UPDATED 11/17/18
I’m often asked for this, so here is the latest. I will update this post over time, and as of this posting these are my VR settings for X-Plane 11.30b4 and the Oculus Rift.
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My settings are primarily based on a YouTube video I’d found, which I have posted at the bottom of this post. It’s worth watching the entire thing, although the last 10 minutes or so you can probably scan through as it, for the most part, just makes and extended case for the use of the 3jFPS plugin. 3jFPS is excellent, but I now use Twick VR. Here’s the list:
- Using the automatic overclock wizard in my BIOS I have overclocked my CPU. A 4.0 chip, it’s running at 4.6 after the wizard, which I have manually upped to 4.7. DON’T OVERCLOCK YOUR CPU UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING AS YOU CAN PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR PC.
- Based on the video below, in my BIOS I also:
- Turned Hyperthreading on
- Disabled power management
- Disabled CPU C states
- Disabled Intel Speed Step
- AGAIN, DON’T MESS WITH YOUR BIOS UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING AS YOU CAN PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR PC.
- With my old 980ti GPU card I used the NVIDA Inspector I overclocked by GPU by 80 on the clock speed and 200 on the memory speed. DON’T OVERCLOCK YOUR GPU UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT YOU ARE DOING AS YOU CAN PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR PC. But my new 1080ti is factory overclocked, so I no longer bother with overclocking it.
- Using Oculus Tray Tool I:
- Set the performance to Maximum Performance Plan
- Disabled USB Select Suspend
- Set SuperSampling to 0
- Left ASW alone — which is DIFFERENT from what he says to do in the video, because I prefer Oculus Debug Tool for setting the frame rate, as I can decide between fixing it at 45 FPS with AWS or without.
- Each time I load X-Plane I set Super Sampling to 1.2-1.5, depending on the performance hit I get in the scenery I’m flying in. Typically I now use 1.2 as I can use better anti-aliasing with my 1080ti, and I fly WITHOUT fixed 45 FPS or asynchronous spacewarp (ASW) as I’m getting very good frames in 11.3. With an older card, like my 980ti, I set SuperSampling between 1.2 and 1.5 and ASW to fixed 45 FPS with space warp off. This works best for me, and if you have performance problems you might turn down the Super Sampling to a lower number (maybe start with 1.3 and work your way up – at some point the increase in clarity is not worth the decrease in performance).
- As a result of the two points above , please note that (1) the Tray Tool changes are a one-time thing. I do NOT load Tray Tool each time I load X-Plane. I DO, however, load the Debug Tool each time I load X-Plane, and I am good with that.
- Using Project Lasso, I:
- Enabled Performance Mode in the overall settings
- With X-Plane and X-Plane VR running, in Lasso I:
- Set XP’s priority to High
- Set its CPU affinity to use virtual cores 2-7 (all but the first two and I have eight virtual cores with hyperthreading on)
- Note: If you are not using hyper threading, run XP on all but your first physical core.
- I have not had great results moving other items, like the Oculus programs, to the first physical core and away from X-Plane. Rather I give X-Plane the last three physical cores and keep it of the first, and let Windows allocate the rest of what’s running across the cores and threads as it sees fit given my performance and power management settings.
- In Windows Power Management (which is in the Windows Control Panel settings), I set the power management profiles to Bitsum Highest Performance (which is a profile created by Lasso). If you don’t have Lasso, pick Highest Performance.
- In NVIDIA Control Panel, I:
- Set the overall 3D profile Energy setting to Max Performance
- IF YOU USE 3jFPS:
- With X-Plane running, in the 3jFPS plugin Advanced Settings I:
- Ran the wizard for a min FSP of 45 and max FPS to 46, and took the best FPS options in every other choice it gave me
- Then I went back through the advanced settings and:
- Reduced sliders in the LOD settings to the bottom of the green scale
- Reduced min and max sliders in the visibility settings to the bottom of the green scale
- With X-Plane running, in the 3jFPS plugin Advanced Settings I:
- IF YOU USE TWICK VR: I have played with the shadow, weather, etc. settings to please my eye. I then manually set the % of objects slider to get the best balance of performance and scenery objects. For me that’s between 78% and 88% (and 88% is my default setting)
- WITH MY OLDER 980ti CARD in X-Plane graphics settings I:
- Set it to windowed mode as it seems to perform better minimized (meaning once I have the Rift on I minimize the XP window)
- Graphics to HDR (position 4)
- Textures to max (position 4)
- AA to FXAA (position 2)
- Objects to almost max (position 4) — while he runs at max objects, I found it hurt my frames too much in busy areas
- Shadows on if I’m using the latest 3JFPS with it’s auto-shadow setting, otherwise shadows off, reflections off
- WITH MY NEW 1080ti CARD in X-Plane graphics settings I:
- Set it to windowed mode as it seems to perform better minimized (meaning once I have the Rift on I minimize the XP window)
- Graphics to HDR (position 4)
- Textures to max (position 4)
- AA to 2xSS & FXAA (position 4)
- Objects to max (position 5)
- Shadows on, reflections off
- Finally, I did anything else I could do to reduce the CPU load while playing X-Plane:
- Turned off Windows auto updates
- Turned off NVIDIA Geforce Experience
- Set Oculus Server to run in administrator mode, which seems to keep it from loading the full Oculus window unless I specifically open it
These setting are working really well for me, with usually solid 45FPS, smooth performance, and few to no “grey flashes” or frozen views. I do think the changes to the power management settings throughout made a difference, for what that’s worth. It’s really a remarkably good experience, although your mileage may vary.
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