VR Discussions, Questions & Feedback

@Wanderkroete

Just want to reply quickly to one part of your message.

100% in Steam should not equal 3868x3780 it should actually be closer to 3164x3092 so first thing would be to sort that out.

Yes the native resolution of the panels is 2160 x 2160 but we need to super sample that to correct for distortion introduced by the lenses. @3160 x 3090 You can see the difference in clarity around the centre and improved sweet spot quite clearly going beyond that doesn't really seem to have much of an effect. But that would explain why you were having such poor performance.

So yeah 100% = 3164 x 3090ish this is the base number to work around whether that's up or down depending on performance.

 

One way you can test for performance gained or lost by having game display to desktop at the same time is to monitor performance with fpsVR when set to native res and then again with it set to something much smaller like 1280 × 1024 If it's an issue you'll see it clearly in your frametimes.

OpenXR in steamvr is not fully implemented, it is not recommended to use it at the moment. The Open XR dev tool is useful for Flight Sim 2020 because the stand alone version has native OpenXR support. For AMS 2 and pretty much all games launched through steamVR it should be left using OpenVR. The OpenXR dev tool is of no use to you here.

On the reprojection front, for now I would just disable it in SteamVR its only confusing the issue while you try to sort other things out.

The whole thing is a balancing act. But in your previous tests you were starting from an incorrect base so it's hard to draw any useful information from them. I would suggest setting your render resolution to 60% and I mean 60% of 3164 x 3090. Lower your ingame settings right down to the lowest possible and start again from there. Focus on increasing render resolution and AA until you reach an acceptably sharp image. Then see where you're at frametime wise. If your happy with the image and are within 11ms but you hate the look because of reduced graphics settings then you have 3 options

A. reduce render resolution and increase graphics settings
B. enable reprojection and increase graphics settings
C. enable 60hz and increase graphics settings.

You do not want 60hz and reprojection on, its the grossest option possible.

fpsVR will always display a reprojection ratio whether reprojection is turned on or not. Your current frametime cpu and gpu are the most important pieces of information that app provides.

Ultimately you will not be able to have the sharpest image the headset can provide with the highest ingame settings available. It's a pity because we can have a glimpse of this at choppy framerates and its awesome and then we go on this quest to try and somehow wrangle the hardware into doing something it isn't capable of. This can spoil the whole experience in the long run. To some extent we have to temper our expectations. Find that balance of performance and image quality and once your there, unless there is a visible issue, stop looking at framerates and metrics and just enjoy what is currently possible. Over time it'll be come second nature to drop down a setting or adjust render scale for a particular game or car and track combo. Initially though it is a complicated and fairly frustrating experience at times, actually its a bit of a pain in the tits. And with previous headsets I've had I couldn't justify the effort required at times, the frustration experienced vs the quality of the image achieved, with the G2 though I think the image is that good, particuarly so for simming, that it's finally worth it.

 

Wow thank you so much for this deep response. I'll follow the path you suggested. The whole experience is so overwhelming, I struggle to decide what to do first... (sim racing, flight sim, or just explore with other programs)

It will take me some time but your advise is great I think.

 

You're very welcome, hopefully it helps. Getting setup in a simple environment like an interesting steamVR Home environment or a VR specific game like Boneworks, HL Alyx etc isn't a bad idea at all.

 

You can change the ini file ,, Documents/Automobilista2/graphicsconfigoculusdx11

go down to SharpeningStrength and set it to "2.900000"

Thats what i do and it works wonders for me.

 

I’m reasonably happy with the rift s now, I am getting steady 80fps but a final couple of questions.......I launch in oculus mode in steam but is there a launch command in steam I can use that may let me disable crowds or such like? If there is would that allow me to maybe improve an in game setting?

Thanks in advance
Baz

 

If it helps with the G2 discussion above, I’ve just got one and running a 2070S and i7-6700 and have it dialled in well now on AMS2 across all tracks.

For me, forcing reprojection on and locking to 45fps is still smooth, meaning I can run 70% Steam SS and run medium in GFX settings with a full track.

These 2 images help you understand the GFX impact as % vs a baseline so really helpful in dialling things in. (Turn grass off, bloom etc). Apols I can’t recall the original poster to credit the work on this.

 

Do you get any artifacts (such as shimmering or ghosting car textures) when using reprojection?

I do with Steam VR's method.

 

First issue, when night racing. Everything outside the lightened area is way too dark. Like pitch black... Makes it very hard to drive at night on some tracks... Pc2 isnt that dark and real life either.

Also with every P1, there is no gear number displayed in the dash where it should be... Absent in all P1 in vr

 

Will there ever be a virtual body in the cab of the trucks in VR ?

 

My latest impressions (playing in VR only):

- best VR racing sim out there

Still room for improvements, which would make my favourite sim even better IMHO:

- performance optimisations needed on some tracks (especially at sunset and when AI opponents have headlights on). Can only speak for VR performance...

