Any good settings for running smoothly on Oculus Quest 2 + additional VR questions

[lwalter]

Just got an Oculus Quest 2 as a present.

On my other flight simulators, I didn't have to tweak anything or change any single setting (until now, for my flat screen, I had 4K ultra or very high settings). Everything just worked smoothly in VR and everything is readable (not super sharp, but better than good enough) 

On DCS, I noticed:

- texts are close to unreadable and overall image is not great

- FPS in Huey were acceptable, in F-16 it was unflyable.

Some controls were interfering with my stick. Could DCS associate the Quest 2 controllers with axes by default?

I really like how you can zoom in an interact with the switches with the Quest 2 controllers, but how do you practically do to have these controllers in your hands and use the stick and throttle at the same time?

Overall, VR is such a game changer. As I read many times in these forums, you really feel inside the planes and you really get a real sense of distance. Several times I just wanted to touch the cockpit panels or switches, as they felt so real.

My main issue now is to find the right DCS graphics settings I guess. If possible, I'd like to avoid tweaking too many places (oculus app, debug, NVIDIA planes, etc...) because it just worked fine with the other apps.

[Paul_Exotic]

Unfortunately DCS is not the other apps, and is anything but plug and play.  To really get things running smoothly, you will end up tumbling down a rabbit hole tweaking everything from NVidia CP, disabling Hyperthreading/SMT in your BIOS, installing and tweaking the wonderful vrperfkit "mod",Tweaking Oculus Debug Tool settings for things like compression rate, foveated rendering and bitrate(if wired with link), tweaking your Windows Page File, Disabling Windows Game Bar and Full Screen optimizations and I could continue on for awhile and get into things like Shader mods and ini file tweaks....

Others may disagree but in my case, despite the time, frustration and hair pulling, it's oh so worth it when things are dialed in.... 

[dleffler]

I'm not any expert, but have a similar setup though lower PC specs (i7 11600KF, RTX 3060Ti). Still I find acceptable performance. Here's some questions/things to consider:

• What DCS settings are you using? If it's the same display configuration as your 4K display, you'll definitely be slow, you might start by clicking on the 'VR' preset at the bottom of the 'System' tab. There are several 'VR Tweak' guides throughout the internet.
• Is this the Steam or Regular version of DCS (Did you purchase it via Steam)?
• Do you use a USB Link or are you using Air Link (Wifi) connection to the PC from the Quest 2?
• You might want to consider running to VR support Apps
  • OpenComposite - This provides an OpenXR overlay for DCS which uses OpenVR, allowing you to use the OpenXR Toolkit. I'd suggest downloading the Launcher, unzipping it to a folder, then running and 'installing' it. Download is halfway down this page https://gitlab.com/znixian/OpenOVR
  • OpenXR Toolkit - This app can speed up VR using some graphics driver features such as NIS, FSR, or CAS. You can download this app then install it. https://mbucchia.github.io/OpenXR-Toolkit/
  • If both have installed successfully, you'll be greeted with a message inside VR welcoming use to the OpenXR Toolkit, and suggesting you press Ctrl-F2 to bring it's settings menu.

[Ramstein]

With VR, just about everyone I know and myself had to dumb down our settings a bit, compromise with video settings. Not real bad, experiment with more medium settings in video in DCS.  in the fixed wing the FPS should be much more, the Apache is the worst in FPS.

[lwalter]

@Paul_Exotic That's what I was afraid to read. I really would like to avoid tweaking many internal and low-level settings just for DCS and then realize that it messed up with all the other VR simulators I have, which all work great now. Nevertheless, I'll try at least to tweak the DCS settings themselves.

@dleffler Indeed, I have just left my settings as they were for 4K on flat screen. I'll try the VR preset. For the screen resolution, will DCS automatically choose the resolution that fits the Quest 2 or should I enter it manually? 

I use the Steam version and the Oculus link (USB cable). I also connect my Quest 2 to the PC via the PC Oculus App.

@Ramsteinsure, I'll try that when I create new settings for VR, as suggested by @dleffler

 

What about the Quest 2 controllers? Are there of any use when flying? Can I ask the Quest 2 to track my hands? I think I saw one game that was doing that (I think it's Elixir).

 

[dleffler]

Settings wise, it's not the resolution, but all the settings being at the highest level and eye-candy things that don't really affect VR being turned on 

[pixie]

I have a Quest 2 and use VRperfkit, with good results

it's way easier to install ( only 2 files to drop in your DCS folder) and you get (supposedly) similar perf boost.

https://github.com/fholger/vrperfkit

 

 

Edited December 30, 2022 by pixie

[lwalter]

@dleffler I picked the VR preset from DCS graphics settings and everything ran super smooth (I tried A-10C, F-16, F/A-18, UH-1H, F-86, F-5 and the FC3 planes on Caucasus, Nevada and Normandy so far).

Actually, everything ran fine for about 2 hours.... until I ran into random "PC disconnects" from the Oculus Quest 2.... (It's not DCS, because I got the same issue on other apps).

I read that I should "deny access to files" to avoid this issue. So, I'll try that next time. Don't know if it's really the solution, because I saw many people complaining about these PC disconnections in the forums.