New to AMS 2, looking for a few pointed to get settled in.

Hello racers,

I have just bought AMS 2 and are looking forward to get settled in, but I read a lot of discussion about the fact that many car / track combo might need a little tweaking. Throw in the hardware people use and you’re quickly thrown into the rabbit’s hole and spend more time tweaking than racing.

So, in order to hopefully get straight into racing I’d like to know if there are settings or config steps I need to be aware of before diving in.

my setup is
Intel 9700K, 32GB RAM
Fanatec CSW 2 with CLubSport Pedals
RTX3080ti
Reverb G2 VR goggles.

Thanks in advance!

 

Lol you've just created a post to flex your specs haven't you.

 

One thing I've found useful is to go into VR settings and change the option to select to manual. Otherwise you'll find yourself unintentionally selecting options.. after that there's a sharpening adjustment that you'll find useful Im sure. Just Google ams2 vr sharpening and it should pop up. There's also a 'vr thread that's got lots of useful stuff. Also ignore the previous post. It's not typical of the level of help youll you'll get on here, but specific questions will get a more prompt response. Enjoy

 

Thanks for the reaction @Sunscreen .
You zoom in on VR, thanks for that, but I also read a lot about car setup defaults being quite variable from ok to almost undriveable.
If there a car you would recommend to kickstart good first impressions with AMS2 and which setup tweaks would be needed for the car?
I have little interest in openwheelers at this point.

 

Well Ive had a pretty good experience with Stock Cars, and this was a series I'd not tried until AMS2. Its pretty good out of the box. If you like mechanical grip series with heel and toe then the Formula Trainer (Formula Ford to purists) is a great laugh and will be a good intro to getting the balance nice and neutral. Ive found settings of difficulty to be so subjective that Ive learnt to treat all suggestions as speculative there so play around a bit with those. Also I'd probably stick with nice weather until you can confidently adjust setups to desired and predictable outcomes.
I'll have a think and if anything else pops into the mind I'll post it here.
Also dont try and rag the hell out of the cars. It really is the case that smooth is almost always better (and generally faster) and if youre going sideways a lot then imagine your team engineer sobbing in the garage You can adjust setups to null out almost all unsettling behaviour but if you exceed the performance envelope then theres no more performance.. obvious but worth stating. I did a few laps using the 2021 stock car at Hockenheim (a DLC track that is very nicely done) on time trial mode and placed almost at the top of the leaderboard (which is quite short as its an unusual combination) with a default setup. That tells you that its a pretty nice beast to get started with.
PS the formula trainer does require a little adjustment to taste. I'll not suggest anything myself and suggest that you dont follow anyone elses suggestions either as I found their solutions very understeering in a car that needs to go where its pointed. Its basic and fun for those reasons. Setups vary not only according to local in game variations (weather etc) but also FFB settings can derive different handling too. So it really isnt possible to offer accurate advice on setups imvho.

 

In summary, dont go chasing some notion of 'the perfect setup' in AMS2. Its just not possible. Instead make the car stable for as many different performance environments as possible, so that you can drive it with confidence without having to wring its performance potential by exceeding local (on the car) performance areas. If you're over-driving it then its time for a reset mentally and an objective assessment. This approach works well for me but you can discard it if you feel it might not work for you. I suspect a lot of people complaining about undriveable cars maybe are trying to impose a certain style on the car etc. I might be wrong but for example I heard a lot of issues about the Formula Vee so decided to give it a go. If you are anything other than smooth then it bites. No big deal though. It rewards smooth driving so drive it smooth was my very simple approach. In terms of non open wheelers though I'd stick with Stock cars initially. They are a good entry car into AMS2 imho.

 

There are some VR tweaks which are found in these files:

%useraccount%\Documents\Automobilista 2:
graphicsconfigopenvrdx11.xml
openvrsettings.xml

Don't worry if you mess any of these settings up as you can just delete the files and they will be generated the next time you launch AMS2. I always make backup's of my files just because and I would make a backup before changing anything listed below. Also these are what I use and might not work for you but it's a starting point.

The sharpening stuff which Sunscreen pointed out is in graphicsconfigopenvrdx11.xml . I run mine pretty high with my G2 and like the way it looks but everyone's eyes are different. The below settings are pretty close to maxed out so you can lower SharpeningStrength to start. By default though it's turned off so you might have to add the following three lines to the bottom of your file and adjust as needed.

