VR experiences IL-2 Korea

[OAE]

I bought the game so I will of course check in to see if it gets better....., but I have my doubts that it will get better to the extent that others are. As I mentioned, I have received Pimax Crystal L., used for 3 months at a nice price. Very fun. (Great with a green fps counter again in dcs.) Good to not be "slave to a constant FPS" with Quest 3.
No stuttering in dcs with PCL even though the fps goes down but in Korea it is the same micro stuttering that makes me nauseous over time with both Q3 and PCL.
The best experience with Q3 was @yoyo's settings but as mentioned above I refuse to turn down the fov and resolution so much that it looks like a game from 1998....But some people think it's okay with a little stuttering, all of this is subjective.

[Voxman]

Any tips on video settings for night intercept missions?  I noticed that at my regular settings, with a gamma of 1.0, the sky landscape, etc.  all looks horrible in VR.  When looking at the projection on my monitor it looks normal.  I did turn the gamma down to about .65 and that seemed like it might be the answer, but if any one has tips or other settings so one can fly the night intercept missions it would be much appreciated.

[YoYo]

44 minutes ago, Voxman said:

Any tips on video settings for night intercept missions?  I noticed that at my regular settings, with a gamma of 1.0, the sky landscape, etc.  all looks horrible in VR.  When looking at the projection on my monitor it looks normal.  I did turn the gamma down to about .65 and that seemed like it might be the answer, but if any one has tips or other settings so one can fly the night intercept missions it would be much appreciated.

The night lighting has some bugs that aren't entirely clear-cut. It definitely requires some work on the developer's part. There's a pretty big issue here; check if HDR is enabled as well:

 

[Panthercules]

I initially had the same sort of weird/horrible results with night missions in VR, but somewhere along the way night started looking just fine for me.  You can check a couple of my posts in the thread YoYo mentioned above to see some settings combos that worked well for me at night in VR.  I'm not sure which specific settings did the trick or caused the problems in the first place, but those screenshots of settings might give you some clues as to how to fix it on your rig.

[SonicGBOMB]

That's odd, I'm running a 4080 Super with a Crystal light at full native and lots of settings turned up and its smooth as silk for me. I'm using 90hz mode locked to half frame rate in the Pimax settings and it gives a solid 45 frames pretty much no matter what. With a 4090 you should have no issues though the Ultrawide at full native would be much more of a GPU Hog than the Crystal Light, might need to use DLSS for that.

[SonicGBOMB]

On 8/31/2026 at 11:07 PM, Hotdognz said:

Its such a shame that VR in IL2 Korea needs A lot of tweaking to even make it run ok and then we have a real compromise in visual fidelity, even today after being in VR since the the original HTC Vive I still sit through WOW moments in DCS, GB and MSF2024, sadly this has not been the case in IL Korea and really it should have been a really big WOW moment being a new flight sim in 2026, a lot of my DCS squad mate who fly with me in DCS in our servers were looking for something new to fly in place of DCS flying full time and were waiting for my thoughts on IL2 Korea in VR as I was happy to test the waters, we even grabbed a server licence key ready to get a server set up, sadly I have told them to hold off and wait for now due to my experience with VR in Il2 Korea as its not a good experience.

Hopefully the dev spends some more time getting it to the point where even there graphic pre-sets for VR runs VR good (The VR pre set is pure rubbish) and no tweaking is required, I will periodically check in and re test when the next patch is released.

 

[GiftGruen]

47 minutes ago, SonicGBOMB said:

That's odd, I'm running a 4080 Super with a Crystal light at full native and lots of settings turned up and its smooth as silk for me. I'm using 90hz mode locked to half frame rate in the Pimax settings and it gives a solid 45 frames pretty much no matter what. 

Well - most( not all ) people don't like motion smoothing ( due to ghosting effects etc.) and therefore need to achieve true 90 or at least true 72hz.

[SonicGBOMB]

53 minutes ago, GiftGruen said:

Well - most( not all ) people don't like motion smoothing ( due to ghosting effects etc.) and therefore need to achieve true 90 or at least true 72hz.

Locking at half frame rate uses compulsive smoothing rather than smart smoothing (which has never worked well with Pimax). After experimenting with both I found compulsive causes far less ghosting to the point I don't really notice it to be honest, smart smoothing was horrendous... its a worthwhile trade-off for a buttery smooth experience.

Edited September 2 by SonicGBOMB

[Husar]

26 minutes ago, SonicGBOMB said:

Locking at half frame rate uses compulsive smoothing rather than smart smoothing (which has never worked well with Pimax). After experimenting with both I found compulsive causes far less ghosting to the point I don't really notice it to be honest, smart smoothing was horrendous... its a worthwhile trade-off for a buttery smooth experience.

