Help me to understand this VR and DCS stuff

[Burt]

Please forgive me for my ignorance in this VR world stuff I'm fairly new to all this so I'm alittle confused. My system specs are below. I started 
DCS and bought a new rig to run it in April 2020 and experience running dcs with a 240hz monitor @ 1080p was and still is totally amazing.. its beautiful so crisp and clear almost as good as Wags video crispness. Well I decided to get a VR headset, I guess I got lucky because I ordered a HP G2 through the HP site and it got delivered in 4 days and I was once again soooo excited that I took off from work to wait for it to be delivered. I know there is alot of tweaking with the resolution sliders so I spent pretty much the whole day yesterday getting all that done and watching videos and forum info. ect. 

 

Now alot of what I seeing people like " BigNewy " with his super duper computer setup tweaking things and helping the community get 90fps and stuff but I'm confused because Im new to this VR world and I don't know what its suppose to look like inside the headset. I mean the videos people are posting are screen shots on their monitors. so to make this short I have everything downloaded WMR, Steam , SteamVR and I have played with the resolution sliders until I was getting alittle nauseated then give it a break then try again. But this is what Im confused about,

 

1. Why is everything fuzzy and out of focus ? I'm getting 90fps and its running pretty smooth

2. Is the graphics in the G2 Headset suppose to look like is does on a monitor ? or different. 

 

I'm struggling with this the most of how its suppose to look inside the headset and through the lenses .... its just so blurry. I do wear glasses- readers while playing with 1080P monitor but not with the headset. My system is VR ready and shouldn't I be able to get pretty close to what I seeing others producing very crisp and smooth play?  Also my PSU is 850 power supply. My VR experience is kinda upsetting right now .... I just don't know if this is over my head or not. 

 

Thanks for any help.
 

[Svsmokey]

Let's start with the simplest possibility . Did you remove the lens protectors on setup ? You wouldn't be the first to forget !

[Burt]

LOL !  Yes I have removed the blue film protector. I have tried the resolution slider at 48 and 100 % just to add and running at 90hz. 

 

I wish I would have posted this yesterday when I was off and on my machine so I could do some screen shot sorry, but I'm at work today and all I can think about it this VR stuff. 

 

thx

[Svsmokey]

How is your far vision ? Vr headests are focused to about 6 feet if i recall correctly .

To answer one question , the G2 is reported to offer near-equivalency to a 1080p monitor in terms of clarity . 

I do not have any experience with WMR headsets , so cannot be of much help .

[unlikely_spider]

Yes, if you need corrective lenses to see distance, you will either need to wear those lenses when using the headset, or do like I did and buy prescription adapters made for the G2, which to me is the more comfortable solution.

 

And the G2 is very particular about headset position. Loosen all straps, start with one eye closed and move the set around so that the other eye sees clearly in the center. There should be a very sharp "sweet spot" that you want centered in front of both eyes, so start with one just to see what it should look like. Then try to keep that spot there as you adjust all the straps and the IPD to get that same clarity with both eyes.

 

And make sure the back part is pretty low on your head, not just sitting on it. It helps to push the lenses close to your eyes and keep it steady.

Edited January 19, 2021 by unlikely_spider

[Burt]

This is the kind of info I have been looking for. The headset out of the box fitted perfect so I didn’t even do anything to the straps at all. And at my age 56 my close up vision took a crap at the age of 45 so my glasses are mainly for close up vision +225. I need to call and get my correct ipd too because I guessed around 64ish. Thank you for this valuable information and I can’t wait to get home and adjust everything and retest. I’m glad it is clear to me know that it should look like a 1080p / monitor picture through the lenses that right there gives me hope to get it right. 
 

Thx ! 

[Burt]

Okay so I just got a iphone app that measured my ipd. As I say I didnt know at the time of testing so I put it at 64ish. The app test gave me a 66.5mm so thats one thing comfirmed and out the way. Somebody told me to check this too is this accurate.

