OP here.
Well, today I spent another 4 hours trying to get it to work with the new 4.17 distribution. Conclusion, same as always, performance worsens dramatically when LMS or MRS is turned on. Even with a blank new project it worsens. This will have been the final time of me ever giving this a try, as trying to make VRworks actually work has made me waste so much time it’s starting to become a big nuisance (I think I’ve spent about 40 hours in total of trying to make it work). I’m still baffled by the constantly newly appearing branches on Github for this completely supportless and (in many many cases) dysfunctional feature.
Unless someone has a golden tip for me I’ll (albeit sadly) be delivering the final version of my product without VRworks support.