Guides A performance Guide for Virt-a-Mate (& other apps)

[grundleperc]

So If I had already gotten vrperfkit up and running for my index, is there any benefit to installing/using the gui? It would just make tweaking settings easier right? or is there something else I missed?

 

[thinoreos]

Good guide! Something worth noting though - The VR Mod / Foveated rendering mod only works if you have SteamVR running, if you're using another runtime like Oculus or WMR, it won't work!

 

[EasyVam]

1. Do i have to launch VR mod everytime before launch VAM? Or is it 1 time thing?
2. If i change settings on VR mod will it apply in game or do i have to restart vam?

The VR-mod is a 1 time thing setup.
VR mod settings will stay and apply.

upgrading from a Rift i had for 7 years to a Quest 3. so can i get sexy fairy's flying around my room with this? only saying fairy thinking it be the only thing that work well moving around ur room

Yes, with the Quest3 thats gracing us in a few days, everyone will have access to a cheap VR device with fantastic quality and easy Mixed Reality access. This will work and ive begun working on some mixed reality centric scenes. Will release them round about the 10.10 when the device gets sent out. Youre going to need VirtualDesktop for easy mixedreality.

Maybe I read it wrong but it seems like the new software works with SteamVR-run headsets like the Index - is that correct? If so that is fantastic

Aye - it works with SteamVR and its basically made for it. Everything thats not launching via Steam needs to be added manually.

So If I had already gotten vrperfkit up and running for my index, is there any benefit to installing/using the gui? It would just make tweaking settings easier right? or is there something else I missed?

Ah, the good old vrperfkit. Id say if everything works for you really well and youre having a good and optimized time already - i wouldnt touch it. However, i find the software i linked more comfortable to handle, the vrperfkit is very raw.

 

[jedidood]

I have a Valve Index and launched the game via SteamVR, but game keep crashing every time.

 

[EasyVam]

I have a Valve Index and launched the game via SteamVR, but game keep crashing every time.

Unfortunately i dont have an Index and cant help with fixing issues regarding that. Your best bet would be looking for soloutions around the net regarding the use of regular games and similar crashes with the software.

Alternatively, you can try out the VR performance kit from fholger, it has the same functionality but isnt as user friendly as the software i linked in the Guide.

 

[jedidood]

So If I had already gotten vrperfkit up and running for my index, is there any benefit to installing/using the gui? It would just make tweaking settings easier right? or is there something else I missed?

Did you do anything special to get it working with Valve Index? mine keeps crashing every time I launch the game.

 

[brasileirinho]

Is that frame generation thingy from AMD of any use for VR?

 

[random_user_9000]

@EasyVam I'm trying to follow the guide to get foveated plugin install but can't get it to work.

I added vam root folder to the app, selected the Install Locations as path for openvr_api.dll and vam.exe. Then clicked Foveated install plugin.
I verified that the dll was changed to mod one in the path.
I ran vam with .bat config command for OpenXR and oculus START "VaM" VaM.exe -vrmode oculus

When I run vam, it doesnt show any change in resolution or performance. Debug mode selected in foveated plugin also doesn't show anything in-game. How do I know its working? Did I do any step wrong?

 

[EasyVam]

@EasyVam I'm trying to follow the guide to get foveated plugin install but can't get it to work.

I added vam root folder to the app, selected the Install Locations as path for openvr_api.dll and vam.exe. Then clicked Foveated install plugin.
I verified that the dll was changed to mod one in the path.
I ran vam with .bat config command for OpenXR and oculus START "VaM" VaM.exe -vrmode oculus

When I run vam, it doesnt show any change in resolution or performance. Debug mode selected in foveated plugin also doesn't show anything in-game. How do I know its working? Did I do any step wrong?

Hey! How are you connecting which Oculus device? Right off the bat, you can try out the VR performance kit from fholger if youre having troubles with the software i suggested in the guide.

@brasileirinho i dont think so, from what ive heard, the DLSS3/FSR3 framegen adds too much latency to VR - resulting in a shitty feel and delayed image.

 

[supplovr]

Many thanks for this guide, EasyVam!

Question regarding ASW. If I'm not mistaken then this is only relevant for users using Quest Link or AirLink. If using Virtual Desktop then SSW is used. If setup is enough powerful then I guess it makes sense to disable SSW aswell for similar reason. Right?

