Mesh culling issue in VR (disappearing objects in VR)

[adam4lexander]

Whenever I play in VR and look at a plane to my side there are parts of the plane that are invisible. Often its parts of the cockpit, the pilots or other details such as the bombs. If the plane is in front of my plane then it is rendered complete, but as soon as I approach such that it moves above, below, left or right these parts of the plane will pop out of existence.

 

Attached a screenshot to show what I mean. You may have to zoom in a bit to see. Im on the runway in a bombing mission. When I look to my side at the other JU-88s in my wing the rear part of their cockpit is missing.

 

I've tested on both oculus and vive headsets and the issue is present on both.

 

[-DED-Rapidus]

@adam4lexander, thank you, I'll check.

[TheWarsimmer]

Rapidus, this has been posted in the VR forum, but I'll repost here in case the devs have yet to see it:

 

For many players in VR, objects are culled according to the direction of the plane's nose rather than being tied to the facing of your VR headset. So pilots, bombs on planes, and even ground targets are invisible unless facing them head on in VR. I believe the bug affects a lot of players.

 

This is most easily demonstrated with planes on the ground while taking a taxi- shown in video (watch in HD).

 

 

[-DED-Rapidus]

@TheWarsimmer, @adam4lexander, I need recordings from you: simultaneously track and video for analysis, turn on the video recording and immediately record the track, I'm waiting for your tracks.

[adam4lexander]

@-DED-Rapidus

 

Here is the track file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M4wQ9jVzDkSBKf_vQ51I-c9pjO2RmxVm/view?usp=sharing

 

And simultaneous video:

 

The popping is clearly seen in the video at 0:35 and 2:46

 

[-DED-Rapidus]

18 minutes ago, adam4lexander said:

Here is the track file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M4wQ9jVzDkSBKf_vQ51I-c9pjO2RmxVm/view?usp=sharing

No access.

[adam4lexander]

@-DED-Rapidus Try again now

[-DED-Rapidus]

2 hours ago, adam4lexander said:

@-DED-Rapidus Try again now

Which VR HMD do you use? what is the helmet's positioning system?

At the 45th second, did you use something in the controls?

[adam4lexander]

The video was shot using an oculus quest 2. I've also tested on a htc vive pro and the results are the same. Both headsets have 6-dof tracking, position and rotation.

At the 45th second I was only turning my head to look at the plane to my right. Didn't do anything with the controls apart from flying the plane. 

 

@-DED-Rapidus I think I've found whats causing this. I had controls for turning the pilots head mapped to an axis on my joystick (for when I'm not using VR). When I removed this mapping the culling issue is no longer present.

Edited November 10, 2020 by adam4lexander

[firdimigdi]

It has been mentioned before in the VR forum that the joystick mapping can cause this:

 

[TheWarsimmer]

No, this is not the same issue. I have had my head movement tied to mouse movement before and fixed "that problem" before this new one came up, and it has been discussed thoroughly in the vr forums. This issue is entirely different and affects many users. Here, in my vid, the culling parameters are FIXED TO THE NOSE OF THE PLANE and not tied to EITHER the mouse for head movement or the the hmd itself- it is like the culling parameters never "hook" to either the HMD or the mouse for headlook, and instead just start and stay stuck on the nose of the plane. The culling zone is about 60 degrees out from either side of the nose of the plane, or about 15 degrees if you zoom, per my vid. If head looks are tied to the mouse and you move the mouse it changes nothing, looking around in your hmd does nothing. The FOV for the culling zone is correct, but it is tied to the NOSE OF THE PLANE and is STATIONARY rather than being tied to the HMD.

 

EDIT: If you read through that thread, you will even see it discussed and explained these are two entirely different issues. Rapidus, if I do a recording and upload a track, will you look at it?

Edited November 10, 2020 by TheWarsimmer

[adam4lexander]

@TheWarsimmer I had the exact same issue your describing, where the culling is fixed to the nose of the plane. I have the pilots head controls mapped to an axis on the joystick rather then the mouse. Its effect in non-vr play is that the pilots head will face forward when the axis is in the center position. Somehow this control is setting the culling direction forwards in VR mode too. 

[-DED-Rapidus]

8 hours ago, TheWarsimmer said:

if I do a recording and upload a track, will you look at it?

Yes, the main thing is that the video is recorded in parallel with the track.

[TheWarsimmer]

12 hours ago, adam4lexander said:

@TheWarsimmer I had the exact same issue your describing, where the culling is fixed to the nose of the plane. I have the pilots head controls mapped to an axis on the joystick rather then the mouse. Its effect in non-vr play is that the pilots head will face forward when the axis is in the center position. Somehow this control is setting the culling direction forwards in VR mode too. 

Adam, thanks for the clarification. Are you saying that I should try mapping the pilot head controls to the mouse? Currently, my pilot head controls are removed entirely and I am still getting the bug, as are other players. Maybe that is what is wrong?

Edited November 11, 2020 by TheWarsimmer

[-DED-Rapidus]

@TheWarsimmer, why guess, I wrote above what needs to be done.

[TheWarsimmer]

Synced. Here's the drop box file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zxhs7l7w077kohq/Track.zip?dl=0 

All pilot head movement keybindings are unmapped. 

