No joke: How I have doubled my FPS in VR

Hi there,

first of all, I hate those snake oil tips and tricks which claim "incredible performance  boosts" by doing various tweaks. But this one really worked for me...

From 22 FPS to 35 FPS to 48 FPS in TAA

First, I own a Pimax Crystal. This HMD has a native resolution of 5760 x 2880 - and I love it for its clarity. But even for my 7850X3d and my NVidia 4090 GPU it is extremely difficult to achieve a reasonable performance in TAA with complex addons, such as the Fenix Airbus in Frankfurt with tons of AI traffic in MSFS 2024. If not even impossible, and that's why I have recently updated my video drivers and enabled DLSS 4 (doing all the stuff that so many people debated about here). Sure, this had a noticeable positive impact on performance, but the image quality on DLSS on such a high resolution is still far away from TAA.

And of course it does not make sense to spend money on a hires VR headset, just to lower the native resolution and to rise it again using AI (as DLSS does).

How to get such an increase in performance - how does it work?
As far as I understand the magic, HMDs also render the visuals outside the field of view. This costs performance. One guy on Youtube named "Ohne Speed" has published a modded version of OpenXR toolkit which allows to crop the resolution outside the field of view. As you can guess, this results in a performance gain.

 

That's how I did it:

1.) You need the OpenXR toolkit. Install it and make a backup.

2.) You need the modded version of OpenXR toolkit which is linked in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CieIQ7cE4CU

Just replace the .dll file in your OpenXR installation.

I found this video hard to understand, since it was not made for MSFS. But it works nevertheless.

3.) I recommend to use the OpenXR toolkit configurator, which is linked in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBf6IIIrK4A

Before you use it, start MSFS (2024), run OpenXR toolkit and write down the headset resolution, which is found in the "information" menu, third line ("Headset resolution"; in case of the Pimax Crystal it is 4312x5102).

4.) Start the toolkit configurator and insert the resolution. Now click on "Crop2FoV".

5.) Start MSFS, open OpenXR toolkit and go to the "System" menu. Select "Override resolution" to "Crop2FoV". The value displayed there should be the value calculated by the configurator. Restart the VR session.

6.) Back in VR, you should already see a noticeable increase in performance. If you are not happy with the resolution, you can crop the field of view by yourself. Just use "Field of view" --> "Advanced" and play with the settings. However, it is necessary to restart the VR session after changing the values.

7.) In order to further increase the performance, you may select "Override resolution" --> "Custom" and go from 100% to 80% (or any other value of your choice). In TAA, I did not see a great visual difference between 100% and 80%, but there is a great difference in performance.

8.) If your headset supports foveated rendering, you may make use of it. Corsten made a video of his experience by altering the values to his personal taste and then enabled foveated rendering. See yourself here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOI7-hEN6hM  

Go flying!

Best of luck with that,
Holger

 

Thanks for the feedback Holger!

I did see this on YT this morning but wasn't sure whether to try it... i am not a fan of DLSS even the new 4 version...the blurry speed tapes are most annoying..

Ill give this a go and thanks for the step by step guide!

Cheers

Doug

Follow up... tried this and was able to run the Fenix with smooth experience using TAA mode... i did drop the resolution to 80% and as you say it was no problem at all... the speed tape was clear and no blurring at all which was nice...

Edited February 11, 20251 yr by vonduck

With the latest display driver, dlss4, preset K I get higher fps on my PClight. KJFK fly around the airport 3 or 4 times and land again. 45-54 fps (I'm using DLSS not DLAA nor TAA.

It will probably take me an hour to set up this new OpenXR toolkit hack and fly again to test if there is any improvement.

The guy making the video is a doer. Doers can't teach. I'm lost what I supposed to do. Maybe someone else will post a video.

Holger's post was easy enough to follow

The video was harder because:

The new .dll file on the internet is password protected. And the video did show how to unzip a protected file. And win11 cannot handle protected files (win 10 can). I had to DL 7zip and run this video to see how to associate zip files to file explorer in order to unzip the configurator:

Pimax play has resolution options. The new values to use in the configurator will depend on which options you use in Pimax Play.

the configuator tells you what to set in OpenXR toolkit to make the modification that increases fps without any downgrade of the VR images.

Edited February 12, 20251 yr by Fielder

3 hours ago, Fielder said:

The new .dll file on the internet is password protected.

Yep, i found out that the password is toolkit... worked fine after that

Still playing with settings and still not happy... hmmmm

Ive got to strike a balance... seems no matter what i set i can only get 27 fps... fenix, NZAA...

I did not make any changes in Pimax Play.

I am running at 120 Hz, Eye Tracking ON, High Render Quality, Dynamic Foveated Rendering OFF, Smart Smoothing OFF, Lock to Half Framerate ON, Hidden Area Mask ON (maybe this is important in this context).

@ Doug: You may decrease the FoV to ridicoulus values, just for testing. But: MSFS 2024 may crash on next startup when entering VR. But if you enter VR in the main menu, you can revert the settings without any problems. But this way you can check if you set up everything correct.

