VR tips and tricks - Improving your VR experience! -Updated 9th/Dec/2020

[41Sqn_Skipper]

@brucevdm based on my settings with a 3070. I'd change:

Overall quality to balanced

Shadows off

Cloud quality low

Render resolution 50%

 

If that gives you 90fps then you might be able to increase shadows high, overall quality to high or render resolution by a few percent.

 

Biggest impact on fps have the clouds and the resolution. Keep in mind that even a 3090 struggles to get 90fps with clouds high and 100% resolution.

 

IMHO the settings to get 90 fps with a 3070/2080TI don't look good anymore. Instead, I use the 60Hz mode (enable in WMR portal) and 80% render resolution and clouds medium. Stable 60fps in all situations so far.

Edited December 15, 2020 by 41Sqn_Skipper

[Panzerlang]

And here's me, happy as Larry with 45 to 90fps (1080Ti). The re-projection with the G2 is absolutely superb, no ghosting, stuttering, nada.
I've done zero in the headset's software/settings. Both the Rift and the Q2 had issues, ranging from minor to major. The G2 has none (once it's running).

Edited December 15, 2020 by J3Hetzer

[NiiranenVR]

I have gen 1

Try landscape blurred and no prick at sharp 

And ...... Is resolution the same as SS in the VR settings ? 

[dburne]

1 hour ago, J3Hetzer said:

And here's me, happy as Larry with 45 to 90fps (1080Ti). The re-projection with the G2 is absolutely superb, no ghosting, stuttering, nada.
I've done zero in the headset's software/settings. Both the Rift and the Q2 had issues, ranging from minor to major. The G2 has none (once it's running).

 

 

Agree on the re-projection with the G2, it is quite good.

I am running at 100% resolution with pretty high settings and enjoying it very much.

[Panzerlang]

4 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

 

Agree on the re-projection with the G2, it is quite good.

I am running at 100% resolution with pretty high settings and enjoying it very much.

I've not monkied much with IL2's settings, though I did have it at a very stable 90 to low 80s. I bumped a couple of bits which reduced the lows to 44/45. If you're one of the lucky ones and don't get the sub-90 nausea there's no discernible difference between 45 and 90, both and in between smooth as silk. On the deck between trees and buildings, smooth 45. Up high, 90.

[dburne]

1 hour ago, J3Hetzer said:

I've not monkied much with IL2's settings, though I did have it at a very stable 90 to low 80s. I bumped a couple of bits which reduced the lows to 44/45. If you're one of the lucky ones and don't get the sub-90 nausea there's no discernible difference between 45 and 90, both and in between smooth as silk. On the deck between trees and buildings, smooth 45. Up high, 90.

 

Yeah I do not experience any nausea with re-projection.

Only time I did was when I tried running it at 60 Hz. It was nice being able to maintain 60 fps constant, but I could certainly feel it.

It is a shame they did not offer an 80 Hz mode.

Edited December 15, 2020 by dburne

[Panzerlang]

3 hours ago, dburne said:

 

Yeah I do not experience any nausea with re-projection.

Only time I did was when I tried running it at 60 Hz. It was nice being able to maintain 60 fps constant, but I could certainly feel it.

It is a shame they did not offer an 80 Hz mode.

They've screwed something up with 60Hz, the cliff-house was shimmering (nasty) when I briefly tried it.

What they really screwed up was allowing MS to parasite its POS WMR on top of SteamVR.

Edited December 15, 2020 by J3Hetzer

[dburne]

25 minutes ago, J3Hetzer said:

They've screwed something up with 60Hz, the cliff-house was shimmering (nasty) when I briefly tried it.

What they really screwed up was allowing MS to parasite its POS WMR on top of SteamVR.

 

Yeah right, it would have been so much better being Steam VR device only.

[Panzerlang]

30 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

Yeah right, it would have been so much better being Steam VR device only.