<prop name="SharpeningStrength" sharpeningstrength="2.000000" />
<prop name="SharpeningClamp" sharpeningclamp="0.090000" />
<prop name="OffsetBias" offsetbias="1.000000" />

There are a few other tweaks in openvrsettings.xml as well but one of the best ones for me is the HUDSettings as it pushed the HUD in VR away to where the dashboard is in the cars so it doesn't feel like it's in your face.

<prop name="HUDSettings" offSetX="0.000000" offSetY="0.000000" offSetZ="-0.550000" scale="0.500000" rotateX="0.000000" rotateY="0.000000" rotateZ="0.000000" rotateW="1.000000" />
<prop name="FrontEndSettings" offSetX="0.000000" offSetY="0.000000" offSetZ="-1.000000" scale="1.000000" rotateX="0.000000" rotateY="0.000000" rotateZ="0.000000" rotateW="1.000000" />
<prop name="InGameSettings" offSetX="0.000000" offSetY="0.000000" offSetZ="-1.000000" scale="1.000000" rotateX="0.000000" rotateY="0.000000" rotateZ="0.000000" rotateW="1.000000" />

Also in the same file there are a few other tweaks that push down the focus point a bit. Again these are what I found online and work for me.
<prop name="NearZ" data="0.04" />
<prop name="EyeOffsetY" data="0.02" />
<prop name="EyeOffsetZ" data="-0.07" />


With the above I'm going to post my two full xml files just for reference.

graphicsconfigopenvrdx11.xml


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Reflection>
<class name="BRTTIRefCount" base="root class" />
<class name="BPersistent" base="BRTTIRefCount">
<prop name="Name" type="String" />
</class>
<class name="GraphicConfigData" base="BPersistent">
<prop name="Build" type="U32" />
<prop name="Version" type="Fct" />
<prop name="Mode" type="Fct" />
<prop name="Vsync" type="Fct" />
<prop name="FrameLatency" type="Fct" />
<prop name="AntiAlias" type="Fct" />
<prop name="SMAAFXAA" type="Fct" />
<prop name="Windowed" type="Fct" />
<prop name="TextureFilter" type="Fct" />
<prop name="TextureResolution" type="Fct" />
<prop name="Brightness" type="Fct" />
<prop name="CarDetailLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="TrackDetailLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="ShadowDetailLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="MotionblurLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="EffectsDetailLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="EnvmapDetailLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="MirrorEnabled" type="Fct" />
<prop name="MirrorEnhanced" type="Fct" />
<prop name="EnvmapReflectionDetailLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="GraphicsLevel" type="Fct" />
<prop name="SuperSampling" type="Fct" />
<prop name="LowSuperSampling" type="Fct" />
<prop name="VRSuperSampling" type="Fct" />
<prop name="SharpeningStrength" type="Fct" />
<prop name="SharpeningClamp" type="Fct" />
<prop name="OffsetBias" type="Fct" />
</class>
<data class="GraphicConfigData" id="0x42524980">
<prop name="Name" data="" />
<prop name="Build" data="1823" />
<prop name="Version" version="2" />
<prop name="Mode" adapter="0" width="1920" height="1080" refresh_num="60000" refresh_dem="1000" />
<prop name="Vsync" vsync="0" />
<prop name="FrameLatency" framelatency="1" />
<prop name="AntiAlias" antialias="2" />
<prop name="SMAAFXAA" smaafxaa="0" />
<prop name="Windowed" windowed="0" />
<prop name="TextureFilter" texturefilter="1" />
<prop name="TextureResolution" textureresolution="2" />
<prop name="Brightness" brightness="10" />
<prop name="CarDetailLevel" cardetaillevel="3" />
<prop name="TrackDetailLevel" trackdetaillevel="3" />
<prop name="ShadowDetailLevel" shadowdetaillevel="2" />
<prop name="MotionblurLevel" motionblurLevel="0" />
<prop name="EffectsDetailLevel" effectsdetaillevel="2" />
<prop name="EnvmapDetailLevel" envmapdetaillevel="2" />
<prop name="MirrorEnabled" mirrorenabled="1" />
<prop name="MirrorEnhanced" mirrorenhanced="0" />
<prop name="EnvmapReflectionDetailLevel" envmapreflectiondetaillevel="2" />
<prop name="GraphicsLevel" graphicslevel="5" />
<prop name="SuperSampling" supersampling="0" />
<prop name="LowSuperSampling" lowsupersampling="0" />
<prop name="VRSuperSampling" vrsupersampling="0" />
<prop name="SharpeningStrength" sharpeningstrength="2.000000" />
<prop name="SharpeningClamp" sharpeningclamp="0.090000" />
<prop name="OffsetBias" offsetbias="1.000000" />
</data>
</Reflection>

