I have just discovered VR with a Meta Quest 3S I was offered. Needless to say, I love it, but the 3S is not the best VR device, I understood it is low end, probably the cheapest. The image quality in VR is not that good, it is flyable, the frame rate is good, but the image is not crisp, steam gauges are hardly readable unless you get closer, some for the Garmin GNS 430/450.
As far as I know, this is because the 3S uses the same screens and Fresnel lenses as the Meta Quest 2, not as good as the Meta Quest 3. Before I upgrade my headset, I would like to know if improving my GPU would help. I have a 3070, not the best nowadays… If I upgrade to a 4090, can I expect a crisper image ?
If you have the same VR device, please let me know about your experience with the PC rig you have. Any feedback is greatly welcome.
Thank you for your feedback.
At this time, I don’t know if I’d better upgrade the GPU or the headset, I’m afraid my 3070 is too weak for a Quest 3 that has a higher resolution.
I use USB-C cable, which made a huge difference.
You say you use Virtual Desktop, do you mean that you keep a flat image displayed in the headset?
I tried this, and the image is absolutely perfect. I can use MSFS as if I had a giant screen, but it is not VR. When I switch to VR, the image quality decreases, even though the frame rate is very good (no motion sickness or anything)
If you do upgrade to a 4090 then I would say upgrade to a Quest 3 as well and download Open XR toolkit. While it’s no longer supported there are many videos out there of how to set it up. I have a Quest 3 and a 4070 and after adding Open XR toolkit it made a HUGE difference. You may see a difference with the 3S after upgrading your graphics card and adding Open XR toolkit, I’m not certain though. I played with the 3S and after looking at the image quality of the Quest 3 in comparison, I couldn’t go back to the 3S.
I’ve looked at the Pimax Crystal Light but not sure I’m ready to invest 3X’s the amount of a Quest 3. I looked at the reviews of the Pimax Crystal Light and it’s too much of mix bag of reviews for me to justify spending that much money. I’m enjoying my Quest 3 headset currently.
Thank you, this video is full of great information, very useful.
Nevertheless, when using Oculus Mirror, I realized the image was perfect on my screen and not that good in the headset. This proves it is because of the poor resolution of the screens and the poor Fresnel lenses, not as good as pancake lenses.
I can change whatever setting, the image is not crisper.
Thank you @Iflygary , this confirms what I was thinking. I think I will upgrade to a Quest 3, everybody says it is much better. Now the question is: will my 3070 be enough for this better headset with higher resolution? Not sure… So if I have to upgrade the GPU as well, it may be too expensive.
Sorry Coleo91, I misunderstood your response, I am still a beginner in VR… Now I understood Virtual Desktop is an independent application that replaces Meta Horizon Link that I use, and it is very good at compression so it let’s you use your headset without a cable.
I use Meta Link with a good USB cable, so the compression is optimal. I don’t mind having a cable when flying because I sit at my desk anyway. This is why I don’t think I need Virtual Desktop, I don’t think it would improve the MSFS experience with the 3S.
Keep in mind there are settings applicable to each card. Obviously you won’t be able to push the boundaries of every setting. However the cool thing about having different systems hardware is that there are such a huge number of settings you can scale up or down to get decent performance and visuals. Let YouTube be your best friend. Once you find something that visually suits you, stick with it. I think you would be fine.
I’ve used both Link and VD for a very long time and currently I can get very good results with both (Q2/Q3/QPro). For me, I prefer Link, but this is mainly a personal preference thing.
If I were you, I’d just stick with what you have and try to get the best out of it. If you have a good wifi6 setup (= PC ethernet conected to your wifi6 router’s separate 5Ghz band, with little other 5Ghz users nearby, and with your play area no more than 5m away, preferably in the same room) then you may want to try VD. I will say that I currently do get a bit better results with VD, compared to Air Link.