 

[EasyVam]

Many thanks for this guide, EasyVam!

Question regarding ASW. If I'm not mistaken then this is only relevant for users using Quest Link or AirLink. If using Virtual Desktop then SSW is used. If setup is enough powerful then I guess it makes sense to disable SSW aswell for similar reason. Right?

Glad that you liked it!

Good question, i cant speak as badly of virtual desktops SSW. While that chunks down your FPS aswell, it actually feels smooth compared to ASW.

 

[supplovr]

Monitored the FPS with only VaM running the same scene on each of the tests.
I'm using Virtual Desktop & OculusVR (not SteamVR), SSW disabled to not influence the results, streaming set on Ultra.
i9,64gb,3090, Quest 3 (unfortunately I sold my Quest 2, would have been interesting in comparison)
Quest connected with 2400mbps

- No modifications applied 50fps
- ASW off; no influence > I guess it is not relevant as I'm using Virtual Desktop; 50fps
- Alternatively switching an testing in VR Mod App V0.9.82 through all 3 options
-- FSR plugin enabled; no influence 50fps
-- Foveated plugin enabled; no influence 50fps
-- VrPerfKit pugin enabled; some influence 55fps

No startup issues with the mod app, VaM runs stable. But not the improvements I was hoping for.
Do I need do enable the foveated stuff within VaM when the plugin is running?

 

[random_user_9000]

Hey! How are you connecting which Oculus device? Right off the bat, you can try out the VR performance kit from fholger if youre having troubles with the software i suggested in the guide.

@brasileirinho i dont think so, from what ive heard, the DLSS3/FSR3 framegen adds too much latency to VR - resulting in a shitty feel and delayed image.

Using Quest 2 with Airlink. What setup did the foveated plugin work for you?
I've tried vrperfkit before, is the foveated plugin same quality as foveated rendering in vrperfkit?

 

[EasyVam]

Monitored the FPS with only VaM running the same scene on each of the tests.
I'm using Virtual Desktop & OculusVR (not SteamVR), SSW disabled to not influence the results, streaming set on Ultra.
i9,64gb,3090, Quest 3 (unfortunately I sold my Quest 2, would have been interesting in comparison)
Quest connected with 2400mbps

- No modifications applied 50fps
- ASW off; no influence > I guess it is not relevant as I'm using Virtual Desktop; 50fps
- Alternatively switching an testing in VR Mod App V0.9.82 through all 3 options
-- FSR plugin enabled; no influence 50fps
-- Foveated plugin enabled; no influence 50fps
-- VrPerfKit pugin enabled; some influence 55fps

No startup issues with the mod app, VaM runs stable. But not the improvements I was hoping for.
Do I need do enable the foveated stuff within VaM when the plugin is running?

Thanks for sharing these detailed results.
One important thing if it comes to comparisons is the Scene that was used to compare. Depending on how its built and if its heavier on the GPU side (e.g. 8k skintextures, a big&detailed environment) or heavier on the CPU side (complex animations, softbody/highquality physics, lots of person interaction) results will differ depending on your hardware. These tools only help regarding the GPU side of things, not the CPU load. For example, if you have a 12600k and youre looking at a well animated threesome with softbody physics, GPU load decreses wont help you gain a single FPS at the CPU performance cap.

Using Quest 2 with Airlink. What setup did the foveated plugin work for you?
I've tried vrperfkit before, is the foveated plugin same quality as foveated rendering in vrperfkit?

Riftlink&Virtualdesktop SteamVR with OpenXR connection are working for me.

 

[glodomorrapl]

thanks for the guide, after messing about with vrperfkit manually by myself i decided to try out this guide anyway. for context, i'm on a Rift S and i'm running VaM in oculus mode instead of OpenVR, so SteamVR doesn't hog resources.

in this configuration, it doesn't seem like the foveated plugin has any effect on the game, which i confirmed by enabling debug mode and still not seeing any change. the vrperfkit does work though. i went along with the recommendation and only left FFR enabled, upscaling disabled.

the method of enabling NIS in control panel doesn't seem to have any effect. makes sense, considering how the linked article says at the very end that this setting is not compatible with VR. so if this ever actually worked for Blaspheratus, that's very interesting. nevermind, poor reading comprehension. it was specified as an alternative to the paid desktop-only app. although honestly, if this guide is supposed to be "VR centric", i would avoid mentioning any desktop-only tips, it's confusing.

