Valve/HTC Vive Discussion

if anyone knows of a frame rate monitor like fraps was, in which you could benchmark the average fps over the course of a mission, please let me know.

I have good overall experience with Mirillis Action.

https://mirillis.com/en/products/action.html

It's a powerful tool for in-game video recording but also has benchmarking options to capture fps performance.

Could be worth checking out.

Not sure my 'review' is adding anything useful to the discussion but here goes...

I've visited the Microsoft Store in NY today where they have an HTC Vive available for demo. I've never experienced VR before (except for the 2 minutes in a 'Gear VR' by Samsung which doesn't really qualify). The Vive demo consisted of 3 'scenes'... The blue whale (whale swimming past while you're standing on the deck of a sunken boat), Tilt Paint (cool 3D painting program) and a First Person shooter game (bots flying and shooting at you).

The Ski Goggle is very comfortable. Granted, I've only worn it for 10 minutes but I can see myself gaming with this thing strapped to my head for hours. There was no outside light entering the headset. FOV was far better than I expected and at no point did I notice the edges. What I did notice right off the bat was the screendoor effect and it was a lot worse than I anticipated. Again, I didn't spend any time adjusting IPD and whatnot. The demos were comfortable to look at and I didn't experience any nausea. Resolution was quite limited and I have a hard time believing that it is enough to do a serious combat mission in DCS. Flying around, admiring the Nevada scenery, would be fantastic though. There was a brief moment when I was slightly disoriented while I was moving my head. The headset seemed to have lost tracking for a second although I can't be sure.

What was my overall impression? "Woohooo... this is going to RoCk!" The screendoor effect did bother me a little (although I didn't really notice it after a few minutes of 'gaming' and I would like the resolution to be upped as much as possible... crappy PC be damned.

1st iteration of a technology that can change the way we learn, play and interact. It'll only get better from hereon out. It's a shame Intel is all but stopping development of faster desktop processors or so it seems. I don't need no stinkin' low TDP. Give me 'balls to the wall' performance. The new graphics processors of nVidia and AMD are a welcome addition and their release seems to have been well timed with the release of the Vive and Rift.

Thanks for your review chaos, any review and impressions are useful. Yeah Intel has been a big let down ever since that new CEO that got hired 3 years ago who from day 1 did everything he could to steer Intel away from PC.

Hopefully AMD will pick up the torch or developers will learn to build game engines around GPUs as much as possible.

Facebook and HTC both talked about a 2 year product cycle so I'm not sure if it's reasonable to hope for a better resolution from them yet. But I could see 3rd party 4k screens surfacing in 6-12 months considering how decently easy it is to put an HMD apart, some people modded their DK2 with better screens and it works fairly well. 4K per eye would be very demanding though, but with SLI 1080 ti, ATW-like features, stereoscopic SLI support, Simultaneous Multi Projection Technology and engine optimisations I'm sure 90 fps could be easily reached consistently early next year throughout the most demanding games.

I got my vive on pre order but I really curious about the performance of the vive at lower framerates. Occulus is using Async time warp that helps a lot at lower fps and frame drops from what I read. Any experience with the vive on this? Since its using a different method, is it still fluid at lower fps, not to much judder and nauseating?

I got my vive on pre order but I really curious about the performance of the vive at lower framerates. Occulus is using Async time warp that helps a lot at lower fps and frame drops from what I read. Any experience with the vive on this?

I did notice a frame drops at one point during the blue whale demo but I wasn't moving my head at the time so it didn't bother me. The Vive experience was otherwise a smooth one during the 10 minutes I spent with it and at no point did I experience judder. Also, the tracking is really good. The sales person handed me the controllers while I was wearing the headset and, without seeing my own hands, I knew *exactly* where they were. I was quite impressed with that. BTW, I see little to no use for the controllers in DCS.

BTW, I see little to no use for the controllers in DCS.

But they are there in both 1.53 and 2.02. ED must have some plans to use them, maybe as mouse pointers at the fingertips!