Butter smooth at 45fps ?

[Dash,Polder]

1 hour ago, Husar said:

Butter smooth at 45fps ?

He's actually getting 90, with it locked at 45 in smart smoothing on a pimax, every other frame is artificially generated in between, so the hz is still 90 but actual game frames generated are locked at 45.   

Pimax is working on a whole new system for artificial frame generation, been at it for quite a while, so we can expect improvement in the future.  It's a whole new rewrite of frame generation code.  Seeing what they did with development of their own SLAM tracking over time hopes its on par, because SLAM these days for an internal tracking system is really good.  Not many HMD manufacturers have the resources or ability to develop from scratch their own integrated supporting systems.   

[GiftGruen]

1 hour ago, SonicGBOMB said:

Locking at half frame rate uses compulsive smoothing rather than smart smoothing (which has never worked well with Pimax). After experimenting with both I found compulsive causes far less ghosting to the point I don't really notice it to be honest, smart smoothing was horrendous... its a worthwhile trade-off for a buttery smooth experience.

Hmm. Maybe at least worthwile to try again with locked framerate. My past experiences with smoothing weren't good so I put this on my 'NoNo'-list, but since technques change and/or progress, also 'NoNo'-lists need to be validated from time to time.

[YoYo]

2 hours ago, SonicGBOMB said:

Locking at half frame rate uses compulsive smoothing ...

Enabling any form of motion reprojection doesn't produce the same image quality as disabling it, both in terms of smoothness and quality. First, you limit frame rates; generally, even if the system adds missing frames, the image isn't smooth. This is very noticeable if you're running a test flight and only look at the side, right or left, and at trees and other objects like buildings (also in dogfight with quickly passing planes) —it's a kind of image shaking that doesn't occur when using headset with reprojection disabled. For me, this is unacceptable and creates a completely different experience (I use 72Hz mode without reprojection in absolutely every simulator—DCS, IL-2GB, and MSFS2024). But obviously, some people prefer Fords, others Mitsubishis; one person doesn't mind being on a 2D 60Hz monitor, while another sees the difference and only accepts the image at 100Hz+. Reprojection also slightly degrades image sharpness, as two frames are always separated. This means it's not as sharp as with reprojection turned off. Personally, that's another drawback for me, but to each their own .

[Picchio]

17 minutes ago, YoYo said:

Enabling any form of motion reprojection doesn't produce the same image quality as disabling it, both in terms of smoothness and quality. First, you limit frame rates; generally, even if the system adds missing frames, the image isn't smooth. This is very noticeable if you're running a test flight and only look at the side, right or left, and at trees and other objects like buildings (also in dogfight with quickly passing planes) —it's a kind of image shaking that doesn't occur when using headset with reprojection disabled. For me, this is unacceptable and creates a completely different experience (I use 72Hz mode without reprojection in absolutely every simulator—DCS, IL-2GB, and MSFS2024). But obviously, some people prefer Fords, others Mitsubishis; one person doesn't mind being on a 2D 60Hz monitor, while another sees the difference and only accepts the image at 100Hz+. Reprojection also slightly degrades image sharpness, as two frames are always separated. This means it's not as sharp as with reprojection turned off. Personally, that's another drawback for me, but to each their own .

But locking framerate doesn't necessarily imply using ASW/Motion Smoothing or similar.

If frame pacing is constant enough, the experience can be good. I used to do that with GB, back when I had a 6900 XT and a Reverb G2 locked at 45 fps. Even fast moving scenes were more than tolerable. There are some details pertaining the method used to lock the framerate and the induced latency which I completely ignored at the time (but in all honesty I didn't notice anything wrong with latency back then).

Never hurts to try.

Edited September 2 by Picchio

[YoYo]

11 minutes ago, Picchio said:

But locking framerate doesn't necessarily imply using ASW/Motion Smoothing or similar.

In this case, we're talking about a lockout resulting from ASW/MR (45/90), etc., and not a lockout FPS in the simulator or drivers. This is generally the worst option, although I know people who don't mind it and fly anyway.

Edited September 2 by YoYo

[Picchio]

19 hours ago, YoYo said:

In this case, we're talking about a lockout resulting from ASW/MR (45/90), etc., and not a lockout FPS in the simulator or drivers. This is generally the worst option, although I know people who don't mind it and fly anyway.

What I am saying is that it's possible to avoid using syntethic frames altogether (in my case I had limited the framerate through OpenXR Toolkit, not via drivers).

