Just finished a 10 hour VR testing session
I tested both in âbenchamark TEâ and a fixed scenario in a dynamic campaign.
Hardware: Reverb G2, RTX4090, 5800X3D and 64GB of RAM, running on NVME SSD.
Here are my findings:
First, the most important one -> object detail, going from 7 to 1 saves 10+ms of CPU frametimes in heavy scenarios. In my case it was an improvement from 25+ms to 10-12ms. I have no idea what this option does, didnât notice any difference while looking at things on the ground. My guess would be poly count? But why CPU frametimes are affected then? This setting adjusts the rendering distance of other units, SteamVR resolution and BMSâs supersampling also affect that distance.
Smartscaling also affects the rendering distance/pop in of other aircrafts, if you want the benefit of that without scaling use set g_fSmartScalingThreshold 5.0 or even bigger value.
Second important thing is reprojection. Either leave it off or âforce always-onâ. I didnât test it with quest 2 but with G2, if you leave it on âenabledâ, there is a massive video memory leak that fills it completely in less than a minute, afterwards the game stutters every couple of seconds. Select the beta version of âwindows mixed reality for steamVRâ and the leaks should be fixed.
Monitor resolution (not VR) seems to be impacting the GPU frametimes, setting it to 1024x768 doesnât change anything in VR but improves frametimes by 2-3ms compared to 3840 x 2160.
Setting âset g_bVRParallelRenderThread 0â increases CPU frametimes in heavy scenarios (+10ms), at least in my case. It was better to leave this on in my case.
âset g_bShadowMapping 0â cutâs CPU frametimes by another 2ms as already explained by the devs, there are situations where the shadows increase CPU frametimes by a lot (6-8ms), I experienced some of these situations myself but only on the ground, I left this on 1 as it looks bad without shadows.
SteamVR resolution affects BMS resolution but my advice is to leave it at 100% and change âset g_fVRResolution 1.0â. I found 1.4 gives the maximum clarity with 100% (3164x3092) resolution set in steamVR.
Setting âset g_bEnvironmentMapping 0â and âset g_bWaterEnvironmentMapping 0â as advised didnât impact/improve performance at all. Probably only useful on lower end GPUs.
Other options: Bloom, HDR, tree/grass density and cloud density have minimal impact.
The information below is only for the people that run 6k+ resolutions and still have some CPU spikes on the ground. (expect another 2-3ms down on CPU frametime in heavy campaign scenarios. You wonât see a difference in benchmark TE as everything is cluttered together).
I havenât tested yet how this affects TGP rendering distance but there is a way to modify the object detail below 1. This will greatly reduce spotting distance for other aircrafts (below 6nm with smart scaling enabled)
The setting is stored in your âyourcallsign.popâ which is in user config folder.
To modify it you need to open it with a hex editor (you can use HxD https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/)
If you arenât sure on how to do it, attached you can find my file with OBJ set to 0.5, just rename it to your callsign https://file.io/wctzHS5nVg6x
Object detail is stored in these two cells:
The setting is applied as follows (any modification should be applied with game/ui/launcher closed):
OBJ 0 -> 00 3E (spotting distance 2.5nm with smart scaling enabled, donât use this but you can try if you want )
OBJ 0.5 -> A0 3E (spotting distance 5nm with smart scaling enabled, 10nm if you use VR zoom)
Edit the value and press âSAVEâ
If you do it correctly you should see this in the game settings:
donât press apply or ok in the settings, otherwise it will revert to 1.