My 2070 SUPER VR settings and suggestion (Reverb G2 - WMR)

[CptLucky8]

@stekusteku @sirpelvis1986

One step at a time!

First, motion smoothing has come a long way with WMR compared to when I started this topic, to the point I find it now usable with the G2 and my test system (9700K+2070S). Even if you don’t prefer using it, it might be worth it you give it a try in adjusting your settings exactly like in my post above to get started and see how does it feel for you. To me, it is much better now compared to 6 months ago, and I find it similar to my Index experience albeit in adjusting a few FS2020 settings differently in order to compensate for their differences (NB: if you’re trying my settings above on similar hardware - in terms of perf - beware and stick to these settings first because some are really just “too much” to sustain motion smoothing)

Having said this, I’ve experimented a few hours without motion smoothing but not enough to conclude anything major for now. In short, the settings above are upping my previous G2 recommendation, thanks to SU5, but the resolution advices when not using motion smoothing are still mostly relevant (in their explanation i.e. outside vs inside vs EFIS legibility). Compared to 6 months ago though, I’ve been able to run a few times with TAA100+OXR100 without motion smoothing and with my settings above with the FBW 320 at an acceptable fps (and juddering) but only when higher up in the sky. On the ground at a complex airport, forget about it.

[CptLucky8]

@CptLucky8

I’ve posted a few days ago I’m now done testing the Index with SU5 and I’ll start trying the G2. Well, I’ve been trying the last 2 days and here are some preliminary comments.

I’ve forgotten to add this observation:

With the G2, unlike the Index, I’ve found that with motion smoothing and when on the ground at a complex airport, say when looking through the side window (it is more visible this way), the rendering is like working in burst mode. That is you get a few frames smoothed out, then it is as if the time is slowing down, then there is a burst of frame and you’re back to the cycle smoothed, slow, burst, smoothed, slow, burst…

I didn’t take the time to open up any GPU or frame timing tool or anything when this was happening, but this ressemble in its visible effects as if the GPU is struggling loading data from RAM to VRAM and during this time, the bus and the GPU are busy and the rendering has a hard time to keeping up. It is just how it looks like, not what is really happening (or at least I’m not sure what is happening really).

I’ve found out though that when this is happening a way to cure it is to change the Terrain LOD setting to a lower value, like 50% or even the minimum. When you do this, it won’t change much the visibility in the distance because you’re on the ground at the airport surrounded by buildings or other clutter, but this will instantly stop the smoothed, slow, burst cycle (at least it did to me).

I’m yet to find a more permanent solution to this, and this is not happening at all with the Index/SteamVR either. The latter seems less affected by this even if running at higher resolution probably because I’m also running it at a 5:1 motion smoothing ratio instead of the default 3:1 (or 4:1) with WMR, which gives more breath per frame. The Index on my test system is not immune to slow downs at heavy airports, and this shows in the form of motion smoothing having a hard time keeping up, but in this case it is really convenient and quick to just press the headset mounted button to open the SteamVR settings and change them live to disable motion smoothing temporarily.

[BABaracuss]

I get the exact same thing. I’ve just chosen not to use motion reprojection for the time being. When you get the view right it works great but it’s these bursts I find really take away from the experience. I wish I could find a permanent solution as when it is functioning as intended it looks good now. I’ve also noticed in general that wmr reproj has improved quite a bit overall in the last several months. I just wish this aspect of it could be improved. This may sound contradictory but I find when flying around with it enabled one moment I’m thinking this is great and then a few moments later when I turn my head it’s… not so good.

Btw thanks for all the work you’ve done investigating these vr settings for months now. Appreciated.

[Jonny5Alive6618]

I have to agree with most of these findings. The sharpness gained by disabling motion smoothing is immediately lost as soon as you look at buildings and trees below and they are just a vibrating juddery mess. With motion reprojection off, when banking the aircraft while looking out the window you see the vibrating effect. Then it smooths out once you stop banking. It’s the transition from aircraft rolling to a static angle is what bugs me the most. I cant change my bank and look outside at the same time.

When you lower your resolutions and TLOD and the smoothness kicks back in you can see the buildings and trees correctly, albeit a little softer.

I was using 40 OXR & 100 TAA which gave me enough headroom for the settings below but it’s right on the edge of working:
Ambient Occlusion - LOW
Clouds - HIGH / ULTRA

But i also lowered:
Reflections - OFF (Too broken to look good IMO)
Buildings - MED
Grass - LOW
Trees - MED/HIGH.ULTRA - (Not much difference IMO)
Water - MED

I will be trying @CptLucky8 settings tonight and expect them to work well. 40% OXR is too blurry and 50% is a good bit better. I will miss the Ultra clouds though. After all the trials and tribulations its nice to see some consistency appearing between users with similar hardware and results shared.

