Oculus Quest2 VR setup for IL2

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

 

I've been asked to help with Oculus Quest2 IL2 settings.

I wanted to move the post here so as not to spam up spotting tips with it.

 

So I have an HP Reverb G2, and that is my goto sim headset, but I also use my Quest 2 for many things, and I recommended it as an upgrade to a buddy for IL2 from his Samsung Odyssey (non plus). So I've been helping him optimize it.

This is long but I will follow this post with a video on youtube to help out this weekend.

 

Some changes from my last post to optimize Quest:

• Have shortcut to Oculus Debug Tool above on desktop.

• Have shortcut to Oculus Software.
• Set the resolution in Oculus software to 1.0 line. It should be close to 1832x1920 if I remember correctly.
• Leave this setting at 1.0 all the time.
• In Oculus Debug tool above set it as shown.
• Set Steam VR Super Sampling Value to 1.0!
• I would turn off motion smoothing in Steam VR settings, but it's subjective.

 

• The top line pixel override value is how you will adjust the resolution of the headset for different games.For IL2 and the 1080ti I would set it to 1.255.  This gives a res of 2320 if memory serves correctly.It's roughly the same as running the G2 at 52% on 1080ti. It approaches G2 sharpness, in the center only, but doesn't quite match.Steam VR will use the value set in the Oculus Debug Tool to provide the resolution and will match it. The Override overrides what is in oculus software and can be changed before starting Steam VR and a game.  It can be changed anytime before starting a Steam VR and a game without resetting Oculus Service.

 

• Set the other settings as shown above in Oculus Debug Tool.
• Bypass proximity sensor allows you to set the headset down without it turning off and needing restart of everything.
• I disable async spacewarp like motion smoothing. I don't like the artifacts you get at times, and I don't want to turn off things to use it. Even then I wouldn't want the little targets I'm fixated on in a dogfight to do anything abnormal, that's precisely the moment I don't want any artifacts which is why I avoid these predictive warping techniques.  With a new faster computer, I will retry them.  It's also subjective try it.  The async spacewarp and the predictive warping in Oculus and WMR are 10% fps hits for me with artifacts. Motion Smoothing doesn't seem to impact fps or cause artifacts that I notice, but I also keep it off will test it more later.

 

• Distortion Curvature is where you want to get more detail in the image. It is hard to notice its effect. Setting Higher will focus more density in the center of the image, making the center sharper than the default but edges worse than the default. Low will make the edges sharper while softening the center more than the default. Default is the normal variation of sharpness across the view. The center is much sharp than the edge in all settings. I am a sharpness freak and will turn my head rather than glance, so I focus on detail more with high on center.  Until we get ubiquitous eye tracking and foveated rendering on glance center is the focus area.  It would be a huge boon until all that happens to have a foveated render option that renders more detail in the center to oversample there and less on the outside to take better advantage of our GPU power available.  Obviously, that should be a choice, and I'm sure many would prefer detail everywhere and trade the best detail in the center for better everywhere.  I'd like to be able to tune that. That setting lets you tune it a little bit.

 

• Encode resolution is a critical setting to getting the most out of the Quest 2. It is the size that the render will encode into before being sent and shrunk down to display. I notice no performance hit to setting it to 3969, and going much above 4000 caused some issues.

 

Setting 2.0 on the top line override gives 3969 resolution and matches this and is the max setting I test the Quest 2 with.

 

IL2 looks awesome at 2.0, but obviously framerates at 2.0 3969 are very low but at this res it is indeed 80-90% the sharpness in the center of the G2 at same resolution. I'll get more precise on sharpness with more testing.

 

With my settings in IL2:

ULTRA main setting

High Clouds, High Shadows, FXAA2, Complex mirrors, Max reflections

 

2.0 gets 21fps and 1.255 gets 41fps

Keeping same settings but dropping main to BALANCED gets 53fps.

 

• Encode Bitrate 300 sends 300 Mbit over the cable to the headset. Pretty sure this is still compressed, just not as much as wifi though in both, you can set bitrate.  If your setting bitrate, it's compressing to fit in that bitrate.  The HDMI or Displayport don't need bitrate and are not compressing, but I'm pretty sure It's compressing the image to get down the USB3 pipe.  I don't notice, but I'm sure it contributes to the softness of only approaching the G2 sharpness.

 

The last two settings are critical in that if you change them, you need to restart the oculus service at the top of the Oculus Debug Tool, or you will see no effect!!

 

After any change of the top res override line you need to restart SteamVR and any game to see an effect.

 

After setting these settings, you only need to change pixel res override to change resolution.  No other setting needs changing in SteamVR or the Oculus Software.

 

I promise to make a short youtube video on all of this for Oculus Quest users shortly.

It will also go over the Oculus startup order.

Edited June 23, 2021 by BH_Adabadoo_VR
Bold and color

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

My Oculus Quest 2 Review:

 

From a HP Reverb G2 user.

 

The Oculus Quest is only $300 and is a great headset for new VR simmers or a cheap upgrade to last-gen headsets like the Samsung Odyssey Plus.

 

On the plus side:

It's cheap.

It does way more than just simming.

It does amazing roomspace VR beyond the limits of normal 2 lighthouse use.

It's roomspace is gloriously easy to setup anywhere any-time and just works.

It's inside-out tracking, and hand controller tracking are second only to Lighthouse and not by much. I've given up lighthouse tracking because it's actually great tracking and I never have issues.  I bought the knuckles and haven't taken them out yet because I've effortlessly played Half Life Alyx and Boneworks on my Quest 2 wirelessly in multiple rooms in my house with no artifacts. Granted in every room I would play in I have a mesh router right there with super solid 5Ghz wifi ready for the game.  Not sure how backyard would work but probably would be covered by livingroom as it’s right next to it.

