Shimmering with Normandy update?

[Chilli_40]

Heaven knows this topic has been discussed before, but at the risk of beating a dead horse I hope to find some kind of solution. It seems that ever since the Normandy map has come out the shimmer effect has become almost unbearable. While on the ground everything is shimmering where it used to be somewhat clear. Plus, a new weird thing I've noticed, while on the ground just off to the side of some tree's it's like a dot matrix image is present, it's transparent but made up of tiny dots. When in the air all water bodies shimmer, plus planes in the distance are now shimmering really bad. I've noticed the horizon is now suffering from the same effects. I think the cities shimmering goes without saying, but it's getting harder to ID anything clearly on the ground. Not just limited to the multiplayer Normandy maps, it's every bit as bad in other maps now, last night it was the multiplayer Rhineland map. I have tried everything I can think of in the Open xr toolkit settings, I've lowered sharpness from 90% down in 10's to 50%, I even tried the sharpness setting to 10% and check the in game sharpening, NIS or FSR no difference. These are my current setting that used to work, any help or advice is great appreciated. I do get around 90fps on average though.

 

• HP G2 version 2

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800x3D

• ASUS TUF Gaming X570+

• GeForce RTX 3080ti

• 64GB DDR4 3600

   

• Tool Kit Settings

• resolution – 3176

• all re-projection off

• FSR

• Scaling 75%

• Sharpness – 90%

• Anamorphic – off

• Mip map bias – off

• World scale – 112%

   

• In game settings

• Shadow quality- high

• Mirrors- medium

• Distant Landscape detail- 4x

• Canopy reflection- off

• Horizon draw distance- 100km

• Landscape filter- sharp

• Terrain roughness- medium

• Grass quality- normal

• Cloud quality- medium

• Antialiasing- FXAA

• target FPS- off

• Dynamic Resolution- 0.7

• Antialiasing- 2

• SSAO- checked

• HDR- checked

• Sharpen- unchecked

• 4K checked

[Comrade_Weng]

Ive had the same thing and it's taken me a while to get rid of it.

 

From your settings what I would change is as follows;

 

Landscape filer - blurred

Antialiasing - MSAA X 2 (4 if your GPU can support it) 

 

Fyi terrain roughness is only useful if you're in a tank from what I understand. Additionally SSAO makes spotting harder I believe.

I also turn DNR to full, to ensure that I'm in full control of my graphics.

 

 

 

 

[Youtch]

MSAA is not really an option in VR.

 

Does FXAA do any good for shimmering? Does it make things better or worse?

I have also observed a lot of shimmering lately, maybe something got corrupted in my settings since 5.000

[firdimigdi]

14 hours ago, chilli40 said:

• SSAO- checked

• HDR- checked

 

These gobble up frametime with little benefit.

 

14 hours ago, chilli40 said:

• FSR

• Scaling 75%

• Dynamic Resolution- 0.7

 

This combination means you are potentially rendering the game at 3176 * 0.75 * 0.7 = 1667px - when you are on the ground, rendering uses up more resources which makes the (rather finnicky) dynamic resolution detection kick in further reducing fidelity and inducing even more shimmering.

 

With your CPU/GPU combo you are better served IMHO not using FSR or dynamic resolution and simply rendering at ~2800px, applying FSR sharpening which is cheap and using negative mip map bias which helps in rendering nearer textures clearer - you'll save CPU frametime from not applying the upscaling and the picture will be much clearer while remaining comfortably under 11ms GPU frametime so you can have 90fps.

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by firdimigdi

[Youtch]

1 hour ago, firdimigdi said:

With your CPU/GPU combo you are better served IMHO not using FSR or dynamic resolution and simply rendering at ~2800px, applying FSR sharpening which is cheap and using negative mip map bias which helps in rendering nearer textures clearer

This is interesting. 

 

Rendering at 2800px is likely to give a niver image than rendering at 3100x using 75% scaler?

 

I am unclear about what dynamic resolution is, i don t think it is available in OpenXr toolkit.

 

I am unclear if it is better to use FXAA or not at all for shimmering and for spotting.

Edited October 21, 2022 by Youtch

[firdimigdi]

3 minutes ago, Youtch said:

Rendering at 2800px is likely to give a niver image than rendering at 3100x using 75% scaler?