" make sure max power/performance is set along with "virtual reality pre-rendered frames" at 3, not the default of 1.

 

[Ala12Rv-Tundra]

If it gets bblurry when you move your head, it could be retro projection related

[dburne]

Try this:

First insure you are running WMR for Steam VR Beta, and also Steam VR Beta.

I run both of those. When I first plug my headset in, regular Windows Mixed Reality opens up. I close that, then I launch Windows Mixed Reality for Steam VR Beta. This will launch both WMR and Steam VR for you. I then launch the game from my desktop shortcut.

 

In Steam VR set Motion Smoothing to On and forced at 45 fps for DCS. You may have to have DCS running to access the per game setting for DCS in Steam VR. If this works out and you don't have DCS listed without it running , no problem it can be added. Forcing it to 45 fps will keep it there and the system won't be switching between 45-90 fps at times.

For your rig, set the resolution in that same settings screen for DCS to 80%.

In game , turn any AA off. No AA of any sort. If you can run it at 80-100% with Motion Smoothing forced at 45 fps you should not need any AA.

 

Try the above and see what you think. If it seems reasonable and looking decent can fine tune from there.

Things in and around the cockpit should look pretty sharp, as well as objects and terrain that are relatively close. The further out you look is when it will start getting blurrier and not so well defined. This is normal with VR as it is today.

Edited January 19, 2021 by dburne

[Fri13]

5 hours ago, Burt said:

1. Why is everything fuzzy and out of focus ? I'm getting 90fps and its running pretty smooth

 

That is difficult to answer really without testing the HMD itself as one can't really explain how they see things (like blind asking what does colors look like).

 

But, regardless all these fancy technical numbers like 1440x1080 per eye resolution and so on.

We need to remember that the displays in HMD are just couple centimeters from your eye. The lenses adjust that so the focusing distance is about 2 meters.

Now that display is not huge one, it is a commonly a smartphone display that is inside. And now that lens is the key technology for everything.

It needs to take that small display and optically enlarge it for your field of view.

 

Just like in real world, you buy a larger displays (28" or 32" etc) not because you want display cover larger area of your vision, but so you can get your display further from you without it going too small. Now increasing the resolution is challenging as it usually means that graphics (text etc) are resolution dependent and so on higher resolution means smaller text and graphics.

So one needs to overcome this by scaling everything back up as larger monitor at further distance and increased resolution means things are more difficult to read.

 

I write this on the 28" 4K display. Close to me I have 65" 4K monitor. I can have the TV much further distance than 28" one (2.3 x further distance) and it will look to me exactly the same. The text and graphics - everything will be identical, regardless if the display is 1 meter from my face and TV is 2.3 meters from my face.

 

Now looking both they are as sharp and as detailed because my eye can not solve individual pixels. I can see a individual black pixel on white screen, but not a black pixel among other dark pixels etc. They are blend together.

 

But if I get closer, lets say I look put the display 20 cm from my face and TV from 50 cm from my face, no with the same ratio they are same size and all, but I can start to see single pixels far more easily but still have difficult to separate them. Like example in this text reply box the edit bar on top, there is a third symbol from the right as GIF. That letter G in text of GIF is clearly "blocky". The link and link addition buttons more to the left of that button are that the chain icon is very sharp and detailed, but the one that has the green + symbol on it is mushy and soft. But it resembles the link icon.

 

Now when you take a relative low resolution display and you magnify it to cover large area of your eye field of view, it doesn't really matter how far you are focusing but just that how large the magnification is. So how big field of view coverage the display has. This creates same situation as you would look a display from very close distance (like 10 cm) so you see individual pixels, and it becomes "blurry" by the optical quality.

 

We are not there yet in VR display resolutions that it would be "seamless", as it would be more like a 4K per eye, and narrow down the field of view. That would be 3840 x 2160 and likely for a FOV 110 or larger (per eye) we would need a 5K or 6K to get a really detailed and "sharp" image.

