Thanks @Cib for the tips. I have done both - still the same result.
I am reading the thread on ED forum - apparently some people report better performance, some the same and some worse performance.
I am still investigating. The drop in performance is indeed quite significant.
EDIT: When I force motion reprojection always on in WMR SteamVR settings, the problem disappears (as well as the few moments where I am able to run DCS at 90 fps).
Curious if anyone else has tried launching DCS through Steam VR and the Oculus software in order to use the Reshader?
I got it working tonight, but I’m seeing a ~10-14 FPS drop, regardless of whether the reshade is active. The coloration and sharpness is amazing, but I unfortunately don’t have the FPS to spare.
Just put the VR_CAS_Color.fx in your C:\Users(you)\ReshadeInjectUWP\Shaders directory and then press Home once in the game, find/activate it in the shaders list and give them some default values - my values from DCS above work ok, with sharpness 1.9 making it crisper in VR allowing you to lower in-sim rendering a bit to improve performance. Don’t forget to run the created bat file as admin for this to work.
(sorry for the eye chart, 4K capture, but wanted to show my settings without typing them all)
Not VR specific, but a concise and easy primer for those wanting to use Reshade in 2D. Haven’t tested in VR yet, other that how we are using it already. Hopefully someone hasn’t posted this yet.
Since I mostly fly in VR, but occasionally fall back to 2D to capture screenshots video, I tried this version of Reshade discussed in the video above. IMO, the results are excellent, the fine tuning of which being a matter of personal taste. But there is no doubt that it is easy to get beautiful screens and video with minimal mouse clicks.
Since @fearlessfrog made us aware of FSR/NIS upscaling for SteamVR, which also allows sharpening of the image, while gaining a substantial performance gain, I’ve stopped using the Reshade for VR, that we’ve also discussed here. It’s output is closer to Reshade above, but without the performance gain.
Are you confused yet? I know that I had to read everything five times before it was absorbed. Just to summarize, we’ve discussed 3 tweaks here, Reshade (2D), Reshade for VR, and FSR/NIS for SteamVR games. The first two are for image enhancement and the last is for performance improvement via upscaling.
But just because the kids went to bed early tonight I tried to see if Reshade and Reshade for VR would play well together, but couldn’t get them to coexist. In reality, if you fly VR and weigh the image improvement of Reshade VR over the performance gain and sharpening of FSR/NIS, you might as well just install Reshade for VR, because it also seems to work in 2D.
To reach my happy place in DCS, I installed the original Reshade from the video above and then FSR/NIS for SteamVR. That gives me fantastic images in 2D and great VR performance.
Unedited screens of 2D mode with the regular Reshade.
Hey WarPig. I guess that I should have clarified that those images above are from 2D using the regular (2D) version of Reshade. So they are maxed out at 3440 x 1440. I set SteamVR image resolution to 100%, or whatever that is for the Reverb G2.
I too see shimmers, even with MSAA 2x enabled in DCS. The developer of FSR/NIS for SteamVR states in the readme that the upscaler can’t fix shimmer, so if you have it before, you will still have it with FSR/NIS enabled. I’ve tried MSAA 4x and you get a little sharper HUD symbology. But shimmers are still there so not enough improvement to lose precious fps. So using MSAA 2x. IMO, shimmer seems to be slightly worse with the NIS upscaler than FSR, but they are pretty close. I’d be curious as to what others think about the differences between NIS and the FSR upscalers on their system. AMD R5 5600X / RTX 3080
Yeah, I thought about just leaving Reshade VR installed and toggling it off when in VR using NIS upscaling. Would that be a paradox? I guess that would give you the most options. I do like the way that it looks compared to FSR/NIS w/sharpening. But, because the FSR/NIS developer’s notes mentioned making sure that post processing took place after upscaling, my Barney level brain took that to mean something like Reshade VR. Was I wrong? Anyway, the fps gain in either FSR or NIS is tangible. I am getting a low of 45 fps in the Hornet low level on the Syria map, to a steady 90 fps at medium altitudes in the Hornet on the Caucasus map.
Funny I watched the same video and also started messing with Reshade again. It’s amazing how a little bit of sharpening makes the textures in DCS look so much better. I started using a shader called BloomingHDR as well. It auto adjusts bloom, saturation, etc. depending on where you’re looking. What it does for night lighting in DCS is stunning. I’ll post some screenshots of it later.
Yes! It works, and BloomingHDR is amazing, DCS has never looked so good.
5.0 and VRPerfKit can still be combined and work together fine if you rename dxdiag.dll from VRPK to d3diag.dll.
Correction, don’t do that, do this:
I was in bed typing on my phone from memory and got it wrong. Sorry to muddy the water/break your game if you did what I suggested!
Just wish I didn’t have to use the vr controller to change settings with 5.0. Now the 2D/3D are separated, so changes get made in Steam VR in the headset. Might as well turn off ReShade in the 2D mirror.
I disabled the VR Perf Toolkit, installed and configured RESHADE 5.1, checked it in 2D, then in VR. The image was quite good, but I couldn’t toggle it off by hitting the END key. Interestingly enough, the mirror of my googles on my monitor showed it toggling on/off, but I couldn’t see that in-game. I wonder if I missed something in the readme, or that’s the way that it runs. ReshadeVR allows you to toggle it on/off with the whatever hotkey you setup, which I usually do the default of END key. I couldn’t find mention of VR in either their RESHADE Home page or in their forum.
With 5.0, VR & 2D are now two separate entities with their own settings. VR ReShade settings must be changed using the VR hand controller and through the SteamVR menu (look at the bottom left, next to the WMR settings). There’s a very nice GUI for this, but having to use the controller is a pain since I never use them for anything else so they’re normally off.
The 2D settings are still changed on the screen using Home/End and the mouse, but are disconnected from the VR settings so you may as well turn it off on the 2D mirror.
