Finally 90fps in VR - My settings guide for new VR users

[T-Bone51]

 

Hey guys, I'm new here and just got into this game which is amazing. Super immersive, especially the sounds and effects. I think in VR you can really appreciate the work that was put in. The instruments and small details all look so realistic. I use a bass shaker as well and when you throttle up and take off you see the exhaust fire, the heat blur, everything gets loud and shakes like you are witnessing a space rocket to be launched 😄 That's exactly how I feel the pilots must have felt in these 1000+HP beasts BUT, it was painful to find the right settings, mainly because you have to restart when you change any graphic setting. I spent many hours the last 3 days so I thought I would share my results hoping it would save someone else the time that I invested trying to find the sweet spot. I think I finally am in a good spot where I can hold 90 fps >95% of the time, but I am open for suggestions.

 

My hardware:

HP Reverb G2

Win 10

AMD 5600X

Nvidia RTX3080 10GB

2x 16GB RAM 3200Mhz

Samsung SSD

 

I did some basic testing, nothing scientific like logging frames etc but mainly observing frametimes with the OpenXR toolkit FPS counter. Even if I tried to do it, the mission always loads slightly different so results vary even if you keep all the settings the same and load into the same mission. So I guess this is the next best thing one can do. If there were heavy clouds I sometimes did reload to double check.

 

- So first obviously I changed the VR runtime to OpenXR with OpenComposite. (It was quite disappointing finding out the game doesn't offer FFR support but I still like the other features of OpenXR Toolkit as well)

 

- OpenXR Tools (the main one) settings:

-> Custom render resolution: 100%

-> Motion reprojection: Disabled (The dev of openXR toolkit said even if you are above 90fps enabling motion reprojection will still consume some performance in the background, so keep it disabled if your target is to keep 90 fps)

 

Unfortunately I found that motion reprojection while holding 45fps makes other aircrafts look choppy in dogfights even though normal cruising is totally fine. So my target was to hold 90 fps for like 99% of the time. I can live with some stutters here and there so I don't want to reduce my settings too much.

 

- Windows: Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling: Off (this consumes gpu performance in iracing, haven't tested in Il-2 but I would guess it will be the same)

 

- Nvidia Control Panel

-> Now the videos I watched on YouTube always go deep into this but having tested it a lot with iracing I can confidently say most of the suggestions have no effect at all or if it has some effect it is not worth the cost, so keep it at default. (YES, even "prefer maximum performance") I'm just not 100% sure about Vsync as it is greyed out and unchecked ingame, so I guess it is turned off and does not need to be modified here.

EDIT: Actually there is an option called VR pre rendered frames and that is supposed to increase fps in case you are gpu bound so changing that from 1 to 2 or 3 might help. Just test it out yourself.

 

- OpenXR Toolkit Settings:

-> CAS: 100% (sharpening with almost no impact, I like this better than the in-game sharpening which is a bit too harsh and not modifyable)
Contrast 57.5
Exposure 52.5 
Color adjustments R 47, G 49, B 50

(these 3 settings above are highly subjective and also depends on your headset, I found the game looked a bit yellowish and a bit too dark so I think it can do well with lower Red tones and some increased exposure. But again depends on your headset as well, increasing contrast gives scenery some slightly livelier colors and darker shadows which make it more realistic imo, darker shadows may somewhat replace ambient occlusion which I turned off I guess)
Override resolution: 2650x.... or 2700x (2650x... seemed to hold 90 fps for like 99% of the time so I will continue experiment with the resolution. I also didn't test it with bombers so that might be different.) 