 

So if one wants to have highest definition in the graphics, it is still the 4K display that is better than any VR. Just alone that even when we get similar resolution per degree of view, the display doesn't have any single optical lens causing blurring etc. But we do not have any single display that can cover that field of view that VR can. Example a Rift S individual eye Field Of View is about 85-90 degrees (in together two eyes combined it is over 110 degrees) diagonally. Now compare that to common display distance etc, they get about 50-60 degree in field of view.

 

Now think about VR with two 6K panels, rendering the DCS graphics. A normal 4K display renders that 3840 x 2160 = 8.3 million pixels. A 6K resolution is 5760 x 3240 = 18.6 million pixels. And you would need two of them, so in total 37.2 million pixels to be rendered. There is not a such a GPU that can do it. Our HDMI highest standards can not deliver such a bandwidth that thing would require, as single frame in 8 bit colors is about 110 MB. And you need to run at least 45/90 frames per second, that is 5 or 10 GB per second. Not Giga bits, but Giga Bytes!

 

Now the HDMI 2.0 standard provides bandwidth support for 18 Gigabits, that is enough for a 4K resolution 60 Hz (60 FPS) + its metadata for the HDR.

That is single individual display. The HDMI 2.1 standard provides 48 Gigabits bandwidth. That is for 4K at 120 FPS or 8K for 60 FPS.

 

And that is limiting factor just alone on simple cables, not even on calculation power etc. We are for an decade limited to lower resolutions than high resolution VR would require for same sharpness as displays does, and that is even without considering the lens optical quality that is required. As now we have cheap lenses, best one can have for the price point. But if someone is ready to pay 8-15 thousand dollars for their lenses, then I bet that LEICA or ZEISS will be ready to put a small lens manufacturing line for so high quality lenses that such high resolutions in VR could be enjoyed in full detail.

 

Nothing of this means that VR is bad. There has been huge leaps. Like alone the Rift CV1 -> Rift S was huge leap. Resolution didn't grow much, but display went from PENTILE to RGB pattern. It was huge clarity maker. The competitors has gone higher in resolution, but they are in the calculation limitations at now.

 

And there is always the game engine limitations. Like search for Unreal 4 engine demo and compare it to the latest Unreal 5 engine. We are not even reached the Unreal 4 limits as it requires way too much from game developers to use it. But Unreal 5 is like another place. And if it can make it easier to utilize the engine capability to create the graphics, it will make possible start push forward in hardware limits.

 

The games problem is that there is interactivity and realtime requirements that are its limits. In movie industry the visual effects are rendered in time and stored in video. So there is no hardware requirements to play back all the complex and extremely detailed visual effects. And that is why movie industries use own super computers to do just that, graphics rendering.

 

Now in games we need to just accept some limits in graphics just to be able get the good FPS so things look solid and smooth.

And regardless the VR advancements, we are just far from that what one could get to call "amazing" compared to displays and reality. But if we forgive the graphical limitations, we gain a lot in the senses and other parts. Far more than any display can ever provide.

 

Even when the 4K display would give superior definition compared to any VR out there, I do not want by any means fly without VR. Even when it is so "low level" as Rift S, as that gives great hardware requirements balance for performance.

It is the immersion that display can never provide. It is that I am after. And DCS is for the entertainment and VR allows you to hop out of your casual life to something completely different place and time. You are something else than you. You can feel partially what it is to fly. You can feel to do something else than sit in front of the computer. 

 

And DCS is providing graphics that are superior to that what any VR can render for long time. It just comes with heavy hardware requirements for various reasons but it is one of the VR games out there that can really show the potential of the VR.

 

So the question is always that "what is blurry" as it is questionable. Easiest way to maybe test it is to make a visual test range in DCS and ask that what you can spot, see etc. But even then it is question about your own vision vs someone else. So only real way to do the checking is that you test your VR with someone else and see the difference.

