Reverb G2 problem seems to be backwards

[RackMonkey]

I did not expect this when I got my HMD. I know 2070 is not going to let me run my setting on high, but I did not expect that it would be blurry. I expected reduced frame rates and some less that optimal visuals. I did not expect it to look like I have 20/50 vision. When I start DCS and it's loading both lenses look like they are jumping between two images. It really hurts the eyes.

 

I have checked the lenses with some free games from Steam and the are perfectly clear. I also got X-Plane 11.50 to boot up, without Vulkun, and it looks OK. So I can assume that there's nothing wrong with the HMD. I must also assume that it's the something with DCS. 

 

I'm asking you guys to looks at my hardware and if yours is the same, let me know if you had a blurry output and what you did to fix it. Assume that I have everything update with the latest firmware or drivers.

 

 

[speed-of-heat]

a lot will be dependent on your settings, in Windows, Nvidia drivers, WMR,  Steam VR and in game... can you let us know what those settings are and we can try and help

[vonbane]

I have a G2 and a 2070 and DCS looks fine.  So i would also say it is something in your settings.

 

I did nothing special with my settings after upgrading from the HTC VIVE other than my steam VR settings.  I changed the global resolution to be as close as I could get it to 2160x2160.  My steam VR DCS settings I left at 100% (so it will stay the same as the global resolution).  I also had to go to the beta steam VR and the beta WMR in steam.  That wasn't due to it being blurry though, it was like a slideshow only getting 7-12 FPS.  I have the latest Nvidia drivers also.

 

Here are some of my settings for comparison.

 

 

These are the only settings I overrode for DCS specifically.

 

[RackMonkey]

23 minutes ago, speed-of-heat said:

a lot will be dependent on your settings, in Windows, Nvidia drivers, WMR,  Steam VR and in game... can you let us know what those settings are and we can try and help

Well...Windows is 20H2, nVidia 461.14, WMR and SteamVR are the current beta's. Everything else have been changing depending on who's post I'm reading at the time. Assume that all adjustable settings are at default. One exception though, I will generally start with my texture setting on high and go down from there since that has worked for me before when using a monitor.

 

I will now try the setting from the post that came right after your response

[speed-of-heat]

those are the versions not the settings, check my 3090 settings to give you an idea of what i am talking about 

[RackMonkey]

I know you were asking for setting but they change every 5 minutes while I'm trying to get rid of the shimmer and blurry. That's why I said to consider everything as default and just gave the versions. 

 

I copied your setting as closely as I could given the difference in equipment. I got my frame time down into the low teens but other than that it made no difference to my "blurry" problem. If my wing man get half a mile away...I lose him in the shimmer and lose of definition of the aircraft.  

 

Thanks for trying though.

[Burt]

Seem here with the blurriness and our system is pretty close. It’s like scotch tape over the lenses in DCS. But I’m sure it’s a setting issue. There is just so much stuff running in the background, steam seems to be a huge program and taking a lot out of performance. 

[vonbane]

Have you tried deleting your shader cache and letting that rebuild?  I tend to delete this after each game update and Nvidia driver update.

 

In your DCS saved games folder.  Delete everything from the inside the following directories.

\fxo\
\metashaders\
\metashaders2\

 

In your DCS installation folder.  In the following directories delete the "dcs" directory.

\Mods\terrains\Caucasus\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\Nevada\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\Normandy\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\PersianGulf\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\Syria\misc\metacache\
 

Start DCS with VR enabled.

 

[dburne]

I myself no longer have any contents in my Metashaders 2 folder in saved games, and I don't have a Metashaders folder.

[Drac]

Metashader folder is also empty on my end.

[RackMonkey]

I'm beginning to wonder if there is an incompatibility between the the 2000 series cards and the MB chip sets and DCS. Every other title I try seem to have great clarity. 

I would appreciate it if anybody reading this would post these 5 things.

What MB/chipset are you running?

What CPU is installed and is it OC'd?

What video card do you have?

Is it just DCS or are other titles having problems?

And lastly, are you having problems with blurry or shimmering in VR?

 

As you can see by my sig I have a Gigabyte MB with and Intel 100 series chipset.

I have an I7-7700K stock.

And Gigabyte's RTX2070Sup Windforce OC 3X 8G video. 

 

By the way Vonbane, all the metacache has been cleared with no change.

Edited February 11, 2021 by RackMonkey

[ShaunX]

Until recently I was running a G2 with an I7-6700K @4.5 on an ASUS Z170-P and a RTX2080 Super. After applying every optimisation suggested on these forums, and with SS at 70%, DCS settings very low , I was at best, able to get 45 FPS Motion smoothing locked, only some of the time, on very light missions.

