Skyrim – Can somebody help my dreams come true?!

[mikester1980]

Hey, guys/gals. First time poster. Got an Oculus Rift a couple of months back almost exclusively for the purpose of playing Skyrim in VR. The opportunity to experience this amazing game as if I was actually in that world would be nothing less than a dream come true! (So I’m a nerd. What’s your point?)

The problem is I’ve never been able to get the game to run anything higher than 15-30 FPS outdoors (indoors is mostly fine) and that makes it unplayable. Dream squelched! I’ve read all the posts I can find on the Vorpx forums and elsewhere on the internet and can’t get anything to work. Had hopes that some of the updates for Vorpx 17.1.0 might do the trick, but no such luck. I think my rig is fairly powerful (see below specs) and have been able to play games like Skyrim and Fallout with heavily modded graphics upgrades outside of VR without it breaking a sweat. I’ve tried fresh, clean installs of both Skyrim and Skyrim SE without any luck. Since I can play other graphic intensive games at very high resolutions and FPS I suspect the problem is somehow my use of Vorpx or how it is configured. The only way I’ve gotten the FPS on Skyrim up to a threashold I can stomach is by dropping graphics options and resolution all the way to the bottom and set all object draw distances to basically nothing. But that looks like crap. So much for my visions of immersing myself in a graphically modded Skryim VR…

Computer specs – –
Processor: AMD FX-9370 Eight-Core Processor 4.40GHz
RAM: 24GB
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon R9 390X 8GB
Storage: SSD
Windows 10 and all drivers current

If anybody can help me get this working, I’ll name my next child after you. My wife is pregnant, so now’s your chance! ;)

PS – Happy New Year!

[mikester1980]

Something I forgot to mention – In both Skyrim and Skryim SE when I change from Geometry mode to Z-Buffer there is zero change in FPS. Most of the threads I’ve read imply that switching off Geometry mode can double the FPS, but mine is unchanged.

[jshef0]

A few things to note around Skyrim.

Does it run with higher FPS whilst not on VR? if not see below.

You have Windows 10 – maximum Vram Skyrim can use is 4Gb. That’s your video ram plus a proportion of system ram. Skyrim SE does not have this limitation btw but the game still seems to have low fps in alot of places.
If you run modded – try to avoid large hi res texture packs. stick to 2048 max in my opinion for VR. .

Make sure your Skyrim is stable and running well before you try to put VR on. VR really requires 60FPS or more but Skyrim doesn’t like running above 60FPS if you run script heavy mods usually you need to cap Framerate at 60. You will need to minimise your settings to make Skyrim work well on VR. Also look at the resolution as lowering this helps.

Look at your Skyrim Prefs and skyrim.ini to make sure you have tweaked it a bit. I would suggest turning off some effects like (shadows on grass, decrease water reflection resolution etc) this should give you more fps. However its a suck it and see thing where you can tweak until you feel its good for you.

Somethings that can help
– ENBoost
– Lightweight ENB – Use injector version. and if you run Mod Organiser etc run the injector from that (add an executable) I get 20+ FPS from vanilla using a lightweight ENB
– Crash Fixes (google it) if you run alot of scripts or strings it can help with CTD’s and freezes as well
– Safety Load (some say this doesn’t work but i find it does help)

A good ini editor is :: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69787/? (sorry if i am not meant to add links on the forums).

Hope some of this helps.

[mikester1980]

Thanks for responding jshef0.

To clarify – It’s vanilla Skyrim (and vanilla Skyrim SE) that is struggling to get above 20FPS outdoors. When I had Skyrim heavily modded with graphics mods, tons of grass, etc and with other graphics settings set sky high I was able to play at very high FPS – but only when I am not playing in VR. Sorry for any confusion – I mention that just to make the point that I think my computer is powerful enough to be able to run vanilla Skyrim in VR at a MUCH higher FPS than what I am currently able to achieve.

And again – The fact that switching from Geometry to Z-Buffer doesn’t improve my FPS even by 1 FPS tells me something weird is going on here.

Can anyone help?

