DCS World Smart Smoothing

[jmorgansmith25]

I just recently picked up a used Pimax 5k+ and I’ve been messing with my settings for the past 5 days. I’ve tried just about everything and I cant seem to get smart smoothing to work correctly. I have exclusively been testing in DCS World as that is what I bought the headset for.

When I have smart smoothing on I can get most things to be clear and smooth playing with the settings. However, no matter if I go to the lowest settings in DCS I always get a form of ghosting or judders. Its mostly only apparent when looking directly left or right and rolling the aircraft quickly. If I look at the missile on the wing tip, it looks like it is being bent or the tip of the missile is misaligned. Is this just something you have to live with in smart smoothing or do I have other problems? I previously had a Samsung Oddysey HMD and I don’t recall seeing an artifact like this with the motion reprojection setting in WMR.

[neal_white_iii]

First, I have never played DCS. My understanding is that Smart Smoothing uses the CPU to synthesize “in between” frames, when the GPU can’t render at the desired framerate. The GPU render rate needs to be at least half of the desired framerate. Eg. at least 45 fps at all times when the desired final framerate is 90Hz.

I’m not sure that Smart Smoothing is appropriate for a game like DCS which is highly dependent on the speed of a single CPU core.

I’ve heard that DCS needs significant tuning (careful selection of the graphics settings) to achieve the best framerate for a given PC.

Hopefully, someone who has DCS experience can provide some solid advice.

[Update] Are you using the latest PiTool version 1.0.1.262? Some of the older drivers had stuttering problems. If not, I recommend updating PiTool.

[mhe]

Calling @mirage335
He is the most likely guy to be able to help you.

[C-Dric]

In iracing aswel smartsmoothing create some ghost effetcts but only in two two cases.

On cockpit view on an open wheel car like Formula 1, que tires has sublinal/ghosting images effects when the car is moving. Some times the top of the front of the car too.

The second case is when you look replay, when the car pass from right to left or left to right, at the distance, you see a big ghosting effect on the car.

In the first case you can deal with it because eyes are focus on road/opponents, not on tires.
Second case it is harder to handle. That’s why i don’t use smartsmoothing anymore.

[Heliosurge]

Welcome to the OpenMR Forum!

@mirage335 is very invested in DCS.

Can you share your system specs, pitool version and settings please?

[dstar]

In the meantime, I use DCS without smartsmooth. (90Hz)
With new pitool and optimized DCS Settings, I have 57-85 FPS without stuttering. Only if I look to the side, I see, 120FPS would be better for some objects, but this is a CPU thing.

Overall, the performance is much better then in the odyssey plus.
In DCS, the Pimax wins clear in all, despite the higher render-resolution.

[mirage335]

First, try PiTool version 1.0.1.254_alpha . I still have not had a chance to try 262 with DCS World, though I have good reason to believe it will also work.

Second, try launching DCS World one time through PiTool’s game launcher, fly an aircraft, and exit. I have good reason to believe this causes a permanent change to DCS World config files, though I have not yet tracked down which. This may temporarily break modules with DRM, and that is fine - you only need to do this once.

After doing those two things, the various bugs that can make DCS World unusable with Smart Smoothing regardless of other settings should be taken care of.

Now, set PiTool Render Quality to 1.25, SteamVR Video and Application vertical resolution to 1800v (eg. 2000x1800), and DCS World Pixel Density to 1.2. You may need to have DCS World running to set this.

Those settings should give you a total supersampling/superresolution/whatever (what I refer to as TotalSR) of approximately 1.5x (on a 2000MHz RTX 2080 Ti and i9-9900k machine TotalSR should be able to go up to 2.2x). Keep in mind DCS World Pixel Density is set to 1.6 by default which is very bad because it further bottlenecks the CPU single-thread DCS World is limited to.

For the visual quality settings and NVIDIA control panel settings, or for doing some numerical calculations to get different TotalSR values, please consult this spreadsheet. Many of the tradeoffs available can be set to bring massive performance gains with zero impact on visual quality. Notable example - I have confirmed by repeated careful study of terrain textures there is zero visual difference with the maximum setting even when approaching terrain from far away, high altitude, at excessive supersampling resolutions under the 8kX, etc).

https://github.com/mirage335/extendedInterface/blob/master/app/DCS/_sequence/000-param-Pimax_5kp.ods

Finally, if you have not downloaded the ‘overclocking’ software for your graphics card (eg. EVGA Precision X1), do so, set the voltage/power target sliders to max, and set the core clock to at least 2000MHz. In the vast majority of cases, this does not involve overvolting or anything else that may void your warranty, and is nearly guaranteed to provide a stable performance boost of ~20%, which is usually the difference between unusable double framing, or absolutely smooth performance.

Also, you may wish to buy FPSVR. Costs something like $2, and is the only valid performance metric. If the CPU and GPU graphs are less than full, and do not have spikes all the way to the top, then your CPU/GPU is up to the task. Anything less, and you know you must reduce visual quality or resolution a bit somewhere.

I do not recommend turning off smart smoothing unless you can maintain within 5 frames per second of the physical refresh rate. A refresh rate of 60Hz/64Hz, or even 72Hz/75Hz with smart smoothing on, can be maintained with hundreds of scripted objects, busy multiplayer servers, occasionally challenging terrain spots, etc.

@Heliosurge Thanks for highlighting me.

[jmorgansmith25]

Thanks everyone for the replies!