- support concerning parallel projection for VR headsets with canted displays (Pimax...) needed to get better frame rate

- changing HUD in VR is pain in the ass (wrong position of hud elements can’t be clicked with mouse). Workaround is using game pad but... yeah...

- sharpening trick with ini-file works wonders concerning picture quality but ingame slider in graphics option would be better

- effect of heavy rain or spray of the racing cars ahead doesn’t have enough effect on the windshield. It seems I always have same amount of raindrops on windscreen and wouldn’t even need wipers. Spray of other cars in front doesn’t have any effect on windscreen at all, right? Normally in heavy rain or behind another car I shouldn’t see anything when wipers turned off, but here I still can see enough to continue race without wipers...

- no pit radio. Workaround is using CrewChief but would be nice if I wouldn’t need another software running...

- more racing atmosphere would be welcome, waving flags, fireworks or smoke effects after finishing the race...

- no trackside cameras in VR? I only see start/finish line at most tracks (Spa, Interlagos...) when I choose “trackside” in replays... other replay cams (chase, hood,...) work well in VR. And there is an annoying depth of field (DOF) effect on trackside replay cam making big part of screen blurry. DOF should be turned off in VR at all.

- Showroom cam should not move automatically in VR. We should be able to move the camera the way we want with controllers or mouse or keyboard (forward, backward, left, right, zoom in/out) to enjoy the wonderful car models in all it’s details (this is what VR is good for). If camera moves automatically I get nauseous in VR...

- more tracks (Zandvoort!), maybe dirt tracks?

Can’t wait for further updates and DLCs and hope to find some VR improvements in future changelogs...

 

Well, I was putting off spending too much time dialing in my VR settings since I had hoped to do so after obtaining an RTX 3080, but I'm resigning myself to sticking with my 1080Ti for at least a couple more months, if not longer. My heart goes out to anyone building a PC for the first time right now.

So, I'm a little late to the party, and had partially begun the process of optimization of VR 6+ months ago, but I now have the HP Reverb G2, so I'm starting over.

I think my goal is to get things looking the best they can in 60FPS mode without reprojection so that when I can finally get an RTX 3080 I can simply bump up to 90FPS without a wholesale change in settings (in theory). However, it sounds like 100% resolution slider in SteamVR might be the primary goal, so would need to go to reprojection from the start in that case with GFX turned way down.

It seems like there are quite a few G2 owners on here, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts about a few things:

1) What SharpeningStrength in the XML file are you using with the G2? I think in the past with the Valve Index I had it set to 2.900000, but then dropped it to .8, so not sure where to land with the G2.

2) Does anyone (maybe @Rob Davies or @psone) have a similar GPU performance-wise to the 1080Ti and would be willing to share their full settings?

3) Are there any other "do's" or "don't's" that I should know about before I start dialing in my settings? Based on the tables in Post #829 it looks like there some post-processing filters and other effects that should be turned off entirely in the sake of conserving performance, but is there anything else either in-game or out-of-game that I should do?

4) Sounds like the SteamVR resolution slider should be set at 60% (or maybe 100%?) as a starting point, but are there any other starting points that can short-cut the calibration process a bit?

Thanks! Looking forward to getting VR looking great!

 

Please see below:

1. Set SharpeningStrength to 0.05 or lower. It's really not necessary on the G2. This setting is more for lower rez headsets like the CV1 and Rift-S (where the image is naturally blurry).

2. Sorry 3080 here ...

3. For the G2 the color on the LCD can be a little flat. I turn ON Post Processing filter and set the exposure to 0.8 and the colors look more vibrant.

4. 60% is my recommendation for a 3080, my other friends with a 2080Ti are running 50%, textures on High, EVERYTHING else low. So you probably want to start @ 50% since a 2080Ti is about 30% faster than a 1080Ti in traditional rastering.

Good luck.

 

I just moved to a G2 last week...from a Rift CV1. I too am stuck with a 1080Ti until I can acquire a 3080. I haven't done much tweaking yet, but one thing I can tell you: everyone's expectations (and sensitivities) are different. I have been running at 50% res, along with: MSAA=Low, Filtering=Trilinear, low grass, mostly Med for the remaining. I also have the Motion Smoothing in Steam at Auto. When I look at the framerates, they do show reprojection under many scenarios. However, I had zero issues visually relating to reprojection. Yes, shadows, shimmering, etc is present but I have pretty much grown to look past that (and not specific to the G2).

The kicker was when I accidentally left my CPU in a forced low power state when playing (60% of max, I believe)...it was almost always at 45fps. I didn't have any issues with that, believe it or not. I would never had expected to get along with that performance, but doing it unknowingly changed that expectation.

My experience clearly doesn't jive with the feedback from many others. ...and that is my point, everyone is going to give a different answer. I am also constraining my expectations considering that I am using an older (yet still capable) GPU, to be fair. While I am looking forward to finding a 3080, I am enjoying the G2 more than I expected with my current setup. Well, despite the recurring '4-1' errors!

