Frame Rate Locking

I’ve read a few things on locking frame rates but I’m still a little confused as to what the best setting would be for VR on a G2.

I have a 7950X3D and RTX 4090 with DX12, DLSS and upscaled rendering. Currently I’m locked in the Nvidia control panel to 60 FPS and I seem to be able to maintain that rate.

I think I heard somewhere to lock at 1/2 the display rate for smoothness. Given I have a G2, should I try locking the frame rate to 45 or just stick with 60?

Going with 45 may allow for more upscaling but 60 FPS feels way smoother than anything I’ve had before in the sim.

The locking at 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 approach is applicable to motion reprojection where those are the frame rates being multiplied by whole numbers to give an overall native resolution.

If you are not using MR then IMO you just go for what ever FPS makes suits you best, locked or unlocked, because the G2 headset always runs at 90 Hz anyway so looking straight ahead is not a flickery mess like a lower refresh at your FPS would suggest and I’ve never seen any tearing at lower FPS than native, like you may experience with a monitor.

So I say stick with the 60 FPS you are currently enjoying and don’t worry about chasing even native refresh rate divisors.

Thanks, I tried 1/2 MR earlier today and while it was much better on the new hardware, it still had weird artifacts, such as ground passing by the door pillars and wing struts.

Should remove the 60 fps lock and just let it max out?

I’m not a fan of MR at all. Looks like flying in jelly world so I don’t care how smooth it is. :laughing:

Just try removing the lock and see if it is still smooth while delivering higher FPS. If not, put it back on.

I run an FPS cap of 70 for when I run FG when occasionally flying in 2D and this applies to VR too but I never really get to 70 FPS in VR because of ultra settings and mega high upscale before DLSSing the image for clear visuals.

I uncapped and was getting up to 70 but average was more around 62~65.

What is your upscale resolution? I’m at 3700x3626 simply because I targeted 3700 when testing. The glass screens still aren’t as good as TAA on native resolution, but overall, I’m happy.

Ever since switching to DX12 DLSS the sim locks up when exiting to the main menu. I’m also on SU15 beta. But the performance seems worth the crash.

I use 4676x4576 but use DLSS Performance because its down sample is exactly 50% so there is a 2:1 downscale effect which IMO looks much better than anything lower res and higher DLSS quality I have tried.

I’m not on the SU15 beta but I get a similar MSFS lock up sometimes when exiting MSFS with DX12. I’ve just accepted it now.

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Thanks, I’ll give that a try.

I’ve got everything at Ultra too. But I can’t always tell the difference on many settings between High and Ultra.

I must admit I struggle to tell the difference between ultra and high in VR, but my 4090 can handle it so I may as well get my money’s worth. :laughing:

OMG, I tried it any my mind is blown! This is the sim I always wanted! LOL It’s better than I can see in real life. And so smooth.

Quality even will render at 45-50 fps and looks crazy sharp. Performance is less crazy sharp but still amazing. I can read all the warning labels and G1000 buttons.

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You can always go up to DLSS balanced for a bit more sharpness and a bit less performance, but I pretty much stay on balanced and can read glass screens fine with my G2.

What CPU are you running?

I have a 5800X3D.

I wound up getting a whole pre-owned 7950X3d system when I was just looking to get just the RTX 4090.

I’m happy to hear the AM4 socket works great with the 4090. I had a 5800x with a 3080ti, but I wasn’t able to push the combo like this.

I am very happy with the 5800X3D as it allowed me to reuse my RAM and CPU cooler so was a cheap upgrade from the 10850K I had before it and gave a significant bump in MSFS performance in CPU bound scenarios. I know the 7XX03D series is even better but I will upgrade to AM5 when the 9XX03D cpus come out, mid year ish apparently, and hopefully give me a similar boost again. The 4090 handles the GPU side of things very well in VR, but I do get my lowest frame rates when I am CPU bound, so it will be good to boost that bottom end.

I have a few months of system bragging rights at least. :sweat_smile:

Had I built the rig I probably would not have gone with the 7950X3D but it has great temps and stability. It’s hardly working when the sim is running. If only MSFS could take advantage of all those cores!

I think Intel has the current top spot but with the system tweaks (mostly memory) my benchmarks seem to match the Intel.

Luckily, I’m not bothered by LOD like some are.

I really appreciate the setup help. I’m blown away at the combination of sharp clarity and smooth performance.

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With that system you definitely want to lock the G2 to 45 fps using Rivatuner. Basically, any fps that is not the native 90 or exactly half, 45, will look relatively bad, that’s just a fact of physics, because the refresh rate and the FPS being out of sync causes stuttering/rubber banding.

It may seem 90% smooth but you will see these little jumps constantly between the smooth phases, especially when panning around in external view. 45fps locked is great and smoother than you might think, as long as the frame times are consistent (and with your system they should be).

Each to their own, but I completely disagree with this, as does just about everyone who has looked into this closely. Locking to half refresh is HUGELY beneficial for smoothness, not just in reprojection contexts. See my reply above as to why. 45fps is (overall) much smoother than even 80fps at 90hz. Yes, large “portions” of the motion will feel much smoother at 80 than at 45, but there will be almost constant jerks/judders as the refresh rate and fps move in and out of sync with each other. Maybe some people are blind to this, but I find it hugely off-putting, as do many.

Even VR flight Sim Guy, who seems to have had this realization really quite late in the game, recommends locking to 45 now (if the refresh is 90).

Unlocked is even worse because the fluctuation causes additional irregularity in motion.

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I’ll experiment and see how it feels. If 45 does feel better than 60 I’d be able to push LOD up. But as its now I’m feeling a level of realism I didn’t think was possible before.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, but I seem to like the unlocked frames better over 45. I tried both the nvidia control panel and OpenXR Toolkit to lock the frames.

When locked at 45 it’s very good. But up at 60 it gets that silky feel.

Just for the sake of comparison, try using the free Riva Tuner to lock fps. Set up a new “game” in the panel and point it to the FlightSimulator.exe then set 45 on that. It just runs in the system tray and you can change the target fps “on the fly” (literally lol).

Reason I ask is that I found the Nvidia lock for me does not really work. It’s constantly seeking up and down around the target which causes the mismatches and breaks in fluidity you mention.

Riva just seems to be perfectly solid at holding the desired rate. Of course it can still dip DOWN if your scenery or whatever suddenly can’t reach 45 but on the whole it’s super good. Worth a try. If you close the app it no longer runs so make sure you ONLY minimise it!

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