All I know is when I used SteamVR with the Rift there were no issues. With this G2, issues up the ying yang.
There was a "hologram" windows update a few days ago and I've not had the issues since, so they might have fixed it all.

[dburne]

50 minutes ago, J3Hetzer said:

All I know is when I used SteamVR with the Rift there were no issues. With this G2, issues up the ying yang.
There was a "hologram" windows update a few days ago and I've not had the issues since, so they might have fixed it all.

 

Hopefully so.

Once I got my method of starting things down, and stopped running my Corsair software, things have been rock solid for me.

For some reason my Corsair AIO software and WMR do not get along at all.

[brucevdm]

14 hours ago, 41Sqn_Skipper said:

@brucevdm based on my settings with a 3070. I'd change:

Overall quality to balanced

Shadows off

Cloud quality low

Render resolution 50%

 

If that gives you 90fps then you might be able to increase shadows high, overall quality to high or render resolution by a few percent.

 

Biggest impact on fps have the clouds and the resolution. Keep in mind that even a 3090 struggles to get 90fps with clouds high and 100% resolution.

 

IMHO the settings to get 90 fps with a 3070/2080TI don't look good anymore. Instead, I use the 60Hz mode (enable in WMR portal) and 80% render resolution and clouds medium. Stable 60fps in all situations so far.

@41Sqn_SkipperHey thanks for this, im pretty noob with the VR, what does the Render resolution mean at 50%? is this the setting in steam VR? Where that slide bar is? there is 2 you can change, the one is just there at settings video and the other one is at the per application, which should I change to what? and what resolution should be in IL2 itself?

 

Oh and another thing, i read everyone say i need 90fps instead of 60fps, will this make a big difference? i didnt realy get motion sickness at all with the vr on, its just not cool to see some stuttering effects sometimes, and i dont know if this is the fps drop? i do get 89fps on quick missions offline but as soon as i go multiplayer it just drops to like 70ish

10 hours ago, J3Hetzer said:

And here's me, happy as Larry with 45 to 90fps (1080Ti). The re-projection with the G2 is absolutely superb, no ghosting, stuttering, nada.
I've done zero in the headset's software/settings. Both the Rift and the Q2 had issues, ranging from minor to major. The G2 has none (once it's running).

@J3Hetzer thanks man, can you also show me your settings in steamvr? the video slide bar one and also the one that is for per application setting? on this picture it shows your screen resolution at 3440x1440, is this correct in game? its for multiplayer

Edited December 15, 2020 by brucevdm
more information

[Panzerlang]

9 minutes ago, brucevdm said:

@41Sqn_SkipperHey thanks for this, im pretty noob with the VR, what does the Render resolution mean at 50%? is this the setting in steam VR? Where that slide bar is? there is 2 you can change, the one is just there at settings video and the other one is at the per application, which should I change to what? and what resolution should be in IL2 itself?

 

Oh and another thing, i read everyone say i need 90fps instead of 60fps, will this make a big difference? i didnt realy get motion sickness at all with the vr on, its just not cool to see some stuttering effects sometimes, and i dont know if this is the fps drop? i do get 89fps on quick missions offline but as soon as i go multiplayer it just drops to like 70ish

@J3Hetzer thanks man, can you also show me your settings in steamvr? the video slide bar one and also the one that is for per application setting? on this picture it shows your screen resolution at 3440x1440, is this correct in game? its for multiplayer

My settings in the headset settings are stock, I've had zero need to mess with them. 
3440x1440 is my 2D game resolution (non VR). It has no effect on VR.
I have had zero issues with ghosting and stuttering with the G2. YMMV.

[brucevdm]

1 minute ago, J3Hetzer said:

My settings in the headset settings are stock, I've had zero need to mess with them. 
3440x1440 is my 2D game resolution (non VR). It has no effect on VR.
I have had zero issues with ghosting and stuttering with the G2. YMMV.

@J3Hetzer ok so they are at 100% still? this is now the steamvr settings and per application setting?

