I agree 100% with @Cpscomuterman.
I think the reason there are some VR users who feel that SU5 was an upgrade, vs. others like myself who feel it was a definite downgrade, probably has a lot to do with what hardware you have and how optimized your settings were before the update.
I took a lot of time early on to follow the advice of @CptLucky8 and others (see My 2070 SUPER VR settings and suggestions (Index - SteamVR) 🟢), along with much personal experimentation, to get to the best possible VR experience. I had a great blend of visual quality and performance. The sim looked great and was generally smooth as butter. Sure, there were places like large cities and airports that would tax my config and cause stuttering and lower framerate, but overall It was certainly good enough to be immersive and a true “wow” experience for me.
Then came SU5 and subsequent patches, and those who had not previously maxed out their visuals are reporting an upgrade, whereas those of us who already had optimized visuals are seeing a definite downgrade. It is a real thing, we aren’t making it up. I am sure that there are folks who had lower end hardware, lower initial settings, etc. who have seen an improvement, but for the rest of us this is a real downgrade and is extremely worrisome.
My biggest concern here as that we’re all in this together and want the best experience possible, yet there are always posts that say something like, “Everything is great for me, so the people complaining must not know what they are talking about”. To me this is as counter productive if not more so than the posts that rant about how terrible the sim is without any additional context. Even if you think your experience now is better than before, I think most would agree it could still be significantly better.
Those of us for whom it is worse are not making things up. Trust me when I say it was a much better experience for me before, and has the potential to be mindbogglingly good, but ONLY if Asobo recognizes the need for improvements and puts in the effort. I wish our VR community could band together on this and acknowledge the fact that VR needs some serious love. Improving the experience for some of us should logically improve the experience for ALL of us.