Been doing MSFS (and DCS) in VR over a year now and last week I upgraded by G2 to a Varjo Aero. I gotta say I’m pretty underwhelmed, unfortunately. While the Aero certainly is clearer and also gives me unimpended clarify (due to eye tracking foveated rendering) inside the v-pit and for the closest objects outside to, say, 100 (~300ft) meters or so, more distant objects are just as blurry as they are in the G2. Also, I don’t see this in DCS and I hear other simmers confirm most other sims also render a clear image pretty much to the horizon. But MSFS doesn’t.
Also, while I haven’t done MSFS in pancake mode for more than a year, as I remember it the flat rendering is crisp and clear. In VR; not so much.
Is there a setting I’m not aware of, that can improve the sharpness beyond those 100 meters?
I only fly pancake mode but I’ve found that turning on Nvidia scaling in control panel and reducing the sharpness slider to zero really makes things a lot more clear. Would this work with VR too?
It doesn’t have to be blurry, and it isn’t made so by design. Decreased viewing distance is basically to give acceptable speeds on the middle class pc’s.
You can increase it.
LOD has a big impact, sharpness settings and clarity in Nvidia’s Freestyle filters did an amazing job, it’s like getting glasses and being able to see the first time sharp… Don’t know how this translates to VR, as i do only Headtracking.
Look at the youtube channels for VR in MSFS, they are very happy even with the Vario…
LOD has no impact on blurriness! It impacts what is drawn - not the clarity - in the distance as far as terrain and buildings. The Anti-aliasing (usually TAA in MSFS2020) and sharpness post-processing does. There are other VR HMD factors (pixels per degree and distortion of lenses and image mapping) that also contribute. The simplest way to check is to use multiple applications (for us, like other flight simulations - DCS, IL-2, Aerofly FS, Xplane, Prepar3D,etc.) and compare the VR clarity. Fortunately, the OVR toolkit is giving some control over just plain pixel resolution without killing our frame rates - but even that still can’t do it all. My general impression right now is that MSFS2020 is somewhat more blurry than other sims in VR mode - and so I attribute that to some failing with TAA. I wish I could try out various antialiasing options using the Nvidia driver but that seems to have no or little control.
I am Not a Super fan of VR I have the Quest 2, waiting for my PIMAX, I would rather see my 3 Monitor view work right but VR is cool too. I was like you, things in the distance like mountains were… well not good.
But since the new Sim update and Also the new Open XR update with new Nvidea drivers . WOW what a difference. The people who do the open XR are VR sim savers…
Sorry but that’s not really true, for 2D at least. Terrain LOD does have an impact on how far away from the aircraft the clarity of the objects appear to the observer. Set it to 400 and distant objects are definitely clearer but the performance is impacted.
You are correct about LOD in the sense that far-away objects are simplified - trees are less detailed and buildings look like small mountains or at least deteriorate in some way since that’s what LOD means (complex 3D objects are drawn with far fewer polygons ). Also, TAA has a tendency to “dissolve” small things so as to anti-alias them. Maybe it is just that TAA needs some options like MSAA (2X, 4X,etc) or general improvement.
I have asked similar question a couple of times, I think AA implementation is normally the most common answer ! What I do find strange is how uniquely horrific it looks when AA is turned off, like there is some underlying render problem.
@sanscheval Try setting your vario to its highest resolution setting (39ppd) in Vario Base, have steam ss and msfs taa at 100%, and use a quality add-on city. Then approach that city from 15 miles out, at low altitude, on a clear or not very cloudy day…it’s not blurry.
To get rid of the horrible aliasing on clouds, and the shimmering and blinking textures in terrain, all you have to do is open Nvidia Control Panel, and for MSFS in program settings, Change the negative LOD bias from “allow” to “clamp”. This allows the antisotropic filtering to work as intended and has a dramatic effect in reducing the shimmers.
as an AMD user (6900XTU model) I just wonder if this has a similar option I haven’t found. This card has enough power to drive MSFS as well as DCS nearly maxed out with my RiftS, but those blurry horizon texturing in MSFS drives me rather cracy as DCS e.g. is really sharp from edge to edge as far as the resolution of my VR gear allows.
Another factor seems that regions in bright sun are much more blurred than regions covered bei cloud shadows that are rather crisp even in a distance. So maybe there is something more into this effect caused by the render oder lighting engine?
I feel to a degree that this is part of the engine’s tradeoff to be able to provide performance with a higher demand from the sim in terms of graphics. Sometimes when flying, I feel like I can make out a radius around the airdraft where the graphics seem to change from the good textures to the not so good. I feel like this radius is determined by the terrain LOD slider but I may be wrong.
If using a rift, be sure to disable ASW in sim (ctrl and numpad 1) to improve the smoothness of looking around the cockpit. Not related to this topic but makes a massive difference to judder in VR
