Working fix / tweaks for heading turning stuttering / fps issues
Hey all,
I play in VR, but I suspect if this is happening in the normal game as well, this may help.
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.
I know there are some bugs in this game but when you get it working properly it is amazing in VR. I might be in a minority here but I actually love the new F1 life (supercars, setting up your place). It reminds me of the TDU days. Sometimes you just want to drive something less intense than a F2 or F1 car.
I've done a lot of experimenting to find the perfect balance in VR. I really hope this helps you all.
