VR Performance Issues - Start here

[Mr_sukebe]

Within this thread/post, I'm hoping that we can collate a set of thoughts/guidance/advise for DCS users to assist with their system optimisation.  Such that instead of having to repeatedly state the same things to people with questions who were unable to find guidance using the search, that we can direct them to a single thread.

In particular, the opening post will collate things, and I'm hoping that others will add useful recommendations that I can merge into the opening post, so please do assist.

DCS Systems requirements, when compared to other apps and managing your expectations:

• Most of the flight sims out there work best with well above average resources, when compared to say your average games.  This is very much true of DCS, which is at the bleeding edge of what is currently possible
• DCS does seem to attract users who are highly engaged, both with the amount of time to invest in playing and also their focus for how to spend their hard earned spondoolies
• Players want the best eye candy possible, and that's what ED are trying to provide.  Taking into account that DCS probably has some of the highest investment in PC equipment capabilities, that's a lot of eye candy.  When scaling  into VR, that same PC has to work MUCH harder than with a monitor.  So as part of managing your own expectations, be aware that you're never going to be able to run DCS in VR with the same levels of eye candy as someone using a monitor

If you want the "best" kit for DCS, as of April 2025, look here:

• Fastest CPU for DCS = AMD9800x3d
• Fastest GPU for DCS = Nvidia 5090
• GPU recommended VRAM = 16GB.  DCS can now show the level of VRAM usage, as well as the amount reserved (which is what is shown in Windows Task Manager).  I've yet to see above 13GB of VRAM
• Recommended RAM for DCS = 64GB.  In single player I've seen usage of up to 50GB in total.  I've yet to see a requirement above 64GB.  Having said that, we now have 96GB becoming an option.  If I were looking to help with future proofing, I'd personally now buy 96GB
• Nvidia vs AMD.  Right now, IMO, advantage sits with Nvidia, primarily because DCS supports the updated DLSS super-sampling and DLAA capabilities, as introduced within DLSS4.  It's a big help.  AMD may catch up with their recently introduced hardware capability that provides something similar to DLSS, but it's not yet supported by DCS we don't know how it will compare to the Nvidia solution
• Storage.  A full install of DCS (i.e. all terrains and modules) requires just over 1TB of space.  In addition there is space needed for the Saved Games folder, which can be pretty big if you have a lot of liveries and mods.  The Saved Games folder does not need to be on the same drive as the DCS install.  My current recommendation is a good NVME2 SSD of at least 2TB
• Motherboard.  You may wish to ensure that any new motherboard supports at least PCIE4 and possibility PCIE5.  This influences the data transfer between the CPU, GPU and storage
• External power for USB.  If you have or intend to use a number of USB controllers, be aware that they'll all suck power.  Individually, might not be much, but it WILL add up.  My recommendation is to buy an external USB powered hub.  It's quite easy to find ones that support upto 60w each

System Configuration:

• Windows
  • Try to minimise bloatware.  There's plenty of guides around, but a good starting point is to look in Start Up and disable anything that you don't need in DCS
  • Familiarise yourself with the use of Taskmanager.  Be aware that you can for example drill into CPU usage by core.  By default that simply shows a summary of all cores and their usage.  DCS is multi-threaded and sometimes uses some cores more than others.  If one of your cores is maxed out, you have a CPU bottleneck.  It's also a reasonable way to identify if your GPU is maxed out
  • Mouse polling rates.  High mouse polling rates can seemingly influence micro-judder (i.e. little stop/starts, regardless of a good frame rate).  The impression I was given being that a high mouse polling rate loads the PC, and especially so if there's a lot of USB devices connected.  For my Logitech G502, the default polling rate was 1000/second.  Reducing that to 125 made a significant improvement to smoothness
  • As per normal with Windows, using it, or leaving it running for a number of hours can result a build up of peripheral tasks that suck up resources without being obvious.  If you're intending to go for a long flight after a hard days work at the same PC, it's prudent to conduct a system restart
• Anti-virus.  This is clearly going to be dependant upon which AV you use.  A number of DCS users (me included) have at points experienced issues with our AV either:
  • Calling out certain files as trojans.  I've yet to see an issue with a file distributed by ED
  • Insisting on checking files before using them.  This can turn into a big issue if the files in question are say textures which need to be loaded from your NVME SSD.  If your AV decides that it's going to run a check on said texture file, that can result in massive cuts to FPS.  My solution for both of the above was to deliberately exclude my AV from sanity checking the folder that has DCS installed into.
• GPU drivers.  Keep an eye on driver releases, but also check in the forums.  New drivers can sometimes improve visuals/frame rates, but not always for DCS.  Check in the forums for feedback is my recommendation
• USB Hubs.  By default, Window's have these configured for "power saving".  In practice, that means that some USB hubs on your motherboard will go sleep if not used for a while.  This can include the USB hub that you might have a VR headset linked to.  If you have issues, open Device Manager, navigate to the USB Hubs and disable power saving mode
• Nvidia DLSS4.  DCS does NOT as yet support frame or multi-frame generation.  DCS does support DLSS upsampling and DLAA (anti-aliasing), which were both introduced on RTX20 series cards.  If you have an RTX20 series or newer, your GPU supports the current DCS enabled functionality.  Be aware that by default, the Nvidia GPU drivers currently use a fairly old "preset" for DLSS.  Newer versions are being introduced and presets from "K" onwards had some serious Nvidia magic sprinkled on them.  To action, there are guides around on how to use NVPI (Nvidia Profile Inspector) to take advantage of this

