DCS and Pimax

Hi, does anyone have a 9Kx with a 6900xt or 3090 ? is it working or 15 fps ?

I have a Reverb G1 but the FOV is very problematic for me, wondering to go on a 8kX.

Thanks for your feedback.

You mean 8KX ? I have one. The 3090 is great for it. It wont be the bottleneck in your system though. It will be your processor. I also have a Ryzen 9 5900x. For unknown reasons for me higher resolutions also need a higher CPU speed. Flying on a MP server with more than 6 aircraft the same time will bottleneck even my Ryzen 9. So the 3090 could render the image fast enogh, but the processor would limit the frame rate though. 

20 minutes ago, darkman222 said:

You mean 8KX ? I have one. The 3090 is great for it. It wont be the bottleneck in your system though. It will be your processor. I also have a Ryzen 9 5900x. For unknown reasons for me higher resolutions also need a higher CPU speed. Flying on a MP server with more than 6 aircraft the same time will bottleneck even my Ryzen 9. So the 3090 could render the image fast enogh, but the processor would limit the frame rate though. 

Yes 8KX sorry

you are able to play high fov high resolution, with decent FPS and settings in DCS ? thanks

Not exactly. FOV is set to normal and you'd better use low visual setting where possible. You wont see a major difference to higher settings anyway in VR. And dont try to fly on too crowded servers because thats going to kill your FPS due to CPU frame times not GPU limitation.

2D is very forgiving for stutters, but in VR its an immersion breaker.

What about smart smoothing at 75 Hz?

Wich is better steam VR motion smoothing or the pimax one?

I purchased Pimax 8KX just to test it. Pleae tell me your experiences. I have a 5900x and 3090 card...

Same here 5900x and 3090. Smart smoothing is not the best choice for DCS. The Pimax one is awful and the steam VR one does not work with the pimax. As far as I know. But even with a good smart smoothing like the one from Oculus its just fake and feels wrong.

My best choice is to go to 60 Hz mode on the Pimax and no smart smoothing. The best illustration for that is: Take the Hornet. Activate the HMCS, HUD for the helmet. Look 90 degrees outside and see the numbers blur and jump. Wont happen without smoothing. Just real frames are the real deal.

Awesome Darkman,

I just came from a G1 Reverb, 2080 Super and 9900KF. Going to 5900X and 3090 and Pimax been a huge leap. I went from 50-60 FPS in the G1 with the 5900X/3090 to 25FPS with the Pimax.

I imagine there is a setting/s I need to tweak in Steam VR.

What I like when flying low and turning in the AV8B is that I can look outside to left or right and still have better situational awareness out the front via my peripheral vision.

In steam vr you just set it to the native resolution. Thats enough for the 8kx. Fiddle with the quality settings. I feel that higher settings dont give much more quality compared to the costs in performance. You can turn on fixed foveated rendering in pitool. Altough you dont have eye tracking it will just render the boarders of the image in smaller resolution. I cant get a sharp image of these areas anyway due to the lenses blurring it already.

Peripheral vision is awesome. Especially for air to air refuelling. You look in front out of the cockpit steer the jet and in the peripheral vision you have the tanker.

Thinking of going to the 8kx from G2 but is there a new version set to come out? I looked on the site but I was watching a review and the guy said there was a new version coming soon. My system may be too weak to run it at 90hz I assume and may not work at all given the 90hz requires 30 series cards. My concern is running 60hz and getting strobing like I see in the G2 at 60hz. I would buy a 3090 if I could find one. 

The 8kx runs best at 75 Hz. Strobing could become an issue if you are sensible for it. I can run at 75 HZ with my 3090 smoothly. But like I always tell, the bottleneck will be CPU frame times on multiplayer or complex missions. I have a ryzen 9 5900 and on a crowded server I am glad if I can keep the headset running 60 Hz. I am in contact with the pimax engineers and I have an improved firmware, I think its already out for public, that smoothes the 60 hz strobing out kind of. Its not gone but its acceptable. I am not sure why the higher resolution has such a huge impact on CPU frame times though. But at the current state of DCS and available hardware, forget about playing at 90 Hz on a multiplayer server. 

Hi, Long time Pimax 8KX owner here.  I just upgraded my GPU from at 2080TI to an Asus ROG Strix 3090.  Was thinking I would re-visit my settings to see if I can get some better visuals.  Also, I havn't spent any time tweaking the graphics since before the 2.7 release so it seems like a good time to do it.  What is the latest go to source for Nvidia Control Panel, Steam VR and DCS settings to optimize the Pimax 8KX?

