CPU Loads, have I got the wrong setup?

User Support Hub Virtual Reality (VR)
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1

Hi Guys, I am new to MSFS coming across from XP11.
I have spent maybe 30 hours trying to get the settings right for a good VR experience like in XP11.
I have watched all the YT videos on settings and some improvements have been made.

Firstly, here is my system:
I5 - 12400F 12th Gen - Up to 4.40 GHz
Gigabyte Geforce RTZ 3060 12gb
Prime H610M-E D4 (LGA1700)
Corsair RW650
32gb Ram
Meta Quest 2

My issues:

  1. Unable to get some clear text on glass cockpit panels (I am using XVR tool kit)
  2. With LOD turned down to 50 I can get 30FPS at the start of a flight, but it usually drops during the flight. But even at the start, the outside view is terrible.
    Stuttering view when turning. Washed out colours etc

I am CPU limited with my GPU running about 60% with all other settings at High.
I understand my limited CPU is not helping, I am on about 36ms according to the Dev tool.

So my question is, even though this CPU works great in XP, is it up to the job in MSFS, I feel I should be getting better performance than this with my specs.

I have stuck with this hoping this will be my sim of choice, but I am not enjoying it.

Any help and advice are appreciated.

2

Moved to Interest-Virtual Reality (VR) and added meta-quest 2 tag.

3

Have you tried DLSS and changing other setting except terrain LOD, especially render scale (assuming no DLSS?

I’ve never run the sim on your strength of hardware but I think it may just be underpowered, especially the GPU. Thing is a real beast to run well.

4

Yes, I am using DLSS with the AUTO setting in resolution, this is giving me the best frames.

Cannot see how my GPU is underpowered, if MSFS needs more than that to run then I will go back to XP

My question centers around the CPU, the developer display says I am Main Thread limited, but it is running at only 50%, and my GPU is the expected 100%, so what is limiting the main thread?
CPU not fast enough?

5

Unfortunately the CPU used at 50% mean nothing useful as it’s an average value.
In the task manager, choose the performance tab, right click on the CPU graph to choose “Display by logical core”. You probably have one or several cores reaching the max or really near the max. It mean your CPU bottleneck. You cannot OC your CPU with your mother board AFAIK. Other mother board can OC your CPU up to 5.2Ghz (Z690 variants).

This sim is (far too much) demanding on CPU. We are hoping Devs do some optimizations here as it’s way too much.

I have the i7 10700K OC to 5Ghz all cores and still limited by CPU if I go TLOD upper than 150. Other settings may affect CPU so I suggest to display the Task Manager as I said above, and then you can play with settings to find the right spot.

Edit: your CPU can be really unleashed. Those guys reach 5.3Ghz with a liquid cooler (in french):

1 Like
6

@DonatedCone8571

I also use a Quest 2. My specs are a little higher, i7-10700k and RTX3070, I’m very happy with performance and clarity.

What refresh rate and headset resolution are you currently using? Are you using cable, airlink, or virtual desktop?

Cheers,

7

I have tried all the settings possible, currently on 90Hz 1.3X
Also tried link cable, Airlink, and Virtual desktop, not really any difference between the three.

I would be interested to know your settings, maybe I missed something!

8

Yes, the best frames, but not the best clarity. DLSS uses upscaling techniques to come to better frame rates at the cost of clarity in details. And that’s exactly what screens need. You can try setting it to quality to see if readability improves.

You may be better of using TAA and a bit lower render scaling. (Like 85 or 75%) this may be better for screen readability. Only way to find out is trying and tweaking.

9

My setup is quite similar to yours. Compromises have to be made with a 3060 GPU. In my experience the first thing to do is reduce refresh rate to 72Hz in the Oculus app (leave resolution at max). Then manually set ASW to 1/3 of the framerate. This is called ASW30 but sets the fps at 24Hz. This doesn’t seem high enough but it is if you can remove other causes of stuttering (which I won’t list here but can be found by searching the forum).

I found DLSS Balanced to be the most “balanced” :slight_smile: option. If you then combine that with 1.2 - 1.3 SS, cockpit sharpness might be good enough for you. It is for me. I have tried TAA with a low render scale too, but then the outside world is so much blurrier that using DLSS is the only option for me.

And give some thought to each and every graphics setting in MSFS. Some cut deeply into your fps. You can find guides online on what each of these options do and how it affects fps. Some I have completely off, while others I really wanted to have on Ultra.

