Motion Reprojection & Task Manager - What's the link?

User Support Hub Virtual Reality (VR)
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I’ve seen a few people able reproduce the same issue as me where they have to open task manager before MR will start working correctly.

Does anyone know the link? It happens with or without the toolkit. It’s persisted through multiple nvidia drivers releases, open xr revisions, sim updates, etc.

It’s not 100% repeatable but there is something there, some kind of priority scheduling perhaps.

My CPU/GPU use may be low and sparodic and MR isn’t working, take of my headset, open task manager, view the process, sometimes you have to change the priority sometimes not, but that usually does the trick, cou and gou use go back up and stabilize as you’d expect and FS is as smooth as it should be again.

The kicker is with heavier aircraft (a320 vs props) even something as going to the external view and back in cab be enough to cause MR to drop out again, then it’s back to task manager, click around, and the smoothness is back. For how long, hard to say. It can be the type of thing that can keep occurring during a flight.

I know my PC can run MR at the settings I have but then it won’t because of whatever issue is being solved by this weird task manager work around.

looking for help or oven just discussion. Have you experienced the same?

3080, G2, i5 9600k,

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I experience MR going in and out all the time. Typically when I first load into a flight with MR enabled, my framerate fluctuates between 14-25 fps or so for the first few minutes. After a few minutes everything stabilizes and I get a nice smooth 23 or 30 fps with MR working perfectly. If I exit VR and re-enter VR, the same thing happens. I have absolutely no idea why it happens…but it’s really annoying. Like you said, I know I’ve got the specs to make it work as intended. I’ve tried so many different combinations of settings to get it working properly, and nothing. Even with setting every single ingame setting to LOW, the issue persists.

I never knew about the Task Manager work around, so I will certainly give that a shot and report back. Hopefully it works for me as a temporary work around, because I really prefer using MR.

I’m on a 3080 with a G2 also with a Ryzen 3700x.

This does not happen with MR disabled. If MR is disabled, I get my typical framerate immediately on load in.

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Yes. Exactly my issue. The task manager hack really just seems to act as a shortcut to the smooth frames.

It’s not 100% every time but like you, i’ve set everything to low trying to figure out what the hell is wrong.

I even disabled all the anti virus stuff as I thought that was interfering but no luck there.

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You’re not crazy… this is a thing. I have been driving myself completely nuts trying to figure this one out. There is SOMETHING going on when opening Task Manager and leaving it running in the background. I managed to reduce this… and i’m still currently testing this whacky configuration, where I have set CPU priority for background (instead of foreground) processes, and running MSFS in Windowed mode.

Upon first load in (from a fresh startup) I was blown away to see 45FPS MR sitting on the runway, with stormy weather and just about all settings maxed out in MSFS. I have never seen that before. But after a while… it will go derpy and drop to 15-22 and get the wobbles… ALT-TAB to Task Manager, watch the performance charts and then BAM, Frame Rate climbs back up to 30 reprojected.

I run OpenXR unlocked so i’m either “locked” on to 23.5, 30, or 45. (45 is extremely rare unless i’m looking straight up in to the sky) BUT, I wish I could figure out what the link is between task manager being open in the background and performance. It’s not placebo… something is going on.

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I joined the su10 beta to try dx12 and dlss but it’s the same thing. @BlueSkyPilot416 recommended deleting a userconfig.opt file and I also saw someone recommend deleting content.xml. I’m going to try those tonight.

Have you also noticed your frame rates pulse in a repeating pattern while GPU and CPU are not really being taxed.

I can make the simple planes work out in rural areas but complex jets or photogrammetry areas have no chance. Glad others are experiencing this too.

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Thanks for the tip on the userconfig.opt and content.xml file. I’m going to try it… particularly for another issue I noticed switching to SU10. Before I joined the beta, I successfully killed the EyeAdaptation setting so the brightness/gamma would stop auto adjusting when looking down at the cockpit and back out the window. It’s perma enabled now, even with it set to =0. SO i’m gonna try blasting that file and see what happens. I HATE that EyeAdaptation effect… hate hate hate it.