[Panzerlang]

2 minutes ago, brucevdm said:

@J3Hetzer ok so they are at 100% still? this is now the steamvr settings and per application setting?

100% is the correct setting for the best image. You can reduce it to get more FPS but the image quality will suffer. I suggest you run the game with various GAME setting adjustments before you mess with the headset settings and see how that goes.

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by J3Hetzer

[brucevdm]

2 minutes ago, J3Hetzer said:

100% is the correct setting for the best image. You can reduce it to get more FPS but the image quality will suffer. I suggest you run the game with various GAME setting adjustments before you mess with the headset settings and see how that goes.

 

will give it a go now, thanks

[Dutch2]

On 12/14/2020 at 8:53 AM, chiliwili69 said:

 

Thanks!  I dind´t try it the MSI Afterburner beta. But yes, this should be the real memory usage of IL-2. I have to try this as well.

It is a big difference going from 11.6 to 5.1. It means then that cards with 10Gb should be more than OK for IL-2 in terms of VRAM.

 

Here something to read https://www.resetera.com/threads/vram-in-2020-2024-why-10gb-is-enough.280976/

 

[chiliwili69]

1 hour ago, Dutch2 said:

Here something to read https://www.resetera.com/threads/vram-in-2020-2024-why-10gb-is-enough.280976/

 

Hey! that reading is really good. And the conclusions is what we wanted to hear. Aligned with our few tests.

[SCG_Fenris_Wolf]

I agree, that was a very good read. Thank you for sharing it.

[E69_Qpassa_VR]

But can we trust VRAM usage reported by FpsVr or no?

 

I still don't understand why we have less VRAM GBs in the 3080 than in the 1080ti, I know these 10GBs are faster but they should at least kept the 11..

Edited December 20, 2020 by E69_Qpassa_VR

[SCG_Fenris_Wolf]

The 10GB on the RTX 3080 performs better than the 16GB on the 6800XT in most VR use-cases. 

 

Check this out: https://babeltechreviews.com/vr-wars-the-rx-6800-xt-vs-the-rtx-3080-15-vr-games-performance-benchmarked/

 

 

-----

 

Update on settings

 

SSAO switched on (ssao_enable = 1), as it improves performance. Yes, I did test it precisely 6 times, it's true. Weird, but welcomed 

[Charlo-VRde]

6 hours ago, E69_Qpassa_VR said:

But can we trust VRAM usage reported by FpsVr or no?

 

I still don't understand why we have less VRAM GBs in the 3080 than in the 1080ti, I know these 10GBs are faster but they should at least kept the 11..

I posted this elsewhere the other day: Just as an FYI to anyone, following the advice at https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/iyl91r/comment/g6dic16?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 , on Combat Box just now with about 40 other pilots the MSI Afterburner 4.6.3 Beta 2 Build 15840 shows I maxed out at 12.5 Gbs of VRAM "dedicated memory usage" (which I interpret as "allocated" and matches what fpsVR displays for me), but I maxed out at 7.1Gbs of VRAM "dedicated memory usage\process", which I interpret as actual VRAM used by IL2. This includes during shooting down an A20 low over Bochum with perhaps three other aircraft I could see around me.

[E69_Qpassa_VR]

With these settings in the G2 I struggle a bit because in some situations the planes dissappear because they are so few pixels. Specially when doing a excessive turn far away or next to a forest. 100% SS

Edited December 21, 2020 by E69_Qpassa_VR

[Blitzen]

Good News:

 

Hello James,

 

I am showing your HP headset did ship, UPS tracking #1Z9306X40303319906, and is showing an expected delivery date of Wednesday, 12/23, as long as other factors don’t delay the shipment such as weather, etc.

 

Thank you and Happy Holidays!

