Tweaking VR settings for smooth DCS Supercarrier experience.

Since Supercarrier have been released in Open Beta I was spending quite a bit of time revisiting my "VR" settings.

The settings and tuning process I describe here allow me to enjoy rich scenarios, with weather, lights, and even mirrors in the cockpit enabled.

Previously I aimed to have as high as possible Pixel Density (1.4), highest shadows, textures, and sacrificing the rest,

flying only missions that can sustain such settings (empty Stennis deck), and ignoring occasional stutters.

While an "Empty" Supercarrier in a good weather worked pretty much ok with just me flying circles around,

I thought it's not really fun to do this, since with new carrier I want to have other planes and static crew on the deck, for more alive scenarios.

And in such case performance hit can be quite large.

I also love to fly an F-14B, and F-14B is known to be a module that "heavy" on resources,

combined with Supercarrier it gave me quite a bit more stuttering than usual.

So if these setting work for F-14, they for sure will work for F/A-18C!.

As most of the players will have different hardware, I would describe my approach toward tweaking settings.

Here is my config: i9 9900KS (@5Ghz), 64 Gb RAM, RTX 2080 Super (8Gb VRAM), DCS is installed on NVMe SSD.

I use Oculus Rift-S for VR flying.

With my config (or with any other config for that matter) I can't just max everything out and enjoy a smooth high FPS in VR.

The Goal:

If I want to have smooth true-to-life experience I need to have at least 40 FPS minimum, in every scenario.

Very occasional drops below 40 is acceptable, but very rarely.

80 FPS - will give me native refresh rate of Rift-S (ideal scenario)

40 FPS (or anything between 40-80) will fit into ASW area where Oculus drivers do really good job smoothing out translational changes in the picture when looking around the cockpit.

And no, I can't fly without ASW, like some people recommend to have "Higher FPS", without ASW if you don't have 80 FPS, view in the Rift will stutter a lot.

So, with all that aside, let's start with playing around:

- First of all, start with "VR" preset. To my surprise it worked very well from the get-go even on relatively populated deck.

Eagle Dynamics really tuned this well, it looks surprisingly good and works smooth.

- Second, try to play with Pixel Density, keep in mind though, that in populated areas, like Carrier Deck,

higher PD settings will have huge impact on overall performance. Usually people exchange Anti-Aliasing(like MSAA) for Pixel Density, in my case I see it worked great in the opposite scenario.

I put PD = 1, and put maximum MSAA possible, limiting it to 30% area on screen, which worked wonders.

- MSAA, see previous point, why I put it to max to get smoothest picture with PD = 1.

- Textures! Usually I would put it to max, however, in VR, with defferred renderer that DCS has, with texture heavy modules,

like F-14 and Supercarrier - VRAM consumption can get really high (see here), and having 8GB of VRAM might not be enough (Another point for lowering PD).

Put textures to Medium, and free-up some performance for other stuff. You'll get a bit blurrier picture, but if you can tolerate it, trust me it's worth it.

Additionally, if you have lower grade GPU, you might want to download reduced cockpit textures for DCS F-14:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3303917/?sphrase_id=1255299

Look quite nice, occupy much less VRAM. Note - in the following screenshots I don't use it.

- Set the shadow setting, it comes with performance hit, however it alleviates a lot of artifacts on screen, especially in the cockpit,

so I would strongly recommend to enable shadows. I found that Medium setting shadows do look fairly good in DCS

(better than I remembered them before) and significantly faster to render than High setting shadows.

EDIT: Actually I noticed that with beefy GPU you can crank Shadows to High, keeping performance relatively good, but leaving less headroom for other things.

Also I did a little comparison of running without shadows and with shadows, to show the artifacts of not having shadows on: Here

For late evening / night flying, disable shadows altogether, it improves FPS on the deck when Super Carrier has it's lights on, and at night there are no cockpit shadows anyway. I have created 2 presets for Day / Night flying and then switch before flying.

- Mirrors, I found that using mirrors helps me in an F-14 during landing to check status of my DLCs (and totally not used in F/A-18 ).

Also it's very cool to see pilot saluting in the mirror on take off, such a cool immersion factor.

To have fair quality mirrors, I use Resolution of cockpit displays: 512 Every Frame setting, that works fine with ASW.

I also mapped it to my free joystick control so I can flip it whenever I feel like it.

- Last but not least, be moderate in your SC missions, too much crowd on the deck will drop your FPS any way, but empty deck is no good either, experiment!

NVidia Control panel settings:

- Power Management = Prefer maximum performance (obviously)

- Texture filtering - Quality = Higher performance (This doesn't look obvious but it does influence performance, especially if there are a lot textures in the scene and we count milliseconds here)

- Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias = Allow

- Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization = On

- Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames = 4 (this can smooth out occasional stutters big deal)

- Virtual Reality - Variable Rate Super Sampling = Adaptive (Didn't found out if works with DCS native MSAA setting or not, but kept it) EDIT: doesn't work with DCS, so ignore this one.

Nothing can compare to truly smooth picture in VR, so I exchanged a little bit of picture clarity (textures, pixel density) to have it as smooth as possible.

With this config on the somehow populated SC in an F-14, in rain, I have stable 40FPS, and it jumps to 80 when I'm off the deck.

I'm adding screenshots made in-game, and all my in-game settings on the latest pictures

(remember these are stable 40-80 FPS with maximum eye-candy with some units around, with weather effects and mirrors).

Hope this would help someone to find their happy settings!

