Gildahl

Keep in mind when reading other people's results that the terms "good" and "smooth", etc. are highly subjective. With my Index I've done probably all the tweaks (including installing the latest nVidia driver which DOES seem to help) and can get my 2080Ti and i9 @5Ghz to run in VR at what the sim tells me is a pretty steady 45fps. But regardless of what it says, I just can't play it for extended amounts of time. Being kind and ignoring the stutters that often crop up during maneuvering, even during my "smooth" runs at "45fps" there's a kind of low frequency judder that always feels like it's pulling at my eyes. It's is nothing like the smoothness that I can get from sims like VTOL and X-Plane 11.5 and much more similar to DCS, which I've never been able to play comfortably in VR. Naturally, lowering the settings helps, but it doesn't take much to lose out on most of the scenic value that makes FS unique. I'm hopeful that MS can eventually do better than Eagle Dynamics, but until they do, I'm mostly back to X-Plane in VR for now (but will be checking back on FS regularly).

It's not really the "brightness" that defines the problem (the sun can be quite bright, after all), but the simulation of brightness as overexposure (incurring unrecoverable loss of detail)--which comes across feeling more like an artificial photographic effect (in the same camp as flare effects) than a natural one. Also, any sane pilot will be wearing sunglasses when flying into the sun, so short of providing us with virtual sunglasses, realism demands that the sim should provide us with the ability to see through sun glare effects to at least the same fidelity that a pilot wearing sunglasses would need to have in order not to require IFR certification to fly in particular directions on sunlit days.

The Valve Index controllers are designed to strap to the hand. That's the main reason I use the Index (though they can be made to work for G2 as well). Even with a controller strapped to my right hand, I can still hold and operate switches on the yoke with that hand (though I suppose that might vary for people with small hands). Now note that in my current setup for MSFS using a HOTAS and mouse, everything does work in a utilitarian sort of way (the mouse is NOT hard to use); but it is just one of those things where once you've used a motion controller, you really don't want to go back since the mouse feels so unnatural in comparison. To understand why, I remember in the peak of my 2D sim days giving serious thought to building myself a physical cockpit. Even then, the mouse just felt uninspiring, and the immersion of real switches and controls had enormous appeal. I had the money, room, and carpentry know-how to do it, but always ended up concluding that the effort and expense probably wasn't worth it because the moment I switched planes, my cockpit would be mismatched. But then VR came along, and I discovered through VTOL and X-Plane that one didn't need a physical cockpit at all to have a home cockpit. In VR, there in front of me, I could use all the switches and dials just as if they were real and change planes at a whim. To use a mouse in that environment just runs contrary to the whole point of why I moved to VR in the first place--i.e. to have a home cockpit. Yes, the visual immersion is a big factor; but to me, fully half the VR experience is in the interaction piece--that is, in how naturally you control things. A mouse will get the job done, but so did just a keyboard perfectly well back in FSII. Would you go back?

Pretty much everything about DCS VR is badly optimized, so not really a surprise.

VR without motion control has a name. It's called partial VR support. In X-Plane I have the option of using the mouse or a motion controller and I can say that without a doubt, after trying both, using a motion controller is far and away superior. For control (in X-Plane) I use a Honeycomb yoke, Saitek pedals, and a Knobster mounted on a Wheel Stand Pro as my physical controls, and fasten a single Index controller to my right hand to manipulate all remaining panel controls not mapped to a physical control. A number of years ago I took flying lessons in a Cessna and it wasn't really until I flew with left hand on the yoke and right hand virtually controlling the throttle that landing felt uncannily like the real thing. In X-Plane, the motion controller also provides a convenient way to browse menus and drag around application widgets--which, with a mouse, requires you to grope around to find it first. Right now in MSFS, I've resorted to HOTAS control to minimize immersion breaking mouse usage, and I don't even bother with my superior X-Plane hardware because it just can't be used properly. I'm pretty sure motion control must be on Asobo's agenda, but as long as folks continue to shout loudly about loving their mouses, I'm sure it can wait.

