VR experiences IL-2 Korea

[platypus65]

After tinkering with settings, I have a steady 90 FPS on my Dream Air Slam. I started out trying the OpenXR and was frustrated with the FPS. So I tried OpenVR using the SBOYS3 driver and set my upscaling to FSR Balanced. That gave me a steady 90 FPS – with occasional choppiness. I then set my SteamVR resolution to 3852 x 3256, and that smoothed things out.

I do have a beefy machine wth an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, 96 GB of Ram, and a Nvidia RTX 5090.

[Merlins51]

The menu moving with your head isn't nice.

However, even worse for me is the cockpit moving with my head when I get close to its limits.  If I lean forward, lean back to much or lean left or right the whole cockpit view pushes with me (instead of me simply clipping through the model).  Hugely immersion breaking and nauseating.    I can't even look down in the cockpit without the whole floor moving away from me.  Honestly can't imagine who thought that was a good idea.  EDIT:  Apparently this can be turned off in the settings by disabling "Limit VR view".  

I have a 9800x3d, 5080, 64gb playing with Quest 3 using wired link.  Out of the box the world textures are featureless and blurry.  Will have to play with some of the settings and look at others' comments to see if I can make it better.  

Edited Thursday at 10:23 PM by Merlins51

[tikijoetots37]

Ditto, have a 5090, 14900k, 64 Gigs of DDR5 with a Pimax Super MicroOled, I mean you can't even buy a system better than that right now, even if you wanted to, and the Performance is pretty bad. I've even cranked my headsets resolution down to 75% of its resolution and the performance/Fidelity balance is not even a little close to what I can pull in DCS. I'm having to crank graphics so low it looks pretty bad, bad enough that I won't play it. I'm hoping I'm just missing so settings somewhere. Also, what is up with the Vomit Sim UI simulator in VR.   

Edited Thursday at 10:01 PM by tikijoetots37

[airsheep_VR]

1 hour ago, TCW_Brzi_Joe said:

Yes, moving window is very bad.

It is called "default view" in Korea, you need to set it again in necksaver (it works). 
EDIT: However Korea has same Necksaver issue as DCS; when sitting in cockpit I need to grab my Pimax controller and press and hold pi button to recenter VR to my seat. Only then my turning left/right with necksaver will be the same.

 

First test with Pimax Crystal OG - not optimised. 30-50 fps. My head hurts from slideshow on ground.

 

Somehow it does not work here. Necksafer tells 'not yet centered in game' even it is centered and the center button is working during game. Weird. But at least zoom is working. Step by step going forward 🙂

 

[TCW_Brzi_Joe]

4 minutes ago, airsheep_VR said:

Necksafer tells 'not yet centered in game'

You need to go in Necksaver, click "set center button" and choose same as in game. It works.

How did you find zoom? How is called in keybindings?

[Traffic]

5 minutes ago, TCW_Brzi_Joe said:

You need to go in Necksaver, click "set center button" and choose same as in game. It works.

How did you find zoom? How is called in keybindings?

Key binding - Cockpit View - Zoom Controls - Zoom Cockpit View - Snap to 3

[YoYo]

3 hours ago, Jade_Monkey said:

• Cockpit is fine, but the world oustide seems to have a lag, like it's moving at a different refresh rate. Very annoying.

Noticed the same. This issue is connected with canopy reflection (problem of effects from canopy looks like). Next thing to fix.

[AcesHigh]

Bad performance on reverb g2 with a 4080 super in VR.  Bigger issues is that the textures never seem to load sporadically, ground textures next to the plane, or when diving the ground textures below - it's literally like flying in mine craft at times.  I thought for sure I was running in low settings but checked and most are set to high / ultra - even when it loads still looks kind of low resolution in too many places.  

[Dash,Polder]

Little tip on the zoom buttons, you can have the max zoom on one button, and put a low zoom on another, and when you press both you'll get the intermediary zoom in between.  Save you on some valuable button real estate. 

