VR experiences IL-2 Korea

[Dash,Polder]

Except for the fact I'm using third party hardware to actually interact and play the game, and the hardware itself can do awesome things, game sometimes being irrelevant to its own capability, the ability works across any game. 

So it's more a matter of perspective, tastes, and personal priorities.  I get as much satisfaction out of my hobby futzing with the peripherals and hardware as I do gaming, so there's that also, it keeps me hanging about and active.

Perfectly capable and fully functional game?  Have yet to see such a critter, maybe candy crush, it's going to be simple.   

[ACE-OF-ACES]

28 minutes ago, Dash,Polder said:

So it's more a matter of perspective, tastes, and personal priorities.  I get as much satisfaction out of my hobby futzing with the peripherals and hardware as I do gaming, so there's that also, it keeps me hanging about and active.

Perfectly capable and fully functional game?  Have yet to see such a critter, maybe candy crush, it's going to be simple.   

Amen

Edited October 3 by ACE-OF-ACES

[FlightBud]

I’ve noticed that I get higher and more consistent FPS when flying the Sabre than the F51.

has anyone else experienced this?

[GiftGruen]

Hmm. In a Sabre you are rather high up, while in a F51 rather low down ( where the game engine still has problems ) ?

I‘d be rather surprised if this really depends on the plane.

Edited October 3 by GiftGruen

[FlightBud]

24 minutes ago, GiftGruen said:

Hmm. In a Sabre you are rather high up, while in a F51 rather low down ( where the game engine still has problems ) ?

I‘d be rather surprised if this really depends on the plane.

It surprises me too but it happens consistently for me, and at similar altitudes when doing bombing runs.

Smooth in the Sabre and choppy and inconsistent in the F51… it’s weird…

[Panzerlang]

Today I'll be mostly testing ground-attack malarkey (napalm etc) to see if I can make the FPS chug. 😄

[YoYo]

I spent all of yesterday playing around with Cheeky Foveated DLSS, and it’s definitely a tool worth checking out for high-resolution headsets where you practically have to lower quality the rendering resolution (like the Pimax 8K, for example). It makes a difference, or rather, it can make a difference. It’s fairly easy to configure, though you have to experiment with it yourself. It’s great that you can smoothly adjust the center and edges to your liking and switch NVIDIA presets on the fly, from E to M (you can even have a different preset for the center versus the outer area; the key is to keep everything at default in the NVIDIA App without forcing specific presets). However, eye tracking doesn't work on the my Quest Pro, which would be really useful, so I’m waiting for a future fix to try it again (it works for me in MSFS2024, for instance, so it’s an issue specific to the IL-2: Korea implementation of Cheeky). If you need GPU power and don't mind flying with DLSS, it’s a very interesting solution. 👌

In IL-2: Korea, however, it didn't yield significant benefits for me; in my opinion, the problem there lies primarily with the game code, and I generally maintain 72 FPS/72Hz (so max) in 90% of situations. It’s an interesting tool that I recommend trying, especially with high-resolution headsets or when you're running low on GPU power (example series 40xx, 30xx of GPU). That said, it’s certainly not a "Holy Grail" for IL-2: Korea users. I also flew two ground-attack career missions, and as expected, Cheeky Foveated DLSS does absolutely nothing to fix the stuttering that occurs in the mission target area. The same goes for the airfield scenario with eight aircraft present on K-16 airfield near Seoul. In both cases, the stutter persisted exactly as before. This stems primarily from the way the code in IL-2 Korea operates and from CPU bottlenecks I suppose, the simulation's demands might be too complex for current CPUs, or perhaps the balance that the developers at 1C should have implemented is simply missing. I flew missions involving a front-line attack and a raid on a railway station. The stutter remained exactly the same; it persisted even after aggressively lowering quality using the "Cheeky Foveated DLSS" tool. Test flights over Seoul yielded the same results, essentially regardless of the settings used. During the descent, I get 72 frames per second; it holds steady for a while, but then objects start to jitter and the frame rate drops, happening at the exact same moments as without Cheeky Foveated DLSS. So, as you can see, even these modifications don't solve the issues. They might improve fluidity to some extent (e.g., with slightly weaker GPUs or very high-resolution headsets), but they fail to address the fundamental problem with VR in IL-2 Korea: code optimization. I wouldn't get too excited about using this mod of 3rd party just yet (it depends on what you're missing).

