Valve Index - Settings Questions

[Khangirey]

I just got a Valve Index yesterday, and this is my first foray into VR.

 

Specs:

 

1080ti

Ryzen 3600

16gb DDR4 @ 3000

 

I'm confused as to how the steamVR settings work for frame rate. Should I set it to 144, 90 or somewhere in between?

 

What should my in game settings look like? I have enabled the FPS overlay, however I get two numbers, one on top of the other. One is constantly changing, and the one underneath it is fixed. Example: 78/105

 

Furthermore, for some reason some times my FPS seems to be half of the HMD's frame rate. If I set the HMD to 120, the FPS in game will show 60. This is with me disabling motion smoothing.

 

How should I monitor my performance and tweak it to a good balance? 

Update: 

 

Please correct me if I am wrong. When I set my frame rate as 144hz, my game shows me running at roughly 70-75. This is because of reprojection, yes? In essence it is forcing motion smoothing because my game can't render at the full 144. When I set it to 90, I run anywhere from 80-90, with dips into the 50s when explosions happen. Am I correct?

 

Also, I still can't figure out what the second number under the FPS readout is. 

[dburne]

That second number under fps is your FOV.

[Mewt]

Hey Kangirey. Fellow Index owner here for about 6 months.

 

 

11 hours ago, Khangirey said:

I'm confused as to how the steamVR settings work for frame rate. Should I set it to 144, 90 or somewhere in between?

 

Quote

 

Furthermore, for some reason some times my FPS seems to be half of the HMD's frame rate. If I set the HMD to 120, the FPS in game will show 60. This is with me disabling motion smoothing.

 

Quote

 

Please correct me if I am wrong. When I set my frame rate as 144hz, my game shows me running at roughly 70-75. This is because of reprojection, yes? In essence it is forcing motion smoothing because my game can't render at the full 144. When I set it to 90, I run anywhere from 80-90, with dips into the 50s when explosions happen. Am I correct?

 

Yes you are getting half the intended frame rate with reprojection on. So trying for 144hz will net you 72 etc. You might be able to run many VR games at 144hz but there is no way in hell with current hardware that IL2 can get anywhere near that. So you end up with reprojected 72.

 

The general consensus seems to be that reprojection sucks for IL2. You get wobbly planes, spotting is harder and general image quality suffers.

 

The best approach I've found on my Index/1080GTX is to get a "true" non-reprojected experience. Everything was a bit of a messy eyesore until I managed to achieve this.

 

That means 80hz, at 100% SteamVR supersampling, motion-smothing off, and balanced settings in game.

 

 

Quote

 

What should my in game settings look like? I have enabled the FPS overlay, however I get two numbers, one on top of the other. One is constantly changing, and the one underneath it is fixed. Example: 78/105

 

Quote

 

How should I monitor my performance and tweak it to a good balance? 

Update: 

 

Get FPSVR. https://store.steampowered.com/app/908520/fpsVR/. You need to monitor your hz, SS and frametime. The goal here is to make frametime consistently with as little re-projection as possible. You want things "in the green" for 95% of your gaming experience. It's OK to go lower occasionally (its hard to make frame time on the ground in a busy multiplayer server for example).

 

Steam VR settings:

Set Steam VR to 80hz, 100% SuperSampling (2016x2240) with Motion Smoothing off. Motion smoothing costs resources, and produces artifacts and works well for some games but not IL2. Maybe motion smoothing tech will improve in the future.

 

In game settings:

Balanced, Screen Res 1280 (doesn't matter that much), Medium Shadows, Mirrors Off, x3 Distant Landscape, 100Km Horizon, Landscape filter to taste, Normal Grass, High Clouds. SSAO off, HDR off, Sharpen to taste. 4K textures on. Distant Buildings off. 

Antialiasing has to be FXAA and 2x or 4x are very similar. Choose whatever gives you better spotting. MSAA is certainly better but absolutely TANKS the FPS of the Index into the ground. You simply wont make 80fps with MSAA.

 

All these settings are a good starting point. You can see what each setting is costing you in FPS and therefore my logic to those settings by checking out the excellent Spreadsheet produced by Chiliwili69 here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJmnz_nVxI6_dG_UYNCCpZVK2-f8NBy-y1gia77Hu_k/edit?usp=sharing

 

If you have the frametime to spare then move some of them upwards. If you cant make frametime move some downwards. Clouds and shadows being the biggest hits to GPU and overall settings being the biggest hit to CPU. But check the sheet.

 

Either way you should now have super smooth, non-wobbly planes and an awesome VR experience. You can now hide FPSVR overlay and pew pew.

 

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Also, I still can't figure out what the second number under the FPS readout is. 

 

Its the Field Of View angle. Dont worry about it. Use FPSVR for your FPS monitoring instead of the in game one.

 

 

 

Edited July 10, 2020 by Mewt

[Alonzo]

+1 to everything Mewt said, but I will add that the "quest for high framerate" is generally only critical if you want to do competitive online multiplayer stuff. If not, and especially if you're playing "icons on" mode where spotting isn't a thing, the high/consistent framerate doesn't matter so much. In that case, you might want to try the 72hz reprojected to 144 -- @SCG_Fenris_Wolf I believe has tried this mode (or his squad has) and people do quite like it. It's much better than 60 projected to 120 or 45 to 90, and it gives your PC a bit more time to render each frame.

 

Personally I'm playing with a Pimax Artisan, a new (to me) headset. I have it set to 120hz and no interpolation, and it's actually a pretty decent experience even when the frame rate drops. I don't ever get 120, but sometimes I'll be up at 90, sometimes down to 70 during action. But because I have the interpolation off, and because the 'max' framerate of 120 is pretty high, the whole experience seems quite fluid to me.

 

A lot of this comes down to personal preference. There are some people on the forums who claim that 40 FPS in VR is fine for them! I think that would be vomit-inducing for me, but to each their own. The key things to understand are what Mewt mentioned -- how all the settings interact to give you better/worse performance and graphical fidelity, how to use fpsVR to measure your CPU and GPU frame times, that kind of thing.

[VR-DriftaholiC]

Re-projection is crap in my opinion. I would use 80 or 90, whatever you can maintain solidly. 

[chiliwili69]

Well said Mewt.

The 1080Ti is quite OK for the Index even with 120% or 130% SteamVR SS.

Clouds settings and how many clouds are in the scene affects directly to the GPU and load it to 100%, as said, you can chack that with fpsVR while playing.