Resolution scaling, what's your experience?

[hyperion]

I had my resolution scaled to 200% in the game and seemed to run pretty well, but decided anyway to monitor performance in headset. With a 1080ti I was getting pretty serious frame drops at 200%. I dropped it down to 150%, but still getting some frame drops and FPS does not stay at 90 FPS all of time, it drops down to 70 or so frequently.

Anyone else have the same experience? I would have thought a 1080 ti would handle 150% easily in this game.

[DoxHoliday]

I've been tinkering with it. I downloaded the SE 2K texture mods, set in-game SS to halfway, set resolution scaling to 150%, kept TAA on and added this to skyrimprefs under [Display]:

fTAAPostOverlay=0.675
fTAAPostSharpen=0.675
fTAASharpen=0.001

I may tinker more with the TAA values.

Seems a happy medium for me and everything looks fantastic. The Diffuse 2K texture mods certainly help, and stuff like the Vivid Weathers, Realistic Waters, Skyrim Floral Overhaul, and especially Enhanced Lights and FX really make the game look so much better.

My rig is getting a bit long in the tooth but the above settings have been working pretty well. I7-4770K, Gtx 980Ti.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by DoxHoliday:

I've been tinkering with it. I downloaded the SE 2K texture mods, set in-game SS to halfway, set resolution scaling to 150%, kept TAA on and added this to skyrimprefs under [Display]:

fTAAPostOverlay=0.675
fTAAPostSharpen=0.675
fTAASharpen=0.001

I may tinker more with the TAA values.

Seems a happy medium for me and everything looks fantastic. The Diffuse 2K texture mods certainly help, and stuff like the Vivid Weathers, Realistic Waters, Skyrim Floral Overhaul, and especially Enhanced Lights and FX really make the game look so much better.

My rig is getting a bit long in the tooth but the above settings have been working pretty well. I7-4770K, Gtx 980Ti.

My CPU is aging now as well, actually older than yours I think. I wonder if I'm getting a bottleneck there and should upgrade everything now? I was wanting to wait until the i9 is not so crazy expensive.

Specs are:

i7 3820 @3.6ghz
GTX 1080 ti
32G Ram
SSD
Oculus Rift

In game I have SS up all the way, everything as maxed as I can get it. TAA off (looks horribly blurry for me with on).

Then I now have the resolution scaling in Steam VR at 150%. I have 7 mods installed including all the 2017 texture mods and the ENB texture mod.

Really, I'm not sure what all this frame dropping is about. Maybe is my old CPU?

[profanicus]

Originally posted by hyperion:

My CPU is aging now as well, actually older than yours I think. I wonder if I'm getting a bottleneck there and should upgrade everything now? I was wanting to wait until the i9 is not so crazy expensive.

Specs are:

i7 3820 @3.6ghz
GTX 1080 ti
32G Ram
SSD
Oculus Rift

In game I have SS up all the way, everything as maxed as I can get it. TAA off (looks horribly blurry for me with off).

Then I now have the resolution scaling in Steam VR at 150%. I have 7 mods installed including all the 2017 texture mods and the ENB texture mod.

Really, I'm not sure what all this frame dropping is about. Maybe is my old CPU?

CPU will almost certainly be your bottleneck. Most likely the ENB, since these don't work so well yet. I'm running similar to you but with i7700k and still removed it to stop the frame drops.

Try using the Oculus Debug Tool that shows both GPU and CPU usage overlay, you will see the CPU regularly 'pulse' really high when using ENB. Get rid of it and you'll see everything smooth out again.

Also your SS may be a bit high. You only need to set it in one place. Maxing it in-game is equivalent to 200% in SteamVR. Setting it to 150% in SteamVR at the same time means you are running at SS of around 275%. There's not much noticeable visual benefit above 250% (equivalent to 1.6 Pixel Density in Oculus).

And watch the 3d mesh mods, some can be quite heavy on performance too (e.g. SMIM Full, 3D Trees, Verdant).

[hyperion]

Originally posted by profanicus:

Originally posted by hyperion:

My CPU is aging now as well, actually older than yours I think. I wonder if I'm getting a bottleneck there and should upgrade everything now? I was wanting to wait until the i9 is not so crazy expensive.

Specs are:

i7 3820 @3.6ghz
GTX 1080 ti
32G Ram
SSD
Oculus Rift

In game I have SS up all the way, everything as maxed as I can get it. TAA off (looks horribly blurry for me with off).

Then I now have the resolution scaling in Steam VR at 150%. I have 7 mods installed including all the 2017 texture mods and the ENB texture mod.

Really, I'm not sure what all this frame dropping is about. Maybe is my old CPU?

CPU will almost certainly be your bottleneck. Most likely the ENB, since these don't work so well yet. I'm running similar to you but with i7700k and still removed it to stop the frame drops.

Try using the Oculus Debug Tool that shows both GPU and CPU usage overlay, you will see the CPU regularly 'pulse' really high when using ENB. Get rid of it and you'll see everything smooth out again.

Also your SS may be a bit high. You only need to set it in one place. Maxing it in-game is equivalent to 200% in SteamVR. Setting it to 150% in SteamVR at the same time means you are running at SS of around 275%. There's not much noticeable visual benefit above 250% (equivalent to 1.6 Pixel Density in Oculus).

And watch the 3d mesh mods, some can be quite heavy on performance too (e.g. SMIM Full, 3D Trees, Verdant).

Thank you, I'll remove ENB and see how that goes.

What you are saying about setting the SS in different places, I was wondering about that. I have it set at 150% in Oculus diag tool, 150% in Steam VR, and maxed in the game. It makes the game look fantastic, but I wondering how this works. Maybe I should just turn it off everywhere but in one place? What do you think would work best?

