VR Performance FAQ

Hello everyone.

Please see below for answers to common questions surrounding VR support for DiRT Rally 2.0, along with a guide to help players improve the feature's performance on their system.

Frequently-Asked Questions

Is DiRT Rally 2.0 the same on Steam and Oculus?

• DiRT Rally 2.0 on the Oculus Store stand-alone version of the game, and is not included with purchase of the game on Steam.
• The Oculus version provides native support to Oculus devices through the Oculus SDK.
• The Steam version uses the SteamVR platform to support VR devices.

Can I play with Steam players while using the Oculus version, and vice-versa?

• All versions of DiRT Rally 2.0 provide support for cross-platform asynchronus play (which players can opt out of in their game settings). 
• This includes Leaderboards, Clubs and Community Challenges.
• Synchronous (as in PvP) Multiplayer is platform-specific. Steam players cannot join Oculus Lobbies, Xbox players cannot join PlayStation Lobbies etc.

Does the Oculus version have DLC?

• The Oculus version contains the same base-game content as other platforms.
• Post-release DLC content that was available on other platforms will come to Oculus at a later date.
• Free content (like the DirtFish location and liveries) are available on Oculus at the same time as other platforms.

Does the Oculus version have exclusive content?

• A number of cars feature an exclusive, Oculus-themed livery on the Oculus version.
• Additional Daily, Weekly and Monthly Community Challenges are available in My Team, exclusive to Oculus players.

Will VR come to PlayStation?

• There are no plans to implement PlayStation VR support for DiRT Rally 2.0.

Does DiRT Rally 2.0 Support Windows Mixed Reality headsets?

• DiRT Rally 2.0 does not natively support WMR headsets, however they may still potentially work through Steam VR.
• If you're using a WMR headset through Steam VR, smooth performance is not guaranteed.

Recommended Settings

Based on our tests, these are the settings we recommend to give the best performance boost:

• Ambient Occlusion: Off
• Ground Cover: Off
• Shader: Low
• Screenspace Reflections: Off
• Anti-Aliasing: Off

Initial Performance (graphics preset; Medium):

• 60-67 FPS

Results after Recommended Settings:

• Over 90 FPS+ - Medium graphics preset plus all of the above changes.
• Slightly under 90FPS - Medium graphics preset plus all of the above changes, Shader Detail on High

For reference, here was our PC build with which we tested each setting:

• GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060
• CPU: Intel Core i7 6700k, 4.0 GHz
• Version: Steam (using Oculus headset)

Depending on your hardware, PC build & peripherals, and their settings, performance may differ so please experiment with these settings until you find what works best for you.

Conclusions

These are what we consider high performance savers. Lowering these settings will significantly increase performance (in order of impact):

• Shaders: Low
• Anti-Aliasing: Off/CMAA 
• Crowds: Low/Off
• Ambient Occlusion off
• Trees, Bloom, Light Streaks, Godrays (These help a lot in areas dense with trees)
• Shadows: Off (or as low as possible)
• Ground Cover: Off
• Screenspace Reflections: Off, lower overall reflections settings too will help.

We recommend not using Multisampling (or lower values), it is costly in VR.
Supersampling methods from SteamVR would be more beneficial if you can run them.

These are low performance savers and won't make much difference if you're using them under Medium, but lowering them all may save a few frames:

• Vehicle Details (Note: Ultra Low removes drivers and other elements, so use it if nothing else is working for you)
• Texture Detail
• Track
• Night Lighting
• Objects
• Chromatic Aberration,  Lens Dust
• Anisotropic Filtering (performance gain is negligible compared to High)

With our Recommended Settings and some minor tweaks, performance on Steam should be similar to that of Oculus.

We increased our framerate from 60-67 FPS up to 90 FPS+ with the Recommended Settings, using the GTX 1060 in our reference build.

If you have a higher-end graphics card you may be able get similar performance with Shader Details set to High and other settings on Low/Off.

So long as you don’t increase Multisampling, and ensure you play in Windowed Mode on a reasonable resolution, you should see notable performance gains.

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.

Other Notes

On Steam DiRT Rally 2.0 will try to run normal setting configs, typically in fullscreen on higher presets by default.

Fullscreen isn't recommended as it can cause issues with performance (upping resolution) and stretch UI elements. 

We're working on a fix for this in a future update; a workaround for now is to disable fullscreen in the hardware settings:

• C:\Users\ YOUR NAME HERE \Documents\My Games\DiRT Rally 2.0\hardwaresettings\hardware_settings_config.xml 
• ‘ fullscreen="0” ‘
• You can also change the resolution here; another quick way is to change these settings in the flatscreen mode before going into VR.

Incase you didn't know, in the Gameplay settings (which can also be accessed via the pause menu) there is a tab for VR Comfort.

This contains options for the following:

• Enable all Views
• Enable Right Stick Camera Control
• Enable Looking Back
• Enable Locked Orientation
• Enable Motion Blur
• Full View During Crashes

Known Issues

The following is a (non-exhaustive) list of known issues with VR:

• 4x MSAA and higher, combined with Shader Detail set to Low, causing outline effect on trees.
• Ambient Occlusion set to Low causing shadowy effects on nearby objects.
• DiRT Rally 2.0 automatically running in VR mode if you have any VR peripherals (including sensors) connected while SteamVR is installed.
  (This is set to be resolved in version 1.8)
• Vive HMD resets position slightly behind head.
• Text being hard to read in SteamVR Pause screens. 

There are more known issues than this, however many are too minor to post here. As always the team is actively reading the forums to see how you're all getting on with the game.