_______


openvrsettings.xml


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Reflection>
<class name="BRTTIRefCount" base="root class" />
<class name="BPersistent" base="BRTTIRefCount">
<prop name="Name" type="String" />
</class>
<class name="OculusConfigData" base="BPersistent">
<prop name="Build" type="U32" />
<prop name="FullScreen" type="Bool" />
<prop name="HideCrowds" type="Bool" />
<prop name="Limit Movement" type="Bool" />
<prop name="VSync" type="Bool" />
<prop name="OnlyPlayer" type="Bool" />
<prop name="ResetVR" type="U32" />
<prop name="LimitCars" type="U32" />
<prop name="NearZ" type="F32" />
<prop name="GForce" type="F32" />
<prop name="WorldMovement" type="F32" />
<prop name="exposureFOV" type="F32" />
<prop name="IPD_Scale" type="F32" />
<prop name="ResScale" type="F32" />
<prop name="EyeOffsetY" type="F32" />
<prop name="EyeOffsetZ" type="F32" />
<prop name="PointerSwitchTime" type="F32" />
<prop name="PointerSwitchShortTime" type="F32" />
<prop name="PointerTriggerTime" type="F32" />
<prop name="PointerTriggerWarnTime" type="F32" />
<prop name="PointerTriggerArea" type="F32" />
<prop name="HUDSettings" type="Fct" />
<prop name="FrontEndSettings" type="Fct" />
<prop name="InGameSettings" type="Fct" />
</class>
<data class="OculusConfigData" id="0x4279A600">
<prop name="Name" data="" />
<prop name="Build" data="1823" />
<prop name="FullScreen" data="true" />
<prop name="HideCrowds" data="true" />
<prop name="Limit Movement" data="false" />
<prop name="VSync" data="false" />
<prop name="OnlyPlayer" data="true" />
<prop name="ResetVR" data="8" />
<prop name="LimitCars" data="20" />
<prop name="NearZ" data="0.04" />
<prop name="GForce" data="0.3" />
<prop name="WorldMovement" data="0.9" />
<prop name="exposureFOV" data="60" />
<prop name="IPD_Scale" data="1" />
<prop name="ResScale" data="1" />
<prop name="EyeOffsetY" data="0.02" />
<prop name="EyeOffsetZ" data="-0.07" />
<prop name="PointerSwitchTime" data="10" />
<prop name="PointerSwitchShortTime" data="3" />
<prop name="PointerTriggerTime" data="1.5" />
<prop name="PointerTriggerWarnTime" data="1" />
<prop name="PointerTriggerArea" data="0.01" />
<prop name="HUDSettings" offSetX="0.000000" offSetY="0.000000" offSetZ="-0.550000" scale="0.500000" rotateX="0.000000" rotateY="0.000000" rotateZ="0.000000" rotateW="1.000000" />
<prop name="FrontEndSettings" offSetX="0.000000" offSetY="0.000000" offSetZ="-1.000000" scale="1.000000" rotateX="0.000000" rotateY="0.000000" rotateZ="0.000000" rotateW="1.000000" />
<prop name="InGameSettings" offSetX="0.000000" offSetY="0.000000" offSetZ="-1.000000" scale="1.000000" rotateX="0.000000" rotateY="0.000000" rotateZ="0.000000" rotateW="1.000000" />
</data>
</Reflection>

 

Absolutely nailed it. I think many people are just used to going super heavy on the brakes and expecting a Formula Vee or the Copa Classics to stick like a GT3 car. IMHO, differences between engine layout/weight balance are really significant in AMS2, they will feel completely different and need to be treated differently.

Also, AMS2 is very sensitive with brake temp which throws a lot of people off. Your brakes will overheat if you constantly push them too hard, and the balance changes massively if you don't expect it.

Some cars require gentle corner entry, where others (GT5 Puma AWD) just want you to fling them full sideways into a corner. You have to learn what the car wants, not exactly what you prefer.

 

@Yskonyn How are you getting on with the Stock Car?

 

I can’t seem to get my CSW v2 dialed in. The steering feels sluggish.
Any specific tips to look at?

 

Fanatec's recommended settings for AMS2 are very outdated.

I don't know similar my CSW v2.5 is to your CSW v2, but I use these settings:
SEN auto, FF 080, DRI off (or 1), FEI 70, FOR 100, SPR 100, DPR off, BLI 090, SHO 050, BRF 050
And in AMS2 with Default FFB profile: 50/0/50/0/20

 

Thanks! I’ll try that once I’ve had time to get some me time.