[Hotdognz]

3 hours ago, YoYo said:

My first impressions in VR are quite mixed, but mostly positive. 👍

• Performance - I'm getting quite good results on Meta Quest, with a constant 72 frames (only free flight is fine for now), when I'm close to the ground and over cities as well. For me, it's no worse than the previous IL-2 (even though I have an RTX 5090) outside of cities. My VRAM is around 9-10GB, so it's very reasonable.
• Unfortunately, during the game I had 4 crashes to desktop, for no reason (?)
• Graphically it's ok, a bit like MSFS, I have x2 antialiasing MSAA and everything is quite sharp (in VR I use OpenXR Toolkit) + upscaling (about 3000x6000 pixels in the image)
• I had to increase the ground distance to x4 because the default image looked very bad, the textures on the ground had a lot of blur from the height
• the cockpits look great!

• A big problem is WORLD SCALE. The world is a bit too small in VR. We have IDP + and -, but... unfortunately, there's a problem here. This function, although it displays data, doesn't work. I don't see any difference at all. In the IL-2 BoX, I fly at +9, and it's just right. Here, whether -30 or +30, everything looks the same. Please fix this ASAP!
• Why is this message displayed to customers who purchased the title? I understand beta testing or some free copies on YouTubers, please remove this!

• Another thing, I don't know how it was tested, but the lights at night are rendered in one eye! It looks bad. Here's a screenshot of both eyes in VR. The problem is clearly visible. In VR, one screen shows a different image than the other. Please fix this too. Check the city lights:

• Why does the menu move with your head in VR? In IL-2, BoX stays still, but here it moves from right to left. This is also a bug, please bring it to your attention. I don't know why this is happening?
• The title definitely requires optimization for cities and buildings. Here, on a low, fast traverse, I'm getting 50-33 FPS. The city doesn't look like New York, and it performs much worse than in DCS, where it's much more detailed. The frame rate should at least be increased. Maybe there's a problem with LOD over the city?

Generally, it's a beta, at 75% level, there is big potential and I like it ❤️ but it also requires quite a lot of work in terms of VR. Fingers crossed for good results for VR users!

I had the same amount of VR crashes, I was told it was due to OpenXR tool kit, I'm going to disable it tonight and try again.

I was also about to post the same items you have but your extensive post has nailed nearly all the issues in VR.

Great to see so many DCS players giving this new title ago.

Thanks

[ronht]

I finally found settings that make this look good and play really well in VR

My setup -

Nvidia 4096 32gig Ram
Pimax Dream Air (Sam version)
 
Run the game in OpenXR (make sure OpenXR Toolbox is disabled for IL2)

In Pimax Play 

Refresh rate 90hz
Redner Quality Auto
GPU upscaling NIS - Balanced

In IL2 Korea Graphic Settings 

Graphics Quality - Balanced
Screen Resolution 1280x768   
VR - Open XR
Horizon Draw Distance - 100
Canopy Reflections - Off
Shadows - Medium
Clouds - Extreme 
Mirrors Medium
Anti Aliasing - FXAA
Aliasing Rate - 2
Target FPS - 60
Landscape Filter - Sharp
4k Textures - Off

Hope this helps!
 

[YoYo]

I asked Luke to add a bug section for VR. Such a section is missing, but as you can see, it's necessary. These aren't often the same bugs as in 2D (such as left and right eye rendering issues, and the 1CGS team should be clear that this is VR-related). If Luke creates such a section, please report bugs there: 

https://forum.il2-series.com/forum/58-technical-issues-and-bug-reports/

 

[YoYo]

5 hours ago, Hotdognz said:

I had the same amount of VR crashes, I was told it was due to OpenXR tool kit, I'm going to disable it tonight and try again.

I need to check this out too. However, in the IL-2 Korea, the IPD settings have a bug – it doesnt work  and the cocpits are too small, creating a Lego-man effect.

