Optimum Settingsto Eliminate Microstutters

I currently run AeroflyFS4 using either the Quest Link/cable or Virtual Desktop with a dedicated router. Unlike MSFS 2024, Aerofly FS4 VR performance does not seem to change much with different settings applied, either in the software or the Oculus Debug Tool. The biggest change was maxing out the resolution in the Quest Link device setting. That improved sharpness in the cockpit significantly.

I get good frame rates, but sometimes taking off I get micro-stutters (fluid motion, but not as fluid as at higher altitudes) with small, barely noticeable interruptions. I use a Quest 3 headset with an i9-14900hk CPU and an RTX 4080 GPU with the latest Nvidia drivers. I also have a dedicated WiFi 6 router used with Virtual Desktop. I've tweaked Nvidia Control Panel settings, but with no improvement.

As a side note, there seem to be many posts and YouTube videos on maximizing performance for MSFS 2020 (and now 2024), albeit many of them conflicting, but scare posts of settings for AeroFly. Although I've gotten the out-the-window performance on MSFS 2024 to be pretty good, the cockpit quality and stable head movements on AeroFly are unsurpassed, which still make it far and away my favorite VR sim platform.

Please post your settings and tips/tricks when you can...

Thanks for the reply. I did try Vulkan, but get terrible performance in the headset (distortion, flashing, etc). Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Downgrading the settings from Ultra to Medium or even Low did not seem to have any impact on the microstutters, although I did not really measure any fps changes. Ultra seems to give me good fps performance, so I just leave it at that.

After playing around with Virtual Display settings, I think I have reduced the stuttering significantly by making some counterintuitive changes:

• Virtual Desktop Streamer:
  1. SteamVR as OpenXR mode (I could not get VDXR to work - it always starts in SteamVR no matter what I set)
• In Virtual Desktop (in headset) Streaming tab:
  1. Codec: AV1 (allegedly works best with Quest 3)
  2. VR Bitrate: Set to less than 200. I use a dedicated WiFi6 router and the setting showed 200 Mb/s max, so naturally I used that. Setting lower reduces latency on performance overlay with no noticeable change in performance. Will experiment with lower settings. One of the unintuitive settings. It reduced the indicated latency shown in the performance overlay significantly.
  3. VR Graphics Quality: High. I was using Ultra with good performance, but I read in "guidetovr.com" that the Snapdragon Game Super Resolution setting later on in the Streaming tab does not work if VR Graphics Quality is set higher than "High" or frame rate is lower than 90
  4. VR Frame Rate: 90. Had it at 72 and 80 before, but see no performance decrease at 90 and set it per reasons in Item 3 above.
  5. Sharpening: Set at 80%. Had it at 100% before, thinking max is best, but "guidetovr.com" said that VD developers recommend at 75%, so I set it lower than 100. One of the unintuitive moves.
  6. SSW: set at Always Enable. Again, per "guidetovr.com", the optimal scenario is Always Enabled at 90 fps, and I tend to agree based on the results. Also shows a constant 90 fps in the overlay, making things seem smoother than turning off and getting half the frame rate.
  7. Snapdragon Super Resolution: Turned On based on Item 3 above.
  8. Video Buffering: On. I didn't play around with this too much. Apparently increases delay by 10 ms but gives smoother picture.
• SteamVR Settings
  1. When in-game and pressing the left indented menu button on the Quest controller, I seem to get a Steam VR menu particular to AeroFly (all these menus and voids/environments can get confusing). There was a multiplier setting similar to the one in the Aerofly VR settings. I changed this to 1.0 since it was overlapping with the 1.75 setting I had in the AeroFly VR Quality setting. Seems to have reduced gpu workload. Still confused about the resolution multiplier displayed in the performance overlay, which shows a value higher than 175%. The value does not appear to be a product of the two resolution settings (AeroFly and Steam VR multipliers).
• AeroFly Settings:
  1. Renderer: Vulkan without anti-aliasing turned on. I saw no difference between this and OpenGL but one of the responses above indicated Vulkan would reduce the stuttering. I know Vulkan gave me a huge performance increase in X-Plane on a Mac in 2D so left it at that.
  2. VR Quality: Set the slider to 1.75. Couldn't really tell much of a difference in quality (i.e. seeing numbers on displays clearly) so left it lower than the max 2.0, thinking it would help performance.