 

EDIT: Actually I went back to SteamVR since it gave me better performance. My ingame settings are the same except for clouds which I set to medium. I also could increase my resolution. I highly suggest to checkout this post which my help with your SteamVR performance even further: 

forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/86271-new-vr-performance-toolkit-rsf/?do=findComment&comment=1292239

 

- In-Game Graphics
-> Global (the big buttons on the left): ultra! (anything lower makes trees and objects in the terrain pop in which is immersion breaking for me so ultra is the only setting I would go for. Even in ultra you can see it but only if you look for it, with "high" or lower you can clearly see the line where trees exist and where it doesn't so I don't like it at all. Also lowering didn't seems to increase gpu frame times much so it's well worth it imo)
-> Shadows high (surprisingly the difference between medium and high was negligible and for immersion I wouldn't go lower than medium, it just looks ugly. But ultra did cost some gpu times so high is a good option and looks good enough)
-> Mirrors simple (haven't tested this yet, but simple or medium was suggested in some guides)
-> SSAO off (high gpu impact as expected)
-> Distant landscape x3 (haven't tested this either, this was suggested)
-> HDR off (medium impact on gpu for not much difference. Note that this has nothing to do with HDR technology of monitors. This should be actually called HDRR High dynamic range rendering, which give light more glow, bloom etc.)
-> Canopy reflection off (medium g impact)
-> Sharpen off (low gpu impact and usable but I found it too harsh as it is either on or off and so I prefer CAS in OpenXR Toolkit which is a "softer" sharpening)
-> Horizon draw 100km (low g impact after 100km, below it didn't seems to make any difference at all so 100km seems a good spot)
-> Use 4k textures on (impacts vram only)
-> Landscape filter blurred (low impact on gpu, off creates shimmering of terrain, sharp still has some shimmering and aliasing effects most visible on buildings, streets and rivers.)
-> Distant buildings off (high impact according to guides, haven't tested)
-> Terrain roughness off (low gpu impact)
-> Grass quality off (medium-high impact only on or close to the ground. I had some big drop when flying close to the ground so turning the 2 options off completely helps with that)
-> Clouds quality low (medium and higher has very high gpu impact, low to medium medium-low impact. If you have the GPU power I would go for medium. Anything higher is not worth the cost imo. This is probably the most GPU expensive option after MSAA)
-> AA type fxaa (MSAA extremely high impact, especially for 4x or even 8x. Unfortunately, as it looks much better than FXAA and 8x completely removes shimmering and makes everythig look crystal clear etc. But FXAA 4x + blurred landscape filter is the next best options for much higher performance, but you have to live with shimmering in of buildings in cities)
-> Dynamic res 1 (doesn't seem to work well, it reduces the resolution more than it needs to down to 8ms gpu, eventhough 10ms would be enough)
-> AA 4 (fxaa low has gpu impact)
-> Gamma 1.1 (personal preference. It's like brightness if you didn't know it. Higher makes everything birghter and lower darker.)

 

My CPU frametimes are around 6-9ms and my GPU times are around 8,5-10,5ms but mostly around 9,5ms. If it goes higher than 10ms fps starts dropping into the 80s which creates stutters as VR users know already.

 

My wish to the devs would be to implement FFR or even mask culling as it would help a lot since as VR users we are GPU limited. Even with the highest end 4090 I'm sure I would still had to turn down some of the options or could not go to max resolution.

 

Edited May 29, 2024 by T-Bone51

[TCW_DirtyMike0330]

12 hours ago, T-Bone51 said:

Even with the highest end 4090 I'm sure I would still had to turn down some of the options

In my experience, IL2 is extremely easy to achieve and maintain 90fps with a 4090, without having to sacrifice the eye candy and with minimal tinkering. I understand not everyone can throw money at the VR problem, but it does essentially solve the problem. The same cannot be said for DCS and MSFS.
 

I hope any “new VR user” that is searching this sub for tips realizes that this post should be taken with a grain of salt, since it is coming from a someone who also considers themselves new, is using less than ideal hardware, and also a dying headset. Plenty of this information is already available in top posts and this just adds to the clutter (with arguably not-so-great advice). Just my opinion. 

