Have Your Say – VR or No VR?

VR Sim Racing 01.jpg

Do you race in VR?


  • Total voters
    214
Sim racing is a perfect gaming format to experience with VR, but some in the sim community are very pro-VR while others are holding back. Have your say in the comments below on whether VR is for you, and why.

A good Virtual Reality sim racing experience is hard to beat, but technical limitations and limited developer support has slowed the growth of VR. So, we want to hear from you. Is VR worth having for sim racers in 2021?

While the global stats on its use on Steam puts the percentage of VR in the single digits, most sim racing polls put the percentage of users who at least own a headset in the 25-35% range. Even with this high level of VR owners, many high-profile racing franchises such as F1 and WRC have yet to implement official VR support. Other sim titles like Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2 and RaceRoom have supported VR for years, and are enjoyed by thousands of sim racers around the world.

For many in the community, VR is the only way to sim race. This crowd even has a slogan: “No VR, No Buy”. Undoubtedly, there aren’t any more immersive or exciting ways to experience sim racing visually than to virtually control the head of the driver. The first sim racing experience in VR is something most people don’t quickly forget. Sitting virtually in cars most of us will never get to drive in real life at a track most of us will never get to experience is undeniably cool.

VR Sim Racing 02.jpg


Contrast the above list of pros with some known shortcomings of VR, and you end up with a divided set of opinions. Among those who have tried VR sim racing and moved on, two of the common complaints are that the video appears grainy and the frame rate is too low. Both issues can be mitigated with higher end hardware, but the cost of such hardware is prohibitive to many. A byproduct of a lower framerate in VR is often motion sickness. Motion sickness can occur in VR at any frame rate, but it’s more common with sub-90 FPS experiences, and makes Virtual Reality impossible for some.

It’s also possible that we’re only in the infancy of VR, and the next generation will improve the visually quality and frame rate even on affordable GPUs and HMDs. Other than flight simulators, no gaming format takes advantage of a VR view quite like racing simulators. If the demand for VR continues from racing gamers, the developers will hopefully look to make support more commonplace in future titles and improve the experience in kind.

So, we want to hear from you. Do you use VR? What keeps you coming back or keeps you away from VR, and what do you think the future will hold for VR sim racing?
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

Comments

Premium
Read this on discord recently:
- I can do 250 fps in iRacing.
- None of them is good.

And ACC is so0000 much better for VR :p

VR vs. no VR
Specific VR headsets vs. other VR headsets
triples vs wide screen
We were just missing ( My favorite sim is better than your favorite sim )

It's amazing that we do anything but argue here!
 
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No VR no buy really. Not about to go backwards because devs don't wanna put in the extra time.
The only Sims on PC worth playing have VR already so there's no reason not to follow suit.
 
I'm a big fan of ACC but the best sim for VR is AC with Custom Shader Patch in my opinion. Great visuals and very low frametimes. ACC 80Hz / AC 90Hz with better graphics.
Would try this first if I were new to the world of VR.
 
D
I'm a big fan of ACC but the best sim for VR is AC with Custom Shader Patch in my opinion. Great visuals and very low frametimes. ACC 80Hz / AC 90Hz with better graphics.
Would try this first if I were new to the world of VR.
FPS change drastically and not in favor of AC when night or rain comes, unfortunately. But yeah, modded AC can be stunning, VR or flat screen, Illya and Peter are miracle workers.
 
I'm a big fan of ACC but the best sim for VR is AC with Custom Shader Patch in my opinion. Great visuals and very low frametimes. ACC 80Hz / AC 90Hz with better graphics.
Would try this first if I were new to the world of VR.
I‘m an AC and ACC fan but best sim in VR is Automobilista 2 IMHO. For me an incredible experience and I played really all sims in VR already (AC, ACC, rFactor2, RRRE…).
 
Premium
Darn all the time I keep hearing that AMS2 is the best in VR.. I have 5800x, 3080 and hp G2. It spends most of its time with reprojection for me.. It does look really nice, maybe lots of people are just pushing less pixels than the G2?
 
