When you put on a VR headset for the first time, you’re inevitably blown away. But when you try it with a complex flight simulator like MSFS, there’s a good chance you’ll be very disappointed at first. So, you search online for ways to improve it and come across a flood of information about Oculus Tray Tool, OpenXR Toolkit, Virtual Desktop, etc., with everyone touting their favorite settings. But after long reads and tedious video watching, it’s still hard to prioritize topics and decide what makes sense in your particular case.
The result: you try everything in random order, the results are not there, and you don’t know if you’ve reached the limits of your high-end system or missed something. Maybe your expectations are too high, after all?
I should mention that I have extensive experience with simulators, also being an IT professional who flies IRL, and after building a home cockpit from scratch, I was rather resistant to switching to VR. I’ve tried and given up several times… But recently, I’ve experienced what appropriate hardware can bring, and it’s extremely convincing!
So, it seemed useful to share my experience here. Because I feel that most of the advice found is more about workarounds for limited configurations, which can make you overlook essential elements and even be detrimental in other cases. Of course, these tips are only valid for a comparable setup, so here are the main characteristics:
- Quest 2 & 3 (same settings work for both)
- GPU RTX 4080
- CPU Intel Core i7-13700K
- RAM 32GB DDR5
Now let’s get to the facts 
Objectives
From my point of view, the experience can only be satisfying if the image is truly beautiful and smooth. It’s not about having the same level of details as on a 4K monitor, but two things seem indispensable:
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No stuttering or almost none (whether during head or plane movements). This must not be compromised, as it’s not only unpleasant but can also cause physical sickness and quickly make you give up on continuing the experience (I had given up several times for that reason).
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Being able to read the instruments effortlessly and enjoying looking around. And it’s okay if the distant landscape is not crystal clear, as long as it doesn’t look like a soup of shimmering pixels (other reason I’ve given up several times).
I think everything else is secondary. With high-quality and smooth visuals, even without being set to Ultra, MSFS generates an incredibly immersive representation of the world, truly reminiscent of the real experience. The depth effect, the lighting when the sun is low, the environmental details (especially with good add-ons, like France VFR for me), the ease of situating oneself in space, it’s quite magical… I never realized this on 2D screens, even with three huge 55-inch displays. Of course, there are still difficulties, especially for interacting with the cockpit, charts, a kneeboard, or third party applications. And also, the flight model problems specific to this simulator (if only they could fix this ground-handling / weathervaning issue, in particular!). But still, I finally find the 3D experience so amazing that it’s worth finding solutions for these latter points.
Mistakes to avoid
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Jumping onto tweaks detailed everywhere with software like OpenXR Toolkit before addressing the basic issues.
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Believing that you can achieve the same result with a wireless connection as with a physical connection via a good USB 3.0 cable and the correct settings (EDIT: unless you have a perfect Wifi 6 setup, as commented below).
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Thinking that setting MSFS to all-Ultra is indispensable for a worthwhile VR experience (it’s certainly very nice in 2D, and you may find it hard to lower the sliders, but in VR, you find happiness differently than in the detail of blades of grass).
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Thinking that a setting is only valid if it allows you to fly over New York. It would be ideal, of course, but focusing on that can deprive you of a perfect experience in almost the rest of the world. And it may not be fully achievable yet even with high end hardware.
Method
Finally, the method I think is suitable for achieving, with a somewhat powerful setup, excellent results : steady 45 FPS / 90Hz (about 70fps if unlocked).
Oculus settings
You might be surprised that the default configuration is so unsatisfactory, but at least for a flight simulator, these settings change everything.
- It is imperative to increase the resolution, which I personally set to 5152x2624.
- For the refresh rate, 90Hz seems to be a good choice for various reasons. Not for the frequency itself, but this is tied to FPS locking and ASW which are very important. Lower settings can be ok if raw FPS is an issue, but in this case you might have to set other parameters more explicitly (see below and added note at the end).