I had to hack the registry to disable Foveated Rendering, to even be able to switch in to VR when trying DX12. The first thing I noticed was that there is a “smoothness” to it, less stutters… hard to explain it, but the FPS is lower. Not to mention ErdTrees popping up in random areas. If I load in Las Vegas, there is a mountain renders that has an elevation of Jupiter. Had to revert back to DX11.

The frames with MR enabled are just odd. I can get 30FPS solid, almost 45FPS with Motion Reprojection, when the main core (the first CPU core for me) is around 60% and my 3080TI is 90-96% which is fantastic. And then… when I see the issue crop up where i’m suddenly getting 17 FPS… my CPU (main core) is bored around 40%, and the GPU is sitting at 50%. It doesn’t make a lick of sense at all. Click in and out of the Task Manager, Alt-Tab back and forth and then it snaps back to 30FPS.

It’s random. It can be exasperated when flying in heavy cities/photogrammetry, but other times, it can tank for no reason. But for the most part, my experience is very enjoyable and the visuals are incredible. VR is truly amazing in MSFS.

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Make sure you don’t use the add on Toolkit for OpenXR. Presently it doesn’t work in SU10. All u have to do is “disable it”. You don’t have to delete it.

Best of luck tonight!!!

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I have the toolkit disabled but some of it works with the beta. Locking MR and FFR for example but neither add much performance to a seeminlg CPU bound scenario.

Deleting the userconf.opt did reset my graphics settings but no worries as I am always trying to strike a balance. I can’t say if it made a difference or not honestly.

@iBeej I noticed that eye grading effect too. I’d like to turn that off too, it’s too noticable.

Performance in rural areas is beautiful. Agreed. But MR can tank due to the phase of the moon it seems.

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@iBeej The eye grading effect is from DLSS over emphasizing the effect. Not a DX12/SU10 thing per say.

After lots of fooling around tonight I have been able to get MR working pretty consistently.

I opened XR Developer tools and disabled my custom render scale of 100%. Left preview mode enabled and MR to Always On. I thought I’d see what happens without forcing it to 100% (I know it sets it to about 70% but I though DLSS might work better/differently Or something.

Using DX11. Set DLSS to Balanced and Sharpening to 150.

Left the Open XR Toolkit disabled.

Cleared all mods except the VR prop mod and Bijans Seasons.

In the 172 around Megeve / Courcheval with some clouds It’s as smooth as ever. I see between 30 & 45 frames and the same story while over Manhattan.

I’m not going to add anything until tomorrow and retry the FBWa320 and see if I have any luck.

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Interested to hear how further testing goes for you.

I’ve currently just turned it off MR entirely and I’m living with the terrible ghosting / judder while taxing around large airports. That’s the main time I REALLY wish I had working MR. Other than that, things are smooth without it once airborne.

I will say, enabling “depth” reprojection via the in-game option, DEFINITELY helps alleviate cockpit instrument ghosting. It basically eliminates it, with very little artifacting / wobble, at least for me.

If I could get 100% working MR all the time, I would certainly use it. Right now, it just seems like too much chasing my tail and endless tweaking to accomplish, and I really just want to fly.

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I spent a few hours again last night troubleshooting this issue where opening the Task Manager improves performance. This typically becomes a problem when I’m in an area that is graphic intensive, or CPU intensive… lots of buildings, traffic, etc. Last night, it was Tokyo (with storm clouds) and I was getting drops to 11 FPS with MR. If I opened Task Manager and brought it to the foreground, the FPS jumped back up to 22.5, and then 30 FPS and stayed there. Well this sucks, cuz I need the mouse to click around in the cockpit… simply click on the MSFS window to interact with the cockpit (which sends the Task Manager to the background) and… 11-17 FPS.

Even looking at the GPU utilization history, when the chart line is at 50%, I’m getting 11-17 FPS, switch to Task Manager and bring it to foreground, it jumps to 70% (straight up) and my MR is “locked” back up to 30 FPS. So in the spirit of this thread’s main topic, the Task Manager is a thing.