Related Applications:

• You may be using MSI Afterburner, or Tacview.  Both make calls to retrieve data within Windows, or DCS respectively.  It has been identified that both of these can result in stutter as a side-effect of the calls.  Disabling of these and re-testing is a way of checking if they are causing impact

DCS install:

• Do download the Skatezilla DCS App.  Above all, it facilitates very easy updates to DCS, along with Repairs (both simple and full)
• Ensure you have enough storage space (see earlier)
• DCS updates.  I consider it good practice to empty both the FXO and Metashaders folders (both in the Saved Games folder) after EVERY DCS, or GPU driver update.  Apparently, post a DCS update, the files in those folders are recreated and simply added to the existing files.  The result can be a folder with a LOT of files that are not being used.  This can slow DCS down.  Be aware that when you first next jump into a map/aircraft, that DCS will need to create them again, so will chug a little for a few mins.  Post that, it'll run much better
• DCS Settings.  Key settings that standout for me as being most important in VR:
  • Textures - These are for the aircraft.  Set them high if you have VRAM available. If you're struggling on VRAM, set to medium or low
  • Terrain Textures - Set them high if you have VRAM available.  If you're struggling on VRAM, set to low
  • Civ Traffic - Off (these use a lot of CPU)
  • Heat Blur - Off
  • Shadows - Flat
  • Res of Cockpit displays - 1024 (lower looks awful)
  • Upsampling - If your card supports DLSS Quality, give it a try
  • Anti-Aliasing - My opinion is that DLAA is awesome.  Sorry can't comment on the AMD equivalent
  • Lens Effect - Off
  • Clouds - Ultra.  Lower seems to result in weird artefacts in VR
  • Scenery Details Factor - This influences the detail that you see on say a building.  Personally I've maxed it out
  • Pre-load radius - I tend to run it at around 45%.  I used to have issues with performance on cranking that up.  Turning this setting from 45% to 100% can add circa 1GB of VRAM usage
  • Vsync - Off
  • Full Screen - Ticked

VR - General:

• OpenXR is now the preferred format.  I'm unaware of any use cases that would now support the use of OpenComposite
• Some users prefer using Virtual Desktop, which supports connection to the headset via Wifi.  Personally I use link cable, which eliminates the potential for wi-fi interference
• Virtual Desktop does seem to have advantages in reducing "smear" of moving objects within VR, and has "similar" visual quality overall to a link cable.  Do ensure that if you're going to use Virtual Desktop that you have a fast Wifi router somewhere nearby.  There's plenty of guides on using VD, so I won't repeat detail here
• The initial view you get on loading into DCS in VR is of the inside of a hangar.  That's very nice, but also takes up circa 2GB of VRAM that is not released.  If you're a bit short of VRAM (and for those of us without a 5090, that's not many of us), there is a solution in a mod called Empty VR Hangar, which is available via the DCS user files.  Install that, and the hangar is replaced with ...nothing, just blackness.  Very easy way to recover some VRAM.  I'm hoping that at some point, there will be a tick-box within DCS to select the option of nothing
• Quad views.  A chap clearly a lot smarter than I (Mbucchia) created an App called Quad Views, which I believe works with a number of VR headsets.  It's a VERY clever piece of software that retains full resolution of the centre of your display in VR, whilst deliberately lowering the visuals outside of that central area.  This can make a SIGNIFICANT saving in PC resource usage and therefore enhancement to frame rate.  There's plenty of guides around on where to find it, how to install it etc.  If your VR headset has Eye Tracking, that's even better as it facilitates reducing the area at full resolution even more

