VR Discussions, Questions & Feedback

Good to know for Monaco! I hope they will optimize other tracks and we will be able to turn off Crowds for all other tracks (like with a performance menu option or when track is set on Low quality)...

 

crowds in all other track have more or less no performance impact. This are simple 2D objects.
Only Monaco is afaik an SMS track, with 3D trees and original crowds.

 

Brands Hatch uses 3d crowd models too. I remember that one as they were quite noticable, probably others also do.

 

VR is brilliant but this suffers of the same issues as PCars 2. Tree shadows on sunny days are an aliased mess. Please improve it (if you have the ability to do so with the Madness Engine).

 

Is there a way for the FPS monitoring in VR within the AMS2 ?
I have tried the following 3rd party solutions :
* fpsVR - great tool but requires to get the AMS2 forced running our of StreamVR, which I am trying to avoid. Doesn't work in Oculus SDK.
* Oculus TrayTool - uses the Oculus Debug performance HUD - nice but no resize / reposition option AFAIK, therefore it looks ugly with that huge overlay right in front of you.

 

Hola everybody!!

im very happy with how this early access simulator is going , love the physics, visuals, nice sounds and ffb, and i like the direction that the developement is taking, so thanks a lot!

i can only ask to please take a look at pimax users, if we want to play it on steam mode we have to use "parallel projection" option that is the compatibility mode option , but is a fps killer , the preformance can drop more than a 25% , the other option is to play it in oculus mode, that is fine, but also much slower and fps demanding that the straight forward natural way of steamVR without, PP option.

Studio 397 recently added an option to the rF2 game engine to avoid the use of PP on pimax headsets.

"VR Projection Mode":1,
"VR Projection Mode#":"VR Projection Mode: 0 = default, 1 = not in-plane displays HMDs",



that was really a boost and a game changer for pimax users.

could you please take a look at it, and make the same magic you did to madness engine?


Regards.

 

I've got a Vive Pro and a Ryzen 5 3600 and an RX 5700 XT, thought I'd share my settings in detail. I'm hoping others will do the same. I'm able to maintain 90FPS with whatever the default grid size is (I've not changed it) and with an occasional dip at the start/finish line. Advice and tips are always welcome!

Performance Settings
Resolution: 1280x720 60Hz
Windowed: No
Texture Resolution: High
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 4x
V-Sync: No
MSAA: Medium
Post AA: Off
Supersampling: Off
Reflections: Low
Environment Map: Low.
Car Detail: High
Track Detail: Medium
Pit Crew Detail: All
Shadow Detail: Low
Enhanced Mirror: Yes
Motion Blur: Off
Render Frames Ahead: 1
Detailed Grass: Medium
Particle Level: Medium
Particle Density: Medium

Visual FX Settings
Post-Processing Filters: Off
Exterior Sun Flare: None
Interior Sun Flare: None
Bloom: Off
Heat Haze: Off
Exposure Compensation: 1.00
Rain Drops: No
Vignette: No
Crepuscular Rays: No
Screen Dirt: No
Cockpit Mirrors: On

Virtual Reality Settings
Gaze Control: Off
Super Sampling: 1.0 (100% in Steam VR or Resolution Per Eye: 2016 x 2240)
Recenter View on Boot: Off
Recenter View at Race Start: Off
Camera Near Clip Plane: 0.07

graphicsconfigopenvrdx11.xml (My Documents/Automobilista 2)
<prop name="SharpeningStrength" sharpeningstrength="1.600000" />
<prop name="SharpeningClamp" sharpeningclamp="0.045000" />
<prop name="OffsetBias" offsetbias="1.000000" />

Edit: Added XML settings and modified settings based upon final testing

 

@BillyBobBongo
Thanks for the Info. It would be very interesting to know what 100% in Steam VR means in Resolution? I have a Valve Index with the same Resolution as the Vive Pro (1440x1600) but with 100% in Steam VR this are 2016 x 2240! And with this Resolution it is not possible to me to have steady 90 or 80 fps without reproduction.... no way! PC i5 9600k@5000mhz, and RTX 2070, maybe the RX5700 XT is faster....?

 

The Vive Pro has at 100% Supersampling shows up in Steam VR as a resolution of 2016 x 2240 per eye. The literature on the Vive Pro says it has a resolution of 1440 x 1600 pixels per eye (2880 x 1600 pixels combined). I'm not sure where this discrepancy is coming from.

