guide VR FAQ & Performance

[YorkyPudsy]

7 minutes ago, SatchmoTK said:

The Oculus version of the game is the same - windowed showing both eyes ...[snip]

Oh, didn't know that. At least it's consistent I suppose! Yeah, hopefully they can sort it in future for both Oculus Store + Oculus-native on Steam then.

[Smithers1968]

Just getting into VR and couldn't understand why choosing to launch in Oculus mode just told me my headset is not recognized (might not be exact wording). Then saw all the stuff about having to run it in SteamVR mode so used that and have the same experiences people are complaining about here.

Reading this I see it should now work in Oculus mode?

Could this be because I'm using a Quest? I don't have a large VR library to test but some VR benchmark/demos I've tried work in both modes, Elite works fine in SteamVR mode and RBR works brilliantly....until I exit to menu when it crashes, which I'm sure I'll figure out.

Point is that so far the claim that anything that works with a Rift will work with a quest seems true apart from this one game. I guess anything using SteamVR doesn't know/care about specific headsets, just the spec whereas anything Oculus knows exactly what it is. 

Could it be as simple as adding Quest to a device list? 

[JKangSC]

On 12/6/2019 at 6:03 PM, SatchmoTK said:

I get a solid 80 frames with high shaders with my 2070 RTX and the game looks incredible.

Can you share your graphics settings? I have a 3700X + 2070 super setup, and I'm stuck with mixed low and medium settings IIRC.

[Smithers1968]

"VR gameplay will sync to 45 FPS if it drops below 90 FPS, so it's important to keep it the framerate high for a smooth experience."

What does that mean for Oculus users? The Rift S runs at 80fps, the Quest at 72. Does that mean they'll always be dropped to 45? Or is it that they need to be generating 90, even if not displayed, which is a waste and would run less smoothly anyway?

Also, the comment about running at a reasonable resolution? There isn't an option in game (when in VR mode). I know there's a setting in the hardware config file but not sure if it works as I think. Guess I could set a stupid value and see if it looks much different?

[somethingthing]

Im very happy with 45 fps in dr2 and it feels very smooth. Im not sure exactly what it is because in other racing titles it makes me feel sick. Best thing ever to being able to bump up graphics settings and supersampling this high!

Edited December 9, 2019 by somethingthing

[cestomano]

25 minutes ago, Smithers1968 said:

"VR gameplay will sync to 45 FPS if it drops below 90 FPS, so it's important to keep it the framerate high for a smooth experience."

What does that mean for Oculus users? The Rift S runs at 80fps, the Quest at 72. Does that mean they'll always be dropped to 45? Or is it that they need to be generating 90, even if not displayed, which is a waste and would run less smoothly anyway?

Also, the comment about running at a reasonable resolution? There isn't an option in game (when in VR mode). I know there's a setting in the hardware config file but not sure if it works as I think. Guess I could set a stupid value and see if it looks much different?

"VR gameplay will sync to 45 FPS if it drops below 90 FPS" is only for HMD with 90Hz, like Oculus Rift CV1, HTC Vive, etc. In Oculus Rift S is 80Hz son with ASW fps go to 40fps (not 45).

And in DR2, ASW is great. You won't see artifacts (only a few when you are stopped). So I prefer to maximize my rendering preferences and activate ASW to run always at 40fps.

NOTE: In another HMDs, ASW similar methods, like "reproyection" maybe is worse. I've tested it in a HP Reverb (to use 45fps) and reproyection artifacts are more visible.

About resolution... you can't change resolution in game. You can do it outside. With Oculus, you can change supersampling with Oculus Debug Tool or, better, with Oculus Tray Tool (OTT). I let a table with resolution vs. supersampling relationships:

S.S.    Resolución Rift    Resolución Rift S
0.7                               1168x1248
0.8      1080x1200          1328x1424    (aprox. native resolution)
0.9                               1488x1600
1         1344x1600          1648x1776    (you won't to put SS under this point)
1.4                               2320x2480
1.5      2016x2400          2480x2656
1.6                               2640x2848
1.7      2285x2720          2816x3024
1.8                               2976x3200
1.9                               3136x3376
2.0      2688x3200         3296x3552

With my GTX1080, i7 9700K, I usually put SS 1.6, ASW on (40 fps) and rendering settings between High and Ultra.

 

Edited December 9, 2019 by cestomano

[JKangSC]

Haven't played DR2.0 VR for a while due to the performance issue. Just gave it a try with Oculus debug tool to see how the performance is. Man! I got constent 80FPS(rift s) with high graphics preset, 4x supersampling and 16x anisotropic filtering. Wow.

I couldn't manage to get 80fps with mixed low and medium settings before. I still have no idea what have been changed. But how great is that! I'm over the moon.

PS: 3700x + RTX 2070 super.