9600K @5GHz + 2070 Super

[CptLucky8]

@Jonny5Alive6618
You’re right, it would be good to see more consistency between users and it seems it is getting there when comparing your experience.

For example there has been a lot of changes in the way some settings are now working. Buildings and Trees for example are now independent from TLOD and this decoupling is helping getting less diverging results I believe (and also why I can now push all of Buildings+Trees+Grass to HIGH on the same hardware). Reflections are really not taking much cost though and this is the kind of setting where given the SU5 bug introduced with reflection you’d choose more based on taste and/or area you fly, more than for fps saving reasons in my opinion.

However ambient occlusion is a clear fps killer to me when using motion smoothing, both G2 and Index. Given how this effect is computed in practice, either or both using a compute shader and large render buffer reads, but also it can’t be amortized among many frames easily and it is computed nearly last in the chain, I believe it might explain it’s higher impact on the motion smoothing. Because both are struggling with the pixels near the end of the frame rendering cycle right before and after the “present”, they might also be both be using the same silicon without enough “time” between the two (I just try to keep it simple here - this is just speculation not a FS2020 fact either). In effect, you have to “present” the view earlier in VR than in 3D but there is no video card “tick” you can use, just heuristics. And if prior the present you’re taking just a tad too much time, you’ll present to late and won’t give enough time for the motion smoothing to do its task between the submit, and the actual real view “present”.

Unfortunately for Clouds, I can really measure its impact especially with motion smoothing. With the Index I can use HIGH more often than with the G2 (complex airport ground and aircraft) but I believe it is only due to the fact SteamVR can motion smooth up to 6:1 ratio (I use 5:1) whereas WMR maximum is 4:1 IIRC.

Probably what would be a better set of settings is one preserving Clouds HIGH always even if reducing other things which are as equally important for the pilot. This might be a next goal I’ll try later but I’m really open to any suggestions here, and maybe it would be easier finding this collectively in starting with a common known good working settings giving similar results to everyone. I hope the above will prove giving similar results to most so that we can eventually consider these the basis to start experimenting from for example.

[Ianrivsmith]

I have a 3090, and 9900KS 5GHZ, 64GB RAM. G2. I get a rubber banding effect whenever I try and use motion re-projection. So, I just leave it off.

[Jonny5Alive6618]

@CptLucky8

However ambient occlusion is a clear fps killer to me when using motion smoothing

Oh i agree, at first i prioritized having this on (low) as I liked the look but I actually turned it off last night while playing around and quickly adjusted to it, or should I say, quickly adjusted to the smoothness that came from disabling it!

I see Nvidia are predicting GPU shortages to continue throughout 2022 so i may as well find some graphics settings that work and get used to 'em.

[MSFSimmer]

Thank you for all your contributions. They have been a great help. I wasn’t able to sign up to the forums till now but I avidly followed your posts and used your recommended settings as I also have a 2070 super with a Reverb G2. One question. Does your finding of in-game 70% render scaling being the sweet spot for per pixel performance rendering stil stand or has that changed? I’ve been using 100% OXR and 70% TAA even after SU5, but now want to apply your latest settings. Thanks again.

[CptLucky8]

@MSFSimmer

Does your finding of in-game 70% render scaling being the sweet spot for per pixel performance rendering stil stand or has that changed?

Thank you for your kind words!

I believe I’ve commented about these earlier today, a few posts above answering the question about my settings without motion smoothing. The problem with TAA different than 100 is that it is still not good enough in the end especially with EFIS. This probably is where it might be important adjusting per you aircraft preferences but the goal to me was finding an ideal compromise working with anything I can use, at every type of airports. If you’re mostly if not only flying the C152 classic gauges over small airfields I’m certain you can push some of these settings or the resolution higher, but even in this case, and given the actual differences of legibility in practice, I’m really starting to consider the different approach to this question is probably better in practice and less frustrating overall:

@CptLucky8

The only SS settings worth the legibility differences to me are 50% or 100%. other scaling values are showing some form of limited distortion and/or “non verging” projection matrices. It is hard to describe but in the end I’m considering anything between 50% and 100% might not be worth it. In other words: choose 50% to give room to your hardware and push the rendering quality for better visuals, or use 100% if your video card allow and adjust the rendering quality up to the point you can still keep motion smoothing overall.

