HP's Reverb VR Pro Headset

the reverb and the pimax have less stereo coverage of the screens. the pimax because of extra fov and the reverb because the screens chosen are small.

its the overlapping image in stereoscopic that gives the 3d effect.

and in the reverb and pimax you get less of it than say the rift cv-1.

why it may feel flat and you cannot explain it.

Hmm, interesting theory.

I'd like to just get to the part where I have them in hand and can make my own assessment!

No offence to anyone here, but this is all very subjective, and what I am willing to accept in performance and image quality may be very different from others.

@Alec DeLorean - Thanks for that. I will take a look. Just curious, do you run processlasso every time you go into DCS? or just once? How does this fix processor affinity? I saw the PDF, but the how and why weren't very clear...

the reverb and the pimax have less stereo coverage of the screens. the pimax because of extra fov and the reverb because the screens chosen are small.

its the overlapping image in stereoscopic that gives the 3d effect.

and in the reverb and pimax you get less of it than say the rift cv-1.

why it may feel flat and you cannot explain it.

If that is the case then people with lower IPD will have wider FOV but lower 3D effect and people with higher IPD will have lower FOV but better 3D perception.

Then what is the min and max IPD for the reverb again? I wanna make sure I’m on the high side.

Hmm, interesting theory.

they mention it in this review here.

If that is the case then people with lower IPD will have wider FOV but lower 3D effect and people with higher IPD will have lower FOV but better 3D perception.

 

Then what is the min and max IPD for the reverb again? I wanna make sure I’m on the high side.

Not sure that stacks up. I'm 69mm!

In software, I think it's 59-67mm. I have it set to 67mm and it looks fine to me, except for the topic in hand!

they mention it in this review here.

 

Yep, seen that. Not sure they relate the stereo overlap with lack of image depth though. Maybe they do, I can't remember.

:cry::cry:

Not sure that stacks up. I'm 69mm!

In software, I think it's 59-67mm. I have it set to 67mm and it looks fine to me, except for the topic in hand!

Then who ever is saying it’s kinda flat what please post your IPD

Thanks for the response FF. I'll get the fpsVR and see what else I can see.

 

I think you may be right - the card knows it won't make 90hz so it jumps down and idles while using the repro. Did a bit more testing in the same mission, I can get 70-90 FPS in that mission without repro on. I think repro in Auto will kick in if there is even the slightest whiff the frames will not stay above 60 hehe. I'll test a bit more tonight with MSI and possibly fpsVR on to see what is going on.

 

And for those who want WMR native, I'd agree with Seconda - things are pretty stable with SteamVR right now. I kinda don't want that to go away...

One thing I forgot to say yesterday and wanted to add, is that your CPU utilization indication can sometimes be a bit deceptive. Because DCS only uses one main rendering physical thread (the other one for sound and some housekeeping I believe) then it used to be the case on something like Windows 7 and an i5 2500K that you'd see 'Core 0' (or whatever was the launch core) be maxed out at 100%. You'd still see an overall 25% utilization (because cores 1,2,3 weren't doing much), but it was obvious DCS was CPU bound.

Now with Windows 10 and its new Thread Scheduler, it uses a new technique for CPU thermal management called 'core hopping'. What is happening is that the overloaded physical thread (of DCS giving all those DX11 instructions) is bounced between cores more rapidly. This helps the CPU stay cooler, but gives a bit of a false impression that DCS is uses more cores and is not CPU bound. You can play with the process affinity and such to try to prevent it, but on something like a Skylake gen chip it's pretty efficient hopping and you won't gain much.

So generally you can max out the GPU using MSAA using a high VR resolution and it should be typically to see 90% usage on that, if the power profiles on the card are ok. If you have GPU headroom (unlikely with VR) then antialiasing is good.

For the CPU and an i9 it would be typical to show 10-15% utilization and DCS would still be showing it is CPU 100% bound on the single core. The bottleneck is the CPU not being able to feed the GPU pipeline instructions fast enough in this single threaded game loop. This is a restriction of DX11 and the engine that DCS uses, and will hopefully evolve over time as they move to the Vulkan API. If you have CPU headroom (again, unlikely in VR with the single core) then Visib Range and object count could be increased.

Anyway, a bit off topic, but if you are checking out fpsVR then I wanted to provide some info around what you might see as the bottleneck.

