How to play Non-VR games in VR smoothly?

[Mr. Beerscuit]

I've been trying to play normal games through Theater Mode or Bigscreen it works but it feels that the actual game window inside VR is running at lower FPS, it is not performance because on the FPS counter it caps at 90fps that I set on Rivatuner. The monitor output is smooth but on the Bigscreen/Theater its a bit laggy which causes a bit of nausea after some time. Tried Running with Rifles and Motorsport Manager both easy to run games, i7 4790K + 980Ti.

[hyperion]

I replied in the reddit thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5ev4wj/how_to_play_nonvr_games_in_vr_smoothly/

Here's the comment again:

It very well could be a performance issue. Even though your game may be rendering at 90 FPS, Bigscreen may not be, causing Bigscreen to not update the game texture at 90 FPS, hence the lag you see. Try lowering the games to their bare minimum graphics settings, along with the bare minimum Bigscreen settings, and you will prove this one way or the other.
Also make sure you turn on VSync in any games you're playing. I haven't seen many people not be able to run games without lag once they configure their settings correctly.

[Titus Gray]

To tail on the dev's comment, you also might want to consider using lower-cost environments like the Void, Campfire, or some of the others marked with a leaf(?) to indicate that they're suitable for higher-demand render streaming. Though ideally it wouldn't matter, it might help you shave that last bit of lag if all else fails

[rainabba]

I wonder if it would be possible to render the game on one GPU and then bring those textures over efficiently to and render big-screen on a 2nd GPU? I have a GTX 1080 and GTX 980 TI and BigScreen itself isn't that demanding so I'd love to see games like Horizon 3 run on my 1080 then let the 980ti handle VR. Remotely possible?