VR in MSFS is starting to lose its luster for me

User Support Hub Virtual Reality (VR)
83

I am really enjoying reading everyone’s opinions on this thread. I come down somewhere in the middle regarding ‘lost luster’.

When I am flying in VR mode and the settings are working well for the location I am in, then VR is an amazingly amazing experience compared to my last ‘flights’ with Microsoft Flight Simulator back in the 90’s! Definitely, a High Luster experience!

When VR is not cooperating and I have to tweak the system (Is the problem in OXR or Steam VR or MRP or MSFS2020 or Nvidia Control Panel or the Win10 Settings? And which setting should I tweak?) it is not so much fun. Low Luster. It does provide a long term, valuable learning experience (you guys, like CptLucky8, blow my mind with your technical prowess…) and I enjoy this Forum for all the help I receive from posts. High Luster.

When I have to peak out from under my headset (while it slides back over my eyes) to hit a key combo that I can’t remember (cause I haven’t memorized it ((and never will)) the multitude of commands necessary to access all of the functionality is quite overwhelming and very clumsy. Low Luster. Even the ability to use my mouse pointer to select what buttons to push, levers to shift, switches to flick suffers from the pointer not always being in the same plane (dimension) as the controls which causes delays in actuating the controls which results in me finally looking up to find I am about to crash… Very Low Luster!

I can avoid most of that by flying in 2D. It is not as immersive as VR but it provides a lot more continuity than VR which, in my opinion, creates it’s own sense of immersion because there is no interruption in the sequence of events. 2D is a smoother experience where I can concentrate on learning piloting skills much more effectively. High Luster.

So, it depends on my mood and goals. That’s the middle I am in.

What is clear to me is the technical marvel MSFS2020 represents in terms of providing me the opportunity to experience real world flying, that by many actual pilots accounts, feels very close to real flying. So, I get to fly anywhere in the world, experience real geography, real airport operations, real air traffic, real air traffic control, real worldwide weather and such a cool set of planes to fly! High Luster. It is truly astonishing that MSFS2020 represents the creation of a Virtual Reality so accurate and multi-dimensional, many professional pilots endorse its realism. And I get to sit in my virtual cockpit and safely enjoy it! Very High Luster.

I doff my cap to Asobo and Microsoft. I look forward to their continued efforts to make this Sim even more realistic! While they do their thing, I will continue to learn how to tweak my equipment, how to better utilize the capabilities of the software, and how to better pilot my planes as I fly off into my 2 or 3D lustrous sunsets!

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84

the main problem i have is the tint on the windshield, it darkens everything outside, put your head outside and looks much nicer, need an option to remove the tint

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85

i feel that way about the side windows on the C152, not dark, but wish i could remove or open them to look down …i breaks my VR emersion to push my head thr them

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86

Funny to see how we are all going through the same experience more or less. Yes, the wow factor of VR is starting to wear off. After doing several flights in the updated UK I had the idea that I was missing out on all the new eye candy due to the fact that outside visuals are unsharp and washed out.
Yesterday I switched to 2D to fly over the same area as the day before. Sure, the landscape had much more detail and sharpness compared to VR but it felt so wrong flying with a 2D monitor. I am afraid I can’t go back anymore.

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87

Same here, VR is incredible but the experience in MSFS is simply subpar compared to 2D.

The performance is not there, at least not with the hardware that I have AMD 3700X and 2070 Super, I am unable to tweak the experience to a reasonable level.

DCS, incredible, steady and high fram rate, feels like flying.

Xplane 11, same thing, all settings cranked up and the sim is like a dream on my rig, but of course with the washed out colors that Xplane 11 is famous for.

In MSFS, I use the bare minimums and the it becomes a slide show when looking to sides. I simply can not make it remotely as good as in other sims.

It is really hard to fly 2D when you have flown VR for 2 months or so but the sim in 2D in 2K on my rig is just stunning visually.

Now VR feels like the days when my rig was never enough for anything, switch to 2D and the sim is in its full glory on high ultra.

I will be curious to see what the sim updated will bring, if the VR features are like the last 2 updates then this is a no go for me. It was fun while it lasted. I will fly MFSF in 2D and stick with DCS and Xplane 11 for VR.

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88

With what settings in MSFS? I have same system and I wouldn’t say 20FPS is flawless.

89

Just built a reasonably top end PC for running MSFS in VR - and have been hit with an intermittent but regular performance bug that is detailed here:

When it works and the sim decides to load and run correctly it is stunning in VR (imo) - but Asobo need to get a grip on these performance/rendering bugs (this is absolutely a bug) because VR folks are spending non-trivial amounts of money here for this sim.

There is something not right when even the menu animations and transitions are only smooth and responsive one time out of four that you load up the sim.

Very much starting to lose it’s luster due to bugs and technical issues with the current state of the VR implementation.

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90

I’m not sure if its the scenery or multiplayer load…but I flew into downtown London area with several other multiplayer planes and my performance tanked to 10-15 fps and the visuals quickly turned into blocked jumpy frame junk. The area before I came into the city ran butter smooth.
It seem as multiplayer plane tags started loading in the performance started suffering.
It was unbearable and I had to switch outta VR mode.

