Author Topic: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.  (Read 3286 times)

Offline N95KF

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Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« on: September 17, 2017, 01:48:55 AM »
I made a post about 6 months ago with a list of graphics settings both in-game and through the Nvidia Control Panel. Many thought they were the best possible graphics settings for Aces High and VR, including myself.  I started to read about how certain settings, although look great on 2D monitors, look worse in VR.  Even if you have the hardware, increasing every setting does more harm than good in VR.  I want people to experiment with these settings and tell me what you think.  After tweaking for weeks, I think I finally may have found the best LOOKING AH3 setting for VR.  All without having to tinker with a Tool Tray or supersampling, etc to drive frame rates into the toilet.

I am going to list them below, and attach screenshots of both the in-game settings as well as the Nvidia Control Panel settings.  If you don't already know, make sure you use 'Program Settings' in the control panel, not 'Global Settings'.  Select program to customize:, and pick 'aceshigh11'.

The goal here with these settings is to get as much clarity as possible without blurry distances, shimmering trees, and things out of focus.
This will not hurt performance, but in many cases will give a nice boost!

Better looking game with more FPS?? Yes!

The key here is mostly about eliminating AA entirely.  Every single AA setting in the Nvidia Control Panel as well as the in-game AA option should be disabled.  AA looks nice at a distance, but not when holding a magnifying glass up to a screen (VR).  It just blurs the image.

As you can see in the first screenshot:
Every single AA function is disabled.
Anisotropic Filtering is set at its highest.

In the second screenshot you can see
All texture filtering is off.
The Power Management is set to Maximum Performance.
Texture Filtering is set to High Quality.
Negative LOD Bias is set to Clamp.

The third screenshot shows the in-game settings.
Anti-Aliasing is disabled
Reflection is Disabled (doesn't look proper in VR)
Environment Map Sides Per Frame: Set to None (it looks bad in VR + hurts performance)
Shadows are Disabled (optional, can hurt performance and looks jagged/aliased in VR IMO)
Ignore Gamma Setting (means nothing in VR)

*Important
The Object and Tree Detail sliders are all the way down. 
I have found, specifically in VR, that you lose no noticeable details in objects and trees, but the shimmering vanishes, providing a better looking image when combined with all other settings.

Give these a try, fly around a "good" map (one that is colorful with trees and lots of greens, hills, etc.)
Tell me if you don't believe everything just looks about as clean, crisp, and less blurry as it can get in AH with VR at this stage. I used to hate looking into the distance and all around the plane on long flights, now I sight-see and am in awe.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2017, 02:00:18 AM by N95KF »
:airplane:

49Alpha

"We, not they, will win the final battle; and we, not they, will make the final peace!"

Offline 1stpar3

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2017, 05:02:49 PM »
Pretty much how mine is set up! I have a few changes,think 3. In NVIDIA Anisotropic is at 4. Everything else same. In AH I have all detail sliders EXCEPT, Tree, all at Max Right. Checked boxes side, only Disable clutter in flight and reflections are checked. Under post lighting, identical.  I changed the Color profile in NVIDIA control panel to deal with Brightness and Gamma changes. Some terrains with alot of Yellow/Sandy areas were way too bright for me. Runways looked like White out. These changes are made for the Port that your Headset plugs into. Plug Monitor into headset port, make changes, then plug Headset back in.
"Life is short,break the rules,forgive quickly,kiss slowly,love truly,laugh uncontrollably,and never regret anything that made you smile."  “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”- Mark Twain

Offline N95KF

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2017, 08:33:09 AM »
If you can, crank Anisotropic Filtering up as high as it can go, it doesn't hurt performance in Aces High but makes the terrain look better.

Try lowering the building details like I said, you won't see any difference in the buildings but less shimmering at a distance. 

The clutter I have found does not contribute to any strange anomalies or eyesores in this game so I leave it on, I like foliage on the ground.

Reflections are more personal preference but I have found them to look bad in VR and distracting.
:airplane:

49Alpha

"We, not they, will win the final battle; and we, not they, will make the final peace!"

