A VR Success Story- IN PICTURES!

[KevyKevTPA]

OK, so I got my Reverb G2s on the same day that the VR patch came out. It’s my very first foray into VR ever. Despite being an uber-nerd and former decades long IT professional, I just had no experience. I didn’t know the lingo, the acronyms, or what I was doing. Still don’t for the most part.

But after watching a bunch of videos, reading a bunch of posts all over the Interweb, and tweaking, retweaking, installing, uninstalling, and doing all kinds of things over and over again, I think I’ve found a pretty good solution, at least for my rig.

So, let’s start with that:

• i5-10600K, overclocked to all-core 4.9GHz and stable
• 2070 Super, overclocked to +175/+1000 and stable
• 64GB of CL16 3200MHz RAM
• 32" 1440p Samsung C32HG70, not that it’s relevant to VR
• HP Reverb G2, brand new
• Windows 10, fully updated
• FS2020 ver. 1.12.13.0, Steam, Premium Deluxe, purchased on day 0
• Carenado PA44, available in the MSFS Store, and on sale for around $19!! I endorse it (though it’s got a few bugs that need fixing), and encourage anyone who would fly a piston twin (with steam gauges!) to pick it up before the sale ends.
• PMS50 GNS 530 mod by @ScorpionFilm422, and available here. Version 1.0.23. Get it now before he decides to start charging for it!

My results:
Stable at 31 fps according to MSI Afterburner, smooth as silk to my eyes. No stutters, but a bit blurry. Almost like I need really weak glasses and forgot them. From what I can tell, that’s just the state of VR to date.

My process:
Downgraded the Nvidia drivers to 452.06, with the following settings in pictures.

1- Nvidia

2- Windows settings

OXR Settings

Aircraft Used: Carenado PA44

FS VR Settings:

Test flight setup:

The test:

• Reboot. I’ve actually gotten in the habit of always rebooting just before firing up MSFS.
• Turn Discord off. Not just X out the box, but completely off.
• Turn WMR on, if it’s not already. (For reasons I don’t understand, sometimes it turns itself on, sometimes not.)
• Fire up MSI afterburner, put on second display.
• Fire up MSFS on primary display, in windowed mode.
• Setup the flight in the planner.
• Press fly now, start VR mode, put on my HMD, and fly it!! AP controlled the aircraft from 1,000’ after TO to 200’ before landing, first in heading mode, then nav, then approach. CDI set to GPS until lined up on final, then LOC (with proper frequency on NAV1, provided by the GNS530 mod in the standby slot).
• Land, park, take the pics I needed for this post (unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to take screenshots while in VR), and share.

And, oh yeah, here I am on the ramp after shutting down:

So, there’s my story. I hope future software patches and updates will only improve things, as well as any other tweaks I can try. (One I am doing the next time I fly is to set the process priority to “High”.)

If you have any questions, comments, statements, or want to call me bad names, feel free!

Good luck, the skies are calling…

KevyKevTPA
(AKA Kevin from Tampa. But I hope you figured that out with only one guess.)

[RompyAZ]

Can you post your msi afterburner values. I want to see how you over locked your 2070S

[KevyKevTPA]

@RompyAZ

Can you post your msi afterburner values.

[KevyKevTPA]

Glad you asked, it should be +175, not the curve, but it was only a tiny difference. Lawd only knows how (or when) it got changed…?

[RompyAZ]

My settings were almost exactly what you had. Thanks for the info

[KevyKevTPA]

Is it working well for you?

[MLTAVIATOR99]

Out of curiousity do you even benefit from OC the Memory in this sim.Had mine to 500hmhz and made the same less stable.

[Brettp101]

I suggest removing geforce experience from your system also. It is a resource hog and is not needed. I have found it to at times use up to 20% of my 3090 for no reason whatsoever. It is always running in the background even if you haven’t opened it.

[KevyKevTPA]

I don’t OC my memory. Every time I’ve tried, my computer got very mad at me. Even by one notch! So I don’t try anymore.

[KevyKevTPA]

Is it? I’ve looked in the process list on Task Manager, and no sign of any bg processes. But I really only use it to inform me of new driver releases, and since I intentionally downgraded, I don’t need that, at least until they come out with something FS2020 specific, or I buy one of the newer games that the driver I have doesn’t cover. But I don’t see that happening, I expect virtually 100% of my gameplaying for the near term future will be FS2020. Even if something I want goes on a sale I can’t resist, I’ll just buy it but not even bother downloading it until whenever.