Oculus: 

• By default, Oculus show a "home" on powering up their headset in PCVR mode.  This also happens to use circa 2GB of VRAM.  Within the menu options of your Oculus software there is a option to disable it.  It's worth doing
• Oculus Tray Tool (OTT).  This is tool created several years ago, that for a while I thought was defunct.  It's not.  It allows the easy setting of:
  • Supersampling in VR.  I've seen all sorts of recommendations.  I'm currently using x1.25, but play to your hearts content
  • Bandwidth usage via Linkcable.  The max = 960bps and is what I use
  • Setting resolution.  This is the upscaling used.  In rough terms, the recommendation I've read that seems to work is to set the horizontal to double the resolution of each eye screen for your VR headset.  For example, my Quest Pro has a resolution of 1800 pixels per eye, so my resolution is set at 3600 (it'll auto-calculate the vertical resolution)

Pimax/HP:

Please see Marky's thread, which has some good recommendations.

Please do add recommendations/updates as you find them and I'll try to maintain this opening post.

Troubleshooting:

There's a reason why this troubleshooting section is at the bottom of this post, i.e. that it's prudent to have investigated the above BEFORE digging around further, as some of these may well rectify your performance issues.

• VRAM.  All GPUs have a finite level of VRAM.  Right now, 16GB is a good minimum figure to aim for if you're buying a new GPU
  • VRAM is used by several applications within Windows.  Note the points earlier that the Oculus home uses up some, as goes the VR hangar in DCS.  Neither of these are really needed and disabling them will give you more headroom
  • Some of the key variables within DCS that seem to eat VRAM are:
    • Textures (the aircraft)
    • Terrain textures (i.e. the ground)
    • The F10 map.  Opening that seems to use up around 1GB of VRAM.  If you're already short on VRAM, quite unsurprisingly, that will create issues

Newer maps and aircraft will tend to use more VRAM, that's just the nature of progress.  We all want "better everything" in DCS, and ED have to assume that we'll keep improving our PCs, as that's the nature of us as consumers

• There's an option in DCS to see how much VRAM it's using.  Open the Show FPS, and it'll do that.  Hit the Show FPS again and it brings up a box of info.  Near the bottom of that box of info, DCS now shows the VRAM reserved and used
• Note that if you now open Windows Task Manager, that it will also show VRAM used, however, it's measuring everything, rather than just DCS.  If there's a big difference between the amount that DCS has reserved and Task Manager is showing as being used, then you probably have an "area of opportunity" for optimising your PC, that sits outside of the remit and control of ED/DCS
• RAM (both VRAM and normal).  When you're getting to the point where your RAM is saturated (i.e. fully used), your PC will starting paging (saving) some of the less used data from RAM into storage.  On a PC, that will be on your SSD/HDD.  Read/write speeds to and from storage is basically rubbish, when compared to access speeds from RAM, so be aware of how much RAM and VRAM are being used
• CPU.  The multi-core update to DCS did (in my opinion) make a big improvement to performance.  On my PC, it seems to primarily spread it's load across 4 cores, though I do get some load on the other 4 CPU cores, but it's much lower.  If any of those cores are fully loaded, yep, you've guessed, it'll result in frame rate issues and stutter

The reason I've specifically called out the above is that once you've done the basic optimisation, if you're still having issues, it's important to understand where the bottleneck is.  DCS heavily loads everything, the GPU, VRAM, RAM and CPU.  It doesn't really matter which of those is maxed out, but if any truly are, that on it's own can cause issues.  Identifying the culprit then means that you have 2 options:

• Throw money at the problem
• Back of on some of the settings

You may think that the easy solution is to simply complain about the performance of DCS.  It is, but IMO it's wrong.

I own most of the big flight sims, i.e. the alternative combat sim and the 2 biggest Civ Sims.  For me, I do genuinely believe that DCS is a better solution and have confidence that their work will continue to lead the rest.  The unfortunate point is that we have some big spenders within our community with bleeding edge PCs, who are always looking to keep improving.  ED by their nature are always going to be looking to see how they can take advantage of that capability.  As such, hoping that a 4 year old PC will run DCS on "max" settings is simply not realistic.

