Surprisingly good results: My IL-2 VR settings for the Quest 3

[1Sascha]

I was going to post what follows in Neph's VR-guide thread, but I figured since his thread was about the G2, I'd make my own. Plus the post got longer and longer, so ... 😄

 

 

I was on a G2 before and my current GPU is about as fast as Neph's 3080 Ti, but with the Q3 I can now run quite a bit more in-game eye-candy at 72 Hz and the game generally looks much nicer thanks to that and the Q3's pancake-lenses.

 

Re visual quality or overall sensation while playing the game: I'm not sure recording a video would do much to convey what sort of quality I'm getting from this setup and with these settings - other than showing in-game FPS. Suffice it to say that I'm currently able to comfortably read the flaps-indicator readout on the FW 190's wings without having to use any of the VR-zoom functions. Spotting, even beyond icon-range, is surprisingly easy, but reliably identifying planes at, say, 2 to 3km and beyond is still a bit of a chore - although that might be a general issue with VR gameplay. Not sure.

 

EDIT: I'm too lazy to take all the screenshots right now, so some of this is from the top of my head:

 

Overcame most of my laziness...

 

 

Oculus App:

72 Hz, 1.0x resolution (4128x2208, lowest 1.0x res the app will show)

 

 

In-game:

 

Preset = High (yes... "High" ... I can't believe I'm getting away with this and the game looks a lot nicer than on "Balanced")

Resolution = 1280x800 or something similarly low (unless I want to record gameplay) - which does seem to make a difference to performance. Note: This is only the mirror-window's resolution (that appears on your monitor) and has nothing to do with your head-set's resolution.

Shadows = High

Details = x4

Cockpit reflections = OFF

Mirrors = OFF

Viewing Distance = 130km <-- which seems to be my system's limit. I tried 150km in career missions on Normandy and my performance went down noticeably. With 130km, everything was stable at more or less constant 72 FPS

Clouds = Medium

AA = FXAA x4 (smoother look and also seems to help with spotting)

Grass = Normal

 

Everything on the right side of the screen is off except "Enable VR" (duh!) and "4k textures".

Not sure if I should use in-game sharpening or CAS in OpenXR, but I'm pretty sure it'd be silly to use both.

 

 

 

OpenXR Toolkit:

Performance: CAS on, ~45 percent (any more than that and I'm getting "rasterized" trees and clouds).

 

System: Override Resolution = YES, resolution set to ~3000xsomething. I can't remember the exact value, but it's pretty high.. 😄 - gotta remember that the Toolkit shows per-eye resolution, so in "Oculus App terms", this would be 6000xsomething. Which is quite a bit higher than what the Oculus App would let me set.  If you're starting to see FPS drops, this should be lowered of course. I find that even 2800x in here will give very good results.

 

ODT (note: I run the Quest 3 over a cable):

 

 

^ I find that I can go lower on the FOV settings. I think the lowest I tried was .085 horizontal and 0.8 vertical and I still didn't notice any "black" areas in my picture. Probably depends on the user and their face-shape/IPD, etc but most folks should be able to use what's shown in the screenshot without a discernible difference in visuals. What this setting does is, *basically*, reduce the size of the picture that gets rendered by your head-set. The upside is that the areas on the edges of your field of view will be invisible to you, so you're basically not rendering a bunch of pixels you wouldn't be able to see, anyway.

 

Note: On my system at least, some of these changes in ODT do not get saved between VR-sessions. Meaning if I start VR for the first time on any given day, I also open ODT (once Oculus Link is up and running) from within my head-set and double check. Usually FOV changes and ASW to "disabled" don't "stick". Everything else does.

 

My changes to Nvidia CP-settings (sorry about the German text... no idea how to switch that to English). I've pretty much copied those from other users' recommendations and I'm not sure how much of a difference those *really* make, but here they are:

 

Pre-rendered VR-frames at higher settings supposedly hit the CPU a bit harder for added performance - since I found that my CPU was basically always (almost) idling during gameplay, I thought I'd give the highest setting (4) a try.

 

 

I usually use career missions for performance testing, as I find those tend to create the most demanding situations on my system. Especially those on the Kuban- and Normandy-maps. If the game runs OK during a really busy mission on those, it should run OK everywhere else.

 

I should also add that the "trick" that really did it for me (I think) was to embrace 72 Hz - even 80 Hz will require me to dial back some in-game settings (like preset from "high" to "balanced") for a 100% smooth experience. However: To me, 72 Hz on the Q3 doesn't look nearly as "low quality" as 60 Hz did on the G2 - maybe another benefit of the Q3's lenses or 72 Hz being simply a higher value than 60 Hz or the Q3's panel being better than the HP's? Not sure. 

 

Speaking of which ... here are some of the more important in-game settings (I found) WRT performance:

 

- MSAA - biggest single performance-hog, IMO. Looks absolutely great even at x2, but requires a lot of sacrifices with other detail-/res-settings to make it playable on my system. Plus I'm pretty sure it makes spotting harder than FXAA. Probably only an option for 4080 or even 4090 users.

 

- Preset - I recommend "balanced" as a starting point but if you have the headroom, you should definitely try "High"

 

- Viewing distance - as mentioned: 150 km is too much for my system. 100km is a good compromise between visual quality and performance. Only use lower settings than that if you absolutely have to.

