DFR Support

[Dagwoodyt]

Any hope for dynamic foveated rendering support such as varjo foveated in the next iteration of the GB game engine?

[Charlo-VRde]

13 minutes ago, Dagwoodyt said:

Any hope for dynamic foveated rendering support such as varjo foveated in the next iteration of the GB game engine?

It may already exist, per 

 

[mbucchia]

Here's the utility discussed on the other thread: mbucchia/PimaxMagic4All: An adapter to make Pimax Foveated Rendering ("LibMagic") work on other headsets. (github.com)

 

I've tested it in DFR mode with a Varjo Aero and FFR mode with an HP Reverb G2. I have not tested "long term stability", so hopefully no crashes.

[Dagwoodyt]

3 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Here's the utility discussed on the other thread: mbucchia/PimaxMagic4All: An adapter to make Pimax Foveated Rendering ("LibMagic") work on other headsets. (github.com)

 

I've tested it in DFR mode with a Varjo Aero and FFR mode with an HP Reverb G2. I have not tested "long term stability", so hopefully no crashes.

Thanks! That's a bit of gymnastics. If DFR/FFR work in those two HMD's is there benefit WRT gpu/cpu frametimes vs any associated artifacts? I guess the ideal scenario would be for the GB developers to provide native support for DFR/FFR if that support shows improved playability.

[dburne]

5 hours ago, mbucchia said:

Here's the utility discussed on the other thread: mbucchia/PimaxMagic4All: An adapter to make Pimax Foveated Rendering ("LibMagic") work on other headsets. (github.com)

 

I've tested it in DFR mode with a Varjo Aero and FFR mode with an HP Reverb G2. I have not tested "long term stability", so hopefully no crashes.

 

Ok so I guess the advantage of doing something like this is the ability to run DFR  in Open VR rather than Open XR? Is that the main thing?

[mbucchia]

4 hours ago, Dagwoodyt said:

Thanks! That's a bit of gymnastics. If DFR/FFR work in those two HMD's is there benefit WRT gpu/cpu frametimes vs any associated artifacts? I guess the ideal scenario would be for the GB developers to provide native support for DFR/FFR if that support shows improved playability.

The gymnastics is necessary because I will not include the Pimax files in my ZIP. That's said those 2 copy steps are still very easy in the end, and you only do them once at installation time.

 

FR will only ever help you with GPU frame times, in my testing it saved around 3ms with Aero and 2ms with G2. This is also why I added an informational GPU frame time indicator in the app (it samples 1 value every second, so it's not extremely precise but it gives you a rough idea).

 

Example with Aero DFR OFF

(30 FPS w/ 23ms GPU frame times)

 

And Aero Maximum DFR:

(40 FPS w/ 20ms GPU frame times)

 

You can see how SteamVR still eating a lot of your frame rate through (because you should get near 40 FPS at 23ms already, and then 50 FPS with 20ms...). But this isn't something I can solve.

 

Regarding artifacts, the settings in Pimax tool (even Maximum) seem quite conservative, it's really hard for me to see any artifacts. This is probably the reason other users like @Charlo-VR had a difficult time telling whether it was working on their Pimax(?).

 

And finally, of course having implement inside the game engine is the correct solution! But seeing that the game engine is using OpenVR, we're kinda far from it supporting DFR in a universal way (OpenVR and SteamVR in general does not have any support for eye tracking, and would need to be achieved with unique code for each headset...).

2 hours ago, dburne said:

 

Ok so I guess the advantage of doing something like this is the ability to run DFR  in Open VR rather than Open XR? Is that the main thing?

Yes, this is only usable if running the game in OpenVR mode with SteamVR. 

 

It's a trade-off, if you were using OpenComposite before, you probably gained some performance through that, that you will lose now. Which gain outweighs the other is probably up to each user. For users you did not use OpenComposite at all (by choice or because it never worked for them), this should be a net gain (assuming they are limited by GPU).

 

FWIW I'm providing this solution because:

1) it was very easy to implement, the original DLL override without the user interface took less than 3 hours to make. 

2) my other solutions (OpenXR Toolkit, Quad-Views-Foveated) will not work with IL2, and I have no interest in sinking further time unto anything related to OpenComposite. 

Edited September 16, 2023 by mbucchia

[dburne]

16 minutes ago, mbucchia said:

 

 

It's a trade-off, if you were using OpenComposite before, you probably gained some performance through that, that you will lose now. Which gain outweighs the other is probably up to each user. For users you did not use OpenComposite at all (by choice or because it never worked for them), this should be a net gain (assuming they are limited by GPU).

 

FWIW I'm providing this solution because:

1) it was very easy to implement, the original DLL override without the user interface took less than 3 hours to make. 

2) my other solutions (OpenXR Toolkit, Quad-Views-Foveated) will not work with IL2, and I have no interest in sinking further time unto anything related to OpenComposite. 

 

 

Makes sense thanks much for the feedback!

 

 

[Dagwoodyt]

@mbucchia:  WRT Pimax Play, two things helpful to know before downloading are whether it's possible to access the needed files without setting up a Pimax Play account and how to make sure there are no other potentially functioning remnants left behind after a Windows uninstall of Play.

[mbucchia]

9 hours ago, Dagwoodyt said:

@mbucchia:  WRT Pimax Play, two things helpful to know before downloading are whether it's possible to access the needed files without setting up a Pimax Play account and how to make sure there are no other potentially functioning remnants left behind after a Windows uninstall of Play.

You won't even need to start up Pimax Play, so no account info will be needed (even then, Pimax does not enforce accounts like Varjo does).

 

And no I don't think I've observed any lethargic service left behind by Pimax Play after uninstall.