 

 

Edited May 20 by Mr_sukebe

[Phantom711]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Mr_sukebe:

OpenXR is now the preferred format.  I'm unaware of any use cases that would now support the use of OpenComposite

Not sure what you mean there. „OpenComposite“ was a mod to male DCS run in OpenXR before it became the default. Now you are right, that there is no use for OpenComposite anymore, but the way you phrase it, it sounds to me like you are mixing it up with OpenVR maybe?!

But overall great job putting this all together!

[Qcumber]

3 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Setting resolution.  This is the upscaling used.  In rough terms, the recommendation I've read that seems to work is to set the horizontal to double the resolution of each eye screen for your VR headset.  For example, my Quest Pro has a resolution of 1800 pixels per eye, so my resolution is set at 3600 (it'll auto-calculate the vertical resolution)

This is the encode resolution. It is different to the rendering resolution. This is set through supersampling. The native resolution of the Quest Pro is about 1900 x 1800. Super sampling of 2 would give you 3700 x 3600. It would be worth mentioning that super sampling can be set in several places so it can become confusing. It's best practice to use a single place for SS. For example set the resolution slider in the Meta app to x1 and pixel density in DCS to 1. Then use OTT or ODT to SS to at least 1.5 native resolution.

It might be worth posting some starting settings which match different CPU/GPUs. 

3 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Quad views.  A chap clearly a lot smarter than I (Mbucchia) created an App called Quad Views, which I believe works with a number of VR headsets

It might be worth having some starter settings here and expectations. Especially regarding presets. 

3 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Anti-Aliasing - My opinion is that DLAA is awesome. 

DLSS 4 is very good but you need to SuperSample very high to get rid of ghosting. I use a QVFR foveated SS of equivalent to 5000 pixels and then about 1500 for the periphery. This gives very good results with DLSS quality preset K. Equivalent to DLAA with a much lower impact on performance. 

Thanks for putting this together. I think it will be very useful for VR newbies. 

[Buzzer1977]

My 2cents on VR performance i've recently discovered:

For Quest3 with AMD GPUs currently the best OpenXR runtime is VirtualDesktops VDXR. It provides the option to use a codec that will give you excellent image quality on AMD GPUs and performs notably better then SteamVR and Meta-/QuestLink. Meta-/QuestLink is pretty much unusable with DCS on AMD by image quality from the lousy codec and the desasterous performance on AMD. The current AMD drivers are also very CPU sensitive, much more then NVidias drivers. If you're CPU is under load your frame rates will not only plummet, they're in a free fall on a AMD GPU. And always use the latest driver. Differences can be enormous. Adrenalin 25.3.2 -> 25.4.1 was giant leap in VR performance.

For Quest3 with NVidia GPUs currently the best OpenXR runtime is SteamVR. It performs notably better then Meta-/QuestLink or VirtualDesktop VDXR. On NVidia the worst runtime is also Meta-/QuestLink, but on NVidia it provides still acceptable performance. On NVidia VDXR doesn't perform as well also. It seems like VDXR is optimized to fill the gap for a usable AMD OpenXR runtime at the cost of performing on NVidia.

A recent RX9070xt with all the tweaks (encoder, VDXR, FSR upscaling...) still lacks way behind a 5 year old RTX3090 in performance even in scenarios where VRAM isn't a issue.

[av8orDave]

3 hours ago, Buzzer1977 said:

My 2cents on VR performance i've recently discovered:

For Quest3 with AMD GPUs currently the best OpenXR runtime is VirtualDesktops VDXR. It provides the option to use a codec that will give you excellent image quality on AMD GPUs and performs notably better then SteamVR and Meta-/QuestLink. Meta-/QuestLink is pretty much unusable with DCS on AMD by image quality from the lousy codec and the desasterous performance on AMD. The current AMD drivers are also very CPU sensitive, much more then NVidias drivers. If you're CPU is under load your frame rates will not only plummet, they're in a free fall on a AMD GPU. And always use the latest driver. Differences can be enormous. Adrenalin 25.3.2 -> 25.4.1 was giant leap in VR performance.