Interestingly, in my case, I have to confirm the developer's earlier statements (on my Quest). Since I generally maintain a stable frame rate (provided nothing is happening on the ground), the benefit of foveated rendering is negligible for me, less than a 10% advantages, while image quality suffers for a simple reason: sharpness is limited to the center. It felt like using Fresnel lenses four years ago ; I’ve long been accustomed to, and specifically bought this headset for Pancake lenses, which provide sharpness across the entire field of view. A quick glance to the six? No problem; quick looking up to spot an enemy in the sky above? No problem. With "Cheeky Foveated DLSS" (without eye tracking), that’s not an option; effectively, you’re not just rolling back the *IL-2 Korea* graphics to make it run passably in VR, but also setting your headset quality back by a few years. For "Cheeky Foveated DLSS," an HP Reverb would actually suffice, as the experience feels exactly the same. Enabling mirrors, grass, and canopy reflections causes further FPS degradation, even with "Cheeky Foveated DLSS" active. Personally, then, it makes no sense to me, it’s certainly no any "game changer" though I greatly appreciate the work put into the program and believe it might really appeal to some users. It does, however, perfectly illustrate the inherent issues with IL-2 Korea  problems that simply cannot be resolved through GPU-side tweaks only.

Here’s a topic about this mod; if you want, give it a try yourself:

Edited Sunday at 09:42 PM by YoYo

[GiftGruen]

I'd partly agree - and partly disagree.

First of all, you are of course absolutely right regarding Korea flaws in CPU bound situations.

Stuttering because of the number of ground and/or AI objects that are obviously not optimized in a way actual CPUs can sufficiently handle, will by no means be solved or even slightly bettered by this Mod.  It's up to the Devs to solve the stuttering by code optimization or better use of parallel threading.

Regarding the GPU bound situations I dont agree with you, but it's quite obvious why we have different conclusions regardng this. 

You drive a QuestPro with a 5090 which means that you can reach headset supersampling even with MSAA, so upscaling does not help you that much and making the outer areas lower quality on a headset which already has a quite low resolution indeed probably feels like going back to a Reverb G2.   Dont get me wrong, the QuestPro is a good Headset ( I owned one for quite a long time and really liked it ! ) - but in terms of resolution it is somewhat outdated. I mean - why should you use upscaling technology when you can achive raw brute force oversampling ? In your setup the question is rather DLAA vs MSAA but obvioulsly not DLSS. ( at least as long you dont try to use indirect lightning 😉 )

It's a complete other story already with a CrystalLight and even more so with Pimax Super and/or DreamAir ( or other headsets above 3x3K rendering resolution ) because even a 5090 in Korea cannot pump this resolution with reasonable settings and MSAA.  I tried it and ended at about 0.7 res factor in Pimax play. That's okay but quite a heavy 'undersampling' and loss of quality.

Korea in a 4K headset supersampled and MSAAx4 - that's our wet dream of course - but not achievable at the moment and not in the near future. Not with a 5090 ( and probably also not with a 6090/7090 - the gap is just too big) and I somehow dont believe that the Devs will find the missing 50% GPU somewhere in their graphics engine.

That's where Cheeky comes in.  In a 4K headset the Cheeky 'outer region' still has acceptable quality and the inner region comes near the 100% 4K optimum. 

So in the end it all depends on the specific hardware.

In Korea maybe a 9800X3D CPU would help best at the moment.  But I'm not sure if I am willing to thow any money in at the moment.