You can read kindle and PDFs and do email in bed.  It attaches to Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and remote desktop computer work is amazing in bed.  Best Netflix Youtube movie screen around in bed on the ceiling with no neck pain. It’s great for fitness.

 

It has better chromatic aberration than G2. I've had two G2's that are mine.  First one the image was perfect but was flakey and needed new cable, and had sound issues.  Got a new one sent.  New one is mostly awesome but has slight chromatic aberration.  I have many at work but because of covid have only worn one of the work ones. It's image is perfect with less chromatic aberration. I think the build quality of the G2 varies considerably based on my sample of having and using several headsets.  All are quite awesome but the image variation is higher than I would expect.  The Quest 2 has no chromatic aberration like the my G2 has. I think I need to get mine returned but don't want to be down without it.

 

The bad:

Only $300, something has to give.

Fenris is pretty much right and I agree with his assessment of all other headsets.

Lenses, glare, only gets to 80-90% sharpness of G2 when cranked to 3969 pixels and does so at a fps loss of 10%.  Worse edge focus than G2.  Worse brightness Worse contrast Worse sound.  Worse everything.

Not as comfortable as the G2. G2 is most comfortable headset I've worn.

 

I use the following software for my testing:

https://www.infinite.cz/projects/HMD-tester-virtual-reality-headset-database-utility

https://knob2001.itch.io/testhmd/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/908520/fpsVR/

 

I compare the G2 to the Quest 2 at very similar settings.

 

To fully test the sharpness I ran them both at 200% and over.

That's over 3696 pixels in the quest and over 4000 in the G2.

I can run the tests in Test HMD up to 450% with the G2 but only up to 200% with the Quest2.  The G2 goes to 6712 pixels then.

At 200% I can read 20/40 line easily in both headsets.  Actually 20/35.  I learned that I can override MSAA in this test using Nvidia settings.

Testing the G2 with TestHMD at 450% with MSAA8x I was able to read the 20/25 missing only one letter!

 

MSAA8x made a huge difference in the sampling.

 

So both are capable of being VERY sharp. Not sure why people expect that the Quest 2 isn't capable of being sharp.

It has very similar resolution / degree about 19 compared to 22 or 86%.  The Quest 2 is also LCD RGB like the Reverb G2.

The lenses are cheaper and the image is compressed.  It is going to be softer but it does easily approach at least 80% the G2 when cranked up.

 

Everything else is only good about image.  It's not outstanding like the G2. The color is flat, the brightness is low. The dynamic range isn't there.  Blacks seem similar.

The color is not nearly as good as the G2.  The lenses are only better in chromatic aberration and I think that's my G2 not all of them.

 

After learning that the TESTHMD app allows MSAA8x override I need to redo all of my tests.  I also need to test the Oculus and G2 at 3696 pixels as that is the limit of the Oculus Quest2.  Then I can directly compare sharpness.  I'll add those results later with some stills captured from tests showing effect of oversample.

 

Though I love my Quest 2 and have gotten many to buy it and all love it I do not prefer it for Simming.

I love my G2 also and love it for Sim use.  For all other use my Quest 2 works for me for now.

 

Hope this helps some look at the trade-offs.

More tests will follow to better compare sharpness and other qualities.

And videos and stills will follow too.

 

More testing will compare G2 to Oculus for clarity and other capabilities will follow here this weekend with some videos and stills also.

Edited June 23, 2021 by BH_Adabadoo_VR
color and bold

[kostek]

Hi,

 

Thank you very much for this guidance - very helpfull. Although again, i have some comments and questions but first a bit about my rig:

 

Ryzen 5 3600

16 GB DDR 4

RTX 2060

M2 disk

 

Now i'm running Il2 on airlink, since i did not found any good cable in stores.

 

Now to the questions and notes:

 

- when i set resolution in Oculus app, for my Oculus 2, linear 1.0 is 3264x1648, not 1832x1920

- will Oculus Debug work for Air Link?

- do i have to start and set override everytime i lunch Oculus?

- additional observation: 1.255, 1.3, 1.6, 2.0 - balanced or high, i'm constantly on 44 FPS, 8x8 battle, clouds avarage

[Desode]

Will be following this as I just built a new Pc for il2 vr with my quest 2 via link.

Amd ryzen 9 5900x, 16x ddr4 3600mhz, Samsung 980 pro M.2, Msi MAG B550 tomohawk, EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra. win 10 pro.

 

Sent you a message in case I can help with this any. 

I did not realize the ERW could go clear up to 3696, I was running that on 3664, not much diff but will put the 3696 in there today.

 

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

11 hours ago, kostek said:

Hi,

 

Thank you very much for this guidance - very helpfull. Although again, i have some comments and questions but first a bit about my rig:

 

Ryzen 5 3600

16 GB DDR 4

RTX 2060

M2 disk

 

Now i'm running Il2 on airlink, since i did not found any good cable in stores.

 

Now to the questions and notes:

 

- when i set resolution in Oculus app, for my Oculus 2, linear 1.0 is 3264x1648, not 1832x1920

- will Oculus Debug work for Air Link?

- do i have to start and set override everytime i lunch Oculus?

- additional observation: 1.255, 1.3, 1.6, 2.0 - balanced or high, i'm constantly on 44 FPS, 8x8 battle, clouds avarage

I'll have to check things this weekend to respond more in depth.