Offline Kanth

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2017, 09:48:40 AM »

i like them normally but sometimes when out completely over sea for a time i find them to be quite disorienting like can't tell if i'm banking or not kinda thing.

haven't tried the rest yet but appreciate you taking the time to post them. i'll try to find time to check these out. thanks!  :aok

Reflections are more personal preference but I have found them to look bad in VR and distracting.
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Offline Mister Fork

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2017, 01:54:16 PM »
i like them normally but sometimes when out completely over sea for a time i find them to be quite disorienting like can't tell if i'm banking or not kinda thing.

haven't tried the rest yet but appreciate you taking the time to post them. i'll try to find time to check these out. thanks!  :aok

...and I LOVE the reflections in game and in the cockpit - the canopy...the dial gauges...beautiful.

I'll try those setting tonight and see what the performance changes are. Might want to make this a sticky!
"Games are meant to be fun and fair but fighting a war is neither." - HiTech

Offline 1stpar3

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2017, 04:55:29 PM »
Found something interesting with the anisotropic settings maxed at 16x....it lowered the "USED" memory number?. I remember NOW why I had Object Details at max. With on Minimum the shadows created some Ghosting(double vision almost) with the cast shadows. Mainly on field guns. Not sure how to describe it but looked off. Since you run with Shadows off though, TRUE the slider can be set at Minimum with no obvious changes to the way it looks. The Clutter in flight on/off doesnt seem to matter. Now in a gun or vehicle it may be diffrent, but I dont do that enough to have a preference. The other Clutter I leave on,like the row crops and flowers :x
"Life is short,break the rules,forgive quickly,kiss slowly,love truly,laugh uncontrollably,and never regret anything that made you smile."  “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”- Mark Twain

Offline N95KF

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #6 on: September 19, 2017, 12:17:32 AM »
...and I LOVE the reflections in game and in the cockpit - the canopy...the dial gauges...beautiful.

I'll try those setting tonight and see what the performance changes are. Might want to make this a sticky!

I love the reflections too, but only on 2D monitors.  It just doesn't look right to me in VR.  Good luck and I hope you have success, but remember, all off the settings I posted have nothing to do with performance and are all about visual clarity.  If we're using VR, chances are that we all have similar builds, and we all have the ability to run this game at max graphical settings.  But that actually makes it look WORSE in VR. 

That is why the tweaks I posted above mostly revolve around turning things off that we would normally max out on a 2D screen. Less is more in this case.

Good luck! :salute
:airplane:

49Alpha

"We, not they, will win the final battle; and we, not they, will make the final peace!"

Offline N95KF

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #7 on: September 19, 2017, 12:34:18 AM »
For those of you who don't feel like downloading images and lining up your settings next to the screenshots, I am going to just list the setting changes in order from top to bottom, from control panel settings to in-game settings.

Graphics Control Panel:
*bold is very important

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x or highest
Antialiasing FXAA: Off
Antialiasing Gamma Correction: Off
Antialiasing Mode: Off
Antialiasing Setting: Off/None
Antialiasing Transparency: Off

CUDA GPUs - Use Global Setting (All)
Maximum pre-rendered frames: Use Global Setting (Use the 3D app setting)
Multi-Frame Sampld AA (MFAA): Off
OpenGL rendering GPU: Use global setting(auto)
Power Management Mode: Prefer Maximum Performance
Shader Cache: Use global setting (on)
Texture Filtering Anisotropic sample opt: Off
Texture Filtering Negative LOD bias: Clamp
Texture filtering Quality: High Quality
Texture filtering Trilinear optimization: Off

Threaded optimization: Use global setting (Auto)
Triple buffering: Use global setting (Off)
Vertical sync: Use the 3D application setting
Virtual Reality Pre-rendered frames: 1



In-Game Settings:

Enable Anti-Alias - Uncheck
Disable Bump Mapping - Uncheck
Disable Detail - Uncheck

Disable Shadow - Check
Disable Reflection - Check
Object Detail - All the way to the left
Tree Detail - All the way to the left

Ground Detail Range - All the way to the right
Terrain Detail - Hi Detail

Environment Map Sides per Frame: None
:airplane:

49Alpha

"We, not they, will win the final battle; and we, not they, will make the final peace!"

Offline Mister Fork

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #8 on: September 19, 2017, 09:27:38 AM »
Graphics Control Panel:
*bold is very important

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x or highest
Antialiasing FXAA: Off
Antialiasing Gamma Correction: Off
Antialiasing Mode: Off
Antialiasing Setting: Off/None
Antialiasing Transparency: Off

<snip>
Superb! By far the best settings - my Rift is working great -

So - we should also mention the Oculus Tray Tool - (here. For those with 1080 power cards,  you can set your sampling to 2.0 (I've got a 970 - set to 1.2).

