Posts by gzt007

I see something similar north of Chicago near the Wisconsin border.

One of the reasons I love AeroFly FS4 is the sharpness and stability of the jetliner cockpits. it's relatively easy to read the screens, unlike MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024, where the cockpits (standard A320 as an example) were fuzzy and jittery with head motion. The only solution was to run TAA instead of DLSS, which slowed down the frame rates but gave passable legibility, although nothing like AeroFly.

I pored over all the blogs, and even enlisted various AIs (Grok seems to be the best for this purpose) to get the settings that would make the cockpit screens and controls sharper, to no avail. I had just about given up, when I decided to download the free A320 from flybywire.com into MSFS 2020. Imagine my surprise when I got into my Quest 3 headset and was greeted with cockpit displays that were crystal clear and sharp, with the settings unchanged,

Asking Grok about this prompted the opinion that cockpit clarity is highly dependent on the resolution of cockpit textures when the plane is modelled. I'm wondering if that's part of the reason AeroFly is so sharp in VR, and whether even better results can be obtained by upping the resolution on the textures when modelling the cockpit.

Any thoughts would be appreciated...

I fly exclusively in VR, and one recent thing I've tried that makes the experience more immersive is running LiveATC in a browser when I'm flying. The audio feeds into my Quest 3 goggles, and I usually select the Center or nearest airport where I'm flying. Would it be possible to somehow link the position of the aircraft with the corresponding ATC area and feed the audio through the headset? I'm not sure LiveATC has an API that would facilitate this.

Is there any reason for providing this option in the menu? If someone was worried about disk space, they just wouldn't download it. Does disabling it provide any benefits?

Just to reinforce the M4 purchase decision, let me add that I ran Aerofly on my M1 Mac at 4k resolution and it still gave great smooth frame rates (well above 30-40 if I remember). The fact that X-Plane 12 ran at about 7 fps at the same resolution also credits the Aerofly software team. The M4 should be significantly better.

I can also vouch for the fact that Aerofly FS4 runs well on an M1 Mac. In fact, it ran so well that it became a "gateway drug" that led me to purchase a Quest 3 headset and a 4080 gaming PC for the incredible VR experience. What the M1 Mac could do with Aerofly without a dedicated GPU was incredible.

Quote from TomC RLG

That command is only used to startup SteamVR in Oculus mode (oculus runtime) if, like FS2/4 it supports Oculus mode. It can only be used when using Link or Air Link. Virtual Desktop doesn't actually use the official oculus sdk's, just their hacked version of it so the command doesn't do anything. VD mainly uses SteamVR as it's openxr runtime, and sometimes VDXR if the app supports it (like msfs2020).

I'm not sure why after deleting this from both your shortcut and Steam app properties launch code it still shows up. Maybe just go to your SteamVR settings and make sure you've selected SteamVR as your openxr runtime. Plus, go to your VD streamer app and select SteamVR instead of VDXR. Also, make sure you haven't done a silly regedit mod previously.

Thanks for the reminder about silly RegEdit mods. I should write these various hacks down when I try them. Will look in the registry…

When I try to run Aerofly FS4 from the "Games" tab in Virtual Desktop, I get a warning that the "-othervr" argument is specified and it asks me to continue or cancel the request. When I continue, the Meta Link void shows up for a fraction of a second but is then replaced by the SteamVR void and the program runs fine. It also seems to run fine if I just start it from the Steam window rather than the VD "Games" tab. I used to have a shortcut with the "-othervr" argument when I was trying to force it to run OpenXR, but have since deleted it, so I'm not sure where VD thinks the argument is. I don't have any arguments specified in the Steam app properties for Aerofly. Ihave tried reinstalling Aerofly to see if the argument disappears in VD, but it persists.

I know it's no big deal, and doesn't affect the performance of the app, but it's annoying that I can't figure out where VD is getting the argument. If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate it.

The FSWidgets app is great - perfect for those long haul flights where I can just leave it on autopilot and check on my iPad when I get close to the destination so I can get back in VR and shoot the approach. The developer responded immediately when I had connection issues (my fault). Highly recommended…

Quote from Jet-Pack (IPACS)

The bottleneck isn't how much the CPU or GPU could perform whilst doing their own business (CPU/GPU usage), the bottleneck is when the CPU needs to tell the GPU what to do and what data needs to be processed next (VRAM upload speed). When this process isn't implemented correctly then you're wasting a lot of performance and have stutters and low FPS regardless of the CPU/GPU usage. So the actual CPU/GPU usage doesn't really tell you much about the actual performance that you can get. The fact that there is plenty of CPU and GPU usage left to spare is a sign of the high amount of optimization we have done and how little extra code needs to run to get a fluid simulation. If the load is higher for the same result then you're just wasting unnecessary clock cycles and do the task inefficiently. So the goal is to get the CPU/GPU usage down as much as possible if you want to optimize a game to be able to be run on a handheld Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch or low end hardware like a mobile phone. This also shows that the RTX 4080 is probably overkill for Aerofly FS because we're not using it to it's full potential for ray tracing, voxel cloud shading, AI supersampling etc.