 

[TimberWolf]

Before you continue messing with DCS, have you tried playing in the VR house? You can pull up a browser, and try some VR demos like the deep sea one. That should tell you whether the headset itself has issues. Once you know that the headset is working properly, then you can try to get DCS set up properly.

[Burt]

11 minutes ago, TimberWolf said:

Before you continue messing with DCS, have you tried playing in the VR house? You can pull up a browser, and try some VR demos like the deep sea one. That should tell you whether the headset itself has issues. Once you know that the headset is working properly, then you can try to get DCS set up properly.

Yes me and my played alittle on it last night and everything is fine in that aspect so I know it’s working properly. It’s actually mind blowing really and very enjoyable... I hope she doesn’t like to much tho because it mine all mine haha! I’m just struggling with DCS right now. 
 

Fri13 I’m still reading your reply. 
 

thank you 

2 hours ago, dburne said:

Try this:

First insure you are running WMR for Steam VR Beta, and also Steam VR Beta.

I run both of those. When I first plug my headset in, regular Windows Mixed Reality opens up. I close that, then I launch Windows Mixed Reality for Steam VR Beta. This will launch both WMR and Steam VR for you. I then launch the game from my desktop shortcut.

 

In Steam VR set Motion Smoothing to On and forced at 45 fps for DCS. You may have to have DCS running to access the per game setting for DCS in Steam VR. If this works out and you don't have DCS listed without it running , no problem it can be added. Forcing it to 45 fps will keep it there and the system won't be switching between 45-90 fps at times.

For your rig, set the resolution in that same settings screen for DCS to 80%.

In game , turn any AA off. No AA of any sort. If you can run it at 80-100% with Motion Smoothing forced at 45 fps you should not need any AA.

 

Try the above and see what you think. If it seems reasonable and looking decent can fine tune from there.

Things in and around the cockpit should look pretty sharp, as well as objects and terrain that are relatively close. The further out you look is when it will start getting blurrier and not so well defined. This is normal with VR as it is today.

 

Oh my god so I have to download steamvr beta and wmr for steam ? Wow ok.

I will try that appreciate it! Really helps!

[dburne]

8 minutes ago, Burt said:

Yes me and my played alittle on it last night and everything is fine in that aspect so I know it’s working properly. It’s actually mind blowing really and very enjoyable... I hope she doesn’t like to much tho because it mine all mine haha! I’m just struggling with DCS right now. 
 

Fri13 I’m still reading your reply. 
 

thank you 

Oh my god so I have to download steamvr beta and wmr for steam ? Wow ok.

I will try that appreciate it! Really helps!

 

Yes absolutely! Steam VR all you have to do is go into the settings and opt into the Beta.

WMR for Steam VR you also download from Steam.

Edited January 19, 2021 by dburne

[Burt]

Just now, dburne said:

 

Yes absolutely! Steam VR all you have to do is go into the settings and opt into the Beta

WMR for Steam VR you also download from Steam.

Awesome will do and I’m excited again just like I did the day I was waiting for it. 
 

thank you 

Ok should I do this with the headset plug in or not?

[dburne]

2 minutes ago, Burt said:

Awesome will do and I’m excited again just like I did the day I was waiting for it. 
 

thank you 

 

Anytime. Let me know how you make out.

[Burt]

I sure will 

[dburne]

13 minutes ago, Burt said:

Awesome will do and I’m excited again just like I did the day I was waiting for it. 
 

thank you 

Ok should I do this with the headset plug in or not?

 

Yeah that is fine. If regular WMR is running just close it down. Do not use regular WMR.

Remember you will only want to run WMR For SteamVR Beta and Steam VR Beta.

When you launch WMR for Steam VR  Beta it will also launch Steam VR Beta.

Then go into Steam VR settings tab and set that motion smoothing like I suggested earlier. If your DCS is not Steam Version, you will need DCS running initially to access the DCS profile in Steam VR.