 

Might be air link is lower res? 

You can easily find a good cable on amazon.  The anker work very well.  You may only need 6 feet if close to sim seat to computer.

https://smile.amazon.com/Anker-Charger-Powerline-Pull-up-Resistor/dp/B01MZIPYPY/ref=sr_1_18?dchild=1&keywords=usb%2B3.0%2Bquest%2B2&qid=1624567300&s=electronics&sr=1-18&th=1

 

It will also keep it charge longer for long missions.

 

Ill need to check but my memory says it remembers my override sometimes but that is one that can be changed on the fly before any game.  Just need to set before steamvr.  Steamvr should be at 1 and oculus software at 1.0.

 

If you change the override you must quit steamvr and game and relaunch after changing override res.

 

It sounds like you've changed one of the bottom settings and did not restart the oculus server.  If you change the bottoms settings you need to restart oculus server to see a change or the res wont change and you wont get a change in quality.

 

I'd set everything again then restart oculus server.  Then recheck the debug tool override and async off.  Then start game.

With your rig I don't think you can easily do over 1.255 with ULTRA settings in a Mission that is not quick or online missions.

You'll drop below 40's I think.

 

 

19 minutes ago, Desode said:

Will be following this as I just built a new Pc for il2 vr with my quest 2 via link.

Amd ryzen 9 5900x, 16x ddr4 3600mhz, Samsung 980 pro M.2, Msi MAG B550 tomohawk, EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra. win 10 pro.

 

Sent you a message in case I can help with this any. 

I did not realize the ERW could go clear up to 3696, I was running that on 3664, not much diff but will put the 3696 in there today.

 

I used 3696 because it matches 2.0 in the override. Going above 2.0 to 4000 pixels caused issues when a bit above 4000.  So I stopped at 2.0 and 3696 with my testing as that seemed a pretty reasonable point.  Please feel free to post what works for you.  I'm only one sample so the more that is shared to more we can optimize it.

 

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

On 6/24/2021 at 2:34 AM, kostek said:

Hi,

 

Thank you very much for this guidance - very helpfull. Although again, i have some comments and questions but first a bit about my rig:

 

Ryzen 5 3600

16 GB DDR 4

RTX 2060

M2 disk

 

Now i'm running Il2 on airlink, since i did not found any good cable in stores.

 

Now to the questions and notes:

 

- when i set resolution in Oculus app, for my Oculus 2, linear 1.0 is 3264x1648, not 1832x1920

- will Oculus Debug work for Air Link?

- do i have to start and set override everytime i lunch Oculus?

- additional observation: 1.255, 1.3, 1.6, 2.0 - balanced or high, i'm constantly on 44 FPS, 8x8 battle, clouds avarage

Kostek I did a bit more testing for you.

I really think you should grab a nice USB 3 cable for link.

But if you have good 5Ghz wifi near your game area like a mesh antenna than it can work.

The weak link for you is the 2060.  Your 2060 is only about 90% my 1080ti with our CPUs.

Check the link below and look at average 4k gaming fps.
 

https://www.gpucheck.com/en-usd/compare/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-super-vs-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti/amd-ryzen-5-3600-vs-intel-core-i7-6850k-3-60ghz/ultra/ultra/-vs-

 

So you're going to have to drop some settings.

 

Try the BALANCED main setting.

Drop shadows and clouds to medium.

Play with other settings. I'll repost a post a made earlier about all the settings fps effect for my 1080ti.  Just look at my settings and yours should be about 90% mine.

 

I had airlink working fine with steamVR just to test for you.

But I had to change several settings.

 

With your computer I'd keep override at 1.0 I wouldn't go above 1.13 until you get a faster graphics card.

The lower settings for bitrate are zeroed for airlink.  I set the speed on the left bar of oculus to fixed speed of 150Mbit.  Higher lags for my mesh network with airlink.

150 works great looks great.  Not as good as link cable.  Link cable I set 300 Mbit and it looks great no lag. But airlink above 150 and it couldn't keep up with fast head movements.  I'll make a video like i promised showing my settings and I'll cover airlink.

 

 

Repost of fps settings effect in IL2

 

I did a bunch of benchmarking IL2 graphic settings to try to optimize my VR experience.

I was shocked by some of the settings results.  If you don't care how I got the results scroll down to the table to see the results.

 

I had been playing with 40km distance as I thought expanding that out would have been a huge hit to fps.

Turns out maxing out at 150km hardly impacts my fps.

 

I did all this because I'm about to upgrade my computer and wanted to get an idea of what I could expect on the new system.

I realize this has been done before and all of these choices are very subjective. But I wanted to see how each individual setting effected my computer.

I'm not sure how well the results will scale.  My guess is less powerful computers would see larger % impacts scaled similarly.

I hope these results help others make good choices in trade-offs between the various settings.

 

Here's my current computer specs used in benchmarks:

i7 6850k all cores at 4400

evga 1080ti slightly over clocked

64gb 3200 cl14 ram

ssd

Headsets used:

HP Reverb G2 @ steamvr sample 52%

Oculus Quest2 set at 1.2 and steamvr 70%

both around 2280x2280 per eye

 

The test method was to use baseline settings and only change one thing at a time and re-test.  The test was a quick mission dogfight.

I used Hwinfo64 to record the fps to log file and after clipping the beginning and end took the average fps for each run.

Baseline settings got 60fps.

 

I mostly use an HP Reverb G2 so mixed reality.

 

The biggest hit to performance was actually using projection.  I don't like projection for IL2 because of the artifacts it causes with propellers and gunsights and tiny airplanes. But it also actually really drops my FPS the most. I went from 60 with it on to 74 fps with it off!

