where I'm heading)

1. Simpler Introduction.
2. Things to know at set up (for all VR)
3. Graphics, Perfromance and Quality.
4. Running absolutely at minimum.

Things to know at set up for all VR

Some people use Oculus and some people use Valve, Vive and anything else that needs SteamVR.
I was a little hard on SteamVR in the beginning, there will be none of that now.

Unfortunately, Most people that ask me for help are in fact having issues with SteamVR.
Let me give some tips to try and help with that.

-We've all seen low FPS: game gets choppy, unpleasant, slow, but when a game is really not configured right and it's running way out of bounds may be something you might mistake for something else:

If you set your Pixel Density too high as an example; Your game will stutter, go into a 6DOF tracking mode, but otherwise will make you think it's "fine" just needs some tweaking. That's not the case, I don't want to say it's gone beyond what your system can do, but it means things aren't configured right (I had the same issue.)
In SteamVR, when it starts acting this way, it will strobe, and freeze and look like something is obviously wrong.
There will be an obvious apparent tracking problem, a mixture of not being able to render while you are moving, comes together to make it look like the tracking is broken.

-

2 in 1 supersampling checkup

I'll have to try and explain this in a way that will stay current as SteamVR is updated, but let's make sure that your supersampling is set to zero. It may have been set high in the past, it also may be doubling with in-game settings. People also may have upgraded their HMDs without realizing the increase in resolution generally means PD is now going to make a bigger performance hit.

Under SteamVR/settings/Video/Per-Application Video Settings Make sure you set each program back down to 100% as a general rule.

My DCS when returning was at 350 something, on a HMD with higher Res, PLUS 1.8 PD in DCS and it was not good.

So it's time to do a reset, just to make sure we are running well:
1. IF you use SteamVR reduce the Supersampling back down to 100% for DCS and any game you are having trouble with in SteamVR/settings/Video/Per-Application Video Settings
2. In DCS, reduce Pixel Density until all tracking errors go away.
3. If you have a higher resolution HMD, or have upgraded to one, remember, there is no free lunch If you ran at 1.8 PD before, you will probably have to run at 1.2-4 today. But that's a great thing. Everything is improved, so lowering your PD does not affect the look of your game... your headsets resolution is in fact "an increase in PD." So everything is good.

Okay the rest is under construction, here's the main points you need to know:
1. Start out by turning off ALL antialiasing both in your GPU control panel and in-game. It's mostly not necessary, and it may be luxury you can't afford. But thought: There is no better AA than more resolution.

2. DCS and NVidia both have Anisotropic Filtering maxxed by default. I really like AF in games, but turn this down to about 2x or 4x. It grows exponentially greatly in performance hit the higher you go.

-These two things are the major players in optimizing your game.

In a section below I make it clear what the other settings do, but most are negligable compared to these two.

I'll be back later with more improvements. Thank you.

First Settings

Before we start, these four settings need to be set.

First:

Make sure all of your VR devices are in USB 3.0 outlets

Even the newest, coolest Motherboards are pretty short on USB 3.0 outlets. And if they have them, they may not be where you expect them.
In Rift Home, you can see the properties of your sensors to see if they are in 3.0, use this as a measure to find your USB 3.0's. Vive you may be able to do the same. Even me.. just now, found that I had one of my sensors in a 2.0 slot, very sure it was in 3.0. So check it.

Set Output Dynamic Range to Full (nvidia)

You will thank me for this if you haven't done it before. Change your monitor's Output Dynamic Range to Full. If your monitor has always seemed washed out, or your adventure games aren't dark enough, this may be why. This won't make much difference in VR, but will make DCS look better in non-vr.

Go to Nvidia Control Panel, go down to Change Resolution. Go to the bottom right, choose "full" and hit apply. (good god I just remembered to do this... ahh what a great thing to do.)

Setup

1. Close everything.
Skype and browsers use an inordinate amount of RAM. Browsers can use up to 3-400mb of RAM, it doesn't sound like much but it really has an effect when the game also expects a lot, and also uses your GPU. Close your art programs and other similar things each time you play.

2. Many modern video card software often has Overclock mode, silent mode, etc. It does help to varying degrees.

DCS Setup

There are 2 folders and a couple files you want to delete (or backup on say, desktop.)
Under C:\Users\You\Saved Games\DCS:
FXO
Metashaders
and under Steam\Steamapps\Common\Bin, you want to delete any files starting with DX.

Run a repair/Verify Integrity of local files and restart the game.

This solved some crashing errors and slightly sped up loading times for me, and probably did some other minor helpful things.