The RX 5700 XT is a stronger graphics card then the RTX 2070, not by much but probably enough to make a difference here. It trades blows with the RTX 2070 Super.

To be fair I think the next generation of graphics cards will make this all easier in the future. But I guess we'll have to wait and see what NVIDIA and AMD come up with later this year.

 

BillyBob, can you play at night with no fps drop? Because I have the same gpu on a WMR headset and I'm getting really bad performance

 

I answered you in your other thread: Night performance bad?

 

Guys, I state that I really appreciate the work done by Reiza with AMS2 and for this I bought the complete package to support them.
I also state that, having tried VR starting from CV1 to the current HP Reverb with all the simulations on the market, playing on screen no longer involves me.
Having said that, a post I wrote on the ACC forum at the beginning of the Early Acces phase came to mind. In this post I expressed my complaints about ACC's VR rendering and I expressed my belief that, given the graphic engine used (Unreal), the visual and performance quality could not have increased much despite the efforts of Kunos & C .
The forum participants then verbally attacked me stating that they belief that VR would be improved in subsequent releases. Well, as we can all see today , after more than a year, VR in ACC is still painful.
This long introduction to justify today for AMS2, my belief that VR in it will not improve much due to the graphics engine adopted.
I read opinions from other members of the forum who are already satisfied with the current VR performance, but I also know that most use first generation HDM.
In other words, I fear that for HDM owners with high resolutions like the HP reverb, unfortunately AMS 2 will never have the necessary performance and visual quality whit current top hardware.
I recommend to everyone who is satisfied with the current VR in AMS2 to try Iracing or AC with HP Reverb, all setting to max, AA 8x SS 210 (obviously with a high-level PC) to understand what VR of the new generation means.
With acc, I hoped for some magic from Stefano (Kunos), now I hope for some magic from Team Reiza, but I fear that I will be disappointed.

I hope this time I'm wrong....

 

That really is to be expected though. The engines used by those games are old technology now and don't do nearly as much graphical processing. When the graphics engine doesn't take much processing power you can use the spare cycles to boost the AA.

 

Yes, but in my opinion these new graphics engines in VR have a clearly lower visual quality and much lower performance.

 

In another thread, discussing performance at night, I said I would look in to what it took to obtain a stable 90 FPS at night. I thought this was a better place to share those results. All test were conducted at 00:00 using the MCR 2000 (not really the best choice due to pixelation of the rear wing) at Donington Park. The system used had an RX 5700 XT, R5 3600, 16GB of RAM and using a Vive Pro.

My original settings were unable to produce a stable 90 FPS so I dropped the Super Sampling to 80% (I do this too in rFactor2). I then tweaked all the settings as high as I could. I then repeated the process at 70% and 60% Super Sampling.

First let's cover what everything does, I will only be discussing 'Performance Settings':

Spoiler: Performance Settings - Explanation of Terms with Impact in parentheses

Resolution: Self explanatory (Low/Medium)
Windowed: Self explanatory (Low)
Texture Resolution: Texture/detail of close objects (Low)
Texture Filtering: Enhances the image quality of textures on surfaces (Medium)
V-Sync: Self explanatory (Not relevant in VR)
MSAA: Increases image quality by reducing aliased lines (High)
Post AA: Fast approximate anti-aliasing or Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing. SMAA provides better anti aliasing than FXAA, with less blurring. (High)
Supersampling: Self explanatory (High)
Reflections: Handles reflection of (wet) road surfaces (Medium)
Environment Map: Handles environment reflections on car bodies and windows (High)
Car Detail: Manages the speed at which the polygons on the cars change. At Low you’ll see the cars ‘morphing’ as you draw closer. Also has an affect on the level of detail of your own car. (Medium)
Track Detail: LOD for track objects. Things popping up in the distance. Also controls the detail of trackside objects (Low/Medium)
Pit Crew Detail: Self explanatory (Low)
Shadow Detail: Self explanatory (High)
Enhanced Mirror: Increases the fidelity of the scene displayed in the cockpit mirrors(Medium)
Motion Blur: Self explanatory. Setting changes the quality of the blur, not the amount applied (Low)
Render Frames Ahead: Buffer of rendered frames (Medium)
Detailed Grass: LOD range and details level for grass (Low/Medium)
Particle Level: LOD for particles (Low/Medium)
Particle Density: Number of Particle clouds (Low/Medium)