I doubt that upgrading your Q3s to a Q3 is going to be all that worthwhile, esp. given your current PC. Besides your rtx3070, I don’t know the rest of your specs (cpu/ram/psu) so it’s hard to suggest if you should look at upgrading your 3070. I’d guess that a logical upgrade would be a nice used rtx4070 (~$6-700?). This should give you ~30% better performance and also gives you 50% more VRAM. Also importantly, it won’t demand any additional power from your psu (maybe even a tiny bit less).
Really up to you to do your own research on all this imho (sorry for the tough love, lol!). Anyway, I hope this helps mate. Cheers.
Don’t for a minute think you are going to get 2D image quality on a Quest 3…it certainly is good, but not 2D clarity. I’ve been using a Quest 3 for about 8 months now, and am now used to the difference, now it doesn’t concern me. I now only fly in VR. As the guys above have posted, just keep playing with the settings until you find your sweet spot. I use Virtual Desktop via wifi, with RTX4080 super.
Thanks, I think I will give VD a try. After all, if I can get the same result without a cable, that’s better. My PC is connected through Ethernet and my router is just next to it, Wifi 5, less than 5 meters so it should be fine.
Regarding my specs, I have a CPU AMD Ryzen 5900X with 16 GB of RAM. It used to be a good PC when MSFS 2020 was released, today it is a low-end
I think I will keep my Q3S until I can fully upgrade the PC. The option of a 4070, which doesn’t require an upgrade of the power supply may be a very good option, I will think about it.
Hi WobblyDuck,
I am surprised because everybody says the Q3 is much better than 3S because of higher res and better pancake lenses. I can understand it will never be 2D clarity, but if it is better than 3S, it may be worth it. I would like to give it a try before upgrading, but I don’t think they have MSFS running in VR in stores
I have a Quest 2, so it’s a lower resolution, and the image isn’t blurry at all.
Check your headset frequency settings (75, 80, 90, 120…), and forget about OpenXR Toolkit, which is completely outdated. There’s VD (Virtual Desktop) which, for 20 bucks, is a game-changer; there’s simply nothing better for Quest.
With VD, you can adjust the codecs, resolution, FOV, etc.
For your information, on Quest 2, I have almost everything set to high with an RTX 2080, and I get a solid 70 fps with VD. I mean a crisp, clear screen.
I am using a RX9070XT at the moment with a Intel Xeon W3275M powered Apple Mac Pro 2019, this CPU obviously isn’t the last word in performance for Flight Simulator. The RX9070XT (Asrock) was selected because it was the right length and would fit in the Mac Pro The price was okay.
I also have high speed WIFI - while the Mac Pro is directly connected to the router. I have tried connecting the Quest 3 with a USB-C to ethernet adapter, doesn’t really seem necessary with speed WIFI.
What I did find worked best is using the Virtual Deskop app - seems to give very clear images with reasonable frame rates, even in airliners like the Airbus A380. I tried the original Meta app with a Quest 3 and it’s just not as good as Virtual Desktop.
What does help is the foveated rendering settings.
I get stable 40-50fps. The only problem I get is the memory warnings (GPU memory) because the RX9070XT has only 16GB VRAM. I can use the default W6800X Radeon Pro (32GB) but it is a bit slower.
Yeah Virtual Desktop is the way to go. It even supports nice features like tracking wherever your hands are and showing a passthrough window around them (with customisable transparency) so you can see your physical controls. Or you can cut out a permanent window.
Yes, I have just bought it and it is much better, definitely worth the price. I didn’t experience all the possible options yet but they look very interesting.
I disabled the hand tracking because instead of seeing my hands, I was seeing the controllers. There is probably an option to fix this.
I also saw the FPS is set to 90, much more than what my PC can do. It gives a smooth experience, but in case of quick image changes (during a turn for example), it makes the animation slightly blurry, like jaggy. Is there a way to lower the FPS to 72?
There’s an option to disable controller tracking - it’ll still follow (and passthrough) your hands so long as that’s enabled too.
For the framerate, there’s two options…one that relates to showing the desktop and one for actual VR. I can’t remember the tab names, but you want to set the fps on the same page that gives options for resolution (Godlike etc).
