Activating the Vulkan mode?

You can force Vulkan if you edit your documents/rc8/config/ base.mcf file and make Vulkan = true. If you have Vulkan capability it should load the rf8 Vulkan shaders ok (look at your tm.log file after to see this is the case). I have tested this and while it works fine in both VR and non-VR modes I saw slightly lower fps performance and VR images seemed a little blurry. I ended up going back to Vulkan = false which took me back to OpenGL 4.5 and this works great.

So, like admin says, Vulkan for rc8 is still very experimental and I would not recommend trying it right now.

I'm not sure but I think Vulkan may be more useful on higher resource demand flight sims like Aerofly FS2 or X-Plane 11. For me, OpenGL 4.5 seems to work very well with rc8 for VR and non-VR and it's surprisingly not very resource hungry. Even with high graphics setting (not Ultra though) and 1.3x ss I'm able to maintain 90fps in VR. In non-VR my framerates go through the roof (+500-1000fps) yet I do not see any screen tearing. I also really like that rc8 only seems to take up less than 10gb disk storage on my ssd drive, or almost the same as Realflight 8, and ~1/3 as much as RFX (~30gb). For comparison (but not apples to apples) XP11 with stock aircraft and stock world scenery takes up ~80gb, lol!

With my nvidia GTX 1060 video card, there are artifacts by activating Vulkan.

Quote from jparia

With my nvidia GTX 1060 video card, there are artifacts by activating Vulkan.

Ya, same here with my gtx1080ti. Gets even worse if you activate msaa = true (just below Vulcan in config file) and fly VR. I guess this is why these are still beta, lol!

Quote from TomC RLG

Ya, same here with my gtx1080ti. Gets even worse if you activate msaa = true (just below Vulcan in config file) and fly VR. I guess this is why these are still beta, lol!

I did not dare to activate msaa

Quote from admin

To everybody trying the new Vulkan mode -> Don't do it, it's just not ready for production use yet. Of course, if you feel bored, go ahead and give it a try

I must have been a little bored today, lol!

I activated Vilkan (see post #3 above) and it worked great in both VR and non-VR modes. I think it slightly improves the clarity of everything but maybe this is just a placebo effect. I have not noticed any downside to using it so I think I'll stick with it for a while.

Quote from TomC RLG

I must have been a little bored today, lol!

I activated Vilkan (see post #3 above) and it worked great in both VR and non-VR modes. I think it slightly improves the clarity of everything but maybe this is just a placebo effect. I have not noticed any downside to using it so I think I'll stick with it for a while.

For me, it produces CTDs when using it in very populated areas and medium-to-high complexity airports. That happens on my two setups (desktop and gaming laptop). I reverted both back to OpenGL and all is Ok now.

Cheers, Ed

Quote from edpatino

For me, it produces CTDs when using it in very populated areas and medium-to-high complexity airports. That happens on my two setups (desktop and gaming laptop). I reverted both back to OpenGL and all is Ok now.

Cheers, Ed

CTD's (crash to desktop) with Vulkan apps is often caused by running out of GPU memory. Maybe try lower graphics settings. I actually find medium settings work best for me, esp. with VR. Also helps if your nvidia drivers are up to date. I'm currently using nvidia driver 431.36.

Are you using Vulkan in any other apps like Aerofly FS2 or Doom?

I just flew completely around Norrison Island including touch and goes at all it's airports without any problems. While I don't see a huge improvement with Vulkan it does seem to improve the image quality/clarity a bit, esp. water image quality.

I plan to stick with Vulkan for now and will report back if I get any system stability issues.

Quote from TomC RLG

CTD's (crash to desktop) with Vulkan apps is often caused by running out of GPU memory. Maybe try lower graphics settings. I actually find medium settings work best for me, esp. with VR. Also helps if your nvidia drivers are up to date. I'm currently using nvidia driver 431.36.

Are you using Vulkan in any other apps like Aerofly FS2 or Doom?

I just flew completely around Norrison Island including touch and goes at all it's airports without any problems. While I don't see a huge improvement with Vulkan it does seem to improve the image quality/clarity a bit, esp. water image quality.

I plan to stick with Vulkan for now and will report back if I get any system stability issues.

Using driver 431.60 here (in both setups). Certainly, if I reduce the graphic settings to medium, I avoid the CTDs, but not sure if with this I'll loose all the visual quality improvements that apparently come out from using Vulkan instead of OpenGL (mainly high quality AA).

Cheers, Ed

It's probably a personal thing but in VR with OpenGL I've found the best RC8 graphics setting to be medium (actually low for trees, high for shadows) and it's VR rendering at 1.5 (basically SS = AA for VR). This always gives me a solid 90fps with my Oculus Rift cv1 in all 4D scenery and looks great to me.

Same setting so far with Vulcan enabled looks a little better and ~ the same solid 90fps in VR. I will try increasing graphics in stages and see if I can hit CTD. I have a new desktop PC with an i9 9900k, gtx1080ti, and 32gb 3000mhz ram so I probably have a little more headroom to play with.

Quote from edpatino

Using driver 431.60 here (in both setups). Certainly, if I reduce the graphic settings to medium, I avoid the CTDs, but not sure if with this I'll loose all the visual quality improvements that apparently come out from using Vulkan instead of OpenGL (mainly high quality AA).

Cheers, Ed

OK, I now have tried all different graphics setting and VR settings with Vulkan and I never got a crash to desktop (CTD). This was running both VR and non-VR.

What I did find was that Ultra settings did drop my VR fps below 90fps in some areas. Fine with High settings but for me the high settings for water and tree density did not add anything significant to me.

So now,with Vulkan I have settled on high textures, high shadows, low tree density, and medium water. I also increased rendering scale ratio (SS) to 1.6. This gives me a solid 90fps in VR everywhere and RC8 VR looks fantastic.

One tip that I got from an Oculus Rift Developer a while back that might help those who get the odd CTD is to increase your windows 10 pagefile size. Only do this if you have a fast SSD drive btw. Set the minimum to your gpu's Vram (11000 mb in my case) and maximum to 2000 mb above this (13000 mb in my case). I'm not really sure how or why this works but since I've done this all my VR sims are a lot more stable.

Vulkan continues to work very well for me in VR. I wonder if there is a way to spread out my i9 9900k's cores usage in order to further improve performance so I can take setting a bit higher and still maintain 90fps everywhere? I'm not sure but I think I have seen a few Vulkan apps that allow you to do this within their config file. Thanks.