OpenComposite and NIS sharpening

[56RAF_phoenix56]

TLDR: NIS sharpening costs you fps all the way up to altitude.

 

Recently I switched to OpenComposite using the guide thanks to Warsimmer (though there seems to be some confusion between what is OpenComposite, OpenXR and the OpenXR helper application that might be a barrier for some people).

 

However, recently I have become increasingly irritated by more nausea, aircraft ghosting in dogfights and low framerates over trees. I fly online almost exclusively, therefore getting 90 fps on my Reverb G2 with a 3080 GPU is critical (Ultra, no shadows, low clouds, 100% resolution).

 

Having finally had some time to do some testing, I have discovered the following:

1. Using Warsimmer's recommended NIS sharpening is great for spotting, but not only costs you fps over trees (eg. taking off from Asch on the Rheinland map), but the fps drop continues all the way up as you climb.

2. Switching NIS sharpening Off gives a little relief over trees, but the framerate increases to 90 fps with altitude.

3. OpenComposite gives slightly better framerates than SteamVR.

 

This leaves me with the painful choice of swapping spotting for framerates and less nausea.

 

56RAF_phoenix56

[[CPT]Crunch]

Why not balanced over ultra if your after frames?  I'd rather have some shadows and clouds, those trees are going to haul heavy in ultra and so will urban areas.

 

Go balanced than manually set

 

    land_anisotropy = 16
    land_detail = 7
    land_tex_lods = 3

 

It will look nice, close to ultra without all the distant stuff you can't really see anyways being pulled along.  Than you can keep your NIS and probably jack up your clouds and shadows a tish.

[Youtch]

Have you tried in Open tool kit to use CAS for sharpening?

 

I never liked NIS has it gives a kind of halo around airplanes.

[TheSNAFU]

What is CAS sharpening? I only know of sharpening via NIS or FSR. Is it part of openxr toolkit or separate or is it the sharpening in FSR? 

Edited November 20, 2022 by TheSNAFU

[Youtch]

10 hours ago, TheSNAFU said:

What is CAS sharpening? I only know of sharpening via NIS or FSR. Is it part of openxr toolkit or separate or is it the sharpening in FSR? 

In the last version of the toolkit the .2 there is a new third option available for sharpening.

[TheSNAFU]

Got it, thanks! 

[56RAF_phoenix56]

Thanks for the replies:

@[CPT]Crunch Actually, I was originally running Balanced and I compared framerates with Ultra and found no difference!

Before switching to OpenComposite, I was running Holger's FSR to get decent framerates, so I'm really back to selecting some sort of upscaling/sharpening again.

 

So, I've now informally tested (rather than capturing a graph, which would mean running a track rather than flying for consistency) and found the following:

None: the best framerate, nice smooth visuals, dreadful spotting;

NIS: significant overhead, lots of shimmering, but good spotting;

FSR: I'm not completely convinced the cfg file is setting a radius (usually you can see it clearly on the bars across the drainage channels in the hanger), but it seems even more overhead than NIS and bad shimmering. Not sure about spotting;

CAS: this is the interesting one, the overhead seems lower than NIS and the effects are so subtle that it's difficult to know whether it's actually operating. But I like it and will see whether the spotting is good. CAS is an AMD method that sharpens less when the contrast between pixels is high.

 

I'll be trying CAS in anger as framerates higher up don't seem too affected by it.

Of course, no sharpening/upscaling can ever reconstitute information that was lost by downscaling. It just looks good...

 

56RAF_phoenix

[56RAF_phoenix56]

I thoroughly recommend trying CAS sharpening. It produces much more visually calm effects than NIS, while distant spotting seems good too. Plus, the overhead seems to drop as you go up.

My 3080 still struggles to produce 90 fps in all weather conditions, so I've reduced resolution to 3000x2938, which is a shame because it's a little less sharp.

 

Near numbers of other aircraft on DF servers, frame rates drop & my rig becomes CPU bound (Ryzen 5800X). Rightly or wrongly, I attribute this to the decals as I have shadows off.

 

56RAF_phoenix56

[Youtch]

17 hours ago, 56RAF_phoenix56 said:

I thoroughly recommend trying CAS sharpening. It produces much more visually calm effects than NIS, while distant spotting seems good too. Plus, the overhead seems to drop as you go up.

My 3080 still struggles to produce 90 fps in all weather conditions, so I've reduced resolution to 3000x2938, which is a shame because it's a little less sharp.

 

Near numbers of other aircraft on DF servers, frame rates drop & my rig becomes CPU bound (Ryzen 5800X). Rightly or wrongly, I attribute this to the decals as I have shadows off.

 

56RAF_phoenix56

Out of curiosity you set CAS to which percentage?

[56RAF_phoenix56]

On 11/28/2022 at 11:20 AM, Youtch said:

Out of curiosity you set CAS to which percentage?

I'll get back to you on that, as the OpenXR helper claims CAS is running, but I really need to make sure and perhaps should have held my fire until I'd run more extensive tests.

?