Star Wars Squadrons in VR on Steam...Amazing experience but nauseating

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VirtualMirage

Limp Gawd
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So I just finished up playing about 30 minutes or so of Star Wars Squadrons in VR using my Valve Index on my current PC that uses a GTX 1080. First, I want to say that the experience is breathtaking. Flying around in a TIE Fighter or an X-Wing is a wonderful experience for those who are fans of the Star Wars universe. But either due to the limitations of my video card, there are bugs in the game, or a bit of both, the game can get pretty nauseating. Even when seated, roaming around space and doing barrel rolls to keep up with your enemy really give an unsettling feeling. I managed to take a glance at my frame time via Steam VR and it looked like it may have been struggling to keep the frame rate at 90fps or above (my headset was still set to 120Hz used in other games). It will be interesting to compare the experience when I get my new system built later this week which will have an RTX 3090 in it.

Also, there seems to be some configuration issues that require you to jump through some hoops just to get the Valve Index working properly. There is a setting you need to change to be able to hear the audio, the resolution in game tries to retain the same settings you chose for your monitor and doesn't seem to differentiate between monitor and headset resolution, the options seem to cap the game at 60hz in the options (which is also capping framerate), but you will need more than that if you want to play at 90hz or 120hz on your headset. I am not sure yet if the refresh rate in the game options is capping the headset or not, but I am seeing reports online that there is a known bug for regular players where the framerate is capping to a 60Hz refresh setting even though the display is capable of much higher. Some are finding work arounds, but a fix I believe is in the works.

Also, if using a game pad like an XBox controller, I would recommend inverting the Y-axis on the right analog stick. By default they have it the typical way you might expect for a FPS but comes across as backwards for simulators, it has up is up and down is down instead of the opposite. I was crashing into so many ships because of this.
 
Thanks for the headsup. I will get this game eventually because flying around in Tie Fighter in VR is simply too good idea to pass up, but I hope they have fixed the bugs by then.
 
There seem to be framerate issues with this title at present, as well as persistent crashes not related to VR AFAIK.

I've had several crashes just playing the singleplayer so far. It could be my RAM overclock but everything else including several passes of memtest, are stable.
 
I have both a Quest + link cable and a wireless Vive Pro, and am using a GTX 1070.
No amount of reduced settings will get my frame rate over 45 in the Vive (Half refresh rate) but on the Quest, I'm able to turn most settings all the way up, excluding the lighting and shadows ones, and can still get an average of 72 FPS (full refresh rate) However, any drops on the Quest bring it down to 36 FPS, which is even worse than the Vive.

I think that I'll do my initial playthrough on my monitor.

Note that this is with the Origin store version.
 
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gsilver said:
I have both a Quest + link cable and a wireless Vive Pro, and am using a GTX 1070.
No amount of reduced settings will get my frame rate over 45 in the Vive (Half refresh rate) but I'm able to turn most settings all the way up, excluding the lighting and shadows ones, and can still get an average of 72 FPS (full refresh rate) However, any drops on the Quest bring it down to 36 FPS, which is even worse than the Vive.

I think that I'll do my initial playthrough on my monitor.

Note that this is with the Origin store version.
Click to expand...

Yeah - I used the resolution scaling in game and it did dick all for the fps. My kid played it for about an hour and was mostly ok. I played it for about ten minutes and wasn’t terribly motion sick but was feeling something (and I am pretty sensitive).
 
Does this game work well with HOTAS like say Logitech X52?
In Elite Dangerous it's an amazing experience since the ship controls look exactly like HOTAS.
 
mda said:
There seem to be framerate issues with this title at present, as well as persistent crashes not related to VR AFAIK.

I've had several crashes just playing the singleplayer so far. It could be my RAM overclock but everything else including several passes of memtest, are stable.
Click to expand...

I finished the single player campaign without any crashes. However, a friend of mine has constant crashing issues in VR with it. I never played it in VR.
 
I've played the game for at least 3 hours on VR and 5 hours on a 4k 120hz - I've had zero crashes. VR headset is the Oculus Rift S, other specs below.
 
I ended up just switching to my main monitor instead of VR.
With the GTX 1070, I'm able to get between 70 and 100 FPS (120 HZ refresh rate) on a 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor, and the frame pacing felt pretty bad, even with G-Sync.
I changed the refresh rate to 60, and it ran great after that, clearing up the frame pacing issues for the most part.

I'll re-try VR if and when I'm able to track down a 3080.
 
