I love Flight Simulator 2020, but I think there is an elephant in the room:
This game is terribly optimized for virtual reality.
This is the only thing I have to say, because I am experiencing no issues other than disappointingly low frame rate. I bought a high-end GPU, which are very hard to get right now, specifically for this game. Yet it immediately caps out at 100% usage (as indicated by MSI Afterburner) with lag streaks multiple times a second (especially when moving your head). This means that it is undeniably by far the most important issue, and I strongly believe that performance is the single issue that the development team should be focusing on right now. Please let me know how soon you are planning to release a major update that addresses this. Otherwise, the game is legit unplayable for now.
Here are some specific specs: AMD Ryzen 3700X, NVIDIA RTX 3070, 32 GB RAM, and Valve Index. I’m pretty sure around 80-90% of gaming computers are not as strong as this, which means that the game is unfortunately excluding a large public.
Update 1 week later: I tried out a lot of different graphics settings until the FPS finally got closer to something reasonable. However, the head movement in the cockpit is still very jerky overall, and it seems to be an inherent element to the game that cannot be fixed by the user no matter how low your settings are. My point therefore stands that the game is unplayable in virtual reality.
I’d appreciate developers looking into this asap.
Hi, I understand your frustration, but I have to disagree with you.
I have been using VR since its release in December with my Reverb G2, FE3090,10700k and 32RAM. I am in a position right now where I can assure you I have great experience in VR, it is not to say it is without quirks, especially with the G2 and its head tracking, but things will get better in the future. Like you, before my G2, I was using my Valve Index for sim racing and it is a fantastic headset. Remember the MSFS2020 team was clear and said the game has been optimized for only three different type of headset, the Valve Index not being one of them, I can find you the link if you desire so. As a curiosity I tried to use my Valve Index in MSFS2020 as I still have it, and yes no matter how you optimize the sim the VR experience is not nearly as good as the one with the G2 and I use the full res of the G2. The moral of the story be patient in the hope they will optimize it for the Valve Index or get a G2, you won’t regret it.
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Correction, I guess I have to agree and disagree : )
Thanks for your input. I didn’t know that the game was optimized for a specific subset of headsets only, and that the Valve Index is not yet part of that. I don’t regret buying the game because I suspect (as you also indicated) the performance can be improved a lot, but I guess I’d love if this happened sooner rather than later. I’m surprised the Reverb G2 performs so well because it has a very high resolution. Although your GPU is much stronger than mine, how big is the frame drop exactly when you switch from Reverb G2 to Valve Index?
I could not tell you, I have not look at frame rate measurement tools for either of them. I just can tell you my experience with my Index is just not fluid at all, especially, as you mentioned with head mov. I only tried the Index a couple times, and the second time was more for an experiment with the tracking. I can assure you, and I think independent of my 3090, you will have a great and fluid experience with your computer and a G2, but like I said it is not perfect, I think the inside out tracking of the G2 has a lot to do with it, but as far as frame rate you won’t be disappointed, if you optimize things properly in OpenXR and the sim.
As you see the Valve Index is compatible with the sim but not optimized for it.
Try Nvidia driver 457.30. Every driver since 457.30, for me, stutters even while having high FPS. This only applies to the 3000 series RTX cards. For reference, I have the RTX 3090. It runs great now…your mileage may vary of course.
For you it might be, for most of us it’s fine and no issues.
So legit unplayable is not the correct term and saying it’s terribly optimized for VR is absolutely incorrect.
In combination with a custom resolution multiplier in SteamVR, this seems to help, thank you! FPS is somewhat manageable and the lag spikes are reduced. But it’s still very far from perfect, especially the head motion tracking, so I’m looking forward to game updates that improve / optimize on these aspects.
I am having a great experience with my G2 and VR, just FYI I am not going through SteamVR and OpenXR to get my VR. I am going through WMR and OpenXR, very pleased with the visual and fluidity experience (10700k, FE3090, 32RAM).
I totally agree, the one thing for me that is so annoying and such an immersion breaker, is the intermittent loss of head tracking. I have been blaming the inside out tracking of the G2 for it, but in fact MSFS is the only VR sim where it is happening, not ever in iRacing, ACC and WMR home, which are my only go to VR apps. So not exactly sure who’s at fault: OpenXR or MSFS or both.
If this could be solved, we wouldn’t be far from excellence : )
The problem is clearly the game itself, because I haven’t seen any performance (especially in terms of head tracking) this bad in any other VR game, using the exact same setup obviously. The cockpit stuttering is 100% continuous for me, not intermittent, and I agree it’s honestly the biggest killer of immersion and enjoyment. We’ve even got news articles talking about how terribly optimized this game is. I wish Asobo would focus on this instead of random location updates…
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I gave up VR because the cockpit was all hitchy and killed the immersion. So triple screens for me
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I feel your pain-having bought the 3070 with high hopes,it is just not enough to run sims at high settings-especially for the reverb G2-I suspect the index may have lower demands.
You may need to consider investigating where you are bottle necked and try and address that step by step
Thanks for your suggestion, but please note I’ve tried iterating the graphics settings already. In fact, there are specific configurations that you can set that cause both low GPU and low CPU usage, yet the head tracking is still equally jerky and harsh as it was before. Hence, I don’t think it’s up to us to try to hack our way around this mess (excuse my strong words) in order to turn it into something less sickness-inducing; it seems to be flawed more fundamentally.
If you had the chance to directly compare the 3070 with another GPU, I’m happy to hear your experience though.
I remember testing it at the time, and while the performance wasn’t the best, there seemed to be some underlying issues. I too had issues where the cockpit looked extremely jerky, but the world itself looked smooth. It very much look like an issue with how the game was interacting with ASW so head movements were not being smoothed.
It was an experience I would definitely describe as unplayable, there certainly no way you could actually fly that experience in VR for more than a minute or two. Presumably the people who think it’s fine aren’t bumping into this specific issue.
My system has a 5950X and an RTX 3090. Even with the render scale at 50% and every detail on low I still couldn’t get it to be anything close to smooth. Works perfectly outside of VR though.
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If you want a well optimized VR game, go play Half Life Alyx I guess.
Like most other things with this software, VR is a half-done or 1/4-done feature released so they could get more hype for the product regardless of if it was actually ready.
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As iv said in a diffrent thread, Im runung the RTX 3080 card i7 9700k 32GB ram Quest 2 Link, Mostly fly the A320 it sure is jercky mostly on the ground, but i have high hopes this will get sorted in sim updates
Oculus software -
72Hz 4704 x 2384
100% In game render scale
most other settings on med/high apart from grass what i set to low
Oculus tray tool -
Default Super Sampling 1.6
Default ASW Mode Off
Bitrate 250
I cant stand flying on monitors since the VR update came out…Put me sitting in the plane anyday
Hi
I’m happy to share my personal experience-I upgraded from a 1070 to a 3070 and found the 3070 was OK for MSFS but inadequate for P3D which eats up 8GB VRAM in a jiffy.So I sold the 3070 and bought a 3090 (my specs are in my profile if you click my username) and find this gives very smooth frames even with the G2 with everything on ultra except the open xr multiplier which I have at 80.
Mind you I have had to use an older more popular graphics driver.
Hope this helps you!
I am curious, are you also , as a Quest 2 user, experiencing those regular head tracking loss that I and other people are constantly experiencing with the G2?
A typical example would be suddenly finding myself looking at a 90 degree angle towards to the right co-pilot cockpit window. Another symptom would be slow sliding through the cockpit when moving around.