As I said earlier: compromise is inevitable, but you can choose where to do it in order to improve the immersion in areas that are important to you. And this is different for everyone. :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

Wow, an improvement, I set the Quest to 72Hz and wound the res to the max and I have some clarity.
Where do I set AWS30? I can see it in Oculus Debug Tool, but how to set it to 30?
1.2 - 1.3 SS, cockpit sharpness? You lost me there to…

DLSS Balanced does seem to be best, as you say outside looks better with this.
I played around with the LOD, currently on 100 and getting 25FPS in the stock 747.
It seems I could go down to 80 if I needed to.

I also fly the PMDG 737, so will check that out tomorrow.
25FPS I could live with, but sadly it drops the longer I fly.

Thanks for the help, maybe I will hang in here!

1 Like
11

For ASW (including 45Hz, 30Hz and 18Hz modes) you can either use Oculus Tray Tool, or the Oculus Command Line Interface (Oculus CLI). I use the CLI approach.

Oculus Tray Tool is a 3rd party app that you’ll need to download and install, if you don’t already have it.

The Oculus CLI is already installed by default (it’s bundled with the Oculus software). It’s usually located in the C:\ installation path for your Oculus client software, under diagnostics folder, I think. When you run it, it basically opens up a window that looks like a DOS command prompt. At which point you can type in commands.

I’m not in front of my PC at the moment but I believe the command for the Oculus CLI is:

server:asw.clock30

To disable it, you type: server:asw.off

I wrote a batch script that automates the CLI process, so I can simply double click a shortcut and it configures all the necessary settings, including FOV parameters etc. Happy to share it, along with a summary of my settings, if you think it would be useful.

Note: 30Hz is simply a translation of 1/3 of your current headset refresh rate. So if you’re running 72Hz, it’s 72 / 3 = 24 FPS. If you’re using 90Hz mode, it’s 90 / 3 = 30 FPS. There’s also an 18Hz mode which divides by 5, so for 72Hz it equals 72 / 5 = 14.4 FPS, and at 90Hz it equals 90 / 5 = 18 FPS.

The command for 18Hz mode is:
server:asw.clock18

Cheers,

12

As DeltaFlyer mentioned, I also recommend using batch scripts. Even though I use the Oculus Tray Tool for most other games, I don’t for MSFS (doesn’t work very well with the MS Store version).
Create 4 text files with Notepad. Name them (for instance) SS.txt, Set SS.txt, ASW30.txt and Set ASW.txt. Change the extensions of the two “Set” files from .txt to .bat. Put these lines in them:

SS.txt:
service set-pixels-per-display-pixel-override 1.2
service set-client-fov-tan-angle-multiplier 0.8 0.8
exit
(This pixel override is often called supersampling or SS and of course you set the value here as needed. I’d start with 1.15 and raise it with 0.05 until you can no longer maintain 24 fps. And if the black frame that you now see in the headset reduces your field of view too much, raise the FOV settings incrementally until it disappears, i.e. 0.85 0.85. These are vertical and horizontal figures and can be changed independently by 0.01 increments. This gives you more room to play with.)

ASW30.txt:
server:asw.Clock30
exit
(this will set the fps to one third of 72Hz, so 24 fps)

Set SS.bat:
“c:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics\oculusdebugtoolcli.exe” -f SS.txt

Set ASW.bat:
“c:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics\oculusdebugtoolcli.exe” -f ASW30.txt

Put all 4 files on your desktop. Run the Set SS.bat file BEFORE launching Link from within the headset. Run Set ASW.bat once you’ve switched MSFS into VR mode.

Also, you haven’t mentioned the OXR Toolkit, so you might not be aware of its existence. It’s a brilliant piece of software with one of the longest threads on this forum. That will give you even more room to play with, and a nice fps counter that also gives you a good insight into the load on your CPU and GPU.

13

Thanks guys, you are super helpful!
I will try with the batch files today and report back.
I do have OXR Toolkit, but was not really seeing any improvement, the problem with reading through the forum is it gets so complicated to follow all other peoples options as many are not using the Quest. So any settings you think I should try would be great.

Also, I am told I should wind up the settings in the PC settings as this improves things in VR, is that correct?

Thanks again.

