Done with VR

[ShinyAndy]

I gave it my best shot, three months in, but I just can't get on with my Rift S! The immersion is incredible but it's too hot, the graphics are awful, it gives me eye strain and I'm fighting the vomit effect constantly. I also hate having to lift it up a bit so I can find my keyboard/mouse/drink/Haribo which then tends to smear the lenses even more. I'm constantly moving it around on my face to keep it in the sweet spot and just generally seem to spend more time fiddling than driving. Consequently I'm significantly slower driving with it, even though the depth perception is fantastic, but I've tried everything (FPS adjusting/massive industrial fans/short sessions/travel sickness tablets) but it's just not working for me in driving games. I've actually got to the stage of dreading it and avoid any potential races, whereas before I'd jump at the chance of a race or even just spend 4+ hours driving around LAC in something old and slow for fun.

Back in the day I had 3x32" triples but the large bezels drove me crazy and I don't really have the space for a large set. So, I'm thinking that I could go down a single superwide path with something like a Acer Predator X34P, or for even less money I could get two more AOC G2790s and go triple with my existing AOC (that have tiny bezels).

What's the current trend heading towards?

 

[maelstrom]

...and I'm fighting the vomit effect constantly.

I had the same problem. I think this is ultimately what will limit VR's impact on the gaming world. Motion rigs may help, but for most people just the cost of the VR headset is seen as a fairly substantial investment. Head tracking works well enough for me.

 

[ShinyAndy]

My first foray into sim racing 8 or 9 years ago was with a Frex motion rig, ironically that used to make me feel sick after a long session.

As I originally said though, the vom effect was just one of many issues I experienced with VR. In fact, after perseverance I could do three hours without feeling ill, however spin a few times and then it's game over

 

[Elaphe]

I don't own VR so I'm not sure if this addon is already available and functional for sims, but I have read about the virtual nose and how it may be a solution for sickness in VR:

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/reduce-vr-sickness-just-add-virtual-nose/

 

[wajdi]

I’m racing motion and VR and it’s really great and immersive but I can’t do more than 60min of racing with both. I like heavy intense motion and it’s really hard physically and with VR after 50-60 min I feel fatigue . It’s great with short offline sessions but online it’s impractical.
Add to that, I have these frequent tracking loss in VR. It’s really frustrating! The cockpit jumps up and down and some times I’m finds my self seeing the virtual driver legs level and some times it’s jump over the virtual cockpit..,that kills every thing. I tried sensor off rig and on rig and it’s the same thing.
Now I’m thinking to add 49 ultra wide monitor to my rig for long online racing but I will keep my VR headset.

 

[HoiHman]

I've been a very big VR enthousiast from the beginning, but i'm starting to get fed up with VR to.

My main reason is the overall poor performance and i'm sick and tired of constantly tweaking and having to choose between (acceptable) frame rate and (acceptable) graphical settings for having a smooth VR experience.

I sold my oculus rift and moved on to the Valve index. With 1 car on track @120 fps it's amazing, especially in Iracing. But as soon as i want to a single player race in any sim with an average of 20 AI, i'm constantly battling with ridiculous low frame rates.

Motion smoothing in Steam VR is now way near the quality of ASW from Oculus and after trying so many games with very poor performance in VR, i have decided to use the Index for track days only and have moved back to "pancake racing" on the C49RG90.

My hardware specs are

I7 4470K @4700hz
16GB ram @3200hx
2080Ti

But still in VR:
ACC - Unplayable due to poor VR optimisation
Dirt Rally 2 - Unplayable due to poor VR optimisation
Pcars 2 - Unplayable (only 40 fps at the start (with medium to low settings)
AC - Only 60fps smoothing with single player races (120 fps track days)
Iracing - Super smooth in single car on track
R3E- Only 60 fps smoothing with single player races

But.... when i switch back to my monitor i get a super sharp image with all the graphical bells and whistles at very good frame rates.

I'm not sure if my experience is a common performance issue or just specific to my PC. You always see so much claims of people using high super sampling rates and claiming high fps in VR.

But is that claim of high fps also valid when you start at the back of a 20 car grid?