One thing I forgot to say yesterday and wanted to add, is that your CPU utilization indication can sometimes be a bit deceptive. Because DCS only uses one main rendering physical thread (the other one for sound and some housekeeping I believe) then it used to be the case on something like Windows 7 and an i5 2500K that you'd see 'Core 0' (or whatever was the launch core) be maxed out at 100%. You'd still see an overall 25% utilization (because cores 1,2,3 weren't doing much), but it was obvious DCS was CPU bound.

 

Now with Windows 10 and its new Thread Scheduler, it uses a new technique for CPU thermal management called 'core hopping'. What is happening is that the overloaded physical thread (of DCS giving all those DX11 instructions) is bounced between cores more rapidly. This helps the CPU stay cooler, but gives a bit of a false impression that DCS is uses more cores and is not CPU bound. You can play with the process affinity and such to try to prevent it, but on something like a Skylake gen chip it's pretty efficient hopping and you won't gain much.

 

So generally you can max out the GPU using MSAA using a high VR resolution and it should be typically to see 90% usage on that, if the power profiles on the card are ok. If you have GPU headroom (unlikely with VR) then antialiasing is good.

 

For the CPU and an i9 it would be typical to show 10-15% utilization and DCS would still be showing it is CPU 100% bound on the single core. The bottleneck is the CPU not being able to feed the GPU pipeline instructions fast enough in this single threaded game loop. This is a restriction of DX11 and the engine that DCS uses, and will hopefully evolve over time as they move to the Vulkan API. If you have CPU headroom (again, unlikely in VR with the single core) then Visib Range and object count could be increased.

 

Anyway, a bit off topic, but if you are checking out fpsVR then I wanted to provide some info around what you might see as the bottleneck.

Is this not compensated for by fpsVR as it shows the max load of any core at that point in time?

This should be published IMO. Nice work. The why this was working so well eluded me a bit. :thumbup:

 

So what if SteamVR goes away?

Thanks. I'm working on an article at Mudspike to try to gather up the various VR tips and whys, as it's a really confusing subject for all and probably worth consolidating.

If SteamVR goes away, in some ways all it is doing now is (a) identifying the WMR device as an OpenVR API device for the pass-through of calls to the underlying driver (this is a very small run-time overhead in reality, but interesting to see what ED find here in profiling DCS with it) and (b) providing the target resolution to up or downsample to, through the SteamVR SS value.

DCS already has pixel density, so I guess we would just have to use that. The WMR does everything else already, reprojection etc.

The only wrinkle in this is Microsoft continue to full support and grow out the Win32 mixed reality side or not. They have more reason than any (being the awkward third child) to put full effort behind something cross-company like OpenXR as the main API. Out of all the partners, they put the most effort into a OpenXR runtime for their devices. Valve will likely go that way, but I'd imagine Facebook/Oculus are just stalling or playing along - it makes more sense for them to be a closed stack business-wise.

Is this not compensated for by fpsVR as it shows the max load of any core at that point in time?

Kinda. :)

fpsVR has CPU Usage, which is the average across all the cores, like the Windows Task Manager would show. It also has a CPUmax/thread percentage that indicates the highest loaded core percentage. That is better than plain avg usage, but not perfect as it is still time sampling between the core hopping (or rather, it is using an underlying API that does that, and fpsVR reads it and passes it on).

Ok - quickly tried the Process Lasso suggestion and it cleared up my stuttering issues. I have pushed the SteamVR SS to 180% and 200% with 8x AF, no MSAA, and I got 45 frames consistent, no stuttering in the Sochi Free Flight. Interestingly, my CPU and GPU utilization still stayed at ~50% in MSI, which puzzled me with the jump from 180% to 200%. Need to do more specific testing but it is definitely SMOOTHER.

Process Lasso config for DCS

Priority Class - high

CPU Affinity - left it alone; there is no Single CPU option on the newer version. Default was no affinity

IO Priority - high

Application Power Priority - High Performance

I didn't set the mem priority so that stayed as is which I think was defaulted to normal (highest available setting)

Good stuff - Thanks Alec DeLorean and FearlessFrog. This experience is getting much better on my current hardware, which will be really amazing on the new hardware!

the reverb and the pimax have less stereo coverage of the screens. the pimax because of extra fov and the reverb because the screens chosen are small.

its the overlapping image in stereoscopic that gives the 3d effect.

and in the reverb and pimax you get less of it than say the rift cv-1.

why it may feel flat and you cannot explain it.

Source for this? Reverb specifically.