so because of that i changed my mind about upscaling via vrperfkit, and enabled it back on - but for some reason that's very unstable for me, most launch attempts cause not only my VaM, but my oculus software to just crash completely. i played with different upscaling methods and other settings, and i thought leaving the method at "CAS" is the solution, but eventually it just started crashing again completely unprompted :|

however, asynchronous spacewarp... what problem is that feature supposed to solve again? because disabling it was exactly what i needed for some of the scenes where i can't get 80 fps and i had to settle for 40, but without ASW the same scene is now 60-65. much better.

that leaves upscaling with the Lossless Scaling app, i'll give it a shot later. although the biggest drawback from reducing render scale is the UI (the more distant the panel, the worse) and hair, starting to shimmer like crazy. who knows, maybe this app will surprise me.

oh and i'll have to do some symbolic link fuckery with the shader cache before increasing its size, since i don't really have much free space on my system drive...

 

[EasyVam]

thanks for the guide, after messing about with vrperfkit manually by myself i decided to try out this guide anyway. for context, i'm on a Rift S and i'm running VaM in oculus mode instead of OpenVR, so SteamVR doesn't hog resources.

in this configuration, it doesn't seem like the foveated plugin has any effect on the game, which i confirmed by enabling debug mode and still not seeing any change. the vrperfkit does work though. i went along with the recommendation and only left FFR enabled, upscaling disabled.

the method of enabling NIS in control panel doesn't seem to have any effect. makes sense, considering how the linked article says at the very end that this setting is not compatible with VR. so if this ever actually worked for Blaspheratus, that's very interesting.

so because of that i changed my mind about upscaling via vrperfkit, and enabled it back on - but for some reason that's very unstable for me, most launch attempts cause not only my VaM, but my oculus software to just crash completely. i played with different upscaling methods and other settings, and i thought leaving the method at "CAS" is the solution, but eventually it just started crashing again completely unprompted :|

however, asynchronous spacewarp... what problem is that feature supposed to solve again? because disabling it was exactly what i needed for some of the scenes where i can't get 80 fps and i had to settle for 40, but without ASW the same scene is now 60-65. much better.

that leaves upscaling with the Lossless Scaling app, i'll give it a shot later. although the biggest drawback from reducing render scale is the UI (the more distant the panel, the worse) and hair, starting to shimmer like crazy. who knows, maybe this app will surprise me.

oh and i'll have to do some symbolic link fuckery with the shader cache before increasing its size, since i don't really have much free space on my system drive...

Ah, the good old&trusty Rift S, that thing was my entry to VR and ill always hold that dear. Glad that you managed to free up some FPS by disabling that terrible ASW.

You should really bother for a shader cache my guy, try the program TreeSize free for disk cleanup, youll be done in no time.

 

[glodomorrapl]

Ah, the good old&trusty Rift S, that thing was my entry to VR and ill always hold that dear. Glad that you managed to free up some FPS by disabling that terrible ASW.

You should really bother for a shader cache my guy, try the program TreeSize free for disk cleanup, youll be done in no time.

yeah, "trusty" is a good way to put it. it's not perfect by any means, but it's good enough that i don't feel any need to upgrade. gonna use this thing until it kicks the bucket lol

without going too much into detail, my configuration is a bit non-standard, so right now i have maybe 3 gigs of free space on my system drive, and i ain't squeezing any more space from that. all my free space is on another partition, i'll just force the shader cache to be stored there.

 

[jedidood]

For Vavle Index with SteamVR, I ended up using an older vesion of fholger's openvr_fsr plugin, I think that is the predecessor of the vrprefkit. I do see some noticeable improvement on performance.

Would love to get vrperfkit working, but the Index controller doesn't show up for me in-game whenever I install it, but I can see and use it on the Steamvr overlay screen.

 

[Case]

Riftlink&Virtualdesktop SteamVR with OpenXR connection are working for me.

Thanks for the awesome Guide!

Some dumb questions, if I may?
1. What is "Riftlink"?
2. What do you mean by "SteamVR with OpenXR connection?".