The only solution is the OpenXR Toolkit + World scale opition (for me 113%) , which again causes random crashes. Tough choice, LOL .

[Picchio]

9 hours ago, Antonovomatic said:

Since OpenXRToolkit has been unsupported/abandoned for years, and AFAIK the IL-2 devs say it is incompatible with GB you guys really shouldn't be giving input based on use of it.  I'm not sure what the value-add would even be since the foveated rendering (Standout feature prior to Quadviews for DCS and MSFS) was never functional w/IL-2.
There is little others can glean from your anecdotes without knowing:
-HMD  
-VR API  
-Render resolution (including multipliers applied via SteamVR)
-DLSS resolution setting/upscaling ratio

Last point especially - there is a gargantuan gulf in workload between least and most intensive DLSS settings.  DLAA/native res using a modern preset (K, M, L) is almost certainly far more intensive than 2x or very possibly even 4x MSAA.

Please listen to this guy and post your settings along with the reports. At least we might actually learn something.

[enyak]

System:
Quest 3 + RTX 4090 + 13900k + 128GB RAM

VR Performance is disappointing. I see a lot of the bad stability behavior of IL-2 in Korea again. (Choppy FPS, framedrops). Usually DLSS should boost performance a lot but here it doesn't seem to be enough to solve anything but basic scenaris. Some kind of fixed foveated rendering option should be considered by the devs if base performance cannot be increased otherwise.

[Blooddawn1942]

Also very mixed experience here which matches the things that have been addressed here before. 

World scale is definitely off... 

Very bad ground textures with random areas not loading fast enough into hi res

There is a lot of polishing to be done here, but since we're at the very beginning of the journey I remain confident. 

[TimSell75]

At the moment VR is pretty much unusable for me (i9 14900k, RTX 5090 and Pimax Crystal Super). Already the menu is extremely shaky. 

I could not really test flying as I am not able to reset the view to where the head should normally be. I am flying with my head pinned against the instruments. 

[airsheep_VR]

9 hours ago, TCW_Brzi_Joe said:

You need to go in Necksaver, click "set center button" and choose same as in game. It works.

How did you find zoom? How is called in keybindings?

I know and it is working in Il2 BoX, but not here. Weird, but anyway thanks for your help. Ill try to reinstall necksafer.

[Sneaksie]

Have you tried FSR upscaling in VR? I would go with FSR, AA off of course, Open XR API, toolkit off, native HMD resolution, most other settings to high. You shouldn't have problems on monster cards like 4090 or 5090, on xx80 too - we showed the game at exhibition on 4080 with Reverb G2 and I think Pimax used a gaming laptop at US exhibition.

Don't go for crazy supersampling like 200% you may have used to right away, try to keep it simple - the less extra steps and filters you have between the game and VR the better.

[brickcommander]

8 minutes ago, Sneaksie said:

Have you tried FSR upscaling in VR? I would go with FSR, AA off of course, Open XR API, toolkit off, native HMD resolution, most other settings to high. You shouldn't have problems on monster cards like 4090 or 5090, on xx80 too - we showed the game at exhibition on 4080 with Reverb G2 and I think Pimax used a gaming laptop at US exhibition.

Don't go for crazy supersampling like 200% you may have used to right away, try to keep it simple - the less extra steps and filters you have between the game and VR the better.

FSR over DLSS even for 50 series nvidia cards?

[Sneaksie]

I don't know since I don't have a 50 series card, please try FSR and DLSS. Also if you're using Pimax @BrigadierFox pointed out on the beta forum you need to make sure that OpenXR is selected in the Pimax app.

Also in multiplayer the performance might be much better than in a busy singleplayer mission because the server calculates other objects - if you're limited by CPU this limit would be gone.

[Cellinsky]

3 hours ago, YoYo said:

I need to check this out too. However, in the IL-2 Korea, the IPD settings have a bug – it doesnt work  and the cocpits are too small, creating a Lego-man effect.

