My 2080 Ti G2 - SteamVR Journey

[SparkerInVR]

I have been a X-Plane VR user and developer for a few years and have lived through the growing pains of bringing VR support to a sim and it is from that perspective my thoughts are formed.

I am running my G2 on a i7 9700K @ 4.6 with a RTX 2080Ti (471.11) with 32G of 3200 ram.

SteamVR beta 1.18.4 Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR 1.3.6

Resolution Per Eye 3352 x 3276 112% Manage Video Settings For: FS2020 Custom Resolution Multiplier 2372 x 2316 50%

SteamVR Settings > Developer > Current OpenXR Runtime: SteamVR

MSFS PC Render Scaling 200 VR Render Scaling (Rendering Resolution 1897x1852) 80

When VR came to MSFS I was happy that I had a HP Reverb G2 and had been using it with my Valve Index controllers on X-Plane with little issues. At that time I could stream MSFS VR while using the G2 with SteamVR and the Index controllers. After a few MSFS updates the program that allowed my Index controllers to work with the G2 had a conflict with MSFS so I then went back to using the G2 controllers. So currently I am using my G2 with SteamVR and have good enough performance that I can join group flights and enjoy VR on my terms.

All of my previous VR headsets were SteamVR based so have been using the various tools that it brings to the table. As the G2 was my first WMR headset I was not sure what to expect but was told many times that trying to use SteamVR with it would cost performance. One thing that I have learned over my years in VR is each person experience can be very different for many reasons. With that in mind over the last month or so I have tried to test the G2 native and with SteamVR and on my system I cannot see any difference. The one thing I do know for sure is the support for overlays that SteamVR brings to the table I find is much better than the WMR approach.

There are two very important tools that I want to have with me on every VR flight no matter the sim.

fpsVR is a very informative tool that much more than showing your fps but how much vram and system ram is in use live. It also shows frame times to see how much load your system is under. GPU and CPU temps to see if your issues might be related to that. I have not found another tool that provides all this to me in the VR cockpit in such a unobtrusive manner.

OVR Toolkit allows me to bring any window on the desktop or the whole desktop into my VR cockpit and place them where ever I want. So on a common group flight I will have Discord, Little Nav Map and the Windows sound mixer in the VR cockpit. All of these windows can be interacted with the VR controllers just like your mouse on the desktop. The opacity of the windows can be individually be changed so you can see through them not to block your view. When I stream I also have a Chatty window so I can interact with chat while flying in VR.

Thanks for reading Bill

[Mike5285]

Hi Bill,
I recognise you from the XP G2 controller fun-times (powering up right before left and so on); I also contributed to that epic thread until we got it all working

I completely agree the tools you mention are very useful, and I search often for decent ways to bring a WMR window into the cockpit (some say it is already possible via pinning, but I’ve had difficulty making it play nicely)… BUT, you should find that going the OpenXR route improves your frame rate fairly significantly. My specs were the same as yours until recently so I’m pretty confident about that claim. Make sure you have the OpenXR Dev Tools installed so you have the latest runtime (I also opted in to the latest Windows 10 via Insider).

[SparkerInVR]

Hi Mike,

Yes that was fun getting XP to finally talk nice to the HP controllers but the funny thing is at that time I was using my Index controllers with the G2.

I have used the G2 native using the OpenXR Dev Tools and just did not see any difference but found using the pinning method was a non starter for me. What I am being told and what I see on my system does not match so will continue to use SteamVR with my G2.

It also sounds like there are some very big improvements coming on July 27 that will help until I can find a RTX 3090 and hopefully allow me to use my Vive Pro 2 which is generally native SteamVR.

Thanks for the feedback Bill