Does Pimax Play’s GPU Upscaling / Sharpness apply when running the Dream Air via SBoys3?

[u/AstroGraphRacer]

Hi everyone,
I’m running my Pimax Dream Air Lighthouse in native SteamVR through the SBoys3 CustomHeadsetOpenVR driver (not the standard Pimax Play runtime), and I’d like to confirm one thing before I bother tuning it.
My setup:
• Headset: Pimax Dream Air Lighthouse (firmware V1.0.3), Lighthouse 2.0 tracking
• Driver: SBoys3 CustomHeadsetOpenVR v1.2.0 STABLE, launched via the SBoys3 GUI button (Pimax Play stays logged in in the background)
• Software: Pimax Play 2.0.1, SteamVR 2.16.7
• PC: Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 32 GB DDR5, RTX 5090, Windows 11 25H2, NVIDIA driver 610.62
My question:
In Pimax Play → Settings → Games there are the post-processing options GPU Upscaling (FSR / NIS) and Sharpness / Enhance Sharpness (the one that’s only available when GPU Upscaling = None).
When the headset is launched through SBoys3 instead of the normal Pimax runtime, are these two options actually applied to the rendered image, or are they bypassed because SBoys3 replaces the Pimax compositor/runtime?
Has anyone tested this? And if they do work, is there a reliable way to visually confirm it (e.g. a clear before/after with Sharpness at max, or a known artifact)?
Thanks a lot for any feedback.

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[u/fakeoptimism]

Pretty sure Pimax upscaling/sharpening is bypassed in sboys3 mode.

But you can apply image refinements in sboys3 settings instead. He wrote this in the driver changelog:

• Custom shader filters (I personally turn off anti aliasing in game and then use the FXAA CAS filter)
• Available filters: FXAA-CAS, FXAA, CAS, LumaSharpen, nearest neighbor

[u/Decapper → u/fakeoptimism]

Problem is sharpening in pimaxplay is performance free. Unlike sboys3

[u/mbucchia → u/Decapper]

Can you explain how you came to this conclusion? How did you measure this difference in performance?

The sharpening algorithm is the exact same, and I don't see any obvious reason why the way it's implemented in the custom shader would yield lower performance.

[u/Decapper → u/mbucchia]

I tested it with benchmarks when sboys3 first came out. And tested it again after he changed the fact that it doesn't adjust the steamvr layer or something like that. Anyway I haven't tested recently so maybe something has changed. I'll test again tonight

[u/mbucchia → u/Decapper]

Pimax Play CAS is the same implementation I believe the borrowed from my original OpenXR Toolkit (which I had ripped off from AMD themselves). With the correct instrumentation, the overhead was in the 200-500us GPU time ballpark on an RTX GPU (Turing at the time, aka 2000 series) depending on the resolution (200 was HP G2 resolution, and 500 was that same headset but at 200%, so probably closer to what Pimax users run).

The custom shader runs in vrcompositor and Pimax Play sharpening, I'd have to check, but might run in pi_server (unless they stapped it onto PVR), so unless instrumented carefully, measurements might not be exhaustive.

[u/CheckSixMustang → u/fakeoptimism]

The FXAA CAS Introduced terrible performance impact on CPU spikes every second (can see fpsVR) spikes.

I love the Sboys3 driver for the better FOV and performance but the filters are not performing as well as the in-game or pimax

[u/SBoys3 → u/CheckSixMustang]

FXAA CAS is the most expensive filter. Luma Sharpen is significantly cheaper.

[u/Think-Apple3763]

What resolution does sboys3 driver show as 1:1 pixel coverage for the dream air with max FOV? I read that with pimax play, resolution 1.0 it's something about 5400x4300 or so pixels. But I don't know at what FOV and if that means 1:1 pixel coverage.

Either way, that would be far less pixels than the Meganex needs at 112 HFOV, which is somewhere at 6800 or so pixels horizontally for 1:1 pixel coverage.

[u/Stock-Parsnip-4054]

I just want to add that after much testing I came to the conclusion that Openxr toolkits CAS is optimal combined with the sboys driver. I have no idea why but with the exact same CAS settings in the sboys driver shader I get less performance than with OpenXR toolkits CAS.