I currently use a 3070 gpu along with 5800X3D and 32Gb ram, running sim on a Quest 2.
The TLDR is Im messing about with settings, and sure I can get the sim to work, and work well, but the visual quality is not where I want it to be. The 3070 I think, great GPU for 1080p or maybe 1440p normal games on a monitor, but running the resolution needed for VR just needs more power.
Obviously I have seen videos on Youtube of people running 4090’s, and claiming its fantastic, high FPS, max settings etc. But from watching a Youtube video it is impossible to get a feel for the graphical fidelity as it looks in the headset, which is always slightly less clear that it looks on a normal monitor.
A 4090 is a lot of money, so I want to know what I can really expect from this when running the sim on a Quest 2. I want strong fps, smooth with no jumps or reprojection, and to be able to set the world details up higher so that the world is very pretty looking and detailed.
The 4090 is a beast of a GPU - is it genuinely a beast in this sim?
Few months ago I faced the same dilemma: what performance to expect when replacing a 2080ti with a 4090?
This is what I did:
I set a test scenario with the settings I would like to run and observed that I was GPU bound.
Then I started to decrease the OpenXR render settings slider up to the point when I observed that I was no longer bound by GPU.
I took note of the FPS.
The hypothesis is that the new 4090 will do the GPU related work with ease and you will eventually get bound by CPU. That also determines your new FPS. If your 4090 still has some power left, you can use it to supersample for higher visual clarity.
I got my 4090 and the hypothesis above was proven to be just right. I have a G2 and was able to supersample to such a degree that the experience is now like day and night.
For details, if you want, check this post of mine:
People claim a lot of things. I bet they were flying a simple GA plane over remote area without any traffic. If this is your type of flying then you should see a big improvement. If you fly airliners between big airports and with live traffic your new GPU will be limited by CPU.
I have 4090, 31900K and fly in VR (Reverb G2). My settings are mix between MED-ULTRA and 45fps with reprojection is all I can get.
Thanks. Yeah so a 3070 is similar in performance to a 2080ti. So I would get a similar uplift to you.
I agree that going beyond 50fps is unlikely whatever the GPU because the SIM is so CPU intensive. But I have an 5800x3d which should cope well, it’s one of the top end gaming cpus.
If I can get a smooth 45fps with supersampling turned up and high terrain and building detail, water and cloud settings, then that should look very nice in game. At the moment I can get 40fps on medium with supersampling set to 80 or DLSS in performance mode. Smoothness is still a bit jumpy and the cockpit is quite blurred.
I want the game to look sharp, beautiful, and be smooth in vr.
To me it is not about higher FPS, the human eye can not detect anything over 32, so stop chasing fps, and focus more on clarity. Meaning being able to read instrumentation CLEARLY, without having to lean into it from the normal pilot position.
I would love to hear what settings people are using to achieve clarity.
I get 40 fps, with decent clarity, nothing like a 4k monitor, and would not expect 4k from a headset, but should be able to ger better clarity than i am.
You can expect your fps to be CPU limited going forward! Amazing card though.
As someone mentioned above, if you fly GA in more rural areas, you can actually hit 90fps more or less consistently if you run something like 3500*3500 with DLSS performance. But not quite locked.
But the Q2 does 72hz too, right? In that case you should be able to hit 72fps fairly easily in a lot of places, at least with GA planes.
Or lock to 45fps at 90hz and upscale it HARD. 4090 might actually be slightly overkill for the Q2 resolution. I’d look into getting a cheap G2 or Q3, or something else higher res.
For me I first upgraded from a GTX 1080ti to an AMD6950xt. That was a huge jump and I thought it was good enough.
After only a couple of days use, I realized that I needed not only more performance for today, but a lot more bang for the buck for several years into the future.
I sold the 6950 and bought the 4090.
That was an immediate and very noticeable huge leap in performance.
I will also say this regarding in game clarity, nothing I did within MSFS gave me sufficient instrument clarity (I do 99% of my MSFS flying in the PMDG 737).
It was only after I took the advice of a member here and used the XR Toolkit Companion to manually override the game’s resolution that I finally achieved crystal clear MFDs.
If you can afford it, I highly recommend the 4090.
