Question about balancing settings vs resolution

[Youtch]

I currently have a Reverb G2, and like everybody else I have spent enormous of time trying to figure out and fine tune some settings that would be decent in terms of visual and performance.

 

I have OpenXR and its toolkit.

 

With experience I came to verify what many said, that the ultimage goal in VR is to keep 80-90 fps at all time to avoid ghosting and losing smoothness.

 

Recently I also discovered that getting rid of upscaling even if using a lower resolution is giving better results than using a higher resolution through upscaling, at least in terms of shimmering (thanks to @firdimigdi).

 

Now I am questionning which of the two alternatives give the best visual experience, to crank up the resolution to get closer to native resolution of G2 without upscaling by lowering all all in-game visual settings (and eye candy stuff) or to keep resolution at 75% of G2 capacity but with in-game visual settings still balanced and some eye candy.

 

I have a combo of RTX 3800 + 5600

 

Thank you very much for your help in this quest.

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

With a 3080 you can really run native resolution and ultra preset with some tweaks to shadows, clouds, and fxaa. You won't get 90 fps, but a stable 55-60 is possible. Offline this won't work as well due to time dilation.

Edited November 29, 2022 by drewm3i-VR

[Youtch]

Yes but as i said above the primary objective remains to keep it in the 80-90 fps range, so one trade off needs to be made, either resolution or settings.

[Super_Tonton]

I just build a new PC with a RTX 3090 (vs a 3070) and I'm also in research of the best settings. With the 3070, I was playing at full resolution with motion reprojection (Steam motion smoothing) and I got tired of ghosting. So I switched to OpenXR, no MR with 67% FSR upscaling to stay near 90fps the most possible. While low res upscaling help with spotting, it kills IDing. With the 3090, my reflex was to use upscaling also, but I realized that upscaling has a performance cost that can be traded in pushing higher display resolution. So I tasted full native G2 display resolution without MR and I can't get back. To me, no eye candy can beat resolution. So what I do to keep the frames up to 90fps is :

 

No upscaling nor sharpening via OpenXR TK

HIGH preset

Ingame sharpening on

Shadows and mirror at MED

Landscape filter at either sharp or blur (I use sharp, OFF is to much shimmering)

Clouds at HIGH

No AA

 

If you have to seek for more performance, I would try to lower display resolution a little (with OpenXR TK override resolution)

 

And I thanks all knowledgeable people on this forum to help us all in that "best graphics settings" endless quest!

 

Tonton

[Youtch]

Thanks Tonton!

 

I came also to the same conclusion NO upscaling and NO motion reprojection and only IN GAME sharpening.

 

Are you forcing the resolution per eye in the toolkit? To which value?

[Youtch]

 

Which draw distance and distant objects configuration do you use?

 

I had played with a while with CAS for sharpening in the toolkit and it seemed less impacting to fps

[Super_Tonton]

Did try CAS at some point, but I prefer in game sharpening, for now . I use native resolution, so 'override resolution' in OXR toolkit is at OFF and OpenXR developper tool is at 100%. It is 3160 x 3092 pixels. I did try to force a lower res like 2800 x 2800, but I found that my system is able to go native res at 90fps most of the time. 

 

[Schwalberich]

@Super_Tonton

Awesome! Thanks!

Since I Upgraded to an 3080Ti last week I was tinkering with the settings and trying to push the best out of it.

I just needed to adjust the horizon distance to about 70km and I now get between 70 to 90 fps in single player on 8x8 at Normandy.

 

Spun up a session at Finnish and got rock solid 90 almost completely

[Super_Tonton]

On a side note: I was playing a PWCG ground attack mission taking off from England with overcast weather. Frames were between 70-80 the whole mission, so not smooth as I wish. I tried to lower graphic settings while keeping the native resolution, but did not achieve the +/- 90 fps goal. No graphic settings seemed to be able to give the 20-30 fps boost I was looking for. So I forced a lower res via override function: 2844 * 2783 pixels (90% of native), did the trick and without loosing to much image quality (I kept graphic settings listed above).

[Youtch]

Is there any consensus about the difference between High and Balanced in terms of visuals? Or it just affects the bubble / distance at which trees are drawn?

[firdimigdi]

6 minutes ago, Youtch said:

Is there any consensus about the difference between High and Balanced in terms of visuals? Or it just affects the bubble / distance at which trees are drawn?

