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personally I think .525 short sold a lot of HMDs, as I had to use .625 for the Rift CV1. I use .675 for the reverb.

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personally I think .525 short sold a lot of HMDs, as I had to use .625 for the Rift CV1. I use .675 for the reverb.

 

When I used this mod, I had 0.525 for the Reverb. Seems to depend on your face, IPD, etc.

 

Trial and error is the way.

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When I used this mod, I had 0.525 for the Reverb. Seems to depend on your face, IPD, etc.

 

Trial and error is the way.

 

At 0.525 I do not see any dark or not rendered edges around in VR...so with my IPD (63.5) it would seem I could try to reduce little bit more, right?

 

No need to empty fxo and metashaders2 in this case, right?

 

Another thing I need to clarify is which masksize is dominant with these shaders mod?

 

One in DCS VR settings or only MASKSIZE in _HMD.hlsl file?

 

Or these are maybe 2 different settings?

 

Thanks again!

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With the Pimax 5k+ on Normal FoV I found mask size of .725 to be about right. If anybody else has been trying to dial it in.

 

Has anybody tried large FoV? I haven't because I run in 144hz mode. But I'm curious of what the mask size is for large FoV

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I've been able to make this mod run eventually. Having to restart DCS and let the rest of the shaders recompile was the key.

 

But well, I don't get any performance improvement at all by this. Absolutely nothing. Caucasus at 45fps with no AI, down to 22 with a few AI units active, and just 7fps on the Channel. VR performance in DCS is absolutely pathetic...

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At 0.525 I do not see any dark or not rendered edges around in VR...so with my IPD (63.5) it would seem I could try to reduce little bit more, right?

 

No need to empty fxo and metashaders2 in this case, right?

 

Another thing I need to clarify is which masksize is dominant with these shaders mod?

 

One in DCS VR settings or only MASKSIZE in _HMD.hlsl file?

 

Or these are maybe 2 different settings?

 

Thanks again!

What two masksize are you looking at there is only one now in_hmd.hlsl afaik?

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I've been able to make this mod run eventually. Having to restart DCS and let the rest of the shaders recompile was the key.

 

But well, I don't get any performance improvement at all by this. Absolutely nothing. Caucasus at 45fps with no AI, down to 22 with a few AI units active, and just 7fps on the Channel. VR performance in DCS is absolutely pathetic...

 

I’m not quite sure I understand this...

 

What are your specs, what are your settings, what mods do you have applied, how are you measuring improvement?

 

The bit I really don’t understand is the delta you are seeing under what circumstances between Caucasus and Channel... Channel is beta and bugged, but I get 38 to 45 with occasional spikes into slide ware as I turn into built up areas. I’m not suggesting it’s playable

 

My suggestion is you remove all the mods you have, run repair, because some of them do interfere with each other, start with low settings , and measure using frame times with FPSVR not displayed FPS as these numbers are typically pegged by asw or motion vectoring. And then apply the mod, and then adjust one setting and proceed and repeat..

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I don't know if the Windows Performance tab is the best tool to use but I ran another test this morning with and without the shaders MOD (speed-of-heat's version).

 

Most of my threads were about the same, but thread 0 (zero) is the one that DCS hammers.

 

Without MOD = approx. 87%

With MOD = approx. 90%

 

I wonder if something has changed because this MOD used to give me better performance over raw DCS. I repeated this comparison twice, both times the MOD increased utilization by about 3%.

 

The Test :

  • Clear fxo and metashaders2 folders
  • Start Steam, WMR, StreamVR, task manager, Word, DCS
  • Launch F/A-18C Free Flight in Caucasus
  • Active Pause
  • Wait 5 minutes for thread graphs to level
  • Screenshot and paste into Word

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I’m not quite sure I understand this...

 

What are your specs, what are your settings, what mods do you have applied, how are you measuring improvement?