 

That's my situation: Madrid Barajas (LEMD) from Latin VFR, Fenix A321, realtime, PSXT with AIG, FSTL, FS Traffic models, Pimax Crystal (4K), MSFS 2024, TAA

Please excuse the image quality, but it is a real pain to take photos through the headset.

Initial situation: 14 FPS (I hope you can see it)

Now, select "Override resolution" with the values that the Configurator provided (see above)

That takes me from 14 FPS to 31 FPS

And now, changing to Custom Resolution X/Y and going to appr. 80%...

...takes me to 40 FPS. That's an incrase of about 300% from the initial situation.

These are my settings for foveated rendering and eye tracking. Notice, that I have disabled Foveated Rendering in Pimax Play.

Best,
Holger

P.S.: I am not a commercial member.

Edited February 12, 20251 yr by Holger0815
Images did not show

Many thanks Holger, will give that a try after work!

Cheers

Doug

I've been doing this for years on my quest pro.  In the oculus debug tool I set FOV multiplier to 0.8, 0.83.  Works a charm!

Nice boost in FPS! I think I got about 10–20 FPS. The instruction in the video and here are rather confusing.

Here is a better video:

 

 

I just tried this, but MSFS2024 would black screen and crash after I made adjustment in toolkit configurator. Also the configurator runs weird: I typed in PCL native resolution 4312x5102 in its window, but if I click "Crop2FOV", it crops the H x V resolution to like 128x128. If I manually set H x V crop resolution, 2024 crashes. 

Do you keep the configurator open when running the 2024? Or after setting the crop solutions it should be closed? If I close the configurator and open it again, the custom crop resolution settings are gone. Very confused now.

 

No, you just use the Configurator once. If MSFS (2024) crashes due to a weird resolution, you can enter VR on the main screen and change the resolution. That does always work. I also had this once or twice... Just play with the settings.

Posted the wrong video. YouTube must have autoplayed the next video when I copied the link.

 

10 hours ago, FlyIce said:

I just tried this, but MSFS2024 would black screen and crash after I made adjustment in toolkit configurator. Also the configurator runs weird: I typed in PCL native resolution 4312x5102 in its window, but if I click "Crop2FOV", it crops the H x V resolution to like 128x128. If I manually set H x V crop resolution, 2024 crashes. 

Do you keep the configurator open when running the 2024? Or after setting the crop solutions it should be closed? If I close the configurator and open it again, the custom crop resolution settings are gone. Very confused now.

 

Just set the resolution, and field of view manually. I set mine to 90%. 90% gave 20 FPS+ with the A2A Comanche! Windows Defender said the configurator had a virus on my download. 

Ok decided to give this Crop2VR a go this evening in MSFS2020 with my Pico 3 NL, here's my findings;

• Formerly I ran SteamVR SS at 70% but reverted this to default 100%
• Ran the Configurator and set that SS to 80 (so 10% higher)
• In Game selected Crop2VR and lowered the FOV for each section to the mid 90s, which just had the edges visible but not noticeable when flying
• Using TAA
• Foveated Rendering On in the Toolkit (causes artefacts around the edges but improves Frametimes)

With the above there is a performance boost, not a huge deal but enough to notice, my GPU Frametimes dropped which was the main thing and I managed to stick around 46fps with dips into the 30s in some situations.

• Then I changed to DLSS 4 Preset J on Quality
• I move the in game CAS slider right up to 200 (previously default 100)
• I selected CAS in the Toolkit as well (increases the sharpness even more)
• Foveated Rendering Off

Now I'm getting a rock solid 46fps in different cloudy skies (Storm, Overcast, scattered etc) with no artefacts on the edges and bumped up Cloud Quality to ULTRA (previously HIGH). This now is (finally) very close to being on par with TAA which I've used since forever, Garmin screens are still a touch more blurry but I can live with that, just the annoyance of the tickers being blurry - which if that ever gets fixed then it'll be on par with TAA if not better.

So in conclusion it's worth the effort with the Crop2VR settings + latest DLSS and a couple tweaks, I may be able to further boost some other in game graphical settings but will do a few flights in various places before I tweak some more.
I'll give this a go with AMS2 (racing sim) to see if that gives a definitive boost as well, which would be nice.

Thank you guys! Got it to work. I didn't use the configurator, just use the custom FOV in the OXRToolkit. It's great that I can customize all the edges of FOV of each eye. In the end, I reduced the PCL pixels from 4312x5102 to 4096x3496, about a 1/3 reduction. The fps gain is not as much as I hoped, roughly around ~30%: from around 30-33fps to 40-45fps. But these extra 10fps make a big difference in terms how solid the VR feels. 

The loss of FOV is almost unnoticeable if I keep my head steady. Only when I'm turning rapidly left right I could see the FOV edges. I guess those extra FOV pixels are meant to buffer the head movements. Overall, a small price to pay until 6090 comes out. 

I can't get the NvidiaInpector to work. It opens then closes after few seconds. I'm using DLSS 310.2 (?), but I can't select the profile. By the way, anyone noticed that this supposedly DLSS 4 thing indeed messed up glass display? When dialing com/nav freq those number digits definitely look blurry and ugly - I never noticed this problem in DLSS 3. 

Edited February 16, 20251 yr by FlyIce