My hardware is listed in my sig, but basically oculus rift + 1080 FTW hybrid + 4.7 6700k..
I'm using KSEA on approach with these specific coordinates as a test: 47.48 N and 122.31 W (vanilla install of b3 of xp11 with only north america loaded in this test)
I'm using the clear weather with about 80miles visibility as the setting. (i found with scattered clouds i couldnt get the same cloud type each time to get good results for comparing)
Hit pause just after loading so its aiming at the runway/airport downward..
**Note.. in all cases, at least for me... if i tried to set NI AA it made NO difference when HDR was on.. however, leaving the settings did make a difference in FPS, just no difference in jaggies/shimmering..
Where NI AA did make a difference was with HDR off.. and AA off in XP11.. but, i couldnt get addons like reshade to work to try to brighten up the horrid darkness of no HDR.. if there is a workaround to this, this may help on frame rate in the long run.. (reshade breaks flyinside)
My baseline test had:
Visual: HDR
Textures: High
NO shadows
World Objects: high
Reflections : Min
I found these color adjustments in FI to work better:
4% Darkness
-6% on Bright
and 126% on saturation
Using the above settings in the c172 default with beta 3 (and with all settings in NI at default, even thread optimization.. i found a 5 fps boost by leaving this on AUTO not off for some reason)..
AT FI of 2880 res:
I tried 4SAA around 35 fps.. if i switch to 2SSA + FXAA its around 41fps..
FI 2880 again, another test, this time with shadows turned on and 4SAA.. 30 fps ..
Now FI set to 3840 res and shadows OFF **much better visibility/clarity than at 2880):
I tried 4SAA i get 26 avg paused (but more like 22-26 with looking around)..
Turn to 2SSA+FXAA i get 36ish for the frame rate (no shadows) but it looks a tad worse on clarity and shimmering.
Leave at 2SSA + FXAA and turn on shadows, 36 becomes 26 fps
Overall, just turning on shadows will cost about 3-4 fps.
Setting reflections to medium, up a notch, made no real difference in fps
Setting buildings to medium instead of high resulted in LESS shimmer, maybe due to being less advanced.. but NO change in FPS, however, going from high to the max was a loss in fps (2-3)
So what this boils down to for me as of now, unless there are ways of tweaking graphics through datarefs, like maybe customizing shadows somehow or turning off traffic?.. that basically i found 3840 supersampling to be the best looking especially at 4SAA, but shadows is killer.. and even at 26 fps with 4SAA and 3840 and no shadows, this is a tad on the low side.. areas like NYCX will tank, so i may find myself for now just setting things to 2SAA + fxaa to get 36 fps (so more like 30 if i turn on shadows with that combo)..
It may seem a slight difference going from 4saa to 2saa, but i can see where things are clearer and in goggles that lack the resolution, clarity is everything, at least to me.
Other notes: FXAA and the AA in FI seem to have little or NO effect on the sim clarity and shimmering, but more so with the menu for flyinside in terms of clarity.. i tried disabling AA in the sim and leaving FI at 8x, it was pretty awful shimmering, and again, NI setting SGSS made no difference on shimmering with AA off in the sim with HDR, only when it was off.
Overall, i still think P3D looks a bit sharper with flyinside.. hoping as the beta improves flyinside will gain some tweaks to reduce the shimmering effect and gain some performance / fps.
EDIT: i should mention in my 4saa + 3840 FI res tests.. where i would see about 27 fps to start.. if you unpause the ATW values drift down from 92.. sometimes even as low as 65 as you get closer to the runway/buildings.. but overall its "ok" though not great performance wise.. i may toy around with trying to lock frames to see if it helps keep the ATW values up as it did with p3d.
update: ok, so the 27 fps had with 4ssa + 3840 (more like 27/90-48 depending).. is unusable due to the low ATW at times.. even KPIT, showing 29 fps sim rate at first.. but the atw drops to 45-50.. and this isnt a big region like KSEA.. so its 2SSA for now until maybe 5-9 fps could be squeezed out from somewhere else i guess..