1 Like
14

No worries, happy to help. I’m working at the moment but I’ll update this thread when I get home with a summary of my broader Quest 2 settings.

RE: your question about PC settings that come across into VR - no, not really, not anymore. In-game MSFS texture resolution is the only setting I’m aware of that may affect both PC and VR. Both are set to medium in my setup.

Cheers,

15

Ok guys, here is where I am.
In the Stock 747 on the stand at LFPG I am getting 23-24FPS, that’s setting the Tray Tool to 30Hz and Quest at 70Hz with the res right up.

For the first time if I lean forward slightly I can read text on the FMC. Great!
Looking outside at the buildings they look better, not as washed out and white (not ice, real weather off)
I get a little stuttering when the plane is turning and taxing whilst looking outside.
LOD’s are set at 115 and 80
Most other settings in VR are High or Medium. Texture Res on Medium.
Anisotropic is 8X Supersampling 8x8 Ambient Occlusion Off
Anisotropic filtering set to 16X in Nvidia Control Panel (Someone suggested that)

With your help, I am getting somewhere.
I tried the Batch files as instructed, when I click on them should I see something, or is it just working in the background?
Frames seemed to drop to 18 after clicking them.

I look forward to you sharing your settings, I am sure it will help.

I have not tried the PMDG 737 yet, but I am sure I will lose frames with that.

16

You see a black window pop up for a moment and then disappear. Run the SS bat first as instructed and check once you’ve activated Link if you can see the black frame the FOV setting created. It should already be visible in the headset Oculus Link dashboard. Maybe even use 0.7 0.7 to make sure it’s in your vision.

Run the ASW bat once you’re in VR MSFS. An FPS counter is helpful here to make sure it worked. I use OXRTK for that. First however, don’t use ASW while you’re pinning down your graphics settings. Without ASW you should be at 27 fps minimum, better yet 30. ASW eats up some fps so you need that leeway to get a stable 24 fps.

Now some more tips and my settings (google key terms if you need more info):

BIOS: SMT/hyperthreading OFF
Windows: Game mode OFF, HAGS OFF, HPET OFF
NVidia: all defaults, so Vsync OFF, VR pre-rendered frames at 1
DL and run ISLC and set it at 0.5 ms (really helped with stutters)

MSFS:
Rolling cache: OFF
Sharpening: I have it OFF here, as some say it makes motion reprojection wobbles worse, but you could experiment
TLOD: 75
pre-caching: Ultra
Vector data: Med
Buildings: Med
Trees: Ultra (could be High for better fps but I love them trees, especially with Bijan’s addon)
Grass: Off
OLOD: 40
Clouds: Ultra (could be High which still looks pretty good but they just look better this way so worth the strong fps hit for me)
Texture resolution: High (I’ve tried medium and ultra, I think the main effect of this is not so much on fps as on VRAM. I only have 6GB and High is fine, so you could even try Ultra with your 12 GB. This setting is worth trying out for yourself, but make sure that the PC setting is set the same, as Deltaflyer mentioned)
AF: 4x
Texture SS: 2x2
(these two settings work in tandem, and really only affect textures viewed at an angle, so mainly relevant for a sharply drawn runway into the distance. Mine are minimal settings but enough for me)
Texture synthesis: High
Water waves: High
Shadow maps: 1024
Terrain shadows: Off
Contact shadows: High
Windshield: Med
AO: Ultra (again, could be lower but I just love how this adds realism to everything: cockpit, buildings, airports, aircraft)
Cubemap refl: 192
Ray refl: Ultra
Shafts: Low
Bloom: On
Cockpit refresh: High

OXRTK:
CAS sharpening: 90%
FFR: 40% at 1/2, 80% at 1/8
Post-processing: Con 75 Bri 30 Exp 50 Sat 45 Vib 0 High 100 Shad 0
RGB: 44 48 45
These 4 functions of OXRTK are all absolutely necessary for me. If need be play around with FFR as this is where you can gain the fps you need to make the other settings possible. Both the post-processing and the RGB settings alleviate the washed-out look you mentioned.

2 Likes
17

@DonatedCone8571

My hardware:
i7-10700K, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, Quest 2, Win10

I fly all types of aircraft, including PMDG 737-800, in all types of locations and weather.
Where possible I prefer to fly without ASW because I can generally maintain 40 FPS which is smooth. When I do use ASW, I use 30Hz mode via a batch script. I use 2 batch scripts, copy of these are at the bottom.