The above settings seem to me to have reduced the microstuttering and made the view out while flying close to the ground more fluid. Using Virtual Desktop wirelessly surprisingly gives me as good or better performance than using Oculus Link and the Debug Tool with the Oculus Link cable (another unintuitive development). My particular layout is below:

• PC: Dell Alienware Aurora R16 with 32 Gb, i9-14900hk cpu, RTX 4080 gpu
• Dedicated Netgear AX1800 WiFi6 router running in Access Point (AP) mode using the 5Ghz band (2.4 disabled), with router directly connected to PC via ethernet and the ethernet cable from my main Orbi router plugged into the Internet port of the Netgear.
• The TCA Airbus Captain pack (sidestick and throttle quadrant with airbrake and flap lever addons) mounted on a sim chair that allows adjustment of each so they roughly correspond to their locations in the A320 cockpits. This worked perfectly out-of-the-box in Aerofly , with all controls enabled and working perfectly, no calibration required. This is in contrast to MSFS 2024, which had a profile for this configuration, but the throttle did not work properly. Luckily I stumbled upon a YouTube video by a very helpful British gentleman who provided very detailed and complicated instructions to fix the throttle lever actikon.

AeroFly is far and away the best VR experience. I have almost 1000 hrs in the A320 and 787 and am trying to convince my wife I could land the real thing if ever both pilots get the bad chicken.

After flying some more, the microstutters are still there. although they seem to manifest themselves at different times. After experimenting some more, both with a link cable and using Virtual Desktop, I'm tending to agree with Blake2023's reply above that the microstutters are there no matter what settings I use, even going down to Low quality. So might as well max everything out since performance stays the same but microstutters are still there.

After more experimenting, I think I've gotten rid of the majority of the microstutters, although I was not as systematic as I should have been, so not sure which of the following helped. Here are the settings I used that worked (Quest 3, i9-14900 and RTX 4080, 32 Gb ram):

1. Virtual Desktop

• HIGH setting
• H264+ codec
• 72 FPS frame rate
• AUTO bitrate adjustment in Streamer - had it at max previously - not sure if this did anything)
• Sharpness at 60% in Streamer

2. AeroFly

• ULTRA settings
• Frame rate limit to 60 fps (don't remember if I tried this before - previously I tried to match VD and Aerofly for settings)
• 100% resolution multiplier in VR Quality (had it a 150 previously, When I tried 100 before, displays were blurry - not sure why they appear sharp now with these settings. VD Performance Monitor reports 150% effective res scale)

3. Win 11

• Game Mode OFF
• Turn OFF Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (never tried this before, so may be a factor)
• Delete as many start-up tasks as possible (this did not seem to impact fluidity in MSFS 2024 so not sure if this was main factor)

4. Nvidia Control Panel

• All DEFAULT settings

The above combination gives me a rock-solid unchanging 72 fps in the VD Performance Monitor (whereas previously with stutters it changed quite a bit, although always above 72). Going with H264+ seems to help with latency (around 45-55ms) over the supposedly superior (for Quest 3 at least) AV1.

I've been testing at Phoenix Sky Harbor taking off from 27R in the A321. I tracked microstutters by how the VASI lights looked as I passed them on the left. The above settings seem to give me stutter-free (and MUCH more enjoyable) flight everywhere.

Glad it helped. I used ChatGPT and Claude to wade through all the numerous (and more often than not conflicting) recommendations. The reasoning given by Claude for the HAGS being off is that it can actually interfere with VR-specific processes and the unique way VR applications need to handle frame timing and display synchronization. Apparently many VR apps already have their own sophisticated resource management.