Yes, moving the slider in the steam menu never had any impact for me in visuals or performance even if I put it outrageously high or low. I had thought this was a limitation of virtual desktop but I tried it through link and had the same. Maybe I just needed to restart the sim or something, Iāll have another experiment.
I am wary not to derail this thread which is about the Index, sometimes I am tempted to gift a quest 2 to Captain lucky just to get his input on that headset 
Iād be pleased but only if you also gift the computer that goes with it. I donāt want to have anything to do with the company backing this headset up on any of my electronic devicesā¦
One thing to check is whether youāre setting this on the global setting or the per-application setting, which can override the global setting.
Thank you, I was using the per application but maybe will experiment further, especially given the good quest results mentioned above.
Iām afraid I need the PC, but Iāll grant use of it via virtual desktop nightly between 2300 and 0700 hours UK time. No crypto mining and stay out of My Documents
Iāve done a few more tests yesterday about this. Motion smoothing is taking more resources and usually you can balance this out with fewer frames per sec (and artifacts of course).
With the 9700K+2070S I can barely push beyond 152% and 18fps with the Index and FS2020 with aircraft with lots of EFIS for example, like the FBW A320 (for this one I must go 15fps on ground but can switch back to 18fps in the air) (NB: I can push much higher with XP11 though)
What stroke me is how much FS2020 has a struggle when on ground, to the point I have to disable motion smoothing otherwise FS2020 is like rendering pairs of frames in reverse order (displaying frame 2 first, then frame 1 next, then frame 4, then frame 3 etcā¦ this is what it looks like).
Yesterday Iāve tried the FBW A320 latest dev version but this time with motion smoothing off. Iāve been able to keep 30fps (SS 152% and all the rest unchanged) on the ground, and when up in the air 45fps, and this was not bad at all to me.
If you read this topic from the beginning and when VR was initially available, I was explaining how 30fps constant is still useable in practice with the A320 (not FBW back then) and after a while you get used to the juddering. It has been months though that Iām only using motion smoothing at 18fps so I go used to the artefacts instead! Switching back to motion smoothing off was slightly uncomfortable at first because of the juddering but at 45fps it was not so bad after a short while, especially if you develop the habit of rotating the head (reprojection kicking it) instead of translating it (juddering is unavoidable in this case).
This is a short feedback post to share the experience!
PS: about āFS2020 on ground taking too many resources while on ground to the point I have to disable motion smoothingā: this one is puzzling me still because in 2D I can see there is still enough room on the CPU/GPU. Iāve been wondering whether FS2020 wouldnāt be using the GPU in a way which is interfering with the Turing silicon the NVidia Optical Flow lib is using for motion smoothing. What I mean by this is that it is has if both FS2020 and Optical Flow are fighting for the card silicon, which could be the case if for example FS2020 would be using compute shaders for example and if those would take a longer processing time when on the ground (handling much more things). This is one area Iād really like to figuring out, at least just by mere curiosity for these sort of things!
After further testing, Win10 updates, NVidia updates etcā¦ this is what Iām starting to consider my best settings right now for the Index.
Of course, if your hardware is more powerful you will be able to raise a few settings there and there, but the following should be a solid base for most users to get started with.
NB: Iāve been adjusting these flying the FBW A320 which is a demanding aircraft.