Copy of my settings below:

Official link cable
80Hz mode and headset resolution is 4864 x 2448 in Oculus app

Oculus Debug Tool:
Note: all settings at default unless listed below and I use a batch script to manage some of these settings.
FOV-Tangent Multiplier = 0.87 x 0.85
Use FOV Stencil = Off (only helps with screenshots)
(PC) Asynchronous Spacewarp = Off
Distortion Curvature = Low
Encode Bitrate (Mbps) = [edit* - currently set at 0 as anything higher seems to cause stuttering since version 47 update in the meta headset]. Was previously set at 300 (and 0 if using Air Link)
Link Sharpening = Enabled
Mobile ASW = Disabled

Nvidia Control Panel:
I’m using game-ready driver 517.48
Anistropic filtering = 8x
Background Application Max Frame Rate = 40 FPS (cap at 36 if using 72 Hz mode in headset)
Max Frame Rate = 40 FPS (cap at 36 if using 72 Hz mode in headset)
Texture filtering - anistropic sample option = Off
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias = Clamp

MSFS in-game settings:
Anti-aliasing = TAA
Render Scaling = 100
AMD fidelityfx sharpening = 200
reprojection mode = off (depth also works fine, I’m trialling it at the moment)
world scale = 100 (I use 113% in OpenXR Toolkit)
nvidia reflex low latency = off (on is also fine)
Terrain LOD = 100
Off screen terrain pre-caching = ultra
Terrain vector data = medium
Building, Trees, Grass and Bushes = medium
Objects LOD = 100
Clouds = medium
texture resolution = medium
anistropic filtering = off
texture supersampling = 4x4
texture synthesis = medium
water waves = high
shadow maps = 1024
terrain shadows = 512
contact shadows = medium
windshield effects = high
ambient occlusion = medium
cubemap reflections = 192
raymarched reflections = off
light shafts = medium
bloom = on
glass cockpit refresh rate = high

VR traffic settings = AI Offline (I use Aerosoft Simple Traffic).
Multiplayer Traffic is enabled. I regularly use live weather, and photogrammetry is enabled.

In my usercfg.opt file: sharpen, fringe, dirt, and film grain is set to 0 in the GraphicsVR section. (Location of file cfg file = C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator)

OpenXR Toolkit:

Performance Tab:
Upscaling/Sharpening = CAS
Sharpness = 94%
Fixed Foveated Rendering = off
Turbo mode = off
Frame rate throttling = 40

Appearance Tab:
Post Processing = Off
World scale = 113%

Inputs:
Shaking reduction = usually between 0 to -20%, depending on circumstances.

Copy of my batch scripts below:

Batch 1:

ECHO ON
echo server:asw.off > NORMAL40.txt
echo service set-pixels-per-display-pixel-override 1.0 >> NORMAL40.txt
echo service set-client-fov-tan-angle-multiplier 0.87 0.85 >> NORMAL40.txt
echo service set-use-fov-stencil false >> NORMAL40.txt
echo exit >> NORMAL40.txt
call “C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics\OculusDebugToolCLI.exe” -f “%~dp0\NORMAL40.txt”
del NORMAL40.txt
EXIT

Batch 2:

ECHO ON
echo server:asw.Clock30 > ASW30.txt
echo exit >> ASW30.txt
call “C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics\OculusDebugToolCLI.exe” -f “%~dp0\ASW30.txt”
del ASW30.txt
EXIT

Hope some of these settings might be useful to you.

Cheers,

2 Likes
18

Wow and Wow! Thank you so much, guys!

I will try these settings, now I have a solid starting point to work from using the Quest and a system close to mine. Hopefully, this will get me up there flying again.
Your help so far has made it flyable, this should make it even better.

I will let you know how it goes.

You guys just ROCK!

1 Like
19

To get a sense of what each graphics setting does in MSFS and how it impacts performance, have a look at this:

20

Hi Guys,
I tried using both your settings to see which worked for me.
Both help quality and certainly the RGB ones were interesting, and will play with them some more.

I did not use the batch codes at this point.
The results looked great, but whatever I do I cannot get above 18-20 frames.
Even changing LOD made no difference.
I have your settings as benchmarks, so do not want to stray far from them, just need to get those frames up.

Any thoughts?