 

The bit I really don’t understand is the delta you are seeing under what circumstances between Caucasus and Channel... Channel is beta and bugged, but I get 38 to 45 with occasional spikes into slide ware as I turn into built up areas. I’m not suggesting it’s playable

 

My suggestion is you remove all the mods you have, run repair, because some of them do interfere with each other, start with low settings , and measure using frame times with FPSVR not displayed FPS as these numbers are typically pegged by asw or motion vectoring. And then apply the mod, and then adjust one setting and proceed and repeat..

 

I think I've posted my specs several times in the performance threads, but I'm planning to add those to my profile page somehow, along with the settings, so it's probably going to be some screenshots with all the info. Makes it easier to have those there all the time anyway. My specs are here. Differences are the 442.19 drivers and some settings. Haven't upped my drivers since the 445s have been known for dropping the fps a lot in DCS. I set the shadows to flat only when the SC arrived and because of the ultra-low fps on the channel I lowered the visibility range to medium (some history here: Was on med on my 970, cranked to high on the 1080 and when the Tomcat dropped with some major fps hit of around 60% I saw it made no difference in fps when set to extreme at which I left it until recently), water and htblr to low and displays to 512 - just to see what I get. Made absolutely no difference in VR though, but that's probably the reason I get up to 200fps in pancake mode now - with the settings as seen in the thread I linked I usually was around 90-120 there. My guess is that my 8yo CPU literally is bottlenecking the whole system here especially considering some AI units around (instant action missions) make the performance drop like a rock, but I won't be able to replace my hardware within ~ a year.

 

One thing really is I don't use a standardized testing scenario. Most values I post are from my Caucasus training map which is just every flyable plane set at Senaki as client, somewhere around 32 trucks on the cross base, a few solo Strelas and Shilkas scattered east of Sukhumi and some combined surface to air sites of different types east of Senaki at various distances, as well as some artillery units. Nothing moves there. In case of the Channel, I've just put the P-47, the Edge 540 and a Huey, again, as selectable "client") as of yet at Hawkinge, otherwise the map is completely spartan. When testing with active AI units, I usually just fire up one of the instant action engagements that come with the Hornet and Viper.

 

Also, I turn of ASW completely with either Oculus Debug Tool or Tray Tool, cross checking since I suspect it doesn't work reliably since my fps often keeps sticking hard to 45, 30, 22 or 15 anyway.

 

For measuring I still rely on the built-in fps counter and guesstimate an average value (that's why I mostly post different values at/around Senaki or flying around). I've seen fpsvr on Steam - does it work without SteamVR as well? I suspect it would be rather pointless to run the whole thing with SteamVR where I have a lot less fps than without in DCS...

 

As for mods, it's just a bunch of community planes (A-4E, MB339, Edge 540 and some others deactivated like the Su-57, MiG-23UB, Su-35 and Grinnelli F-22), but none of them are loaded in the missions I use to check my framerate, unless I say so. And, of course, some alterations to input luas which shouldn't change performance at all. Did a repair prior to activating the kegetys mod last time, after updating to the latest version and wiping fxo and metashaders2.

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so your running on an i5-3570 is that at native or have you tried OC'ing, you should be able to get at least 4ghz out of that with a good cooler and a 1080. You are running on much weaker hardware and running way higher settings than me.

 

I can't speak to the mods, but i would seriously recommend uninstalling them for the moment... I have seen mods do very odd things just buy being installed ... you can always add them back later.

 

I would strongly suggest dropping the following shadows to low/medium if you absolutely must, grass to 750, take cockpit res down to 1024 , you dont need every frame, turn heat blur to low, terrain textures to low its doubtful you will notice the difference, and drop heat blur to low, smoke drop to 1 or zero, Terrain Object Shadows ... i'd turn off for the moment... and see about the rest.

 

However what is absolutely killing your FPS are three things;

 

Cockpit Global Illumination ... turn it off

Visibility Range set it to High , and likely medium (i see you have done that already good)

Shadows turn them to medium at most i would suggest low on your spec or off preferably

 

these last three are going to absolutely give you poor perf... remember to restart after apply changes

 

 

I would absolutely recommend doing something in consistent in the same plane to test settings.