I got my vive on pre order but I really curious about the performance of the vive at lower framerates. Occulus is using Async time warp that helps a lot at lower fps and frame drops from what I read. Any experience with the vive on this? Since its using a different method, is it still fluid at lower fps, not to much judder and nauseating?

There is an "Allow Reprojection" tick box in the VR>Settings>Performance which does a similar job as far as I can see. It smooths out any judder when loosing frames, but depending on your overall settings can result in Frame Rates of 45 or 30 fps.

I wish ED would produce some sort of guide to the best settings for the Vive as well as improving optimization. :joystick:

here some LensShots with the Vive.

Thanks montify for the pictures. I thought it would be worse.

Thanks montify!

My 2 cents.

For shear immersion factor alone I can't stop playing DCS with my vive. The other day I was playing online, and right when I spawned at the airfield it was under attack. Friendly SAMS were launching, AAA was going off, and another player did a strafing run while I sat there trying to power up my A-10A.

It was easily one of the coolest experiences i've ever had playing video games, seriously I can't speak enough on how different it felt to actually be sitting in an A-10 cockpit while all hell broke lose around me.:pilotfly::

Now the cons are legit, you have to lean in close to read the gauges correctly, the HUD can be tricky to read, and forget about spotting an airplane in the distance, you get visuals on them till they are much too close.

But I don't care, the immersion alone means I simply can't play DCS any other way these days.

Note: I have been sticking to FC3 aircraft so far, but I plan to get back into the Black Shark on my next weekend :)

Bonus: The head mounted sight mode on the Russian aircraft are AMAZING when using an HMD:thumbup:

Monty's still pictures prompted me to publish this video, that I took with an iPhone through one of the lenses of my Vive.

Now I haven't had it long enough to ensure that I'm getting the best performance.

I have always been a bit put off by the usual videos showing both the Vive and Rift in DCS, that have always been taken from the "mirror" output and as a result look far sharper with better resolution than that seen in the headset.

Here is a quick look at what I get.

Note:

1. The screen door effect is definitely present but "disappears" in use. (you just don't see it after a short while.)

2. The obvious lens rings are at times glaring but that was mainly because of the extra light getting into the headset. Again not visible in game.

3. At times there is some electrical interference going on between the camera and the Vive but again not visible in game.

Oh and I left the hands out of view.

Monty's still pictures prompted me to publish this video, that I took with an iPhone through one of the lenses of my Vive. [..]

Very interesting!

Is it too much to ask for a video of a gun straffing run - with targets (you are allowed to replay :D)?

I'm just curious how usable it is for vehicle spotting.

Thanks!

Very interesting!

Is it too much to ask for a video of a gun straffing run - with targets (you are allowed to replay :D)?

I'm just curious how usable it is for vehicle spotting.

Thanks!

Yes, would be interesting I'll see what I can do.

Thanks. I'm currently on the verge of cancelling my Rift due to the balls-up that has been the launch and processing debacle, but I'm worried I will regret getting a Vive if it isn't clear enough in the sim (bearing in mind my sight is far from perfect) due to SDE or such-like. So such videos are very important to me as the only proper reference.

From what others' are saying, in terms of readability of instruments, I would think so. I'll tell you in about two weeks.

Thanks. I'm currently on the verge of cancelling my Rift due to the balls-up that has been the launch and processing debacle, but I'm worried I will regret getting a Vive if it isn't clear enough in the sim (bearing in mind my sight is far from perfect) due to SDE or such-like. So such videos are very important to me as the only proper reference.

My limited experience, mainly with 1.53, would suggest that reading inner cockpit (gauges, HUD, MFCDs) is not a problem. Just lean in and ensure it's in the "sweet spot" perfectly readable, even sharp in the center of your view. It is the external acquisition of targets that's a lot more difficult. If you know where to look from TGP acquire and hence the HUD then I could make out a ZSU 23-4 from about 3 miles. Just enough time to kill with guns before he gets you.