 

I did however, still experience exactly the heavy shimmering/sparkling you describe, both inside and outside of the cockpit. It wasn't possible to turn on any anti-aliasing to attempt to negate that effect without severely dropping FPS to an unplayable extent.

 

The blurring you're describing I assume is double imaging/ghosting and will always be seen in objects/terrain as you pass it when you're unable to maintain 45 FPS with motion smoothing.

 

It was certainly flyable and very enjoyable if I kept to simple missions and accepted the shimmering, but sadly I suspect that if you want to unleash the G2 on DCS as it was intended, your only recourse is to upgrade your hardware. If you read around this forum you'll see that there are scenarios in DCS that will challenge even the highest spec rigs with the G2.

 

I was lucky enough to be able to scrape together the funds to upgrade and the results are breathtaking.

[RackMonkey]

A lot of good info Shaun. I am already looking at a MB and CPU upgrade BUT, it will probably have to wait since stock seems to be at an all time low making prices extremely high. Maybe by that time I can look at a 3000 series card also.

 

You described what I see exactly. Ever try to land the HIND like that? It's a beast when you can see correctly, and you can forget about getting into a furball with anything in Redfor.

[vonbane]

Have you tried disabling motion smoothing in Steam VR to see if the blurring goes away?

[ShaunX]

Vonbane, it is precisely the motion smoothing that is responsible for preventing the blurring/ghosting. It can only do it's magic if you can get FPS up to at least 50-60 so it has some overhead to work with.

 

As I understand it, with the G2 set to it's native 90 Hertz frame rate, it should ideally run at 90 FPS. If it can't do that (and it really can't unless you have a top spec highly tuned rig and even then it will struggle to maintain that..unless you're Speed-of-Heat ) then you're going to get increasing blurring the lower the FPS drops, and that manifests as double-imaging/ghosting as it drops to the rates you're getting. Steam introduced motion-smoothing as a system to combat that. It drops your frame rate to a fixed 45 and then uses the unused frames to somehow smooth out the experience and the ghosting dissapears. No idea how it does that but I'm sure there are luminaries on this forum who'll correct me and explain better.

 

Another option if you're struggling is to change the refresh rate for the G2 to 60 hertz in the WMR settings. Then you're only looking to achieve 60 FPS or with motion smoothing it will fix at 30 FPS. I haven't tried it myself and some users have reported that the slower rate causes a bit of nausea while others are fine with it.

[vonbane]

Yep I agree.  But since motion smoothing is on by default, the thought was to try the other extreme.  You would expect that the blurring would get worse, since they wouldn't have the extra frame in between to help smooth it out.  The results of that may help tell what is wrong wouldn't it?  If it gets more blurry then the issue is their machines simply cannot produce enough frame to make it non blurry.  If it gets better, then maybe one of those luminaries could explain that cause I don't know what that would mean.  If it's the same amount of blurriness then they are no closer to figuring it out.

[dburne]

I am quite happy running my Reverb G2 with Motion Smoothing forced on at 45 fps.

[Gusti]

7 hours ago, vonbane said:

Have you tried deleting your shader cache and letting that rebuild?  I tend to delete this after each game update and Nvidia driver update.

 

In your DCS saved games folder.  Delete everything from the inside the following directories.

\fxo\
\metashaders\
\metashaders2\

 

In your DCS installation folder.  In the following directories delete the "dcs" directory.

\Mods\terrains\Caucasus\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\Nevada\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\Normandy\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\PersianGulf\misc\metacache\
\Mods\terrains\Syria\misc\metacache\
 

Start DCS with VR enabled.

 

Interesting find. I recently did upgrade from a reverb G1 to a G2. I have been a bit disappointed about the much praised clarity compared to the G1 which I could not observe. I frequently delete fxo and metashaders2 folders in saved games. After doing that, I did observe that fxo did create new shader files while metashaders2 folder did not and stayed empty. However, no gain in clarity after that.  After deleting metashaders in the DCS installation folder (different location then metashaders2 folder) as stated above, metashaders2 folder in saved games did now generate lots of new shader files while it did not generate new shader files in DCS installation folder. In my view, clarity and performance did improve after that. Give it a try!

[RackMonkey]

No luck with the fxo and metashaders files. There was no change. I could not find a lone metashaders folder to delete anything from.

 

When I fly I seem to get a locked 45FPS with a low 20's frame time. And I don't see what "smoothers" have to do with this. If I'm holding my head still and looking at the instruments the image should be clear. 

 

I'm beginning to think the problem is a way the hardware and software are interacting. I've installed a couple of the free games on Steam and they work fine and are perfectly clear. X Plane is blurry but not as much as DCS. I remember reading that the 570? chipset has a problem with VR. Maybe the Intel 100 chipset does too. Notice dburne has a 300 chipset and his runs fine. That's why I was asking everybody for that info...to see if there was a correlation. If some people run DCS in VR with the same WMR and Steam software there has to be more to the problem than just raw horsepower.