Having a fan blowing air on me is a game changer if VR issues start to make me feel nauseous
 
In preparation to this game I decided to dig up my old Logitech Wingman Force Feedback joystick from storage to test if it still works on current PC games and of course it did not, Windows did find it but not even basic functions worked in games. But now that I looked for a modern replacement I found out that (except on racing wheels) Force Feedback isn't even a thing anymore! Not even on HOTAS rigs costing hundreds of dollars! WTF, what happened? Force Feedback used to be a huge thing in sims as the joystick reacted to things in game, twisting and resisting in your hands if you bumped into things and got hit etc. A massive immersion boosters. Now it is a dead tech and very few simulation even support it anymore. What a sad thing and a loss for immersion. VR headset and force feedback controllers would have been a dream combination... 😭
 
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MaZa said:
In preparation to this game I decided to dig up my old Logitech Wingman Force Feedback joystick from storage to test if it still works on current PC games and of course it did not, Windows did find it but not even basic functions worked in games. But now that I looked for a modern replacement I found out that (except on racing wheels) Force Feedback isn't even a thing anymore! Not even on HOTAS rigs costing hundreds of dollars! WTF, what happened? Force Feedback used to be a huge thing in sims as the joystick reacted to things in game, twisting and resisting in your hands if you bumped into things and got hit etc. A massive immersion boosters. Now it is a dead tech and very few simulation even support it anymore. What a sad thing and a loss for immersion. VR headset and force feedback controllers would have been a dream combination... 😭
Click to expand...
I used to have a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro that was such a great joystick. I would often use it with the MechWarrior series and MS Combat Flight Simulator series. But once the gameports started to get dropped from PCs and sound cards, it became more and more difficult to find ways to use it. Alas, I ended up tossing it. Such a shame too.

I also had a Logitech iFeel mouse which really did an excellent job adding some tactility to games as well as day to day tasking within Windows. Shame that the technology didn't progress much further for PCs and ended up becoming a very niche product.

I guess I will stick to my Xbox controller for now.
 
VirtualMirage said:
So I just finished up playing about 30 minutes or so of Star Wars Squadrons in VR using my Valve Index on my current PC that uses a GTX 1080. First, I want to say that the experience is breathtaking. Flying around in a TIE Fighter or an X-Wing is a wonderful experience for those who are fans of the Star Wars universe. But either due to the limitations of my video card, there are bugs in the game, or a bit of both, the game can get pretty nauseating. Even when seated, roaming around space and doing barrel rolls to keep up with your enemy really give an unsettling feeling. I managed to take a glance at my frame time via Steam VR and it looked like it may have been struggling to keep the frame rate at 90fps or above (my headset was still set to 120Hz used in other games). It will be interesting to compare the experience when I get my new system built later this week which will have an RTX 3090 in it.

Also, there seems to be some configuration issues that require you to jump through some hoops just to get the Valve Index working properly. There is a setting you need to change to be able to hear the audio, the resolution in game tries to retain the same settings you chose for your monitor and doesn't seem to differentiate between monitor and headset resolution, the options seem to cap the game at 60hz in the options (which is also capping framerate), but you will need more than that if you want to play at 90hz or 120hz on your headset. I am not sure yet if the refresh rate in the game options is capping the headset or not, but I am seeing reports online that there is a known bug for regular players where the framerate is capping to a 60Hz refresh setting even though the display is capable of much higher. Some are finding work arounds, but a fix I believe is in the works.

Also, if using a game pad like an XBox controller, I would recommend inverting the Y-axis on the right analog stick. By default they have it the typical way you might expect for a FPS but comes across as backwards for simulators, it has up is up and down is down instead of the opposite. I was crashing into so many ships because of this.
Click to expand...
If you haven't already: go into your Nvidia driver control panel and try setting "virtual reality pre-rendered frames" to "1".

and also turn on the "low latency mode" option and set it to "ultra".


Anything you can do to lower latency, should help with the nausea in VR.
 
chameleoneel said:
If you haven't already: go into your Nvidia driver control panel and try setting "virtual reality pre-rendered frames" to "1".

and also turn on the "low latency mode" option and set it to "ultra".


Anything you can do to lower latency, should help with the nausea in VR.
Click to expand...
I think what I was experiencing earlier was a known bug in the game where the frame rate was being capped to monitor refresh rates instead of the 90/120hz the headset is capable of. It plays fine on the monitor. I am not sure if the latest patches addressed this or not since I haven’t played it again on VR with the latest updates yet.

Also, I am now using an RTX 3090 FE instead of my older GTX 1080 FE. So performance shouldn’t be an issue unless, again, it’s an problem with the game itself.
 
VirtualMirage said:
I think what I was experiencing earlier was a known bug in the game where the frame rate was being capped to monitor refresh rates instead of the 90/120hz the headset is capable of. It plays fine on the monitor. I am not sure if the latest patches addressed this or not since I haven’t played it again on VR with the latest updates yet.

Also, I am now using an RTX 3090 FE instead of my older GTX 1080 FE. So performance shouldn’t be an issue unless, again, it’s an problem with the game itself.
Click to expand...
My post was about input latency, not general performance.

Indeed, a higher refresh rate would help with input latency. But there may be things you can tweak, to lower the input latency at any framerate. Such as the suggestions which I made.

Another thing you can try is the "fast" sync mode, for Vsync.
 
You need a beefy GPU, and settings that let you hit the refresh rate of your HMD. Peasants bellow 90 might still have issues ;)
 
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