9700K+2070S
Win10 21H1 (with KB5005033)
HAGS OFF, Game Mode OFF
NVidia 471.68 SD (Studio Driver - latest)
SteamVR 1.18.7 (latest non-beta)
| Setting | Value | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Render Scaling | 100% | Best for EFIS |
| Anti-Aliasing | TAA | |
| Terrain LOD | 100% | Go-To value all around, raise to 200% while up above |
| Terrain Vector Data | Off | This is controversial to me, prefer off for now |
| Buildings | High | |
| Trees | High | |
| Grass And Bushes | High | |
| Objects LOD | 100% | |
| Volumetric Clouds | High | you can save some fps and keep nearly same visuals with Medium instead if youāre flying mostly overcast or with non isolated cumulus clouds in the sky |
| Texture Resolution | High | |
| Anistrophic Filtering | 16x | |
| Texture Supersampling | Off | saves a few fps and this helps when on ground (with aniso 16x it is ok) |
| Texture Synthesis | High | |
| Water Waves | High | |
| Shadow Maps | 768 | |
| Terrain Shadows | 256 | I donāt see much impact with 512 but not a large visual diff either |
| Contact Shadows | Off | eats fps and I prefer raising other things instead |
| Windshield Effects | High | |
| Ambient Occlusion | Off/Low | Further testing makes me believing it is using a compute shader which is taking a hit on the motion smoothing compute shader. Set this to Off if your system is struggling on the ground for example. |
| Reflections | High | |
| Light Shafts | Off | I didnāt really measure the impact of this one completely yet, but it might be affecting motion smoothing for the same reasons as Ambient Occlusion |
| Bloom | Off | This is reducing the legibility of integral lighting in the cockpit sometimes to me |
| Depth of Field | Off | |
| Lens Correction | Off | |
| Lens Flare | Off | |
| Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate | High |
| Setting | Value | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Aviation Traffic | ||
| - Aircraft Traffic Type | Off | I donāt need any (flying MP only) |
| - Show Nameplates | . | There is no good or bad choice here! |
| Airport Life | I mostly balance between my taste and perfs | |
| - Vehicle Density | 15% | |
| - Aircraft Density | 0% | I donāt need any (flying MP only) |
| - Worker Density | 5% | |
| Land & Sea Traffic | ||
| - Leisure Boats | 50% | |
| - Road Vehicles | 50% | Boats are usually lightweight on perfs but cars arenāt |
| - Ships and Ferries | 80% | |
| - Fauna Density | 0% | this was source of fps loss in the past and I didnāt try it lately |
| AI & MP Traffic Detail | ||
| - Generic Models (AI) | On | |
| - Generic Models (MP) | Off | this would be better if onlyā¦ |
| - Traffic Variety | High |
| Setting | Value | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh Rate | 90Hz | I find this one the best both with and without motion smoothing |
| Brightness | 130 | |
| resolutionScale | 152% | tradeoff between legibility and computing power - this is about the maximum render resolution I can push with TAA100 and motion smoothing on the 2070S |
| FOV | 95% or 90% | adjust this based on your eye relief setting (with the shorter eye relief position I still canāt view the sides at 95% but I can at 90%) |
| Motion Smoothing | Enabled | I mostly use motion smoothing (see āTipsā for more info) |
| Fixed Rate | 18fps | 15fps on ground with FBW 320 on complex airports |
| Prediction | 33ms | strikes the best balance to me with 18fps or 15fps |
Tips:
.
After testing many different drivers and settings, I find these the best with the āSystemā specs detailed above.
NB: most settings are using default values in my screenshot. They are inheriting from the Global Settings. If your global settings are different, they will also reflect in your FS2020 custom settings. Besides āMonitor Technologyā all the others should match whether inherited or overridden.
NB: Iām now using NVidia Studio Drivers. They seem to be providing more consistent frame time in VR to me, and they are visually free of any artifacts that others are reporting with SU5 like textures shimmering (buildings edges jagged highlights and aliased popup menus are still a problem due to FS2020 itself though).
Tips:
From now on Iāll use Maximum Performance (unlike the screenshot above)
.
I canāt really differentiate any particular difference between Optimum Pow. and Maximum Perf.
The latter may be less performant in practice (hitting temp and/or power caps) so Iād tend to lean toward Optimum Pow in general, but Iām yet to hit any protection with Max. Perf in practice.
I get smoother experience and no stuttering with Threaded Optimizations Off. This is very consistent in my experience with the Index and the G2 (along with HAGS Off and Game Mode Off).
I donāt find any need to further tweak Low Latency and VSync mode anymore.
Slim Drivers:
Here is how to make your own NVidia Slim drivers:
Then run setup.exe, donāt select GEForce Experience then select the components (I only install Video driver and Physx, and unselect USB and Sound)
Credits: several posts at the guru3d forums
Do you have any specific reasoning behind āthreaded optimisationā being off in your drivers?
@BazzaLB
Is testing both a āreasonā enough? 
NB: I believe Iāve already commented on this in my different topics or at least somewhere on this forum.
There are technical reasons too, but too complex and in an ever changing driver/system/game environment. But suffice to say as long as the game is DX11 and with VR, Threaded Optimisation OFF should give better results for most in VR.
I found my issue, I had been launching steam along with some other apps via a batch file with admin permissions, while msfs was running as my standard user. This stopped the steam super sampling from working somehow.
I will be looking with quest 2 - Can I ask is there any mathematics to reach these numbers, or was it trial and error ? Thank you
These are for the Index only, based on perceptual measures first and foremost. This is highly dependent on the panel resolution, the lens deformation, the processing of the raw view pixels into the display view pixels etcā¦ As far as logic goes, I rationalize this (and this is biased) that these are integer scale fractions + a little more in order to exploit aliasing at my advantage.