  

Edited Sunday at 09:19 AM by GiftGruen

[YoYo]

No. You’ve actually agreed 100% with exactly what I wrote above . I was talking about use cases for high-native-resolution headsets, the kind even an RTX 5090 struggles to handle. This might well be the best solution on the market from 3rd parties, for instance, for owners of top-tier Pimax headsets; that’s what I was referring to. P.S. I use "oversampling" myself, as you called it, since I fly with a 1.2 multiplier, though I do limit the FOV. For me, right now, that yields the best results, combined with FSR AA and without any DLSS upscaling. 

For some, Cheeky Foveated DLSS will work well, while for others, as we can see, well... let's just say it's a mixed bag. In any case, we still have to wait for optimization patches from 1C for Korea title.

Btw. If he improve the eye tracking, I’d gladly give it another try, because then the central area, in terms of the sharp image, could be reduced in size.

Edited Sunday at 09:48 AM by YoYo

[YoYo]

For some reason, I hadn't noticed before that there's now a VR section on the homepage of IL-2 Series / Korea. Interesting statement:

I'm pinning high hopes on point 4 in particular 😊.

Link:

https://store.pimax.com/pages/the-sky-over-korea-looks-different-in-vr?ref=il-2

[kmo1619]

I’m running a 9800X3D, RTX 5080, 64 GB RAM and a Quest 3S, which has a relatively low resolution compared to other headsets but works fine for me.

I’m getting the same problems whenever I attack an airfield or anything larger outside the optimized “Home by Christmas” campaign. I’m absolutely sure it’s not GPU-related, because there’s basically no difference between potato and high-end graphics settings — the jitter is always there.

And while there are obviously faster CPUs, the 9800X3D is still right at the top for gaming performance. So if this setup is struggling in those situations, I really think the bottleneck is somewhere in the single-player/AI workload rather than the graphics.

[Dash,Polder]

Hope we get some collaboration in eye tracking support some day.  

Why does the solution always arrive right after posting stuff.  

 

Pepper just gifted us Pimax Super users with fully functional eye tracking.  May work with other sets, but you'll have to find out yourselves.

Edited Sunday at 07:04 PM by Dash,Polder

[T24_Martin]

And the Devs need to figure out the bottlenecks. I also tried again today and somehow it fells as if there is no big difference in settings. It doesn't matter if I choose high or middle or lower resolution to 75%. 

Sure it is different but the impact is so small compared to other Sims. It feels like a heavy CPU bottleneck, especially when I read how many here do actually use high end GPUs and struggle with the same issues.

[GiftGruen]

3 hours ago, kmo1619 said:

And while there are obviously faster CPUs, the 9800X3D is still right at the top for gaming performance. So if this setup is struggling in those situations, I really think the bottleneck is somewhere in the single-player/AI workload rather than the graphics.

Are there ? Faster CPUs for gaming? Dont think so, maybe the 9850 by 2% ..

In the end it‘s indeed clear. These stuttering situations have nothing to do with GPU power or settings and even fastest CPUs struggle.  It‘s simply a coding optimization problem.

[kmo1619]

I played for a while yesterday, but eventually had to stop. Career mode stutters way too much during ground attacks, so I mainly play multiplayer instead — which unfortunately isn’t very populated because of these issues.

But the main reason I had to stop was the graphics since the patch. I’m flying around with only 5–8% load and a GPU that’s basically bored, yet after what feels like 500 meters the environment becomes so insanely blurry that entire rivers sometimes disappear. Trees vanish after a few hundred meters, and navigation is almost impossible because above 2,000 m everything just turns into one blurry green blob.

It’s such a shame... there’s so much incredible potential in this game.

[Voxman]

Has anybody tried Cheeky Foveated with a Varjo Aero headset?  

I also get an anti virus message with this program when extracting it.  Trojan:Win32/Posilod.CA!cl 

Edited Monday at 01:32 PM by Voxman

[Motoadve]

3 hours ago, Voxman said:

Has anybody tried Cheeky Foveated with a Varjo Aero headset?  