Thanks for the perspective on this. When shopping for a PC (specifically to run Aerofly FS4 in VR) I tried everything from an RTX 3060ti to both an RTX 4060 and RTX 4070, with at least an i7-13700 CPU. The performance was not as good as with the RTX 4080 (granted that I did not do a lot of trial and error with the various settings as I did with the 4080). My impression was that I needed a more powerful GPU. I also noticed that the performance in terms of fps did not seem to change much when I went lower than "Ultra" settings, just a decrease in visible objects and terrain complexity.

After trying VR, there's definitely no going back to a 2D screen. I have to thank your team for the incredible VR experience, especially when compared to the other guys. Having pretty much solved the fluidity and stutter issues, I'm now trying to optimize cockpit clarity. I've tried increasing the render resolution in Aerofly (going above 150 did not seem to provide any improvement), but found that leaving it at 100 and increasing the render resolution in Steam VR settings gave better fps performance with the same clarity. Any recommendations on that would be appreciated.

For all the performance that Aerofly provides in VR, I've noticed that it doesn't seem to tax the CPU and GPU much. I never hear my fans spool up when running Aerofly (unlike MSFS 2024 and X-Plane, which very noticeably increase fan speed). Looking at the Nvidia app CPU and GPU utilization percentages, the GPU load never exceeds 60% and the CPU is mostly at 10%. This seems counter to the prevailing narrative that flight sims are generally CPU-bottlenecked. I have an i9-14900/RTX 4080 combo with 32Gb and fly at Aerofly Ultra settings in VR using Virtual Desktop and a dedicated 6E router. Even though the utilizations don't appear maxed out, it seems that the performance in terms of frame rates and stutter isn't entirely effortless, making me think there are setting optimizations s that could increase performance further.

Is there any reason Aerofly FS4 performs so well without maxing out CPU/GPU utilization? Both MSFS and X-Plane seem to tax both much more without anywhere near the performance.

Thanks very much for the reply - thought I was doing something wrong. I tried Meta Quest Link with Air Link, but it does not work for some reason - always get an error. For now, SteamVR with Virtual Desktop seems to work great, but always trying for better performance...

I run Aerofly FS4 in VR mode exclusively using a Quest 3 headset under Virtual Desktop with a dedicated 6E router. I used to run it with the hard cable and Meta Quest Link, which worked well, but Virtual Desktop seems equal or better. However, with Virtual Desktop, even if I set the Streamer to VDXR, when I start Aerofly the gray Meta void appears for a split second and the SteamVR void (mountains) takes over. This is even after selecting "Start with OpenXR" instead of SteamVR when I hit "Play" in Steam. Is there any way to run Aerofly under Virtual Desktop without using SteamVR? I deleted SteamVR to see if it would force using OpenXR but I got an error and the game would not start in VR.

The AI chatbots can be pretty useful. I asked both ChatGPT and Claude about setting recommendations for optimum performance in VR and the tips they gave helped. At the very least, both summarized the often conflicting recommendations on the web.

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.

Thanks for the detailed instructions. I was wondering how current the Aerofly database is; some of the departures look strange - looping on themselves. I'm trying to learn learn a complete flight plan, from cold/dark start to programming the FMS (or whatever Airbus calls it).

Has anyone compared the standard arrivals (STARs) and departures (SIDs) to the actual arrivals/departures for airports. For example, flying out of Palm Springs towards LAX in the A321 using a departure available in the Navigation menu sends me into the mountains west of Palm Springs. I've noticed the same on some arrivals, where the waypoint altitudes shown would fly me into mountains on a night approach. Maybe I'm misunderstanding...?

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.

I've only been able to run the Oculus OpenXR using the link cable (i.e.the gray "void"?). No matter what I do (including setting the default OpenXR in the Meta Link app beforehand), Virtual Desktop always defaults to SteamVR (i.e. the "sunset" void) even if I started the game specifying that it open in OpenXR. Trying the same with Airlink in the Meta app just gives me errors stating that the game cannot start. I'm still confused about which void I'm in half the time...

Are these commands documented anywhere? I went to "Advanced Settings" in the Tutorials but could not find it.