Edited December 10, 2019 by JKangSC
I'm over the moon.

[Smithers1968]

Thankyou so much for that explanation @cestomano. As a VR noob I had to google ASW. Then I thought that can't possibly work, especially as the quest frame rate is already pushing the lower limit for VR. So I drove around dirtfish until I found a nice glitchy bit on low settings, forced ASW on and it ran smoothly. Tried a few doughnuts, shaking my head about etc. and the effect had me fooled. I've now managed to crank up to mostly medium with a few highs and still smooth.

Can't handle rain at night in the forest on high weather but I'm asking a lot from an old I7 3770 and RTX 2060. 

[cestomano]

13 hours ago, Smithers1968 said:

Thankyou so much for that explanation @cestomano. As a VR noob I had to google ASW. Then I thought that can't possibly work, especially as the quest frame rate is already pushing the lower limit for VR. So I drove around dirtfish until I found a nice glitchy bit on low settings, forced ASW on and it ran smoothly. Tried a few doughnuts, shaking my head about etc. and the effect had me fooled. I've now managed to crank up to mostly medium with a few highs and still smooth.

Can't handle rain at night in the forest on high weather but I'm asking a lot from an old I7 3770 and RTX 2060. 

Yes, ASW in Dirt Rally 2.0 is very very good. I've tested reproyection in other HMDs (reproyection is similar to ASW in Oculus) and results aren't so good as in Oculus.

I get 40 fps with my computer with high-ultra settings and 1.6 on SS, with ASW on. With ASW off, I can only put med-low settings with 1.3 SS to get 80 fps.

ASW uses 40 fps in order to produce other "syntetic" 40 fps interleaved, so you'll get 80 fps. It's very smooth driving or moving the head. Not so smooth when you see the people moving around you (before you start the race)... but it's no important.

[KAnator]

Oh hey, thanks for including VR for those of us that have the Windows store version.


/s

[DessIntress]

On 12/9/2019 at 2:41 PM, cestomano said:

"VR gameplay will sync to 45 FPS if it drops below 90 FPS" is only for HMD with 90Hz, like Oculus Rift CV1, HTC Vive, etc. In Oculus Rift S is 80Hz son with ASW fps go to 40fps (not 45).

And in DR2, ASW is great. You won't see artifacts (only a few when you are stopped). So I prefer to maximize my rendering preferences and activate ASW to run always at 40fps.

NOTE: In another HMDs, ASW similar methods, like "reproyection" maybe is worse. I've tested it in a HP Reverb (to use 45fps) and reproyection artifacts are more visible.

About resolution... you can't change resolution in game. You can do it outside. With Oculus, you can change supersampling with Oculus Debug Tool or, better, with Oculus Tray Tool (OTT). I let a table with resolution vs. supersampling relationships:

S.S.    Resolución Rift    Resolución Rift S
0.7                               1168x1248
0.8      1080x1200          1328x1424    (aprox. native resolution)
0.9                               1488x1600
1         1344x1600          1648x1776    (you won't to put SS under this point)
1.4                               2320x2480
1.5      2016x2400          2480x2656
1.6                               2640x2848
1.7      2285x2720          2816x3024
1.8                               2976x3200
1.9                               3136x3376
2.0      2688x3200         3296x3552

With my GTX1080, i7 9700K, I usually put SS 1.6, ASW on (40 fps) and rendering settings between High and Ultra.

 

You forgot the GPU render timings which are way above 11ms with your hardware and these settings. That's why it's red.
FPS isn't the only important point in VR. Render timings of max 11ms are even more important - IMO also with ASW.

e:Called 'frame timing' on Steam.

Edited December 13, 2019 by DessIntress

[cestomano]

23 hours ago, DessIntress said:

You forgot the GPU render timings which are way above 11ms with your hardware and these settings. That's why it's red.
FPS isn't the only important point in VR. Render timings of max 11ms are even more important - IMO also with ASW. 

e:Called 'frame timing' on Steam.

Both things are relationated. You need 11 ms max tu make a frame if you want to run in 90fps mode. Rift S works at 80Hz so you need 12,5ms max (not 11ms) to run at 80fps.

But if you use ASW, you only need half the frames because another half are made syntetic. So, with ASW on, in Oculus Rift cv1 you can spent 22ms (max) to do a frame, and using Oculus Rift S, 25 ms.

I put my rendering options, AA and SS such render timmings don't go further than 25ms (in 99% of times). And the game runs as a charm.

[chodemasters]

2080ti here the performance is abysmal most of the tracks barely use 50% of my gpu some stutter like mad some run perfectly fine.

????????????

Doesnt matter what settings res aa 

[IlmarsM]

On 12/24/2019 at 6:03 AM, ************ said:

2080ti here the performance is abysmal most of the tracks barely use 50% of my gpu some stutter like mad some run perfectly fine.