Of course things are a lot easier with Labels but I just hate using them. Here we are spending lots of money for a VR Headset to gain "immersion" and then you blow it all with huge Red or Blue labels.

Also they have had the Rift for development for quite a lot longer than the Vive, so maybe there is scope for improvement in it's performance, which at present, at least with my setup, requires "Reprojection" to be On and even then there are some large drops in Frame Rate.

It would be nice if ED came out with some form of guide to running in VR, which would take a lot of the guesswork out of it.

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that they will eventually come out with some good Crossfire VR support for DCS in Version 2.x

Is it just me?

In any other VR game I don't experience such a loss of readability and grafics quality like with the Vive in DCS. (side note: Immersion bonus on the other hand is way better than in other genres)

Is it just me?

 

In any other VR game I don't experience such a loss of readability and grafics quality like with the Vive in DCS. (side note: Immersion bonus on the other hand is way better than in other genres)

I think this simply is due to to the high amount of details compared to other games, even if if it's highly detailed it might not be as much of an issue in other games considering most details will just be eye candy you can gloss over. In DCS these details are needed graduation, numbers and dials essential to the gameplay.

Thanks. I'm currently on the verge of cancelling my Rift due to the balls-up that has been the launch and processing debacle, but I'm worried I will regret getting a Vive if it isn't clear enough in the sim (bearing in mind my sight is far from perfect) due to SDE or such-like. So such videos are very important to me as the only proper reference.

I don't think you'd go wrong with either HMDs, they both have pros and cons. The biggest pros of the Vive for simming imho is it's screen brightness and bigger FOV that some are reporting helps a lot with immersion. Switching rapidly from the two HMDs some say the Rift which screen is dimmer feels like putting on sunglasses compared to the Vive.

In term of screen quality the SDE is marginally similar and you'll see it if you go looking for it. The Rift image is clear and focused everywhere while the Vive has a sweet spot with blurriness appearing the further you look away from the center. There are reports of the vive being crisper than the Rift when looking within sweet spot. Comfort is very subjective and obviously bound to everyone's anatomy, many prefer the OR, many prefer the Vive.

You are right Vivoune. And I would only need it a bit better to enjoy it in DCS. The exteriour is way good enough. Even with low settings now because of Vive req. But it's not enough to fly with complex systems and it's not enough for WW II Aircraft as spotting (and identifying) is horrible I guess.

Just tried FSX with Flyinside. While Vive recognition and head tracking is flawless readability and cockpit grafics are even worse then in DCS. I can't read the menus and I cant read instruments.

Im really disappointed with my Vive when it comes to flight sims which I would have thought it is it's strong point. The grafics in the typical vive games games is sufficent but they arent as long motivating as Sims.

Having used a DK2 for a couple of years the Vive is actually a step above. Personally I accept the fact that I leave the Labels on. Artificial yes however as you pointed out the rez is not quiet good enough for identification a lot of the time. There are some threads on how to make the labels smaller and once we get to version 2.5 I plan on implementing it. In the mean time enjoy it the rez is good enough to read the hud on the A10 finally just lean towards it same with the MFD's.

If you want to play multiplayer with no labels its a problem but then again from my past life I would say welcome to the real world, Target identification has always been a problem. With VR you can fly realistic close formation, AAR and in close Air combat you can actually track a guy and fly some pretty decent BFM. Also the Russian HUD's are larger font and significantly easier to read so try some of those.

In summary while there are some losses when you transition to VR the gains are enormous. With a good Hotas setup the sense of immersion is amazing (if only we had full motion for the g effects). Yes there is some loss of clarity but there is so much more to flying a military fighter and with VR you can get that much closer to the real thing.

Hello forums, after getting my Vive yesterday (previously I was using a DK2) I jumped into DCS. Performance is worse, a lot worse than the DK2. I haven't measured FPS as yet so this is subjective, but it would appear that the oculus timewarp was doing wonders for playability. With the vive there is severe juddering when looking around, something that I suspect timewarp was smoothing out exceedingly well. For instance, when using fraps on the DK2 the red number (shown while recirding) was in the 30s and I could still look around without being distracted by judder. I'm using a gtx980. Edit: I believe the valve version of this is Reprojection, but so far the implementation hasn't provided the results one could expect.