 

you dont say what your PD is but i would set it to 1 to start with and adjust scaling later through your oracle tool tray, but that is not an area i'm familiar with.

 

Good luck

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so your running on an i5-3570 is that at native or have you tried OC'ing, you should be able to get at least 4ghz out of that with a good cooler and a 1080. You are running on much weaker hardware and running way higher settings than me.

 

I can't speak to the mods, but i would seriously recommend uninstalling them for the moment... I have seen mods do very odd things just buy being installed ... you can always add them back later.

 

I would strongly suggest dropping the following shadows to low/medium if you absolutely must, grass to 750, take cockpit res down to 1024 , you dont need every frame, turn heat blur to low, terrain textures to low its doubtful you will notice the difference, and drop heat blur to low, smoke drop to 1 or zero, Terrain Object Shadows ... i'd turn off for the moment... and see about the rest.

 

However what is absolutely killing your FPS are three things;

 

Cockpit Global Illumination ... turn it off

Visibility Range set it to High , and likely medium (i see you have done that already good)

Shadows turn them to medium at most i would suggest low on your spec or off preferably

 

these last three are going to absolutely give you poor perf... remember to restart after apply changes

 

 

I would absolutely recommend doing something in consistent in the same plane to test settings.

 

you dont say what your PD is but i would set it to 1 to start with and adjust scaling later through your oracle tool tray, but that is not an area i'm familiar with.

 

Good luck

 

I've been running with the settings attached for the last few versions now, as I said. Shadows are actually flat only, the lowest except for flat, but it looks dull in the pit and makes it nearly impossible to read things, so I bumped it up to low. Displays down to 512 (not every frame), water and heat blur as well down to low. Lowering grass has absolutely no effect at all, so I leave it up there. Probably reducing the visibility range did quite some - again. It made no difference for approx. a year after the Tomcat arrived, but that was with a major loss in fps I had there. I never turned it back down after I regained my performance with one update, until recently. Same with shadows BTW, I cranked them up back then because it made no difference. Might try switching of cockpit global illumn as well though.

 

My PD is always at 1.0. Just had it bumped up once to 1.5 to see if it makes reading the F-16 HUD and MFCDs easier... well, just a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit, not worth the performance hog it comes with. No antialiasing at all, but anisotropic filter at 16x in the drivers. My CPU runs at 4.4GHz since shortly after the Tomcat release, stock clock is 3.4 with single core boost up to 3.8 that wouldn't trigger in DCS though, so it ran at 3.4 before I OCed it. Did nearly double my fps actually.

 

And well, things are strange sometimes. I could now fly the F-16 Aggressive Engagement instant action - I think that's what it's called, the one with a Flanker ahead and another spawning after you splash it -with constantly steady 45fps, just one or two very short drops to 30 in the beginning and later after touchdown. In external view, it went up almost to 90 depending on the view angle. Even with shadows set to low (no difference to flat only), and the same goes for loading up the Jug in Hawkinge where I had just 7fps yesterday. But I read of someone else having issue with inconsistent fps where simply reloading the whole stuff helped. Guess that's just something to be sorted yet. But it might be the case that once you load up the thing with the low fps, it also affects subsequent runs on the other maps. Because that's what I literally did yesterday after I saw the powerpoint on the Channel - just loaded up something in Caucasus instead and it wasn't running well either.

 

In the end, I think it runs quite well now, as long as some issues don't pop up again. Can't say how much is done by the shaders mod, but I think I'd get less performance if I removed it now.

 

Thanks for your help and hints ajmug.png

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I can't thank Kegetys and speed-of-heat enough for doing this. Essentially DCS is unplayable for me in VR without this mod.

 

Which brings me to a question: if either stop doing what they do, or for whatever reason take a long time to update the shader mods after a patch, the process for modifying the shaders is in their heads and DCS is unplayable again.