 

The next big hit to performance is your choice of main quality.  The range for me was 71fps on low to 53fps on ultra balanced was baseline at 60fps.

 

The next biggest hit is MSAA 2x or above AA.  Any MSAA kills fps in this sim. It's a 10% hit for me.

With a Quest2 or HP Reverb G2 the pixels are so small you really don't need much AA.  You only need enough to get rid of any shimmering on edges of things in the distance. So I use FXAA 2x and that was baseline. This gets rid of any shimmer for me and also smooths edges very naturally.  I'm looking for a realistic view not a spotting view but the results should help anyone tune for their goal.

 

My baseline was balanced main setting with high shadows and high clouds and I got 60fps.  If you went to ultra shadows or extreme clouds you did not get much of hit.

Dropping down to Medium from high on both get's large gains. I used to like mirrors but I've been playing without recently.  I liked complex because it showed bombs exploding in the mirror.  Complex mirrors is a pretty big hit.

The setting I had expected to be a HUGE hit wasn't detectable at all.  I went from 40km horizon draw distance to 150km and got same 60fps.

That makes a huge difference in navigation and view totally worth cranking that all the way up.

 

After all that testing I have 3 settings choices I'm trading off to see where I end up.

 

Same as my old baseline but with 150km.  This gets me 60fps.

Going up to HIGH from Balanced, 150km but lowering clouds and shadows to medium, this also gets 60fps.  

And my favorite:

Going to ULTRA, 150km clouds and shadows high, drops to 45fps on a very cloudy day.  But it doesn't drop below 40fps and will get 60fps average if there are no clouds.  The clouds finally look amazing and every thing looks better with ULTRA and the quality it adds to everything. I may stick with that.

 

Sorry so long.  Hope it is helpful to others.

 

Here's a link to a spreadsheet of all the tests and research:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfRuDtNQJDjzci9V-MxPwlPzr3y5RN3_xdBs7DV5c1U/edit?usp=sharing

There are several tabs in the spreadsheet.  The summary below is from the IL2 Settings tab.

 

Here's the summary BOLD items show the biggest performance changes.

 

		IL2 Graphic Settings	BASELINE AVG FPS	60	FPS Change	FPS % Change	Baseline Test
WMR Projection & DX11	On / Off	WMR Projection & DX11	Off / On	74	14	23%	On / Off
Main Quality
BASELINE SETTINGS	BALANCED	Main Quality BALANCED	BALANCED	60	0	0%	BALANCED
		Main Quality LOW	LOW	71	11	18%
		Main Quality HIGH	HIGH	55	-5	-8%
		Main Quality ULTRA	ULTRA	53	-7	-12%
Screen Resolution	1920x1080	Screen Resolution					1920x1080
UI Scale	Auto	UI Scale					Auto
Shadows quality	High	Shadows quality	High to Medium	64	4	7%	High
Shadows quality	High	Shadows quality	High to Ultra	59	-1	-2%	High
Mirrors	Complex	Mirrors	Complex to off	77	5	7%	Complex	Projection off
Distant landscape detail	x4	Distant landscape detail	x4 to x1	60	0	0%	x4
Canopy Reflections	High	Canopy Reflections	High to off	78	3	4%	High	Projection off
Horizon draw distance	40 km	Horizon draw distance	40km to 150km 58	58	-2	-3%	40 km
Landscape filter	Blurred	Landscape filter					Blurred
Terrain roughness	High	Terrain roughness					High
Grass quality	Ultra	Grass quality	Ultra to Normal	61	1	2%	Ultra
Clouds quality	High	Clouds quality	High to Medium	63	3	5%	High
Clouds quality	High	Clouds quality	High to Extreme	58	-2	-3%	High
Antialiasing type	FXAA	Antialiasing type	FXAA2 to MSAA2	54	-6	-10%	FXAA
Antialiasing	2	Antialiasing	FXAA2 to MSAA2	54	-6	-10%	2
Target FPS	Off	Target FPS					Off
Dynamic resolution factor	Full	Dynamic resolution factor					Full
Gamma correction	1	Gamma correction					1
Full screen	On	Full screen					On
Enable VR HMD	On	Enable VR HMD					On
Multi GPU support	Can't	Multi GPU support					Can't
Vsync	Not VR	Vsync					Not VR
SSAO	On	SSAO	Both SSAO and HDR on to off	60.5	0.5	1%	On
HDR	On	HDR	Both SSAO and HDR on to off	60.5	0.5	1%	On
Sharpen	Off	Sharpen					Off
Use 4K textures	On	Use 4K textures					On
Distant buildings	On	Distant buildings

Edited June 26, 2021 by BH_Adabadoo_VR

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

Oculus Quest2 Setup Guide for IL-2 Video

--EXPAND SHOW MORE TO SEE CHAPTERS--

This is a video guide to help people new to VR, the Quest2 or IL-2 setup and optimize for VR with the Quest2. It's long and rambling so I've included Chapters below to jump to points of interest.

Hope some find it helpful.

 

0:00:00 - Setting up the Quest2 before connecting to PC with Link

0:06:52 - Setting up Oculus PC Software before connecting to PC with Link

0:16:06 - Quest2 connected with Link - Setting up SteamVR

0:21:14 - Quest2 connected with Link - Setting up IL-2 Graphic Settings

0:26:50 - Benchmarking IL-2 at Override 1.225 for 1080ti 2320res

0:31:47 - Setting up new Override 2.0 for 3696res

0:33:25 - Benchmarking IL-2 at Override 2.0 for 1080ti 3696res

0:38:11 - Setting up Air Link

0:44:22 - Open Composite (no need for SteamVR)

 

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by BH_Adabadoo_VR
added link; formatting

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

@Alonzo

 

Alonzo gave me permission to share his training file for benchmarking. I use a slightly modified version of a training file he made that is based on his Combat Box Operation Paravane Mission.