 

- Shadows: Anything above "medium" is noticeable - both in the performance- and in the looks-department. Obvious sacrificial setting if you need a few more FPS.

 

- Clouds: Medium looks fine to me and "high" does noticeably eat into performance.

 

System specs:

Board: MSI Z690 Tomahawk DDR4

CPU: Intel i7-14700KF, 360 AiO

RAM: 2x 16 GB G.Skill TridentZ RGB, 3600 CL16 - XMP on.

GPU: GB RTX 4070 Super Gaming OC, manually OCed

 

Both Win 11 and IL-2 are installed on fairly fast Samsung M.2 drives.

 

Open Composite/OpenXR Toolkit, so no SteamVR.

 

 

 

S.

Edited October 21, 2024 by 1Sascha

[III/JG11_Tiger]

I just received my quest 3 this last weekend and coming from the quest 1 I've been using for the last couple of year its amazing, while I enjoyed the quest 1 it was always a struggle to spot and ID aircraft, now with the quest 3 I can spot and ID nearly as good as in the old track IR days.

 

One other thing I'm enjoying is that with my low end 3060ti at 72hz, I've actually been able to improve some of the game settings and its still running very smoothly, this is as big an upgrade for me as going from a 19" monitor using a trackball for head tracking, to a 27" with track IR.

[chiliwili69]

On 1/13/2025 at 5:29 AM, III/JG11_Tiger said:

One other thing I'm enjoying is that with my low end 3060ti at 72hz, I've actually been able to improve some of the game settings and its still running very smoothly

 

Yes, the Quest3 is a VR device which requires a very small internal supersampling ratio for the default device resolution (100SS% SteamVR). This means that for a given physical panel resolution it requires less GPU load than many other VR devices like G2, Pimaxes, Aero, etc.

In fact, it gives the lowest ratio of GPU_load/physical_pixel.

 

 

That´s why I obtained better images for Quest3 than for Pimax Crystal Light for the max GPU load of my 3080.

 

 

[III/JG11_Tiger]

On 1/14/2025 at 3:54 PM, chiliwili69 said:

 

Yes, the Quest3 is a VR device which requires a very small internal supersampling ratio for the default device resolution (100SS% SteamVR). This means that for a given physical panel resolution it requires less GPU load than many other VR devices like G2, Pimaxes, Aero, etc.

In fact, it gives the lowest ratio of GPU_load/physical_pixel.

 

 

That´s why I obtained better images for Quest3 than for Pimax Crystal Light for the max GPU load of my 3080.

 

 

Your posts from previous years on the quest 3 helped sway my decision on buying one, I'm glad I did, so thanks for all the solid work you put in. 

[chiliwili69]

2 hours ago, III/JG11_Tiger said:

Your posts from previous years on the quest 3 helped sway my decision on buying one

I am also glad it helped.

Although there are hundreds of Youtubers reviews I have learnt that there is nothing like test yourself, since nobody knows better than you what it fit better for you.

Honestly I hated to pick the Q3 over the Index and over the Crystal Light, but apart from individual preferences (comfort, sensitivities to FOV/Colors/glare/edge-to-edge clarity, etc) there are other facts that can be measured like Throgh-lens pictures and required performance (GPU load) which also count to decide one device or other.

 

A Quest3 with a Display Port cable, without the need of a battery (for weight and charging), a bit higher resolution and a bit more FOV would be a dream.

 

Let´s see what new things arrive this year.

[dgiatr]

2 hours ago, chiliwili69 said:

 

A Quest3 with a Display Port cable, without the need of a battery (for weight and charging), a bit higher resolution and a bit more FOV would be a dream.

 

Let´s see what new things arrive this year.

Yeah, I will tell Elon to force Mark to change Meta policy to make our dream come true😀

[dryheat94]

Lacking the DisplayPort connection, I run Virtual Desktop with an AXE5400 router and have a USB-C to USB-C cable plugged into the headset and directly into the wall charger, so no battery required. This way I'm always charged and don't have to deal with the Meta Link software or batteries.

Edited January 17 by dryheat94

[Blitzen]

I just got a Q3 day before yesterday after my G2 “died”( no really!) I am currently doing my best,with the help of others here to navigate a complete install and link which I have just managed and then working on the settings with the “De-Bug” tool.All this is very new to me..and eventually actually getting into BoX game play- this is still a mystery to me , but I have faith it will work itself out,,,again with help here…So your initial post is VERT relevant to me. Thanks - anything to add for a complete Q3 newbie?

 

Ok a couple ogf small quetions:

Do I have to download tehOculus App?  I cannot find a "Graphics Preferences screen?!

AND:

My OpenXR Toolkit appears to only give me a screen dealing with screenshot preferences...nothing else?

 

Finally I am actually seeing the game appear in the goggles!and to be almost there in terms of playing the sim, But when BoX appears on my monitor and in the goggles it appears as if it is in a curved panoramic screen mode and not filling the whole screen, and moves around all over the place if I have one of the hand controller working.I seem to remember you can disable the handcontrollers and go back to just the mouse by key-stroking Windows key, and key 7 ( or is it 9?) but how do I gat full screen without the curved screen distortion?

Edited February 3 by Blitzen
added info