 

3176 * 0.75 = 2382px so IMHO, 2800px will look cleaner and have less shimmering, especially for distant terrain, despite FSR's commendable result for what it is.

 

3 minutes ago, Youtch said:

I am unclear about what dynamic resolution is, i don t think it is available in OpenXr toolkit.

 

It's an in-game graphics option. The concept is that when framerate drops it downscales the resolution up to a maximum of the factor you gave it.

[Youtch]

4 minutes ago, firdimigdi said:

3176 * 0.75 = 2382px so IMHO, 2800px will look cleaner and have less shimmering, especially for distant terrain, despite FSR's commendable result for what it is.

Understood thanks. What negative effect rendering at 2800px vs an upscaled 3176? Will it affect negatively the clarity of the cockpit and the spotting?

 

6 minutes ago, firdimigdi said:

It's an in-game graphics option. The concept is that when framerate drops it downscales the resolution up to a maximum of the factor you gave it.

Is it recommendable to use it in VR or it will introduce some stutering or ghosting?

 

Many thanks for your answers again to neophytes like us!

[dgiatr]

5 minutes ago, Youtch said:

Understood thanks. What negative effect rendering at 2800px vs an upscaled 3176? Will it affect negatively the clarity of the cockpit and the spotting?

 

Is it recommendable to use it in VR or it will introduce some stutering or ghosting?

 

Many thanks for your answers again to neophytes like us!

Do you fly with open xr toolkit and opencomposite? Because i think that openxr toolkit has better sharpening effect than steamvr , i also prefer to fly with lower resolution than using upscaling and higher resolution. I use only fsr sharpening (to 90% ) , not fsr upscaling ( fsr upscaling to 100%).

Edited October 21, 2022 by dgiatr

[BBAS_Tiki_Joe]

2 hours ago, Youtch said:

MSAA is not really an option in VR.

 

Does FXAA do any good for shimmering? Does it make things better or worse?

I have also observed a lot of shimmering lately, maybe something got corrupted in my settings since 5.000

 

What do you mean by MSAA is not an option in VR? Do you you mean it drops your frames too much?. FXAA is what is giving you the bad shimmering or at least on my valve index it does. I use 4x MSAA in game which gets rid of 90% of it. 

[Youtch]

54 minutes ago, dgiatr said:

Do you fly with open xr toolkit and opencomposite? Because i think that openxr toolkit has better sharpening effect than steamvr , i also prefer to fly with lower resolution than using upscaling and higher resolution. I use only fsr sharpening (to 90% ) , not fsr upscaling ( fsr upscaling to 100%).

I am flying with Opencomposite and using OpenXR toolkit

12 minutes ago, BBAS_Tiki_Joe said:

What do you mean by MSAA is not an option in VR? Do you you mean it drops your frames too much?. FXAA is what is giving you the bad shimmering or at least on my valve index it does. I use 4x MSAA in game which gets rid of 90% of it. 

I mean that MSAA is extremely taxing in terms of FPS or you need to have a monster machine. My experience with MSAA is that it drops frame rate too much and hence introduce ghosting.

[BBAS_Tiki_Joe]

4 minutes ago, Youtch said:

I am flying with Opencomposite and using OpenXR toolkit

I mean that MSAA is extremely taxing in terms of FPS or you need to have a monster machine. My experience with MSAA is that it drops frame rate too much and hence introduce ghosting.

 

I gotcha ya, I had a 3080 gtx not TI, and ran with 2xMSAA, with re-projection/Motion smoothing turned off in my steam settings and it ran pretty smooth no ghosting. Was at a solid pretty much locked 60FPS which seemed like the sweet spot for me. I did hours and hours of testing and could not tell the difference in performance between lower settings to get 90fps and the higher settings I was using to get better quality but @ 60fps. So i choose quality over the higher frame rates. People swear up and down they can see the difference in performance but maybe I just have a slow brain, hehe. I think the important part is having the FPS locked down where its not jumping all over the place, ie going from 90 to 75 then back up to 90 all the time is when I notice things. When I had it locked at a solid 60fps I thought it looked great and being able to use MSAA to get rid of the jaggies is a must for me. Cannot stand that look, it kills immersion IMO big time. Running with the 4090 now which has been a giant leap in performance and quality for me. With my old 3080 settings, my new card was hitting 140fps in VR. Even then, I just cranked my headset Res up and maxed out all my setting in IL2 and am getting a solid 75 fps now. Which I'm happy with. Again, my slow brain cannot tell the difference between the 144fps and the 70 Lol. The clarity and quality of the picture looks amazing and that is whats important to me.

