Pimax Artisan settings with 5700xt Nitro+ and R5 3600

[Agahnim90]

Continuing the discussion from 5K Plus with AMD 5700 XT

Hello !

I choose to create a new topic in order to avoid pollution of the previous one.

So as a summary, i own a Pimax Artisan with 5700xt Nitro+ GPU and R5 3600 CPU. And i’m totally new regarding VR, this is my first headset and i’m already convinced, VR is so great, especially for my usage, which is simracing moslty.

First settings were 90Hz Pitool 2.0, smart smoothing OFF and SteamVR SS 50% (total resolution is 3172*2980), with these FPSvr is reporting most of the time 90fps (GPU-frametime < 11ms) with some drops to 12ms (or 13ms in really heavy traffic with 24 AI). But i was maybe capped by the maxRecommendedResolution Steam setting to 4096.

@mr.uu

Change it to 16384. steamvr.vrsetting in programsx86/steam/…
Also look for MotionSmoothing and set it to false.
This value represents the maximum total pixels rendered. HorXvert. So as i thought your resolution vas not around 9Million pixels but not even half of that. That is why your gpu could deliver 90fps mostly.

So i did the modification of the file, setting maxRecommendedResolution to 16384. And motion smoothing to false.

And i feel like nothing changed, so reports FPSvr, it’s like before in a matter of FPS. But if i set much more resolution with SteamVR SS, then FPS go down heavily.

I realized also that if i turn smart smoothing ON, it works, i means sometimes FPSvr reporting like 45/50fps but the GPU-frametime is still under 11ms. So it’s smooth as before, without FPS drops i would say. Still running 3172*2980 but with Pitool 1.0 and SteamVR SS 200%.

But, when smart smoothing is ON, once a turn my head from side to side, i see cars in double, if i don’t move my head it’s OK, it’s smooth. So in the end the feeling with smart smoothing is worse…

So don’t really know what to do. I mean i would like to use smart smoothing from Pitool and set resolution higher in order to rely on it and have the best visual/performance balance, but this issue makes it difficult.

@PimaxQuorra @PimaxVR

[Heliosurge]

Okay so as being the op of this thread if it veers off. Ask folks to stay on topic politely. If you have an issue ask a mod for help.

[Agahnim90]

Hello,

I don’t think it was totally off topic but the previous one was dedicated to 5K+, so as mine is an Artisan i didn’t want to mix topics.

Could you please tell who are the mods i can ask for help ? Am i doing it wrong maybe ? Idea of this thread was to ask for some help, and in order to help people with same “issue”.

[Heliosurge]

Your thread here or the discussion there are both fine. As both headsets share a lot of common components. GPU and CPU will affect each headset similarly. Save the Artisan may have more performance due to it’s specifications. Though lowering FoV on the 5k+ can also see these gains as well.

Mods have the Shield beside there name.

Active full mods are Pimaxquorra, TrevorVR, PimaxUSA and myself.

Here is a screenshot of the Forum About page.

There are also users whom have a Leader User Level that can perform some Mod functions as a kind of Sub Mod.

[mr.uu]

@Agahnim90

And i feeling like nothing changed, so reports FPSvr, it’s like before in a matter of FPS. But if i set much more resolution with SteamVR SS, then FPS go down heavily.

strange. means that your setting has an effect.

@Agahnim90

I realized also that if i turn smart smoothing ON, it works, i means sometimes FPSvr reporting like 45/50fps but the GPU-frametime is still under 11ms. So it’s smooth as before, without FPS drops i would say. Still running 3172*2980 but with Pitool 1.0 and SteamVR SS 200%.

But, when smart smoothing is ON, once a turn my head from side to side, i see cars in double, if i don’t move my head it’s OK, it’s smooth. So in the end the feeling with smart smoothing is worse…

yep, thats the downside of smsm. if you look to the sides you see the artifical doubling. This is why in sim games i like it turned off

As i said, i doubt it is rendered at 2980v pixels. have you tried with 2160v?