Your assessment seems spot-on. I've been doing a lot of cross comparison with X-Plane 11.5 (Vulkan build) lately. For the last few months going back to XP from FS2020 in 2D feels like going back in time. FS2020 is just amazing in comparison (avionics excepted), and X-Plane's dated look is clearly evident--though with a good set of orthos and a few plug-ins it is in its own way quite nice and VFR worthy. However, in VR I find the tables are completely turned. When I go from FS2020 back to XP in VR, X-Plane feels remarkably solid and professional in comparison. Good and stable framerates, (mostly) great motion controller support, graphics that are actually pretty well matched to the current resolution standards of VR, and a maturity (in the good way) that shows and feels like something you could train in. So currently for me, MSFS2020 is leading in 2D, but XP is the easy winner in VR since to get performance and quality of experience anywhere close to XP, one has to turn off almost every visual advantage FS has over XP and still not get there.

Thanks for the suggestions. I was already on 1.15.16 since Steam VR gets updated automatically. I had heard that rolling back the GPU driver might help but hadn't tried that yet--so upon your suggestion, I went ahead and tried it. While I *think* I see a subtle improvement, it is unfortunately too little to matter.

No, I've tried lowering, but it has no meaningful effect on the results. I mean, as it is my graphics are down to a muddy mess that looks worse than X-Plane, so it would be pointless to go further. If you bought on DVD, then clearly you didn't buy on Steam, so that makes it even more mysterious.

Yes, that is precisely the problem, and the one others seem to be reporting. For example, the developer mode reports a locked in 45FPS (which in X-Plane VR is nice and smooth), but in the headset what I'm seeing is clearly much lower. I do believe you when you say it is smooth in your Index headset, but just can't figure out what the discrepancy is. Did you purchase FS in Steam? I purchased mine from the MS store, so I don't launch it from Steam, which makes me wonder if that has anything to do with it. When you installed, did you do anything special other than turn on the Steam VR Beta? For example, I'm assuming that for Index we don't need to download/install OpenXR or anything like that.

Well couple experiments. First of all, my motion smoothing is always turned off. I learned to do that a long time ago. Also, after viewing your video, I took a look at the stereo image on my screen while flying in VR and interestingly enough it was as smooth as yours. So that tells me that the view on the screen is not representative of what one sees in the headset as far as performance goes. If possible, could you show an image or video of your Steam VR performance graph while running. Mine is strongly pegged to orange, and I'm already on very low settings.

Can you specify your equipment and your settings. If it is really "super fluid" there must be some magic that I'm missing as I'm running on an 5 Ghz i9/2080Ti and my performance in all other VR games is superb on this system.

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I agree 100%. I think Index support is seriously broken at the moment. IMO it is just not usable at this time.

The bizarre thing that I see is that the FPS counter shows a pretty stable 45FPS on my Index, but when I look down toward the ground while taking off I can literally count the frames--chop, chop, chop--and yet, I'm still seeing 45FPS being registered; so I'm not sure I can believe the frame counter. I know its not 45FPS because that's what I get in X-Plane VR, and in comparison XP is smooth as silk in VR compared to fs2020, which maintains a distinctly low FPS feel out the window. The subjective feel is as though the cockpit is running at at least 45FPS (very smooth), but the world is somewhere between 10 and 20 FPS. Given that I'm running a 5Gz i9 and 2080Ti, I wouldn't necessarily think an upgrade is going to help. I suspect the Index is just not getting any love by this simulator at the moment, so I'll probably be bailing on this until it's ready for prime time. With that said, I think if I didn't have anything to compare it with and this was my first time in a sim with VR, I would be blown-away by how "immersive" it is; but since its not, I'm not.

I'm running i9, 20890Ti with 32GB. Comparing with X-Plane 11.5 with level 19 orthos, I can say this is in no way superior either graphically or performance wise. I've started trying various optimizations, but I'm finding that in strict comparison, X-Plane in VR is significantly better. It's probably better on Reverb due to the optimizations made for that platform, but for me, definitely not worth switching from X-Plane yet on Index. Basically, fun to try, but not to fly for any more than a few minutes without getting sick and missing my motion controllers.