So I started playing around with CPU affinity. I set MSFS to CPU0 only. Yup, getting 2 FPS LOL!! Set processor affinity to 0 and 1. FPS got better. 0,1,2,3 and was back to 30 FPS. I learned that MSFS for sure is using 4 threads (cores loosely speaking) at the very least, and I believe it’s actually upwards of 6. 4 pretty heavily and another 2.

So I set MSFS to use my top performing cores (which happens to be 0,1,2,3 and 12,13) and then I set the DWM.EXE process to use everything OTHER than those cores. The reason I did this is, because DWM (Desktop Window Manager) is what WMR (Windows Mixed Reality) is also tied to as a system process. This actually had a positive effect. I was able to fly around Tokyo at 30 FPS almost everywhere at 30FPS MR, and it was glorious. It did drop to 22.5 in the most dense part of the city. And this actually worked pretty well, even with the Task Manager closed.

Sort of…

So I loaded up the achilles heel of my system, which is Las Vegas with FlyTampa scenery. This area kills my machine with that scenery. I did get an improvement in performance, but was back to needing the ■■■■ Task Manager open again to get 22.5 FPS. And even then, it would regularly drop to 17 FPS at certain areas over the strip.

So I went to OpenXR and disabled Motion Reprojection. And then Disabled it in the Toolkit just to see where my frames were at without MR. (Thinking CPU utilization to run MR is just nuts in certain areas in MSFS) And my frames were at 45-50FPS without MR. The MOST I could get the framerate to drop was down to 30.

^^ This doesn’t make sense to me guys. If the lowest I could get my frames to go was 30 with MR off, then why am I dropped to 17 with MR on? OH and again, why having the ■■■■ task manager open makes a substantial difference on performance when trying to use MR? If I fly in a less dense, more normal area, I can run MR at 30 for hours and it’s just fantastic.

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It doesn’t have to be the task manager. You just need to cause the game to yield focus to some other (maybe high-priority) program. For WMR users, a much quicker way to get back stable frames is to press the Windows key on the controller (to bring out the Windows interface) and then press it again (to go back to the game).

Nobody knows why, but it’s been like that since the beginning. It could be that the game is not clearing up the VRAM in a timely manner.

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I have some good news, my team has been looking at this issue (the inconsistent frame rate until Task Manager is brought up, and a few other variations of this scenario), and we are testing a fix for it as I speak. I’m hopeful that we will have a fix as part of our next OpenXR for WMR runtime release (112) early/mid-August.

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That’s wild!! Thank you guys.

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Thank you. To be clear “my team” here means the OpenXR for WMR engineers at Microsoft. This is my day job, not related to OpenXR Toolkit.

The fix will be delivered as an update to the OpenXR for Windows Mixed Reality package, first as a Preview (using OpenXR Tools for Windows Mixed Reality to enable the Preview runtime) then later available to all by default.

More details on the release process here:

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@mbucchia dude, I could kiss you. (With your consent of course) haha!!

But seriously, this is wonderful news. I was just about to post here that I experimented some more last night and re-enabled HAGS, and that seemed to help. I think… I need to do more testing when I get home today, but it caused some crashing issues after I re-enabled it, so all of this is maddening.

By the way, I haven’t had a chance to thank you for all your hard work on the Toolkit. I’m a giant nerd and even watched your dev interview explaining how some of this stuff works and the history of it. Thanks for all your hard work!

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Hi @mbucchia, this is really great news! I also suffer from this since i started VR a year ago. I hope the fix will do it, then it gets much more comfortable.

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I just tried and disabled Game Mode in Windows. I think this helped (at least this time, you never know).

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Parts, I have a very similar problem as is described in the topic. In the link a short video with a description of the problem.
PC Spec:
i5 9600k
RTX 2070s
16gb

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Welcome to the forum! Great video. That is exactly our issue albeit it 2d and not VR which is interesting as @mbucchia believes his team was going to fix this via an OpenXR update.

This could this mean it’s a sim issue OR an OpenXR thing? Maybe both.