[Alonzo]

There seems to be little difference between using PiTool RQ to increase pixels rendered, vs SteamVR supersample. I prefer to keep RQ at 1.0 and then play with SteamVR percentage, mostly because the slider is tough to drag accurately, especially at higher render qualities!

2980 vertical seems like a lot of pixels, given the physical device has 1600 vertical. Are you using PP mode?

Each VR user will have a different preference when it comes to frame rates and whether they like motion smoothing or not. The Artisan can do 72, 90 or 120hz, each with motion smoothing on or off. You might find that 60 FPS motion smoothed to 120 is acceptable (it’s a whole lot better than 45 -> 90). Or you might find that you absolutely want a full ‘real’ 90 FPS. Either way, try both to see what you like. For flight simming, I absolutely turn motion smoothing off, it’s awful.

In VR you’re going to have to get used to less resolution and eye candy than 2D mode. I think you’re probably cranking the resolution too high. For flight sims in my Artisan (non-PP mode) I am shooting for about 2000 vertical pixels. You’re way above this number.

[Agahnim90]

Hello !

Thank you for your answers! Regarding motion moothing, your’re right that it’s better when using 120Hz mode ! But i can’t still see cars in double when i move my head a bit fast.

It is the same for every body using smart smoothing ?

Regarding visual quality, of course i wasn’t expecting same quality than the native 1080p projector i was used to play with, but honestly i’m quite pleased with the display and i don’t loose much details in the distance comparing my previous configuration. And the immersion is fantastic .

But there is still something i don’t figure out, it’s when i use smart smoothing my base FPS rendered are lower than when i don’t use smart smoothing, so i’m not really taking advantages from smart soothing in a matter of visual/FPS balance

So in order to find out, i performed a small “study” using benchmark test from Assetto Corsa and fpsVR to report data. You’ll find the results below :

And then direct comparison between smart smoothing on and off for test N°2/3/6/7 :

The most obvious thing is the GPU usage which very different, but we can see a don’t hit same performance without smart smoothing about FPS delivered (real frames), but still the GPU usage is low.

So my questions are :

1 - Why using smart smoothing in test N°6 i can’t hit same delivered FPS (avg) than the ones i have when smart smoothing is off (test N°2) ? Moreover it seems my GPU could deliver more… Because, when i see i can hit 68fps in test N°2, i was expecting 120fps using smart smoothing but we can see eventually i can’t, and hit just 12.3ms GPU frametime (81fps). Statement is the same for test N°3 vs N°7 with 90Hz.

2 - Is it really possible my GPU+CPU combo manage to deliver 68fps with 22 million pixels (see test N°2) ? I’m quite surprise by this result.

Any remarks are welcome !

[Sonsolar]

Have you tried this Project Cars 2. I have 5700xt and 3700 and can only run everything low 1.0 in pitool and 60ss in steam or else my system crashes.

[Teigue]

@Agahnim90

1 - Why using smart smoothing in test N°6 i can’t hit same delivered FPS (avg) than the ones i have when smart smoothing is off (test N°2)

I’'m not sure on the topic but I will share what I know about SS. It artificially divides your fps by 2, e.g. you have 90Hz but software limits rendered FPS to 45 & it’s what you see in FpsVR, while it doubles the frames & delivers those frames to HMD panels in 90Hz mode, it can do some tricks liks interpolation frames & do some other stuff that causes double vision but the idea is that it halves the fps so it’s why your GPU is less used, it should inrease CPU a bit I guess. I like to avoid use SS, but if hardware struggling you can achive 72hz with only 36 fps & 90 with 45 & 120 with 60 & so on, the key requirement to make SS work is to ensure your system is able to maintain not less than half of your choosen fps otherwise artifacts will be more visisble, but I also get double vision on head turns so preffer to not use it a lot.