Looking at picking up a VR headset, but having seen random bits around the forums it sounds like you need a pretty high FPS rate to have a good experience.  Trying to figure out if my hardware will handle VR in MSFS without having to dumb down the eye candy too much.  I have no idea which headset I'd even be looking at so I guess I'm just looking for a general "yeah you'll be fine" or "well you'll be ok if you turn X/Y/Z down a bit" or, "don't bother until you get a new GPU".

Right now I'm running a 5950X with a 2080 Super FTW3 and 32GB of RAM.  Typically getting mid-upper 40's to locked at mid-50's in nearly all situations at 3440x1440 on High with a few Ultra thrown in where performance isn't really a hit and 130 on both LOD sliders.  In case anyone is wondering, I have it locked at mid-50's as I want to leave headroom if available for Twitch streaming but also when I went to 3440x1440 I lost the ultra low FPS GSYNC capability of my Asus monitor.  The LG ultrawide has Gsync compatibility but requires 48fps+ to stay in it.

Edited October 12, 20214 yr by flyinion

flyinion,

I do not thing you will have many problems.  My system is not as good as yours but I am getting a good VR experience when I can get into the @^&^%% programme (see previous topics) I have the 3900x and a GTX1080ti. 

You could probably have a slightly better experience if you utilized a kray computer or even manage to hack into the US department of Defence computer whilst utilizing a Varjo headset though. LOL

With my set up, I never fly in 2D any more and I am extremely happy with my Quest 2 performance in MSFS.

I have to say that with bug issues aside, the performance in MSFS using mediocre  hardware, is impressive to say the least. 

Regards

Tony 

I think you will be alright with your setup on medium to high settings. I only fly in VR now and MSFS does very well in VR.  Nice an smooth for me, where my P3D sim can be very jittery. 

If your looking at picking up a headset and mainly using it for flight sim, then getting one with a high resolution so you can easily read the instruments in the fight deck without having to lean in each time to read it. One example would be the HP Reverb 2. 

4 hours ago, rickjake said:

I think you will be alright with your setup on medium to high settings. I only fly in VR now and MSFS does very well in VR.  Nice an smooth for me, where my P3D sim can be very jittery. 

If your looking at picking up a headset and mainly using it for flight sim, then getting one with a high resolution so you can easily read the instruments in the fight deck without having to lean in each time to read it. One example would be the HP Reverb 2. 

Thanks guys. Yes it would be about 50% flightsim and about 50% elite dangerous which a couple friends just got me into and they’re both using VR with it. I had been thinking of getting VR anyway for MSFS so now I really want it. 

As has been said, your pc will be fine for vr, you wont regret it. Some thought however should be given to which vr hmd you choose to buy. Reason being for example, a pimax 8kx hmd will push your system harder than a quest 2. I think your pc is suited to a quest 2, probably a hp reverb G2 also, although the latter will push it more.

I reckon Elite Dangerous will be absolutely fine with your spec for both the Quest 2 or Reverb.  My 5800x and 2700super ran it fine through my Reverb Gen1

However, MSFS through the Reverb was heavily GPU restricted for me even when on low to medium settings (although fine for XPlane).  An upgrade to a 3080Ti has transformed the experience.

So my guess is that the lower res (but decent all the same) Quest 2 would give you good resu!ts for MSFS with the 5950x and 2080super.  However, the Reverb may or may not without a GPU upgrade.

 

1 hour ago, AJZip said:

I reckon Elite Dangerous will be absolutely fine with your spec for both the Quest 2 or Reverb.  My 5800x and 2700super ran it fine through my Reverb Gen1

However, MSFS through the Reverb was heavily GPU restricted for me even when on low to medium settings (although fine for XPlane).  An upgrade to a 3080Ti has transformed the experience.

So my guess is that the lower res (but decent all the same) Quest 2 would give you good resu!ts for MSFS with the 5950x and 2080super.  However, the Reverb may or may not without a GPU upgrade.

