Author Topic: VR in P3dv5  (Read 3314 times)

corbu1

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VR in P3dv5
« on: April 20, 2020, 04:01:06 PM »
Hello,
here are some experiences with P3dv5 in VR. I‘m using the HTC Vive Pro.

First, the performance increase in v5 is really noticable compared to v4.5 HF2, which I still have installed on my flightsim PC.
Flying in VR mode at PF20 and in Ketchikan area in general was really demanding for v4.x in my system, which is not state of the art after 3 1/2 years but I plan updating to new system anyway this summer.
There have always been stutterings in VR at they3 locations, so it was always far away from smooth flying.
In v5 with the same scenery addons installed and the same sim settings applied, it is really a new experience.
It is now really a smooth flying experience. Some stutters do still happen, but in general it is definitly a new experience. So after these first days of flying there‘s huge potential in this new P3d version regarding VR.
So far the good things I have discovered.

The downside is, there are several issues not only with v5 in general but also in VR mode.
1. there was a heavy jittering in VR which caused nausea and headaches after a few minutes of wearing the HMD. This issue is already fixed. LM offers a hotfix for download.
2. water reflections Of clouds generate issues in VR when flying over large water bodies like RTMM areas. It seems that this effects are generated wrong in the two lenses of the HMD. It is important to know that these rendering issues do not only produce bad graphics. VR mode generates a 3D effect on the lenses. If the produced graphics on the lenses are not synchronized the right way it‘s hard for the brain to deal with the 3D effect which leads to nausea and headaches.
The issue is not yet solved. I had to disable water reflections till a fix is avaible.
3. In VR mode it is possible to activate 2D panels like the atc panel or other panels like gps and third party gauges like rxp GTN 750. These panels can be placed free in the 3D environment in the virtual cockpit. This allows them placing over 3Dpanels like the main panel or center panel as being in their correct planar orientation. This is a great features and is possible since v4.1 or 4.2. In v5 the feature still exists, but gauges implemented buttons are no more clickable......LM has promised fixing this soon.....but this really sucks, because I think it‘s a sign for poor quality control before release of the software.
4. the mouse pointer in VR shows sometimes bad habits and centers it position to middle of field of view when pressing right mouse button. This happens random.
5. CDT‘s do happen again.......I remember them in v4.1 and v4.2 when flying in demanding areas. Loading times of he“vy scenery produced CDT‘s. In later v4.x versions this was Completly resolved. I can not remember having these in v4.5 HF2.

So there is still a way to go for v5....... I really hope LM get the VR mode working stable.

I fly exclusively in VR since P3dv4.0 now. Especially flying helicopters in VR is a immersive experience, I can‘t imagine doing again in front of a 2D screen.

As I said at the beginning....there‘s huge potential in v5 VR mode!


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nbrich1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #1 on: April 20, 2020, 08:06:40 PM »
Yes I hear the same.. I have a bud in the uk that now has v5 and he has an Oculus Rift S headset and says that VR is so much better/ clearer in v5.
Regards from Toronto, Canada. Home Airport CYYZ.
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MFC0001

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #2 on: April 20, 2020, 11:01:53 PM »
Just sold my vr5 as the resolution and the stutters were beyond awful.  Maybe they will get a handle on it in another year or so.
Henry

corbu1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2020, 03:02:29 AM »
LM says they have fixed the issues mentioned in my post above. They plan a hotfix release for v5 next week addressing some other problems reported on the LM forum by user.....one of the major issues there is the sudden crash to ground issue.


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nbrich1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2020, 09:49:20 PM »
Yes sir. Early or mid next week for the fixes. Those random  terrain hits are really annoying but soon, hopefully, those low altitudes AGL type errors will be removed.
Regards from Toronto, Canada. Home Airport CYYZ.
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corbu1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2020, 06:44:12 PM »
The Hotfix 1 is released by LM and it adresses the VR issues which occured on initial release of P3dv5.

