Vive FlyInside performance

[speedrabbit]

Hola,

I received my HTC Vive recently and was eager to give FlyInside a try with Microsoft Flight Simulator X - Steam Edition. I have not used either program before, so consider me a newb when it comes to them.

After getting FSX running, then FlyInside working with FSX, I was able to look around inside the cockpit. Very cool. Unfortunately the judder felt quite significantly, and was punctuated by the entire display flickering black intermittently, varying somewhere between 0.5 -3 times per second. It contributed rapidly to a feeling of motion discomfort so I wasn't able to play for very long.

I felt like I could see the benefits of the Geometry Warp Smoothing (though come to think of it, I just assumed it was on by default -- I should double check that), as rotating my head in place felt much less bad than it should have been given the FSX framerate (which seemed to hovering around 35). However it still felt like the world was jumping around me as I made quicker head motions -- the black flickering may have increased the sensation of judder further.

I assume the black flickering isn't considered normal - any suggestions? Also, any key settings for increasing frame rate? I'm guessing being an old game, FSX is poorly optimized and CPU heavy, so the CPU is probably more my bottleneck than the GPU.

My specs:
i5 760 2.8GHz OC'd to 4.0 GHz (stable for several years)
GTX 970 GPU
Windows 10
edit: FlyInside FSX 1.5 of course

[Tony]

Hi there and a warm welcome , well I think your card is up to spec but I think you've already guessed that your cpu is a little weak ? How does it perform with other games for the vive ?

Tony

[speedrabbit]

Thanks for the welcome. The system is nice and smooth for all the other Vive games I've tried, with the exception of Job Simulator and Budget Cuts -- both of which are reported to be CPU-heavy right now (max out CPUs). Most other games leave the CPU only moderately loaded.

If the black flickering could be resolved, then it'd probably mostly be a matter of tweaking FSX for a better framerate, but I'm not sure if there's much point as long the black flickering persists.

[Robert]

FSX and P3D are also really heavy on CPU core performance. May be just stuck for now.

[admin]

Hi Speedrabbit,

Glad to have a Vive user, I haven't gotten much feedback from that side of things yet! I'm working with Valve to try to narrow down the cause of the black flickering issue. It seems to only happen when the system is very "loaded" (I only get it using the Fast Async Timewarp option using higher res frame-rates). I had suspected that it was related to GPU load, but given that we both have GTX 970s, maybe it's CPU-load dependent also.

Full Geometry-Warp Smoothing is disabled by default, it also doesn't play nicely with the Vive yet. Rotational reprojection is always enabled though, and that's why rotating your head didn't feel too bad.

The black flickering is a work in progress, probably related to your CPU (I've never gotten it in FSX)? I'm trying to fix things from the software side though, as I only see it with Vive and under specific circumstances. To increase frame-rate, try turning down the number of trees, number of buildings, and scenery complexity, as those are the hardest CPU hitters in FSX. Also disable road/air traffic entirely. Please let me know if any of that helps, it's useful info.

Best of luck, and please check back on occasion, I'm hoping to eliminate the black flickering issue entirely in the future

Thanks!
Dan

[speedrabbit]

Hi Dan,

After aggressively turning down the game options (which were set pretty high by default), the experience is much better, with game framerates between 35-70 (35 fps floor, vs previous 35 fps average), and almost all the black flickering is gone. It's easy to see the rotational reprojection doing its work. I can't imagine what it'd be like with Full Geometry Warp Smooth as well.

Now I just need to learn to fly one of these damn planes. I had fun hooking up my Leap Motion and flicking switches incessantly, even though I had on idea what most of them do.

[Robert]

Just finished some flights in P3D with the Vive. Very, very, nice! I was getting the black flickering too at Orbx airports in detailed planes. But if I backed down on the eye candy it worked great!

Dan, I have hyperthreading turned off. Somewhere you were asking about hyperthreading and the black flashing on i7 processors I think.

Also, the mirror window feature in FlyInside chews a fair amount of frames. For whatever reason the mirror window in SteamVR doesn't drop my frame rate. Apparently I have enough headroom for that but not for the FlyInside version.

So glad I can fly in the Vive! Woohoo!

[admin]

Thank you for the tip on the mirror window, very useful to know

[Robert]

Hey Dan, any thoughts on potential to increase performance on the Vive? I am only able to run the basic aircraft now it seems without black frames and judder.

In the SteamVR performance bit, I can see the dropped frames - about one or so per second depending on how complex the aircraft. And in your main menu, my frames are generally holding 30 for FSX but the Vive counter will frequently drops to 80-85 then goes back to 90.

I think I'm right on the very edge of great performance.

Just curious...

[Sharkku]

Should have ordered the Rift... **flamewar ensues**