I'll preface what I'm about to type by saying I am very happy with my (lower end VR) setup; but like many here (I'm guessing) it took a LOT of playing about with the settings and third party apps to get a balance I am satisfied with in regards to quality and performance in ED.
1. What VR headsets do you all recommend for playing Elite Dangerous?
I have no personal recommendation that is an absolute, but I can tell you I am very happy with my Quest 2. I believe I would be very happy with a Quest 3 too ... and probably a Pimax or a Varjo or ... budget and available PC performance will be your deciding factors here. You'll have to consider if your PC can handle running the headset you want to buy and will you be updating your PC in the future to get the most out of your Headset etc. One good things is that AFAIK, all the headsets can be adjusted to accomadate higher or lower performance.
2. For those of you using VR, what kind of PC specifications are necessary to run Elite Dangerous smoothly in VR? Are there any graphics settings or tweaks you suggest for optimizing performance?
This will depend on your headset, but the short answer is "the best hardware you can afford". I happily run a Ryzen 5600x (Overclocked) with a 3060ti (Overclocked) with 32GB of ram. Would I like better? Oh hell yes. Elite Dangerous, especially the 4.0 engine likes VRAM, so while I am happy with my settings and setup, I do find myself occasionally running medium textures just to give my 8GB gfx card a little headroom, usually when in open on a Thursday morning Invasion ground port. Also at Spires I can get stutters with high textures vs medium. Most anything else, I can run a mixture of
high and medium settings, with a few things like bloom and blur switched off, which do little for VR visuals anyway. ED is also partial to CPU cache, so the Ryzen x3D CPU's do a lot for framerates on planet surfaces and on-foot I believe (someone correct me if I am wrong) and should therefore be beneficial for VR gameplay too. Keep in mind that Odyssey on-foot switches to a floating cinema screen rather than the usual 360 view you get in vehicles which also helps performance depending on your setup. Depending on what hardware/headset you get,
OpenComposite can be a big help in regards to framerates compared to SteamVR. Shout out to
Virtual Desktop for Oculus users as well, tho I personally prefer the visuals of a link cable.
3. How do you find the controls in VR? Are there specific flight sticks or controllers that enhance immersion and control in the game?
The thing with VR is that you can't (easily) see your physical controls, so you'll want as many buttons as possible at your fingertips. Can you play it with an Xbox controller in VR? Sure, I know at least one guy who plays in VR with an Xbox controller, and plays it very well and enjoys it a lot. Same goes for keyboard and mouse which many would argue is the only way to excel in ED combat. But for me, the point of VR is more immersion, so I'd add a HOTAS setup to your budget as well if you don't already have one; it's not essential, but I would describe it as preferred. Look into Voice Attack and add some voice control to your game, this can help a lot, and if you do add
Voice Attack, you should probably check out
HCS Voice Packs. Things like
ED Copilot and
EDDI are also great in VR. For my setup, I also made a DIY Button box using some cheap arcade joystick parts and a plastic box, all bought from Amazon and cost less than £40 all in; has 11 buttons and the joystick which I use as poor mans landing gear switch (although I may swap the joystick for a guitar selector which should give me a more satisfying feeling landing gear feel). For actual main controls I use a TWCS throttle and a
VKB Gladiator NXT. I am personally considering a VKB STECS or a going HOSAS with another VKB Gladiator. Virpil are also a popular choice. Winwing* and some Thrustmaster joystick setups are named a lot too. Even a Thrustmaster Hotas X can add to your VR fun, but IMO you would quickly outgrow it.
tl:dr - You can do VR in ED with a midrange system and a quest 2 to save money, but the better your system is, the better/easier your experience will be in VR regardless of your headset, which in turn may dictate how much money you have to spend on the headset itself. So much like when asking what monitor to get, everyone will respond with "what gfx card/pc do you have? Budget?".
*there seems to be some controversy about their latest ursa minor being a copy of the VKB joysticks, at least under the hood, but they are cheaper, but not enough in my opinion to sway me from VKB.