Tips to improve your enjoyment of DCS and Flight Sims.

Check your Six

I have always had a problem with not being able to check my six in DCS World and other flight sims. I went searching for a solution, and even found one that was good! However, with how fast games get updated and how fast SteamVR gets updated, these mods likely fail every couple of weeks, and with my schedule, I can't be messing with that.

Let's face it, VR FOV isn't perfect. Even if you have better-than-some FOV, it's still not enough. People often say they can barely see to the rear of their wing, and this is true. Here is probably the best solution for now:

* Use recenter view, bound to a button. Look far to your right and press it. When you turn forward, you should now be looking pretty much to your rear left (or vise-versa.) I think this is a fair fix to make the game more enjoyable.

I hope this one helps some people because I could almost see it being a dealbreaker.

The Key to having a great time with DCS and VR is all in the set up.

If you get on, set a few controls, get off, it isn't really that enjoyable. But if you get on and all of your controls are all at your fingertips, you will have a great time every time you strap in.

It really is a game-fixer if you are less than happy.

My simple trick for fast set up

My controller has 12 buttons on it's base, so on a notebook, I draw 6 x 6 circles, write the name of the plane, then fill out the circles.
Top Left is always Landing Gear
Bottom Left always starts with Gun Safety cover off. And I work to the right from there.

On Korean and WW2 planes, so far bottom right row is being set for interior and exterior lights. (see, you can think of it as "extending" your controls to areas you might not think about.

And it's turning out the Top Right row is looking pretty open for systems.

For jets, Harrier for example I do the very same... except I modernize it.
Left side I try to reserve for landing/taxi systems, but right side I try to reserve for auxiliary sensor switches that you may need.

But let's forget that "layer" for a second.
Just get into a plane, set your flaps, wheel brake, speed brake, gear lever, throttle, etc... the basics... Then fill out the buttons in a way that is similar across all planes. You will form a strong association that the control area is "probably there." If you don't draw a diagram, just go to "adjust controls" and hit your buttons, and it will take you to their bindings.

DCS World Standard In-Game Settings

DCS Settings:


1. PreLoad Radius:
If it's set too low, your game will appear to freeze every short distance, but the higher you set it, the longer the load time as it's probably buffering to RAM. Don't zero it out, or max it. Set it at a good large range with a little extra. 32,000 to 40,000 (40km) is pretty ideal.

Doesn't play a role in VR performance, draw distance OF the objects does.

2. Draw distance: Your typical VR user can set this to medium or high. It has a very big impact. Testing needed for if it curtails drawing of enemy planes.
If it does not effect plane spotting, Low is just fine. Remember, your typical good VR game has very low draw distance, and our secret goal is to make DCS a good VR Game which needs to run like one.

3. Trees, Grass, Civilian Traffic and other visual goodies: Foliage does seem to impact VR strongly. I like to see a good amount of trees, but as a friend put it, grass really is zero importance.
Civilian traffic oddly gives me more situational awareness, so I leave that at high. I can't imagine that impacts things too bad.

4. MSAA, Anisotropic Filtering: MSAA: NONE. Plays almost no role in a high Pixel Density (our goal) situation. Higher resolution is the best AA and seems to surpass MSAA quickly.
Anisotropic Filtering: Is a sharpening of things in curves of perspective, and is a delightful thing in flight sims and can also enhance your Fresnel lense characteristics of your VR (clearer in the center) Set this to 4x. It has a fair effect on performance, you can remove it altogether if you wish.

5. Depth of Field, Dust, Flare: DOF may add some perf hit. But maybe not. It's a hard thing to calculate depending on how strongly it's calculated. Dust and Flare seem fine.

5. (In VR Options)
- Bind Mouse To Window - yes.

DCS World VR checklist

1. Press RightCtrl + Scroll Lock in game or at menu to see in Game FPS, press it twice for extended info.
2. Turn off ASW (Oculus press RTCtrl+numpad 1 while in game), For Vive and others, go into SteamVR and turn off Motion Smoothing.
3. SteamVR: Applications Tab: Make sure DCS is set at 100% not higher.
4. SteamVR: Audio: "When SteamVR is exited" configure this to your usual audio device so you don't have to manually change when you exit.
5. SteamVR: Video: Choose Manual Override Set it to 100% not higher. *1
6. DON'T launch DCS World in 2.5 mode. Only Oculus or SteamVR. *2
7. Nvidia Control Panel: Manage 3D Settings>Program Settings: Set VR pre rendered frames to "use application settings."
8. Nvidia Control Panel: Power management mode: Prefer Maximum Performance.


