VR Discussions, Questions & Feedback

Thanks. VR is something mysterious to me, because I am definitely not having the same experience as you using the same device (Quest2, but with AMD 6950xt). I can either play with the resolution parameter in the config file or with the supersampling parameter in the oculus debug tool, that as long as I can distinguish, they do basically the same (at some point I restart the game so many times that lose the ability to distinguish small differences). What is not even remotely negotiable to me is MSAA: the higher the better, but medium is probably already good enough. If I have it low or off, it is just a pixelated mess. I do not know if there is anything intrinsically different in how different GPU do the same stuff, or if we have different configuration somewhere else, but MSAA considerably increases the image quality for me.

Here are my settings in the debug tool:



As said, I basically see the same and get the same performance setting PixelPerDisplayOverride to 1.4 here or having in the config file:
<prop name="SharpeningStrength" sharpeningstrength="1.400000" />
<prop name="SharpeningClamp" sharpeningclamp="0.090000" />
<prop name="OffsetBias" offsetbias="1.000000" />
while having both or, as you said, increasing it further, does not really give anything extra that I can notice.
In game I have the following (in Spanish MSAA=High, anysotropic filter x16, texture resolution high, reflexes high, shadows low and everything else ultra except for grass and particles which I have in high)


Please let me know if you or somebody else see something obvious here that can be touched to improve the performance. Otherwise I am actually starting to think that the limit of the Quest2 in terms of clarity is somewhat where I am, which is quite decent, but distant objects (specially cars) do not look good, while close ones look fantastic, as well as the road. So I would say that these are good settings for anyone to start playing around, if that might help. With these settings I get stable 90Hz in day conditions (sometimes at start with a lot of cars in the screen, it drops to >75), while at night it drops if a lot of cars are on the screen to a minimum of around 60 Hz

 

The problem with the sharpening in config file is because it creates more aliasing, and distort textures. But it's almost performance free.

Pixel density improves textures quality and lower aliasing, like in 2D.

With AMD, you can try H265 encoding, without sliced encoding, and 200-300 bitrate. If performance is OK, MUCH better imagem quality. My Geforce suffers with this, H265 have crap performance.

 

You don't need to adjust Pixel Denisty in the Oculus Tray Tool. You can also do this directly in the game. Then you only need to change this once and not every time.

 

Here this don't work anymore.

And I forget to change in vídeos bitrate to fixed 700, because without this or more everything looks like soup with any settings.

Compression sucks.

 

You may have to first set PD to default in the debug tool and then reconnect.

Both settings together can cancel/interfere with each other. These settings add up and if it's too much for your GPU it won't run.

I've had something like this before with Q3 and Nvidia...maybe it helps.
Good luck

 

You inspire me to do a full reinstal of AMS2. It's working now. Before, it's stopped to save supersampling setting. Thanks a lot, less effort now.

 

I've had this before, but not with Ams2.

There are so many settings in VR that you first have to understand them all.

The GPUs have a maximum resolution. I think if you exceed this through too much super sampling, your setting will simply not be accepted at all.

At the same time, if you make changes in the oculus debug tool, you should (I think) sometimes reconnect so that the setting is adopted. Sometimes even with a restart
if you switch back and forth too much. A real little search orgy.

 

Yes. If i'm a bilionaire will be nice to get a flight to China and order a batch of headset with limited vertical FOV and 180 deg horizontal FOV display/optics, with DisplayPort connection, direct power suply and good DPI, to give for free to VR users in this forum, to create a happy community, living the dream.

EDIT: to be even better, all this in a helmet, with build in 7.1 sound and air cooling. Maybe a drink connection too.

 

Mostly a restart of the oculus service will do the job .

 

So, thanks to Ernesto, I decided to jump back into this rabbit hole of tinkering with VR settings —with his report about > SS with no AA might just be the holy grail.

I ended up losing a good 1-2 hours testing every possible combination, from SS 1.0 to 2.0, and even cranked up the SS straight in Oculus on top of SS from within the game, which of course tanked my frame rates, but I was trying to see if an extreme render size would finally stop the shadows from flickering.

All other graphics settings were maxed out, and I tested every AA option—MSAA, plus the two post-process AA modes.

I’m 99% sure I've been down this road before, but did not remember, no matter the AA, no matter the SS, those shadows just keep flickering/jittering from a distance, there was no combination to make it stop.

On other flickers—like in trees—can be fixed with MSAA on medium or high, and at least 1.2 SS, based on my tests.

Cheers

 

Those shadow problems is a problem in the mad engine if you ask me. It has always been a disaster. Not only in VR.
I stopped bothering because there where times that I was only tweaking and tweaking instead of racing. VR is awesome but definitely has it’s drawback. Until we have the hardware that can coop with the current 2D looks, it will be immersive but less good performance and GFX. We have to deal with it.

 

Thanks again for your help. H265 is unusable for me since it just lags immensely even before opening the game, while I see no difference whatsoever with slice encoding or not.

Don't focus on the shadows, you won't fix that, it's more about the engine that anything else. I am constantly enabling or disabling shadows depending on where and at what time race, so when there are a lot of shadows from trees for example I just disable it.

 

Shadows in Madness Engine are like in DCS: too sharp in terrain, flickering all way. New rendering engines does the job better, really. In AMS2, MSAA blurs the edges of flickering, but do not solve the problem.

All my trouble with SS is about sharper details, most in textures.

For me, the best VR shadows in sims are in IL-2 Sturmovik BoS. Good in performance and soft visuals.

 

But to much MSAA makes the whole image blurry. Not ideal, but as long we do not have the hardware that can show the same quality in VR as it can in pancake mode, we have to compromise.

 

I like full shadows in sims, but in AMS2 maybe in VR is better disable detailed shadows and go all up reflections, SSAO and details...

 

Yeah but without shadows is does not look ok for me.

 

Same here, shadows off you still get a pre baked shadow under the car to connect it to the road. At the moment the trees and fencing are just too distracting in VR. I have them on when I occasionally run in flatscreen but I run that at 4k and do a 1.2 supersample to make that work.

 

Shadows always off for me.
Also had a fiddle with MSAA and render resolution settings. Certainly can turn render resolution up at lower AA settings. Originally was at high AA with 2600x resolution on PSVR2, 7800x3d, 3080. Turning off AA i could easily run at 3400x resolution with even more gpu overhead, but too much jaggies and shimmering for my liking. Low AA made it slightly better, but started dropping fps at that point. Medium AA with 3000x render resolution seemed to be the best compromise between aliasing and picture clarity so I might run it like that for a while.

 

I tried shadows off and it's terrible, everything looks like it is not set in the scene. Sure shadows are jaggy and i want them to be fixed but to me it is more distracting without them . Especially when it is night time and there would be no dynamic shadows, now that looks awful.

 

Without detailed shadows, things only looks "normal" with SSAO at ULTRA.