Terrible performance in VR in rain and night conditions

I can confirm, night time racing (even in dry conditions) tanks the framerate which makes it almost undrivable in VR. None of the graphics settings adjustments help. I hope they can fix this soon.

 

I turned my screen resolution down to 640x480 (I know, but hear me out). I gained about 20FPS-40FPS in night, and with rain at Daytona. Original settings were getting me 10FPS tops, -200% headroom in my gpu.

After turning off rain drops( which doesn't turn them off. ) which netted me about 15 FPS and with the monitor thing, I was hitting 45FPS with a few cars around me.

The give back is the menus (when not in the race) look like poop. As soon as it switches to the vr resolution, it looks perfect.

3060 12GB
i5 10700
32 GB RAM

 

Have you guys turned your oculus headsets from prioritize quality (or auto) to prioritize performance?

 

If it was an Oculus issue then the performance would be bad in all conditions, however, as the title suggests, performance is only bad during night or rain. I personally get well over 90 fps with 40% headroom, but then change to night, and its sub 90 with -50% headroom.
Also, I have the CV1, there is no such option for my headset

 

So I did some extensive testing tonight, and this is what I found. Turning all graphics options to the lowest (either low or off, which means shadows was set to off, this will be important later) and also turning all visual effects options off as well (this includes cockpit mirrors set to off, also important), starting a race with full grid of GTE class on Nürburgring 24hour during the day (3pm & clear weather) and fps is over 90.
Then just changing the time to 10pm, and the fps drops way below 90 so ASW kicks in with terrible headroom. However, if you start at the back of the grid with the exact same settings, fps is over 90. If you false start so that you overtake the entire grid, the fps will suddenly drop as you overtake about half the grid.
If you're at the back of the grid with over 90 fps, and there is a hairpin and the entire pack is now facing you, the fps will suddenly drop again just as they approach you (which means the issue is not related to cockpit mirrors as the entire grid is in front of you but facing you now), and then the fps goes back up as they pass.
If you start at the front, and stay at the front, you get terrible fps. Remember that this is with no cockpit mirrors or shadows so it cannot be the headlights casting shadows or rendering the entire grid in the mirrors.
Something about being at (or near) the front of the grid, at night, is causing a massive drop in fps that cannot be resolved by any setting. This is particularly bad at the start of the race, but gets better as the grid spreads out as the race progresses, however, these damn AI like to form long trains so often you will do several laps with low fps waiting for the AI to spread out. So I think it is something to do with the rendering of the headlights, but I am not sure what. I even tried turning my lights off to see if it will make a difference, but it didn't.
Running the exact same race during the day has no issues at all regardless of where you start and what position you are in.
EDIT: I also tried the exact same race at night but with cars without headlights (F1 Classics) and no fps drops at all regardless of what position you start in. So it's definitely an issue with car headlights.

 

Hi folks, I can only confirm all your tests. I have many different tried settings and my conclusion is the same. Too many months to solve this problem (and who knows how many still have to pass) that does not allow you to enjoy the incredible sensation of a wet race with this fantastic sim

 

What Reiza need to do is disable the AI from turning on their headlights every time there's rain. The headlights is the problem. First of all, they don't need to turn on the headlights when it's raining....its not dark outside lol. I think it will help a lot by disable all the AI cars from turning on headlights during rain.

 

I logged a bug, if enough people agree on the post then I am sure they will prioritize it...
Bug Reports - Automobilista 2 (Read the Opening Post)

 

Hey guys, I figured out how to get around this issue, although it's not an ideal solution. I was playing Project Cars 2 and learned that it has the exact same problem (same engine, so obviously). So I tried a few things there which worked and came back to AMS 2 and they work here as well. The problem is Supersampling. Something about supersampling combined with the cockpit illumination from headlights is causing this massive fps drop. If I turn down supersampling under VR options to 1.0 or even 1.1, then I am able to maintain 90 fps on the starting grid with headlights. I have a RTX3080 so not sure if this will apply to slower cards, but from slowly incrementing the supersampling I can tell it does seem to scale in performance based on frametimes. If turning off supersampling doesn't work then you may need to downsample which you can do in the Oculus debug tool, or in SteamVR depending on what headset you use.

But lowering supersampling means an aliased image, so I increased MSAA to medium which doesn't affect the performance like SS does. This does mean you get a blurry image which is why it's not an ideal solution, but it at least makes the game playable. So I lowered supersampling to 1.3 (I was running 1.7 before) and increased MSAA to medium, which means on the grid and for the first few corners I get lower than 90 fps but then it increases to 90 for the rest of the race, which is a compromise I am willing to make. I also have turned down some other graphics options to ensure I have enough performance to do this so it could also depend on your graphics settings.

Interim solutions from Reiza would be to give an option to disable headlights for rain races during the day, or an option to disable the cockpit illumination effect so we can race at night with SS. A proper solution is to optimize this effect as it makes no sense that it has such a drastic performance hit. It's definitely a bug in my opinion.

 

I've said it once & will say it again. It's not a bug. Rain & night lighting is far more taxing because there is much more going on. Of course if you turn down other taxing settings like SS it will help. It's not rocket science.

 

I've said it once and I'll say it again. It used to run sooo much better.

 

Actually it is mandatory to turn yours Lights on when raining. Lights Working is parts of the pre-race inspection.

I don't have such issue on night and dry ( 1080ti, i5-12600k, 16gb of Ram, HP G2). Even Night and wet track ( no rain) was ok and acceptable , tried on road america. Rain, Day and no Lights gives trouble

 

Hi guys, it is very nice to meet people having same problem My PC specs:

MOBO ROG Strix B450-F
CPU AMD RYZEN 7 5800X3D
GPU Gainward RTX 3080 Phantom+
RAM G.SKILL RipJawsV DDR 2x16 GB 3200Mhz

Same exact problem as everyone else on Reverb G2 using OpenComposite. I recently bought season pass and will buy lmdh and le mans, so I hope they will use my money to fix this issue

 

Hello wynarator, welcome to the asylum. Take your milk and cookies and wait in line please.

 

same combo than you, 5800X3D and RTX3080 with the same conclusion. Maintaining 90fps in night and rain conditions require lot of external tweaking (vrperfkit for me on a Q2 and PICO N3L) as I dont want to compromise on Graphics High settings

 

For those who are not aware, there is new option in 1.5.5 that allows to control the number of visible cars to reduce the numbers of car lights creating a ton of shadows, thus killing FPS.

Also, you must be crazy for wanting to race at night in full blow rain... It's not fun, and you are asking for the worse graphical scenarios possible. It's not because you "can" create the worse rendering scenario that you "should". I have a RTX 4090 and I keep all my settings at high or ultra and stay away from many cars at night and rain.

 

Hello,

Where is this option ? I can't find it.

 

Yes please adress this issue Reiza. Now with endurance content coming, racing at night will get used way more. My fps also suffer very hard from darkness alone

 

Me neither

 

Les 24Heures du Mans just entered the room