????????????

Doesnt matter what settings res aa 

Most likely you are CPU bound. I have RTX 2080Ti. I recently upgraded from Ryzen 7 1700 to 3800X just because of this. With old CPU I could not run anything but lowest settings and still had major stutters in Spain city areas. Now with R7 3800x (only CPU swapped), I can run medium/high settings even in a city and dense forest areas of stages. And still, fpsVR (https://store.steampowered.com/app/908520/fpsVR/) is showing that I'm mostly CPU limited.

The takeaway is that VR is an extremely CPU demanding affair.

[evaristorivi]

I've noticed that at the beginning of the race it's all blurred and foggy.
If I turn the MSAA or TAA options on and off before each race and leave the menu, mysteriously  everything looks perfect, no fog, everything looks perfect.
I have a 2080 SUPER and High configuration (But the same happens in low, medium, Ultra, etc...)

[cestomano]

10 hours ago, evaristorivi said:

I've noticed that at the beginning of the race it's all blurred and foggy.
If I turn the MSAA or TAA options on and off before each race and leave the menu, mysteriously  everything looks perfect, no fog, everything looks perfect.
I have a 2080 SUPER and High configuration (But the same happens in low, medium, Ultra, etc...)

Yes, it's said at 1.12 Bug reports thread:

I hope they fix it ASAP.

EDIT: I've just saw you wrote in that thread 😉

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by cestomano

[Shodan0000]

I was having massive judder issues and I thought it was ASW related. However, with the performance HUD I noticed that despite the " auto" setting in Oculus debug tool. ASW never kicks in. I have to manually force it to 45fps + ASW and indeed I noticed no negative effect from ASW. It works perfect with DR2. It's really weird though that auto does not work. Perhaps something is wrong with my oculus install or something.

 

Anyway. Everything is suprisingly clear and buttersmooth with ASW on. So I can even crank up some visuals. I love having crowds on, much more immersive. Happy it works now.

[cestomano]

1 hour ago, Shodan0000 said:

I was having massive judder issues and I thought it was ASW related. However, with the performance HUD I noticed that despite the " auto" setting in Oculus debug tool. ASW never kicks in. I have to manually force it to 45fps + ASW and indeed I noticed no negative effect from ASW. It works perfect with DR2. It's really weird though that auto does not work. Perhaps something is wrong with my oculus install or something.

 

Anyway. Everything is suprisingly clear and buttersmooth with ASW on. So I can even crank up some visuals. I love having crowds on, much more immersive. Happy it works now.

ASW works only in 45 mode. Auto mode is horrible, it brakes and accelerates the time (a kind of suttering) for every Oculus user... I don't recommend it.

45 mode is perfect in DR2! 🙂

[CadeyrnDirt]

Hey Guys,

I'm super happy to play Dirt Rally 2.0 with VR now, since I can start the Steam Version with the Oculus SDK. There's only one thing that realy bothers me: For some reason I have seemingly 8-bit color on the darker colors. As long as the stage is in strong daylight or mostly in brighter colors everything seems fine, but as soon as there are more shadows, its cloudy or night it becomes realy ugly and hard to drive.

I did my best to capture it with some Screenshots. Focus on the darker spots and the hard borders between colors. Its especially obvious on the menu screenshots. The images have not been changes,. thats exactly how it looks like. The last two images (without the google view) are for reference in non VR mode, same spot, same settings.

Anyone found a solution to that already?

[Shodan0000]

On 2/8/2020 at 8:55 PM, CadeyrnDirt said:

Hey Guys,

I'm super happy to play Dirt Rally 2.0 with VR now, since I can start the Steam Version with the Oculus SDK. There's only one thing that realy bothers me: For some reason I have seemingly 8-bit color on the darker colors. As long as the stage is in strong daylight or mostly in brighter colors everything seems fine, but as soon as there are more shadows, its cloudy or night it becomes realy ugly and hard to drive.

I did my best to capture it with some Screenshots. Focus on the darker spots and the hard borders between colors. Its especially obvious on the menu screenshots. The images have not been changes,. thats exactly how it looks like. The last two images (without the google view) are for reference in non VR mode, same spot, same settings.

Anyone found a solution to that already?

Unfortunately there is no solution except to start the game in SteamVR mode and lose performance. This problem only persists in Oculus SDK version (as far as I know). You could run in 45 / 40 fps in steamVR mode if the performance hit is too much.

 

Not sure if Codemasters will ever fix this.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Shodan0000

[Rubbercow]

Hello.

I must share something I find a bit odd (but GOOD!)

I was fiddling around the settings and didn´t get good perfomance. (i7 7700k, 1080Ti, HTC Vive)

Then I tried editing the "hardware_settings_config_vr.xml". I changed the setting: <resolution width="1600" height="900"" to <resolution width="2048" height="1152".