Also don’t underestimate this alternative I wasn’t considering before:

@CptLucky8

If you can further push your video card (most likely you’re with a 30XX instead of the 2070S), I find much better visuals using TAA 150% and OXR 50% than FS2020 TAA 100 and OXR 100. A viable “in between” is TAA 125% and OXR 50%.

You might like it, or not, but it is worth trying to see for yourself whether you do! (TAA150+OXR50)

[whitav8]

@CptLucky8 and Jonny5Alive6618,
I have a 9700K at 5Ghz, RTX2070, Reverb G1V2 and recently with Tmobile 5G Internet Gateway (no wires!) to get 200Mbps internet - a system similar to CptLucky8. I have been avoiding motion reprojection because when I can’t get 22.5 (90/4), it looks worse than 36fps with no reprojection. I also have been enjoying helicopter-flying the Airbus H135 helicopter from HypePerformanceGroup:

Airbus H135 Helicopter Project » Microsoft Flight Simulator

but any yaw rotation has been a “stuttery mess”. However, as many of us have, we have been awaiting our resident guru CptLucky8’s latest settings for SU5 since we know he does detailed research - I have a PC similar to his except that I only have a 2070 non-super. Anyway, I faithfully matched his settings and started up at ORBX Santa Barbara, CA (my old alma mater) in the H135 and immediately didn’t like it - a lot of stuttering - but I checked the render scaling resolution and lowered it from 2100x2100 to 1800x1800 - and wow - motion reprojection locked in and I could rotate in yaw without any stutter as well as look sideways with image clarity. AMAZING. I added the OpenXR tool setting for frame timing overlay and that allowed me to more accurately adjust the performance so as to stay “in the blue”. I really appreciated the comment by Jonny5Alive6618 above that points out the subtle unfocus of objects due to no motion reprojection. I had not thought that through and so now I can use the H135 heli so comfortably at very low altitude and land in small areas. In the Santa Barbara area there are beautiful mountains and ocean coastlines - so lots to look at.
Thanks again to CptLucky8 who helps us all. Yes and it is good that we are all getting similar performance - I just have to dial back due to not having the RTX2070Super.

[Jonny5Alive6618]

I can only imagine how bad it must be in a helicopter!

Glad you got it working. The motion Reprojection truly is magical once you get the settings sorted.

Too many people don’t understand the overhead it needs and so don’t free up the required resources.

I think those seeing excessive wobbling / rubber banding (I used to be in this camp) may benfit from lowering resolution or one or two other settings one notch more to allow the GPU more headway to better calculate the interpolated frames.

[MrMartin0815]

6- WMR/G2 camera tracking seems to has improved as well since the last time I’ve used it. It still has some perceivable but limited jittering sometimes, and this is highly tamed and nearly non-existent when using motion smoothing though. When you’re used to the Index and its rock solid headset tracking and precision, you can’t help noticing this but although it was really annoying a few months ago, I find it good enough with the G2 now, enough to not be bothering much about it in most cases.

Same impression for me - better/smoother tracking but still not the same smooth level like my Rift S.

[stekusteku]

I’m away from my sim now, so I can’t check visually, but it’s hard to me to understand why would you oversample the TAA to 125% or even 150%, only to later cut it in half with OXR 50%?
Shouldn’t this result in “pixelated” display in the G2, if it is being driven with half the native resolution? Or is it rather 125%*50%=62.5%?
This still seems low compared to your pre SU5 recommendation of TAA 100% and OXR 70-80%. Shouldn’t this result in low quality scenery? Is this a compromise required to enable reprojection?

Should such (TAA 125%, OXR 50%) setting be good for EFIS or scenery? My experience so far told me that scenery quality depends mostly on OXR.

My use case:
I have 3070 and fly mostly steam gauges equipped planes like C172 classic or Just Flight’s Turbo Archer with GNS530 as the sole glass display. I typically operate from rural or regional airports (e.g. Orbx), visiting photogrammetry areas occasionally (e.g. Copenhagen or London). I typically fly below 5000 ft, occasionally some IFR up to FL140.
I spend most of the time looking outside, as you should when flying VFR (I’m RW VFR-only pilot).

[CptLucky8]

@stekusteku
This is a very interesting subject matter, further compounded by different factors and where theory and practice sometimes are telling different stories. Here are a few elements behind my reasoning.

First this is a recommendation not just when using motion smoothing, although in this case it is helping because motion smoothing computation depends on the OXR resolution, because it is computing motion vectors from the final output image. This means the smaller the OXR resolution, the better for motion smoothing. Of course a 30XX will do better than the 2070S here and will give more leeway in term of resolution.