Thanks, really appreciate your reply.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by profanicus:

Most likely the ENB, since these don't work so well yet. I'm running similar to you but with i7700k and still removed it to stop the frame drops.

Well, you were right. I disabled it and played for about 10 minutes without a single dropped frame at 90 FPS solid. Thanks for the info.

That makes a huge difference in the way the game plays and especially in bow aiming. Doesn't look quite as pretty now, I liked that mod. But maybe now I can increase SS more.

[Tessa Wolf]

i have a gtx 1080ti and run the game at 250% Res and i get no serious performance drop the game still runs perfect.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by SHADOWxWOLF:

i have a gtx 1080ti and run the game at 250% Res and i get no serious performance drop the game still runs perfect.

It might be the ENB mod. Do you have any mods installed? Disabling ENB mod gave me a huge performance increase. Right now I'm thinking of removing all mods since they are not officially supported for Skyrim VR and just trying to crank my rez back up.

[profanicus]

Originally posted by hyperion:

What you are saying about setting the SS in different places, I was wondering about that. I have it set at 150% in Oculus diag tool, 150% in Steam VR, and maxed in the game. It makes the game look fantastic, but I wondering how this works. Maybe I should just turn it off everywhere but in one place? What do you think would work best?

I think SS is a lot simpler than many people assume. You're basically setting the resolution the game renders at, before it sends the image to the headset to be scaled down and processed.

Setting it in multiple places just multiplies values together to arrive at a final render resolution. So it doesn't matter where you set it, but do it in the place or places that is most convenient for the given situation.

For example, I like having one simple number to change so just set it in the Skyrim ini file.
Others like having a 'base SS' present on the headset for all games, so set that in SteamVR or Oculus, and further bump it up via in-game settings case-by-case.

I haven't verified this myself but I've seen it mentioned that Oculus 1.6 (Steam 250%) is the point of diminishing returns, where rendering at higher than that won't provide much noticeable benefit.

Keep in mind this resolution is calculated differently in SteamVR and Oculus* so it can get confusing setting it in multiple places. You can always turn on the headset debug to see the actual resolution it's rendering at (on Oculus at least, unsure on others).

*basically, given base resolution Width/Height:

• SteamVR 200% = 2xWxH (Skyrim in-game works the same as this)
  
• Oculus 2x = 2(WxH) = 2xWx2xH (so Oculus sets the render size at twice the number of pixels SteamVR does at the same setting)

[hyperion]

Originally posted by profanicus:

Originally posted by hyperion:

What you are saying about setting the SS in different places, I was wondering about that. I have it set at 150% in Oculus diag tool, 150% in Steam VR, and maxed in the game. It makes the game look fantastic, but I wondering how this works. Maybe I should just turn it off everywhere but in one place? What do you think would work best?

I think SS is a lot simpler than many people assume. You're basically setting the resolution the game renders at, before it sends the image to the headset to be scaled down and processed.

Setting it in multiple places just multiplies values together to arrive at a final render resolution. So it doesn't matter where you set it, but do it in the place or places that is most convenient for the given situation.

For example, I like having one simple number to change so just set it in the Skyrim ini file.
Others like having a 'base SS' present on the headset for all games, so set that in SteamVR or Oculus, and further bump it up via in-game settings case-by-case.

I haven't verified this myself but I've seen it mentioned that Oculus 1.6 (Steam 250%) is the point of diminishing returns, where rendering at higher than that won't provide much noticeable benefit.

Keep in mind this resolution is calculated differently in SteamVR and Oculus* so it can get confusing setting it in multiple places. You can always turn on the headset debug to see the actual resolution it's rendering at (on Oculus at least, unsure on others).

*basically, given base resolution Width/Height:

• SteamVR 200% = 2xWxH (Skyrim in-game works the same as this)
  
• Oculus 2x = 2(WxH) = 2xWx2xH (so Oculus sets the render size at twice the number of pixels SteamVR does at the same setting)

Thank you so much for that. It's a little confusing and that helped a lot. I guess I had the rez scaling cranked up to a crazy level. No wonder it looked so totally amazing and ran like crap.

BTW, what line in Skyrims SkyrimPrefs.ini is the correct line to set that in? I'm not seeing anything that looks like super sampling or resolution scaling?

[profanicus]

In SkyrimPrefs.ini:

[VRDisplay]
fRenderTargetSizeMultiplier=1.0000

That's the default. I think Skyrim caps this at 2.5 though, so if you want to go higher you'll have to set it elsewhere.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by profanicus:

In SkyrimPrefs.ini:

[VRDisplay]
fRenderTargetSizeMultiplier=1.0000

That's the default. I think Skyrim caps this at 2.5 though, so if you want to go higher you'll have to set it elsewhere.

Ah, I see. Thanks so much, again.

[Mr. Pharaoh]

Try setting the "bFull Screen" to 1 in SkyrimPrefs.ini too. It resolved my issue with the massive stuttering. I tried all other fixes and it didnt work but this did. Credit to user Genesis for this fix.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by profanicus:

Keep in mind this resolution is calculated differently in SteamVR and Oculus* so it can get confusing setting it in multiple places. You can always turn on the headset debug to see the actual resolution it's rendering at (on Oculus at least, unsure on others).

*basically, given base resolution Width/Height:

• SteamVR 200% = 2xWxH (Skyrim in-game works the same as this)
  
• Oculus 2x = 2(WxH) = 2xWx2xH (so Oculus sets the render size at twice the number of pixels SteamVR does at the same setting)

I turned on the headset debug to see what the resolution rendering is,but I don't see it. Am I missing a setting? That would be really helpful in learning how it actuallly works.

Thanks.