[SCG_motoadve]

32 minutes ago, TCW_DirtyMike0330 said:

In my experience, IL2 is extremely easy to achieve and maintain 90fps with a 4090, without having to sacrifice the eye candy and with minimal tinkering. I understand not everyone can throw money at the VR problem, but it does essentially solve the problem. The same cannot be said for DCS and MSFS.
 

I hope any “new VR user” that is searching this sub for tips realizes that this post should be taken with a grain of salt, since it is coming from a someone who also considers themselves new, is using less than ideal hardware, and also a dying headset. Plenty of this information is already available in top posts and this just adds to the clutter (with arguably not-so-great advice). Just my opinion. 

4090 here, I maintain 90FPS with almost set to full in graphics, no HDR SSAO or Sharpen (Toolkit sharpness 30%) but still is choppy when planes cross in front of me.

DCS was the same until Foveated rendering was included by a third party, then I gained 15FPS and it has become super smooth at 90FPS,  I dont get the choppiness I get in IL2.

Any ideas why is choppy at 90FPS?

 

[TCW_DirtyMike0330]

9 minutes ago, SCG_motoadve said:

4090 here, I maintain 90FPS with almost set to full in graphics, no HDR SSAO or Sharpen (Toolkit sharpness 30%) but still is choppy when planes cross in front of me.

DCS was the same until Foveated rendering was included by a third party, then I gained 15FPS and it has become super smooth at 90FPS,  I dont get the choppiness I get in IL2.

Any ideas why is choppy at 90FPS?

 

A few variables to consider for that. What headset are you using? What CPU is paired with your 4090? Is this on a particular multiplayer server or is it during single player campaigns? All of those could factor into the choppiness/ghosting when a plane crosses your view. 

[SCG_motoadve]

Varjo Aero , AMD 7800X 3D, its mostly in single player, but happens in MP too.

[DBCOOPER011]

55 minutes ago, SCG_motoadve said:

4090 here, I maintain 90FPS with almost set to full in graphics, no HDR SSAO or Sharpen (Toolkit sharpness 30%) but still is choppy when planes cross in front of me.

DCS was the same until Foveated rendering was included by a third party, then I gained 15FPS and it has become super smooth at 90FPS,  I dont get the choppiness I get in IL2.

Any ideas why is choppy at 90FPS?

 

 

What third party software are you using for foveated rendering? Is through steamvr or openxr via opencomposite, or something else?

[SCG_motoadve]

That is in DCS, its not supported in IL2.

https://github.com/mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated/wiki

[T-Bone51]

7 hours ago, TCW_DirtyMike0330 said:

In my experience, IL2 is extremely easy to achieve and maintain 90fps with a 4090, without having to sacrifice the eye candy and with minimal tinkering. I understand not everyone can throw money at the VR problem, but it does essentially solve the problem. The same cannot be said for DCS and MSFS.
 

I hope any “new VR user” that is searching this sub for tips realizes that this post should be taken with a grain of salt, since it is coming from a someone who also considers themselves new, is using less than ideal hardware, and also a dying headset. Plenty of this information is already available in top posts and this just adds to the clutter (with arguably not-so-great advice). Just my opinion. 

I don't know why your comment is so negative man. Are you a mod here that is looking to keep this forum clean?

 

Obviously I'm not a IL-2 dev and this is not an official guide so obviously this should taken with a grain of salt as any other unofficial guides as well. 

 

I checked other guides here in the forum and on YouTube as well but I found contradicting suggestions and some of it I found was just not true in my case or I found it was a bad solution to save a few fps (like turning off shadows) So I decided to do the work and test the most important settings myself. I'm just sharing here and maybe it will be useful to someone. I'm sure there are still VR users out there who don't have a 4090...

 

Also that my headset is dying has no impact on the results for other headsets since they have similar resolutions and refresh rate. 

