VaM 1.x Terrible FPS in VR although having really a beast of a machine

[Fuchsschweif]

Hey everyone! Before @hazmhox jumps in and tells me to use the search function.. I did! And I stumbled across this:

The problem is: "most" (to use the same word as you) people don't really optimize their scene properly OR think about the VR performances.
Technically, there's a quick math you can do: take your scene in desktop, look at the framerate, divide it by two and you got your average VR framerate.

If your rig can run a desktop scene at 120fps, then you got yourself a nice scene you could run at around 60fps in VR.

In desktop mode (in 1080p though) I'm getting 160 FPS, the exact same scene in VR gives me only 36 FPS. It's just a single character in a dark room posing waring 3 pieces of clothing (tshirt, pants, socks), nothing else.

Now obviously the math doesn't add up. I also don't see any significant changes in FPS switching between max and high. Only if I go to "ultra low" I see an increase up to 60-70 FPS, which looks like shit obviously.

My system is brand new:

RTX 5080
64 GB DDR5 RAM 6000
Amd Ryzen 9 9950X3D
SSD

So as you see this machine should be easily able to give me minimum 60 FPS in a single scene with just a character standing in it in VR.
Anyone got an idea what's going on here?

I tried Quest 3 with 72Hz and 90Hz, not really a difference. Turned off the warping and slicing thing, no difference either. Render resolution is set to 100%, I didn't crank this up either.

 

[dalinte]

A few things to look at that are not obvious.

Turn on performance monitor to see what is taking the most time - Render, Script or Physics. These times are all added together so Render + Script + Physics needs to be <= 13 ms to maintain 72 fps. This will help you see what you need to focus on.

If render time is really high, you can try turning render scale down. MSAA specifically costs a ton when you're very close to hair.

If physics is high there are a lot of places to look. Remove an entire character from the scene for science, does fps shoot up after you remove them? If so, work backwards from that, reload the scene and iterate, checking performance each time:

• Remove all hair
• Remove all clothing
• Remove all plugins

In general what I find most often gets me:

• High-quality physics option is expensive (Run rate auto and update cap 2)
• Some clothing and hairstyles have crazy physics settings and need density or GPU iterations turned down
• Some clothing loads additional plugins, many shoes load ShoeHelper which can destroy framerate in VR
• Older versions of Naturalis can kill physics times
• Soft body physics are expensive, especially without the CPU patch
• Having the vam menu open reduces framerate by about 10-15 fps in VR
• Interiors that are 1 giant CUA can be very performance intensive in VR. It can help to use Camera Background Color and enable passthru mode so it hides all of the non-person geometry as an A/B test

If you are using VirtualDesktop, you might also look at their performance readout, they show you video encode/decode time. You might have the codec bitrate turned up too high which can kill framerate on either end.

 

[hazmhox]

Before @hazmhox jumps in and tells me to use the search function.. I did! And I stumbled across this:

I am very proud of you! haha!

In desktop mode (in 1080p though) I'm getting 160 FPS

Yeah, you have to do that "math" with the same resolution. So more or less 4K ( pretty much 95% of VR headset are rendering around the 4K resolution ).

be easily able to give me minimum 60 FPS in a single scene with just a character standing in it in VR.

Yes, that rig should output way more than that. I'm running a single standing char at the cap framerate at 1080p (350fps average) and 210/220 average at 4K.
So either your clothes, hairs or something is wrong somewhere.
Ensure you have the CPU patch too.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Yeah, you have to do that "math" with the same resolution. So more or less 4K ( pretty much 95% of VR headset are rendering around the 4K resolution ).

Unfortunately my screen is still limited to full hd yet, I have to buy a 2k or 4k screen soon.

Yes, that rig should output way more than that. I'm running a single standing char at the cap framerate at 1080p (350fps average) and 210/220 average at 4K.
So either your clothes, hairs or something is wrong somewhere.
Ensure you have the CPU patch too.

For reference, I just loaded up the basic VAM model under "creator". I'm getting 270 FPS there on average in 1080p:

With the character "Sally" from the hub I'm getting said 160 FPS, here with the resource monitor (don't know how to interpret what it shows):

This is the character where I had only 36 FPS in VR. I played a bit with my Q3 settings yesterday (higher Hz rate, from 60 to 90) and I think in VR I have now around 40-50 FPS in this scene, but I still think that's way too little for a single character, no? Or do you think this is legitimate for what the resource monitor states? Also tagging you @dalinte since you recommended the resource monitor. BTW ingame I find MSAA 8x really gets rid off all aliasing so I like to keep it, but I don't see any performance difference in FPS between 8x and 4x anyway.