Mostly the frame rate suffers when looking at buildings or regions of the air/ground where there are a lot of units, so this is an issue on dense multiplayer maps like Open Conflict. I've compensated by putting almost everything on low detail/quality settings. On the DK2 I could even have shadows on high and be OK, even with cockpit mirror reflections on.

The other odd one is that I've bound numpad 5 (recenter VR view) to my saitek x52pro, and it's misbehaving quite a bit, possibly a saitek thing though. If I press it once it will recenter, and then lock the cockpit to my head's yaw. If I press it again it will release and leave it there. Either way, what's nasty is that there is a LOT of judder when doing this, kind of like when you first start in the hangar and look left and right to load things into memory. Quite untenable if flying close to the ground.

I imagine a lot of this will be resolved as development progresses, but thought this info would be valuable to the devs and anyone else wanting to try this out. One day I hope to have a better experience than the DK2! Although in retrospect, the DK2 experience was quite good as the resolution bump hasn't provided *that* much more clarity. It's still bloody difficult to see things/text/hud. Oh, and the map doesn't display it's texture. That's pretty annoying hah.

Thanks for your info Shabi. The Rift really seems like a better choice for sims at this point. I really hope it can be ironed out somewhat in the future but i have to admit im thinking of cancelling my Vive order as my main thing would be flight and racing sims. Im not sure the brightness and larger FOV on the vive will outweigh the ATW benefits of the Rift.

If you're just after seated play then it makes more sense. Though I would caveat that with the fact that I haven't tried CV1 to compare image quality (god rays, fov etc). It's certainly a lot cheaper, but who knows when it's going to ship!

I do think though that the DCS devs would be aware of this issue, and the disparity between Vive (and reprojection) compared to Oculus' time warp. Looking at this announcement it looks like the desired frame rate for repro to work is 45fps, which I'm probably not hitting at times:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/358720/discussions/0/385429254937377076/

The important thing for developers to keep in mind is that when this happens, your game will be updating at 45hz instead of the normal 90hz, and you need to be robust to this dynamically changing while your app is running. So anywhere you have hardcoded assumptions about running at 90fps should check to see if we are currently presenting frames multiple times or not. This is done by checking Compositor_FrameTiming's m_nNumFramePresents, which will normally be 1, but will jump to 2 when interleaved reprojection is active.

ATW works wonders but it's won't make a game runs smooth at too low fps.

If your fps were in the 30's in the DK2, you are at the extreme limit of playability for VR (and 2D screens for that matter). No amount of ATW will smoothen your experience should you use the CV1 in place of the DK2 at such low fps because the higher resolution of both CV1 & Vive will have your fps plunge below ATW's envelope.

I suggest lowering your game settings to get back some fps, plenty of Vive owners are enjoying DCS and other flight/racing sims just fine with a GTX 970/980.

For the record, ATW isn't an oculus exclusive proprietary feature. It existed before the Rift and is used everywhere, the Vive could use it if they wanted to (some say they're already working on it). HTC Vive decided to go with reproduction because it is apparently more easily supported and compatible with the widest range of hardware from what I understand, but it has to be supported too so it could be that DCS also has to support it for it to work well. Since the Oculus SDKs are there for a few years now, most devs already know how to work with it and support it, that's why some devs also support Oculus first, they're familiar with it. Maybe give the devs some time to get acquainted with the Vive too and the softwares to evolve a bit on Vive's side. ^^

There's nothing wrong with going with the Rift though if you can't be bothered with the wait and think you'll enjoy its features more, but there are a few months wait if you order an OR now I believe and by the time you get your OR, HTC Vive might have implemented something just as good or better. There are reports of AMD and nVidia working on something even better than ATW. Rift's ATW might also get even better. We won't know until both HMDs matures a bit.