EDIT: At any rate, I uninstalled it, let’s see if I can see any meaningful difference. I guess no more screenshots, but I haven’t figured out how to do that in VR anyway. I can always use F12 (which is Steam itself, I think) when not in VR mode for screenies if I want some.

[RompyAZ]

I’m seeing frame rate increases from 22 to about 29 FPS. I’m limited by my cpu not feeding video card frames fast enough

[KevyKevTPA]

Almost all of us are, because of that ■■■■ “MainThread” thingy. You’d have to have a seriously mismatched CPU/GPU combo to not be CPU bound. (And if you wanna get really technical, it’s not even CPU bound, it’s either core or thread (if your CPU is hyperthreaded) that is causing the bottleneck. So it really comes down to single core/thread clock speed and IPC. I think anyway, some of this stuff makes my head hurt trying to analyze it.)

[ImmersiveVR]

Spot on…in 2020 we are still confined to single core performance with anything regarding VR/stereoscopic 3D rendering with even modern CPUs.

[KevyKevTPA]

I wasn’t even talking about the VR aspect, just the base sim itself.

@Brettp101, after removing Geforce Experience, I didn’t notice any significant change, but I only did one short night flight, so we’ll see. I only need it to tell me about new drivers anyway, so I’m going to leave it off. Well, that and for screenshots and videos, but I’m gonna check out this obs thing that people have been talking about and see what it might do.

I think it’s for video only, no screenshots, but other than finding the website (here in case anyone is interested) I know less than nothing about it. And I haven’t found anything that can take screenshots in VR, but I’ve seen videos from it, maybe from OBS, maybe from something else.

[Brettp101]

Sweet all good man. I def noticed some stutters were gone after deleting geforce ex. Its weird, I had issues in the past where it was using my gpu and deleted it. I gave it another go and it was fine for awhile but realised recently it was using my gpu again for no apparent reason. Not sure what causes it but it seems to do it from time to time. As soon as I deleted it I haven’t had any more issues. One of those things you notice when you are trying and looking at everything to get the best performance haha.

[KevyKevTPA]

@Brettp101, tell me about it. I’ve got a pretty stout system, and I’m still looking for every frame I can get. Not in every game, in fact FS2020 is about the only one my poor 'puter struggles with at all, doubly so with VR.

But I’m hoping some additional software optimizations will help (and not just with the sim itself, could be new drivers, new versions of WMR, OXR, or the Steam app, whatever!), as well as when we go to DX12.

[ElectrikKar]

Thanks KevyKev for the rundown. My Initial few dives into VR (similar system to yours) were pretty disconcerting. I had to dial everything way back, and even then the experience remained a juttery, blurry mess.

But somewhere between yourself, CptLucky8 and VR Flight sim guys settings and recommendations, and a lot of tweaking, I’m now really happy with the state of VR in flightsim on my machine.

The last few things I’ve tried might have done it…

*Remove Nvidia Experience

*Downgrade to earlier nVidia drivers- in my case, 457.30 (I think CptLucky8 tested a bunch and 457.30 performed best)

*Run FS in a window, and make sure everything else is minimised during flying.

BTW, I’m considering picking up the Carenado Mooney- but others have mentioned issues with the 3d mouse cursor in VR with that plane- is this a similar story to the PA44?

Cheers

[KevyKevTPA]

@ElectrikKar

My Initial few dives into VR (similar system to yours) were pretty disconcerting. I had to dial everything way back, and even then the experience remained a juttery, blurry mess.

Same here. And I got even more frustrated when everyone was recommending to install OXR, because it seemed like whenever I did, it just made things worse! But I’ve stumbled across what might be a winning formula (that is slightly different from my OP above), in that now I do have it installed, with the latest preview runtime slider set to “On”, and a custom render scale of 50%. Now, how that helped make things better, both in terms of smoothness (which I assume means higher FPS, but I haven’t figured out a way to get an FPS counter on inside of VR, and the truth is I don’t care as long as it looks good), and clarity, as it somehow enabled me to crank my settings inside the sim, is a complete mystery to me.

I now have render scaling set at 100% (which is close to the native resolution of my G2s), and many other things that I shared above I’ve “upgraded” as well, and I’m quite pleased. And I’m still tweaking.

It’s still blurrier than I would like (almost like I need weak glasses, and forgot them to make a RW comparison), but I’m starting to wonder if I actually NEED some RW prescription lenses, either contacts or in my device itself. I’ve read that is at least hypothetically possible, but haven’t looked into it in any detail, so I’m nowhere near certain about that.

