Opinions on VR mode?

[Electric]

I wanted to know if I was going insane or not but VR feels so much better then it has EVER.
Usually when I launch the game I would had to do a huge optimization check just to TRY and get the game running, but when I launched it today with zero checks the game actually was stable for once.
There was performance issues but for things like stuttering and warping it was barely present and the game on planets and space stations felt smooth just with a bit of lag.
How's this for others? Improvement or just the same and I got lucky? 4070 GPU ryzen 5 5600 CPU.
EDIT: To clear things up, I'm using a oculus quest 2 for PCVR and I always stayed on 2 planets before lacking motivation to play the game again. About a month ago VR was unplayable and now it is for some reason, btw I don't use DLSS or other tools cause they blur my screen. Also it feels better, not that it's perfect just enough so I can actually look around without it looking like a powerpoint.

[BlueLightning]

Nah, i barely can play this as this game keep dipping to 40 fps despite in lowest quality setting in 1080p non VR with a 3060. I can't even play 60 fps stable with this rig, which is irony as I could easily go 90++ FPS (never dips below 90) in Ghost Recon Breakpoint Ultra preset. Easily reach 110-120 fps there too.

Until now, they added some features to help with FPS but mostly are features to cope with their poor optimization. I mean, they are still using the "cancer filled" object from launch, and not fixed even if it was brought up to light in 2020
https://steamcommunity.com/app/275850/discussions/0/2850173019345001990/#c2850173019345113792

This is a simple basebuilding object that you usually see. Ok, multiply it by 64, and that's what you need to render when you see a base. That enourmous polygon/tris count.

But i'm sure that 4000 gen gpu are benefiting from frame gen. It still an unoptimized game, but i believe modern hardware gives solution to "cope" with it.

[Jouchebag]

Yeah, my 3070 is barely keeping up still. Choppy. Not pretty.

Probably BL's experience but it kind of sort of holds a stable 72 fps for the Quest 2.

[profanicus]

Originally posted by Electric:

I wanted to know if I was going insane or not but VR feels so much better then it has EVER.

I'm not sure they actually improved it on PCVR, it's possible you just lucked into a 'sweet spot' where it works better?

I.e., it is running really great for me on Quest 3 over Virtual Desktop now I know how to make it do that, but I can certainly break it again by changing a few settings! :)

Spec: i5-12600k, 3080ti, 32GB, Quest 3 w/ Virtual Desktop

[hammerhelm]

I was having real problems playing last week, super laggy, tried playing a few times and just had to log back out again. Since the last small patch everything seems to be back super silky smooth on Ultra, not likely to stay that way I think though, every update seems to be screwing up framerates requiring another patch to 'fix' things, was always the same with Elite.

btw I run through steam VR directly from the PC meta app. meta 3, ryzen 9, RTX 4070ti 32gb

[GAMEDRIX 🦴]

VRAM is the biggest issue for VR and only a few people understand that and wonders why it's hard to run in good conditions, I had to sell my 3080 ti which was more than enough for me at the time just for that game, and with my 4090 now, at 50% Supersampling which is about 4144x4144 it eats up 22gb of vram, yes you read that right, 22gb... it now runs pretty well and it's really sharp on my vive pro 2, but I'm pretty sure that's no different for any other recent VR headset be careful about vram.

[MOSLEY]

It's pretty horrendous for me on an i9 + 3080 Ti. It generally starts off okay, then becomes less stable over the course of a few minutes until tracking stops working properly and makes me feel like I'm melting.

I've only run it through SteamVR directly and haven't spent any time trying to fix it though. I gave up and stick to flatscreen for NMS.

[bernardb]

I still cannot play at all because of the stuttering and freezing, its horrible - i9-9900, 3080, 32GB, SSD, Quest 3 with link cable (and even with Virtual Desktop)

[umop-apisdn]

Butter-smooth on a 4060 Ti and a Valve Index through SteamVR.
CPU is a 6 year old first-gen Ryzen 1700 on a B350 mobo with 16 GB of system RAM (coincidentally, that's the same amount the video card has). 3 SSDs in the system; one stick on the board for OS, and a pair of SATA SSDs (one for games and another for work). The base rig is nothing to write home about other than being a solid piece of equipment; that 4060 Ti is what's pulling all the weight.

TL;DR: It's all about the GPU.

[profanicus]

Yeah on less than a 4000 series card, everyone in the thread so far seems to report that it's unplayable, except me.

Temper expectations, you need to make significant compromises for a smooth(er) experience. As mentioned, lack of VRAM is killer at higher resolutions and settings.

The biggest impact on VRAM and performance in general is SteamVR resolution and the Planet Quality setting.

Some tips:
I find clearing all caches and settings (Nvidia shader cache, game cache files, game settings files) helps if it's been a while and the game seems to be in a 'broken' performance state - could be placebo though.