Right now my biggest complaints are:

1.) Lots of anti-aliasing on details at a distance

2.) Flickering shadows

3.) When I am flying low and I look out the side of the cockpit at the ground the movement of the ground isnt smooth, but rather its a rapid series of "steps" that makes it hard to see details.

The rest of my PC specs.  Intel Core i9 10900K CPU, 64GB of RAM, 4TB of NvME M.2 drives.

My specs: RTX 3090 , Ryzen 5 5900x, 32 GB ram.

Forget about anything that makes the game look good. You need performance.

My settings are low for everything. Except cockpit textures.

Anti aliasing and flickering: get the pimax to its native resolution which is 100 % in steam Vr. Get used to flickering shadows and anti aliasing on that setting.

Get fpsVR from steam. Check whats the bottleneck of your system. CPU frame time or GPU. Visual stepping between the frames will go away if you have nothing bottlenecking your system. The "stepping" as you describe is the left and right panel being out of sync because the PC cant deliver frames in time.

Even I cant run it all the time with 75 fps. My CPU cant deliver the frames quick enough to the GPU. Especially on MP servers.

Solution : 60 Hz mode. Its enough for a simulator like DCS, which is not a first person shooter.

60 Hz will lower the demand for your CPU to prepare frames for the GPU.

Set everything to "low"

Check fpsVr again if GPU and CPU graph are displayed in green now: good. Now you can see what settings you can bring higher.

Otherwise, bad luck for you and you need to upgrade your PC. If it cant run smooth with everything "low" and in 60 Hz there is no use in tweaking settings.

1 hour ago, darkman222 said:

My specs: RTX 3090 , Ryzen 5 5900x, 32 GB ram.

Forget about anything that makes the game look good. You need performance.

My settings are low for everything. Except cockpit textures.

Anti aliasing and flickering: get the pimax to its native resolution which is 100 % in steam Vr. Get used to flickering shadows and anti aliasing on that setting.

 

Get fpsVR from steam. Check whats the bottleneck of your system. CPU frame time or GPU. Visual stepping between the frames will go away if you have nothing bottlenecking your system. The "stepping" as you describe is the left and right panel being out of sync because the PC cant deliver frames in time.

 

Even I cant run it all the time with 75 fps. My CPU cant deliver the frames quick enough to the GPU. Especially on MP servers.

Solution : 60 Hz mode. Its enough for a simulator like DCS, which is not a first person shooter.

60 Hz will lower the demand for your CPU to prepare frames for the GPU.

 

Set everything to "low"

Check fpsVr again if GPU and CPU graph are displayed in green now: good. Now you can see what settings you can bring higher.

Otherwise, bad luck for you and you need to upgrade your PC. If it cant run smooth with everything "low" and in 60 Hz there is no use in tweaking settings.

 

Thanks for the info.
 

I have FPS VR but haven’t looked at it in a while.  I’ll check it again.  

I think I’m currently running at 75 hertz. I’ll try 60 to see if that makes things smoother.  Where would I make that change?   SteamVR?   Or.  PiTool?

With a Strix 3090 and an intel core i9 10900k at 5.1 on all cores I’m not sure that upgrading hardware is going to give enough additional performance to be a noticeable difference.  

No. You are top notch hardware wise. Try 60 hz mode in Pitool. You will start to see the image strobing in your peripheral vision. Get the newest firmware for the pimax. You will still see it, although it'll be much better, but you might be able to adapt to it.

I am still in touch with Pimax support about 60 hz mode.

I'm currently running a 3080ti and a 10850k with the pimax set to wide, parallel projection disabled, and SteamVR running at 100% which is like 5100x3400. I get 35-40 fps in syria in multiplayer with 2x MSAA. Most of my settings are on high, clouds on ultra. Shadows on medium. SSAO and GI off.

If I enable fixed foveated rendering I can squeeze out another 5-10 fps. But I'd rather not. 30-40 fps is fine for me.

35-40 fps? You have to use motion smoothing then. Doesnt the motion smoothing on the image distract you? It feels like water washing down on the lenses to me.