In practice though, between 126% and 140% there isnāt much visual change, the same between 150 and 200, this is why in the end and after having tested nearly all steps by 10 increments (see all my previous posts about this) I finally settle with these 4 for now, knowing 126% was what I used prior SU5 and 152% is what I can use now. The others will have to wait for a 30XX or a 40XX 
I shall add than 126% and 152% are giving nearly the same legibility inside the cockpit (with EFIS) but the later is a little better for the outside. If I were using 126% instead of 152% with SU5 I might be able to push some other settings higher, or the fps higher.
NB: 152% and my settings above are a best-balance on this system for now though, well suited so that I donāt have to change settings in flight every time to adjust to the situation while keeping high levels of visuals overall. With these settings the only thing I change during a flight, depending on the situation, is in SteamVR only:
To be honest I am not sure even those cards will help! It is a different headset but I have been experimenting a bit now with additional Steam SS on Quest2, using my 3090. Starting with my standard 5408*2736 native resolution and 100 render scale, I see very little benefit from additional Steam super sampling, and certainly nowhere near enough to warrant the noticeable performance reduction. For my setup at least, my guess is any further legibility improvements on cockpit buttons or EFIS will need to come from fixes and improvements to the sharpening filter and TAA interaction (or even just removal of the sharpening filter at high res !? ) rather than additional super sampling on top.
Iāve updated my comments in my post above:
Light shafts, ambient occlusion have similar impacts on the G2 as well.
Great work, thanks.
As ever Captain, huge gratitude from me for your input on this effort to try to find the right balance for VR settings. I have an Index & 3080ti and a couple of questions if possible - sorry if you have already answered elsewhere, I looked but couldnāt find anything.
Re SS numbers eg 152%. Is this the ātotalā SS value ie global SS value multiplied by the game specific setting? In my global SteamVR settings (and I presume everybody elseās) there is a detent at 150%, so to acheive 152% I would just add 1-2% from the game-specific setting?
You mention 15-18fps with Motion Smooting but a whopping 30-45fps without. When disabling motion smoothing, I get nowhere near this gain in fps, in fact the GPU and CPU frame time seem much the same. I would probably prefer 30fps without Motion Smoothing as the slight wobbling of MS for me is worse than the slight juddering without MS. Iām wondering what others experience and if there is some setting that might help me there?
Many thanks 
@Jonny5Alive6618
Thank you for you feedback and kind words!
@D4EF1n4tOR
I believe this would work then. My approach with SS, since Iām using the Index but also the G2 (well I havenāt for a long time but I used to, and will to at least to experiment and publish suggested settings), is. to have the global scaling fixed 100% (about 2.2 x 2.4 pixels IIRC) so that it is the ānominalā for each headset, and then adjust per-game depending. What matters in the end is the number render pixels.
As for motion smoothing, when I disable it, I however keep Fixed Rate setting (never auto) and set it to 30 or 45. I seem to get these 30 or 45 from my visual experience, but I didnāt launch any counter to counter-verify either. It seemed really 30 on the ground for sure, and 45 in the air higher up as well.
Just a quick note: Iāve tried HAGS ON and Game Mode ON and here are my observations:
This doesnāt seem to make much differences to me with motion smoothing on (anyhow I believe HAGS will be much more beneficial with DX12, along with threaded optimizations on)
However I might get a little bit better perf with motion smoothing off. It didnāt feel like struggling as much with fixed rate 45 but what Iām reporting here is only perceptual, not measured.
I get more fluid and faster asset streaming with HAGS OFF though (in other words it takes less time to refresh the sides when turning the head quickly)
I wonāt try HAGS ON + Game Mode OFF (enough combos to test)
Iāll probably revert back to HAGS OFF and Game Mode OFF like Iāve suggested first, because it seems to me more consistent whether I use motion smoothing or not.
all the above could also be a lot of placebo, again, this is only a perceptual report!
Second that motion.
Having tested all variations of these I have come to the exact same conclusion.
Also purely perception but still.
Thanks, I have never found significant difference with HAGS so just left it on (3090). However maybe it is time for me to revisit - anything to reduce that pop in !
On another subject than configuration, Iāve finally decided to publish my mod for the taxi helpers:
This mod makes the Taxi Ribbon assistance less invasive in VR and more convenient in 3D
This mod replaces the set of Taxi Helpers UI so that you can keep the Taxi Ribbon assistance always enabled. It consists in modifications making them unobtrusive and naturally blending with the ground.
Smaller taxi ribbon arrows coloured green:
Blending naturally with the taxi lines and displaying only a few meters away from the aircraft.
Tweaked blue/green parking box helpers:
Displaying almost like ground painted lines as if they are normal features of the airport.
PS: the screenshots are crops from quick VR captures, Iāll update them with much better ones later!
Very nice idea - the taxi assist is the one guide that I leave on but it is indeed very obtrusive. I look forward to trying this, thanks 