 

This one has an air start with a P-51.  You dive down through lots of clouds and attack an air base.  It's the mission I used in the benchmarking portion of the video posted above.  The frame rates are very accurate to what I get when playing on combat box and there are lots of clouds so I use it for testing out IL2 graphic settings changes.

I find this give much more accurate results for fps than a quick mission with lots of AI if your looking for what your fps will be on a server like Combat Box on a cloudy day.

 

Here's a link to the mission:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hyPXWFei26WSLUD7DIiN_nfsQCjnyve0/view?usp=sharing

 

Thanks for everything Alonzo!!!

 

[kostek]

On 6/26/2021 at 11:35 AM, BH_Adabadoo_VR said:

Kostek I did a bit more testing for you.

I really think you should grab a nice USB 3 cable for link.

But if you have good 5Ghz wifi near your game area like a mesh antenna than it can work.

The weak link for you is the 2060.  Your 2060 is only about 90% my 1080ti with our CPUs.

Check the link below and look at average 4k gaming fps.
 

https://www.gpucheck.com/en-usd/compare/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-super-vs-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti/amd-ryzen-5-3600-vs-intel-core-i7-6850k-3-60ghz/ultra/ultra/-vs-

 

So you're going to have to drop some settings.

 

Try the BALANCED main setting.

Drop shadows and clouds to medium.

Play with other settings. I'll repost a post a made earlier about all the settings fps effect for my 1080ti.  Just look at my settings and yours should be about 90% mine.

 

I had airlink working fine with steamVR just to test for you.

But I had to change several settings.

 

With your computer I'd keep override at 1.0 I wouldn't go above 1.13 until you get a faster graphics card.

The lower settings for bitrate are zeroed for airlink.  I set the speed on the left bar of oculus to fixed speed of 150Mbit.  Higher lags for my mesh network with airlink.

150 works great looks great.  Not as good as link cable.  Link cable I set 300 Mbit and it looks great no lag. But airlink above 150 and it couldn't keep up with fast head movements.  I'll make a video like i promised showing my settings and I'll cover airlink.

 

 

Repost of fps settings effect in IL2

 

I did a bunch of benchmarking IL2 graphic settings to try to optimize my VR experience.

I was shocked by some of the settings results.  If you don't care how I got the results scroll down to the table to see the results.

 

I had been playing with 40km distance as I thought expanding that out would have been a huge hit to fps.

Turns out maxing out at 150km hardly impacts my fps.

 

I did all this because I'm about to upgrade my computer and wanted to get an idea of what I could expect on the new system.

I realize this has been done before and all of these choices are very subjective. But I wanted to see how each individual setting effected my computer.

I'm not sure how well the results will scale.  My guess is less powerful computers would see larger % impacts scaled similarly.

I hope these results help others make good choices in trade-offs between the various settings.

 

Here's my current computer specs used in benchmarks:

i7 6850k all cores at 4400

evga 1080ti slightly over clocked

64gb 3200 cl14 ram

ssd

Headsets used:

HP Reverb G2 @ steamvr sample 52%

Oculus Quest2 set at 1.2 and steamvr 70%

both around 2280x2280 per eye

 

The test method was to use baseline settings and only change one thing at a time and re-test.  The test was a quick mission dogfight.

I used Hwinfo64 to record the fps to log file and after clipping the beginning and end took the average fps for each run.

Baseline settings got 60fps.

 

I mostly use an HP Reverb G2 so mixed reality.

 

The biggest hit to performance was actually using projection.  I don't like projection for IL2 because of the artifacts it causes with propellers and gunsights and tiny airplanes. But it also actually really drops my FPS the most. I went from 60 with it on to 74 fps with it off!

 

The next big hit to performance is your choice of main quality.  The range for me was 71fps on low to 53fps on ultra balanced was baseline at 60fps.

 

The next biggest hit is MSAA 2x or above AA.  Any MSAA kills fps in this sim. It's a 10% hit for me.

With a Quest2 or HP Reverb G2 the pixels are so small you really don't need much AA.  You only need enough to get rid of any shimmering on edges of things in the distance. So I use FXAA 2x and that was baseline. This gets rid of any shimmer for me and also smooths edges very naturally.  I'm looking for a realistic view not a spotting view but the results should help anyone tune for their goal.

 

My baseline was balanced main setting with high shadows and high clouds and I got 60fps.  If you went to ultra shadows or extreme clouds you did not get much of hit.

Dropping down to Medium from high on both get's large gains. I used to like mirrors but I've been playing without recently.  I liked complex because it showed bombs exploding in the mirror.  Complex mirrors is a pretty big hit.

The setting I had expected to be a HUGE hit wasn't detectable at all.  I went from 40km horizon draw distance to 150km and got same 60fps.

That makes a huge difference in navigation and view totally worth cranking that all the way up.

 

After all that testing I have 3 settings choices I'm trading off to see where I end up.

 

Same as my old baseline but with 150km.  This gets me 60fps.

Going up to HIGH from Balanced, 150km but lowering clouds and shadows to medium, this also gets 60fps.  