For Quest3 with NVidia GPUs currently the best OpenXR runtime is SteamVR. It performs notably better then Meta-/QuestLink or VirtualDesktop VDXR. On NVidia the worst runtime is also Meta-/QuestLink, but on NVidia it provides still acceptable performance. On NVidia VDXR doesn't perform as well also. It seems like VDXR is optimized to fill the gap for a usable AMD OpenXR runtime at the cost of performing on NVidia.

A recent RX9070xt with all the tweaks (encoder, VDXR, FSR upscaling...) still lacks way behind a 5 year old RTX3090 in performance even in scenarios where VRAM isn't a issue.

Man, SteamVR being the best OpenXR runtime for a Q3 with a NVidia GPU would be a new one for me. I haven't tried SteamVR in well over a year because of how poorly it performed back then and how much overhead is associated with running it. Can anyone else corroborate this or is this unique for @Buzzer1977?

 

[sleighzy]

2 hours ago, av8orDave said:

Man, SteamVR being the best OpenXR runtime for a Q3 with a NVidia GPU would be a new one for me. I haven't tried SteamVR in well over a year because of how poorly it performed back then and how much overhead is associated with running it. Can anyone else corroborate this or is this unique for @Buzzer1977?

 

I agree with this, we typically steer people away from SteamVR, admittedly I haven’t used SteamVR in a little while (and have no interest in installing it again to experiment). Everybody is different though, curious what others have to say. I use VirtualDesktop and the VDXR runtime it has has been the most performant for me, and others I’ve spoken with. SteamVR has a greater overhead than VDXR, as does the Meta app. I disagree that VDXR is aimed at AMD and not Nvidia, not sure of the relevance of this. If anything most AMD users on the VirtualDesktop Discord have issues largely in part due to the AMD drivers.

Edited April 25 by sleighzy

[Mr_sukebe]

Initial post updated with comments about USB power saving modes and using Virtual Desktop.

[scommander2]

1 hour ago, Mr_sukebe said:

USB power saving modes

Should all USB hubs be disabled the power management from the device manager?

Thanks.

[Mr_sukebe]

4 minutes ago, scommander2 said:

Should all USB hubs be disabled the power management from the device manager?

Thanks.

I did.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

On 4/8/2025 at 2:41 PM, Mr_sukebe said:

I've yet to see above 13GB of VRAM

I usually sit between 14-15GB of VRAM in use, and with the Chinook that jumps to 18GB.

[scommander2]

2 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

I usually sit between 14-15GB of VRAM in use, and with the Chinook that jumps to 18GB.

Does it mean that a user has neither 4090 nor 5090 will have the performance issue?

Thanks.

 

[Mr_sukebe]

41 minutes ago, scommander2 said:

Does it mean that a user has neither 4090 nor 5090 will have the performance issue?

Thanks.

 

 

Yes

[Qcumber]

3 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

I usually sit between 14-15GB of VRAM in use, and with the Chinook that jumps to 18GB.

Is that VRAM allocation or VRAM use?

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

46 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

Is that VRAM allocation or VRAM use?

Reported as 'in use': when the limit gets exceeded all the usual stutters happen.
Older modules obviously use far less: 10-11GB and FC3 only around 8.

[Qcumber]

33 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Reported as 'in use': when the limit gets exceeded all the usual stutters happen.
Older modules obviously use far less: 10-11GB and FC3 only around 8.

Everything I have tested so far does not go above 13Gb with the 5080. Including F-4 on Marianas map on takeoff. But yes simpler maps and modules use much less. 

Edited May 15 by Qcumber

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

27 minutes ago, Qcumber said:

Everything I have tested so far does not go above 13Gb with the 5080.

Presuming you mean 13GB since 13Gb is ridiculous, you're lucky then: as I'm sure you're aware the Chinook subforum is filled with angry people asking/demanding ED to optimise the Chinook's textures because it exceeds their available buffer size.
But there are several factors determining the VRAM demand, not just the module itself: headset resolution, anti-aliasing, ...

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Presuming you mean 13GB since 13Gb is ridiculous, you're lucky then: as I'm sure you're aware the Chinook subforum is filled with angry people asking/demanding ED to optimise the Chinook's textures because it exceeds their available buffer size.
But there are several factors determining the VRAM demand, not just the module itself: headset resolution, anti-aliasing, ...

Sorry typo regarding VRAM. Thankfully I don't fly the Chinook. 

Please keep the "angry" bleed away from this thread otherwise it will deter new VD users. Your comments relate to very specific factors and it derails the point of this thread. 

[Mr_sukebe]

Opening post updated