Spoiler: Performance Settings - 80% Super Sampling

Performance Settings
Resolution: 1280x720 60Hz
Windowed: No
Texture Resolution: Medium
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 4x
V-Sync: No
MSAA: Off
Post AA: Off
Supersampling: Off
Reflections: Low
Environment Map: Low.
Car Detail: Medium
Track Detail: Low
Pit Crew Detail: Player Only
Shadow Detail: Off
Enhanced Mirror: No
Motion Blur: Off
Render Frames Ahead: 1
Detailed Grass: Off
Particle Level: Off
Particle Density: Low

Spoiler: Performance Settings - 70% Super Sampling

Performance Settings
Resolution: 1280x720 60Hz
Windowed: No
Texture Resolution: Medium
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 4x
V-Sync: No
MSAA: Medium
Post AA: Off
Supersampling: Off
Reflections: Medium
Environment Map: Medium.
Car Detail: High
Track Detail: Medium
Pit Crew Detail: Player Only
Shadow Detail: Off
Enhanced Mirror: No
Motion Blur: Off
Render Frames Ahead: 1
Detailed Grass: Off
Particle Level: Low
Particle Density: Low

Spoiler: Performance Settings - 60% Super Sampling

Performance Settings
Resolution: 1280x720 60Hz
Windowed: No
Texture Resolution: High
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 4x (can sometimes push to 8x)
V-Sync: No
MSAA: Medium
Post AA: Off
Supersampling: Off
Reflections: Medium
Environment Map: Medium
Car Detail: High
Track Detail: Medium
Pit Crew Detail: All
Shadow Detail: Low (can just about get away with it)
Enhanced Mirror: Yes
Motion Blur: Off
Render Frames Ahead: 1
Detailed Grass: Off
Particle Level: Medium
Particle Density: Medium

What is interesting is how close the three settings are to one another, showing just how little wiggle room there is.

Going through this process I learnt a lot about what each setting does and, looking back, I'd probably change a few things regarding the priority of my choices. In particular I'd probably lower both 'Reflections' and 'Environment Map' to their lowest values and put those resources elsewhere, most likely towards 'Super Sampling'. Doing so would put me very close to my original setting and my approach to night racing would simply come down to dropping the 'Super Sampling' to an acceptable level.

I tried using 'Trilinear Texture Filtering' but found myself leaning towards 'Anisotropic' more often than not. I'll go back over my settings and see what the headroom difference is using the settings stated above, but with only that change.

I also want to look in to what is possible at 45 FPS. However I'm not able to achieve this with my equipment, 'Motion Smoothing' doesn't work on Automobilista 2 (Project Cars 2 also blocked it). The best I can do is use to launch term "-fpscap 45", but this is not the same as 'Motion Smoothing'. If anyone has a way around this please let me know. Occasionally I got it to work, looking at 'fpsVR' the system was confused regarding if Steam Home our Automobilista 2 was running, this confusion led to 'Motion Smoothing' working which suggests it certainly is possible but it's being blocked somehow.

Feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

 

Good job Billy. I'm still confused about the difference between motion smoothing and reprojection but I got one of those (or both) to work in AMS2 although in generates some visual glitches (I think this is to be expected).
So after all that experimenting, what's your conclusion as to what looks the best/yields best results? Supersample turned to low and high settings in game or a high supersample rate but low settings in game?

 

Yeah, I struggle to understand it too sometimes. Fortunately in fpsVR there is an option that tells me that if I set it to always on then it will half the frame rate. That is what I want but it doesn't work for me.

From this scenario my choice would be to drop the 'Super Sampling' at night but keep the settings high (ultimately using my daytime/standard settings). Not only do I feel it gives the best results, it is also easier to change on the fly (I don't need to restart the game to change this). When we discuss VR the opinion is usually that the higher the 'Super Sampling' the better the experience, but with the higher resolution of devices like the Vive Pro I think I am gifted with other options.

When I got 45 FPS to stick (when it got confused with Steam Home) I was able to seriously turn up the 'Performance Settings'. I don't get motion sick so I can get away with this, but obviously this approach isn't for everybody. Back when I was using an RX 580 I took my setup to work and let my colleagues try it out and see why I love Sim Racing so much (they loved it too). Problem was that I was only managing 45 FPS back then (on a DK2) and two of my colleagues got really sick. Gotta feel sorry for those that can't handle it. Anyway...I digress, in short this would probably be my preferred option.