 

You will be amazed when you get your 3080...
I was lucky and got one jsut before xmas.
Only jsut got AMS2, and I can run everything on Ultra with my G2 with a full grid, and it looks absolutely fantastic .

 

@Chip I'm on a 6800 at the moment with a 3080 on the way. Sucks not being able to get your hands on one, I've been trying since launch. Ridiculous...Hopefully you won't have to wait too much longer.

Honestly there isn't much point in sharing settings, like Chin said above it's so dependant on what you deem an acceptable experience. I will say I was using 60hz, render resolution at 94% and MSAA Medium. When I have the 3080 I will post what I use in a range of different situations but it'll be a while before I can put that togegther in a meaningful way.

The other thing is that I don't think it's possible to have one catch all set of settings. There's just too much performance variance depending on the setup. For example I just ran 20 Roccos at Nords, if I raced at 5am Foggy its a slideshow whereas at 10am Foggy I was hovering around 12ms the entire race. In both scenarios all cars were running with headlights on.

Last night I tested Spa at sunset with a full grid, if I used just Group As there was no problem, but when I added in P3, P1 and GT1 my fametimes were in 18ms+ territory and it was unplayable...With group As I could have added in some rain and been fine. Or bumped up some other settings. If I'm just running laps I'm going to max those settings out as much as possible. (This would be much much easier if we could save settings presets) Even still I would rather adjust my settings as needed than just think owh I can only have 60% because that is absolutely not the case. Based on the performance I'm seeing with the 6800 hundred I'm pretty confident I'll be able to run 90hz at 80% in a lot of situations with the 3080.

You just have to figure out which settings mean the most to you and which you're willing to sacrifice when necessary. I don't think people should adjust their settings for a worst case scenario i.e storm at night multi-class and stick with those religously. sorry, bit ranty that seems to be the way I write.

Oh and the on the sharpening filter front, use whatever looks best to your eyes, I have it set to 2, will probably knock that down to 1.5ish going forward, but I like the gritter look it gives the image and for me it helps with the visibility of distant objects, again a totally subjective setting.

p.s @F1-Dave thank you for the partalert tip, it took a while but I got sorted in the end.

 

Thank you for this hint!
I tend to do things like this and sacrifice picture quality although it wouldn’t be necessary at day and dry conditions.
I did it because I don’t want to get surprised in a Championship or future career mode when suddenly I am confronted with a night race or it starts to rain or gets dark in the middle of a race and the game gets suddenly unplayable performance wise (in VR a performance drop may cause nausea as well for example).
Would be cool if we could change to a plan B in such demanding situations and simply switch to a night/rain-graphics-setup “on the fly”.
In the past you could access the graphics menu anytime, but this is not possible anymore, right? You need to quit the race, go to the main menu and change graphics settings there and some settings need to restart the whole game too. Any suggestions for such Plan B for demanding situations (how to change which settings and when?)?

 

@Mike1304 yeah I've taken the same approach in the past but it just doesn't make sense to me anymore.

One of the nicer features of ACC is that you can create graphics presets. In that way you can get really specific as specific as you like i.e Spa - Nightime/Heavy Rain and easily switch from one to the other. This is a feature I would really really like to see in AMS 2, you wouldn't think it but it and the ability to use a modifier key on your keybinds is a huge quality of life upgrade.

As far as what to change and when, again its kind of something you need to assess for yourself, like if your running 90hz mode then switching down to 60hz for one paritcularly taxing online race is an easy option, but you may hate the result whereas its totally fine for me. Another easy option is just to drop the render resolution in Steam as much as is necessary. But, if you're already at 60% then maybe that's not the best place to look for a boost. Then you have the other big hitters like MSAA, Reflections, Shadows, Track Detail. Spending some time testing one at time to see what kind of performance hit you take and whether that's visually acceptable to you is really the only way.

Going back to the presets thing, you can do this yourself in a way. Lets say you come up with settings that work for the harshest conditions. Once you exit the game you can go to Documents\Automobilista 2 and make a copy of your graphicsconfigopenvrdx11(I think this will be different for oculus users) save it with a meaningful name and the next time you want those settings just rename it back to the original. A bit tedious, but the effect is the same. It would be nice if there was a simple tool for this already.

 

Thanx! Yeah, there are workarounds for demanding situations but we need to prepare this before starting the race and therefore we need to know before that the race will be demanding performance wise.
If I set the conditions for my own I can choose weather and daytime and therefore prepare the graphics settings but during a championship or future career or when using “random weather” we don’t know before the race what will happen and if it will be extraordinarily demanding for GPU/CPU so we should be able to change such presets on the fly. Don’t know if this would even be technically possible because the most demanding settings always need restart of the game even in other games I fear...

 

For those that use the rift s........ do you alter any settings in the oculus debug tool? My pc spec is in my signature if that helps. I may have changed settings previously but can’t remember lol as don’t know what the default settings would be

As always thanks in advance
Baz