So after a minor error which scared the heck out of me I have updated the firmware.  For future reference you can actually install the firmware for the 8k+ on the 8KX!  I know because I just did it.  After doing so PiTool could no longer "see" my headset.  After a few minutes I figured out what I did wrong and ran the upgrade process with the correct firmware.  Eventhough PiTool could not "see" the headset I was still able to install the correct firmware and my 8Kx now works again.  I also switched over to 60Hertz.  Looking out of the side of the cockpit at the ground the movement appears a little smoother but not perfect.  The "steps" appear smaller but every now and then there is a bigger "step/jump".  That issue aside.... What would be the negative reason to switch from 75 hertz to 60 Hertz?  It's my understanding that at 60Hertz the headset is attempting to update the image 60 times per second.  At 75 Hertz its attempting to do it at 75 times a second.  Thats only a 15 cycles per second difference.  If that difference makes it easier on the system then I don't see why I wouldn't move to 60 hertz.  What would be the down side to moving to 60 hertz?  Will the image not respond as quickly to head movement?

10 hours ago, darkman222 said:

35-40 fps? You have to use motion smoothing then. Doesnt the motion smoothing on the image distract you? It feels like water washing down on the lenses to me.

I do not use motion smoothing or any frame interpolation. I can't stand it, it's disabled in pimax and in steamvr.

@FoxTwoBut if your system runs with 40 fps only you would see awful stuttering. Its unplayable for me if the pimax cant reach the target frame rate which is 60 fps @ 60Hz or 75 fps @ 75 Hz. This is why I appreciate 60 Hz mode so much. 15 fps less is not much, but the playback is smooth because both LCD panels are in sync.

@melchiondaIt does not make a difference for me if I play at 60 fps or 75fps. It wont make a difference in DCS anyway. Maybe a little for guns only dogfighting where you will have benefits of the higher frame rate. It will make a huge difference for first person shooters. But not 15 fps though. Playing a shooter in 60 fps or 120 fps that will make a difference. But 120 fps is unreachable with DCS and the Pimax 8Kx.

It only makes a difference if you can see the refresh rate in your peripheral vision. For example when the image is very bright. I can see the image refreshing. Thats why I was in contact with pimax support. The new firmware did not fix it for me, but it got a lot better.

Stuttering? No.

It's not 75 fps, but its a smooth experience. I don't chase capping the frame rate, it's not possible at these resolutions with this generation and the limitations of the engine.

Smooth? I dont know what I am missing here. But for me, if the Pimax is set to 75 Hz and the framerate does not reach 75fps the LCD panels seem to be out of sync. I hate motion smoothing too. Thats why I need 60 Hz mode. Because my system can reach 60 fps most of the time. How can it be smooth on your end if you run it 75 Hz but with a frame rate lower than 75 fps? Maybe you just adapted to it, but it cant be smooth experience having a frame rate lower than the refresh rate.

New PiTool Beta version

I wish we could see what each of our headsets is doing because what I am seeing doesn't seem to line up with what everyone else is sseeing...

1.) I can run high settings on almost everything in DCS with no issues except when I look down at the ground and I am flying low the ground moves past in little "steps" rather than a flow.  Im not sure if this is what people are calling "micro stutters".

2.) (Possible separate topic but this is a big problem for me) When I look down at the ground when I am flying low the ground right under me is blurry. Its almost like every object has a double image.

3.) (Possible separate topic but this is also a big problem for me) The sky is super bright and no matter how much I adjust gamma I cant fix it because if I adjust the gamma so that the sky looks good then the cockpit is super dark.

4.) I don't get much of a performance boost by switching from 75 to 60 hertz.  The "steps" that I mentioned above are still there but maybe a little smaller.  What I do notice is that when I move my head quickly around the cockpit it seems laggy.  So I switched it back to 75.

5.) Smart smoothing made a big difference for me.  It solved two problems. First it solved my issue #1 above in that it made the ground move much smoother (no more little steps).  It also solved issue #2 in that I can now see things on the ground very clearly. The double image is gone. 

I would love it if someone could tell me what I am doing wrong to make my sky so bright as to make DCS almost unplayable.

@melchiondaIf you post your system specs and what settings you are running, it could help us diagnose some of your issues. And which headset you're using. I had bought a 5k Super and sent it back. Clarity was no where near the 8KX.

5 minutes ago, FETUS said:

@melchiondaIf you post your system specs and what settings you are running, it could help us diagnose some of your issues. And which headset you're using. I had bought a 5k Super and sent it back. Clarity was no where near the 8KX.

Thanks, My specs are in my signature.

W/r/t settings I guess I should post screenshots of my settings for DCS, PitTool and Maybe SteamVR?