 

Bob

 

Customer Care Supervisor

 

So for the time being I'll be using an older 1080 card.Now all I need is a simple step by step of installing this new "dingus" after uninstalling ( and selling I hope) my Pimax5k. Ferris Wolf's advice was great for working with the workings of the Pimax5k and I must say right now its performance is acceptable, but do others have further advice? Precautions ?  Please keep it relatively simple , because I'm relatively simple when it comes to setting these things up...I'll be buying a new graphics card as soon as they become widely available , but that might be a while.I'd like to get a FPS in the 30-50 range if possible ...I don'y get much better now, so hopefully I'll be able to soldier on for a while with what i've got...Ant guesses when the 3070 or the AMD 68800 will be actually available to real people and not just to the evil "Bots' of the internet?

[sydale1972]

I need some help, i've recently started playing il2 again after a long absence but now with a HP Reverb G2. I used to have an Oculus Rift CV1 which worked pretty well.

VR quality and framerates have been great, but some how today the generic controller settings in steam changed and in the process of getting them working again I've had to reset all my controls again  (why is there not a load /save feature??). In the process of doing that I also noticed that my head position in VR seems to be locked (it was ok last time I played). If I move my head side to side or fwd/back the entire cockpit moves with me rather than being able to move my head around the cockpit. With the old rift all I had for setup for view controls was one for re-centering the view, external view, flyby and zoom and thats all i needed but looking at the menu now there are now a load of controls for setting camera positions etc!

 

Any ideas for what may be up??

 

Thanks in advance!    

[JimmySolarium_VR]

Try to light your room, this happened to me when only my reading lamp on the desktop was active. I fired up a Lamp behind my Chair then and after a restart the fwd/backward head movement worked out perfectly fine.

[Charlo-VRde]

@sydale1972 when I have had this happen a few times I have had to disconnect my Reverb G2 from my computer to get the head tracking working again. @JimmySolarium may be on to something, though in my own case I didn’t change any lighting - unplugging and re-plugging my G2 fixed the issue, though of course, means you have to restart the game. I am now in the habit upon my first spawning of moving my head right up to the gun sight to see if the cockpit moves away from me. If it does then I know I have to restart my G2

Edited December 22, 2020 by Charlo-VR
Spelling

[Panzerlang]

7 hours ago, sydale1972 said:

I need some help, i've recently started playing il2 again after a long absence but now with a HP Reverb G2. I used to have an Oculus Rift CV1 which worked pretty well.

VR quality and framerates have been great, but some how today the generic controller settings in steam changed and in the process of getting them working again I've had to reset all my controls again  (why is there not a load /save feature??). In the process of doing that I also noticed that my head position in VR seems to be locked (it was ok last time I played). If I move my head side to side or fwd/back the entire cockpit moves with me rather than being able to move my head around the cockpit. With the old rift all I had for setup for view controls was one for re-centering the view, external view, flyby and zoom and thats all i needed but looking at the menu now there are now a load of controls for setting camera positions etc!

 

Any ideas for what may be up??

 

Thanks in advance!    

I've had this and I put such issues down to glitches. Rebooting the PC fixed it. The WMR software is the culprit in my opinion and I can't wait for somebody out there to offer a way to disable the 'cliffhouse' and all its associated shite.

Edited December 22, 2020 by JG51-Hetzer

[sydale1972]

Thanks everyone for all the responses. Rebooting didn't change anything, I then tried increasing the light as the lights were fairly dimmed last night but that didn't change anything either. I then thought to look at some of the WMR settings, and selected the motion reprojection setting with motion vector selected. After that it seemed to work. Now it could be due to the change in settings or another startup of WMR but it seemed to work at least!!

[Moelders109]

On 12/15/2020 at 9:06 PM, JG51-Hetzer said:

And here's me, happy as Larry with 45 to 90fps (1080Ti). The re-projection with the G2 is absolutely superb, no ghosting, stuttering, nada.
I've done zero in the headset's software/settings. Both the Rift and the Q2 had issues, ranging from minor to major. The G2 has none (once it's running).

