PSA: NVidia has found the root cause of stuttering and VR performance in their drivers!

I have Nvidia 461.09 installed (is this good or bad?) And GeForce experience tells me that it is the latest driver. So, how can I get my hands on 461.33 that everyone here is talking about?

GFORCE does not update HOTFIX Driver like 461.33, suggest you use GeForce 461.33 hotfix driver download (guru3d.com)

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I’d suggest you download anything NVidia from the NVidia website only:

Error | NVIDIA

PS: by the way, this link is already posted in this discussion. Search is your friend…

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For the moment 457.30 is the best driver for me with MSFS2020 but with other games it not hte best… The 461.33 is a stutter mess with OXR. NVIDIA need to fix the stutter with OXR

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461.33 seems to work even better for me than 457.30 at least when using Virtual Desktop with the Quest 2 (using SteamVR instead of Oculus). I also noticed lag and stuttering when approaching any airfield, turning off all types of airport traffic/people (but I also turned off all other traffic like road traffic and sea traffic) seemed to get rid of that. I can now get a pretty smooth flight with quite high settings in an aircraft without glass instruments.

Anyone here has tried 461.33 and Geforce experience? I know it is advised everywhere to remove Geforce Experience while using VR and that’s what I did when I rolled back to 457.30, uninstalling GfE, but I really miss GfE. I was using it a lot when I was flying in 2D (color and exposure tuning, capturing 32 bits HDR screenshots, video recording), in 2D, it had no impact at all on my FPS count.
Right now I am satisfied with 457.30 but if 461.33 allows to use Geforce experience again, I’m in !

I would hope there’s further optimisation to come from Asobo themselves, having done a lot of Benchmarking recently it’s very evident that there’s plenty of room for improvement. Here’s a list of my findings that all point to the need for this to be looked it (if not already with the upcoming next update…fingers crossed):

  • Two identical Sessions can have differing results; by this I mean when I do my Benchmarking I always do it on the First Run of MSF after a clean PC Reboot. Sometimes I get into VR on the Runway and the FPS is at 30ish, the next time I do it it’s at 25 yet both scenarios are identical (same weather, time of day, Data settings etc)

  • Switching from Pancake to VR Mode can sometimes take a while for the FPS to settle down, other times it’s just fine straight away. It’s like VR Mode is taking too long to Register and you end up sitting in the Plane waiting for things to settle down.

  • Likewise switching from Pancake to VR Mode the FPS/Frametime is atrocious and giving it time does not help, an exit of the Sim and reboot of the PC is needed even though this was after a clean reboot.

  • Fly above the Atlantic in Clear Weather with AP On and watch any Performance Graph like MSI Afterburner or CapFrameX or FPSVR, you’ll see random drops on FPS for seemingly no reason whatsoever which suggests something is at play. Edit: just to add to this point, turn off all background tasks especially GPU/CPU monitoring type software and you’ll still see the effects of random FPS drops.

Add to that the latest nVidia Drivers are not exactly helping matters (even with the smoothest, for me, 457 can have issues), the OpenXR Platform is very bare/basic and still relatively new, plus SteamVR has a history of sporadic behaviour and you end up with a mix of various variables that can play into an unstable simulation.
For sure MSF2020 is not totally at fault due to those other areas, but it’s clear to me there is still some way to go to get this Sim running correctly, regardless of the other programs/drivers.

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Do you have aircraft traffic enabled? If so that could be the difference between two sessions. If so, can you check whether there is a difference with it disabled? That said I’m under the impression there is a difference in performance between sessions, I just can’t lay my finger on it.

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GFE isn’t inherently evil, it just gets left on the cutting floor when people are trying to have no extra stuff running. I’ve found that the “enable experimental features” checkbox causes lots of performance issues on my machine. As long as that is unticked, GFE doesn’t have a negative performance impact, and provides very useful features.

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Nope all that was Off, when I do my Benchmarks i try to make sure stuff like that doesn’t interfere.

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Offline too? Streaming scenery can affect performance too.

But it shouldn’t when all you can see is blue sky and blue sea and why are two identical flights never the same?, regardless it’s clear to me that work still needs to be done on the core of the Sim to help performance. Whether that be direct VR feature additions on the graphical side and/or general optimisation of the Sim.

At the moment it’s not like it’s a dog’s mess, in the right conditions it does work quite well and I’m having a blast, but a bit of TLC never hurts where warranted :slight_smile:

The cloud side is a big part of MSFS this time, so if you want to benchmark graphics, I don’t think the result would be reliable results without being offline. You’ll be surprise how much game logic does not follow your settings for the sake of optimization (e.g. they might still preload in stuffs for caching).

Anyway I am not disagreeing with you about more optimization is needed, although I will always be the case for the simulator. Asobo will add more optimization, and at the same time new features which again would need more optimization. It’s also depends on the specs of the hardware (and the bonus bugs) NVIDIA, AMD and Intel throw out in the future.

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I’ve noticed similar issues… Regarding updates, I haven’t seen any mentions of VR, or any comment about issues or improvements regarding VR on their latest development updates. They are very silent about it, like if it is running perfect for everyone and they have zero problems. :slight_smile: We may see small improvements soon, but I think big performance improvements and changes will probably come later on the Sim update… they will update glass displays, aerodynamics, etc, etc and this will probably have an effect on VR. So many variables… OpenXR, Different headsets, Nvidia issues. Right now it is so complicated to setup. This thing should be plug n play, with minimal issues, like it is on 2D.

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Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll address VR questions and feedback:

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So the the experts here. I just today installed a brand new asus 3090. what drivers version do you guys recommend for that as today? Right now I am on 461.09

@CptLucky8, did anything useful or substantive come out of that?

Yes and no :smiley:

See my comments on the new VR bugs and features:

Discussion: Live dev Q&A January - #57 by CptLucky8

Index : all the drivers I tested early on made it stutter like a chunky cow, so off to the forums weeks later and.it was clear, run one of two drivers but which one is the best. For me the winner is v461.09

Unrelated but an important option: Has a background app FPS control option. Yet both drivers for me on my index appear to work about the same. I also run@ 90HZ with a cap of 45fps, motion smooth “Yes”.
Gigabyte Water cooled AIO 2080ti

Cheers
Stay safe,
PACO572

457.30 for me…all other drivers after that stutter in VR on RTX 3090, 10900KF. I’ve tried every driver since 457.30.

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