Awful VR performance on Index

User Support Hub Virtual Reality (VR)
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I think there is something broken with VR on Index. Note before I start that I am running an i9@5Ghz, 2080Ti with 32GB system RAM. Also note that I purchased FS2020 from the MS store, but using it with Steam VR (the latest Beta). I have tried the alt-tab trick, never use motion smoothing, and have tried applying suggestions for improved performance, including lowering settings down to perfectly bleh, and still I can’t manage good enough frame rates to make this thing playable for more than a couple minute demo flight.

Also, note that I have over 100 VR titles in my library with excellent performance in pretty much all–including X-Plane 11.5 VR with level 19 orthos which has outstanding performance on my system; so I’m pretty sure my issues are not user or system related.

Anyway In browsing various forums, there seem to be two kinds of Index users: those who say they get perfectly smooth and outstanding performance in fs2020 VR, and others (like me) for whom it is awful. Assuming the positive reports are true, I’m trying to figure out what the discrepancy is. One curiosity is that even though the developer mode FPS counter shows me with a locked-in 45FPS on my system and even though the stereo view on the screen while playing looks nice and smooth, the view in the headset is clearly much lower than 45FPS (comparing with X-Plane which also locks at 45FPS but is far smoother). It basically feels like X-Plane did before their Vulkan driver update–which in that state was never playable for me since it only managed to make me sick (as does fs2020 right now).

So first off, is there anyone here who has excellent performance on their Index, and if so, did you purchase from Steam or the MS store as I’m starting to wonder if that might be the problem since I purchased from the MS store and so, am not launching directly from Steam. Clearly, if some are getting the kind of outstanding performance on their Index headsets that they claim, there has to be some kind of magic that I’m missing and am very eager to find out what it is.

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100 VR titles don’t exist

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There is at least 280 VR titles on Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&vrsupport=402&filter=topsellers

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I have a index and bought fs2020 on steam and my performance is pretty poor. I am running a i7 8700k, 16gig ram 3200mhz, 2080super. I did mange to get it to hang out around 30fps but it seems to stutter and when turning my head I get some refresh lag aka black bars/vomit. The odd thing is some of the settings if I lowered them drastically my performance would get worse, sorry I can’t remember what settings I lowered that made it worse.

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Actually, the VR filter on Steam has 1296 titles. My actual count is 136. Not all are from Steam.

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Yeah, you see that’s the thing. If you can’t get at least 45 FPS (half 90 Hz) then I don’t consider the performance adequate for VR. Consider that in a “normal” VR game that 90Hz is considered the holy grail minimum to be viable. We get away with the lower framerate in civilian sims because of the relatively slow environment (say, compared to a shooter like Alyx or Star Wars Squadrons where 120Hz is greatly preferred). So 30FPS in VR is basically in tech demo territory and can’t be played seriously (unless, of course, you have a seriously iron stomach–which some folks, admittedly, do have).

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I agree, I play american truck simulator which is kind of a hot mess in vr. I was able to reproject that at 45fps and honestly it does pretty well but it took a lot of tweaking to get it playable.
I plan on messing with settings again tonight on fs2020 but if I can’t get it playable after tonight I am going to just hold out and hopefully they can maybe come up with some tweaks through updates.

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Real titles please

End OT

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Well I think the 280 titles in the “Top Sellers” list that xBufferzz posted are real, at least I think their real. The 218 games in the Upcoming list are not real (yet). But I didn’t count those. Anyway, if you find one in there that isn’t real, let us know.

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I posted this over at NVIDIA, sharing it here too

I’m using a Vive Pro both wired and wireless.

I have eliminated the “Pink Spikes of Death” from Steam VR entirely within my experience. I went from a stutter every 3-4 seconds to smooth as butter play.

I’m posting this to both help others get good play and to hopefully reach NVIDIA to get this sorted out in the drivers.

OK, I have 460.89 drivers installed
SteamVR 1.15.15
Win 10 20H2
i9-9900k & 2080 Ti
All drivers updated.

Here’s what I did to get things back to around 457.30 levels of performance:

*Disable HWM in Precision X1 or UNINSTALLthe MSI overlay programs. Disabling won’t work for the MSI Version, but does work for Precision X1. Others not tested.

*Unistall NVIDIA Frameview SDK
Disable MS Game Bar
Remove (UNISTALL!) iCue

  • You can set “hardware RGB profiles for Corsair”
  • Fan and pump profiles default to the last used configuration from iCue

Remove (Unistall) RGB Fusion and all motherboard add-on software. Don’t remove your drivers!