Another factor not to forget about is the “quality” of the FS2020 rendering engine. I’m not talking PBR or nice clouds here, but signal to noise ratio per pixel instead - or something along these lines. In other words, how much of each pixel is actually representing the entirety of the visual signal underlying that pixel. For example, if you have two vertical lines at a distance and there is only 1 pixel covering the two lines (mathematical ideal lines), the only way to faithfully representing the entirety of the signal represented by this pixel is to average all the contributors (the 2 lines). There are theories behind signal sampling thanks to Nyquist which tells you need at least 2x the maximum linear signal frequency (4x therefore for bilinear sampling - X and Y in a plane). As a matter of fact, super sampling 200% is a minimum for any renderer but it is expensive, and this is why there is a ton of techniques to make quasi similar looking renders with much less computations

Finally let’s not forget one factor for such recommendation is the G2 itself. The only reason OXR100 is about 1.5x the actual panel res (2160x2160) is to compensate for lens distortion. In short, you take the flat projected image, then you have to spherically distort it in an opposite direction than the lenses distortion, so that when viewed through the lens, both distortions cancel out. In other words, you have to over sample the rendering if you don’t want to loose details at the center. But here is another factor that kicks in with the G2: its narrow sweet spot and narrow circle of details. In practice if you’re displaying the image at 1.5x res to compensate the lens distortion, you’ll most likely observe a small highly detailed circle in the center and the surroundings will be perceived as blurry by contrast.

So what does all this has anything to do with the question?

In short here is what I think is happening when using TAA150+OXR50 (given the above):

• you’re sampling each pixel with more data and therefore you’re getting more details per pixel
• in addition with OXR50 you’re still rendering as many pixels as the native panel resolution. In practice it looks like you’re still getting more information per pixel
• super sampling TAA150 is also averaging out the tree leaves and all the transparent edges better. In FS2020 they cut corners for speed and there is no real alpha blending but cookie cut leaves instead.
• finally, the small circle of details is less apparent and the image looks more seamless on a wider area outside the small circle.

So in practice, I don’t find you’re trading much quality due to the lower resolution because it helps lowering the G2 sweet spot flaws, while at the same time giving better signal sampling and while also being comfortable to enable motion smoothing on the 2070S.

But beyond the theory and my own personal interpretation of the optical and digitized signals going through the chain, it is just best to try it out and compare how you feel it is.

Having said this make no mistake: it is helping getting an overall better VR experience with the G2 and the 2070S to me, under a certain number of constraints and goals. If you’re hardware allows you might still want to compare then TAA200+OXR50 vs TAA100+OXR100. You might be surprised!

In any case the general principles from my initial posts remain: you need TAA100 at a minimum for the best EFIS legibility. In this case you’d adjust OXR res. to compensate within your hardware limits. You can still find TAA70+OXR70 pleasant enough even with EFIS for example, but you can’t beat TAA10 there. After a while with the Index and the G2 it is still remarkably better with TAA100. Maybe once they really take seriously the idea to implement FSR at least (1 day work according to most devs) and DLSS (2 days work now with the latest SDK), we’ll have other means to compare, but although the Asobo TAAU is quite good in itself in 3D, it is lacking in VR.

I think that what could be valuable in our collective struggle with VR at this stage, is that we can compare apples with apples. In other words, the main difference between our systems is mostly the CPU+GPU combo and this is what affects the most the end result. I believe if all of you reading this could start with the same settings as a basis, just to have a common reference to build upon, and then try to see up to which point you could adjust/balance TAA and OXR resolution with and without motion smoothing, this should give serious trends and hints about what we could adjust further and why.

I’m not saying my recommendations are the best in absolute though, but I’m putting enough reasoning and testing behind to validate some choices, not just by their hypothetical book value but by their actual technical and physical implications in practice. I might be wrong in many of my assumptions as well but given the feedback on “My VR Topics” I believe I’m on good tracks overall. The settings I’m recommending above are showing extremely good similar results between the G2 and the Index and this further tells me they are hitting the sweet spot for the 2070S in terms of GPU use with SU5. Since most are also already set to High there is not much need to try building a settings combo with ULTRA in mind either. High is enough and I’ve been even surprised to realize texture synthesis is as good in High or Med even with the G2 resolution. Therefore from these settings, it appears the most valuable opportunities are about resolution and motion smoothing, and this most likely will only be video card dependent, and what we can try collectively to finding out if we experiment with the same settings as the same basis!