Using a Quest1 myself, what would be the best tools/setup? (I vaguely remember that there's some pretty drastic differences between the Q1 and Q2 in terms of what the Q2 can do due to its more powerful CPU)

 

[ozzielegend]

How do I tell if any of these things in the new guide are working? Hitting upscale seems to do nothing in Lossless, and adding the Foveated rendering and manipulating the hotkeys seems to also do nothing.

Does it depend on what API your running, like SteamVR/Occulus?

 

[glodomorrapl]

How do I tell if any of these things in the new guide are working? Hitting upscale seems to do nothing in Lossless, and adding the Foveated rendering and manipulating the hotkeys seems to also do nothing.

Does it depend on what API your running, like SteamVR/Occulus?

upscaling with the lossless app is for desktop only, not VR
as for foveated rendering, you may have the same issue that i did, where the foveated plugin didn't work, but vrperfkit did (be sure to disable upscaling in vrperfkit, it causes crashes). you can test the latter is working by pressing ctrl+f1.

 

[eb123]

I'm sorry, I read the whole topic and didn't fully understand.

I want to understand whether this guide is suitable for all options for connecting Oculus Quest 3 to a PC?


I use:
Virtual Desktop (OpenXR Runtime - VDXR)

But in general there are the following options:
OpenXR:
a) Oculus Home
b) SteamVR
c) VDXR

Connection:
1) Wired oculus link
2) Air Link
3) Virtual Desktop
4) ALVR

Is the guide suitable for all options or are there any special features in some combinations?

Thank you!

 

[EasyVam]

I'm sorry, I read the whole topic and didn't fully understand.

I want to understand whether this guide is suitable for all options for connecting Oculus Quest 3 to a PC?


I use:
Virtual Desktop (OpenXR Runtime - VDXR)

But in general there are the following options:
OpenXR:
a) Oculus Home
b) SteamVR
c) VDXR

Connection:
1) Wired oculus link
2) Air Link
3) Virtual Desktop
4) ALVR

Is the guide suitable for all options or are there any special features in some combinations?

Thank you!

Great questions. Ive used the foveated Rendering in VaM on a Quest2 and a Quest3, first with the VR performance kit, then with the VR mod app. Both exclusively with the wired oculus link connection. Answering your questions to the best of my ability would probably be an upgrade for this guide though. I'll test out the current Scalers on a Quest3 with a), b), c), | 1) 2) 3) again and Update the Guide. Getting back to the point, i havent tested different setups than Quest2/3 + wired connection and even on that, ive noticed some weird inconsistencys.

 

[thinoreos]

I'm sorry, I read the whole topic and didn't fully understand.

I want to understand whether this guide is suitable for all options for connecting Oculus Quest 3 to a PC?


I use:
Virtual Desktop (OpenXR Runtime - VDXR)

But in general there are the following options:
OpenXR:
a) Oculus Home
b) SteamVR
c) VDXR

Connection:
1) Wired oculus link
2) Air Link
3) Virtual Desktop
4) ALVR

Is the guide suitable for all options or are there any special features in some combinations?

Thank you!

Since the OP didn't answer your questions, this is the answer:

VDXR: VAM will not work with VDXR, because it is OpenVR. This means, you will need OpenComposite to launch with VDXR, but OpenComposite does not play nice with VaM, controls are all broken with it. You *could* launch it in VDXR. but essentially all your controls are broken

1) Link cable is good (Oculus runtime)
2) Airlink is okay (Oculus runtime)
3) Virtual Desktop with SteamVR has low performance
3.5) Virtual Desktop but launching WITHOUT SteamVR has the BEST performance
4) ALVR is okay, but a bit buggy

 

[cwayne1989]

Since the OP didn't answer your questions, this is the answer:

VDXR: VAM will not work with VDXR, because it is OpenVR. This means, you will need OpenComposite to launch with VDXR, but OpenComposite does not play nice with VaM, controls are all broken with it. You *could* launch it in VDXR. but essentially all your controls are broken

1) Link cable is good (Oculus runtime)
2) Airlink is okay (Oculus runtime)
3) Virtual Desktop with SteamVR has low performance
3.5) Virtual Desktop but launching WITHOUT SteamVR has the BEST performance
4) ALVR is okay, but a bit buggy

VDXR works just fine with VAM
You gotta use VD's launcher and launch the Vam.exe

now if I try and set VD to use SteamVR I get the controller issue you're talking about, but VDXR works just fine as long as you set VDXR in VD and launch it via the system tray icon.