The only solution is the OpenXR Toolkit + World scale opition (for me 113%) , which again causes random crashes. Tough choice, LOL .

You could try openxr through steamvr. It has a nice slider for worldscale-tuning. Render-resolution can be tuned also very fine. I know, steamvr has a bad reputation for having to much overhead and bad performance. But its 2026 and they have come a long way since. Supports native openxr or openvr. I use both Pimaxplay/openxr and Steamvr/openxr depending on the games engine. Worth a try and an easy switch.

[enyak]

Another thing. The camera "pushing" / displacement when reaching the limits of what the game considers safe "VR space" is still present as it was in IL-2 BoX. I consider this unacceptable in 2026 and I think the wider VR community will reject the game based on this. Even when just leaning in for a closer look at the dials (without physically making contact with the board) the view is already getting displaced.

[robzerg]

5 hours ago, ronht said:

I finally found settings that make this look good and play really well in VR

My setup -

Nvidia 4096 32gig Ram
Pimax Dream Air (Sam version)
 
Run the game in OpenXR (make sure OpenXR Toolbox is disabled for IL2)

In Pimax Play 

Refresh rate 90hz
Redner Quality Auto
GPU upscaling NIS - Balanced

In IL2 Korea Graphic Settings 

Graphics Quality - Balanced
Screen Resolution 1280x768   
VR - Open XR
Horizon Draw Distance - 100
Canopy Reflections - Off
Shadows - Medium
Clouds - Extreme 
Mirrors Medium
Anti Aliasing - FXAA
Aliasing Rate - 2
Target FPS - 60
Landscape Filter - Sharp
4k Textures - Off

Hope this helps!
 

This is very similar to the settings I've ended up with on my 6800 XT, the only difference being I've toned the clouds down to Low. With this I get 50-60 fps, which is a little on the low side, but just about acceptable. If I can just manage to gain an additional 10 fps it'll be perfect! I can't seem to find the Target FPS option, but I'm probably not seeing the wood for the trees.

My general impressions:

- Lighting is, for me, the greatest upgrade, as colours look much more natural (than GB), and aircraft colours are clearly distinguishable. The reflections are great too!

- Because of the above (I think) I find aircraft identification much easier than in GB

- Aircraft damage is fun; I love seeing the black smoke starting to emerge, often followed shortly after by flames.  I've also seen the odd aircaft explode mid air, which is quite spectacular!

- Landscape is a mixed bag - sometimes looks OK, other (most) times looks very blurry or blocky. There seems to be some issue loading the detailed textures in. Also the trees have a lot of shimmer and flickering, especially with shadows, which is quite annoying.

- The interface moving around is quite nauseating initially, though I'm now getting used to it (around 5-6 hours in). Nonetheless this is a key item to fix for me!

- The museum is bugged (can't click on any of the icons), and when selecting different views the camera jumps around all over the place, which is just awful in VR

 

One item I can't understand is why there's no first person views outside the aircraft  -when pressing the button for the pilot (i.e. me) to exit the aircraft, I then get to watch an animation of the pilot model climb out. However I only really want to walk around the aircraft in first person. 

 

[MoleUK]

Is DLSS even working in VR? It felt like it wasn't initializing at all, as the image was still full of aliasing and I didn't really see any performance bump. This was via OpenXR, maybe I should try OpenVR.

Unfortunately the head movement restrictions feel just as over the top as they did in GB to me. I can't get very close to anything without the head movement restrictions kicking in.

And yes the game scale doesn't feel right. I think you can alter that with OpenXRtoolkit.

Currently the game both looks worse and runs worse than DCS in VR for me on a 3090. This is semi expected given that I rely very heavily on quadviews for DCS performance, but it still feels like something is iffy.

Flatscreen looks and runs great for me by comparison.

Edited Friday at 10:55 AM by MoleUK