VR Performance only with F14

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.

yeh it deffinately likes cpu clockspeed more than anything else, im at 5ghz and its still difficult to make it decently playable

Bought a new PC was hoping to have the F14 where I wanted it with VR sadly it still underperforms and like the first post says is the only module that does, tried the brickdust VR friendly pit mod, it gains a few FPS but still underperforms in my opinion. Its a shame a was hoping a new rig would bring the best out of the F14. But on the plus side all other modules are running beautifully. 

On 1/14/2022 at 10:09 PM, westr said:

Bought a new PC was hoping to have the F14 where I wanted it with VR sadly it still underperforms and like the first post says is the only module that does, tried the brickdust VR friendly pit mod, it gains a few FPS but still underperforms in my opinion. Its a shame a was hoping a new rig would bring the best out of the F14. But on the plus side all other modules are running beautifully. 

What are your system specs? What are your settings? What are your expectations?

Hi, i9 11900k overclocked at 4.20ghz

RTX 3080 10 GB

64gb DDr4 3600 RAM

Running a Reverb G1

I have always had at least 2xMSAA set as I just find it looks so awful without, all other modules I can do this and maintain 45fps. 

With the F18 and AV8b I can run 4x MSAA

The only way I can maintain 45 fps with the F14 without dropping into the 30s is by running modded cockpits. The standard cockpit textures seem to be too much to handle. Once the sim drops into the 30s its very noticeable with screen tearing.

Would just like to run at 45fps without jagged edges and shimmering and not have to keep using mods, thanks for any advice or help.

5 hours ago, IronMike said:

What are your system specs? What are your settings? What are your expectations?

Thanks posted above

On 1/19/2022 at 9:32 AM, westr said:

Hi, i9 11900k overclocked at 4.20ghz

Unfortunately, DCS is single CPU thread, and single thread speed is king.  I've seen massive improvements overclocking my CPU. More so than GPU/Ram/anything. 

Disclaimer: Overclocking can damage your CPU.

4.20ghz is pretty slow for that chip.... My 10700k im running at 5.1 pretty comfortably, and saw a pretty significant increase in VR performance. 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16857/overclocking-with-intel-rocket-lake-four-core-i911900k-binned-and-analyzed/7

You should be able to push much faster than 4.2ghz. Provided you are cooling properly. Do so with care. 

Also turn your grass off, who cares. you wont see it at 10,000 feet. And experiment with turning the trees down. Due to the increased Radius, the greater the range, the more things that need to be rendered by a squared factor.  (Circle Surface Area = πr²). So you arent rendering 2x as many trees if you double the radius, you are rendering 4x as many. They really do make a hit on performance 

as far as shimmering goes - If you find a solution to that please let me know. DCS looks like Absolute ARSE when there are buildings or objects with sharp angles, when viewing textures at high angles, everything shimmers. Its really annoying. 

I too run a G1, with an older 7700K and would echo @DoorMouse's comment, I've over-clocked to 4.9Ghz but get a fairly steady 40-45FPs on most maps with slightly higher settings.

Happy to share other settings if it will help.

From our perspective - a 15 FPS dip is not much, given the higher poly counts, yadayada. Now, I know that from your perspective it is at the least not appreciated. However, in this case I think it is a settings/VR tweaking issue @westr - Kula and DoorMouse will have the best pointers for you there, since I personally do not fly with VR, so my experience/knowledge for proper tweaking is limited (although most anyone else flies VR on our team, I just love my 55" screen too much haha).

15 hours ago, IronMike said:

From our perspective - a 15 FPS dip is not much, given the higher poly counts, yadayada. Now, I know that from your perspective it is at the least not appreciated. However, in this case I think it is a settings/VR tweaking issue @westr - Kula and DoorMouse will have the best pointers for you there, since I personally do not fly with VR, so my experience/knowledge for proper tweaking is limited (although most anyone else flies VR on our team, I just love my 55" screen too much haha).

On 1/20/2022 at 5:47 PM, DoorMouse said:

Unfortunately, DCS is single CPU thread, and single thread speed is king.  I've seen massive improvements overclocking my CPU. More so than GPU/Ram/anything. 

 

Disclaimer: Overclocking can damage your CPU.

4.20ghz is pretty slow for that chip.... My 10700k im running at 5.1 pretty comfortably, and saw a pretty significant increase in VR performance. 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16857/overclocking-with-intel-rocket-lake-four-core-i911900k-binned-and-analyzed/7

You should be able to push much faster than 4.2ghz. Provided you are cooling properly. Do so with care. 

 

Also turn your grass off, who cares. you wont see it at 10,000 feet. And experiment with turning the trees down. Due to the increased Radius, the greater the range, the more things that need to be rendered by a squared factor.  (Circle Surface Area = πr²). So you arent rendering 2x as many trees if you double the radius, you are rendering 4x as many. They really do make a hit on performance 

 

as far as shimmering goes - If you find a solution to that please let me know. DCS looks like Absolute ARSE when there are buildings or objects with sharp angles, when viewing textures at high angles, everything shimmers. Its really annoying. 

