HelixVision - Experimental beta with driver support

[bo3bber]

@bo3bber - have you considered making the 3D screen in the Katanga window FIXED relative to HMD motion, rather than being fixed in VR world space? I believe this would improve rendered game performance.

In my limited testing, I was little disappointed in HelixVision performance, when compared to normal VR gaming with my 2080Ti/i9-9900X/32 GB setup, or normal 3D Vision gaming on my 4K display. I noticed that if I moved my head slightly during HelixVision gaming, the entire display had to be refreshed with the "dynamic" content, even if the 3D game image is static. A screen fixed in HMD display space should have better performance, although not as compelling as a VR room screen - but game performance is more important. Perhaps a user could toggle/choose between a fixed screen or VR room view?

Could be an option, but 95% of the people are not willing to accept a stuck-to-the-face screen. I'm actually in that camp, I really do not like the Glyph stuck to the face effect. It's OK, but the VR environment is a lot better.

Performance-wise, what you are seeing isn't the VR world taking much time. It takes maybe 2-3% of your GPU. What you are seeing is that the game itself is starving the VR world for resources, by using every last bit of the GPU, causing stalls in the VR world because it is in the background and not a priority for the GPU.

Turn your settings down to allow 5% headroom on GPU monitor, and it will run smoothly. You can easily burn all the GPU resources by letting vsync off, so GPU runs wild on game producing frames that are never seen for example. You can also experiment with the driver based frame limiter in the nvidia control panel, which can allow you to cap the game at 90 fps, which frees up resources.

We are setting up a way to automatically do that frame limit, and for normal games, we are going to set it to 45 fps by default, half of the headset frame rate. It will of course be an option that can be disabled, but we want to avoid people having your experience here- thinking the performance is bad when it's just not set up right.

[whyme466]

Thanks for the feedback. As a user who prefers resolution over fps, I have willingly played games like Arkham Knight at full 4K (interlaced) resolution and ultra settings, resulting in nominal 30-40 fps performance (quite satisfactory for me). Vsync is Off to keep fps as high as possible - with little issue of game generating unused frames (exceeding 60 fps, for my display). When the same 4K game settings are used with HelixVision, the VR display of the game suffers and does not feel solid like my 3D Vision display (it felt like more than 2-3% off, since VR demands at least 60 fps to maintain immersion experience).

If VR HMD was the only way I could experience the outstanding HelixMod game fixes, I would be willing to live with a “stuck to the face” display, if it meant I could have better game resolution and performance. These rigid (non-VR) screen displays can accommodate lower game fps, with better in-game resolution. I wonder what others think about this?

[bo3bber]

Sorry, I did not explain that clearly. The maximal amount of impact that HelixVision/Katanga has is to take 2-3% of your GPU resources, no matter what it's doing. So making a fixed screen with no environment would have no improvement on what you see, because it's already so low. Recovering 2% if we turn it off completely doesn't help.

What is happening is that you are starving the Katanga app of GPU resources so that it cannot draw in a timely fashion.

NVidia does not have any GPU scheduling, so whatever is in the foreground- the game- takes precedence. Anything in the background gets drawn last, lowest priority. If the game is using 100% of the GPU then background can get nothing. This is similar to situations like you see with CPU, where background tasks can be starved if the CPU is pegged, including UI elements.

If you are running the game full settings at 4K, and getting 30 fps, then your GPU is maxed at 100% and there is no time left to draw Katanga's screens. Which leads to a jittery experience, and low frame rates in VR. Being a VR app matters not a whit to NVidia, they starve it just the same.


Running the game in 4K for HelixVision is not a good use of resources. You cannot see the difference between 1440p and 4K in the headset, because all VR headsets are too low resolution. So that's just drawing pixels you cannot see in VR. The sweet spot for HelixVision is somewhere around 1080p, maybe 1440p. You can just barely tell the difference between 1080p->1440p in VR.

VSync off is also not what you want for HelixVision, because you are then dedicating every resource to the game, and zero to Katanga. With vsync on, there are at least small windows of opportunity for Katanga to get time slices, and it only needs tiny bits of time to draw properly. With vSync on, you can typically at least see 45fps in VR, which is a decent experience.


In upcoming builds, we are going to introduce an automatic frame-limiter for games, so that we can prevent this resource starvation problem. (Using the new driver built in frame rate limiter)

In the meantime, do like I say, and set it up to give your GPU 5% headroom, and it will all work well.

[WZZ]

win7 1709;i7 4770+1080;16G;451.67 with latest 3dvision drive

1..tried both beta and other version,FF13-2..FF lightning return..god eater3..wargame3..(the last 2games work good without 3d fix),these games stay on launching screen but desktop works well

2..with helixvision bete,tried monsterhunter iceborne,works well;but yesterday helixvision recieved an updata,then tried icborne ,desktop mirror is ok,headset stay on launching screen;then i went back to the first version on the version list,iceborne works again

[WZZ]

sorry,win10 i mean....

[bo3bber]

win7 1709;i7 4770+1080;16G;451.67 with latest 3dvision drive

1..tried both beta and other version,FF13-2..FF lightning return..god eater3..wargame3..(the last 2games work good without 3d fix),these games stay on launching screen but desktop works well

2..with helixvision bete,tried monsterhunter iceborne,works well;but yesterday helixvision recieved an updata,then tried icborne ,desktop mirror is ok,headset stay on launching screen;then i went back to the first version on the version list,iceborne works again

For using HelixVision on unsupported games, you'll still need to apply the 3Dmigoto that comes with HelixVision. It's a special version that knows how to connect to the VR side, and also importantly, it knows how to apply the Schwing hack to avoid crashing games. So even if a DX11 game works without a fix, you'll still need to install the 3Dmigoto.

[tadpole]

Many thanks for the recent update allowing HelixVision and 3DFM to run at the same time

[3DNovice]

Is this going to cause any problems with using older Nvidia drivers for HelixVision/3DMigoto/Helixmod?

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/11/30/remin ... next-year/