I have installed the Hotfix and some flying today to see how VR works with it.
I refer to the issues I have described above:

1. Jittering
There‘s no jittering for me anymore. The issues were already taken care with two separate VR Hotfixes. The fixes are now implemented in the Hotfix1. Headmovement is now smoth and stable and should work with Steam VR based headsets, like my VivePro, Oculus HMD‘s and also Windows WMR based headsets.
2. Water reflections
the known problems with reflections are fixed now.
But I noticed a new strange behaviour while testing reflections. Clouds reflections on water like strange. The amount of clouds reflected on the water do not match with the clouds in the sky...different sizes and numbers. Also the clouds should be displayed at fixed positions on the water or should mo e with the same speed as the clouds in the sky they do reflecting. This isn‘t the case.....the clouds images reflected on the water move with the same speed and direction as the AC I‘m flying. This is really strange......I have enhanced atmospherics disabled as this feature isn‘t working yet with single pass mode in VR. I can‘t say if this behaviour a,ready existed wit v5 initial release, so maybe it‘s a new issue.
3. 2D panels in VR
this issue is fixed now.
2D panels placed in 3D environment in VR are now clickable. It should also work now with the ATC window.
4. bad habits of mouse pointer
This seems to be no issue. I found the solution for it by disabling the advanced mouse controls in v5 Options.
5. CDT‘s
So far I had no CDT‘s in VR....I did a 2 1/2 hour SAR flight today and all worked well.
One source for these CDT‘s could have been when flying with opened ATC window. This should be fixed now.
Other cause is the high VRam usage I guess.....

My first overall experience flying with the hotfix was still a better performance in VR than in v4.5HF2, but not as smooth performing than in v5 initial release. I guess this is a result of the changes in VRam usage implemented in the Hotfix. Having in mind, that  before the hotfix the sim crashed in 90% of the flights after about 45-60 minutes....I‘ll see the hotfix a good starting point for further optimizations by LM.
I also noticed blurry ground textures in performance demanding sceneries like the aera around Ketchikan....I‘ll do some further testing on this as I did not find similar reports on LM forums, so maybe it‘s a failure on my side.

 


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corbu1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #6 on: May 02, 2020, 08:12:59 PM »
Well, the blurries are really worse on my system with v5 HF1.
Today I did two complete reinstallations......the blurried ground textures are still present.
Flying low level is no fun with these.....

Some others have similar problems reported on LM‘s forums.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2020, 08:14:36 PM by corbu1 »


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corbu1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #7 on: May 15, 2020, 07:51:57 PM »
It seems steady but slow I‘ll get v5 in VR working....

The extreme blurred textures are away now.
I had an affinity mask setting in the prepar3.cfg set. The entry works in v4 good for me. I came to this after some reading of user problems playing with affinity mask settings on the LM and AVSIM forums.
After removing the affinity mask entry, actually I deleted the complete prepar3d.cfg and the shaders cache to led them rebuild by the sim, the Blurred textures are gone.......

But then I had complete crashes in Flight.....with caused by different modules.
The crashes were caused multiple times by VCruntime140.dll. After deleting I reinstall the VC++2015 and 2017.
Did also a reinstall of the actual Nvidia graphics card driver.
And I added Norm‘s suggested DXdiag TDR fix.

Before these, I had constant sim crashes between 5 to 15 minutes in Flight......Today, I was for 1.5 hours in Flight without crash. I was flying around Misty‘s Place and Ketchikan in different altitudes.

I had stutters in very demanding areas like Ketchikan harbor and aitport, but overall experience was very good. I‘m knocking on woods.....I‘m at the point believing, v5 and me, we could build a relationship....

I‘ll do more texting this weekend....but this with much more optimism than the last week!


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kaha

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #8 on: May 16, 2020, 02:57:43 AM »
Klaus, that's good to hear. Have fun!

Karl
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nbrich1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #9 on: May 16, 2020, 07:58:24 AM »
Sounds much better Klaus.. I don't have VR yet or blurries.. but sound lke well on your way to getting the setting right...

Not sure if all know, but for NVidia users there latest drivers (in the last 6 months or so) have contained two new features right in control panel. 1. Image/Display sharpening tool and a built-in frame rate limiter.

Ok To try this stuff: Go to your NVidia Control Panel, > Manage 3D settings > Go to the Program Settings tab: and select the Prepar3D (prepar3d.exe) setting.

1. The sharpening tool. turn ON and try .50 or slightly higher IE: .57 which will sharpen the display in the sim. (Hopefully it will help in VR). Leave Ignore Film Grain as is. 