 

 

 

 

Ok thanks for the advice I have Clocked to 4.8ghz I originally tried 5.0 stupidly instead of incrementing and the PC wouldn't boot. Fortunately removing my battery from the board reset the bios. I then incremented until I reached 4.8 and loaded and XMP2 profile for my memory all seems stable and I have achieved a significantly higher benchmark. I am achieving 45fps in the F14 although I am running a modded cockpit. But I have noticed a big jump in performance. For example I can fly over Dover in the Channel map without any drops from 45fps which I have never been able to achieve before. I also have been able to run clouds at high as well which is a bonus as they look pretty awful in VR if set to low. Thanks everyone.  

On 1/22/2022 at 11:39 AM, westr said:

Ok thanks for the advice I have Clocked to 4.8ghz I originally tried 5.0 stupidly instead of incrementing and the PC wouldn't boot. Fortunately removing my battery from the board reset the bios. I then incremented until I reached 4.8 and loaded and XMP2 profile for my memory all seems stable and I have achieved a significantly higher benchmark. I am achieving 45fps in the F14 although I am running a modded cockpit. But I have noticed a big jump in performance. For example I can fly over Dover in the Channel map without any drops from 45fps which I have never been able to achieve before. I also have been able to run clouds at high as well which is a bonus as they look pretty awful in VR if set to low. Thanks everyone.  

I am very happy to hear that! Happy flying!

On 1/19/2022 at 11:13 AM, IronMike said:

What are your system specs? What are your settings? What are your expectations?

Hey man, I am also new to VR and your Tomcat is my favourite jet in DCS followed by the Hornet and the difference in performance is abysmal between these two.

I run DCS in a mix of mid to low settings and I can lock to 45 fps (so reprojection works its magic and increases it to 90 FPS) with both the Tomcat and Hornet. However, in the Hornet, as I have way more overhead from those 45 FPS, it runs much smoother than the Tomcat. If I disable reprojection and unlock the FPS, I get much more FPS in the Hornet.

I've developed a problem with only the F-14 too, been using it since launch until I upgraded my setup in September 21.

Previous had an I7 4790k Strix 1080 and 16gb ram using an Oculus Rift DK2 then a CV1, It got a little Heavy in the Persian Gulf with the Supercarrier but the frame drops were manageable

Since upgrading to 17 10700k MSI Gaming X Trio 3080ti 32gb ram with a G2 the Tomcat freezes every few seconds making it unplayable, i'll get the DCS splash screen appear while it's trying to catch up at times too. This is regardless of which map i'm on

I've reduced the Steam VR res and in game res to 60%, MSAA is off PD is 1. deleted the fxo and metashaders folders, used a VR friendly cockpit mod

Not sure what else to try, I can't overclock using my Motherboard Asus B560a unfortunately so that isn't an option.

This is only an issue with the F14 whether on the ground or at altitude. I've been flying around the Mariana's in the Huey with the Steam VR resolution at the default 150% with no stuttering whatsoever. I've tested several other modules over the last couple of days too and again no issues. is there anything else I can do so i can get back in the Tomcat?

1 hour ago, Turd Ferguson said:

I've developed a problem with only the F-14 too, been using it since launch until I upgraded my setup in September 21.

Previous had an I7 4790k Strix 1080 and 16gb ram using an Oculus Rift DK2 then a CV1, It got a little Heavy in the Persian Gulf with the Supercarrier but the frame drops were manageable

Since upgrading to 17 10700k MSI Gaming X Trio 3080ti 32gb ram with a G2 the Tomcat freezes every few seconds making it unplayable, i'll get the DCS splash screen appear while it's trying to catch up at times too. This is regardless of which map i'm on

I've reduced the Steam VR res and in game res to 60%, MSAA is off PD is 1. deleted the fxo and metashaders folders, used a VR friendly cockpit mod

 

Not sure what else to try, I can't overclock using my Motherboard Asus B560a unfortunately so that isn't an option.

 

This is only an issue with the F14 whether on the ground or at altitude. I've been flying around the Mariana's in the Huey with the Steam VR resolution at the default 150% with no stuttering whatsoever. I've tested several other modules over the last couple of days too and again no issues. is there anything else I can do so i can get back in the Tomcat?

Your problems with the Tomcat sounded like headset disconnect issues at first but if you say that other aircraft are fine then I don't know.

My issue exactly is that I just get worse performance which also happens in 2D.

I've spent a few hours today trying to get to the bottom of this issue and after trying several different things have managed to all but eliminate the major stuttering in the F-14. I thought this may be useful to someone.