Darn all the time I keep hearing that AMS2 is the best in VR.. I have 5800x, 3080 and hp G2. It spends most of its time with reprojection for me.. It does look really nice, maybe lots of people are just pushing less pixels than the G2?
Hmmm, I have 3090 and Pimax 8k+ but chose the smaller FOV option and only the 72 hz option, no supersampling but sharpening-trick in ini-file instead. Almost everything on ultra and still high resolution, everything super crisp and fluid without reprojection even with full AI grid or at night/rain.
Something I couldn’t achieve in the other sims (ACC for example).
That‘s a huge advantage of the Pimax that you can scale it, depending on the game. Huge 200 degree FOV and 110 hz or only smaller FOV or less Hz.
The small FOV gives me the feeling of wearing a racing helmet. So very realistic ;-). It doesn’t use the full potential of the Pimax in this game but gives me crisp and fluid hi-res gameplay like I never could experience before…
 
Autosmoothing and Reprojection is unacceptable for me. I don't feel comfortable with stuttering and it kills the immersion. I always try to stay 2-3ms below the minimal frametimes. Fortunately no problem with 3090 and Index @80Hz.
Never played AMS2 but if it has the same engine like PC2 I could push gfx to the limit with a lot of SS without repro. Does AMS2 look so much better?
 
Premium
No VR. Tried it, it's supercool and all, but I can't do it for more than 15 minutes before feeling sick. I've tried loads of tricks, settings etc. Nothing helps. I'm just not VR-compatible when it comes to racing-games. "Stationary" VR games work fine though.
 
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Autosmoothing and Reprojection is unacceptable for me. I don't feel comfortable with stuttering and it kills the immersion. I always try to stay 2-3ms below the minimal frametimes. Fortunately no problem with 3090 and Index @80Hz.
Never played AMS2 but if it has the same engine like PC2 I could push gfx to the limit with a lot of SS without repro. Does AMS2 look so much better?
AMS2 Vs PC2:
A little better in VR than PC2, why? I don't know. No display problem, no slowing down unless it rains with thunderstorms and a lot of cars on the track. I am in 1.8 for the Super Sampling and I have a 7700K with a 1080Ti, which is not the Top.
On the other hand, in terms of driving realism, it's day and night, Ams2 crushes PC2, it's magic! I'm in love with it, it's Top!
Give it a try, it is cheap without the DLC, it really is the best car AND VR simulation experience possible.
The only better thing on PC2 is that we can adjust the mirrors in VR, unfortunately, impossible on AMS2 when the interface is exactly the same.
 
Still in the research phase here, the few racing sims I play don't support VR but friends have VR for flight sims that I think I want to get into.
 
I do, I do!!! Amazing performance boost on every gfx card!! Nvidia RTX, GTX or AMD doesn't matter. Not every game is supported. SW Squadrons doesn't work :( but ACC works great! It's so easy, give it a try guys.
Why would you need it for SW Squadrons - it's actually pretty light on the GPU in VR, even on the highest settings.
 
Premium
For someone who feels about ready to jump into VR this is a really interesting thread - I've been gaming since the 70s and for me it has always been a buzz following the improvements in graphics and other technologies and checking out the latest developments. I do dip into other genres, but for me sim racing is the most rewarding due to the fact that it's arguably the genre which has the most similarity to it's real world counterpart in motorsport (solitaire aside of course...!) I'm sure I would have tried it before if it weren't for a hiatus of a few years due to other commitments, but it's very eye opening to see all the opinions on this thread, and of course the common potential issues with VR....
 
D
Never played AMS2 but if it has the same engine like PC2 I could push gfx to the limit with a lot of SS without repro. Does AMS2 look so much better?
Same thing.
With G2 can only do 60hz on 3080Ti, dropping SS and settings can get to 90fps but eyes don't like it.
 
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Why would you need it for SW Squadrons - it's actually pretty light on the GPU in VR, even on the highest settings.
Squadrons is ok on my index, but above 120% pixel density ingame it starts dropping frames @80hz. Not what I call "pretty light on the GPU" and maybe not enough for next-gen HMDs like index2?!? FSR or implemented DLSS support would be nice.
 

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