[Gregan]

jshef0 is right, make it run flawlessly in non-VR and then try in VR.
your RIG is better than mine and I manage to run it quite good even on 1600×1200 res.
That being said, you have to find first why it doesn’t run well without VR ( IMO, maybe your settings are too high ( screen resolution ) or your skyrim installation is partially broken ( a fresh install is priceless for perfs! )or maybe an AMD blopware that auto supersample it beyond your screen res ( so impossible to run smooth in VR )
Try a fresh install and run the launcher to check your game settings ( or look the SkyrimPrefs.ini ) to be sure that you run it like Ralf tips you to do ( 1280×1024 res, no ENB or heavy graphic mods, etc…), otherwise you have the option in vorpx to optimize the game settings as it should be.
After that, you can always look for other websites with tutos, videos to see many different results depending on the rigs and settings, that’s what made me understand the way everything is linked and how I needed to tweak my setup in order to obtain the wanted result.
Good luck for your dream pursue… It worth it, trust me!
cheers

[alegse]

Your CPU is a very good AMD, however AMD cpu’s don’t have the highest single thread rating. I found that when I changed from AMD athlonx4 to intel i7 my sky-rim VORPX frame-rate increased by about 10 fps.
Before this update I found the head rotation and looking arpund felt uncomfortable and jittery even in Z3D mode at 80-90fps.
However now with direct VR mode I find Skyrim very smooth and natural feeling even when the fps is 30 – 45 fps outdoors in G3D. No more jittering at all.
Look into your settings more because z-3D should give you high fps.
I like to use the rez 1575×1400 since it is clear and does not waste much rendering outside the field of view.

[mikester1980]

Gregan – When I run Skyrim outside of VR it runs flawlessly. Zero FPS drops anywhere, even in Whiterun. But switch to VorpX and the FPS plummet to an unplayable level. And I am playing with fresh, clean installs of both VorpX and Skyrim.

Alegse – I did apply the Direct VR mode which, as you say, helps things look very smoothly – but only while I’m indoors. Step outside and the FPS plummets. And again, switching from Geometry to Z3D gives me 0 FPS boost, which doesn’t seem right.

All – My computer can run other games in VorpX without any FPS drop. For instance, I can run Dragon Age 3 on highest settings in VorpX and it’s smooth as silk. Vanilla Skyrim which is 3 years older should therefore be running flawlessly, in theory. So I think the issue is narrowed down to not my hardware which seems plenty powerful, but some sort of VorpX configuration issue.

Thanks for continuing to help VorpX users.

[TCPcitizn]

I’m going to write a thread about my initial experience with my oculus rift+Vorpx and modded Skyrim experience sometime after I install Realvision. I’m using 1920×1440, 1.2 internal res and all of the heaviest mod suggestions from the Realvision description page (stuff like Skyrim HD – 2k textures FULL), but haven’t installed any grass mods yet or Realvision itself. I’m getting 85-90 frames outdoors and and as low as 65 in Whiterun if I jump around like a maniac. I mean this seems insane right!? The days BEFORE this latest patch I hadn’t enabled XMP on my X99 board for my ram yet. My ram was running at 2133mhz on a single stick and I was getting 16-30 fps in ‘a’ outdoor area on these settings. After which I enabled XMP and took full use of a quad channel on my motherboard, setting my ram to their default clock of 3200mhz at 14-14-14-34 and getting 90 frames. I’m not using any overclocks either. So I don’t know to what extent the update or my new ram is responsible but seriously no complaints LOL!

Processor: Intel 6950x (first two cores running at 4ghz turbo)
Video Card: Titan X Pascal
Ram: G.Skill Tridentz 8Gig x4 at 3200mhz 14-14-14-34
SSD: Mushkin Enhanced Reactor 2.5″ 1TB SATA III

[mikester1980]

jshef0 – How do you get ENBoost to work with VorpX? You suggest this is a good way to speed up the game, but VorpX rejects the wrapper version of ENB and when I try the injector version of VorpX it just freezes up my entire computer.

All – Can you tell me what the difference between Game FPS and Direct Mode FPS is? My Direct Mode FPS is always aroung 90 but the Game FPS is 20 or lower.

And again – game runs with flawless FPS when not running in VR…

[peteostro]

I’m not having much luck getting SR:SE fps working good on vive. Around 30-40 fps this is after the optimizing with vorpx settings.
also the game looks pretty hazy. I used to run the Skyrim on my dk2 with vorpx and I do not remember it being this bad. I now have a 1070 now and more system ram. I thought it would be running better (cpu its icore 7)

[Ralf]

I’m slightly surprised to see you here, but welcome back nonetheless.

In general I would recommend the original Skyrim. Unless you use very many mods it probably runs a good chunk better than the SE with vorpX. A 1070 should be enough for more or less consistent 45fps everywhere at 1600×1200 with the original Skyrim using the “high” settings preset.

Be aware that on Vive vorpX always caps the framerate to half the refresh rate per default for the sake of a more consistent frame rate. Disable FluidSync in the menu if you don’t want that. I would recommend to leave it on though.

If you don’t want to or can’t use the original Skyrim, try the “medium” graphics preset, that’s more or less the same as “high” in the original Skyrim and should work OK almost everywhere with your GPU.

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