I just wanted to let the community know what worked for me to get very good performance in MSFS VR.
First my specs:
Rampage V Extreme MB
i7 6950x OC 4.4Ghz
32 GB DDR4 3200Mhz
RTX3090 FTW3 Undervolted to 1890Mhz .818V
HTC Vive Pro 1
Intel wireless for Vive
I’ve been trying to get MSFS to run smoothly in VR like many of you. Tried OpenXR toolkit and guides with little success. Decided to use SteamVR instead, to see what would happen.
With my headset I require SteamVR. It cannot seem to natively use OpenXR. So I decided to use SteamVR to upscale the image to 140%. In MSFS I set my AA to DLSS Quality. I went into my SteamVR settings for the game (Per application Video Settings) as well and limited FPS to 45, disabled all SteamVR motion smoothing as well.
Steamvr Application Settings:
Motion Smoothing: Disabled
Custom Res Mulitplier: 140%
Field of view: 100%
Override world scale: Off
Legacy Repro Mode: Off
Throttling Behavior: Fixed
Lock App framerate : 45FPS
Additional prediction: 0.00
After Enabling these settings MSFS became clear as day in the headset, as well as very smooth except in the most demanding airports and cities. I’ve also disabled hyperthreading on my CPU (10 core 20 thread) and found this helped CPU frametimes by a few milliseconds. Also removed my wireless VR for the Vive Pro as it was also consuming precious CPU time needed to meet 22ms render target.
I use FPSVR in Steam to check system info. I’ve found you need to balance GPU and CPU use to be below 22ms frametime.
MSFS Settings (VR)
Nvidia DLSS
Quality
AMD FX Sharpening 100
Repro mode Depth
World Scale 100
Reflex low latency On
Terrain LOD 200
Object LOD 150
I have almost all settings on Ultra and turned up reflections and shadow maps as well.
I have disabled openXR toolkit as it didn’t give me any discernable performance boost. Likely due to needing SteamVR for my headset.
By enabling the SteamVR settings above and using DLSS in game were the biggest performance and clarity wins I have seen with MSFS. Hopefully some of you find this useful in your journey for acceptable VR performance with SteamVR headsets.
The biggest factor I found was getting CPU frametime below 22ms, otherwise the CPU cannot supply data to the GPU in time for 22ms (45FPS) and FPS will drop.
I found the GPU can be undervolted and underclocked in MSFS. Locking to 45FPS will generally keep the GPU below 100% utilization in most areas and terrain. We are horribly CPU bound in MSFS and CPU is the limiting factor in VR FPS.
I am now locked to 45FPS and very smooth in most places. Clarity in the headset is unbelievably good, as well as instrument readability.