 

thanks, yeah I was getting 150 fps in ED on Ultra before I locked it lower lol so not worried there at all.  I definitely have been planning to upgrade the GPU, but the current state of buying GPU's has literally made that impossible just from the standpoint of I refuse to pay 100-200% over MSRP for a card from a 3rd party scalper.

Whilst I have a Ryzen 5 5600x and 16gb of ram, I am currently running an RX580(8gb) until the GPU market calms down. I adore playing MSFS in VR using it. Yes, it not perfect, by nothing beats flying a Small GA aircraft in VR in remote places. There are some cons to doing this on my current rig:

- Have to set the VR resolution at the bare minimum. This makes dials difficult to read at a glance. I avoid glass cockpits for this reason

- Frame rates, whilst not high (24fps), are perfectly good enough and don't give me any motion sickness

- I have to keep the AI planes etc down to a minimum to keep frame rates up. can make for a quite experience at airports

Once you have tried it, despite the drawbacks, it is very difficult, in my eyes,  to return to playing it in pancake mode. Definately give it a go. Don't expect to do full on flights with all the bells and whistles. Take a 152 out to iceland at sunset and just chill out.

Roll on cheap 3080's !!! 

Hmm so a friend is suggesting the Valve Index (one of the ones using VR for Elite Dangerous).  Is the resolution on that usable for MSFS? I tried his ED setup yesterday and it seemed fine in that UI.  I think the one thing I'm not sure on in trying to figure this out is how VR actually interacts with the GPU and sim or game settings.  I.e. using a VR headset is whatever game/sim/etc driving the title on your main monitor at whatever resolution and also driving the VR headset?  Or does the headset take over and the monitor just displays what's going on like you're watching a video (i.e. not actually rendering the sim for the monitor)?  Hopefully that makes some sense.  Maybe to put it clearer, would the sim still be rendering at 3440x1440 for my monitor and also essentially rendering for a second display as well (i.e. the VR headset)?

4 hours ago, flyinion said:

Hmm so a friend is suggesting the Valve Index (one of the ones using VR for Elite Dangerous).  Is the resolution on that usable for MSFS? I tried his ED setup yesterday and it seemed fine in that UI.  I think the one thing I'm not sure on in trying to figure this out is how VR actually interacts with the GPU and sim or game settings.  I.e. using a VR headset is whatever game/sim/etc driving the title on your main monitor at whatever resolution and also driving the VR headset?  Or does the headset take over and the monitor just displays what's going on like you're watching a video (i.e. not actually rendering the sim for the monitor)?  Hopefully that makes some sense.  Maybe to put it clearer, would the sim still be rendering at 3440x1440 for my monitor and also essentially rendering for a second display as well (i.e. the VR headset)?

Looks like I found the answer, but someone please correct me if I read the wrong thing.  Sounds like what's displayed on the monitor while in VR is just a mirror image of what's being actually rendered for the headset and actually has minimal GPU resource cost?

8 hours ago, flyinion said:

Looks like I found the answer, but someone please correct me if I read the wrong thing.  Sounds like what's displayed on the monitor while in VR is just a mirror image of what's being actually rendered for the headset and actually has minimal GPU resource cost?

Sort of, although there can be an impact nonetheless. 

With a WMR headset like the Reverb, there is also the WMR window that can be live or static.  In XPlane, it makes a tangible difference to the fps and actual visual performance if the screen view is full screen and the WMR is also showing a live view.  The recommendation for best VR performance in X Plane is usually to go windowed mode on the screen and reduce to minimum the size of the monitor X Plane window or even minimise, once you are in VR, and to set the WMR window to pause the live feed.

In MSFS, there does seem to be a difference between full screen and windowed mode...but less than in X plane...but I still find an advantage in pausing the live view on the WMR on my rig.  