@ReizaDevs, what is blocking me in the Madness Engine from being able to force 45 FPS in Steam VR? It was exactly the same in Project Cars 2.

 

Very informative @BillyBobBongo , I also made tons of test (using the overlay OculusDebugTools with my Oculus Rift CV1, displaying FPS, headroom, etc.).

My CPU is not powerful as your and my GPU seems more or less equivalent. My settings are higher I guess thanks to the lower resolution of my headset. CPU and GPU are OC. I keep SuperSampling at 100% (a.k.a VR menu SS 1.0 for Oculus) and use instead the ShapeningStrengh settings in the XML to sharpen with nearly no fps cost.

Below my current settings allowing me to keep 90fps 99% of the time (but the few seconds of starting a race with 15 AIs), at day time and with some clouds. I didn't test by night or with rain for now (probably will need to lower settings).

Performance Settings
Resolution: 1280x720 60Hz
Windowed: No
Texture Resolution: High
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 16x
V-Sync: No
MSAA: off
Post AA: SMAA Medium
Supersampling: Off
Reflections: Medium
Environment Map: Medium
Car Detail: Ultra (I will lower it for sure if my car is not impacted)
Track Detail: Low
Pit Crew Detail: All
Shadow Detail: Low
Enhanced Mirror: Yes
Motion Blur: Off
Render Frames Ahead: 1
Detailed Grass: Off
Particle Level: High
Particle Density: High

I avoided test the 'Car Detail' as I thought it will lower my own car. if it's what you said, lowering it will impact only other cars (LOD) and I can live with that in VR. I also didn't test what happen playing with the Render Frame Ahead...

 

I actually think that 'Car Detail' does both. It certainly also has an influence on your own car. On the 'Low' setting I was literally seeing four wheels, and a driver in front of me until I got close enough, then the car rendered. LOD certainly has a role in all of this. Will update my notes to avoid confusion

 

Yeah, I went through the process again....

"My name is BillyBobBongo, and I have an addiction to Sim Racing Settings"

I've updated my original settings, I ended up more or less in the same place but with a few minor changes and I learnt some new things along the way. I'll try not to write another essay. Here's a few more learnings regarding some of my choices and the reasoning why I changed them.

Resolution
This definitely has an impact on performance, I can't really work out how much. I've chosen to lower this as low as I can and not worry about it too much. Too many variables already.

Texture Filtering
This could make or break my settings. I ended up using 'Anisotropic 4x', if I went to '8x' it became much harder to fine tune the other settings. There is a lot of discussion that 'Trilinear' is a good option, I found the performance impact of 'Trilinear' to be similar to 'Anisotropic 8x'. The multiple options of Anisotropic Filtering provided me with more headroom.

Antialiasing
I settled on 'MSAA Medium' in the end. I predominantly race in daytime and this was by far the best looking. My system was also able to run with 'SMAA High', but I preferred 'MSAA Medium'. There seems to be a staggered effect on performance with this option. Purely based on my experience it felt like the order of performance impact was SMAA Low - MSAA Low - SMAA Medium - MSAA Medium - SMAA High etc.

Shadow Detail
This remains a killer for me. I've settled on 'Low' as 'Medium' forces me to make too many other concessions.

Detailed Grass
This seemed to have less impact than I had originally thought. I was able to put this at 'Medium'. I found that using 'High' made it much harder to dial in the 'Antialiasing' settings, so whilst it doesn't have a large impact on performance at lower levels the same cannot be said for higher levels.

Particles
Originally I had these at 'Low' but have now pushed them to 'Medium'. Not sure why I had this so low before Maybe it was an affect of the 'Resolution' setting or purely just needed multiple runs (I've lost count how many times I've drive Donington now) to make a final decision here.

Night Racing
I predominantly race during the daytime, so my settings are configured with that in mind first. However, this whole thing began as an experiment on what it took to get stable FPS at night. With these settings I am able to do that with a few minor changes. The first being the 'Shadows' need to turned 'Off' and the second that I drop the 'Super Sampling' level (somewhere between 80-90%). If I find I need a little bit extra room I can drop the 'Track Detail' to 'Low' and that will get me over the line. All of these changes don't require me to restart my system and I find that to be acceptable.

I'm hoping that VR sees more optimisation going forwards, but to be fair I don't think it's actually that bad at the moment.

Going to drive more laps now and press less buttons.