GAME IS UNPLAYABLE ON VR
I could manage only 70 FPS on VR Ultra-Low setting + 50% resolution on SteamVR. This is unplayable on VR. I can get 100+ FPS on iRacing.
Forum Discussion
I did post this in another thread, but worth mentioning here. It may help with your issues. For me personally - I'm running latest Nvidia drivers and using Virtual Desktop on a Quest 2 to play VR.
From my extensive benchmarking and testing the main cause of stuttering is having Ambient Occlusion turned on in any form. If you set Ambient Occlusion to off in the settings I can promise you it will help with smoothing out the framerate and the head turning stuttering. I'm using a RTX 3070 and can set everything to high except for Ambient Occlusion and get a stable 72fps per eye (non SSW or ASW). I can even go to very high VR preset and turn Ambient Occlusion off, and only get a slight stutter here and there.
Here are some tips to find that sweet spot for you with framerate:
- To benchmark properly you need to make sure SSW (Steam) and ASW (Oculus) are turned off. Otherwise it is only going to report half framerate while using the GPU to calculate every second frame.
- In game - I'd start with the medium VR preset, except for Ambient Occlusion, which as mentioned needs to be turned off. I'd also set the in game AA to TAA only (nothing else works really well in VR and even Codies have suggested this in earlier testing). I'd also turn on Dynamic resolution in the Video settings, set it to around 80% and leave it on Balanced. Dynamic resolution allows to drop the resolution in game if for some reason there is a drop in fps. The three settings relate to how crisp you want it to look. If you'd rather suffer a slight fps drop before dropping in resolution, set it to Lazy. If you want the resolution to drop to preserve fps set to Aggressive. Balanced is between those two options.
- In terms of VR fps - start with 72hz. If you are prone to motion sickness, up this a bit to 80hz.
- Once you set these options up - run the Benchmark tool (remembering to turn on the FPS meter before starting it). If things are running well you'll be able to turn your head and there will be no stuttering. After the race starts what you want to see is the fps consistently hovering around 71 or 72fps.
- If it isn't making it to those figures, first thing to try is going to the VR menu in game and overriding the steam resolution settings. Drop it to 90% or lower. Benchmark again and see if you hit that magic 72fps. If you are constantly hitting 72fps, you can increase the value beyond 100% (I'm on 120% with my base per eye resolution at 2016x2112). I find this overriding steam value excellent and it doesn't seem to use as much CPU / GPU power as changing the super sampling in the steam menu or other method.
- This is the best way to test raw performance. If you are close to 72fps and are happy with the settings just turn SSW / ASW back on if you wish.
- If you have headroom. ie it is staying at 71-72fps all the time during the benchmarking (with SSW/ASW disabled in VR) then you can start upping the graphic settings to High. Start with setting the High VR preset and turning Ambient Occlusion off. See how you go.
@SochilVR @Grocs_Blech Thanks for sharing your experience guys. I did also extensive benchmarking and testing with all combinations of settings.
@Grocs_Blech Thanks for the very detailed explanation. I will try to replicate your settings
Forgot to mention my equipment:
Quest 2 with link cable
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8400 CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz
Geforce RTX 2070
16.0 GB RAM
Settings:
VR Ultra-Low setting
74% Resolution on SteamVR (1920 x 1936)
@Grocs_Blech questions about your settings?
1 - What are SSW (Steam) and ASW (Oculus)? where I can find out these settings?
2 - How about the oculus refresh rate. Did you keep the recommended 72Hz?
@paulosoaresf SSW is for when you are using the Virtual Desktop application (wireless streaming) in Steam. As you are using Quest 2 with link cable you won't have to worry about that one.
Asynchronous Warp (ASW) can be found in the Oculus Debug Tool (normally abbreviated as ODT). This can be found in the Oculus folders - "C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics"
Usually this is set to Auto by default, but if you want to benchmark properly you'll need to set this to Disabled. When playing though, it might still be a good idea to leave it on Auto. Keep in mind that whenever you restart the Oculus software this will return the setting to its default settings. Always close and re-open ODT once you've have restarted the Oculus software before making any changes.
Yes, I'm running with the default 72hz. It actually feels smooth when the framerate is hitting that.
Just as a side note - I actually find the performance much better on Virtual Desktop (when set up correctly via a 5ghz internal wifi), though you should have some luck with Oculus Link as well.
Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions.
I don't understand how whoever did the VR for this game, didn't realise oculus vr headsets shouldn't be using SteamVR to run their headsets.
the headsets come with their own VR software for link. And it doesn't like sharing with SteamVR.
AC, ACC, automobilista 1 and 2, Pcars 1 and 2, ETS2, ATS2, and so on and so on, none of them require SteamVR to play in VR on Oculus headsets.
you can run both oculus software and steamVR on all of the above listed games, but they take performance hits if you do.
having 2 different softwares trying to control one headset.. is just stupid.
I couldn’t agree more with this post although I was quite surprised at how well SteamVR performs with the Quest for this title. That said, I’m left wondering if there is more performance to be had if EA allowed The Quests to use its own Oculus software.
- @Grocs_Blech Thanks, man! I got the Virtual Desktop yesterday but I could only manage 35 FPS. I will review the settings and the 5ghz wifi.
- @paulosoaresf Running Virtual Desktop on your 5ghz wifi is a must for good performance. Preferably dedicated too - ie other devices aren't connecting to the 5ghz wifi at the same time as your Quest 2.