 

Let that rattle around your head for a while and let me know what you come up with.  

[javelina1]

23 minutes ago, RackMonkey said:

No luck with the fxo and metashaders files. There was no change. I could not find a lone metashaders folder to delete anything from.

 

When I fly I seem to get a locked 45FPS with a low 20's frame time. And I don't see what "smoothers" have to do with this. If I'm holding my head still and looking at the instruments the image should be clear. 

 

I'm beginning to think the problem is a way the hardware and software are interacting. I've installed a couple of the free games on Steam and they work fine and are perfectly clear. X Plane is blurry but not as much as DCS. I remember reading that the 570? chipset has a problem with VR. Maybe the Intel 100 chipset does too. Notice dburne has a 300 chipset and his runs fine. That's why I was asking everybody for that info...to see if there was a correlation. If some people run DCS in VR with the same WMR and Steam software there has to be more to the problem than just raw horsepower.

 

Let that rattle around your head for a while and let me know what you come up with.  

FWIW. Just another data point.  my specs below in my sig.  I've been running just fine similar to dburne.  I've also been leveraging most all of Speed-o-h's guidance/settings.

[RackMonkey]

The DCS server I fly on has a tech channel so I asked an open question there...Is there anybody here that is running the G2 on an Intel 100 series chipset that's working fine? 

 

I'll post here what I find out.

 

[ShaunX]

I've just reread your first port .. "When I start DCS and it's loading both lenses look like they are jumping between two images. It really hurts the eyes. "

 

As far as I'm aware, we ALL experience that during load with the G2, regardless of hardware so that's a current "feature" and not your issue. I just close my eyes till it stops.

 

 

[ShaunX]

14 hours ago, RackMonkey said:

A lot of good info Shaun. I am already looking at a MB and CPU upgrade BUT, it will probably have to wait since stock seems to be at an all time low making prices extremely high. Maybe by that time I can look at a 3000 series card also.

 

You described what I see exactly. Ever try to land the HIND like that? It's a beast when you can see correctly, and you can forget about getting into a furball with anything in Redfor.

 

..when you're looking at new MB's be aware that a number of them (mostly AMD but some Intels too) have been reported to have issues between their USB 3 ports and the G2. With my new ASUS x570 MB for example, WMR couldn't recognise the G2 via any of the front ports and although the rear ports would boot the G2, the tracking would fail after a few minutes. I solved that be plugging an external USB 3 hub into one of the rear ports and it works perfectly now. Actually, with that in mind, have you tried using a different port or using an external hub to try and resolve any of your issues ?

 

There's a link on the other sim's forum to a table which lists problem MBs - https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/67575-list-of-reported-motherboards-having-issues-with-g2-possible-solution/

 

[RackMonkey]

5 hours ago, shaun57 said:

I've just reread your first port .. "When I start DCS and it's loading both lenses look like they are jumping between two images. It really hurts the eyes. "

 

As far as I'm aware, we ALL experience that during load with the G2, regardless of hardware so that's a current "feature" and not your issue. I just close my eyes till it stops.

 

 

The G2 is my first experience with VR so I'm learning and everything is new to me. I wasn't sure if that was normal or a symptom of a problem. Better to put everything out there and be educated.   

[RackMonkey]

4 hours ago, shaun57 said:

 

..when you're looking at new MB's be aware that a number of them (mostly AMD but some Intels too) have been reported to have issues between their USB 3 ports and the G2. With my new ASUS x570 MB for example, WMR couldn't recognise the G2 via any of the front ports and although the rear ports would boot the G2, the tracking would fail after a few minutes. I solved that be plugging an external USB 3 hub into one of the rear ports and it works perfectly now. Actually, with that in mind, have you tried using a different port or using an external hub to try and resolve any of your issues ?

 

There's a link on the other sim's forum to a table which lists problem MBs - https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/67575-list-of-reported-motherboards-having-issues-with-g2-possible-solution/

 

I've read about that. Assuming that I have to replace my 100 series chipset MB, I'll go through the other post here in the VR section and make note of the MB's that others have listed in their sig's and make notes as to which ones are having problems and which ones are helping. I can only assume that the ones helping have working systems and would be the best choice for a new MB. I other words, I'll follow the heard and assume they know what they are doing.

 

I just looked at the list that you linked...my MB is on it and the chipset is listed 4 times. The Z170X series. I guessing there are not more listed because it is an older board and chipset and most people wouldn't even think of trying VR on it. 

Edited February 12, 2021 by RackMonkey