91

Yep, I noted the same inconsistency of fps even in monitor (2D) menus. It’s new at this amount. You launch the sim and you have a certain amount of fps, you relaunch it and it’s divided by 2 in menu on monitor, you switch VR and return to monitor and once again new amount of fps in menu, etc. It’s fairly new, from the last not-sim-UK-update.

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92

This is exactly what I’m seeing, it didn’t happen as frequently on my old system but that was before the UK/Ireland World update.

I’m convinced something isn’t initialising properly when launching the game and/or when switching into VR mode and/or entering the settings page- which is a pretty major issue - and it has gotten worse with this update.

I would be willing to stick my neck out and bet that half the VR performance woes posted here are related to this exact issue.

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London is often like that at present, it is not a VR thing. I was in a multiplayer stream a few days back in 2D and we did a bridge height SCUD run up the Thames with about 50 planes and my FPS dropped from 40 FPS down to maybe 2 seconds per frame. Earlier in the flight we had all landed at Birmingham and there were no issues, just at London. It was not just a multiplayer issue as the photogrammetry scenery was vastly more melted than normal, a clear sign of the server struggling.

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94

I will say just like many others have mentioned before me, in FS what you need is consistency not number of FPS. Consistent 20 FPS and above is what you need for a good to great experience. I get 25-28 in VR and I am very happy with that.

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95

20 FPS is awful. Even in VR. Look at the windmills as you fly past them, they look like slow motion. Minimum should be 30fps.

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96

When this is happening you might want to enable developer mode, open the fps window, and watch the VRam allocation. I’ve noticed the same kind of sudden drops over the London area and every time FS2020 was oversubscribing the available VRam. When it does, it must discard allocated buffer to stream new ones and it does this every frame which is certain to make the fps falling down. Once it recovers fps rise up again to previous levels.

I don’t know if there is a new bug in their VRam allocation manager, or if this is related to bugs in the mesh causing their mesh optimizer tripping and sending tons of unnecessary vertices trying to fill holes (I’ve documented one hole in the London mesh area in these forums), or something else, but this oversubscription is new to me in FS2020 since WU3 and is happening only over London area so far, not anywhere else in UK where I’ve flown. (@Jummivana sorry to bother you but this might be something Asobo devs might want to look at as well [World Update 3] London Photogrammetry Mesh Holes )

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Is that you ?

98

If you are going from the CV1 to the G2…you are in for a treat!!! You won’t believe the difference.

A few months ago I had to go back to the CV1 when I returned my Rift S for a replacement, I couldn’t believe how bad the CV1 was compared to the Rift S!!, and the G2 is much clearer than the Rift S!

99

The G2 is an LCD which lacks the contrast of OLED. You get better resolution but you lose contrast ratio and vibrancy, which really helps with immersion. The direction VR took, going for higher resolution instead of immersion, in my opinion, was a big mistake. I am still using the CV1 over any LCD panel you can give me, and I have tried high res LCDs - they are abysmal. Primaily because I enjoy (and develop) games with darkness. Night time flying is how I enjoy flight simming, and it’s how I find it most immersive.

If you ever tried xplane 737 Zibo mod at night time in a CV1 or another OLED headset you know what I’m talking about.

I am not planning on buying any headset that is not OLED. And it’s sad because newbies coming to VR now don’t even know the immersion they lost and think this is what VR is.

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100

It’s all a question of tradeoffs ultimately, ideally we’d be able to use a (non-pentile) RGB subpixel based OLED and mostly get the best of both worlds - while there’s no physical barrier to doing that they just aren’t manufactured as pentile OLEDs are cheaper and longer life.

I’m generally pretty happy with the LCD displays in the G2 (having come from two OLED headsets - CV1 and Quest). For most of my use they have nice colours, good contrast and low persistence. Unfortunately in games with a lot of dark areas (like HL Alyx for example, or indeed MSFS at night) the lack of shadow detail and Grey blacks are painfully obvious compared to my old Quest. Worth noting that while obviously superior, even the OLEDs in that and the CV1 didn’t have “true” blacks as OLED pixels have a tiny bit of a delay from full off to switching on, and in the headset they always maintained a low level “on” to avoid the time delay from switching fully off to on causing black smear.

I think the next big thing in displays for VR will probably be microLED, given the small panel size they are prime candidates for it and I think we’ll see them arriving for VR headsets by 2023/24 if the rumours are any indication. That will likely render any discussion around LCD vs OLED moot as both will be the inferior choice!

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101

Loaded up a flight today and noticed even more issues with terrain not being aligned properly and flooded looking roads everywhere.(like wtf is it gonna be a road or a river?)
I’m really getting to the point of shelving this sim for now.
It just isn’t there yet for VR.

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When is the VR update coming ??

Everyone I know now uses VR it’s now
It’s an increasing market that’s continuing to gain momentum

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