[Youtch]

In a dogfight with planes close crossing at high speed in front of your cockpit, you do not have any ghosting at 60fps?

 

In heavy combat with many enemies and smoke, when it drops from 90 to 55 fps for me it is already screaming ghosting.

[BBAS_Tiki_Joe]

8 minutes ago, Youtch said:

In a dogfight with planes close crossing at high speed in front of your cockpit, you do not have any ghosting at 60fps?

 

In heavy combat with many enemies and smoke, when it drops from 90 to 55 fps for me it is already screaming ghosting.

 

No, none what-so-ever. I only got ghosting when I had re-projection/Motion smoothing turned on in my steamvr settings. Its actually the first thing I tell my squad new to vr to turn off. Have you tried turning motion smoothing off?

[Chilli_40]

Thank you all for the great feedback and knowing it's not just me. Like Youtch, had stated earlier I thought something must had been corrupted in my settings. There is a lot for me to absorb here, I'll have to study all this information and report back this evening hopefully. Interestingly, last night I switched over to steam vr and the shimmer effect was way less noticeable but of course the FPS weren't anywhere as good.

[Youtch]

2 hours ago, BBAS_Tiki_Joe said:

 

No, none what-so-ever. I only got ghosting when I had re-projection/Motion smoothing turned on in my steamvr settings. Its actually the first thing I tell my squad new to vr to turn off. Have you tried turning motion smoothing off?

Yes, it is off.

[firdimigdi]

4 hours ago, Youtch said:

Understood thanks. What negative effect rendering at 2800px vs an upscaled 3176? Will it affect negatively the clarity of the cockpit and the spotting?

 

The nearby textures and objects like the gauges in the cockpit will have less difference, less clear for sure, but less obvious to the difference seen with distant objects/textures. Perception of far away objects and scenery, including the horizon or variations in landscape will suffer more when upscaled from 2380px version compared to the 2800px version, this will lead to increased shimmering of those, specially when there's contrast involved (the edges of a distant lake or river for example). Spotting could be potentially better with lower res (up to a point and depending on what is behind the target) but as always it will come by sacrificing the ability to ID the target at a distance as it'll still be a blob due to lower resolution - you are better off reawakening the lizard brain to track motion which is benefited when you have less shimmering.

  

4 hours ago, Youtch said:

Is it recommendable to use it in VR or it will introduce some stutering or ghosting?

 

IMO, after some experimentation with it, it is annoying because it gets triggered when on the edge of max framerate too easily so suddenly you feel like you have a cataract. If it had a way to tune the threshold for triggering it then maybe it would be an interesting feature, but not as it is.

 

2 hours ago, Youtch said:

In a dogfight with planes close crossing at high speed in front of your cockpit, you do not have any ghosting at 60fps?

 

2 hours ago, BBAS_Tiki_Joe said:

No, none what-so-ever. I only got ghosting when I had re-projection/Motion smoothing turned on in my steamvr settings.

 

TikiJoe is using a Valve Index, 60fps is 1/2 the native refresh rate of 120Hz of his HMD's panel, as long as it's locked to 60 it would not ghost but simply not be as smooth.

Edited October 21, 2022 by firdimigdi

[Youtch]

8 hours ago, firdimigdi said:

using negative mip map bias

What is negative mip map bias?

 

In OpenXR toolkit they only come in 3 flavors: Off, Conservative, All

[firdimigdi]

On 10/21/2022 at 10:12 PM, Youtch said:

What is negative mip map bias?

 

In OpenXR toolkit they only come in 3 flavors: Off, Conservative, All

 

This setting, which you can easily access in the nvidia profile inspector:

If you set a sensible negative value to it (like -0.25 to -0.5) it adjusts the bias of the texture mipmaps so you get the higher LOD version at a closer distance. An easy way to test this is when you are in the hangar in the menus when you start the game. Things to look at that are affected is the texture of the grates on the floor, the stencilled letters/lines and the cracked paint texture of the walls of the hangar.