 

Is the process for selecting and modifying the shaders (including IC compatibility) documented anywhere, maybe on Github, so that others can do this for themselves if necessary? Or would Kegetys/speed-of-heat consider doing so?

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it's all Kegetys work i just butcher his work ... so it would be up to him to choose to open source it, not even sure that would be allowed as he is modifying copyrighted work... not an expert just a worry.

 

My observation is that you can largely get the same performance effect by dropping about 10% of your current PD value

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Thanks speed, and I agree putting the files on github would prob not be ok, I'm talking more documenting the process. I'd love to know in detail what you do when you're converting Kegetys package for IC compatibility for instance, so I can do it if you ever decide to stop.

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Thanks speed, and I agree putting the files on github would prob not be ok, I'm talking more documenting the process. I'd love to know in detail what you do when you're converting Kegetys package for IC compatibility for instance, so I can do it if you ever decide to stop.

 

I have put this on on here before, it is simply deleting files for Clear Water its:

 

water.fx

Decoder.hlsl

GBuffer.hlsl

 

have to be deleted from Kegetys mod in order to work.

 

The IC Pass version, delete those and everything except the files in a earlier IC pass version, which to be honest was largely trial and error to work out.

 

It's possible you might be able to add water.fx, Decoder.hlsl and GBuffer back in if you dont want clear water, but you would have to test that yourself.

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I have put this on on here before, it is simply deleting files for Clear Water its:

 

water.fx

Decoder.hlsl

GBuffer.hlsl

 

have to be deleted from Kegetys mod in order to work.

 

The IC Pass version, delete those and everything except the files in a earlier IC pass version, which to be honest was largely trial and error to work out.

 

It's possible you might be able to add water.fx, Decoder.hlsl and GBuffer back in if you dont want clear water, but you would have to test that yourself.

 

I'm very happy of basic shaders mod!!

 

Anyway, thinking at those 3 files mentioned above, which is the quickest way to enable/disable clear water?

 

For example, renaming the 3 mentioned files, then cleaning fxo and metashaders2... or I need to do the whole process, this being disable the Mod with the Enabler tool, then adding the other shaders mod ("Clear water" one), then enabling the new mod, then editing _HMD.hlsl with same pars I'm keeping now and finally start DCS waiting for whole recompile?

 

Thank you!

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you have to remove the files before you apply the mod, otherwise you will just break dcs

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you have to remove the files before you apply the mod, otherwise you will just break dcs

 

So for example:

1) disable the mod with JSGME

2) remove/rename the 3 files from mod folder

3) enable the mod (same one, but with 3 files removed/renamed and maybe proper _HMD.hlsl)

4) fxo and metashadres2 cleaning and DCS restart

 

Could be?

 

Thanks again!

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largely trial and error to work out.

 

That must have been fun :) Thanks for everything you do

 

I may just go through Kegetys mod and diff the shaders against the official ones to reverse engineer what’s being done. Good project for a weekend.

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So for example:

1) disable the mod with JSGME

2) remove/rename the 3 files from mod folder

3) enable the mod (same one, but with 3 files removed/renamed and maybe proper _HMD.hlsl)

4) fxo and metashadres2 cleaning and DCS restart

 

Could be?

 

Thanks again!

 

1) disable the mod with JSGME

2) remove/rename the 3 files from mod folder

3) enable the mod

4) fxo and metashadres2 cleaning and DCS restart

 

dont invent steps!

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That must have been fun :) Thanks for everything you do

 

the hard-work is all Kegetys.. the pref difference on the IC pass version is ... much lower

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i actually have 3 copies of the mod , native, clear water, and ic pass

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i actually have 3 copies of the mod , native, clear water, and ic pass

 

I know and I have all 3.

 

If I'm not wrong, it seems to me to remember that HMD for base and clear water version are slighlty different, any reason for this? I mean, is there a link with between HMD and clear water settings or not?

 

Thanks for the clarification.


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