Framerate doesn't want to go past 40 on wired, absurd bitrate required for tolerable image quality | ALVR | Page 1

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 4:41 AM

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Specs: Windows 10 22H2 19045.5371, Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 32GB RAM, RTX3060 (driver ver 572.16), Pico 4 running OS 5.4.0.
ALVR installed via GitHub launcher download, to "C:\alvr_launcher_windows\ALVR Launcher.exe", the headset part is installed via the launcher too.
On ALVR 20.12.1, I have to crank the bitrate slider all the way to 1000mbps, otherwise the image is really blocky and full of what looks like compression artifacts.
At the same time, no matter if the bitrate is at 30 or 1000, the framerate stays around 36-40, even in the SteamVR void.

For comparison, Virtual Desktop gives me a stable 45FPS on PC spacewarped to 90FPS on the headset on Medium quality setting (2064x2064 per eye iirc) and Streaming Assistant (Pico's native app) stable 90FPS on HD setting (similar resolution), while both are set to 100mbps.

sessions.json attached for ALVR settings.

📎 session.json

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 8:59 AM

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switch to hevc encoder

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h264 wants absurd bitrate

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alvr defaults are set to work on low end system - you need to turn things up - set your preset to "high"

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use hevc with wifi and you should get same quality as virtual desktop - just change your presets

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:08 AM

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Okay, I'll try to change to HEVC, thank you. I should also note that despite the low framerate my GPU and CPU were absolutely chilling at <40% load according to fpsVR. I wanted to try ALVR specifically for Beat Saber over wire, though. Everything else works great trough VD with barely any framedrops.

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:09 AM

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i bet hevc makes huge diff for you

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also reset to defaults - use presets and dont touch other settings

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use high preset - hevc - dont need to change anything else

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im not sure what preset is good to match a pico

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also - dont use wired - there is no advantage

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use wifi - should be same as virtual desktop

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so long as you configure it the same

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note the alvr bitrate slider is NOT the same as virtual desktop - do not move the bitrate slider up

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it get multiplied - so that default 30mbps will produce a lot more in reality

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:13 AM

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compact nest also - dont use wired - there is no advantage

I tried a bunch of times to play Beat Saber specifically with VD wireless. It still has tiny microstutters that are not noticeable in any other game and just don't exist when playing via Streaming Assistant. But lately SA+BS combo is giving me very weird issues, so I was trying to find an alternative wired solution.

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:14 AM

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wired is not a magical fix

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stutters are caused by something else

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maybe HAGS or something

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check your nvidia settings, tune for vr

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but yes your wifi might not be optimal

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check the usual stuff - make sure using ethernet cable for startes

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:14 AM

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turning HAGS on fixed some issues in other VR games for me, oddly enough.

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:15 AM

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new drivers just came out

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maybe they are not good

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maybe they are better, need to test

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with VD there are many extra tricks

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try to launch the game from VD itself and bypass steam

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that massively improves things for games like MSFS

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do you have proper wifi for starters?

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does your network look like this: pc -> ethernet cable -> wifi router -> wifi signal -> headset

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:17 AM

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compact nest check the usual stuff - make sure using ethernet cable for startes

Gigabit ethernet, HUAWEI WiFi AX3 router, 5G 802.11a/n/ac network reserved for the headset, fixed 80MHz band, manually selected the least congested area relying on a phone WiFi scanner app.

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:17 AM

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ok good

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did you disable legacy mode?

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that a/n/ac crap ruins performance

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use latest only

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even if you reserve for headset it will still beacon in the other modes

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called "mixed" mode in some device

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:18 AM

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unfortunately I can't select ac specifically in this firmware. Also, some advice in VD Discord said that Huawei specifically has trouble with ax mode, which is why I disabled that, and I think it actually helped me.

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:19 AM

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maybe its good router with multiple radios so this doesnt matter

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i know for some models with single radio this is a problem

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you would want to use AX only or AC only

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and not have those other modes

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:19 AM

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yeah, understandable

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:20 AM

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makes me suspicious - coz this does cause a little stutter

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maybe not related tho

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:20 AM

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tbh probably is the cause of that

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:20 AM

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in your alvr statistics graph can you see evidence of the stutter and what causes it?

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does it say network latency for the stutter?

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if it says game render or something else then we blame gpu

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:20 AM

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I'm gonna be honest I did not mess with ALVR for too long just yet because it produced a different very strange bug

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:21 AM

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alvr is very difficult to configure

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i suggest you follow this easy method and do not deviate:
reset to defaults (installation tab, run setup wizard, reset)
choose preset - high for good pc
choose framerate - 90
video tab -> change encoder to hevc

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and change nothing else

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this works for quest2/3 on modern pc for most ppl

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pico not too different i think

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:22 AM

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half bronze I'm gonna be honest I did not mess with ALVR for too long just yet because it pr...

for one, restarting SteamVR trough ALVR lead to some SteamVR error (306 iirc?) untill I rebooted my PC

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:22 AM

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correct

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get used to rebooting pc

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:23 AM

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and then after I decided to call it quits for now, it lead to my entire system interface except for the alvr window being entirely unresponsive to my mouse