Edited January 20, 2021 by dburne

[Burt]

Sorry but do I launch wmr for steam or download it ? 

[dburne]

17 minutes ago, Burt said:

Sorry but do I launch wmr for steam or download it ? 

 

You need Windows Mixed Reality for Steam VR Beta.  You download it from Steam, go to the Steam Store and search for it. Download and install it.

I assumed you already have Steam VR. If you do all you need to do there is go into settings for Steam VR and enable Beta.

 

Once you have that, you will only want to launch WMR for Steam VR Beta, Once you launch it Steam VR will launch with it.

Then launch DCS from your desktop shortcut.

 

Remember when you first plug in the headset always just regular WMR starts with it automatically. Close that down.

Then launch as above.

 

We are headed off to bed for the night, good luck ! I will check back in the morning.

[Burt]

Ok thank you again and good night.

[DerekSpeare]

 

And make sure you enable motion reprojection in Steam VR as well. 

[Burt]

Well I’m done trying for now again. Did all the above to my best. So now my DCS screen resolution is stretched out and unable to do anything of my DCS option screen ... unbelievable. Why is that? I unplugged the VR and restarted. And start stretched out i am totally confused and quit upset. Thanks for the help and I don’t by any mean blame any of you I’m just totally lost now about just wanting to get back to normal monitor play. 

[Burt]

2 hours ago, DerekSpeare said:

 

And make sure you enable motion reprojection in Steam VR as well. 

Yes I got that center binded... thx

[Lange_666]

3 hours ago, Burt said:

Well I’m done trying for now again. Did all the above to my best. So now my DCS screen resolution is stretched out and unable to do anything of my DCS option screen ... unbelievable. Why is that? I unplugged the VR and restarted. And start stretched out i am totally confused and quit upset. Thanks for the help and I don’t by any mean blame any of you I’m just totally lost now about just wanting to get back to normal monitor play. 

 

When coming out of DCS in VR mode and you close DCS in that mode, it will open in VR again next time you run it even when you don't use your headset. This is because you forget to disable the VR enabled setting in the VR tab of the DCS setting (easy to forget and it's messy next time if you want something to try in pancake mode). 

This means it will also run in the set VR resolution giving you a crappy image in 2D.

There are a few options though to make it work in 2D or VR directly without going through the option screen and turn off/on VR and close/restart DCS to make the switch (ED really needs to implement how MSFS handles 2D <-> VR switching):

You can make a copy of the DCS desktop shortcut and add --force_disable_VR to it's target, something like this:

"C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\bin\DCS.exe" --force_disable_VR

You then have 2 shortcuts, one for VR, one for 2D.

You can also use this superb tool by Skatezilla: https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/134493-the-dcs-updater-gui-utility

which allows you to select the mode in which you want to get DCS started.

 

 

[Terry Dactil]

You can also use batch files so clicking one icon on your desktop restores things to normal.

Here are mine ...

 

 

@echo off
:: Shut down all the programs started by DCS Updater
:: Use quotes if there are spaces in program name
taskkill /IM  "DCS Updater Utility.exe" /F
taskkill /IM  VoiceAttack.exe /F
taskkill /IM   OVGME.exe /F
:: taskkill /IM  joy.cpl  /F
taskkill /IM  OculusClient.exe /F
::
:: Move audio back from headphones to the computer
:: Requires nircmd utility program installed
"D:\DCS WORLD\UTILITIES\Windows Audio.bat"

:: replacing
::C:\nircmd\nircmdc.exe setdefaultsounddevice "Acer X34" 1
::pause
:: See how it all went
:: then
cls
exit

 

.. and the other batch file that  resets the audio to the desktop.

I have made that separate now, but it can be included in the first batch file

(Check device manager to find the name of the audio system on your desktop).

 

::@echo off

C:\nircmd\nircmdc.exe setdefaultsounddevice "Acer X34" 1

:: exit