Star Citizen VR Settings & Performance Guide

We now have VR support in Star Citizen. Here are some performance tips. 

Getting started

If you need VR Headset recommendations, I personally use the Pimax Crystal Super which is a beast with the highest resolution. If that is outside your budget, the best entry level option will be the Quest 3. Here is my more detailed reviews specifically for Star Citizen after hundreds of hours of testing almost every ship in game. 

Step 1: Make sure your in-game render is set to Vulkan. This is the default now so unless you changed it, you don’t need to bother.

Step 2: The game runs with OpenXR runtime which means it will run with any VR headset. Quest users will need to use Virtual Desktop. For Pimax users, set the runtime to SteamVR and make sure Pimax Play and SteamVR is running before you launch the game. 

Step 3: You can toggle VR on and off using the “Numpad /” key once in the game. Recenter View is bound to “Numpad 5”.

Step 4: Tweaking VR settings. There is a setting called IPD in the game which essentially affects world scaling. The lower it is, the bigger the world looks. I have set it to 0.95 but you can try and see which looks best. There are also settings to make your HUD look bigger and change the distance of UI elements and you should tweak these too. 

I also recommend creating a user.cfg file in your Star Citizen folder and adding the following lines in there:

r_stereoUILensdepth = 1
r_stereoscaleformdepth = 2.4

This 2.4 number is unique for each person and each headset. See what works best for you. Essentially, it fixes the issue where some icons and symbols (like on enemies or minable rocks) are seen in double. Change this value from -8 to 5 and see where the double icons go away.

Performance Optimization

• Make sure to turn on DLSS as that is the biggest performance booster. Even with a 4090 I had to use DLSS in performance mode to get good frames. 
• Also, reduce your render resolution in SteamVR. I had set mine to 50%. This is the lowest I have put it for any game but the game is very stuttery otherwise.
• With these two settings, you should be good. Graphics setting I just set to medium or high but its not as important as the other two settings mentioned above. 

Is VR worth it for Star Citizen?

While its still possible to play Star Citizen in VR using some third-party tools, there are performance issues even on high end systems. I tried VR for Star Citizen and here are my thoughts:

1. The game has tremendous potential in VR. I believe space sims are inherently awesome in VR and what I have tried so far, does look gorgeous. My favorite thing to do right now is flying between hills and mountains and driving around in a Cyclone. The caves look good too, but I don’t like the locomotion (more on this later).
2. Star Citizen has iffy performance even in 2D right now., but a lot of those problems are server side issue instead of graphical engine issues. What that mean sis upping the resolution for VR will have some impacts, but the main bottleneck is still on the server side.  Of course, your PC specs matter here a lot so check out my hardware guide for SC.
3. Its hard to use the keyboard with VR so HOTAS, or better yet, HOSAS becomes essential. 
4. Each major SC patch causes some issues and often times improves things as well. So you may need to keep tweaking things. I will attempt to keep this guide updated.
5. The environment looks pretty cool but there are some issues with FoV and graphical glitches. But if you really an SC + VR enthusiast, go for it! The scale of the ships is pretty amazing.
6. Locomotion is my biggest use. Games like Elite or DCS or Dirt Rally don’t have to bother with locomotion since you are seated. But it can really be quite an annoyance in first person games because it feels quite unnatural and can even induce nausea. Some people have better experience using rudder pedals to simulate walking so if you have a set, map them to walking and see if it feels better. 
7. If you have bad performance, try loading into Arena Commander instead of the PU. That’s an old trick of mine and I do it whenever each of my new ships is released to try it out at a glorious 120 FPS! Luckily, the same performance benefits apply to VR as well.
8. SC VR is far from perfect. But I have spent dozens of hours in other VR games like Elite, DCS and MS Flight Sim to get VR to run properly as well. It’s a new tech and it reminds me of PC gaming in the 1990s. It was the wild west and you had to scour the internet for the right tools and tinker with settings. That is where we are with VR right now, and I frigging love it. 

Related Articles

• Star Citizen Review (Current State)
• Star Citizen Beginner’s Guide
• Star Citizen Best Joystick/ HOTAS/ Controller
• Star Citizen Frequently Asked Questions
• Star Citizen Best Starter Ships & Packs
• Star Citizen Referral Code

About the Author

Gary (Flanker)

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Gary has been "hard landing" into runways and driving his Mitsubishi Evo off of cliffs since the early 2000s. These days, he spends most of his precious hobby time with his favorite flight, racing and space simulations in VR.He also has an Engineering Degree in Computer Science which helps a lot with his obsession with optimizing PC hardware like CPUs, Graphics Cards, VR Headsets, HOTAS, Racing Wheels etc. for high end sims.