My 2070 SUPER VR settings and suggestions (Index - SteamVR) šŸŸ¢

Iā€™ve 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 Iā€™ve tried the FBW A320 latest dev version but this time with motion smoothing off. Iā€™ve 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 Iā€™m 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 ā€œFS2020 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. Iā€™ve been wondering whether FS2020 wouldnā€™t 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 Iā€™d really like to figuring out, at least just by mere curiosity for these sort of things!

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After further testing, Win10 updates, NVidia updates etcā€¦ this is what Iā€™m 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: Iā€™ve been adjusting these flying the FBW A320 which is a demanding aircraft.

System:

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)

Settings:

FS2020 Graphics Settings (same in 2D and VR)
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 youā€™re 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 donā€™t 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 didnā€™t 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
FS2020 Traffic Settings (same in 2D and VR)
Setting Value Comments
Aviation Traffic
- Aircraft Traffic Type Off I donā€™t 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 donā€™t 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 arenā€™t
- Ships and Ferries 80%
- Fauna Density 0% this was source of fps loss in the past and I didnā€™t try it lately
AI & MP Traffic Detail
- Generic Models (AI) On
- Generic Models (MP) Off this would be better if onlyā€¦
- Traffic Variety High
SteamVR Settings
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 canā€™t view the sides at 95% but I can at 90%)
Motion Smoothing Enabled I mostly use motion smoothing (see ā€œTipsā€ 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:

  • The only SS settings worth the legibility differences to me are 126%, 152%, 220%, 300%
  • When on final, you can quickly change the FOV to 50% to get a very legible runway in the distance and crisp cockpit lettering/EFIS.
  • If your hardware permits, you can try SteamVR SS 300% and this gives you the same legibility as SS126%+FOV50%.
  • If the aircraft/airport is really too heavy, disable motion smoothing and set a fixed rate of 30fps or 45fps

.

NVidia Settings

After testing many different drivers and settings, I find these the best with the ā€œSystemā€ 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 ā€œMonitor Technologyā€ all the others should match whether inherited or overridden.

NB: Iā€™m 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 Iā€™ll use Maximum Performance (unlike the screenshot above)
    .
    I canā€™t 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 Iā€™d tend to lean toward Optimum Pow in general, but Iā€™m 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 donā€™t find any need to further tweak Low Latency and VSync mode anymore.

Slim Drivers:

Here is how to make your own NVidia Slim drivers:

1. Unzip the NVidia driver .exe (with 7z for example)...

nvidia_slim_step1

2. Delete these folders...

3. Edit the setup.cfg file and remove these lines...

Then run setup.exe, donā€™t 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

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Do you have any specific reasoning behind ā€œthreaded optimisationā€ being off in your drivers?

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@BazzaLB
Is testing both a ā€œreasonā€ enough? :rofl:

NB: I believe Iā€™ve 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.

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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 isnā€™t 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 :slight_smile:

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 donā€™t 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:

  • Click the button on the HMD and
  • Change 18fps/15fps (motion smoothing enabled) or
  • Disable motion smoothing and set 30fps/45fps.
  • On final I like sometimes reducing the FOV to 50% for the highest legibility of both the runway and the EFIS.
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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.

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Iā€™ve updated my comments in my post above:

Light shafts, ambient occlusion have similar impacts on the G2 as well.

Great work, thanks.

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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 couldnā€™t find anything.

  • Re SS numbers eg 152%. Is this the ā€œtotalā€ SS value ie global SS value multiplied by the game specific setting? In my global SteamVR settings (and I presume everybody elseā€™s) 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. Iā€™m wondering what others experience and if there is some setting that might help me there?

Many thanks :+1:

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@Jonny5Alive6618
Thank you for you feedback and kind words!

@D4EF1n4tOR
I believe this would work then. My approach with SS, since Iā€™m using the Index but also the G2 (well I havenā€™t 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 ā€œnominalā€ 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 didnā€™t 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.

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Just a quick note: Iā€™ve tried HAGS ON and Game Mode ON and here are my observations:

  • This doesnā€™t 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 didnā€™t feel like struggling as much with fixed rate 45 but what Iā€™m 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 wonā€™t try HAGS ON + Game Mode OFF (enough combos to test)

  • Iā€™ll probably revert back to HAGS OFF and Game Mode OFF like Iā€™ve 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.

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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 !

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On another subject than configuration, Iā€™ve 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, Iā€™ll update them with much better ones later!

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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 :smiley:

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Thank you for your kind words! Iā€™ve update the Small Taxi Helpers earlier today with a ā€œslightly whiterā€ White/None, and and a new Blue/None parking aid!

After spending quite some time evaluating HAGS ON/OFF and Game Mode ON/OFF (see a few posts above), Iā€™ve further been evaluating the impact of a few NVidia CPL settings and on my test system Iā€™m now confident about my NVidia CPL settings detailed in the post linked in the quote above:

  1. Motion Smoothing works better with Threaded Optimizations OFF.
  2. From now on Iā€™ll use Maximum Performance.

NB: I canā€™t 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 Iā€™d tend to lean toward Optimum Pow in general, but Iā€™m yet to hit any protection with Max. Perf. in practice.

Iā€™ve been a ā€œMotion Smoothingā€ naysayer since I first started flying in VR back in December 2020. I would get bad ā€œwobblysā€ and distortions when moving my head inside the cockpit. It was always a non-starter for me.

This morning, while reading the new posts on @CptLucky8 ā€˜s G2 thread, I thought maybe Iā€™ll try reducing my SS in SteamVR to further reduce the GPU overhead and see if that works better. Lately Iā€™d pretty much settled on 100/100 for RS and SS, and was ok with the results.

Iā€™ve tried every known combination between SS / In Game RS / FOV trying to get the best compromise between glass screen readability and smoothness (especially when maneuvering the plane and looking at the terrain). I fly the TBM 930 (IFR) and the Piper Arrow III (just flight) (VFR) exclusively.

When setting my SS to 90 and the RS to 110 and enabling Motion Smoothing in SteamVR, I was pleasantly surprised by the very smooth experience. No wobbling or distortions (very very minor distortion near the prop animation only). Screens in the TBM (the MDF has some painfully small text) was acceptableā€¦ as good as 100/100 Iā€™m sureā€¦ and the smoothness was as good as Iā€™ve experienced. I was able to keep my FPS pretty much maxed out at my locked 30.

Of course this was a short test before heading off to work, but I am very encouraged to continue down the ā€œMotion Smoothingā€ road with a reduced SS and slightly raised RS.

System:
AMD 3600X
2070S
32GB 3200 ram
NVMe install disk
(I have absolutely nothing running in the background with no OC. HAGGS and Game Mode are OFFā€¦and perform a clean reboot before every FS session)

SteamVR settings:
120 MHZ
Motion smoothing: ON
SS: 90
FPS locked at 30
Prediction: 25ms
FOV: 90

Flight Sim settings:
Render scale: 110
AA: TAA
Terrain LOD: 100
Terrain Vector Data: Medium (what does this even do? I donā€™t see any changes)
Buildings: Medium
Trees: Medium
Grass and Bushes: Medium
Object LOD: 100
Volumetric Clouds: High
Texture Res: Ultra
Aniso Filter: 16X
Texture SS: 8X8
Texture Synth: High
Water Waves: High
Shadow maps: 1024
Terrain Shadows: 512
Contact Shadows: Medium
Windshield Effects: High
AO: off
Reflections: Off
Light shafts: off
Bloom: on (canā€™t live without that bloom off my wing tip at sunrise)
Glass cockpit refresh: High

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Indeed, what does it doā€¦ :wink:

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