 

The setting inside the OpenXR Toolkit is relevant only when upscaling is active, it applies a similar setting as above to the textures so they have more detail when the image is upscaled but if you don't use upscaling then it doesn't do anything.

[Youtch]

1 hour ago, firdimigdi said:

This setting, which you can easily access in the nvidia profile inspector:

If you set a sensible negative value to it (like -0.25 to -0.5) it adjusts the bias of the texture mipmaps so you get the higher LOD version at a closer distance. An easy way to test this is when you are in the hangar in the menus when you start the game. Things to look at that are affected is the texture of the grates on the floor, the stencilled letters/lines and the cracked paint texture of the walls of the hangar.

Is it something you need to reset manually each time there is a driver update for Nvidia? Or once modified it is applied once for all?

[firdimigdi]

If you do a clean reinstallation of the driver it will be reset but otherwise it remains.

[[CPT]Crunch]

Man, that works wonders in the horizon shimmer, never looked so good.

[Youtch]

2 hours ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

Man, that works wonders in the horizon shimmer, never looked so good.

You used - 0,25 or 0,5?

[[CPT]Crunch]

-0.3750 preset works best on my system.  Tried the other two also.  Still have shimmer on specific objects, but this rids it off the horizons, makes the map look so much better.

[Customizer171]

23 hours ago, firdimigdi said:

 

This setting, which you can easily access in the nvidia profile inspector:

If you set a sensible negative value to it (like -0.25 to -0.5) it adjusts the bias of the texture mipmaps so you get the higher LOD version at a closer distance. An easy way to test this is when you are in the hangar in the menus when you start the game. Things to look at that are affected is the texture of the grates on the floor, the stencilled letters/lines and the cracked paint texture of the walls of the hangar.

 

The setting inside the OpenXR Toolkit is relevant only when upscaling is active, it applies a similar setting as above to the textures so they have more detail when the image is upscaled but if you don't use upscaling then it doesn't do anything.

 

This Nvidia profile inspector, is that a separate program that needs to be downloaded or can it be found in the regular settings?

Excuse my ignorance but I am not good with computers, hahaha.

However, I would love to reduce the shimmering I have in the game.

 

Thanks 

[Comrade_Weng]

23 hours ago, firdimigdi said:

 

This setting, which you can easily access in the nvidia profile inspector:

If you set a sensible negative value to it (like -0.25 to -0.5) it adjusts the bias of the texture mipmaps so you get the higher LOD version at a closer distance. An easy way to test this is when you are in the hangar in the menus when you start the game. Things to look at that are affected is the texture of the grates on the floor, the stencilled letters/lines and the cracked paint texture of the walls of the hangar.

 

The setting inside the OpenXR Toolkit is relevant only when upscaling is active, it applies a similar setting as above to the textures so they have more detail when the image is upscaled but if you don't use upscaling then it doesn't do anything.

 

I too would like to try this. 

 

Does the "Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias" in the Nvidia Control Panel need to be set to allow also?

[firdimigdi]

1 hour ago, Customizer171 said:

 

This Nvidia profile inspector, is that a separate program that needs to be downloaded or can it be found in the regular settings?

 

It's a separate program found here: https://github.com/Orbmu2k/nvidiaProfileInspector/releases

 

1 hour ago, Comrade_Weng said:

Does the "Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias" in the Nvidia Control Panel need to be set to allow also?

 

Yes. A negative bias is usually needed for VR usage anyhow so clamping it would be detrimental unless you plan on using high levels of anisotropy which can chew up performance with the render resolutions used in VR.

Edited October 26, 2022 by firdimigdi

[Comrade_Weng]

Thanks for the advice. Seems to work well.

[RAAF492SQNOz_Steve]

On 10/21/2022 at 11:39 AM, Comrade_Weng said:

Ive had the same thing and it's taken me a while to get rid of it.

 

From your settings what I would change is as follows;

 

Landscape filer - blurred

Antialiasing - MSAA X 2 (4 if your GPU can support it) 

 

Fyi terrain roughness is only useful if you're in a tank from what I understand. Additionally SSAO makes spotting harder I believe.

I also turn DNR to full, to ensure that I'm in full control of my graphics.

 

 

 

 

This.....