[DBCOOPER011]

1 hour ago, SCG_motoadve said:

That is in DCS, its not supported in IL2.

https://github.com/mbucchia/Varjo-Foveated/wiki

 

My bad, should have read that more carefully. Foveated rendering does work in IL2 with pimax play/steamvr but very buggy. Hopefully this gets sorted out in a future update..

[TCW_DirtyMike0330]

51 minutes ago, T-Bone51 said:

I don't know why your comment is so negative man. Are you a mod here that is looking to keep this forum clean?

 

Obviously I'm not a IL-2 dev and this is not an official guide so obviously this should taken with a grain of salt as any other unofficial guides as well. 

 

I checked other guides here in the forum and on YouTube as well but I found contradicting suggestions and some of it I found was just not true in my case or I found it was a bad solution to save a few fps (like turning off shadows) So I decided to do the work and test the most important settings myself. I'm just sharing here and maybe it will be useful to someone. I'm sure there are still VR users out there who don't have a 4090...

 

Also that my headset is dying has no impact on the results for other headsets since they have similar resolutions and refresh rate. 

I'm not a mod, I just think that your title "Finally 90fps in VR - My settings guide for new VR users" is pretty misleading because:

1. It isn't a good guide for new users

2. Nothing you "tested", by your own admission, is backed by any repeatable parameters. It is essentially a gut feeling post. 

3. It doesn't include any information that hasn't been posted a million times on this forum already

 

So, you can perceive it as negative, just like I can perceive your post as pointless. Welcome to the internet and public forums. 

 

51 minutes ago, T-Bone51 said:

Also that my headset is dying has no impact on the results for other headsets since they have similar resolutions and refresh rate. 

Yes, it does. This comment right here shows just how uninformed you are. Do you think that your settings for your G2 and its fresnel lenses are going to be the same for something like a Quest Pro or a Pimax Crystal? It isn't all about resolutions and refresh rates. Thanks for the "guide" for new users, from a new user, though! 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2024 by TCW_DirtyMike0330

[dgiatr]

👍

22 hours ago, T-Bone51 said:

 

Hey guys, I'm new here and just got into this game which is amazing. Super immersive, especially the sounds and effects. I think in VR you can really appreciate the work that was put in. The instruments and small details all look so realistic. I use a bass shaker as well and when you throttle up and take off you see the exhaust fire, the heat blur, everything gets loud and shakes like you are witnessing a space rocket to be launched 😄 That's exactly how I feel the pilots must have felt in these 1000+HP beasts BUT, it was painful to find the right settings, mainly because you have to restart when you change any graphic setting. I spent many hours the last 3 days so I thought I would share my results hoping it would save someone else the time that I invested trying to find the sweet spot. I think I finally am in a good spot where I can hold 90 fps >95% of the time, but I am open for suggestions.

 

My hardware:

HP Reverb G2

Win 10

AMD 5600X

Nvidia RTX3080 10GB

2x 16GB RAM 3200Mhz

Samsung SSD

 

I did some basic testing, nothing scientific like logging frames etc but mainly observing frametimes with the OpenXR toolkit FPS counter. Even if I tried to do it, the mission always loads slightly different so results vary even if you keep all the settings the same and load into the same mission. So I guess this is the next best thing one can do. If there were heavy clouds I sometimes did reload to double check.

 

- So first obviously I changed the VR runtime to OpenXR with OpenComposite. (It was quite disappointing finding out the game doesn't offer FFR support but I still like the other features of OpenXR Toolkit as well)

 

- OpenXR Tools (the main one) settings:

-> Custom render resolution: 100%

-> Motion reprojection: Disabled (The dev of openXR toolkit said even if you are above 90fps enabling motion reprojection will still consume some performance in the background, so keep it disabled if your target is to keep 90 fps)

 

Unfortunately I found that motion reprojection while holding 45fps makes other aircrafts look choppy in dogfights even though normal cruising is totally fine. So my target was to hold 90 fps for like 99% of the time. I can live with some stutters here and there so I don't want to reduce my settings too much.

