Hi all,

Yesterday I faced a strange issue with my XPlane12 in VR and I wanted to ask if it was a known issue or something new... For info, I'm using XPlane12 on Windows10 with a i7 8700k coupled with a GTX1070ti and a Pico4 VR headset. VR  mode goes through SteamVR beta  and Virtual Desktop.

Basically, while the first switch to VR went very well performance-wise, I realized the FPS was getting worse and worse (down to 1 frame per second at some point) each time I switched from 2D to VR and back. In 2D, no performance problem at all at any point in time, but each time I switched back to VR, it was worse than the previous time.

Such a performance issue is normally well known when switching back and forth between 2D and VR, while keeping the same SteamVR session. It's a SteamVR issue and the solution is simply to kill SteamVR and restart it. But in my case, yesterday evening, that didn't help at all. I killed SteamVR each time I switched back to 2D, restarted SteamVR, switched back to VR, and saw a lower performance than the previous switch, like FPS divided by 2.

Anybody had a similar experience, or solutions to share ?

I think its SteamVR, maybe nvidia. very similar happening to me sometimes on Linux, been this way for a while, often worse

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/489

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/555

Only solution I have is to not come in and out of 2D once in a VR session and keep waiting patiently for it to get fixed. Pinning my hopes on openXR support.

Edited April 27, 20233 yr by mSparks

Thanks for your feedback, good to know I'm not the only one. 

I was flying the XTrdent 412, and the plugin menu (to remove the covers, or bring the ground power unit) is impossible to reach in vr. I have to go back to 2d in case I forgot to do before switching to vr. Do you know if there is a way to make the top menu appear in vr ?

I believe you want to right click the VR mouse on something close to bring that up.

Unfortunately, although the mouse right-click does bring a contextual menu, with a "412" item in it, but that item does not bring any options, it's empty 😕

Was already like that in XP11, if I remember correctly...

53 minutes ago, Daube said:

Unfortunately, although the mouse right-click does bring a contextual menu, with a "412" item in it, but that item does not bring any options, it's empty 😕

Was already like that in XP11, if I remember correctly...

that sounds like the menu options are being removed by the 412 in VR - maybe it's setup display isnt VR compatible?

You can also access the top menu from the top menu in the main XP window by moving the normal mouse to the top of the display  -XP window with the big blue "disable VR" button in the bottom left like this one 

There are lots of quality of life inprovements aircraft devs need to make for VR - big motivation behind me putting so much time and effort into the 744 was I wanted a good plane for VR and none of the existing choices offered the ability to make and share the changes I wanted to make to create one.