"Antialiasing - MSAA X 2 (4 if your GPU can support it) "

[Youtch]

While FXAA is bad for spotting, MSAA is bad for performance.

 

Of course some people prefers good looking image at 45fps than maintaining a steady 90fps (and I understand that in my change based on the HMD).

 

But the consensus seems to be that the main objective of performance finetuning shall be to maintain a solid 90fps, hence at the cost of either having to lower all the other settings to be able to support MSAAx2 for the same FPS counts, or abandoning MSAA altogether.

[d2k77]

On 10/26/2022 at 2:03 AM, [CPT]Crunch said:

-0.3750 preset works best on my system.  Tried the other two also.  Still have shimmer on specific objects, but this rids it off the horizons, makes the map look so much better.

 

Wow amazing!! This totally gets rid of the horizon banding/shimmering that I was getting plus for the most part my game is smooth!

 

There still is some shimmering on buildings and gauges but I can't expect too much with a Quest 2

[dburne]

On 10/25/2022 at 9:03 PM, [CPT]Crunch said:

-0.3750 preset works best on my system.  Tried the other two also.  Still have shimmer on specific objects, but this rids it off the horizons, makes the map look so much better.

 

I definitely need to make a note and try this when I get back to flight simming.

[Comrade_Weng]

13 hours ago, RAAF492SQNOz_Steve said:

This.....

"Antialiasing - MSAA X 2 (4 if your GPU can support it) "

 

I'm actually now running 2xfxaa with -0.375 mip Map bias and can't really tell the difference from the above. GPU is not running as hard. Will increase to 4x. The negative bias really seems to help.

[dburne]

5 minutes ago, Comrade_Weng said:

 

I'm actually now running 2xfxaa with -0.375 mip Map bias and can't really tell the difference from the above. GPU is not running as hard. Will increase to 4x. The negative bias really seems to help.

 

That is pretty incredible if you can get FXAA running visuals as good as MSAA. Typically I see a large difference between the two.

[RAAF492SQNOz_Steve]

31 minutes ago, Comrade_Weng said:

 

I'm actually now running 2xfxaa with -0.375 mip Map bias and can't really tell the difference from the above. GPU is not running as hard. Will increase to 4x. The negative bias really seems to help.

In my experience FXAA does nothing for shimmering.  MSAA is required but it does impact framerates significantly.

It all depends on what is your highest priority. For me, it is wanting to reduce shimmering as much as possible.

[dburne]

29 minutes ago, RAAF492SQNOz_Steve said:

In my experience FXAA does nothing for shimmering.  MSAA is required but it does impact framerates significantly.

It all depends on what is your highest priority. For me, it is wanting to reduce shimmering as much as possible.

 

Yeah same here, I am currently sidelined due to health reasons but hope to get back to simming again here in the next couple of weeks. I will gladly give that method a try out of curiosity. Been sidelined for a while now and going absolutely nuts lol.

[[CPT]Crunch]

Be sure to turn texture filtering - negative LOD bias clamp to 'allow' in your Nvidia control panel as firdimigdi specified above, or the setting don't work.

[Customizer171]

17 hours ago, dburne said:

 

Yeah same here, I am currently sidelined due to health reasons but hope to get back to simming again here in the next couple of weeks. I will gladly give that method a try out of curiosity. Been sidelined for a while now and going absolutely nuts lol.

 

I hope you will feel better soon!

[dburne]

13 minutes ago, Customizer171 said:

 

I hope you will feel better soon!

 

Thank you.

[Chilli_40]

Does the Nvidia Inspector app, automatically apply changes you make to IL-2 or do I need to somehow link it to It? I wish some of these programs included readme files.  Thanks, Firdimigdi, for sharing your insights on this topic!

[No_85_Gramps]

1 hour ago, chilli40 said:

Does the Nvidia Inspector app, automatically apply changes you make to IL-2 or do I need to somehow link it to It? I wish some of these programs included readme files.  

With profile inspector open, click on "create new profile", name it, and then click on "add application" (has a green + sign), and locate the IL2 exe to add it. Just be aware that if you set NVIDIA defaults in profile insp, it will also reset your settings in the NVIDIA control panel. Also, if IIRC, you can just click on the add application, skipping the new profile set-up.

Edited October 29, 2022 by No_85_Gramps