I have now added a new Opt-in BETA for the performance pass update called "performancebeta". No password is required, just leave the field blank.
Please follow the instructions on the forum to opt-in.
This update is purely focused on improving both the VR and Non-VR performance of the game. I've already made pretty good progress...
1. Added loading bar to the initial start up as islands are now streamed in. While this doesn't actually speed up the loading process overall, at least now you can see that something is happening!
2. Rebuilt a lot of the tree instancing systems so they run faster and are now self contained per island allowing me to turn them off when not needed i.e. when you're too far away to see them
3. Baked a lot of the meshes for Maupiti's harbour area resulting in significant performance gains in this area.
As a rough benchmark I have now gone from around 60-70fps at Maupiti's harbour to well over 100fps @ 1920x1080. At 5120 x 1440 (nearly 4k) I get a comfortable 60-70fps even in this quite demanding area.
I shall be applying the same performance updates to the rest of the harbours shortly.
Of course, depending on your hardware, you will get different amounts of performance gains but whatever you get should be quite noticeable.