And my favorite:

Going to ULTRA, 150km clouds and shadows high, drops to 45fps on a very cloudy day.  But it doesn't drop below 40fps and will get 60fps average if there are no clouds.  The clouds finally look amazing and every thing looks better with ULTRA and the quality it adds to everything. I may stick with that.

 

Sorry so long.  Hope it is helpful to others.

 

Here's a link to a spreadsheet of all the tests and research:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfRuDtNQJDjzci9V-MxPwlPzr3y5RN3_xdBs7DV5c1U/edit?usp=sharing

There are several tabs in the spreadsheet.  The summary below is from the IL2 Settings tab.

 

Here's the summary BOLD items show the biggest performance changes.

 

		IL2 Graphic Settings	BASELINE AVG FPS	60	FPS Change	FPS % Change	Baseline Test
WMR Projection & DX11	On / Off	WMR Projection & DX11		Off / On	74	14	23%	On / Off
Main Quality
BASELINE SETTINGS	BALANCED	Main Quality BALANCED	BALANCED	60	0	0%	BALANCED
		Main Quality LOW	LOW	71	11	18%
		Main Quality HIGH	HIGH	55	-5	-8%
		Main Quality ULTRA	ULTRA	53	-7	-12%
Screen Resolution	1920x1080	Screen Resolution					1920x1080
UI Scale	Auto	UI Scale					Auto
Shadows quality	High	Shadows quality	High to Medium	64	4	7%	High
Shadows quality	High	Shadows quality	High to Ultra	59	-1	-2%	High
Mirrors	Complex	Mirrors	Complex to off	77	5	7%	Complex	Projection off
Distant landscape detail	x4	Distant landscape detail	x4 to x1	60	0	0%	x4
Canopy Reflections	High	Canopy Reflections	High to off	78	3	4%	High	Projection off
Horizon draw distance	40 km	Horizon draw distance	40km to 150km 58	58	-2	-3%	40 km
Landscape filter	Blurred	Landscape filter					Blurred
Terrain roughness	High	Terrain roughness					High
Grass quality	Ultra	Grass quality	Ultra to Normal	61	1	2%	Ultra
Clouds quality	High	Clouds quality	High to Medium	63	3	5%	High
Clouds quality	High	Clouds quality	High to Extreme	58	-2	-3%	High
Antialiasing type	FXAA	Antialiasing type	FXAA2 to MSAA2	54	-6	-10%	FXAA
Antialiasing	2	Antialiasing	FXAA2 to MSAA2	54	-6	-10%	2
Target FPS	Off	Target FPS					Off
Dynamic resolution factor	Full	Dynamic resolution factor					Full
Gamma correction	1	Gamma correction					1
Full screen	On	Full screen					On
Enable VR HMD	On	Enable VR HMD					On
Multi GPU support	Can't	Multi GPU support					Can't
Vsync	Not VR	Vsync					Not VR
SSAO	On	SSAO	Both SSAO and HDR on to off	60.5	0.5	1%	On
HDR	On	HDR	Both SSAO and HDR on to off	60.5	0.5	1%	On
Sharpen	Off	Sharpen					Off
Use 4K textures	On	Use 4K textures					On
Distant buildings	On	Distant buildings

 

Thank you for help here. I've changed from AirLink to Linka and the difference is... huuuuuge

I cannot find WMR Projection & DX11 option in Il2 - can you help me here?

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

4 hours ago, kostek said:

 

Thank you for help here. I've changed from AirLink to Linka and the difference is... huuuuuge

I cannot find WMR Projection & DX11 option in Il2 - can you help me here?

Those settings are for the HP Reverb G2 and other WMR headsets. You have an Oculus  quest2 so No WMR settings apply to you.

Sorry about that my info will mix some information from the two headsets I use.  So no WMR information applies to Quest owners...  

 

You should set the OpenXR Runtime to Oculus in the Oculus desktop software - software beta section and check it is set in SteamVR under the settings developer tab.

This should get rid of the need to use Open Composite.  You'd be using Oculus's runtime already. Then you might not want Open Composite as that is older than Oculus's OpenXR runtime.

 

In the video this is covered at:

Video 18:49

 

 

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

Kostek asked about using Open Composite which wasn't very clear in my video.

 

I tested this just now and the below does work for me.

 

 

Open Oculus software on computer

Connect to computer with Link

 

Run that Open Composite software.

Don't click on configure.  Just switch to the one you want to use... Open Composite or SteamVR.

 

Run your games.  They should all open in the one you choose on the main screen.  Switch back when done if you want to switch it back to SteamVR.  Or it might be possible to leave it that way if you prefer it.  It's basically telling steam games they are now Oculus store games and to fake working natively in Oculus hardware instead of steams Runtime.

 

I'm guessing each time you use a new program with Open Composite it will appear in the list to be configured with config button if you like but there is no need.

I also tested Oculus OpenXR runtime in SteamVR against Open Composite and I think Open Composite is not needed anymore.  I get the same performance and OpenXR will always be up to date with Oculus's latest runtime as it evolves.

 

More detailed info on Open Composite is found here: but you don't need to manually copy lib files anymore I don't think:

https://gitlab.com/znixian/OpenOVR

 

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

Update got encode res to run at 3950 with no issues

Played many games with it like that no issues and even played Condor 2 at super high 2.0 and above with no issues and high fps.

 

[zelfit]

I used OpenComposite for quite some time and today i have switched it off to test the latest SteamVR. I tried the same flight record from my single player mission on Stalingrad. In my case SteamVR performed slightly better than open composite (52FPS vs 49FPS).

[Tora]

On 6/29/2021 at 10:17 AM, BH_Adabadoo_VR said:

I'm guessing each time you use a new program with Open Composite it will appear in the list to be configured with config button if you like but there is no need.