On the performance part right now there's not much to upgrade. Surely a 9900K will perform better, but how much since my 4770k already runs stable at 4700hz. I want to hold out to the next intel desktop release before investing another grand and being disappointed with the VR performance again.

There are also other factors in play.

The very smooth experience of the C49RG90 @5120x1440 with it's awesome picture quality and the unmatched experience of Iracing @120fps in VR has also spoiled me in such a way that i really don't want to be stuck with sub par graphics, very low res and also low frame rates to experience races in VR.

So...i'm done with VR ( but i'm still keeping my Valve Index )

 

[Jeremy Ford]

I've been a very big VR enthousiast from the beginning, but i'm starting to get fed up with VR to.

My main reason is the overall poor performance and i'm sick and tired of constantly tweaking and having to choose between (acceptable) frame rate and (acceptable) graphical settings for having a smooth VR experience.

I sold my oculus rift and moved on to the Valve index. With 1 car on track @120 fps it's amazing, especially in Iracing. But as soon as i want to a single player race in any sim with an average of 20 AI, i'm constantly battling with ridiculous low frame rates.

Motion smoothing in Steam VR is now way near the quality of ASW from Oculus and after trying so many games with very poor performance in VR, i have decided to use the Index for track days only and have moved back to "pancake racing" on the C49RG90.

My hardware specs are

I7 4470K @4700hz
16GB ram @3200hx
2080Ti

But still in VR:
ACC - Unplayable due to poor VR optimisation
Dirt Rally 2 - Unplayable due to poor VR optimisation
Pcars 2 - Unplayable (only 40 fps at the start (with medium to low settings)
AC - Only 60fps smoothing with single player races (120 fps track days)
Iracing - Super smooth in single car on track
R3E- Only 60 fps smoothing with single player races

But.... when i switch back to my monitor i get a super sharp image with all the graphical bells and whistles at very good frame rates.

I'm not sure if my experience is a common performance issue or just specific to my PC. You always see so much claims of people using high super sampling rates and claiming high fps in VR.

But is that claim of high fps also valid when you start at the back of a 20 car grid?

On the performance part right now there's not much to upgrade. Surely a 9900K will perform better, but how much since my 4770k already runs stable at 4700hz. I want to hold out to the next intel desktop release before investing another grand and being disappointed with the VR performance again.

There are also other factors in play.

The very smooth experience of the C49RG90 @5120x1440 with it's awesome picture quality and the unmatched experience of Iracing @120fps in VR has also spoiled me in such a way that i really don't want to be stuck with sub par graphics, very low res and also low frame rates to experience races in VR.

So...i'm done with VR ( but i'm still keeping my Valve Index )

Your I7 4470k is holding back the full protentional of the 2080Ti in VR, and that is definitely reducing your framerates. My previously gaming rig was an I7 4470k paired with a GTX 1080. In sim titles, I consistently experienced stutter during certain on track circumstances, such as tight cornering while behind other cars, or when cars were panning across the bonnet.

I built a new gaming PC with an I7 8700k, with the same GTX 1080. And no more stutter.

 

[wajdi]

What do you guys think, one 49 ultra wide Samsung monitor or triple 27 ultra wide Samsung monitor?
Keep in mind that I have 4 DOF motion.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

I'd favour the Samsung 49" option if only for the cleaner and hassle-free setup.

 

[Elaphe]

How do games adapt display to ultrawide monitors? I have seen some videos of Dirt Rally, for instance, and the right part of the screen is very very distorted. What about Assetto Corsa?

 

[wajdi]

How do games adapt display to ultrawide monitors? I have seen some videos of Dirt Rally, for instance, and the right part of the screen is very very distorted. What about Assetto Corsa?

Good question.

 

[AlexN]

How do games adapt display to ultrawide monitors? I have seen some videos of Dirt Rally, for instance, and the right part of the screen is very very distorted. What about Assetto Corsa?

I've only had mine setup for a couple days, and only tried it in pCars2. But it looks fine, especially once you dial in the FOV and seat position. I've tried iRacing and another game on two friends' 49" setups and it looked perfectly natural in those, too. Seems to "just work".