Edited September 3 by Picchio

[Hotdognz]

10 hours ago, SonicGBOMB said:

That's odd, I'm running a 4080 Super with a Crystal light at full native and lots of settings turned up and its smooth as silk for me. I'm using 90hz mode locked to half frame rate in the Pimax settings and it gives a solid 45 frames pretty much no matter what. With a 4090 you should have no issues though the Ultrawide at full native would be much more of a GPU Hog than the Crystal Light, might need to use DLSS for that.

Well ill give that ago nothing to lose, but words would mean more on your settings you are using with a with a pic, at least gives me a ref point for silky smooth

[Motoadve]

Its not only not smooth, resolution is low, it does not look good at all, I have a 5090 and AMD 9800X 3D its runs bad in VR

[Hotdognz]

18 hours ago, SonicGBOMB said:

That's odd, I'm running a 4080 Super with a Crystal light at full native and lots of settings turned up and its smooth as silk for me. I'm using 90hz mode locked to half frame rate in the Pimax settings and it gives a solid 45 frames pretty much no matter what. With a 4090 you should have no issues though the Ultrawide at full native would be much more of a GPU Hog than the Crystal Light, might need to use DLSS for that.

In my Pimax software I can see nothing that gives me an option to lock 90mhz mode to half frame rates, I only see these options, where about is it

[OAE]

Big difference with meta's ASW and the Pimax system.

Pimax's system (often called Smart Smoothing in PiTool/Pimax Play) does exactly the same job, but does it far more efficiently. A significantly smoother experience than Meta's ASW.

While the Meta Quest 3 is a fantastic all-in-one headset, the PCVR compression and ASW technology fall through for enthusiasts. If your goal is maximum fluidity without visual noise when the hardware is pushed to the edge, there is no doubt: Pimax's system delivers a far more "smooth" and seamless VR experience with smart smoothing.

I have both, quest 3 and PCL, I have put away the Q3...

[Husar]

2 minutes ago, OAE said:

Big difference with meta's ASW and the Pimax system.

Pimax's system (often called Smart Smoothing in PiTool/Pimax Play) does exactly the same job, but does it far more efficiently. A significantly smoother experience than Meta's ASW.

While the Meta Quest 3 is a fantastic all-in-one headset, the PCVR compression and ASW technology fall through for enthusiasts. If your goal is maximum fluidity without visual noise when the hardware is pushed to the edge, there is no doubt: Pimax's system delivers a far more "smooth" and seamless VR experience with smart smoothing.

I have both, quest 3 and PCL, I have put away the Q3...

I can say SSW is superior to the ASW on quest. The best on market in Valve smoothing. 

[TCW_Brzi_Joe]

1 hour ago, Hotdognz said:

n my Pimax software I can see nothing that gives me an option to lock 90mhz mode to half frame rates

It is next option after smart smoothing / reprojection; Lock to half frames.

50 minutes ago, Husar said:

can say SSW is superior to the ASW on quest. The best on market in Valve smoothing. 

All of them are ok-ish. Pimax repro is fast, simple and kinda sharper, but not so smooth as from steamvr. And sometimes it starts with error (watery effect), just restart headset (do not close game for that).

Edited September 3 by TCW_Brzi_Joe

[Dash,Polder]

The only issue with smart smoothing I suffer in Korea is with propellers, they get a watery wave going on through certain portions of the arch when the lighting is turned a certain way with the sun.  Otherwise it's not even noticeable you have it on in a jet.   If and when pimax releases their new version and it fixes the prop arch water wave I'll crank it on and go back to 90hz, 72hz with it off works dandy for now, no complaints, pretty much everything that counts is cranked up.  Max my system can pull with settings and pixel number generated is 82 fps when in 90 mode.  That is the 10% they dismissed as not worth the effort................

[OAE]

Wow...., as mentioned before I went from Quest 3 to Pimax Crystal Light. Got tips about 120hz with halving the fps to 60. Let me put it simply, best experience I've had so far, a little shocked. Same in DCS, why it's so smooth to halve the fps in 120hz versus 72 and 90 hz I don't understand. (not smarth smoothing) And a crystal clear graphics. (no AA needed with such a resolution)

[Picchio]

39 minutes ago, OAE said:

Wow...., as mentioned before I went from Quest 3 to Pimax Crystal Light. Got tips about 120hz with halving the fps to 60. Let me put it simply, best experience I've had so far, a little shocked. Same in DCS, why it's so smooth to halve the fps in 120hz versus 72 and 90 hz I don't understand. (not smarth smoothing) And a crystal clear graphics. (no AA needed with such a resolution)

Because 60 fps are better than 45 and 38 🤣

[OAE]

18 minutes ago, Picchio said:

Because 60 fps are better than 45 and 38 🤣

No, more stutter with 72 and 90 hz. With Quest 3 it was the opposite

Edited September 3 by OAE