In-Game Settings
1. Set MSAA in-game to zero. *3
2. Turn textures to high.
3. Turn Building shadows to flat, and regular shadows to low.
4. View distance is a big factor. High is great. Medium won't hurt if you are tight on speed.

You are aiming for 45 frames per second (and low latency) If you finally end up with more than 45 frames per second, turn up your pixel density little by little til you have the best image quality you can.

Appendix:
*1: This affects SteamVR Applications tab. Ideally you want SteamVR to bump up the resolution of standard VR games, but DCS is different. Follow my directions then you can see how it works. If you want to set per-game settings, you can get higher resolution by using these sliders.
*2: If you have those "jumping back to loading screen" issues, this is why. 2.5 is hard to run even on my computer. Don't worry, you are still in 2.0 and that's good. 2.5 is super Beta for VR.
*3: MSAA is the most expensive AA. Pixel Density (oversampling) does a good job of being it's own AA. If you want to play with additional AA, set up FXAA in your card's control panel. It's way cheaper.

NVidia Control Panel Settings

A lot of misinformation is out there about how to set your NVidia control panel for DCS. In certain Youtube videos, even great content makers are giving incomplete advice. It's helpful, but the direction that's being giving is incorrect.

A lot of people see these settings as vague and hard to understand, but in fact they are extremely specific and useful. I'll guide you in setting the settings with a brief description so you can discern their usefulness.

1.

First of all, make sure you are changing the GAME's Setting. The first tab on the right panel is the global settings, The second tab is the actual per-game settings. If you change global, you are changing EVERY game's settings.

2. Control Panel Checklist

The NVCP is split into 3 sections: Antialiasing, Texture Filtering, and Frame modifiers. I'll put a mark ### next to things that you can increase if you see fit. I will add "**" next to things that make a big difference in graphics or performance.

1. Ambient Occlusion - not supported
2. Anisostropic Filtering - Application controlled

is ideal. DCS has up to 8x in it's own settings. This controls the sharpness of objects receding into the distance ie; panel lines and rivets, and lighting on curvatures.
Turning this up first in game, then here is not a bad idea but at some point will make textures look really crusty looking. Also has a growing performance impact. ### (This MAY help spotting aircraft)
Next is turning on FXAA. Definitely use this to replace MSAA in game. So turn off MSAA in game. It's a terrible factor in FPS, while FXAA is much less.

3. Antialiasing - FXAA = On.

4. Antialiasing - Gamma Correction = On.

no impact. AA by nature increases gamma.

5. Antialiasing - Mode = Override any program setting.

Think in terms of Sweetfx or Reshade, this is an overriding injection.

6. Antialiasing - Setting = 2x or 4x

### Not much is needed for VR. Pixel Density increase is itself a useful form of AA.

7. Antialiasing Transparency - I personally have this to OFF.

I have not seen a case in game where it's even called for. Normally it's used when you see patterns or glitches in tinted glass items or fading objects.

8. CUDA -GPUs = All

9. Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames = Application controlled.

VR does not make use of this feature at all.

10. Multi Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) = Off.

11. OpenGL Rendering GPU = Select your card.
sidenote here: I read every driver patchnotes cover to cover for years. Last year or so, in one of the patch notes, it made mention that selecting your GPU in the PhysX section, vs autoselect, was actually beneficial. This seems to be a characteristic of NVidia's way of doing things, so *I* personally identify the item when given the choice.

***12. Power Management Mode = Prefer Maximum Performance.

This singly will give you the biggest boost in FPS, but does increase temps. Only use if your computer is well maintained.

13. Shader Cache = On.
14. Texture Filtering - Anisostropic Filter Optimization = On

(may need to revisit this. May cause bad shadows)

15. Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias = Clamp

(relies on Aniso Filter Optimization, may revisit)

**16. Texture Filtering - Quality = High Performance.

This. Is awesome. Turn this to performance instead of quality, and your textures will be sharper. Turning on quality smooths pixels which you really don't want in DCS because the details are so fine. With this you'll be able to read text written on your plane and more. So don't do Quality... you want it to be finely pixelated.
(image by Aublak)

16. Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization = On
17. Texture Filtering - Threaded Optimization = Auto

18. Triple Buffering = Off

19. Vertical Sync = Use the 3D application setting.

**20. Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames = Use the 3D application setting.

It's going around that setting this to "use the application" gives much better performance than setting it to 1 or more, and I have to agree.