 

- Windows: Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling: Off (this consumes gpu performance in iracing, haven't tested in Il-2 but I would guess it will be the same)

 

- Nvidia Control Panel

-> Now the videos I watched on YouTube always go deep into this but having tested it a lot with iracing I can confidently say most of the suggestions have no effect at all or if it has some effect it is not worth the cost, so keep it at default. (YES, even "prefer maximum performance") I'm just not 100% sure about Vsync as it is greyed out and unchecked ingame, so I guess it is turned off and does not need to be modified here.

EDIT: Actually there is an option called VR pre rendered frames and that is supposed to increase fps in case you are gpu bound so changing that from 1 to 2 or 3 might help. Just test it out yourself.

 

- OpenXR Toolkit Settings:

-> CAS: 100% (sharpening with almost no impact, I like this better than the in-game sharpening which is a bit too harsh and not modifyable)
Contrast 57.5
Exposure 52.5 
Color adjustments R 47, G 49, B 50

(these 3 settings above are highly subjective and also depends on your headset, I found the game looked a bit yellowish and a bit too dark so I think it can do well with lower Red tones and some increased exposure. But again depends on your headset as well, increasing contrast gives scenery some slightly livelier colors and darker shadows which make it more realistic imo, darker shadows may somewhat replace ambient occlusion which I turned off I guess)
Override resolution: 2650x.... or 2700x (2650x... seemed to hold 90 fps for like 99% of the time so I will continue experiment with the resolution. I also didn't test it with bombers so that might be different.) 

 

- In-Game Graphics
-> Global (the big buttons on the left): ultra! (anything lower makes trees and objects in the terrain pop in which is immersion breaking for me so ultra is the only setting I would go for. Even in ultra you can see it but only if you look for it, with "high" or lower you can clearly see the line where trees exist and where it doesn't so I don't like it at all. Also lowering didn't seems to increase gpu frame times much so it's well worth it imo)
-> Shadows high (surprisingly the difference between medium and high was negligible and for immersion I wouldn't go lower than medium, it just looks ugly. But ultra did cost some gpu times so high is a good option and looks good enough)
-> Mirrors simple (haven't tested this yet, but simple or medium was suggested in some guides)
-> SSAO off (high gpu impact as expected)
-> Distant landscape x3 (haven't tested this either, this was suggested)
-> HDR off (medium impact on gpu for not much difference. Note that this has nothing to do with HDR technology of monitors. This should be actually called HDRR High dynamic range rendering, which give light more glow, bloom etc.)
-> Canopy reflection off (medium g impact)
-> Sharpen off (low gpu impact and usable but I found it too harsh as it is either on or off and so I prefer CAS in OpenXR Toolkit which is a "softer" sharpening)
-> Horizon draw 100km (low g impact after 100km, below it didn't seems to make any difference at all so 100km seems a good spot)
-> Use 4k textures on (impacts vram only)
-> Landscape filter blurred (low impact on gpu, off creates shimmering of terrain, sharp still has some shimmering and aliasing effects most visible on buildings, streets and rivers.)
-> Distant buildings off (high impact according to guides, haven't tested)
-> Terrain roughness off (low gpu impact)
-> Grass quality off (medium-high impact only on or close to the ground. I had some big drop when flying close to the ground so turning the 2 options off completely helps with that)
-> Clouds quality low (medium and higher has very high gpu impact, low to medium medium-low impact. If you have the GPU power I would go for medium. Anything higher is not worth the cost imo. This is probably the most GPU expensive option after MSAA)
-> AA type fxaa (MSAA extremely high impact, especially for 4x or even 8x. Unfortunately, as it looks much better than FXAA and 8x completely removes shimmering and makes everythig look crystal clear etc. But FXAA 4x + blurred landscape filter is the next best options for much higher performance, but you have to live with shimmering in of buildings in cities)
-> Dynamic res 1 (doesn't seem to work well, it reduces the resolution more than it needs to down to 8ms gpu, eventhough 10ms would be enough)
-> AA 4 (fxaa low has gpu impact)
-> Gamma 1.1 (personal preference. It's like brightness if you didn't know it. Higher makes everything birghter and lower darker.)