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which I had to fix by, again, rebooting via Alt+F4 on the desktop

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:23 AM

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this happens on linux as well

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i suspect its nvidia related - totally locks up

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need to reboot to fix it

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logout works ok too

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:23 AM

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https://tenor.com/view/scares-me-i-fear-no-man-gif-21507033

Tenor

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:24 AM

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alvr directly writes to gpu memory

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cant kill the zombies

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:24 AM

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that was a bigger bug than I expected tbh

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:24 AM

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it might be steamvr problem not alvr as such

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if you reboot and do clean startup alvr will work well 🙂

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but changing settings and restarting steamvr can be hairy yes

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:24 AM

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if if you're sure it's not something that can stack up and ruin my OS installation I trust you

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:24 AM

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no its fine - its just annoying zombies that wont die

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:25 AM

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ok I guess it was stupid of me to think that

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:25 AM

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compact nest no its fine - its just annoying zombies that wont die

zombies as in?..

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:25 AM

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programs that refuse to exit

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:25 AM

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ah

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:25 AM

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we cant start new stuff coz the old one wont die

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:25 AM

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not even visible in task manager?

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:25 AM

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nop

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some low level thing with gpu driver

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ie the part where steamvr talks to nvidia probably

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:27 AM

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I see

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so mu best course of action is
-reset all settings via the alvr launcher setup wizard
-choose high preset
-choose framerate
-choose hevc
-plug in my headset
-hope for the best

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and take screenshots of as much statistics windows as I can

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one more related question: does having the VD streamer in the background without it being connected to anything break things?

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:47 AM

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i dont think so, i have it as well - doesnt seem to do any harm

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tbh i prefer to use VD on windows

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:48 AM

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Same, but as I said Beat Saber specifically over WiFi just refuses to work perfectly. One or two dropped frames a minute mean nothing for chill games or even shooters, but in Beat Saber it's an almost guaranteed unfair miss.

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:49 AM

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is it really only beat saber with the problem?

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or you just dont notice with others?

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if you are that fussy you should use displayport and lighthouses

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the tracking and graphics are not actually that good for streaming headsets compared to native

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:58 AM

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this is quite literally FLAWLESS

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thank you so much!!

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:58 AM

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compact nest or you just dont notice with others?

I prolly just don't notice in any other games

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:58 AM

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nothing i told you would magically fix stuttering tho

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unless you were overloading it before maybe

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:59 AM

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cable did

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this is cable connection right here, <1ms network latency

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 10:59 AM

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wireless doesnt add on much

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if you care about these tiny amounts you would be using displayport

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 10:59 AM

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on VD it's usuallylike 4ms but it sometimes spikes to 16-18 and idfk how it even matters but it does

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:00 AM

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use displayport get zero and no video encoding 🙂

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:00 AM

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compact nest if you care about these tiny amounts you would be using displayport

I am too broke for a headset with external tracking honestly

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:00 AM

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have you ever tried native?

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:00 AM

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native beatsaber? nope

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:00 AM

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you should - so you know what zero latency feels like

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:00 AM

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well I guess I had at those rental places

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but not on my own headset

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:01 AM

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but what you have now looks pretty good

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are you trying to play competitively?

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if so know that you are using handicap

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:01 AM

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compact nest are you trying to play competitively?

never enen attempted multiplayer and any map with over 4nps gives me a heart attack

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I just have fun untill I'm drenched XD

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:02 AM

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my indian housemate was fucking amazing at beat saber, noone could touch his scores

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:02 AM

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it's always either indians or asians

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:02 AM

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using valve index was much much better than playing on streaming headset

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:02 AM

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if you're ever good at something there's an asian dude out there that's better

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:02 AM

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if you read this online you will read a lot of argument

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valve index is a pain - coz you need these lighthouse tracking stations

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but they give superior sub-millimeter precision

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and that helps to get the precise cuts in beat saber for most score

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:03 AM

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yeah

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but hey

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nothing's stopping me from simply having fun again, thanks to you

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:03 AM

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this is the most important thing

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im still wondering what i actually fixed lol

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:03 AM

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open source software wins again

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also my mouse works, yay

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:04 AM

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alvr is very very good - but the UI is confusing to users

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:04 AM

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true

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I probably sound too stupid to believe that but I'm one of the three IT guys at my work (a university) and VR setup still gives me anxiety

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:05 AM

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this is totally normal

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im video streaming engineer and still found it very difficult to get up and running

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compare to virtual desktop - has nice interface, difficult to make mistakes

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:06 AM

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wondering why with ALVR switching to HEVC was superior but with VD h264 is king for me, HEVC (which VD automatically selected, funny enough) introduced severe stutters

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:08 AM

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vd uses hevc by default

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you would not use h264 over wifi it would be awful

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h265 and hevc mean same thing

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h264 is the older codec

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:09 AM

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doesn't it depend on the GPU?

