VR is Fantastic - Even with Older Card

Things tend to be a bit negative in the VR subgroup but I’m seriously impressed with MSFS in VR. I can’t go back.

I spent a bit of time tuning more for video quality on an older GTX 1070 and Quest 2. My framerate is far from butter smooth. But I’m having a blast and it’s very usable (outside of that nagging “impossible how to focus on VR menus” issue, or the “no throttle/rudder control issue”).

If I downtune all video settings, the resulting framerate gains are not worth the losses. Sometimes downtuning even results in more rendering issues (tears and black edges). It may be more a knock on the 1070?

My biggest complaint is the G1000 requires prescription glasses. But I can virtually lean in when needed.

Not sure what everyone with the RTX 3090 and G2 is experiencing and I’m missing out on. It does seem to be the popular combo here.

I took my first flight in the mountains today and I just can’t see how a 2D monitor projection would have cut it.

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I recently bought the ORBX Asia terrain mesh and REX Accuseason last week.

Last night I decided to try a flight in Nepal. I just randomly picked a departure and destination on Littlenavmap and plotted a route through the mountain valleys. I set the time to just after dawn.

I donned my Quest 2 and jumped into the cockpit of the Kodiak 100. Sometimes flights can be a bit of a lottery and as you know, a lot can go wrong to spoil the immersion but not last night. It was one of those flights that truly make you’re jaw drop in amazement. Scenery was immense and awe inspiring, the Kodiak’s outstanding performance allowed for such a casual preparation, allowing me to drop low into the valleys and climb out when necessary without all the usual, normally aspirated anxiety.

Even with the Kodiak’s immense power, I still had some moments where i had to circle in a tight environment to gain altitude in order to cut across a pass or two at 20,000 ft with high level winds doing scary things to the plane.

The landing involved topping out over a pass close to the Annapurna mountain complex and then dropping about 10,000 ft to the airfield which was only two miles down the valley. Lots of fun, deploying full flaps and idle, circling again in a very limited space.

Nailed a pretty difficult approach, with the foot of a mountain jutting out in front of the approach to the airfield, required banking right onto the threshold, floating to about mid runway, setting it down and straight onto full anchors and reverse thrust. Came to a near halt about 20 metres from the end of the runway. Even managed to keep it rolling as I span around to return to GA parking, just like a pro.

Without VR, I cannot imagine how it could have been such an immersive and truly awesome experience.

Hats off to Microsoft and Asobo. When it works it REALLY does work.

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I just flew Miami last night. I had been avoiding loading a large city as I didn’t think my setup could handle it. But it was beautiful. I recognized so many locations.

I had to turn cars back on. Seems VR sets them off by default. Roads look weird all empty.

I’ve been really impressed with what can be done on a 1070 if you keep messing with the settings. I’ve got a lot of settings on medium/high at ~1800x1800 px/eye with a bit of sharpening from openxr nis scaler. While only getting 18fps at these settings the motion smoothing on the Vive Pro 2 is working really well. Turning settings down until I get 24 nor even 30 fps seems to make it less smooth with more surging.

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That is my experience as well, going for “lower” visuals and resolution for increased FPS did not make for a better/smoother VR video. The NIS scaling at 80% for me is the biggest bang, up sharpness to just under jitter, then having the headset do motion smoothing. SteamVR and Quest 2 handle motion smoothing nicely.

Under accessibility, having the UI scale at max helps for menus. It even makes the VR toolbar “almost” easy to focus. But it’s too big when you drop to desktop.

Upping many of the graphics settings don’t seem to have a performance impact from what I could tell. Perhaps there is a sweet spot for motion reprojection, or whatever it gets called depending on app.

The biggest thing for me was giving up being able to see the G1000 buttons. I don’t think they would be clear with an additional $6,000 in hardware. Perhaps a MSFS software fix could do it.

The default Cessna 152, with no gauge backlighting, also has very low contrast at night, which makes the gauges in VR harder to see.

I actually don’t use G1000 buttons much in flight and I know where the buttons are. A lean forward takes care of the rest.

I have a 3090 and Pimax 8kx, and the glass screens are still just a bit blurry, but readable. I only have to lean in a little to read the smallest things. The 8kx has an enormous wide view though, so to keep framerates around 30 i have the steam resolution down a bit from what the G2 could do at the same framerate. I keep msfs at 100% and use the NIS scaler (found here on the forums) at 50%. A year ago i had a 1070 and Rift S and while even that was really great, the new setup is amazing.

Good to know it can get better!

On this I would disagree - whilst many of us would wish VR to have more development (and bug fixing) attention, I find users of the VR forum to be enthusiasts who are constructive and helpful, and certainly none of the toxic posts and fights sometimes seen in the main forum!

Yes it is astonishing… I like to get at least 30 mins a day to boost my mood. Not sure at what point it would start to be classed as an addiction :grin:

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I use a Pimax 8k x and have a 3080ti. The glass panels are pretty readable but as someone else mentioned, sometimes lean in just a bit to see some of the smaller engine data. I am continually blown away by how much of a game changer VR is. Before MSFS, I hadn’t flown a sim in about 15 years, and I bought the Pimax and PC just for MSFS, having never tried VR before. I still have yet to use the PC or HMD for anything other than flight sim, maybe at some point I will… but having flown many hundreds of hours “in real life”, I am amazed at how close to real flying is in VR. If someone solves force feedback for flight control surfaces (yoke and trim), it’ll start to approach perfection. I can’t speak to any other headsets, but with the Pimax, my expectations have been exceeded. I can’t imagine where things will be in another 5-10 years.

I really miss my Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro from the late 90s.

I’ve seen someone post here with a 2k varjo aero that the G1000 buttons are hard to read so youre not alone, if theyre blurry in an aero then theyre blurry in any hmd.

Pleased for you that youre having a good time with older hardware :slight_smile:

For me the G1000 screen itself is as readable as I could expect, but the physical buttons panel (direct to, enter, etc) is hard to read and I think it’s mainly due to the font used on the buttons, rather than the size - it’s quite a bold font with not much black space around the bold white letters. I wonder if a talented modder could subtly tweak the font on the g1000 etc buttons to create a more vr friendly version

I think so, we would probably need a whole new G1000, I have the marketplace NXi version. I’ve switched over to the GNS530 variant in the C172 Classic as the gauges are easier in VR.

As for my hardware (Windows 11, GTX 1070 and Oculus Quest 2). I’ve found Virtual Desktop through Steam VR the only playable setup. I can get higher FPS though the Oculus Tray Tool, but the video quality was full of distortions, jitter, shimmer and lag. The Virtual Desktop setup allows for high settings but can smooth the frames out just enough.

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