It´s so smooth and sharp. Text is superclear. (Works in PCARS2 as well. PCARS2 was almost unplayable before i changed resolution.)

Don´t know why the higher resolution makes it more playable but I LIKE IT! Maybe some CPU-thingy with lower res?

Maybe works on Oculus as well?

Logg from fpsVR:

fpsVR Report:
App: DiRT Rally 2.0 HMD: Vive MV (90.000 Hz, IPD 71.6)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (26.21.14.4219) CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
Delivered fps: 89.13  Duration: 2.5min.
GPU Frametimes:
Median: 7.8 ms
99th percentile: 10 ms
99.9th percentile: 10.4 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 100%
CPU frametime:
Median: 4.2 ms
99th percentile: 8.2 ms
99.9th percentile: 10.7 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 99.9%
Max. SteamVR SS: 150%
Render resolution per eye: 1852x2056(by SteamVR settings, Max.) (HMD driver recommended: 1512x1679)

Edited February 21, 2020 by Rubbercow

[cestomano]

55 minutes ago, Rubbercow said:

Hello.

I must share something I find a bit odd (but GOOD!)

I was fiddling around the settings and didn´t get good perfomance. (i7 7700k, 1080Ti, HTC Vive)

Then I tried editing the "hardware_settings_config_vr.xml". I changed the setting: <resolution width="1600" height="900"" to <resolution width="2048" height="1152".

It´s so smooth and sharp. Text is superclear. (Works in PCARS2 as well. PCARS2 was almost unplayable before i changed resolution.)

Don´t know why the higher resolution makes it more playable but I LIKE IT! Maybe some CPU-thingy with lower res?

Maybe works on Oculus as well?

 

Really??

I have to try it ;-)

[tombradybaby]

Tracking for oculus rift S via steam using oculus sdk has become glitchy since last update. At one point it was so bad the game would stutter all over the place, the game would reset me to outside the car or in worst cases crash the oculus app. During the daytime it’s barely noticeable but at night when using a light shade it sometimes is unplayable. I’ve diffused my light, put posters on the wall, put items in front of my rig, done everything I can to help the rift S have something to track, but as soon as natural light turns to dark and I turn my lights and lamps on the tracking becomes poor. Putting posters on my wall next to me and in front of me, has improved the tracking, but still nowhere near the same standard as any other vr sim. All my other sims absolutely no problem at all, in fact I didn’t realise a driving sim could have tracking issues until DR2.0. The VR is so close to being perfect, please can you look into tracking for oculus sdk via steam.  Intel 9 9900 overclocked to 4.2, 2080ti, 16GB ram and using all fanatec gear. I get great performance from vr in natural daylight, but night time the tracking goes to pot with artificial lights. My play space also works fine for games like superhot, onward and pistol whip. I am out of ideas on how to help tracking for this game. 

Edited March 3, 2020 by tombradybaby

[nbates66]

On 2/21/2020 at 9:39 PM, Rubbercow said:

ied editing the "hardware_settings_config_vr.xml". I changed the setting: <resolution width="1600" height="900"" to <resolution width="2048" height="1152".

 

This seems to be a good one, i set it to match my current SteamVR render resolution, so resolution width="1928" height="1928"

(trying to match 1920x1080 resolution width for video capture)

[writefree]

Running the Steam VR version here 3700x + 16GB RAM + 2070RTX

Currently playing with settings but found a big win I thought I'd share. The game seems to ignore running in windowed mode when you launch in VR and also runs at native res (again on the monitor) - despite telling it otherwise in the settings when launching the non-VR version.

Set set fullscreen="0" and the resolution on that line to 640x480 - I saw a big improvement in performance in doing this ~20%

Also a big annoyance is the pop in - you can fix this with <ground_cover clutter="true" enabled="true" lodScaling="0.9" /> - it defaults to 0.25. and upping it doesn't seem to hurt performance.

Another big thing is forcing motion smoothing on in the Steam UI - as others have said it works to good effect. 

Still tweaking but running these settings someone suggested on the Steam DiRT Rally 2.0: VR FAQ & Performance Guide.

MS off
AF16
Shader high
Texture ultra
Reflect low
SS reflect off
Shadows medium
Night light high
Ambient OCC off off
Particles medium
Blending off
Weather high
Crowd cloth mirrors off
Vehicle detail track object ultra
Trees medium
Ground cover low
Skid god chromatic bloom on
Light streaks replay
Lenses dust on

Running all of this at 80FPS and I get big spikes esp at night in the rain. Motion smoothing does remove this but I'm still hoping another patch is on the way...

To add, I tried the settings suggested in the first post in this thread but it makes the game look awful. Setting the shader to anything but high kills the enjoyment and makes it look like a PS2 game.

Edited April 7, 2020 by writefree