I also removed Geforce Experience, and downgraded to 452.06 on my drivers, but that was almost an arbitrary choice, as it was the last one that specifically addressed MSFS, and it seemed to improve things, though I can’t dismiss the placebo effect either. Frankly, if I hadn’t kept those driver files in a prominent location on my desktop, I’m not even sure that I’d know how to check what version I’m on (device manager?), though it hurts my very long and extensive history as an IT weenie to say that out loud.

I also don’t know how I’ll know if/when Nvidia releases new drivers, especially if they’re targeted at MSFS improvements without randomly checking their website on a regular basis, or getting lucky here (or elsewhere) and hoping that someone mentions it and I notice the post.

I run virtually everything minimized (except FS itself, which I keep full screen on my main display so I don’t lose mouse control), and on a second monitor which is attached to my onboard graphics, not my GPU. I’ve tried putting the monitor displayed FS window on the second display under the theory that it will unload my GPU (because my GPU doesn’t drive that display), but it made no discernable difference, which seems strange to me.

Then again, this all seems more like voodoo than any sort of best technical practices.

As for the Mooney, I have it and love it, but I haven’t tried it in VR yet. I’ve been flying the PA44 almost exclusively, with a few flights with the Baron thrown in for giggles. But I’d vote for grab it now while it’s on sale, I think that sale ends on Tuesday. (I think the sale price is more reasonable and appropriate than the regular one, but that’s a whole different conversation.)

One thing that was driving me nuts about the PA44 was getting the fuel selectors turned on inside of VR, as it but I found a way for it to default to that so that’s fixed, too!

I also turn off EVERYTHING (which basically only means Discord, but I let it start on the theory that if I don’t, I might forget I even have it and never turn it on), reboot every time I’m gonna sim, and then just turn on WMR and the sim itself. I even created a shortcut to the game directly so I don’t have to start Steam, though it does seem like it does so at least temporarily, I suppose to check if I’m a legit licensed user.

I think I’m at the point that I’m just tweaking around the edges trying to maximize settings without killing frames (or visual fidelity) until new drivers, software tweaks and enhancements, and other things from MS, Asobo, HP, Carenado, or any other software that even remotely touches my experience come out and make it even better.

[sneaky74]

Nice one @KevyKevTPA I have noticed your render scaling is 90, you’ve probably changed it now but with the G2 OXR SS at 100% you can set MSFS TAA render scaling to 60% or 70% and still have beautifully clear visuals - you’ll also be able to bump up the graphical settings as well. Loving VR in this title.

Incidentally if you want to try reprojection, reverse your render scaling settings.

MSFS TAA 100%, OXR SS 60% - Reprojection ‘Always on’ but you get less artifacts when disabling runtime preview setting. This works quite well for me. If you don’t turn down OXR SS then the reprojection is next to useless.

[KevyKevTPA]

@sneaky74

I have noticed your render scaling is 90, you’ve probably changed it now but with the G2 OXR SS at 100% you can set MSFS TAA render scaling to 60% or 70% and still have beautifully clear visuals - you’ll also be able to bump up the graphical settings as well.

Actually, @sneaky74, I went the other way, and have OXR set at 50, and TAA at 100, which is just about native for my G2s. As an experiment, yesterday I tried TAA 150, and while it looked fantastic, my 2070 Super threw up trying to do it, and my frame rates got cut to about 12.

But I’m not married to any specific solution, so I’ll give your OXR 100, TAA 70 (ish) a shot and see if the visuals and performance are better one way or the other. I found I can run with OXR 50 TAA 110 out in the middle of nowhere (I was literally in the Arizona desert looking for that meteor crater, but the only instructions I had were “take off from Flagstaff and head west”, so that quest failed lol. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but I didn’t find it, and if it’s a POI on the flight planning map, I didn’t find it that way, either. But I didn’t try the OXR 50 TAA 110 option around actual civilization, so I don’t know if it will be able to do it successfully or not.

I haven’t played with the repro mode at all, except yesterday I turned it on without changing anything else, and I got a strange effect where the bottom of my view almost looked a tiny bit letterboxed. But I can’t say with certainty it was the repro setting that did that, so I’m planning to give it another shot as well.

But I’ll give the OXR 100 and TAA 70 option, and circle back with you, assuming I can find this thread again lol…

I’ll try tagging myself to see if it gives me an alert. @KevyKevTPA