I'm confused by exactly how you have it running with no stuttering when below 90fps. 

Gotta say, for me, if it drops lower than 90 it's a horrid stuttering mess. Moving my head around in the cockpit I can clearly see ghosting and stuttering on the cockpit bars etc. 

 

Can you clarify exactly what settings you use in Steam VR to have re-projection working smoothly? Also, does yours lock to 45fps or 90, or is it spending most of it's time at 60fps (as mine tends to). I must be missing something because the stuttering and ghosting is absolutely awful for me (taking off the ground moves like a slide show). 

In the end I set mine to 50% SS in Steam VR so I could stay between 80-90fps. But have yet to test with clouds...

System is 9900KF and 2080 Ti. 

[Moelders109]

I'm guessing motion smoothing is the option. For me, 45 or 60hz/fps is just way too juddery, ghosting on the visuals. 

Back to 50% SS and prefer the slight loss of visual clarity and 80-90hz. 

[Panzerlang]

5 hours ago, Moelders109 said:

I'm confused by exactly how you have it running with no stuttering when below 90fps. 

Gotta say, for me, if it drops lower than 90 it's a horrid stuttering mess. Moving my head around in the cockpit I can clearly see ghosting and stuttering on the cockpit bars etc. 

 

Can you clarify exactly what settings you use in Steam VR to have re-projection working smoothly? Also, does yours lock to 45fps or 90, or is it spending most of it's time at 60fps (as mine tends to). I must be missing something because the stuttering and ghosting is absolutely awful for me (taking off the ground moves like a slide show). 

In the end I set mine to 50% SS in Steam VR so I could stay between 80-90fps. But have yet to test with clouds...

System is 9900KF and 2080 Ti. 

The headset's settings are totally stock. I did find that in co-op missions I saw an increase in ghosting and stuttering but still acceptable for play. I then OCd my CPU (i5 8600k) from 4.3 to 5.0ghz and that seems to have fixed it, so clearly a lot of CPU-intensive stuff can hit the smoothness.

Mostly at 45fps.

Edited December 23, 2020 by JG51-Hetzer

[Blitzen]

I’m curious,when the Reverb G2 arrives should I delete/uninstall the Pimax & Pitool functions before trying to install the new headset?

[Alonzo]

4 hours ago, Blitzen said:

I’m curious,when the Reverb G2 arrives should I delete/uninstall the Pimax & Pitool functions before trying to install the new headset?

 

If you will no longer be using the Pimax, you might even want to do a fresh Windows install. My systems get full of crud over time and I always find a reinstall helps freshen things up. I'm reading plenty of issues with WMR and the G2, having remnants of Pimax stuff in there probably won't help.

 

(But you can also just wait if/until you run into a problem).

 

On the VRAM thing, I still think 10GB on the NVidia cards is worryingly small. On the other sim (the jet simulator) I cannot run my Index higher than about 2200 vertical pixels on a multiplayer server, because the textures + whatever it needs for the actual rendering memory use up more than the 10GB in my 3080. Now you might argue that other game is an unoptimized POS -- and I would agree with you! -- but nevertheless it's a mainstream simulator where you can easily blow 10GB of VRAM in a common use case. If anyone has a G2 and that other game, can you run it at 100% (or even 80%) and not run out of VRAM? The symptom of running out of VRAM is a sudden frame time increase to something crazy like 33-50ms per frame.

[dburne]

8 minutes ago, Alonzo said:

 

If you will no longer be using the Pimax, you might even want to do a fresh Windows install. My systems get full of crud over time and I always find a reinstall helps freshen things up. I'm reading plenty of issues with WMR and the G2, having remnants of Pimax stuff in there probably won't help.

 

(But you can also just wait if/until you run into a problem).

