VR Performance only with F14

I recently purchased the F-14 module together with the Harrier .

I play mostly Single Player and VR .

With the Harrier I found no issues whatsoever in VR and was amazed at the clarity and polish of the graphics . Even when playing with high Settings for VR.

I then tried the F-14 and I was amazed at how "bad" the textures appeared , very dulll and unreleastic compared to the Harrier . However the biggest issue is with the VR itself as, only in this aircraft , VR is almost unplayable . Even with lowering graphics to a bear minimum , VR is stuttery and lags to the point that even when watching another F-14 take off from the AC Deck , it appears to stutter , where as other aircraft models appear to move without issue .

I have currently tried everything from clean - install , changing shaders as read on the Forum , played around with the oclus debug tools etc .

This issue appears to be localised solely to the F14 module .

What startles me is the significant appearence of textures between the F14 and other modules , even the Su-25.

Has anyone had any similar experience and any advice what to do ?

My setup is :

i7-6700k / Gtx 1070 / 16GB Ram

Thanks

...

What ever you do, buy more RAM, and go for a tuning process.

You will hit the deck very soon when flying with the F-14.

Most multiplayer sessions I play are below 24 GB, but some rise up to 26 GB, so I strongly recommend at least 32 GB.

See my specs below, I am currently fine with 45 fps on Oculus Rift CV1 and some tuning with NVidia drivers and DCS settings.

Next:

In BIOS, turn OFF the C-STATES.

Overclocking to 4.4 GHz might make sense, but I am not saying you should.

Turn OFF terrain shadows completely, and turn normal shadows to FULL.

Set PIXEL DENSTITY to 1.0, and set MSAA off, FXAA off, SSAA off, and VISIBILITY and WATER to MEDIUM.

Set NVidia driver to "prefer maximum performance", and leave all other settings to "Set by application" whenever possible.

Then you should be fine for the first part.

Hi , thanks for the info. I'll make the change in the BIOS and I was planning on a RAM upgrade anyway so it wil make sense . It's just weird how it only affects the F14 and not the AV88 appears to have more surfaces yet does not have the fps prob.

Hope these will do the trick , from the little i managed to play , I absolutely love it .

Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth - was about to post the exact same issue about VR performance in the Tomcat. I'm running an RTX 2080 Ti overclocked by 10%, and an i7-9700 overclocked to 5GHz, along with 32GB of DDR4 2666Mhz memory. Unfortunately performance in the F-14 is pretty horrible, and there's nothing we can really do about it. It'd be amazing if the Heatblur guys could do a VR version of it that is less demanding, but I doubt they'll have the time or inclination to do so (not saying Heatblur aren't amazing - they are - but it'd require a lot of work for them to optimise just for VR people. Until the base DCS engine is optimised, or a graphics card that is at least 1.5 times the performance of a 2080 Ti, we're sh$t outta luck.

@Tuomaspap

I've started VR on about the same machine as you did, and later added additional 16GB of RAM and 2070S video card. Funnily enough, that has allowed me to raise the graphics settings notably higher, but have not added overall smoothness. Guess my machine is CPU bound.

Anyway, back to your question. The Tomcat is indeed heavier in VR than other modules. And it gets pretty funny, because in 2D it's one of the most beautiful and detailed cockpits in the game. Turn to VR and it largely becomes very poorly readable compared to e.g. Hornet or Viper, and performance gets very lousy.

I might speculate the cockpit was not really optimized or made for VR in mind. After all, it's a learning curve for devs as well.

@Tuomaspap

Turn to VR and it largely becomes very poorly readable compared to e.g. Hornet or Viper, and performance gets very lousy.

Yes I would say that is an understatement . I can't read 90% of the cockpit no matter what settings i try , there is no clarity .

I was considering upgrading GPU but seeing that GunsliggerAus stated he has a monster of a machine and still gets performance issues i would say , there is basically no hope .

On the other hand this i fear is very unfair to the prospect buyer . I watched a sh#it load of videos before buying and NONE mentioed such extreme performance issues . I was between the F-18 and the F-14 and went with the "Which aircraft do i reall want" as almost every review i saw stated that the F-14 was mostly equal in performance with the F-18 Module . It is NOT .

I'm currently of two minds to challenge DCS's no refund policy on this because there is no warning that VR versions of this modules are basically unplayable .

Odyssey+ with GTX1080 here.

No problems about readability in the F-14.

On my personal opinion, the cockpit looks much better, and is better readable then the Av-8b cockpit. Also I feel not a big difference in performance between those two.

Flying both on nearly max settings with stable 30-45fps.

Yeah 2080ti and a reverb and the f14 is fine, bit i stopped caring about framerates after i got the reverb.

Odyssey+ with GTX1080 here.

No problems about readability in the F-14.

On my personal opinion, the cockpit looks much better, and is better readable then the Av-8b cockpit. Also I feel not a big difference in performance between those two.

Flying both on nearly max settings with stable 30-45fps.

What are your PC specs ? RAM/CPU

Yeah 2080ti and a reverb and the f14 is fine, bit i stopped caring about framerates after i got the reverb.

Do you play through Steam or standalone ?