See you in the virtual sky!

Edit2: Here are my VRAM measurements regarding changes in Pixel Density setting: https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4348913&postcount=28

Edit: I have added missions I made to test FPS,

Rain - the heaviest (in fact not that heavy, but has some things on a deck and few moving bots to make it more alive :) ),

Lite2 - good weather, lighter,

Empty - lightest.

All of them are my modification of F-14 carrier qual mission. Allow you to pick a Tomcat or a Hornet. Also works in Multiplayer, tested today with my friend, and had a good stable FPS on "Rain" map.

FULL SETTINGS:

SCREENSHOTS:

Supercarrier_FPS_test.zip

More pics:

And few more...

Thanks for the hardwork and research.

So you set your PD to 1.0 within DCS and don't use Oculus Tray Tools to tweak anything?

Thanks

-Ok here.. 1024 textures must be on to be able to read and see a good texture in your cockpit..

- Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames = 4 (this can smooth out occasional stutters big deal) set to 1 or 2 or it will be lagging

-PD = 1.4

I found turning off the anti aliasing from the Oculus software and all to minimun then use the in Sim set will give a good boost

What I did help a lot is modifying my visibility range.. the one that is provided is not quite good for VR..

Thanks for the hardwork and research.

So you set your PD to 1.0 within DCS and don't use Oculus Tray Tools to tweak anything?

Thanks

Thank you!

No, Oculus Tray Tool was tested during this, I played with all the settings.

Change in PD in DCS vs change PD in Oculus Tool doesn't give any benefits in performance.

It's practically doing the same thing, so you can just use the one in game.

In the end Oculus Tray tool was not used here.

-Ok here.. 1024 textures must be on to be able to read and see a good texture in your cockpit..

- Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames = 4 (this can smooth out occasional stutters big deal) set to 1 or 2 or it will be lagging

-PD = 1.4

 

I found turning off the anti aliasing from the Oculus software and all to minimun then use the in Sim set will give a good boost

Yes put 1024 for the screens if you fly Hornet.

For the F-14, 512 Every Frame is sufficient, and doesn't impact frames as much as 1024.

Honestly in Hornet 512 screens work fine for me.

PD is the biggest FPS killer, look at all other settings I published, that's why to get to "never drop below 40" I opted to get more AA vs more PD, because my RTX2080 has enough power to do AA, but not enough VRAM to have high PD with the rest of the things on my test mission. And I used to fly with PD = 1.4 before Supercarrier.

Shadows are heavy too

Interesting, thank you!

Shadows are heavy too

Yes, that’s why I recommend “Medium” shadows.

High - eats too much resources, low doesn’t look as good, but at least have it in Low/Medium than no shadows at all, without shadows there are too many incorrectly lit surfaces in the cockpit that flicker too much because of high contrast. Much better to have any shadows than this.

Nothing flickers without shadows in my cockpit :-)

Nothing flickers without shadows in my cockpit :-)

Happy for you, if that works for you - awesome, less things to render

Nothing can compare to truly smooth picture in VR

So true.. what a step forward.. ! Something in Flight Sim that will become in no doubt more popular than TIR.. or maybe Augmented reality..

What I did is use the Medium visibility setting.. then in the file I bumped what I wanted to see better or think was more of a necessity .. I keep my medium home made on a side and replace at each upgrades.. This was the best boost.. PD 1 to 1.4 did not impact me at all but better precision in sight.. But it's very good to see what we all do and try.. I will try more..

PD 1 to 1.4 did not impact me at all but better precision in sight..

1.4 sure looks sharper, I used to fly with 1.4 all the time. But it does take it's tall. It all depends on your scenario, if you put a Hornet at Tsenaki Kolkhi on the empty airfield, sure it will not impact at all, and will look better.

What I'm writing here is about reasonably populated Super Carrier, with light rain, in an F-14 Tomcat. And staying above 40 FPS.

You will see that PD influences size of all render buffers that DCS uses, as such uses more VRAM, add many more textures and you have a recipe for FPS drop.

What I'm writing here is about reasonably populated Super Carrier, with light rain, in an F-14 Tomcat. And staying above 40 FPS.

You will see that PD influences size of all render buffers that DCS uses, as such uses more VRAM, add many more textures and you have a recipe for FPS drop.

Yes I understand.. true

Try to modify your Visibility file.. water . you can definitely have a serious boost there .. I am curious.. it deal with textures and VRAM etc. I noted

I have added my missions that I use to test to the first post.

The "heaviest" one is not that heavy, but it has reasonably populated deck and things are moving :)

LOL same ! :) Great! and thank you

- Virtual Reality - Variable Rate Super Sampling = Adaptive (Didn't found out if works with DCS native MSAA setting or not, but kept it)

 

Your post is very interesting...i am trying some of your settings..

but i don't have this in my nvidia panel...

It is a GTX20xx only setting?

Your post is very interesting...i am trying some of your settings..

but i don't have this in my nvidia panel...

It is a GTX20xx only setting?

Thank you!

I have a driver 445.87

it could be just RTX setting, not sure at the moment.

Thank you!

I have a driver 445.87

it could be just RTX setting, not sure at the moment.

Yes it is an RTX only feature and doesn’t apply to DCS as it uses deferred rendering.

Good to know! DCS has it's own feature now, with kinda similar goal (MSAA mask).

Thanks for clarifying it, scratched out of the post!

It is not supported for DCS :(

It is not supported for DCS :(

Well we have a new setting in DCS - MSAA Mask