Remove (Uninstall) G.Skill RGB - RAM RGB coms use massive SMBus Data

For most RGB software If you don’t uninstall and reboot, the services will still be installed and will continue to start even if you block startup.

Disable Hardware Accellerated GPU Swithcing and REBOOT

Disable Game Mode

Disable Steam Overlay

Uninstall GeForce Experience if you have it. It is not necessary for VR at ALL and the overlays are latency factories.

Disable XBox Game Overlay

Every one of the overlay programs have FPS and performance monitoring going on the SM Bus that is triggering the hiccup.

The SM Bus was never meant to carry more than a voltage reading or the power on sleep commands around the motherboard.

It’s two wires that are sorely overworked.

Without getting into threading (and over my head): The problems are coming, I think, when applications are waiting for the SMBus for just a dozen or so mSeconds. This is long enough to make a pink line in the performance graphs, cause a stutter in our virutality and break immersion.

If a program has a temperature or monitoring indication and you don’t absolutely need it, remove it.

Reboot and then reboot again.

So, yeah.

tl;dr free your SM Bus and it may help.

All my opinion, I know how maddening it was for me and I would love to help someone else with it.

YMMV

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Thanks for the info, but I seriously doubt all of those reporting excellent performance did all these things. I know for a fact that getting rid of certain hardware monitoring services can help eliminate some hiccups once one gets to the uber-tweaking stage, but I doubt its going to give back the fairly major FPS gains needed in this case (I’ve actually already tried some of these).

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I had to try all of them to get results. I don’t know or claim to know which one worked. I was also in exactly the same boat. Steam VR bought on MS Store.

When I did do all of them (This morning) I got the best VR play I’ve ever seen, in this and all of my Steam games.

Good luck!

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So I use fpsvr overlay and now I am wondering could that be causing issues with stuttering? I’m at work right now but I will close that out tonight and see if that makes any difference.

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If you have Windows Hardware Gpu Scheduling enabled, then you must have Steam (not SteamVR) running before you toggle VR mode on in FS2020.

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I just launch Steam VR. Steam is a dependency. I’ve never tried without it.
It actually says to do so somewhere in one of the early guide I read.

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I just downloaded FPSvr, and with Gorn on 200ss I am getting about 4ms latency and no spikes with it.
And about the same wtihout.

Before I did the steps in my post, I couldn’t even play it on 66ss

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I may check out some of your recommendations you listed. I have a gigabyte gaming board, 9 thermaltake rgb fans, gskill rgb ram and a gigabyte aorus 2080super which has rgb on it. I don’t have any performance issues in any other games, Cyberpunk 2077 plays pretty good along with all my other vr titles so i dunno if it will make any difference.

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Thank you for sharing these details, this is most useful.

I was hesitant upgrading from 457.30 to 460.89 given all that I could read on the NVidia forum, but you’ve restored some confidence in me trying :slightly_smiling_face:

Now I know HWM programs are impactful since after 446.14 (so it seems) and looking at the list, and the SM Bus explanation, you’re making me wondering about something: since Win10 20H1 the default Task Manager is now reporting GPU temperature (it didn’t before) and once you’ve eliminated all other 3rd party HWM tools, I’m wondering whether this one alone could be part of the problem as well and eventually how to disable it.

My test system is also an Alienware which I must say I find pretty lean regarding “bloat” but the Alienware Control Center which is used for everything overclocking/thermal/fans is running automatically and doesn’t seem to be any source of problems but it might be.

What are your thoughts about this?

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I suspect you are on to something with the reporting in Windows being a problem, but possibly only as one more log on the fire, so to speak. I have been experimenting in an attempt to get the spikes to come back, no luck yet. I mentioned before that the last thing I did was the Frameview SDK, so I’m going back and trying to reproduce the spikes. If and when I do, I will share.

As far as the Alienware software, If it is generating SM Bus trafficinstead of reading from a system buffer somewhere, then it absolutely could.

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Well I figured out my issue. First I wasnt in steam beta because I had a issue awhile back and forgot to switch it back to beta version. 2nd issue was the nvidia drivers, I was on 460.89, I reverted back to 446.14 and the stuttering is gone. Now I’m at 30fps, it does dip down every once in awhile but night and day difference to what it was doing.