I also get an anti virus message with this program when extracting it.  Trojan:Win32/Posilod.CA!cl 

I tried it and it helps, better FPS and more resolution for sure.

I cannot get eye tracking to work, let me know if it works for you

I also get the virus message, looked everywhere and finally was able to find one without the virus detected message, I attached it here.

CheekyFoveatedDLSS-0.5.4-Standalone-release.zip

[Husar]

I was able to run "CheekyFoveatedDLSS 0.5.4 Fixed" with eye tracking on the Quest Pro through both VD (godlike resolution)and VDXR, and I was shocked. For the first time, during a skirmish  with ground-objects enabled , my game frame time dropped below 10 ms, averaging around 2–4 ms. This gives me a total motion-to-photon latency of around 30 ms. (7800X3D and 5070Ti). DLSS Quality in Korea. Preset J in fovea (0.40x040)

Edited Monday at 06:43 PM by Husar

[Husar]

1 hour ago, Motoadve said:

I cannot get eye tracking to work, let me know if it works for you

Try this build https://github.com/Pepper9881/CheekyFoveatedDLSS/releases/tag/0.5.4 

do not copy dxgi.dll into game folder

[Hotdognz]

On 10/5/2026 at 1:15 AM, YoYo said:

For some reason, I hadn't noticed before that there's now a VR section on the homepage of IL-2 Series / Korea. Interesting statement:

I'm pinning high hopes on point 4 in particular 😊.

Link:

https://store.pimax.com/pages/the-sky-over-korea-looks-different-in-vr?ref=il-2

That there is a pretty bold statement considering where Il2 Korea is with VR today out of the box no tweaking and no 3rd party tools.

After reading the latest VR comments I'm pretty happy I have not reinstalled it and gone back to IL2 GB and will revisit the forums again after the next patch to see how VR is going.

[MajorMagee]

If stuttering is the issue, is it related to compiling shaders?

It has been suggested that this app may help by precompiling all of the shaders.

Availalbe through GitHub

[YoYo]

6 hours ago, MajorMagee said:

If stuttering is the issue, is it related to compiling shaders?

I don't think so, because once shaders are loaded, they usually don't cause stuttering, provided you don't stray too far away, and the same applies to explosions. Yet, for instance, flying over active artillery, especially with other objects (like AAA) nearby, causes stuttering and frame drops in Career mode.  The same goes for the test over Seoul. The same happens with explosions, such as napalm, few bombs etc. and regardless of whether you have 4K textures enabled or disabled. This might help with lower-end or older GPUs. Maybe. Although I still think it's negligible in the simulator like IL-2 Korea.

Edited Tuesday at 05:44 AM by YoYo

[OAE]

The game hammers away at the CPU to calculate complex AI calculations, vehicle columns on the ground, and detailed cities. When the CPU is overloaded with logic, the graphics card has to "wait" for data, which results in a momentary micro-stutter. (same in GB)

This is primarily due to how the game's game engine handles CPU instructions, the DirectX 12 pipeline, and VR runtime synchronization.

In my experience, cranking up to 120Hz, using DLAA (which puts maximum load on the GPU without upscaling) or DLSS Quality forces the bottleneck onto the graphics card. The GPU takes longer to render each frame, giving my CPU the much-needed breathing room it needs to synchronize its threads. Then I get a little less micro stutter and 120 hz tricks my brain into thinking it's better. But this is just a theory/estimation....

[kmo1619]

18 hours ago, Husar said:

Try this build https://github.com/Pepper9881/CheekyFoveatedDLSS/releases/tag/0.5.4 

do not copy dxgi.dll into game folder

I cant run Cheeky without the dxgi.dll. Do I miss something?

 

[Husar]

46 minutes ago, kmo1619 said:

I cant run Cheeky without the dxgi.dll. Do I miss something?

 

I can, as others do , put only version.dll