Alpha - can you repost this and I'll have Skuzzy make it a sticky for this forum.
"Games are meant to be fun and fair but fighting a war is neither." - HiTech

Offline Randy1

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #9 on: September 19, 2017, 12:33:09 PM »
Superb! By far the best settings - my Rift is working great -

So - we should also mention the Oculus Tray Tool - (here. For those with 1080 power cards,  you can set your sampling to 2.0 (I've got a 970 - set to 1.2).

Alpha - can you repost this and I'll have Skuzzy make it a sticky for this forum.

In iracing, they have an INI file, you can set the sampling for VR so you do not have to use the oculus tray tool.  That would be nice in VR-AH.

Offline N95KF

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #10 on: September 19, 2017, 12:36:19 PM »
I purposely avoided mentioning the Oculus tray and super-sampling because I felt many users would run into trouble, and I don't think it looks better than the settings I posted above.

I am running the GTX 1080 and an i7-6700k.  As good as the higher resolution looks in the headset, it can totally kill frame rates if you don't turn all the eye candy down.  Also, I have found that it makes the screen door effect more noticeable. I had to play at with every single graphic option dialed down with 2.0 Supersampling and still ran into frame rate drops when the skies got busy.  I think the settings I mentioned above actually look better overall than Supersampling does with all the eye candy turned off.  If you have a different experience, please let me know.

As far as re-posting, how would you like me to do it? Should I just start a new topic? 
« Last Edit: September 19, 2017, 12:37:58 PM by N95KF »
:airplane:

49Alpha

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Offline Mister Fork

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #11 on: September 19, 2017, 12:55:22 PM »
I purposely avoided mentioning the Oculus tray and super-sampling because I felt many users would run into trouble, and I don't think it looks better than the settings I posted above.

I am running the GTX 1080 and an i7-6700k.  As good as the higher resolution looks in the headset, it can totally kill frame rates if you don't turn all the eye candy down.  Also, I have found that it makes the screen door effect more noticeable. I had to play at with every single graphic option dialed down with 2.0 Supersampling and still ran into frame rate drops when the skies got busy.  I think the settings I mentioned above actually look better overall than Supersampling does with all the eye candy turned off.  If you have a different experience, please let me know.

As far as re-posting, how would you like me to do it? Should I just start a new topic? 
Duly noted on the Tray Tool.

As for the rest, yes, just repost in a new topic and call something like "Optimal nVidia Settings for VR"
"Games are meant to be fun and fair but fighting a war is neither." - HiTech

Offline N95KF

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #12 on: September 19, 2017, 10:32:30 PM »
Duly noted on the Tray Tool.

As for the rest, yes, just repost in a new topic and call something like "Optimal nVidia Settings for VR"

Ok, I posted a new thread.  Maybe it can become stickied
:airplane:

49Alpha

"We, not they, will win the final battle; and we, not they, will make the final peace!"

Offline 1stpar3

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #13 on: September 20, 2017, 02:05:10 AM »
I purposely avoided mentioning the Oculus tray and super-sampling because I felt many users would run into trouble, and I don't think it looks better than the settings I posted above.

I am running the GTX 1080 and an i7-6700k.  As good as the higher resolution looks in the headset, it can totally kill frame rates if you don't turn all the eye candy down.  Also, I have found that it makes the screen door effect more noticeable. I had to play at with every single graphic option dialed down with 2.0 Supersampling and still ran into frame rate drops when the skies got busy.  I think the settings I mentioned above actually look better overall than Supersampling does with all the eye candy turned off.  If you have a different experience, please let me know.

As far as re-posting, how would you like me to do it? Should I just start a new topic?
I agree! The Tray tool is a potential "what NOT to do" nightmare. We are pretty close to the same settings and I believe these settings are/should be the standard! Starting point anyway!  :rock
"Life is short,break the rules,forgive quickly,kiss slowly,love truly,laugh uncontrollably,and never regret anything that made you smile."  “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”- Mark Twain

Offline Randy1

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Re: Perhaps the king of VR Graphics settings.
« Reply #14 on: September 20, 2017, 05:55:41 AM »
I tried the settings last night.  I do think they are the best setting I have used.

In the nividia panel I used the AH DX11 exe to save the program settings.  Is that right or should you use the AH oculus exe?