First thing I tried was reducing the Steam VR Resolution (General and Per application) to 40% DIDN'T WORK

Then with the Above still at 40% clicked the VR pre-set under DCS System settings DIDN'T WORK

Disabled Windows Mixed Reality Virtual desktops by adding the reg key below (You will also probably need to create this)

DWORD (32-bit) Value Data 0

PreallocateVirtualMonitors 

To this location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Holographic DIDN'T WORK

I then loaded the Take Off Turkey Instant Action, Set trim to 20, then took off and gained a bit of altitude. As my plane was looping continually I used my phone to record Task Manager overlaying the VR Mirror on my monitor.

CPU Usage -  I7 10700k (Never got above 65%)

GPU usage - MSI Gaming X Trio 3080ti (never got above 71%)

However i did notice my Memory was above 80% constantly. DCS was using just short of 10GB. I have 32GB in my system, Task manager was showing I had 32 GB in my system too.

I Typed Advanced System Settings into Windows Search bar and opened that (You'll need admin rights) Advanced> Under Performance click Settings>Advanced then under Virtual Memory click Change. Untick the box "Automatically Manage Paging File Size For All Drives" then save and exit. You'll be prompted to restart.

After the restart I loaded DCS up again then the Take Off Turkey Instant Action and the stuttering had virtually gone.

I've now cranked my settings up a bit so DCS looks pretty and set my SteamVR Resolution to 80% and still almost no stuttering at all.

It could've been a combination of the above but I think it may have been that Paging File setting that solved it.

Interesting. I have 32GBs of RAM installed and recently set my pageing file to a fixed minimal size ... DCS started crashing! I didn't put the 2 together, but the ED support guys spotted it. Scary to think that 32GB of RAM is not enough

On 2/2/2022 at 12:08 PM, Turd Ferguson said:

I've developed a problem with only the F-14 too, been using it since launch until I upgraded my setup in September 21.

Previous had an I7 4790k Strix 1080 and 16gb ram using an Oculus Rift DK2 then a CV1, It got a little Heavy in the Persian Gulf with the Supercarrier but the frame drops were manageable

Since upgrading to 17 10700k MSI Gaming X Trio 3080ti 32gb ram with a G2 the Tomcat freezes every few seconds making it unplayable, i'll get the DCS splash screen appear while it's trying to catch up at times too. This is regardless of which map i'm on

I've reduced the Steam VR res and in game res to 60%, MSAA is off PD is 1. deleted the fxo and metashaders folders, used a VR friendly cockpit mod

 

Not sure what else to try, I can't overclock using my Motherboard Asus B560a unfortunately so that isn't an option.

 

This is only an issue with the F14 whether on the ground or at altitude. I've been flying around the Mariana's in the Huey with the Steam VR resolution at the default 150% with no stuttering whatsoever. I've tested several other modules over the last couple of days too and again no issues. is there anything else I can do so i can get back in the Tomcat?

Try using one of the cockpit mods available this gained a few FPS for me. 

On 2/5/2022 at 3:04 PM, Kula66 said:

Scary to think that 32GB of RAM is not enough

It is... until it's full. But it's rather the case of DCS needing the big page file due to code/Windows memory management stuff.

The problem is that when you set the Windows page file to "System Managed" on high Ram systems (with 32 or more GB ram) Windows automatically adjusts it but usually it never goes above 4GB, until necessary, which seems to be a lot in DCS World. I would imagine the slowdown occurs whenever Windows has to manually adjust the page file size. These are just educated guesses though, but I've had great success with increasing my page file size to 32GB with Unity based games, and maybe this is true of DCS world too. I will try and test this out. 

Paging file (for DCS users) should always be set to 32768MB, especially for MP.

It is very likely if you do not have this set, you may experience stutters and micro-stutters, VR or non VR, but I could imagine for this to be even more pronounced in VR.

1 hour ago, IronMike said:

Paging file (for DCS users) should always be set to 32768MB, especially for MP.

It is very likely if you do not have this set, you may experience stutters and micro-stutters, VR or non VR, but I could imagine for this to be even more pronounced in VR.

 

Would it be advisable for me to set a paging file?, I have 64gb RAM but do get stutters sometimes. I don't play multiplayer.

38 minutes ago, westr said:

Would it be advisable for me to set a paging file?, I have 64gb RAM but do get stutters sometimes. I don't play multiplayer.

Absolutely. It is kind of a "first thing you should do" step imo. MP or not, it helps.

5 minutes ago, IronMike said:

Absolutely. It is kind of a "first thing you should do" step imo. MP or not, it helps.

Thanks Iron Mike sorry to be a pain but as im 64gb I take it my paging file size wont be 32768 any advice as to what I should set it too?

9 minutes ago, westr said:

Thanks Iron Mike sorry to be a pain but as im 64gb I take it my paging file size wont be 32768 any advice as to what I should set it too?

32768 is what I would set it to.

13 minutes ago, IronMike said:

32768 is what I would set it to.

There is an Initial and a Max value when the page file is set to Custom. Should this be the same value for each?

1 minute ago, unlikely_spider said:

There is an Initial and a Max value when the page file is set to Custom. Should this be the same value for each?

Yes.