Alright, now I think its worth to share a summary of what we did to get to a proper and stable VR performance with the GTX3080ti and the Oculus RiftS, also based on your input, the forums VR and Nvidia Driver discussion, as well as some Bios and Oculus hints:
- Start VANILLA
To really compare the effects of all changes, we decided to bring our system into a vanilla (clean/standard) state. This means
a) BIOS (Asus) to standard settings. No overclocking, no RAID mode, just the standard boost function (in our case its a I7 ROG Z370F Gaming, with 32GB RAM at 2666mhz, with 6 cores running at 3700mhz - in boost mode they deliver solid 4300mhz)
In order to reserve the highest priority and balanced cores for MSFS, I installed “project lasso”, so my settings here are pretty easy: Performance Mode and ProBalance Mode enabled, MSFS.exe gets high prio, (always), i/o prio, and the Bitsum power profile “highest performance”, plus I set a CPU limiter here to 98%.
b) WINDOWS10 to standard settings, except Game Mode OFF, and Hardware Accelerated GPU Scaling (HAGS) OFF. Its safe to say that both modes do not help with FPS on our system.
b1) NVIDIA Driver 512.59 (clean install), leave everything to stock settings. No MSFS profile. Yes, really.
c) Oculus Software to standard settings. except BETA Channel is active, and Headset settings are on “Quality” not on “Performance” as this gives you the full resolution (which will be adjusted later anyway, but not here).
d) OPEN XR Software to standard! No individual render scale, no motion repro (for now).
e) OPEN XR Toolkit active, but no settings for now. All OFF.
f) Oculus Tray Tool or Debug Tool (doesnt really matter), both OFF. Do not use this for the first test flight, as we wanted to find the sweet spot first on MSFS.
g) MSFS - Data settings: rolling cache and manual cache OFF. This was one of the problems, as my glasfibre internet was faster than the cache coming from a HDD…try it. Graphic settings; go to VR and hit “default setting, then adjust rendering resolution to 100” and leave. Now adjust your PC graphic setting to the same numbers as in VR (why loading higher settings to dump them when entering VR).
- Make a proper BENCHMARK
Now do a test flight with empty community folder, no addons, and make sure you keep everthying else away from the CPU (no antivirus, no updates, no monitoring software etc., so that MSFS can utilize full scope, which also means CPU and GPU can interact without additional traffic).
I use the MSFS addon linker to remove all addons with one click, and bring them back with one click. Also I use several profiles (like “low and slow”, or “helicopter”, or “CRJ700”) to ensure, MSFS only loads what I need for a specific flight. Loading time MSFS should be below 2 minutes, loading time flight below 1 minute.
Get into a Cessna with classic instrumentation, no clouds set, and use the same airport and time for comparision. Now open the OXR toolkit window in VR and activate the HUD display. Check if GPU and CPU are within specs (if now, it says “CPU or GPU bound”, then you are already at a bottleneck, and have to reduce certain settings. Second flight should be with the same plane, but G1000 instrumentation, check the performance again. Then do both flights with scattered clouds - check. Then low and slow, then high and slow, then low and fast etc… until you have your benchmark fps.
- RESULTS
To make a long story short; we are finally able to dial-in robust 40fps at a 1.4 super sampling, which gives smooth scenery and good clarity in the cockpit. With the Oculus RiftS and the RTX cards in MSFS, you have to say goodbye to “far distance clarity” or super “ASW or motion smoothing” - thats not gonna work. The sooner you accept this, the earlier you fly again instead of fumbling options back and forth. When MSFS gets the DLSS from Nvidia (in SU10), this might change.
- Our “recommended” SETTINGS
We will list here the important ones, that made the change, we do not list the full overviews, as this would be confusing. When its not listed here; its STANDARD setting. Ok? (the magic hint here is; change ONE thing at a time, then observe and benchmark again, then continue with the next change…)
Windows: HAGS off, Game Mode off, MSFS enables performance mode (under Apps), Updates paused
OPEN XR Software: default, no changes here! Motion Repro: OFF.
Oculus Software: default, but beta channel active, and headset set to “quality”
Nvidia Control Center: default, keep things like low latency mode OFF !!, but change this: Max Frame Rate 40fps (which is native MSFS setting), Maximum Performance Setting, and texture filteing to Quality (yes!). Make sure the rest stays default.
MSFS: Data, Caches OFF, VR Grpahics: Render Scaling 100, TAA, LoDs 80, Off Screen Pre Caching: LOW (!), Vector Data LOW, Texture SS OFF, all Shadows OFF, Shadow Maps can be 2048, also Clouds are HIGH on my system, as they look great and my system can take it, Ambient Occlusion OFF; Reflections, Shafts and Bloom OFF, Glass Cockpit HIGH.
OCULUS TRAY TOOL: Default Super Sampling 1.4, the rest stays OFF, server prio above normal.
OPEN XR Toolkit: here I only use the Performance Tab - and set Upscaling to FSR. Along with the 1.4 Oculus Super Sampling, it gives us pretty 2200x2200 pixels clarity (numbers are out of my head, as I did not took a shot here), all other settings (Fixed Foveated rendering, Sharpening, Reduction of Shaking) I did not touch, but - feel free to benchmark and report back!
In addition, as mentioned above, I do use process lasso to have a balanced core management, and on top I start every Windows session with AVG tune up utility to have my system scanned for old data, backup files, broken links etc., and let it clean it. Dont know if thats an option for you, but here it helps to keep my 2018 i7 Coffee Lake with pure Coffee… haha.
I hope this helps some of you, would be happy to hear your approaches on the RTX cards with a Rift S.
Regards from EDDM
Michael
#thehybridcockpit
737 and H145 hybrid cockpit simulator