Just chiming in with what I’ve experienced on my system so far. Running an i5-9600k overclocked to 5.0Ghz, RTX2070 vanilla, 32GB DDR4-2666, all SSDs, Oculus Quest 2.
Running unmodded DCS 2.7 through Oculus Link with Oculus Tray Tool in my Channel sandbox missions with new clouds and a handful of AI, I get 36~45fps, but frequently get Link stutters and compression artifacts. Sometimes major artifacts (transluscent white bar covering 30~40% of my screen).
Disabling Oculus Tray Tool seems to have reduced compression artifacts but I still get Link stutters; mainly audio.
Running wirelessly through Virtual Desktop I get stunning smoothness and no disconnects, but frames are stuck at 22~32fps. I get occasional drops in quality causing pixelation on red objects and shadows. I also frequently have this random period where the game will suddenly turn to a slideshow, temporarily fixed by clicking outside the DCS window. My router is ancient, so I don’t know how much is DCS vs. the headset vs. Virtual Desktop vs. my router.
I tried Speed-of-heat’s IC-pass shaders mod and had no framerate improvement. Visual quality also dropped, with no light diffusion from the clouds and the Marston mats at High Halden became blindingly reflective.
What doesn’t make sense to me, is that when my VR suddenly gets stuttery or slideshowy, neither CPU nor VRAM are maxed out. Highest CPU core is 57% VRAM 98%.
Well, I may be doing something wrong, but niether of the shader mods give me any appreciable performance boost…
Nowhere near what I saw in 2.5 anyway.
What I do find however is that, with my settings, I get 90fps in the Spit on the Normandy map, but just 70 on the Channel map. That’s quite a difference.
I don’t know if anyone is using Oculus headsets, but for the Quest 2 I’m finding that the Oculus Tray Tool does more harm than good. I can get a good Link with minimal stutters by making sure OTT is closed, denying access to files in the headset, and running Link without running Oculus app first.
I also set DCS.exe to run on two cores, and select two different cores for the Oculus exe. Not sure if that helps or not.
The Channel map is simply not optimized, yet. Normandy actually runs quite well on my end. I’m seeing overall decent FPS improvements on the other maps with the various shader mods. But as always, your mileage will vary.
I’m hip. Especially since I don’t move so well anymore
I’m odd though; all that stuff appeals to me.
I think that’s the one I tried first; claimed to be IC compliant. I saw no diff. Kegety’s (above) has brought me back to pre-2.7 performance - with clouds. Though they still drop the FPS a little.
Since the new prop animations, with 2.7, I’m thinking of going down the Warbirds way. Not sure why really, just cuzz. So, performance-wise, Normandy you think is better?
Yeah back in December 2019, the Normandy map received a significant facelift with new content and optimizations. I recall the FPS gain was significant. Definitely made helicopter flying more enjoyable.
Last night I had a little VR play. Going up through the overcast is amazing. Then the sea of clouds below looked so pretty. A few days ago I was not as impressed. I cleaned up the files a bit, then ran the game in non VR. Then I went to VR and it seems much better performance wise. Warbirds are beautiful.
The 2.7 VR clouds issue with the ‘jumping’ clouds is a strange bug…
It is on the known issues list, so I have no doubt that they will fix it.
But one thing that I have noticed is that the clouds only jump up and down when I hold my view still… When I move my head, the clouds are still, in relation to the background.
I’m seeing no jumping in “standard”
Just completed an amazing flight .
First time i have had a chance to use lightening and mav displays and see new explosion/fire/smoke effects in 2.7 , followed by some terrain play in the gorges and cloud surfing between layers , all with butter-smooth performance , even running msaax4 and pd 1.4 . Enjoyed the smooth transitions from clear air to cloud when climbing/descending too . Yeah , that was an amazing experience - even greased the landing
This update deserves first place in the ED hall of fame !
Do you see any difference in the clouds, what so ever, from standard to ultra?
I don’t think the jumpy clouds affects every VR user, but I wonder what change in setup makes the difference…
I’m guessing you have pretty updated hardware?
But, even with the small issues I see, the new clouds are a big leap forward for realism and looks.
Yeah, I see something like that too. I’ve started to look for it more since others have brought it up. For instance the OVC2+Rain preset; I notice it on certain layers, not just the distant ones - but not close up either - more than others.
Caught myself doing a “head bob” yesterday as I was watching this; to see if my head movement did anything?
Took on a 190 in the Jug. Clouds are beautiful and I am loving how the “New Sim” looks. Its amazing. I’m over the Caucasus btw. I manage hits… follow the smoke(blood) trail. More hits and suddenly he is on fire… Whoa! Now that’s a fire! The fire looks fierce and the smoke looks almost thick with oil. It is amazing to watch. He goes down and bounces in a beautiful fireball. Now the 109 comes after me. We dance and I manage to get him out front. He is about 200 meters out climbing at a 90 degree and I think, “Just try”. Its a small blip of the trigger but it seems like all rounds connect in unison. A puff of smoke briefly marks where I connected. Its very satisfying. Even though I have not played in a long time with the Jug, I manage to land in one piece…Whaaaat?!? Its a NEW SIM. My performance with VR is good. Summer is coming. The sim is a good way to keep entertained during the heat in the desert. Cant wait.
Thanks to some inspiration from @smokinhole, I went back and tried to fly mission 1 of the Reflected Wolf Pack campaign, but this time used the DCS VR preset and the Reshade mod. I had had such a slide show in mission 0 (prologue). Glad that I did. The fps wasn’t spectacular, 35 around air bases but a very playable 45 during the mission at altitude. I used the Nvidia overlay to grab a few screens, albeit very low res. I cropped the curved mask and ended up with these two, which was a lot of work for low res. The one of me with my flight is untouched, but I used Light Room to give the one of the whole formation (actually, there is a fighter squadron out of the shot) the look of a B&W image that had been colorized. Look at all those aircraft!
