Yet another VR frame rate question

[Sully--]

Hi all – I’m new to IS-2 BoS and new to flight sims in general. I have to say I’m really having a blast and wish I had stumbled upon this hobby earlier. As I tell my wife, it’s the most fun you can have with your pants on. ?

 

I’m having some issues playing IL-2 in VR, so I’m hoping someone can help. In short I can’t get my frame rate above 40 FPS and I see double images. I’ve done my best to read what’s already been posted and try those suggestion but nothing I’ve tried to date seems to help.

 

Here are my basic machine details:

• Lenovo Legion Y740 17” laptop (screen is 1920x1080 pixels)
• Intel i7 (2.66GHz)
• 16 GB RAM and SSD hard drive
• Nvidia Gforce RTX 2070 Max-Q with 8GB VRAM
• Oculus Rift S

I’ve also installed ReShade 4.3.0 in BoS in an attempt to fix the double image problem.

 

Here’s what’s weird. When I run BoS in non-VR mode it works like a champ. I set the target frame rate to 100 and the FPS shown in game bounces back and forth between 99 and 100. Everything works perfectly and the images are gorgeous. Here are my current game setting:

 

 

When I switch to VR and the Rift I cannot get the FPS above 40. In general the game plays very smooth, I don’t see stutters, or lag, but moving aircraft all have double images. The double images do not occur with the cockpit, or the ground/background as far as I can tell, just other aircraft. It seems to be worse in multi-player vs. quick missions, but it's there in both. As I mentioned, I installed ReShade to see if that would help, and it does eliminate most of the VR “blur,” which is great, but not the double images. I’ve tried dropping all of the settings to the absolute lowest value and that didn’t have any effect. I’ve also tried different options with SSAO and HDR and nothing seemed to change.

 

I’m trying to graduate to multiplayer and IDing aircraft in-game is an absolute bitch. Thanks for any help/ideas.

 

-Sully

[Alonzo]

As far as I know, ReShade doesn't work for VR, so you might want to remove it outright.

 

I suspect the problem is your CPU. Try installing Oculus Tray Tool, then setting "HUD" to "Application latency". Then report the CPU and GPU times.

 

If CPU or GPU goes above 12.5ms for the Rift S, it will switch to ASW projection mode. This runs at 40 FPS and creates interpolated frames for the other 40 FPS to make 80 for the headset. This is probably what you mean by "doubled images".

 

Basically, you want to tune the settings so that CPU and GPU times are < 12.5ms, most of the time, so you can get 80 fps. I don't know if this will be possible on your CPU. The heavy CPU setting is the "Low / Balanced / High" one, so drop that to Balanced immediately and see if it helps. The heavy GPU options tend to be clouds, anti-aliasing, and (sort of) landscape render distance.

 

You can also install OpenComposite to bypass SteamVR and gain a bit of performance. For your CPU, I would say this is essential.

[Sully--]

Thanks Alonzo.

 

I did uninstall ReShade as it was causing BoS to occasionally fail to load. 

 

I don't think it's the CPU as it's never more than 35% max with BoS at 15% during play. 

 

I did see in the SteamVR developer menu an option to look at the frame rendering and the GPU seems to be slow, above 12.5 ms anyway. I'm curious why it works fine outside of the Rift. 

 

Anyway, I'll give the Oculus Tray Tool a try and see what it says. 

 

-Sully 

 

 

[PO_Baldrick]

40 minutes ago, 332nd.Sully-- said:

I don't think it's the CPU as it's never more than 35% max with BoS at 15% during play.

 

The key issue is single core performance. Your i7 will move the IL2 single core activity from core to core giving the impression of low utilisation. High end CPUs are running a single core at 5GHz+ so I am afraid yours is looking a bit weak. VR requires a lot of CPU activity for rendering which is why you are struggling.

[JonRedcorn]

2 hours ago, 332nd.Sully-- said:

Thanks Alonzo.

 

I did uninstall ReShade as it was causing BoS to occasionally fail to load. 

 

I don't think it's the CPU as it's never more than 35% max with BoS at 15% during play. 

 

I did see in the SteamVR developer menu an option to look at the frame rendering and the GPU seems to be slow, above 12.5 ms anyway. I'm curious why it works fine outside of the Rift. 

 

Anyway, I'll give the Oculus Tray Tool a try and see what it says. 

 

-Sully 

 

 

It's 100% your cpu, it's clocked at a snails pace. Drop the preset to low and pray for frames.

[Sully--]

Okay, good to know. At least I know why now. I can't have a dedicated game machine so I kind of figured I'd hit some limits here and there using a laptop. Anyway, it's not the end of world - still a joy to fly. 

 

Thanks for the help.

 

-Sully 

 

[Sully--]

A quick update on this problem.

 

Since posting the problem has improved somewhat as there have been a bunch of changes. In the last month or so 4.01 has dropped and the Oculus has had a couple of software and firmware updates. I'm also using Open Composite instead of SteamVR.