I also tested Oculus OpenXR runtime in SteamVR against Open Composite and I think Open Composite is not needed anymore.  I get the same performance and OpenXR will always be up to date with Oculus's latest runtime as it evolves.

Does it make any sense? Is there any confirmation that Il-2 utilizes OpenXR runtime?

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

13 hours ago, Tora said:

Does it make any sense? Is there any confirmation that Il-2 utilizes OpenXR runtime?

SteamVr uses whatever runtime you set it to use.  IL-2 is using steamVR so it is using whatever runtime you set SteamVR to use.

 

If you have Oculus you can choose Oculus or SteamVR  OpenXR runtime.

If you have WMR headset you choose WMR or SteamVR OpenXR runtime.

 

If you have Valve or HTC I think you probably must choose steamVR runtime??

I've not hooked up my old Valve headsets since OpenXR was added.

 

Open Composite was based on steams older OpenVR and allowed only Oculus headsets to run more without running all of steamVR to sort of run more natively as if you running steam games as if they were from the Oculus store made for Oculus hardware.

 

With OpenXR that really isn't needed IMO.  I don't see the performance advantage one used to notice.  The post above states that for that test SteamVR actually ran better than Opencomposite and that make sense to me as OpenXR is new and supported and will be updated.  I think OpenComposite will continue to work but is essentially deprecated at this point.  If anyone has info as to how OpenComposite is still useful and relevant and is being updated and supported I'd love to know.

 

Thanks...

 

 

 

[ACG_daffy_]

Thanks for all of the information in this thread. I’ll certainly be following it and any other advice as I drag my old butt back into this environment, and into VR to boot!!  Currently, inside my head, I’m saying…”what the heck have I gotten myself into here?!”

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

22 hours ago, Jaquar said:

Thanks for all of the information in this thread. I’ll certainly be following it and any other advice as I drag my old butt back into this environment, and into VR to boot!!  Currently, inside my head, I’m saying…”what the heck have I gotten myself into here?!”

Sure!  Post your finds here when you learn something new to help! Hope to see you online!

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

Many thanks for sharing the settings. For some reason after applying them I can steadily have 90 FPS for the most of the time without long drops.

Edited August 30, 2021 by =TH=mincer
Moved the post to a separate thread

[tirta]

sorry if this is a noob question:

I am using quest2, how do you change from steamVR to Oculus runtime?

 

And how do you display FPS in VR ?

 

[dburne]

You can display fps in VR in the game itself, assign show fps to a button on your stick or throttle.

It will show two numbers, the one on top is FPS and the one on bottom is FOV.

You should be able to run through Oculus runtime by default I would think.

Edited September 9, 2021 by dburne

[Giovanni_Giorgio]

12 hours ago, tirta said:

sorry if this is a noob question:

I am using quest2, how do you change from steamVR to Oculus runtime?

 

 

 

Did you mean switching from steamVR to OpenComposite?

[tirta]

On 6/29/2021 at 3:35 AM, BH_Adabadoo_VR said:

You should set the OpenXR Runtime to Oculus in the Oculus desktop software - software beta section and check it is set in SteamVR under the settings developer tab.

This should get rid of the need to use Open Composite.  You'd be using Oculus's runtime already. Then you might not want Open Composite as that is older than Oculus's OpenXR runtime.

 

In the video this is covered at:

Video 18:49

 

 

no, I mean Oculus Runtime.

 

Are you saying OpenComposite is better than Oculus Runtime?

 

[dburne]

34 minutes ago, tirta said:

no, I mean Oculus Runtime.

 

Are you saying OpenComposite is better than Oculus Runtime?

 

 

No it would be in addition to. You will always need Oculus runtime.  Open Composite is just better performance wise to Steam VR and Oculus runtime.

IL-2 does not have native Oculus support - so you must use either Steam VR or Open Composite with Oculus device. Open Composite historically yields a little better performance over Steam VR with Oculus device.

 

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

On 9/10/2021 at 1:23 PM, dburne said:

 

No it would be in addition to. You will always need Oculus runtime.  Open Composite is just better performance wise to Steam VR and Oculus runtime.

IL-2 does not have native Oculus support - so you must use either Steam VR or Open Composite with Oculus device. Open Composite historically yields a little better performance over Steam VR with Oculus device.

 

I don't think this is correct anymore.  Oculus runtime is now superior to Open Composite for IL2 players IMO ever since SteamVR and Oculus supported OpenXR as a standard.

Open Composite is based on OpenVR which is obosolete.  Now in SteamVR you choose your XR compositor.  For most headsets you have two choices.  Use your headsets Open XR or use SteamVRs.  For some made by valve or HTC you only can choose SteamVRs.  WMR is the best choice for the HP G2.  Oculus Runtime XR is the best for Quest2 and Oculus headsets.

 

For the quest 2 you choose this in the Oculus software under the beta tab.  It warns you in a banner at start of oculus software if it is not chosen and asks if you want to switch to it.  If you want to switch back to SteamVRs you can in the SteamVR developer debug section I think if I recall correctly. 

 

This video I made covers this:

 

 

Hope that helps.  I tested and there is no longer any FPS advantage to open composite for me.  In addition I can't easily record in OBS that way so I prefer to use SteamVR which runs just as fast now using Oculus XR runtime for me.

 

Hope that helps...

 

Edited September 12, 2021 by BH_Adabadoo_VR

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

14 hours ago, BH_Adabadoo_VR said:

I don't think this is correct anymore.  Oculus runtime is now superior to Open Composite for IL2 players IMO ever since SteamVR and Oculus supported OpenXR as a standard.