I get the theory, but the reverb size wise is pretty close to the CV1 from my understanding, screens gotta be pretty close too. Optics are squircle so thats different.

Kinda. :)

 

fpsVR has CPU Usage, which is the average across all the cores, like the Windows Task Manager would show. It also has a CPUmax/thread percentage that indicates the highest loaded core percentage. That is better than plain avg usage, but not perfect as it is still time sampling between the core hopping (or rather, it is using an underlying API that does that, and fpsVR reads it and passes it on).

Yep, it was the CPUMax/Thread I was talking about.

fpsVR is an essential tool for this kind of thing. I honestly don't know how people try to monitor GPU/CPU loads in VR without it!

Good stuff - Thanks Alec DeLorean and FearlessFrog. This experience is getting much better on my current hardware, which will be really amazing on the new hardware!

You have a 9900k and a 2080ti... What new hardware could possibly be on the horizon to give a big boost to DCS?

FspVR provide very useful information for me.

I see percentage usage for cpu, GPU and RAM.

Also how much of the GPU ram is used.

Good tool to have to see how your system is doing in vr.

@Harlikwin - less boost more clarity...Reverb and Index are both on the way...

What can I say? I'm spoiled :P

You have a 9900k and a 2080ti... What new hardware could possibly be on the horizon to give a big boost to DCS?

Source for this? Reverb specifically.

I get the theory, but the reverb size wise is pretty close to the CV1 from my understanding, screens gotta be pretty close too. Optics are squircle so thats different.

11:30 into the review I posted before they talk about the screen physical size

it may be in the review for the vive index where they talk about it again

@Harlikwin - less boost more clarity...Reverb and Index are both on the way...

 

What can I say? I'm spoiled :P

I'm just confused by what you're saying... Are you talking about the VR improvement?

11:30 into the review I posted before they talk about the screen physical size

it may be in the review for the vive index where they talk about it again

Got it. They never really say by how much though. Is the difference in a 1.3 vs 1.4 or 1.5" panel huge? Probably not. And thats something you engineer around anyway. They also said it wasn't an issue at all for one guy, and a minimal problem for the other guy.

I just got the Reverb two hours ago and setup was basically plugging it in and making one adjustment on the video resolution from my Lenovo Explorer in SteamVR. The clarity and performance on my setup is very good with the way I have the settings. I can read everything inside the cockpit now but also can spot planes a lot better at a distance which I was just testing. The SDE is basically gone although if you really concentrate you can barely make out the very tiny pixels. My sweet spot also took a big jump but my IPD is 64 mm but I am actually using glasses which are working fine. I am very slightly near-sighted with the minimum prescription and am very close to not needing glasses at all. I also thought the audio is very good.

 

The only complaint I have at the moment is the heavy cable. I routed it around the back over a home theater recliner seat I use and then I forgot about it. A few zip ties might help too. I can't see any mura - even looking at a white screen.

 

I am curious on folks are handling that cable. The cable seems longer than my Lenovo Explorer.

 

:thumbup:

Anyone using a Reverb with an RTX2070? Would like to avoid another £1,100 for a 2080TI.

Thanks

Ed

@harlikwin - so what I am doing now is validating my configuration with what I have since the Reverb will just likely be more of the same, just at a higher res. I figure if the WMR, SteamVR, and DCS settings give me a good experience before the Reverb arrives, I'll be in a better position to see the difference the native HMD resolution makes.

This is also a learning journey for me in terms of getting good VR clarity with other apps. Since I decided to get an index, I am likely going to expand my VR experience beyond DCS. I've played Elite Dangerous and would like to try Onward, and a few other titles. I think I can say DCS is likely one of the most demanding titles for VR.

I would shift the SS to SteamVR as many of us are doing with the PD at 1.0 in DCS and see how it goes before I would buy a new card with a 2070. I suspect it will do ok. Especially if OC'd.

XPlane is real demanding in VR one of the reviewer/testers said. Even more so than DCS.

I tried using the SteamVR beta motion setting (uncommented it) and see a bit less judder when looking sideways close to the ground. The DCS FPS display is stuck on 45 FPS. I think the jury is still out about how much of an improvement it really is for my setup/config. since it is in that 58-60 FPS (without the motion setting) at the moment with the Reverb when near terrain. Still doing minor tweaking.

Anyone using a Reverb with an RTX2070? Would like to avoid another £1,100 for a 2080TI.

 

Thanks

 

Ed