 

My CPU frametimes are around 6-9ms and my GPU times are around 8,5-10,5ms but mostly around 9,5ms. If it goes higher than 10ms fps starts dropping into the 80s which creates stutters as VR users know already.

 

My wish to the devs would be to implement FFR or even mask culling as it would help a lot since as VR users we are GPU limited. Even with the highest end 4090 I'm sure I would still had to turn down some of the options or could not go to max resolution.

 

Thank you T-Bone51 your post is very informative.

 

I also play with Hp G2 and I can say that after many many hours of tweaking, many of my settings are the same as yours. I agree that openxr toolkit is better than steamvr and I also have 100% CAS sharpening which gives better and more clearer image than in-game sharpening. I also play at about 2600x2600 resolution and at 2 or 4xMSAA which has an impact in fps but gives less shimmering and better image on the other hand.

 

Edited May 24, 2024 by dgiatr

[firdimigdi]

21 hours ago, SCG_motoadve said:

Any ideas why is choppy at 90FPS?

 

Likely this:

[horendus]

On 5/25/2024 at 5:10 PM, firdimigdi said:

 

Likely this:

 

ahhh yes the classic AI processing holding up the rendering thread problem.

 

Waiting for the intel core i11 Quantum to brute force this one off the table.

 

 

 

In all seriousness though the Intel 13th gen massively improved this problem. 

[firdimigdi]

2 hours ago, horendus said:

In all seriousness though the Intel 13th gen massively improved this problem.

 

Yeah, it's mitigated substantialy on newer gen CPUs. With a 7950X3D I'm able to run the game on the cached cores and a dserver on the normal ones and play absolutely smooth "singleplayer" (with PWCG or SynVader's mission generator) since the AI is ran on the dserver.

[horendus]

8 hours ago, firdimigdi said:

 

Yeah, it's mitigated substantialy on newer gen CPUs. With a 7950X3D I'm able to run the game on the cached cores and a dserver on the normal ones and play absolutely smooth "singleplayer" (with PWCG or SynVader's mission generator) since the AI is ran on the dserver.

 

Not going to lie, this is genious. 

[DBCOOPER011]

On 5/25/2024 at 2:10 AM, firdimigdi said:

 

Likely this:

 

Not related, but I had slight micro stuttering for some time with a relatively low CPU/GPU frametime. Turned out it was having HWinfo64 running with IL2..

[firdimigdi]

58 minutes ago, DBCOOPER011 said:

Turned out it was having HWinfo64 running with IL2..

 

Yeah that, and similar oddities, can happen in certain systems when polling certain sensors - can be a bit of a hassle to single out the offender. Usually I only run such monitoring software when tinkering/doing OC stress tests, checking on the state of the 4090's HVPWR voltage every couple of weeks or so, etc and it's set to only monitor very specific sensors exactly for this reason.

[DBCOOPER011]

On 5/24/2024 at 5:01 AM, SCG_motoadve said:

4090 here, I maintain 90FPS with almost set to full in graphics, no HDR SSAO or Sharpen (Toolkit sharpness 30%) but still is choppy when planes cross in front of me.

DCS was the same until Foveated rendering was included by a third party, then I gained 15FPS and it has become super smooth at 90FPS,  I dont get the choppiness I get in IL2.

Any ideas why is choppy at 90FPS?

 

 

If using opencomposite/openxr, I would ensure that "turbo mode" is enabled in the toolkit, or the equivalent "prefer framerate over latency". Just enable one or the other.  DCS and IL2 can get choppy for me if these are unchecked..

[dgiatr]

14 minutes ago, DBCOOPER011 said:

, or the equivalent "prefer framerate over latency".