 

I am now getting up to 80 FPS on the Berloga dogfight server and get better frame rates in Quick mission, where it drifts between 40 and 80. Strangely I'm still stuck at 40 FPS on the other servers. 

 

The double images are still an issue and I've noticed they occur even if I close one eye. That's got to be a bug IMHO. 

 

-Sully

[ironk79]

16 hours ago, -332FG-Sully-- said:

The double images are still an issue and I've noticed they occur even if I close one eye. That's got to be a bug IMHO. 

 

-Sully

What do mean with double image? Maybe you are seeing the ghosting effect that comes with re-projection at low fps?

Regarding low fps on servers, MP is much more demanding, especially with some action going on. Even my setup cant pump out constant 90fps in MP with "balanced" settings

[TCW_Brzi_Joe]

@-332FG-Sully-- Do you see other planes in a strange way, sometimes like they are fast waving its wings (like a birds), or maybe like a slide show when they pass by - that is reprojection, you can not help it. My pc is fast enough, so I have reprojection off. 
In Oculus there are 2 types of repro: inter...(something) reprojection  and ASW. Try booth off, or on, see what is better for you.

[dburne]

15 minutes ago, Brzi_Joe said:

@-332FG-Sully-- Do you see other planes in a strange way, sometimes like they are fast waving its wings (like a birds), or maybe like a slide show when they pass by - that is reprojection, you can not help it. My pc is fast enough, so I have reprojection off. 
In Oculus there are 2 types of repro: inter...(something) reprojection  and ASW. Try booth off, or on, see what is better for you.

 

There is only one type in Rift - ASW.

Prior to ASW  there was ATW.

Oculus also now has ASW 2, an update to ASW which was introduced in May. 

Games must support depth buffering to take advantage of ASW2, which IL-2 GB does.

 

But yes behavior as described is typically ASW kicking in when frames drop below the headsets default refresh rate. It interpolates every other frame to still meet the refresh rate of the headset. ASW can be disabled at risk of experiencing some stuttering.

 

[Sully--]

9 hours ago, ironk79 said:

What do mean with double image? Maybe you are seeing the ghosting effect that comes with re-projection at low fps?

Yes - the double images. I will try to fiddle with ASW to see if I can minimize the ghosting. 

[chiliwili69]

On 9/13/2019 at 6:44 PM, -332FG-Sully-- said:

As I tell my wife, it’s the most fun you can have with your pants on. ?

 

This is absolutely true, LOL!

On 9/13/2019 at 11:10 PM, -332FG-Sully-- said:

I don't think it's the CPU

 

You are running at High settings with High clouds and High Shadows. This is too much for your CPU.

 

The average single threaded passmark performance of your i7-9750H CPU is 2476, it is not bad but desktop CPU with some overclock reach 3000 easily.

But laptops could suffer from CPU throttling is they are not able to evacuate all the heat generated. So be sure that you enable the TurboBoost in the BIOS and the CPU clock is mantained at the max (4.6GHZ) during the game play. You can verify that with the MSI Afterbuner trendlines, displaying the CPU temps and CPU clock.

9 hours ago, dburne said:

Prior to ASW  there was ATW

 

Well in fact ASW and ATW are very different things.

 

ASW "invents" new intermediate frames based on trajectories of moving objects. You can put it ON or OFF

ATW use the latest rotational info from the headset to capture the already rendered scene which used the latest positional info from the headset.(Just my interpretation) It is always ON

4 hours ago, -332FG-Sully-- said:

Yes - the double images.

 

Try to put Low graphics, with low clouds and low shadows.

Put also supersampling just at 1.0 or 100%.

 

If you still have double images there is a problem.

 

In the past laptops had an issue with the HDMI ports not being directly going to GPU.

[dburne]

I am running at about the highest settings, spent around 4 hours in a PWCG Campaign today in Bodenplatte, fps for me with Rift S stayed pretty consistently at

80 fps with no ASW kicking in.

[Fern]

Weird thing is I dont get the double images/ghosting on old maps on servers like WOL. Everything is perfect.

 

Bodenplatte on combat box server I do. Even in quick mission. 

[Alonzo]

On 11/27/2019 at 7:24 PM, Fern said:

Weird thing is I dont get the double images/ghosting on old maps on servers like WOL. Everything is perfect.

 

Bodenplatte on combat box server I do. Even in quick mission. 

 

The Rhineland map is significantly more taxing on system performance than the older maps. It was the same with Kuban, actually, we had some complaints that people could fly the Moscow / Stalingrad maps with no problem but Kuban was giving them FPS loss.

 

The developers improved Kuban over time with better tree rendering performance, I expect they will work on ensuring Rhineland performs better over time too. One major thing it has is the new long distance city tech, and that's drawing a lot of polygons. I have it switched off personally but it's a major difference on that map compared to others.