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:09 AM

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yes but works fine on all modern ones

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only issue with potatos

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:09 AM

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compact nest you would not use h264 over wifi it would be awful

that is percisely what I did

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I think it's sorcery at this point

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:09 AM

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if you have amazing wifi that can do 1gigabit then h264 works maybe

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h264 needs like 800+ to do same as 200 hevc

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much easier to do 200 hevc on wifi

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there is no reason to use h264 unless some special case old gpu maybe

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:10 AM

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I had insane frequent stutters. I disabled ax on the router and 100-mb fixed bitrate h264 on VD, and it just worked

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:10 AM

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any modern nvidia has amazing hevc

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100 megabit h264 is only using like 12.5% of your headsets potential unfortunately

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might be good for beat saber but anything demanding will look shit

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or maybe you are running very low resolution

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what you are saying is correct - by turning stuff down you make performance good and reduce stuttering

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but noone wants to turn graphics down 😄

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the trick is to get good performance with maximum quality

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:11 AM

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true

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:12 AM

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with high end pc i can use 90fps hevc high/ultra preset with quest3 and it seems great

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:12 AM

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compact nest or maybe you are running very low resolution

VD set to medium, SteamVR to 100%, sums up to 2064x2064 per eye

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:12 AM

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but all headsets have a limit, and if my bitrate goes over 200 it will artifact

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leave steamvr on auto

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no need to be clever here

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:13 AM

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compact nest leave steamvr on auto

then it cranks it up till it starts to lag like hell

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:13 AM

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its supposed to deal with that itself

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:13 AM

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¯_(ツ)_/¯

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:13 AM

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i leave mine on auto, and i just adjust the preset in alvr

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but yes this steamvr settings is very important

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:14 AM

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sometimes I bump SteamVR app-specific slider for VRChat down to 80% but that's if I really want to see a cool but poorly optimized world or something

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:15 AM

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vrchat is completely special case

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:15 AM

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it is

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:15 AM

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cpu bottlenecked - does not matter what you set graphics to

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even with high end pc and 4090 it will bottleneck

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:15 AM

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that's why I got the R7 5800X3D

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:15 AM

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i have 7800x3d and vrc wrecks it

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depends on the room ofc - go into club orion and see

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:16 AM

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I mean here's the fpsVR report of CPU and GPU usage in a 70-minute long VRChat sesh via VD, CPU is in transparent blue

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my GPU is sweating

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:17 AM

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only at the end?

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:17 AM

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at the end of what?

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:17 AM

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3060 is underpowered tho yes

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its true you need to be turning stuff down a lot

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in particular you have little vram

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:17 AM

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what

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:17 AM

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if its any consolation just know that having a 4090 does not help a lot

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:17 AM

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12gigs

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:18 AM

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for steamvr super sample and video encode you use extra

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vr is demanding

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:18 AM

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I thought 12GB of VRAM is a lot considering Nvidia doesn't even want to put much more into 50 series

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but the chip itself is pretty weak

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:19 AM

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when you read people talking about this stuff online - none of them are talking about vr

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they are just talking about flatscreen games and most people have never tried vr

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vr has extra requirements on top of the normal ones

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using a chunk of extra vram is just the start

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:19 AM

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well yeah true

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that's why people go out of their way to drop wrappers like using OpenXR to go around SteamVR entirely

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:20 AM

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and nobody can run VRC well - what you have is working fine

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:20 AM

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yeah I'm not complaining

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:20 AM

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if you want to really suffer then try linux

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:21 AM

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😰

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for comparisons, here's an UNDERDOGS session, I could probably disable SSW for that one and not break a sweat. I just keep it on so
a) I get used to it and don't notice it as much in VRChat lol
b) why bother switching it on and off when it looks good

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okay we're way way off topic I should let this thread die

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thanks a lot for the help once again

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:45 AM

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do try what i said about "virtual desktop startup tricks"

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ie from the games menu inside virtual desktop itself

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this is what you referred to earlier about skipping layers/wrappers

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(for microsoft flight simulator this is huge)

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:47 AM

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compact nest (for microsoft flight simulator this is huge)

I wish I could afford that ngl

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:47 AM

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there are other games it supports as well

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im not expert about this feature - just telling you that its a thing 😛

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:47 AM

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I know yeah

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thanks

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:48 AM

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tbh what helped the most for me with flight sims - was NOT using quest3 - and going back to use index

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and similarly for any high-end pc stuff

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:48 AM

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rich people moment, having multiple headsets for different purposes XD

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:48 AM

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im software engineer i buy all this stuff for "work"

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but ofc i just play games with it

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:49 AM

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I snagged my Pico 4 for like $300 equivalent off Aliexpress two years ago and I can't be happier

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:50 AM

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when i buy a 4090 via company it comes from my gross income, and i dont pay vat /sales tax - so its like 60% discount compared to buying it as normal person

half bronze Feb 2, 2025, 11:50 AM

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holy shit

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that's one hell of a discount yeah

compact nest Feb 2, 2025, 11:50 AM

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but thats only coz taxes are so high where i live lol

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the same applies for any computer gear i can justify

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and yes even with that discount its still hugely expensive

#Framerate doesn't want to go past 40 on wired, absurd bitrate required for tolerable image quality