Edited October 14, 20214 yr by AJZip

18 hours ago, Sybull said:

Once you have tried it, despite the drawbacks, it is very difficult, in my eyes,  to return to playing it in pancake mode.

My gfx card died months ago which left me with no other option than pancake mode using my old card.

Tried with different sized screens, with TrackIR, and even with 3D glasses with an old 50 inch 3D television to get something back of the stereo depth i was used to in VR

But as of yesterday  i'm back again in real VR with a 140 euro GTX 1050 Ti card (i still use Rift CV1 on an old PC) and oh boy, what a difference.

So, yes you can revert to pancake mode, it is not impossible,and perhaps time will heal and you may forget VR. but it's just not the same anymore.
 

 

 

 

10 hours ago, AJZip said:

Sort of, although there can be an impact nonetheless. 

With a WMR headset like the Reverb, there is also the WMR window that can be live or static.  In XPlane, it makes a tangible difference to the fps and actual visual performance if the screen view is full screen and the WMR is also showing a live view.  The recommendation for best VR performance in X Plane is usually to go windowed mode on the screen and reduce to minimum the size of the monitor X Plane window or even minimise, once you are in VR, and to set the WMR window to pause the live feed.

In MSFS, there does seem to be a difference between full screen and windowed mode...but less than in X plane...but I still find an advantage in pausing the live view on the WMR on my rig.  

Thanks for the info.  Good to know it can be pause like that.  I really had no idea how it worked until just this week.  I was worried the need for super powerful PC's was because it was fully rendering for the monitor but also rendering for the VR headset.  I just knew that I always saw people having it on their monitor while using the VR headset but didn't know the technical details of what was going on.  I feel a bit more confident in my system now 😄

Man I'm really not sure which headset to go with now.  I got a chance to try a friend's Oculus 2 and it's ok, thought nowhere near as comfortable as another friend's Index.  Colors don't seem nearly as good on the Oculus either (both headsets being compared in Elite Dangerous as neither friend has flight sims).  After watching some review videos it seems as though the Reverb G2 would be the best choice for quality, and I know I could run it fine for Elite, but it sounds like my 2080 Super FTW3 will struggle with it in MSFS?  How about render scaling reducing it to say 80%?  Would that help?  Or would it make things worse?  Also, while I do a lot of tubeliner stuff in MSFS maybe this means I use monitor only for that stuff and slap the VR on for GA?  I have plenty of power for GA stuff it's just the big tubeliners with all the glass and behind the scenes system rendering that drag down FPS in big city areas.  I suppose I could test by bumping up my render scale right now to as close to 4K as possible and just see what I get.

Well, I may have to turn some settings down, or even hold off on using it in MSFS, but after a lot of reviews, YouTube vids including "through the lens" reviews etc, I think I'm going to go with the Reverb G2 unless something new comes out in the probably 2-4 months before I actually buy.  The "god ray" issue with the Index is really noticeable in other titles like Elite (and probably in MSFS if I was flying at night or something), and I'm just not too impressed with the Oculus' fit and visual fidelity.  Also while I don't have an issue with Facebook in general, requiring a login to use the Oculus at all and the potential issues if Facebook give out a ban hammer for something is just too worrying.  Besides its sharpness the G2 apparently has some really good color and contrast which not only would be good for MSFS, but Elite as well with all the space stuff.

 

I definitely am planning to upgrade my GPU at some point, just waiting until the prices drop to more "normal" levels and we don't have to buy from scalpers vs 1st party retailers (like directly from EVGA for example).  If I have to wait for a 4xxx series then so be it I guess.  I've heard rumors Nvidia is trying to push the current inflated prices as being the new norm which is pretty horrible, but at least if the stock issues improve to where the whole 3rd party scalper sales isn't the only way to get them then at least that's something.  If Nvidia actually goes that route though and AMD doesn't it might actually push me to try an AMD card for the first time in like 14 years.  Ok mini rant over lol.