4790K@4.5GHz, 32GB, GTX 1080, SteamSS 150%, PD 1.0

4790K@4.5GHz, 32GB, GTX 1080, SteamSS 150%, PD 1.0

 

Hmmm. im starting to think this might have something to do with the standalone vs Steam.

So far those who I have generally spoken with and said they experience minor issues are Steam Users . Will keep testing different methods. Thanks man

In my experience the difference is on the mission or MP server you play.

If I do a quick mission is butter smooth.. incredible.

If you join a dense server with multiple units and multiple player the performance is different.

I have and Odyssey+ with a 2080ti and a 6700K

I think what has shocked me most is how many people are able to afford to have a 2080ti in here hahaha !

I think what has shocked me most is how many people are able to afford to have a 2080ti in here hahaha !

Go be poor somewhere else! :pilotfly::pilotfly::pilotfly:

Unfortunately, even with the recent jumps in GPUs and VR headsets, there are still trade offs necessary: you want it to look better, then it will perform a bit less, you want it to perform better, than it will look worse. VR settings at max is still nothing one should expect if you want to enjoy the same level of detail as we provide in the F-14. VR is not quite there yet.

And as notice above, providing a semi detailed solution for VR, is just not possible. However we did try to optimize it as much as we could and according to our inhouse tests, partially done even on 760s, there was no significant performance difference between the Tomcat and the Hornet.

I am not the right person to go into detail in such matters, Cobra would be the address to give you indepth answers. But on the surface the "trading off" statement remains.

VR will also continue to improve, which in the end will justify a more beautiful cockpit much more than a less demanding one in the short term. Help here is needed also from the customer's side, in terms of his willingness to tweak his settings to a compromise where he can both enjoy the detailed cockpit and does not suffer too much performance hits. But tweaking your settings, is still something required for VR, even with a 2080ti. And we are not at a point yet, where in general a fluid 60fps experience in VR can be expected in sims a priori.

Flying both on nearly max settings with stable 30-45fps.

I wouldn't call 30 - 45fps 'stable' and dips down to 30fps mean I need to lower some settings. My aim when tuning is always to hold 45 with framerate smoothing forced on. It is all subjective though and I know some will enjoy the sim with lower framerates.

I was recently doing some testing with the F-14B and the Su-33 (System specs in my sig).

Using the VR Performance mod and 120% SteamVR SS, I tweaked my in-game settings so I was able to hold 45fps with two Su-33s on the deck of the new Kuznetsov while looking around in all directions.

I then loaded into a separate mission with two F-14Bs on the deck of the George Washington. My fps did not rise above 30 and in some instance dropped into the high 20s when looking down into the cockpit.

The first scenario is playable, the second definitely isn't.

I'm not bashing HeatBlur for this and appreciate what IronMike has said about trade offs. In a year or two, when we're running 3080s or even 4080s, we'll be thankful that the module was built with more detailed geometry and textures. For me now though (at least with this module), I have to wait or forget VR exists and fly in 2D.

10 ghz cpu would help, im so frustrated atm because vr is FANTASTIC but god damnit hardware simply cant drive it properly

I don't see difference between another planes.

I don't see difference between another planes.

I get about 1/2 the FPS in the tomcat. 4.4ghz 32mb 2080ti. Ive even got the VR shaders mod running now which makes it playable. The f15 i get 90fps the tomcat i get 45.

With my 980Ti tomcat was reducing the refresh reta compared to other modules. With my 2080Ti not enamored. I think this is related to amount of memory that card has. Dcs needs a lot of video memory.

It saddens me a lot to read this thread, by none of your fault of course, since the F14 cockpit and textures were developed specifically with VR in mind, and it should boast better textures than almost anything to date in VR.

We are not sure where these performance issues come from (naturally it will always be a bit heavier than other modules, due to our textures, but it should really only be by a small margin). We haven't changed anything on that side.

Either way, thank you for your reports, we will look into it.

It saddens me a lot to read this thread, by none of your fault of course, since the F14 cockpit and textures were developed specifically with VR in mind, and it should boast better textures than almost anything to date in VR.

 

We are not sure where these performance issues come from (naturally it will always be a bit heavier than other modules, due to our textures, but it should really only be by a small margin). We haven't changed anything on that side.

 

Either way, thank you for your reports, we will look into it.

i saw an interview with an ed guy the other day and although i enjoyed the interview 1 thing he said REALLY irked me. he claimed vr performance is perfectly acceptable and basically i dont know why people complain about it! god damn that annoyed me. i have a better system than he does and struggle like hell to get a consistent pleasant framerate in vr despite having the game look jaggy as hell! having said that i litterally cant go back to 2d even with that in mind!

I too experience lower frame rates (VR) with the F-14 when compared with other modules (Hornet/Viper). Ive been accepting that as a price to enjoy this magnificent rendition, but would STRONGLY prefer better performance, (and a fresher looking, easier to read in VR cockpit!)

FWIW I have found that the limiting factor is DCS.EXE seems to be CPU bottlenecked. my FPS went up significantly by overclocking from 4ghz to 4.4 ghz. Changing my GPU did practically nothing in this game.