Edit 20211011: added shimmering to the title of the issue, as it is one of the main unpleasant symptom of the issue: buildings (many report it to be more severe on autogenerated buildings) and trees that shimmer, even in active pause. It may also be that the shimmering is not related technically to AA (despite appearances) but to something else.
There is already a bug report concerning the lack of AA in the overlays and menus ( https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/no-aa-anymore-on-menues-in-vr/ ). This is a separate issue, concerning in-game AA. On my setup (Fresh install of MSFS post hotfix, no add-ons, no dev mode, 5800X/32GB/RTX3080Ti), I tried with multiple different settings, in particular different render resolutions (low and high) and different Nvidia Control Panel settings (including the default settings), on two different headsets (Oculus Quest 2 via Oculus Link and via Virtual Desktop, as well as HP Reverb G2). Note that for all tests, I had reflections set to OFF, as reflections have their own issues in VR. AA was always set to TAA for these tests.
Starting with the same settings I had in SU4, I can see that thin (antennas, towers, etc.) or high contrast objects (shorelines, buildings) are much more jagged than they were in SU4, and the aliasing of these objects moves as point of view moves, causing visible shimmering on sharp borders. Sometimes thin objects can even end up being either a jagged, shimmering blob (ILS antennas), or even just transparent/not appearing.
While this happens in pretty much any scenario and lighting conditions, it is very visible in the Rio Landing Challenge, in particular:
When the Rio landing challenge starts
- buildings in the sun are shimmering due to the antialiasing (to the left, close to us)
- the bridge crossing the bay is a shimmering jagged mess especially in the sun
- some of the shore line decks and peers are the same
- The white bars at the top of the glass cockpit display (within the display) are jagged, shimmering as I move my head
When turning on final
- to my left there is an orange-ish building (right in front of a peer) is a shimmering mess, I can infer it’s supposed to have lots of horizontal lines/window rows, but all I see are jagged lines shimmering diagonally, like moiré
- the peninsula covered in trees front left of the runway is a jagged, shimmering mess until I get closer
- The bridge to the left of the runway, crossing to the mainland is a jagged shimmering mess
- The coastline beyond the airport and to the left is a very aliased line (not so shimmering)
- The small oval shaped island on the left of the runway is very thing with perspective, and appears jagged and shimmering
- The airport buildings to the right of the runway are a shimmering mess
- The antenna array at the start of the runway is a jagged, shimmering mess
- Ditto for the light poles to the right of the runway
Note that I spend several hours fiddling with settings (OpenXR render res, in-game render res and graphics settings, UserCfg, nvidia settings, etc.) and the issue is consistent. Also, some players report not seeing the issue at all, which could mean there is a workaround (but if there is, I haven’t been able to find it).