 

It's all in the \data\luascripts\gpresets.cfg file IIRC (you have to unpack this from some .gtp file. Here's a version of it I had lying around, not sure from which version of the game but you can follow which visuals are enabled/disabled and which have reduced quality:

Spoiler

//******** Preset 0 ************
[preset=0]
//Textures settings
	Filter=3
	texmipdown=1
	land_textures=1

//Quality
	shadows_quality=1
	shadows_dynamic=1,false		//Quality, InGameEnable, Smooth
	reflection=2
	grass_quality=5
	forest_quality=1
	landscape_parallax=0
	smooth_effects=false
	clouds_quality=1

//Distance
	objects_distance=0.5
	landscape_mesh_quality=0
	forest_distance=1

//Post effects
	post_effects_enable=true
	post_bloom_enable=true
	post_contrast=true
	post_sharpen=false
	post_drops_enable=false
	post_hdr=0
	post_motion_samples=0;
	saturation=1.0

//Screen depth, SSAO, SSR
	depth_res=1
	ssao_res=-1
	ssao_samples=0
	ssr_samples=0

	clouds_samples=64

	effects_samples=0.25
[end]







//******** Preset 1 ************
[preset=1]
//Textures settings
	Filter=3
	texmipdown=0
	land_textures=0

//Quality
	shadows_quality=2
	shadows_dynamic=1,false		//Quality, InGameEnable, Smooth
	reflection=3
	grass_quality=5
	forest_quality=1
	landscape_parallax=1
	clouds_quality=1

//Distance
	objects_distance=1.0
	landscape_mesh_quality=0.5
	forest_distance=2

//Post effects
	post_effects_enable=true
	post_bloom_enable=true
	post_contrast=true
	post_sharpen=false
	post_drops_enable=false
	post_hdr=3
	saturation=1.0
	post_motion_samples=16;

//Screen depth, SSAO, SSR
	depth_res=1
	ssao_res=-1
	ssao_samples=0
	ssr_samples=20

	clouds_samples=64

	effects_samples=0.5
[end]



//******** Preset 2 ************
[preset=2]
//Textures settings
	Filter=3
	texmipdown=0
	land_textures=0

//Quality
	shadows_quality=2
	shadows_dynamic=1,false,true		//Quality, InGameEnable, Smooth
	reflection=3
	grass_quality=7
	forest_quality=1
	landscape_parallax=1
	clouds_quality=2

//Distance
	objects_distance=1.0
	landscape_mesh_quality=0.75
	forest_distance=3

//Post effects
	post_effects_enable=true
	post_bloom_enable=true
	post_contrast=true
	post_sharpen=false
	post_drops_enable=true
	post_hdr=3
	saturation=1.0
	post_motion_samples=20;

//Screen depth, SSAO, SSR
	depth_res=1
	ssao_res=1
	ssao_samples=12
	ssr_samples=24

	clouds_samples=64

	effects_samples=0.75
[end]

//******** Preset 3 ************
[preset=3]
//Textures settings
	Filter=3
	texmipdown=0
	land_textures=0

//Quality
	shadows_quality=2
	shadows_dynamic=2,true,true		//Quality, InGameEnable, Smooth
	reflection=3
	grass_quality=7
	forest_quality=1
	landscape_parallax=1
	clouds_quality=2

//Distance
	objects_distance=1.0
	landscape_mesh_quality=1.0
	forest_distance=5

//Post effects
	post_effects_enable=true
	post_bloom_enable=true
	post_contrast=true
	post_sharpen=false
	post_drops_enable=true
	post_hdr=4
	saturation=1.0
	post_motion_samples=24;

//Screen depth, SSAO, SSR
	depth_res=1
	ssao_res=1
	ssao_samples=16
	ssr_samples=30

	clouds_samples=512

	effects_samples=1
[end]

 

 

As you can see between high and balanced you lose some eyecandy like reflection details, certain water drop effects, etc - also the scaling of the shadows is different - e.g. high quality shadows on the balanced preset means something different than it would with the high preset.

[Youtch]

Many thanks.

 

Question is if the Gpresent hackeable/modificable like the startup.cfg to keep for instance some effects similar to High even if the global settings is set to Balanced?

 

For instance keeping only Clouds_Quality to 2 and landscape_mesh_quality to 0.75.

 

Those are the differences between high and balanced:

 

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Youtch

[shirazjohn]

1 hour ago, Youtch said:

For instance keeping only Clouds_Quality to 2 and landscape_mesh_quality to 0.75.

 

Hi youtch, yes you can do exactly this, before the new clouds update the clouds had large negative impact on framerate. Using the gpresets I had low clouds in the high preset (which gave an extra 8 fps or so) also if you want to increase some settings (tree line, grass etc) and run in high, balanced or low you can.

 

The only thing if i remember correctly you will need mods on.

Hope this helps

Edited December 11, 2022 by shirazjohn

[Youtch]

Thanks for the answer.

 

Ok, if it is detected as a mod, i will not be able to use in MP... so it would not be an option.