 

[hazmhox]

Let's not mix subjects. You can talk about your other problem in another thread : )

First, disable High quality physics. That's useless and you'll end up having issues with alignments or various scenes because no one uses that. It's 10 times more consuming on the physics without making any visual difference at all.

Enable the depth texture (it's free with GPUs being at least 7 years old, and that's not where the bottleneck is anyway) to have proper visual for some VFX libraries (mine for instance).

I'm gonna grab sally and check what is going on. Yes a single character being that consuming is not normal.
Also don't forget to have the CPU patch.

 

[hazmhox]

Ok looked at the character. Never trust the demo scene: it's generally a "beauty shot" scene, so it's generally unoptimized. The light rig and the reflective floor breaks the FPS.
If you do the default girl, then load the appearance preset, I'm getting a 320+ in 1080p.

You should have something similar : )

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Let's not mix subjects. You can talk about your other problem in another thread : )

First, disable High quality physics. That's useless and you'll end up having issues with alignments or various scenes because no one uses that. It's 10 times more consuming on the physics without making any visual difference at all.

Enable the depth texture (it's free with GPUs being at least 7 years old, and that's not where the bottleneck is anyway) to have proper visual for some VFX libraries (mine for instance).

I'm gonna grab sally and check what is going on. Yes a single character being that consuming is not normal.
Also don't forget to have the CPU patch.

Thanks for checking! I moved the other subject to a new thread.

Ahh good to know! The high quality physics didn't change my FPS but if it makes problems then I'll turn it off.

Regarding the CPU patch: It doesn't list my particular CPU, can I as a rookie figure out the correct values by reading the instructions or is it dangerous to play around? (Like overclocking my hardware unitentionally or something..).

I'll check the basic girl later in VR. But it appears you still have over 50 FPS more than I.. well, maybe that's because of the CPU patch!

 

[hazmhox]

Ahh good to know! The high quality physics didn't change my FPS but if it makes problems then I'll turn it off.

Regarding the CPU patch: It doesn't list my particular CPU, can I as a rookie figure out the correct values by reading the instructions or is it dangerous to play around? (Like overclocking my hardware unitentionally or something..).

It's because you're looking at a static character. Physics kicks in (mostly) while animated and/or when soft body physics occurs. Trust me on that, disable the high quality physics. Nobody uses them, it's more a trap than a useful feature.

The CPU patch will not break your CPU. At worst, it'll make your VAM run weird or crash.

Got the same CPU here's the config:

[threads]
computeColliders=6
skinmeshPart=6
skinmeshPartMaxPerChar=6
applyMorphs=6
applyMorphMaxPerChar=6
affinity=1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29,31
#engineAffinity=1,3

[threadsVR]
computeColliders=6
skinmeshPart=6
skinmeshPartMaxPerChar=6
applyMorphs=6
applyMorphMaxPerChar=6
affinity=1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29,31
#engineAffinity=1,3

[profiler]
enabled=0

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Got the same CPU here's the config:

wow perfect! Thanks, I'll try it all out later )

 

[Fuchsschweif]

It's because you're looking at a static character. Physics kicks in (mostly) while animated and/or when soft body physics occurs. Trust me on that, disable the high quality physics. Nobody uses them, it's more a trap than a useful feature.

The CPU patch will not break your CPU. At worst, it'll make your VAM run weird or crash.

Got the same CPU here's the config:

Hmm no improvement, Sally still gives me the same amount of FPS in desktop mode. And actually I am losing 20-30 FPS when I turn off high quality physics, is it supposed to be like that?

Can you check if I correctly applied the patch? Like it said I downloaded the zip, unpacked it into VAM main directory and did replace existing files.

In the boot.config in VAM data I did Input:

[wait-for-native-debugger=0
gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1
gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1]

and then your CPU code into skinmeshpart.dll.

is this all correct?

Edit: Asked Gemini quickly, it said yes, and also used a powershell command it gave me to verify the new dll is running, it's positive. hmmm..

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Loading times I think are much faster now, that's good! But FPS wise no improvement.. Sally gives me still around 35-40 FPS in VR.

 

[hazmhox]

Loading times I think are much faster now, that's good! But FPS wise no improvement.. Sally gives me still around 35-40 FPS in VR.

Pure clean scene, appearance preset loaded?

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Pure clean scene, appearance preset loaded?

Just the OG Sally scene that you tried too. How much FPS do you have in that scene in VR? And what render resolution / Framerate (Hz) are you using?

