Oculus’ recommended soft limit is 100k visible textures triangles. I am not even close to that soft limit. So if you look at it as 45k textured triangles in the view, it should provide 60 fps.
Note that I have 58 fps in virtually empty scene (geometry from FPS template). So whether it’s 100 tris or 45k tris, I get the same fps. So I am positive that it has nothing to do with my mesh not being culled.
I’ll try splitting my mesh (also would help to determine whether there is some limit on vertex count for GLES2 re: torn mesh issue) and test it again, but I am pretty sure rendering engine needs to be optimized particularly for Gear VR. It just doesn’t seem like it’s the case at this time.