Oculus Link
- Use a good cable for a physical connection (I use the original one)
- If needed, configure the USB ports correctly in Windows settings
- And use Oculus Debug Tool for a few important parameters like encoding/bitrate (H265/200 for me) and FPS lock (for me: locked with ASW enabled).
- Refer to this video for more advanced settings: Oculus Link Setup.
(See the added note at the end about ASW and FPS lock.)
MSFS graphics settings
Prioritize quality here as well. In my view, TAA antialiasing is the best looking, and it might not be necessary to change other settings if the GPU can handle it, but is very demanding.
- In my case I settled for DSSL in quality mode which gives a very good result with twice the FPS.
- Keep the render scaling at 100 since it’s handled elsewhere (see above).
MSFS scenery settings
This is the only area where I compromised between details and FPS. It might seem obvious, but since all tutorials focus on other aspects, it can almost be forgotten. For me, the global preset High works everywhere except for particularly demanding areas like NY. Yet, I use the stunning France VFR sceneries.
No regrets for the Ultra mode I used in 2D; the experience here is entirely different. I imagine with less powerful GPUs, one can still degrade these settings while maintaining a very satisfying experience.
Only as a last resort, if necessary
Tools like OpenXR Toolkit can allow for further adjustments. For my part, I only used it for minor tweaks like slightly reducing color saturation. There’s no need for upscaling or foveated rendering, as it completely ruins the experience for me. This experience is corroborated by this post: Best in VR: Just the Sim, No OpenXR.
Summary
In summary, this means:
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Investing in appropriate hardware.
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Pushing the headset’s capabilities to the maximum (resolution, PC connection, etc.) → plain Oculus and OS tools.
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Adopting reasonably high-quality graphics settings → in MSFS (or GPU driver settings).
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Then making the right compromise between FPS and the level of detail of the scenery and/or aircraft → in MSFS.
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Forgetting about tweaks that are supposed to restore fluidity at the cost of a mediocre visual experience.
These are the tips that would have saved me a lot of time if I had found them earlier, and I hope they can help others Anyway I would love to hear from comparable or different experiences with similar configurations.
Next step for me (WIP): converting my home cockpit into a « blind cockpit » usable in VR and finding a comfortable way to have charts on board!
Added note about ASW and FPS locking
The Asynchronous Space Warp (ASW) parameter is linked to a technique that can smooth the overall rendition above actual FPS, but it also offers an easy way to configure frame rate locking, which is very (I mean very) important to keep things smooth under MSFS. In my case if I don’t lock FPS it tries to keep 70fps which is completely useless and impossible to maintain as soon as the scenery has a bit of complexity.
Limiting to 45fps gives a really smooth and constant result. It is coherent with 90Hz frequency (see above), and this seems to be managed the best by Oculus software. In this case I noticed it limits automatically to 45fps so the auto setting for ASW works very well.
Limiting to lower values might be needed if the hardware can’t keep up (the most important is to set it at a value that can be maintained in almost all situations). But be aware that for example for 70Hz, the auto setting will not work well if your unlimited FPS are close, and surprisingly, the end result is very bad unless I apply ASW locked explicitly. By the way the actual fps limit is half the frequency of the headset, not necessarily 45 (so the title of the option is misleading). So for example you would get 35fps for 70Hz.
In the end, 90Hz and ASW to auto is by far the best setting for me, way more smoother than 70Hz with ASW enabled (which is also ok, but not as good). In any case not limiting the FPS gives very bad results in general.
Added note about a few mods
Although the prop wash effect is less disturbing in VR than it used to be, it is still annoying and not realistic at all (IRL you barely see the prop at normal RPMs). You can youse this mod to make it way more realistic and finally enjoy the front view
In terms of aircraft, I couldn’t recommend more this freeware Cessna 152 mod by WBSim/JPL, which is a joy to fly especially in VR !