 

[hazmhox]

It does not matter in desktop, render resolution is only accounted in VR, and the physics rate only matters if you are below the target.
I told you the scene is very badly optimized just remove one of the light yields over 70fps on desktop. I'm running it at around 180fps on desktop... but I honestly don't have time to fire up the VR atm : )

That's like if you loaded an enviro and got 50fps in desktop (which is a thing on some resources on the hub) and you tried to get proper framerate with it... spoiler: you won't.

When you test a new character, look at the "demo" if you want, but either you need to understand how the game behaves/works beforehand, so that you can detect that something is wrong. Or you need to always start a clean scene from scratch with the default character and light rig, and load the appearance.

When we create looks, we tend to push the fidelity on the character's demo. Some people do mind the VR aspect and will ensure it runs well. Others don't.

And also: if you can run a proper scene at a normal framerate and THAT specific character runs like ass, obviously... the problem is that particular scene. Not your PC or the game : )

 

[Fuchsschweif]

It does not matter in desktop, render resolution is only accounted in VR, and the physics rate only matters if you are below the target.
I told you the scene is very badly optimized just remove one of the light yields over 70fps on desktop. I'm running it at around 180fps on desktop... but I honestly don't have time to fire up the VR atm : )

That's like if you loaded an enviro and got 50fps in desktop (which is a thing on some resources on the hub) and you tried to get proper framerate with it... spoiler: you won't.

When you test a new character, look at the "demo" if you want, but either you need to understand how the game behaves/works beforehand, so that you can detect that something is wrong. Or you need to always start a clean scene from scratch with the default character and light rig, and load the appearance.

When we create looks, we tend to push the fidelity on the character's demo. Some people do mind the VR aspect and will ensure it runs well. Others don't.

And also: if you can run a proper scene at a normal framerate and THAT specific character runs like ass, obviously... the problem is that particular scene. Not your PC or the game : )

Yes but that's why I asked what you get in that scene to verify whether there's something wrong on my end or if it's just resource hungry scenes. To be frank, I think there's not a single scene in VAM from everything I downloaded where I get over 60 FPS in VR. Except for one club scene that is super barebones.

So I'm trying to figure out whether or not that's normal with my rig? Almost all scenes are in the range between 30-40 FPS which seems a bit odd to me given the power of my computer. Or is that normal for everyone too? I somehow expected that it would be able to run almost all scenes easily with at least 60fps+ and that only some heavy scenes full with persons, volumetrics and such would maybe bring it down. But it's quite the opposite, I can barely find any scene that has really nice high FPS.

Pure clean scene, appearance preset loaded?

Just tried it with "load new scene" where that default girl pops up, I have 90 FPS in that scene in VR.

 

[hazmhox]

Almost all scenes are in the range between 30-40 FPS which seems a bit odd to me given the power of my computer.

Ok so for starters, do you know VAM very well or not? VAM is expected to run like ass, even with the CPU patch. The sim is ultra intensive and anything above 2 chars is pretty much nope. For the rest, it's like a modding community... so you're pretty much facing people releasing content without really focusing on the optimization aspect. You will have to find creators who can optimize their scenes properly. And even then, some scenes are just intensive... there's nothing much you can do about it.

You can throw one of the best CPU of the market at it like we have, the game will still run quite horribly in VR if you don't optimize and create your scene properly.

Since I can't test in VR rn, I can't tell you what I'm getting exactly. But one thing for sure, I have a Vive, so since you're on a Quest, results will differ : )

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Ok so for starters, do you know VAM very well or not? VAM is expected to run like ass, even with the CPU patch. The sim is ultra intensive and anything above 2 chars is pretty much nope. For the rest, it's like a modding community... so you're pretty much facing people releasing content without really focusing on the optimization aspect. You will have to find creators who can optimize their scenes properly. And even then, some scenes are just intensive... there's nothing much you can do about it.

You can throw one of the best CPU of the market at it like we have, the game will still run quite horribly in VR if you don't optimize and create your scene properly.

Since I can't test in VR rn, I can't tell you what I'm getting exactly. But one thing for sure, I have a Vive, so since you're on a Quest, results will differ : )

I was hoping that a reeeeeeeeally good rig could bypass this, I knew that VAM is like this. I mean if there's nothing I can do about the FPS anymore then that's at least a small relief. However, with the constant shadow flickering it's really unplayable for me.. I've spent the whole day troubleshooting with all settings with the ocolus debug tool but couldn't find a fix.

 

[LubaFoto]

Got 100 fps back if I remove reflectiveslate and change hairs.