PS: since the time I’ve posted this, I’ve made further progress with this question and I can now run with motion smoothing enabled with OXR100 and adjusting the rest

[stekusteku]

The explanation regarding OXR < 100% vs. the G2 perceived sweet spot (relatively small) is really convincing me to do some testing when I will be back home. The small sweet spot and the sharp transition from clear in the center to blurry outside is IMHO the biggest G2 flaw (however the more I use G2 the more my brain is getting used to it).

[CptLucky8]

@stekusteku (and all others)
Even if you’re not convinced a priori, testing it and reporting your impressions is still valuable for all of us!

I don’t want to keep your hopes too high either, it won’t “cure” the flaw, but I find it compensates for it enough to make it much less distracting let alone the additional gains in doing so!

[BearsAreCool510]

Interesting, thanks. I’ll try 125TAA/OXR50 next time I run the sim and report back. I usually do 100/70

[Ianrivsmith]

So. I use a 3090. 100in sim and 100 in openXR.
You’re saying I should run 150 in sim and 50 in open XR?

[CptLucky8]

@BearsAreCool510
Actually depending on your GPU you might even try TAA150+OXR50 and compare with TAA100+OXR70 in terms of visuals and perf. If you couldn’t use motion smoothing before, with OXR50 instead of 70 you should get more room to enabling it.

@Ianrivsmith
I’m only suggesting to try, compare how it looks likes and how it runs, and report the outcome in order to build up together a better understanding of the limiting factors. With your 3090 in particular, if you can run TAA100+OXR100 already with a 3090, you might want to try with TAA200+OXR50 and TAA150+OXR50 and let us know how it goes in comparison with TAA100+OXR100.

To all:

The idea I’d like to introduce with my recent posts above is to build up knowledge in comparing most CPU+GPU combos against a known base settings configuration, which is tuned for giving its best with motion smoothing on an average setup (9700K+2070S). It is not a low spec settings configuration either because most are set High and are delivering a very good and solid VR experience in itself. In other words, using these settings shouldn’t lower you VR experience a lot in terms of visuals, and for many of us they are in fact often better overall.

This is only because SU5 is now allowing to push these settings further than before, that it is starting to make sense to me the real differentiator remaining would be resolution vs motion smoothing, thus the idea to report what each of your CPU+GPU combos are delivering with the same high settings (with motion smoothing). In building up this knowledge it will be easier to also derive other recommendations without motion smoothing.

Otherwise my comment about using TAA > 100% is really a novel thing I’ve discovered thanks to the higher res of the G2 which I couldn’t see as clearly with the Index. In trying to make sense of it, I realized I might find the visuals are better for all the rational reasons I’ve explained above which are in this case aligning together and producing the end result I’m observing. However it might just be me hallucinating or wanting to believe in a miracle (placebo). Since I can’t discard this possibility, and the fact that higher range GPU could be in turn much more capable of pushing better results with TAA100+OXR100 and motion smoothing, it might end up this idea of TAA>100 would only be beneficial to lower tier GPUs.

This is why in my opinion it is important we do share these experiences so that we can build together better knowledge which would benefit everyone in the end!

PS: I’m especially interested to see, for those of you already capable of running TAA100+OXR100, whether you’re finding TAA200+OXR50 or TAA150+OXR50 are giving you better visuals or not.

[MickT1701]

I’ve always found Motion Reprojection comes with a huge overhead, reported by MSFS fps counter as CPU time, but in reality that’s also including GPU time. Another behaviour I’ve noticed is that switching VR off often results in the Desktop Window Manager going crazy on GPU usage, even though it’s not doing much. It would eventually settle down though.

Today, however, it just kept going, so I decided to experiment.

I used Nvidia Control Panel to limit the fps to 90 for dwm.exe, restarted everything and lo and behold - I’m getting smooth MR using 30 and even 45 fps at OXR 70 / TAA 100 with my 3080/5800x/G2, whereas before I changed the setting I wasn’t even able to consistently hold 22.5 @ OXR 50/ TAA 100.

FYI, I usually run with either a 144 or 170 Hz 1440p monitor with G-Sync enabled, but I have tried running that at lower refresh rates in the past.

So it seems that on my system at least, there may have been some issue with WMR trying to render way too many frames.

No idea if this will help anyone, but figured it was worth relaying.

Also, as you’ve been suggesting people try going over 100% on render scaling, a small number of us have experienced issues where some time into a flight head movement goes all wobbly/jerky and can only be fixed by moving back to 100 or less.