Misinfo:
Often you will hear someone say to change the PhysX to CPU. My friends and I spent an entire weekend testing a bunch of different cards and benchmarking and only one performed better on CPU, a GTX650, and only by a small percent. GPU of all other cards was over 50% better than CPU. It's very old advice when PhysX was very new.

Helpful tips and tricks

Coming soon:

1.

Changing the aircraft in the hangar at startup:

Okay hardly worth mentioning because the demo models look terrible!
But, Open C:\Steam\Steamapps\Common\DCS World\Scripts\DemoScenes\sceneVR.lua

Back up sceneVR.lua.

Change the "su-27" name in the line: scene.m = sceneAPI:addModel("su-27", 0, 2.4, 0);

The usable model names are located in here:
C:\Steam\Steamapps\Common\DCS World OpenBeta\Bazar\World\Shapes

These don't even seem to be game models, but possibly roughed out demonstration models or placeholders. A FEW of them look "okay." There may be a winner in the bunch.

There's other settings for gear up/down, position, rotation. Will post those soon.

2.

VR Hand controls.

The developers make it clear that the hand controls are very beta and don't really work as yet. But if you have Rift, to turn a knob positive(+) point and press trigger with your hand right side up.
To turn it negative(-) Turn your hand and controller upside down and press the trigger.

VR Headset Maintenance and Longevity

Coming soon:


To maintain your VR headset takes some work. It's very fragile and can be damaged easily.

To keep it from overheating, it can be a good idea to right click on your Oculus Home exe, go to Compatibility and turn it to Run as Administrator. This will keep it from turning on and staying on if you get too close to the sensor, or if light in your room causes the sensor to trip. It will stay off. To use your headset, manually open the Home service.


In SteamVR settings, under Developer, Choose and put a check in "Pause rendering when headset is idle."

[hatsune miku]

How does DLSS fare in with, you mentioned that bigger resolutions are better than AA and was wondering with that would it improve clarity with minimal impact to performance?

[Oper]

oh dude, you didn't even include improved shaders in the guide that greatly increase the performance boost. Or how about ASW and a fixed 45 fps?

[Highstriker]

It's a little on the easy side. There isn't many options.

[nelsonontheradio]

Oculus for DCS is like powerpoint hell

[Highstriker]

Mostly done with rewrites. Just have to remove some old info. Check the section about Steam's Supersampling and about "Check your Six," I hope this one will greatly improve your fun in DCS.

[Highstriker]

Okay I'm finally getting my new VR setup. After a huge amount of comparing (and a little curiosity) I'm going with the Quest. Index may be my true headset, but the waiting list is long. So I'll be able to revise this and help with recent questions.

One thing I'm liking for Quest is a bit of declutter. This time last year I had HOTAS, steering wheels and Rift all over the place. A small part of my decision was it's right in a certain spot where I'm curious to see if it's good.

[Highstriker]

If you are asking about any CP AA, the shadows should be a giveaway. What I think happens is the shadow resolution is WAY lower than the display itself, so it's like you have one phase of AA fighting with a slower phase of AA at a different scale. So they are each 50-50 trying to make it to the front stage (screen) and makes that exact pattern.

Goon, this is my first hearing of SPS and sounds amazing. I'm surprised it's not an NVidia over-ride. Here's my judgement: I think people in DCS will soon figure out how to force it to work.
Something new like this takes a few months to be added to game. DCS is medium fast at implementing new things like this, so I would expect it... but I'm betting a player will crack the code any minute. I'll definitely get back to you when I move and get DCS updated, or if I hear anything new.

[Highstriker]

Hey Gumby7, Hey Goon. I've been busy irl and haven't checked into DCS since recent update.
So I don't know if there is a problem with MSAA. One way to tell is to crank NVidia FXAA to full with in-game AA off, it should make edges super pixellated... smooth but "grainy"

That's why I like FXAA, back in early ARMA 2 days, it gives a smooth realistic look, but also a super sharp "game look" into the distance which I find pleasing.

Another sure way to tell is look at cockpit shadows, if they look mike Venetian blinds it means your AA is on. -This isn't my best or most accurate advice, but I have bad net at the minute and can't test for sure. I'll read up on it.

[Ketama73]

Is it possible to use SPS from NVidia with DCS?

[gumby7]

@Highstriker Thanks for making this! Since the 2.5.6 update, are you having any issues with using nvidia control panel AA instead of the in-game MSAA?

This youtuber seems to have the same issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkzHTclRIgQ&list=WL&index=99&t=0s