Direct to rift mode works better than extending or mirroring for me. I would stick with that and try these things:
- mitchemmc’s template (which I think is what you are referring to) is a good test, continue to use it as a baseline: ://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?12874-VR-Game-Template
- CouchKnights is also fairly good as a baseline, but the art assets are not well optimized. If you are having framerate issues I would recommend setting “Actor Hidden In Game” to false for the player models, which you can find by selecting the guy in the scene, going to details panel and searching for “Actor Hidden”.
- Make sure you disable real time rendering in the editor viewport, or it will really kill performance for you.
- Rather than running the game through the editor, build the game by going to: File > Package Project > Windows > 64 bit. This has fixed most framerate issues for me.
Hope that helps. Remember to reply back if this works for you.