Where is it? I haven't seen it?

[DBCOOPER011]

57 minutes ago, dgiatr said:

Where is it? I haven't seen it?

 

Its on my pimaxxr app and I believe it was on the openxr tools for mixed reality..

[dgiatr]

1 hour ago, DBCOOPER011 said:

 

Its on my pimaxxr app and I believe it was on the openxr tools for mixed reality..

OK thank you,, I will check.

 

 

[Paul_RSXK]

On 5/23/2024 at 11:22 PM, T-Bone51 said:

 

Hey guys, I'm new here and just got into this game which is amazing. Super immersive, especially the sounds and effects. I think in VR you can really appreciate the work that was put in. The instruments and small details all look so realistic. I use a bass shaker as well and when you throttle up and take off you see the exhaust fire, the heat blur, everything gets loud and shakes like you are witnessing a space rocket to be launched 😄 That's exactly how I feel the pilots must have felt in these 1000+HP beasts BUT, it was painful to find the right settings, mainly because you have to restart when you change any graphic setting. I spent many hours the last 3 days so I thought I would share my results hoping it would save someone else the time that I invested trying to find the sweet spot. I think I finally am in a good spot where I can hold 90 fps >95% of the time, but I am open for suggestions.

 

My hardware:

HP Reverb G2

Win 10

AMD 5600X

Nvidia RTX3080 10GB

2x 16GB RAM 3200Mhz

Samsung SSD

 

I did some basic testing, nothing scientific like logging frames etc but mainly observing frametimes with the OpenXR toolkit FPS counter. Even if I tried to do it, the mission always loads slightly different so results vary even if you keep all the settings the same and load into the same mission. So I guess this is the next best thing one can do. If there were heavy clouds I sometimes did reload to double check.

 

- So first obviously I changed the VR runtime to OpenXR with OpenComposite. (It was quite disappointing finding out the game doesn't offer FFR support but I still like the other features of OpenXR Toolkit as well)

 

- OpenXR Tools (the main one) settings:

-> Custom render resolution: 100%

-> Motion reprojection: Disabled (The dev of openXR toolkit said even if you are above 90fps enabling motion reprojection will still consume some performance in the background, so keep it disabled if your target is to keep 90 fps)

 

Unfortunately I found that motion reprojection while holding 45fps makes other aircrafts look choppy in dogfights even though normal cruising is totally fine. So my target was to hold 90 fps for like 99% of the time. I can live with some stutters here and there so I don't want to reduce my settings too much.

 

- Windows: Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling: Off (this consumes gpu performance in iracing, haven't tested in Il-2 but I would guess it will be the same)

 

- Nvidia Control Panel

-> Now the videos I watched on YouTube always go deep into this but having tested it a lot with iracing I can confidently say most of the suggestions have no effect at all or if it has some effect it is not worth the cost, so keep it at default. (YES, even "prefer maximum performance") I'm just not 100% sure about Vsync as it is greyed out and unchecked ingame, so I guess it is turned off and does not need to be modified here.

EDIT: Actually there is an option called VR pre rendered frames and that is supposed to increase fps in case you are gpu bound so changing that from 1 to 2 or 3 might help. Just test it out yourself.

 

- OpenXR Toolkit Settings:

-> CAS: 100% (sharpening with almost no impact, I like this better than the in-game sharpening which is a bit too harsh and not modifyable)
Contrast 57.5
Exposure 52.5 
Color adjustments R 47, G 49, B 50

(these 3 settings above are highly subjective and also depends on your headset, I found the game looked a bit yellowish and a bit too dark so I think it can do well with lower Red tones and some increased exposure. But again depends on your headset as well, increasing contrast gives scenery some slightly livelier colors and darker shadows which make it more realistic imo, darker shadows may somewhat replace ambient occlusion which I turned off I guess)
Override resolution: 2650x.... or 2700x (2650x... seemed to hold 90 fps for like 99% of the time so I will continue experiment with the resolution. I also didn't test it with bombers so that might be different.) 