 

On the VRAM thing, I still think 10GB on the NVidia cards is worryingly small. On the other sim (the jet simulator) I cannot run my Index higher than about 2200 vertical pixels on a multiplayer server, because the textures + whatever it needs for the actual rendering memory use up more than the 10GB in my 3080. Now you might argue that other game is an unoptimized POS -- and I would agree with you! -- but nevertheless it's a mainstream simulator where you can easily blow 10GB of VRAM in a common use case. If anyone has a G2 and that other game, can you run it at 100% (or even 80%) and not run out of VRAM? The symptom of running out of VRAM is a sudden frame time increase to something crazy like 33-50ms per frame.

 

Yeah that is one of the reasons I splurged and bit the bullet on a 3090 card this go around. 

[Blitzen]

IT ARRIVED! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The short version: disconnected the Pimax and after a couple of hiccups with headset not turning on & interface with Mixed Reality,got it up & working.( lucky for me I found the very tiny connector that converted one of the small “plugs into a USB friendly plug...)Applied all the recommendations found here and did the perimeter tracking as well.I had a small problem with mouse cursor in game , but I think that’s solved too,now.Using the new Microsoft Mixed Reality ad only one small glich & that is having to use the Windows key+Y to get the cursor working from time to time.

It took a while but not too tough & not nearly as many steps needed for the Pimax & Pitool and the good news is that it really works well in game even with my “ancient” 1080 card.Very good resolution and acceptable FPS ( high 30’s-high 40’s give or take, close to what I was used to with the Pimax5K)) so all good. Maybe there is a way to boost this but I may. Have to muddle along until a Nvidia 3070 or AMD 6800, whenever that will be.

Immediate (small) questions: when I lean into cockpit (i.e.towards monitor) I see the Mixed reality grid of a couple of vertical lines & a circle overlapping the images of the cockpit or exterior view. Do I need to do do the perimeter mapping again or is something else going on? Do I need to be concerned with : rear projection, smoothing & number of Hz’z ( whatever the they are? Many of these were part of things that could be handled on the Pitool but now I’m not sure  where to dial these in if I need to? Steam VR somewhere?

Summing up after my brief trial yesterday ,I’m pleased with the new ReverbG2 ...very pleased! A relatively easy install and it worked well from the get go. The PIMAX will be deleted from the PC and will go up for sale after Christmas.

 

Again , many thanks for all your suggestions in this thread and a great Christmas...mine came a day or two early.

Edited December 24, 2020 by Blitzen

[41Sqn_Skipper]

@Blitzen in the WMR portal settings you can disable the display of the room limits to not see the boundary  lines when you learn forward.

 

There's also an option that solves the mouse/win+y problem, not sure how it's called (it's the last combobox on one of the setting pages)

 

You can also change from 90Hz to 60Hz in the portal.

 

To enable motion smoothing you need to do this in the SteamVR Room, explained here 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by 41Sqn_Skipper

[Blitzen]

All good ...Last question ; what's the general consensus on 60 vs.90 Hz? What the heck does Hz stand for - what does it do?

Thanks again!

[HunDread]

7 hours ago, Blitzen said:

All good ...Last question ; what's the general consensus on 60 vs.90 Hz? What the heck does Hz stand for - what does it do?

Thanks again!

 

Hz is Hertz. The update frequency of the screen per second. 60 Hz means your screen only refreshes 60 times per second which is easier on your system to lock on to max refresh rate which usually gives the smoothest experience. I was really counting on the G2's 60 Hz mode with my aging PC but for me it turned out to be bad. It has a constant flickering mainly in the peripheral vision which is inconvenient and I believe it is a health hazard. 

[SCG_Fenris_Wolf]

It is. 

 

90Hz is the way to go.

 

If you can't get that, even motion reprojection at 90Hz with 45fps is better than going 60Hz.

[Operatsiya_Ivy]

I don't see the point in trying to achieve 90hz when as soon as some action starts reprojection is kicking in anyway. I'd rather play with reprojection and high settings and a bit of ghosting than with 90hz and the game looking like garbage. But maybe i am missing something considering that i am new to the whole thing.