How to: Min/Maxing graphics settings for Miners (Oculus Rift/GTX1080)

As a real life pilot I enjoy playing Elite Dangerous as a miner. It is a lot like crop dusting; flying very close to the ground, trying to be as efficient as possible; and a whole lot of fun. I bought a Oculus Rift and a GTX 1080 to run it because I need the visual freedom, and really enjoy the "presence" being in VR gives me (great at de-stressing after a day of hospital nursing).



I spend a lot of time looking at rocks and wanted to share my graphics settings to help others in this time of VR infancy. These settings give the highest visual quality while maintaining 90fps so not to get nauseated:



Ambient Occlusion: Off. While looking at rocks, objects are not close enough to each other to cause shadow occlusion.



Antialiasing: Off. The fresnel lens (blooming) and high resolution of the Oculus Rift negates the need for antialiasing.



Bloom: Off. The fresnel lens of the Oculus Rift creates blooming on its own.



Blur: Off. Why?



Environment Quality: Ultra. For a nice backdrop.



Depth Of Field: Off. Why?



FX Quality: Low. Any higher than low and the magenta mining laser fills the cockpit with magenta light that is very hard on the eyes.



Galaxy Map Quality: Low. The galaxy map kills FPS.



Material Quality: High. The limiting factor is the FPS dip while going inside a space station and during the landing inside the space station.



Model Draw Distance: (Full right slider). Need to be able to see pirates as far as possible.



Reflections Quality: High. Metallic rocks are "reflective".



Shadow Quality: ULTRA. Must be ultra for rocks to cast shadows on each other. This is a must have feature and can save a collision while working rocks that are in close proximity to each other.



Supersampling: x1.0 No need to supersample (in Elite Dangerous settings or using the Oculus Debug Tool). For improved reading of the HUD text, just put the HUD brightness on minimum (set in-game, with the HUD settings) to minimize the blooming effect of the Oculus Rift fresnel lens.



Terrain Material Quality: Ultra. For interesting to look at rocks.



Terrain Quality: Ultra. For interesting to look at rocks.



Terrain Work: (Full right slider). Seeing any rock modeling & shading work being done breaks the VR "presence".



Terrain Sampler Quality: LOW. This is only antialiasing of the terrain shader texture. The fresnel lens and high resolution of the Oculus Rift negates the need for antialiasing.



Texture Quality: High. For interesting to look at rocks.





GTX 1080 Overclocking:



With Nvidia GPU Boost 3.0, the video card is going to keep itself healthy. It limits the overclock frequency by the voltage going to the GPU, and limits the voltage going to the GPU by the GPU temperature.



Replace your PC case and CPU fans with quiet Noctua brand fans and run them at 100% (inaudible/whisper quiet); to minimize the internal PC case temperature. Set the GTX 1080 fan curve to 0%rpm <40°c and 100%rpm >40°c to minimize the GPU temperature while gaming and inaudible while not. Set the GPU over voltage to 100% to allow the GPU to over voltage to the maximum allowed. The actual voltage is set by GPU Boost 3.0 in relation to GPU temperature, not by the user; and will be much lower than the maximum. Use a stress test app that uses a game-engine (e.g. 3Dmark) to increase the GPU overclock in 10mhz steps. For reference, my GTX 1080's GPU stabilizes to a heat soaked overclock of 2000mhz @ 1.081VDC @ 70°c @ 23°c room temperature, during the 3Dmark Fire Strike stress test.