Somewhat blurred instrument panel focus is in VR

[TheFamilyMan 280]

Anyone else out there irritated by the blurred focus visuals of the instrument panels in MSFS VR when viewed from the default cockpit position?  If I use the right mouse button VR view, the instrument panel becomes amazingly focused and completely life-like, but that’s at inches from your eyes. But as the eyes’ distance away from the panel increases, I see increasing levels of blurring of its focus but not to the point of being illegible (except for the really tiny stuff). I used to think that this blurring is completely a side effected of the resolution, but another flight sim I fly in regularly, IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad, does NOT exhibit the same level of focus blurring of the instrument panel as the distance away from it increases, while using comparable VR resolution settings for both sims (given below). If you have access to IL-2 BoS and VR, start a mission in either a Ju 88 or a He 111. The VR cockpit of either of these are very realistic and finely detailed, and are stunningly impressive in their own right. Notice that the instruments furthest from you do NOT exhibit the same level of blurriness as similarly distanced instruments in a MSFS aircraft’s cockpit. I’ve tried lots of thing to eliminate this MSFS focus problem to no avail; even using silly huge resolutions only help a little bit while lowering FPS to unplayable levels. For both sims, I use mods that implement FSR and in MSFS have FSR set to 85% scale 90% sharpen and in IL-2 BoS 80% scale 70% sharpen (notice that the effective resolution in IL-2 BoS is less than MSFS’s while delivering noticeably clearer cockpit details). All other scale settings are at 100% for both.  Note that these mods noticeably enhance the visuals and performance for both sims. Anyone think that this is a problem?  I’m rather new to VR, but not at all to flight sim. I got my first HMD, an HP Reverb G2 revised last September.  My computer specs are in my signature.  Thanks for reading.

[rickjake 243]

I have similar hardware as you do, and I agree, there is a certain fuzziness with MSFS with some instruments that I don't get with P3D or X-Plane. However, the smoothness  I get from MSFS beats P3D and X-plane by a long shot. 

[Spit40 197]

I’ve been wondering if it’s a glare issue when the sun strikes white lettering. I see narrow red text in the DME for example quite sharply but small white lettering is very prone to blurriness.. and i have a varjo

[AJZip 251]

I think also it depends on the aircraft - and maybe the developer too. 

Take the Just Flight Arrow and Warrior - in my HP Reverb Gen1, the panels are very sharp and pretty much everything I need is perfectly legible from the normal seating position.

But a number of the Asobo stock aircraft are not.  And probably the stock Cessna 172 for me is the worst of the lot.  The AP and Flight Plan illuminated buttons are blurry and cannot, for me, be read without leaning forward.  And that is the same with both the original and the G1000 unit and the otherwise excellent nxi version.

That said, I would say the same in X-plane.  It is, again, the stock Cessna's I have the greatest difficulty with.  Maybe to simulate the 'lit up text' on the buttons, they add lighting glare?  Whatever, the result is blurry text through my Reverb VR.

Edited April 1, 2022 by AJZip

[Bozdog 63]

7 hours ago, AJZip said:

I think also it depends on the aircraft - and maybe the developer too. 

Take the Just Flight Arrow and Warrior - in my HP Reverb Gen1, the panels are very sharp and pretty much everything I need is perfectly legible from the normal seating position.

But a number of the Asobo stock aircraft are not.  And probably the stock Cessna 172 for me is the worst of the lot.  The AP and Flight Plan illuminated buttons are blurry and cannot, for me, be read without leaning forward.  And that is the same with both the original and the G1000 unit and the otherwise excellent nxi version.

That said, I would say the same in X-plane.  It is, again, the stock Cessna's I have the greatest difficulty with.  Maybe to simulate the 'lit up text' on the buttons, they add lighting glare?  Whatever, the result is blurry text through my Reverb VR.