• Start with a baseline. Set all in-game settings off or lowest, & SteamVR resolution minimum (Video & Application Specific settings combined should get down around 500x500 per eye). Note the framerates here (which should indicate how much CPU limits the framerates).
  
• Move resolution then settings slowly back up. But don't move resolution back up too much - it heavily affects VRAM.
  
• You can use DLSS as well as or instead of lowering resolution too much, if you prefer blur to aliasing.
  
• Keep Planet Quality on the lowest settings - in my benchmarks it is too impactful on stable framerate and VRAM to raise.
  
• Keep GTAO set to standard or off, it's too expensive.
  
• Other stuff can probably go higher, but leave tessellation until last, and keep it below ultra.
  
• Reprojection/motion smoothing will mostly be on regardless of settings so pick a headset refresh based around your stable framerates, and lock smoothing 'always on' if needed (I target raw 60fps, and use 120Hz refresh - very smooth)
  
• Benchmarking is hard given the variance in the game, but very helpful during this process!

For reference, here are the settings I use for my 12GB VRAM spec:
Virtual Desktop/Quest 3

• Ultra
  
• 120Hz refresh
  
• SSW Auto

SteamVR

• Video resolution: 150%
  
• NMS Override: 50%
  = 2328x2408

NMS

• Texture Quality: Enhanced
  
• Animation Quality: High
  
• Shadow Quality: High
  
• Post Processing: High
  
• Reflections: High
  
• Volumetrics: High
  
• Tessellation: High
  
• Planet Quality: Standard
  
• Anisotropic Filtering: 4
  
• GTAO: Standard
  
• Anti-aliasing: Off

This is giving me a pretty good 120Hz experience, though obviously the game still occasionally hits rough spots and freaks out - no getting around that. :)

Spec: i5-12600k, 3080ti 12GB, 32GB, Quest 3 w/ Virtual Desktop

[GAMEDRIX 🦴]

Guys, there's no freezing or loss of tracking in the matter of minutes it's your vram being full, the guy on top cleared that out pretty well

[Jouchebag]

Originally posted by GAMEDRIX 🦴:

Guys, there's no freezing or loss of tracking in the matter of minutes it's your vram being full, the guy on top cleared that out pretty well

Which is proof of the terrible optimization. When an 8GB card can run HL Alyx, or FO4 VR heavily modded, etc. but struggles with NMS then there's clearly room for improvement.

[BleppyBoo]

Okay so I'm not going insane that the game just didn't work in VR for me on a 3070.

[profanicus]

Originally posted by BleppyBoo:

Okay so I'm not going insane that the game just didn't work in VR for me on a 3070.

You should be able to get it working on an 8GB card. Just use a low SteamVR resolution, all game settings on lowest or off, and enable DLSS performance.

Play the game and check Windows Task Manager's 'Performance' tab, 'Dedicated GPU Memory'.

Depending on your PC setup, you can also claw back up to 500MB VRAM by setting your desktop resolution very low and disabling Windows HDR.

Doing this I was able to keep VRAM use down around 7GB. Whether you are willing to play at low res like this is another matter...

[GAMEDRIX 🦴]

Originally posted by profanicus:

Originally posted by BleppyBoo:

Okay so I'm not going insane that the game just didn't work in VR for me on a 3070.

You should be able to get it working on an 8GB card. Just use a low SteamVR resolution, all game settings on lowest or off, and enable DLSS performance.

Play the game and check Windows Task Manager's 'Performance' tab, 'Dedicated GPU Memory'.

Depending on your PC setup, you can also claw back up to 500MB VRAM by setting your desktop resolution very low and disabling Windows HDR.

Whether you are willing to play at low res like this is another matter...

Very good points, also if that can help, I have a 10850k with a graphics chipset the uhd630 and when I had my 3080 ti it was really hard not to use the full 12gb with nms despite lowering the resolution quite drastically.
Something that worked really well was to use my third monitor which is hooked to my graphics chipset and only use this as my main monitor, this saved me 2gb of vram because my 3080 ti was not utilized at all so the vram was empty until I start VR and I got much more room, so you could try that.
I'm still using this method with my 4090 because I want the highest resolution possible and the game is absolutely beautiful, I'm tho eating 22gb of vram which is really crazy. It's the vive pro 2 after all.

[profanicus]

Originally posted by GAMEDRIX 🦴:

Something that worked really wall was to use my third monitor which is hooked to my graphics chipset and only use this as my main monitor, this saved me 2gb of vram because my 3080 ti was not utilized at all so the vram was empty until I started VR and I got much more room, so you could try that.

Even better!
With only a single monitor I guess we can just plug it into CPU integrated graphics for this game. A hassle, but every free MB counts! :D