 

 

[adam4lexander]

@TheWarsimmer Unmapping the pilot head rotation controls from an axis on my joystick solved it for me. If you don't have the pilot head controls mapped to a joystick axis then you must be having a different problem then me.

[-DED-Rapidus]

@TheWarsimmer, problem like @adam4lexander, the loss of objects you have due to the" sticking " of the game camera. Your view is still tied to something, that is, the game camera does not reach the angle of 70-90 degrees, that is, if you imagine two cameras: the game camera(as if you did not have a VR HMD, but a regular mouse for viewing) turns by 30-40 degrees, then the VR camera continues to rotate, and the game camera stands still. You can see this for yourself if you simultaneously start playing a video clip and a track on your computer. What kind of helmet do you have and how is 6DOF organized? 

As a possible solution, reset all controls in the default settings and before configuring your devices, try using game with the standard control settings for your VR HMD.

[TheWarsimmer]

Completely resetting the input folder has fixed the problem for me! Wish we knew what controls were tied to this issue, so we could get get it sorted. It must cover more than just the pilot head movements, because I had all of those totally removed. In any case, this is good news to hear for those of us who removed those controls and still had the problem. 

[GOA_Karaya_VR]

Thanks for this information

 

[-DED-Rapidus]

@TheWarsimmer, @GOA_Karaya_CRI*VR*, That's great). 

[Impalor]

Not to start a new thread. I think after the last update the trees started to "grow" way too close as you fly over. This is not affected by draw distance (tried 100km 150km) or detalisation (normal, 2x, 4x). In DCS there is a parameter to control this, which I like at max. What do we do here? Looks awful in G2.. 

[-DED-Rapidus]

@Impalor, thank you for your suggestion, I will definitely ask the developers a question. I need to know your graphics settings in the game, please take a screenshot.

[Impalor]

On 2/24/2021 at 3:08 AM, -DED-Rapidus said:

@Impalor, thank you for your suggestion, I will definitely ask the developers a question. I need to know your graphics settings in the game, please take a screenshot.

[Gleisner]

On 11/13/2020 at 11:28 AM, -DED-Rapidus said:

@TheWarsimmer, @GOA_Karaya_CRI*VR*, That's great). 

Do you have any insight into what specifically could be causing this issue?  I appeciate there is a workaround, but I would rather not redo all my controls to fix this.  Resetting defaults is a rather destructive kind of workaround!  In VR, the culling should always be linked to the headset - why can it get un-linked?  Is this something you plan to investigate further?

 

Edited March 20, 2022 by Gleisner

[Gleisner]

Have now reset my controls and am still experiencing the issue. Nothing on hotas is bound to camera or pilot head controls - removed the default joy0 bindings for these.

[-DED-Rapidus]

@Gleisner, record a track and a video of the screen at the same time.  look at the control device in the simulator, whether there is movement along the axes of the control devices while the virtual reality camera is moving.

[RossMarBow]

On 2/18/2021 at 1:04 PM, Impalor said:

Not to start a new thread. I think after the last update the trees started to "grow" way too close as you fly over. This is not affected by draw distance (tried 100km 150km) or detalisation (normal, 2x, 4x). In DCS there is a parameter to control this, which I like at max. What do we do here? Looks awful in G2.. 

The preset setting controls tree draw distance
That looks like the low preset
maybe you have made you startup.cfg file invalid so its ignoring it

[-332FG-brooklynspo]

I recently experienced this bug. In VR, objects off center would disappear and reappear and they would also disappear in zoom.  

I tried many different graphics settings but none fixed this behavior. Some threads suggested I remove all pilot-head movements, I tried that, but no luck.  However, there did seem to be some kind of disconnect between the VR head movement and the objects the game renders: the game appears to render certain objects (but not scenery) as if I am observing from a different position and direction than I am in VR. 

Finally, I managed to fix the behavior by first generating a fresh "input" folder along with removing all-pilot head movements. This required remapping all my key-binds from scratch but I was happy to be rid of the objects flickering in and out of existence.

Unfortunately, I cannot aim turret guns without binding pilot head movements, so I guess I won't be doing that in VR.

I have seen references to this bug going back many years. Seems like something that still needs fixing. 

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by -332FG-brooklynspo

[-DED-Rapidus]

It often turns out that the game camera in the control settings is tied to some  device. Resetting the control settings usually helps to solve this problem.

[-332FG-brooklynspo]

Resetting the control settings is not a small undertaking in IL-2, especially with VR where everything needs to be mapped to your HOTAS. I have had to spend many hours rebuilding my key-mapping from scratch.

Finding the workaround for this bug (full reset of controls) took many hours of research and experimentation.

The workaround is only a half measure. You still cannot aim gunners in VR without messing up the rendering.

This is a pretty serious bug.

Edited October 27, 2022 by -332FG-brooklynspo

[-DED-Rapidus]

@-332FG-brooklynspo, ok, I need a visual example - simultaneous recording of a track and a video, in order to analyze the problem, I need to compare what the game camera and the VR camera see.

[-332FG-brooklynspo]

@-DED-Rapidus  Thanks for your reply, only noticed it now. I have fixed the problem but it took deleting all my key-binds and re-mapping from scratch. I don't want to have to do that all over again. If I come across the issue again I will try to provide you with a recording track and a video.  The best video examples I can find of what I experienced is here: 

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by -332FG-brooklynspo