Yes I find the same two. If I lean forward super sharp. Sit back blurry. So far I only have default planes. Thanks for the info on the Just Flight Arrow that’s on my list for next sale 

[TheFamilyMan 280]

Got the Just Flight PA-28 Turbo Arrow on sale yesterday (30% off) through the MSFS store. Though immaculately modeled, both visually and in flight dynamics, it still suffers from that same blurring instrument effect. Regardless it is a joy to fly, but no silver bullet here ☹️

[Spit40 197]

4 hours ago, TheFamilyMan said:

Got the Just Flight PA-28 Turbo Arrow on sale yesterday (30% off) through the MSFS store. Though immaculately modeled, both visually and in flight dynamics, it still suffers from that same blurring instrument effect. Regardless it is a joy to fly, but no silver bullet here ☹️

I was flying that last night myself and paying attention to the instrument panel sharpness. I found it nicely sharp unless I turned up the panel lighting which blurred things.

[Bozdog 63]

I find in Oculus if you turn up the resolution in the oculus app it becomes very sharp 1.6x but does introduce stuttering if you look out the side windows

I have it just 1x for smoothness  and just move my seat forward a little further at the moment as fed up messing  with settings 

[TheFamilyMan 280]

Looks that both FSR and NIS, as enabled by the OpenXR Toolkit, cause the excessive blurring I experience.  Disabling either of these upscaling filters removes most of the blurring.  Using 100% Render Scale helps a lot too, but that's not practical for me since it results in 25-30 fps; 85% is my sweet spot for quality and performance (35-40 fps).  Things are still not perfect, but I imagine it's now more likely that I'm hitting the performance limits of the my gcard and my Reverb G2 rather than a software issue.

Edited April 15, 2022 by TheFamilyMan

[Bulva 98]

I have a question related to this thread.
Comparing e.g. PA28 (from JF) with MSFS and XP in VR mode.
In XP11 I have very sharp cockpits (despite the old Rift S) - I can read the pressure numbers on the altimeter without any problems. But in MSFS it is very difficult even as I get close to the altitude indicator. The font is thicker than in XP. Same with using GPS. Is this normal in MSFS or do I have something wrong ???

[Lange_666 167]

For me it's normal (also Rift-S). Even in 2D the cockpits in XP are sharper then those in MSFS.

[JacquesBrel 639]

7 hours ago, Bulva said:

In XP11 I have very sharp cockpits (despite the old Rift S) - I can read the pressure numbers on the altimeter without any problems. But in MSFS it is very difficult even as I get close to the altitude indicator.

I don't know what sort of anti-aliasing that XP uses, but I'm assuming it's some form of spatial AA (multi-/super-sampling or FX-/SMAA). MSFS uses temporal anti-aliasing which will always introduce some blurriness to the image, so spatial anti-aliasing looks sharper in comparison (except maybe FXAA, which is the Universally Ugly AA Option You Should Never Select).

In VR the temporal AA blurriness is much more noticeable than on a monitor, as there are far fewer pixels per degree of view in VR, so anything affecting pixel sharpness stands out much more in VR.

The blurriness from temporal AA can be remedied to some extent by a sharpening shader. The OpenXR ToolKit can sharpen the image if you select one of the upscalers (NIS or FSR) but leave it at 100% upscaling and set the upscaler sharpness to some level that doesn't oversharpen the image.

[TheFamilyMan 280]

In seeing my topic resurface months later, I am pleased to report that updates to both the sim and graphics drivers have alleviated a good percentage of the instruments blurriness in VR, at least with my Reverb G2.  Currently I'm using DLSS Quality and for my needs it delivers the clearest image for the performance level I want, which is 45 fps driver limited which it runs very consistently.  As it is now, the clarity is much better than when I made the OP.  Sure, I can get it somewhat clearer but IMO the performance hit isn't worth it.  Also, all this sort of stuff is 100% YMMV.

Edited November 6, 2022 by TheFamilyMan