I’m still experience this ghosting effect with smart smoothing on the wings when rolling and in multiplayer when other planes fly by. It seems this may just be a unavoidable and a trade-off when using smart smoothing? I love bumping up the supersampling and other settings but the ghosting is such an immersion killer to me!

I have a Ryzen 7 3700X, EVGA 2080TI FTW ULTRA XC, 32 GB 3600 RAM, 1 TB SSD. This is my first build so I’m now realizing how I’m limited with the Ryzen when playing DCS vs. having an Intel chip. I was running Pitool .262 before and now I rolled back to .254 alpha as recommended. I’m also using the steamVR release version and the latest DCS Open Beta.

I tried all of @mirage335 tips. It seems the included spreadsheet allows me to run at 64 fps and smart smoothing doesn’t kick on (verified by watching fpsVR staying at 64fps). Stable 64 fps is smooth and doesn’t provide the ghosting effect.

I agree that the Pimax 5k+ beats the Samsung in almost all aspects, but I think the WMR motion reprojection might be a bit better than smart smoothing at interpolating the frames. (Unless the ghosting was happening in WMR too and I just forgot about it…)

One nice thing I found was that .254alpha does include the 64Hz option which is easier to meet than 72. Does anyone know why Pitool .262 doesn’t include this refresh rate? I may go back since the utilization of the GPU is pretty high in .262. Hopefully I can sustain 72 Hz. Thanks again for the help!

[Heliosurge]

With having the Ryzen 3700x have you installed the Amd power profile? It auto overclocks. Just be sure to adjust the profile after installing to max.

Extremepc in Canada here if you send him an email can give pointers on optimizing your Ryzen. He builds hi end gaming pcs.

[mirage335]

@jmorgansmith25
Forgot to mention a couple things.

Disabling HyperThreading on Intel i9-9900k systems is now known to bring a major performance boost, on the order of 15%. Since you have a Ryzen 7 3700X, with similar cores to spare, you should try this too.

Disabling CPU security mitigations introduced recently can also improve performance. Depending on what you use that computer for, the tradeoff may be worthwhile either way. Along with the registry, this is another good reason to have a dedicated MSW OS installation for gaming with as few applications installed as possible.

GRC | InSpectre  

As for Smart Smoothing, it is indeed a tradeoff. Smart Smoothing can kick in even before dropping below physical refresh rate (eg. 64Hz), and does introduce artifacts. Consider disabling Smart Smoothing if you can maintain even close to physical refresh, perhaps 55Hz out of 64Hz.

Looking at the wingtips and rolling, if smart smoothing is in effect, there will be a complicated ‘tearing’, not a simple ghosting or double framing, effect. The advantage of Smart Smoothing is that it keeps your flight deck instruments and HUD readable. Otherwise at 32Hz or so, the VR experience would be so choppy it would look like double framing. The disadvantage is some artifacts, primarily because Smart Smoothing, like SteamVR reprojection in general, is far less accurate than Oculus ASW was.

Because you are able to maintain 64Hz steadily, I have to suspect you are not getting all the resolution you paid for with that Pimax 5k+! Personally, for training and casual flying, I would push the resolution to a TotalSR or 2.2 and accept some Smart Smoothing artifacts, dropping Smart Smoothing only for more intense competitive situations where the extra latency might be more important than readability. For long flights, I find the extra resolution really helps with eyestrain.

That is why I usually have batch scripts swapping my ‘steamvr.settings’ files and a couple of different spreadsheets - a separate ‘fast’ profile.

Regarding your CPU, as long as your FPSVR CPU graph is showing at least 5% margin under your worst DCS World use case, it should be fine. Watch for performance trouble spots near terrain and on multiplayer servers. There is a definite disadvantage to AMD for DCS World specifically, no matter how far it is overclocked. If it is any consolation, I built two AMD machines and even tried a Radeon VII before giving up and reluctantly swapping that stuff to eBay for an Intel/NVIDIA i9-9900k/RTX2080Ti, both the CPU and GPU being prebinned to the highest clock rates from Silicon Lottery and EVGA…

It depends on what you are doing. For most DCS World users, a Ryzen 3700X will just enough to keep up with the RTX 2080 Ti, unless you start loading hundreds of scripted objects…

By the way, thank you for downloading and working with my spreadsheet! Please also consider exploring the rest of the repository - there are things like JoystickGremlin/VoiceAttack profiles and control specifications for nearly every aircraft in DCS World, among other things.

[Sidekick1]

I am getting very good framerates with my OC i900KS RTX2080TI and have tweaked a few Nvidia settings based on your spreadsheet and am trying out your Resolution settings for my 5k+, thank you. But have not disabled Hyper Threading yet and will have to give that a try. I just recently started using Smart Smoothing when I installed .262 and hardly every notice ghosting unless a very fast plane with a high crossing angle and it is slight

[mirage335]

If that airfield is the one I think it is, and if you push the resolution to a TotalSR of 2.2 or so, you should notice two things. First, the AMPCD should be readable enough, even with the color map turned on. Second, if you turn right, turn left on to the runway, take off, turn left (towards some hills IIRC), and remain at low altitude, you should see a major performance hit (IIRC near the hills).

Also, everyone should keep in mind, once again, the 8kX requires less GPU and CPU processing power to achieve higher visual quality in DCS World than the 5k+, due to reduced need for supersampling. Even with the 5k+ though, it is worth pushing for higher resolution if eyestrain is a significant issue. For practicing instrument flying techniques, pattern work, carrier landings, etc, I find visual quality is imperative.

Point-by-Point Demo of (not-final) Pimax Vision 8kX