2. This is not new but you can check your settings in NVidia control pane. Go to Antialiasing - Mode  >
Set this value to "Enhance the application setting" then right below is  "Antialiasing - Setting" set this value to what ever value you have for AA: in your sim:

    so IE; IF the sim AA: is set to 2xMMAA or 2xSSAA then set NVidia Control panel > Antialiasing to 2x.
        IE; IF the sim AA: is set to 4xMMAA or 4xSSAA then set NVidia Control panel > Antialiasing to 4x.
        IE; IF the sim AA: is set to 8xMMAA or 8xSSAA then set NVidia Control panel > Antialiasing to 8x.
Just match the value and the NVidia drive treis to enhance the setting.

3. Also in NVidia there is an external frame rate limiter - helps the CPU cores level rather than dumping the app on one core. (From my understanding redistributes the load better across the CPU cores: You can try it and see if it helps at all. Here's how to apply it to your sim:
 
In the sim set Target frame rate: Unlimited. In NVidia Control Panel set max Frame rate ie: to 30FPS. That's lets your sim run at full-without any restriction but the NVidia setting holds the sims frames capped  which actually seems to smooth out the load across the CPU cores and this helps to smooth out the sim  graphics display which helps with blurries as well as to help minimize micro-studders.

You might not see much change in the sim graphics but the cores are better handling/distributing the load
across the CPU cores which overall gives you more capacity on each core to handle the load.

Anyways try this stuff, Might help a bit or more or not but sure worth worth trying it and it takes no time at all to set up and try it and easy to revert.

Norm
Regards from Toronto, Canada. Home Airport CYYZ.
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stiletto2

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #10 on: May 16, 2020, 09:31:59 AM »

......And I added Norm‘s suggested DXdiag TDR fix.


I cannot find NOrm's suggested DXdiag TDR fix....can you point me to that?

Thanks,

Rod

corbu1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #11 on: May 16, 2020, 10:21:49 AM »

......And I added Norm‘s suggested DXdiag TDR fix.


I cannot find NOrm's suggested DXdiag TDR fix....can you point me to that?

Thanks,

Rod



It was in another thread here:

„P3Dv4x and above on Win10 64bit, Nvidia GTX1080ti with latest drivers. It's called DXGI hung error.

The problem: an app called TDR checker monitors the computer’s hardware, particularly the GPU. When the GPU stops responding with the computer for 2 seconds TDR checker restarts the driver if GPU is under load; (It's like a time out - and if the app exceeds the time out the GPU graphics driver is stopped - then restarted.

But if you in an application like P3Dv4x+ the stopped driver results in "DXGI hung error".
(Display driver not responding)

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/Working-around-TDR-in-Windows-for-a-better-GPU-computing-experience-777/

(If you don't get it that's a good thing!!).  I haven't had it either ('Touch wood"!) but I just finished working on a guys PC in Florida yesterday am:. A fresh P3Dv5x install -(GPU GTX1080TI), and on first start this error).

So until HF2 is done for users that experience this fatal error in the sim: a fix that is supposed to work (But not exactly for the novice user to do), is to create a sub key:(TDS entry) in the windows registry to nullify the TDS timeout so that the graphics driver is not stopped).   

Will post the method here but again not for novice PC users so please only implement if you know how and are ok with editing your registry.

How to:
- Exit all Windows based programs,
- Click on the Windows Start button, type regedit in the Search box,double-click regedit.exe from the results above.  (If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation).

- Browse to and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers

- On the Edit menu, click New, and select the QWORD (64-bit) value from the drop-down menu,
- Type ‘TdrLevel’ as the Name and click Enter,
- Double-click TdrLevel and set the value as 0 (it is set to that by default, but double check) and click OK,
- Close the registry editor and restart your computer for the changes to take effect!

That should disable the TDR Detection/GPU Driver timeout.“


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stiletto2

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #12 on: May 16, 2020, 10:37:21 AM »
Thanks!

Rod

corbu1

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Re: VR in P3dv5
« Reply #13 on: May 16, 2020, 05:59:20 PM »
Hello Norm,
thank you for your infos on the Nvidia control panel.

I’ve heard of the picture sharpening feature avaiable in the actual Nvidia Drivers, but didn‘t try it so far. But will do now......Thank you!

Regarding the fps limiter, I learned it‘s best leaving the fps unlimited in P3d and I think also in the driver software. The VR Steam drivers use a feature called motion reprojection. I learned this feature works best when the fps are not limited either by P3d or another fps-limiter....also LM recommends it.

I‘ll really start feeling happy with v5.......thanks again!


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