 

EDIT: Actually I went back to SteamVR since it gave me better performance. My ingame settings are the same except for clouds which I set to medium. I also could increase my resolution. I highly suggest to checkout this post which my help with your SteamVR performance even further: 

forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/86271-new-vr-performance-toolkit-rsf/?do=findComment&comment=1292239

 

- In-Game Graphics
-> Global (the big buttons on the left): ultra! (anything lower makes trees and objects in the terrain pop in which is immersion breaking for me so ultra is the only setting I would go for. Even in ultra you can see it but only if you look for it, with "high" or lower you can clearly see the line where trees exist and where it doesn't so I don't like it at all. Also lowering didn't seems to increase gpu frame times much so it's well worth it imo)
-> Shadows high (surprisingly the difference between medium and high was negligible and for immersion I wouldn't go lower than medium, it just looks ugly. But ultra did cost some gpu times so high is a good option and looks good enough)
-> Mirrors simple (haven't tested this yet, but simple or medium was suggested in some guides)
-> SSAO off (high gpu impact as expected)
-> Distant landscape x3 (haven't tested this either, this was suggested)
-> HDR off (medium impact on gpu for not much difference. Note that this has nothing to do with HDR technology of monitors. This should be actually called HDRR High dynamic range rendering, which give light more glow, bloom etc.)
-> Canopy reflection off (medium g impact)
-> Sharpen off (low gpu impact and usable but I found it too harsh as it is either on or off and so I prefer CAS in OpenXR Toolkit which is a "softer" sharpening)
-> Horizon draw 100km (low g impact after 100km, below it didn't seems to make any difference at all so 100km seems a good spot)
-> Use 4k textures on (impacts vram only)
-> Landscape filter blurred (low impact on gpu, off creates shimmering of terrain, sharp still has some shimmering and aliasing effects most visible on buildings, streets and rivers.)
-> Distant buildings off (high impact according to guides, haven't tested)
-> Terrain roughness off (low gpu impact)
-> Grass quality off (medium-high impact only on or close to the ground. I had some big drop when flying close to the ground so turning the 2 options off completely helps with that)
-> Clouds quality low (medium and higher has very high gpu impact, low to medium medium-low impact. If you have the GPU power I would go for medium. Anything higher is not worth the cost imo. This is probably the most GPU expensive option after MSAA)
-> AA type fxaa (MSAA extremely high impact, especially for 4x or even 8x. Unfortunately, as it looks much better than FXAA and 8x completely removes shimmering and makes everythig look crystal clear etc. But FXAA 4x + blurred landscape filter is the next best options for much higher performance, but you have to live with shimmering in of buildings in cities)
-> Dynamic res 1 (doesn't seem to work well, it reduces the resolution more than it needs to down to 8ms gpu, eventhough 10ms would be enough)
-> AA 4 (fxaa low has gpu impact)
-> Gamma 1.1 (personal preference. It's like brightness if you didn't know it. Higher makes everything birghter and lower darker.)

 

My CPU frametimes are around 6-9ms and my GPU times are around 8,5-10,5ms but mostly around 9,5ms. If it goes higher than 10ms fps starts dropping into the 80s which creates stutters as VR users know already.

 

My wish to the devs would be to implement FFR or even mask culling as it would help a lot since as VR users we are GPU limited. Even with the highest end 4090 I'm sure I would still had to turn down some of the options or could not go to max resolution.

 

Something you might want to consider is using Process Lasso. A one click solution to manage your background operations and run your CPU cores more efficiently. It has a number of presets that can be assigned to exe files. I found it smoothed out random stutters in DCS and just made the whole experience a lot smoother. Of course, you still need to fine tune your graphics to suit your specific set up and hardware. I’ve tried it with IL2 and although it’s early days it looks to be an improvement there as well.