My specs:
AMD 5800x3D
4090
32 gigs RAM
Meta Quest Pro
Actually I’m already quite happy with the instruments if I set the game to high and render resolution at 100%. I can read all the text at that and it looks sharp enough. But at those settings I get jerky framerates so it’s not playable for long.
Where I really want the improvements is in the terrain detail, anti aliasing etc. I want the world itself to look almost real.
I upgraded from a 3080 to 4090 and the best thing about it was the VRAM increase. No more running out of VRAM and having MSFS from time to time chug away choked of VRAM. VRAM is crucial for VR in MSFS in my experience.
I’m running an i7-10700k, 32GB RAM, Quest 2, and a 4090.
Prior to this I was using an RTX 3070 (everything else the same).
For me, the upgrade was night and day and I have absolutely no regrets. I waited for the prices to drop after initial release and purchased my 4090 about 2 months ago. I also upgraded the case and power supply at the same time.
With the 3070 I was constantly tweaking settings for different aircraft, different locations, and was never truly happy. Most in-game settings were on medium and I was using a reduced FOV. I was also using fixed foveated rendering at times which I disliked. My headset resolution in Oculus was 4864x2448 and in-game resolution ended up being about 2100x2100.
With the 4090, my in-game resolution is now 4310x4362 using the OpenXR Toolkit override (DLSS) and practically all settings on ultra, except my LOD’s which are still at 100. I use 72Hz mode in the headset, with oculus resolution set at 5408x2736. I make use of the entire FOV, and don’t need foveated rendering. The VR experience now is truly incredible. I have moments where I forget I’m in VR.
I fly helicopters, airliners, GA, etc. in all types of locations (dense and remote). I do use motion reprojection though as I prefer that, however, it’s often hitting +40 FPS so it’s very smooth and the artefacts are minimal or not noticeable.
I originally anticipated needing to upgrade my CPU and motherboard, however, I now don’t plan on doing that for possibly 2 to 3 years. For me it may also depend on what MSFS 2024 needs.
Our CPU’s are similar, happy to do some raw tests without reprojection if you think that might be useful?
Im not so much interested in raw numbers, but on how nice it looks really. You say you’ve kept the LODs on 100 still, have you experimented with this being higher and what difference does it make visually, eg for low scenery/mountain flights?
Im after as close to photorealism at a smooth fps as possible.
I upgraded from a 2080Ti on a i9 9900k to a 4090 on a i13 9900k and the upgrade I’m able to enjoy in pushing the details is superb.
I have most things on Ultra or High depending on how important I perceive them to be but the real difference is in being able to push the Terrain LOD and Object LOD (if those are the right terms, I’m terrible at remembering exact terms when not in game looking at them.) I do use OpenXR and OpenXR toolkit but that’s to maximise the experience rather than to simply run it smoothly as it was on my previous system. How hard you can push will depend on your own personal preferences and tolerances.
If it’s financially viable for you then I’d certainly suggest it’s worth it, particularly from where you’d be coming from in terms of tech.
Put it this way; I flew from London to Sydney in a Piper Arrow MkIII on my old system….and I’m doing the trip again because it’s a completely different looking sim on my new pc compared to before and I want to enjoy those sights properly.
EDIT: My biggest issues now come from the servers themselves or any poorly optimised addons I may have.
No, I haven’t tried increasing the LODs but if I get time tonight I’ll try increasing them (separately and together) to see whether I notice a difference, both in quality and performance.
I particularly enjoy mountain flying the most, and from my perspective, the last time I tried adjusting the Terrain LOD I had to increase it to 175 before I really began to notice any substantial difference. At 175 I can see the mountain tops tightening up and the general shape of everything starts to looks a bit nicer.
Sorry for the delay in coming back to you on this one, life stuff got in the way.
I tested different levels of LOD (terrain and object), however, on my i7-10700k I achieved the optimum experience when both values are set to 100. When I tried Terrain at 200, yes things looked nicer but the stutters were unplayable. Object LOD at 130 was mostly fine, but any higher and it began to stutter.
With both LOD’s at 100, everything else set to Ultra, and DLSS balance resolution with override set at 4300x4300, the virtual world looks very nice with my 4090 / Quest 2 and I can read dials and gauges in the flight deck.