Open Composite is based on OpenVR which is obosolete.  Now in SteamVR you choose your XR compositor.  For most headsets you have two choices.  Use your headsets Open XR or use SteamVRs.  For some made by valve or HTC you only can choose SteamVRs.  WMR is the best choice for the HP G2.  Oculus Runtime XR is the best for Quest2 and Oculus headsets.

 

For the quest 2 you choose this in the Oculus software under the beta tab.  It warns you in a banner at start of oculus software if it is not chosen and asks if you want to switch to it.  If you want to switch back to SteamVRs you can in the SteamVR developer debug section I think if I recall correctly. 

 

This video I made covers this:

 

 

Hope that helps.  I tested and there is no longer any FPS advantage to open composite for me.  In addition I can't easily record in OBS that way so I prefer to use SteamVR which runs just as fast now using Oculus XR runtime for me.

 

Hope that helps...

 

I'd be curious to hear if anyone using open composite reports better frame rates with it compared to oculus runtime modern openXR, because I tested this a ways back and things could always change.  I don't use quest2 for sim much so I won't notice if this changes...

[tirta]

thanks BH_Adabadoo_VR for the youtube link.

now I understand how to set steamvr to oculus runtime.

 

and you are correct, compared to steamvr, oculus runs faster.

 

with my lowly rig:

i7-870 3,7ghz

16gb ram

gtx 2060 6gb

 

I get around 35-41 fps using defaut setting.

my resolution in game is 1980x1080.

but in steamvr, it is 1628x1628

is this setting correct?

or should I change it?

 

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

6 hours ago, tirta said:

thanks BH_Adabadoo_VR for the youtube link.

now I understand how to set steamvr to oculus runtime.

 

and you are correct, compared to steamvr, oculus runs faster.

 

with my lowly rig:

i7-870 3,7ghz

16gb ram

gtx 2060 6gb

 

I get around 35-41 fps using defaut setting.

my resolution in game is 1980x1080.

but in steamvr, it is 1628x1628

is this setting correct?

or should I change it?

 

 

I've got an RTX2060 as well, and a quest 2. Those fps rates are comparable to what I get, although they usually improve at altitude or graphically less intensive areas (no towns/forests) and jump up to the full 72.

 

The in-game resolution doesn't really matter with VR, since it just determines the resolution of the two views you'll see on your desktop monitor. Your headset uses the SteamVR setting.

[tirta]

9 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

The in-game resolution doesn't really matter with VR, since it just determines the resolution of the two views you'll see on your desktop monitor. Your headset uses the SteamVR setting.

 

thanks for clarifying about in-game resolution.

 

I have just remembered about similar issue in Half Life Alix.

IIRC it is called spectator window,

and I get smoother and faster fps when I turn this all off.

 

is it possible to turn the view on the monitor off in IL2?

 

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

18 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

I've got an RTX2060 as well, and a quest 2. Those fps rates are comparable to what I get, although they usually improve at altitude or graphically less intensive areas (no towns/forests) and jump up to the full 72.

 

The in-game resolution doesn't really matter with VR, since it just determines the resolution of the two views you'll see on your desktop monitor. Your headset uses the SteamVR setting.

This is correct.  I'm not sure what to set for a 2060.  But that all sounds reasonable.  There are three places for quest you can tune VR render resolution.

I go over them in the video. I prefer to set SteamVR sample resolution to 100%, and Oculus Software device resolution to 1.0 default line and tune resolution with the Oculus debug tool only.  It's set below 1 to render at 1628 but that seems appropriate for a 2060.  The quest has overhead over other headsets to compress image and send it down link or send over wifi to link.  Either way it has overhead that other headsets don't have.  In my experience on a 1080ti the quest2 was consistently 5fps slow rendering the same resolution than the G2.  It also doesn't look quite as good at the same resolution.  I had hoped that FRS would help with this as it was a great help to my G2 for both the 1080ti and also for the 3090 but the overhead is too much for the 1080ti and FRS.  Framerates dropped to much to be useful even rendering way below the res used without FRS and I couldn't make up the difference and have it look as good or better.  In our case with 1080ti rendering without FRS at res2300 getting 50fps with our settings.  Using FRS and dropping render res to 2000 with scaling blowing back up to 2300 the fps was 30 and below and choppy.  It looked better than 2300 without FRS but did not gain FPS like G2 did.  With the G2 it looks better to render lower res and use FRS than to render higher res and not use FRS and FPS go up.   So I can't recommend FRS for quest2 for anything slower than 1080ti.  

 

I have heard it said if you lower the in game res as low as possible for the mirror screen and turn off full screen mode there is a slight fps boost.  I did not see that on my 1080ti.  I don't know of anyway to turn off the mirroring. People have also said that all HUD and overlays slow the game including fps counter.  I haven't see that either.

I don't really count 1fps changes in my testing because the testing I did had variation of about 1fps as it wasn't exactly the same each time.  So unless fps was constantly 2fps or more different I discounted as no real effect.

 

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by BH_Adabadoo_VR

[Patricks]

On 9/12/2021 at 12:10 PM, BH_Adabadoo_VR said:

For the quest 2 you choose this in the Oculus software under the beta tab.  It warns you in a banner at start of oculus software if it is not chosen and asks if you want to switch to it.  If you want to switch back to SteamVRs you can in the SteamVR developer debug section I think if I recall correctly. 

 

 

 

Just an FYI, that is no longer a selection in the Beta section. Thank you for all your help with this!