 

[Elaphe]

I've been dreaming with upgrading to VR for a long time, but I'm starting to reconsider it when I read all this about sickness. I've also a bit worried about the health of my eyes, since I got both laser operated many years ago to fix my myopia and astigmatism. Also, there's a neverending problem with VR and it is that we will never be able to run the latest games at max settings, since newer games are more and more demanding and VR doubles the requirements. This means that if we want max settings we will have to resign to older games. Maybe I should consider the 49" curved monitor. I have an old i7 4790k and I could get now a used 1080 Ti for 450€ and I think that combo would be able to manage the 3840x1080 resolution on Dirt Rally and AC with max settings at least at 60hz. It's a shame these monitors are still so expensive.

 

[AlexN]

I've been dreaming with upgrading to VR for a long time, but I'm starting to reconsider it when I read all this about sickness. I've also a bit worried about the health of my eyes, since I got both laser operated many years ago to fix my myopia and astigmatism. Also, there's a neverending problem with VR and it is that we will never be able to run the latest games at max settings, since newer games are more and more demanding and VR doubles the requirements. This means that if we want max settings we will have to resign to older games. Maybe I should consider the 49" curved monitor. I have an old i7 4790k and I could get now a used 1080 Ti for 450€ and I think that combo would be able to manage the 3840x1080 resolution on Dirt Rally and AC with max settings at least at 60hz. It's a shame these monitors are still so expensive.

Personally, I don't get sick when driving in VR (I do in other VR games). A good headset with a good software stack is important - Oculus Rift, or (2nd place on the software front) Vive/Index. The off-brand headsets work for some folks but can be a nightmare for others, and as someone who works in VR I'm not at all surprised - it's not enough to just have high resolution or FOV, everything else needs to be well thought out, too.

It's extremely immersive and impressive. However, it's more work to set up, more performance issues, and not compatible with all games. It's also a bit too intense for me to do anywhere near bedtime - like drinking a couple cups of coffee. Given that, it's a nice-to-have for me, in addition to a good base setup, but probably not my default choice.

Re: eye comfort... typically, these headsets have an optical focal distance of 1.5 meters or further, so they are a very comfortable distance for most folks to focus on (less strain than a computer monitor 2 feet away). However, the screen door effect, blur from poor optics or poor head fit, and less-than-perfect vision (if you normally wear glasses) can leave you with a headache. The latter can be fixed by getting custom lens inserts from a place like https://vroptician.com/, which I highly recommend. Any stutter from not maintaining perfect framerate or tracking (more of a problem in the off-brand headsets) can also leave you with eye strain in addition to the typical effect of nausea.

 

[HoiHman]

Your I7 4470k is holding back the full protentional of the 2080Ti in VR, and that is definitely reducing your framerates. My previously gaming rig was an I7 4470k paired with a GTX 1080. In sim titles, I consistently experienced stutter during certain on track circumstances, such as tight cornering while behind other cars, or when cars were panning across the bonnet.

I built a new gaming PC with an I7 8700k, with the same GTX 1080. And no more stutter.

Thx, i definately considering it, but was yours also overclocked?

 

[Jeremy Ford]

Thx, i definately considering it, but was yours also overclocked?

Mine was OC'ed to 4.5k. I don't think 200hz would make a difference of substance.

 

[AlexN]

Thx, i definately considering it, but was yours also overclocked?

You can figure out if you are CPU or GPU limited by trying this experiment:

Measure FPS with VR resolution / scaling / supersampling / MSAA (both in-game and in SteamVR settings) set as low as possible. If you still see a significant drop when adding AI, this indicates you are CPU limited. If you are entirely CPU limited, you will likely get the same framerate in this experiment as you get normally, though it can be somewhere in-between.
Edit: I should mention, you want to keep all other quality settings the same.

The AI cars in these racing games can be CPU-intensive, both to simulate and to draw. When I upgraded to a 144Hz monitor for my desktop (from 60Hz), I needed to replace my 3.8Ghz overclocked Core i7 920 which had served me extremely well for something like 9 years... it was limiting me to 70-90Hz in many games.

I now have a 5.2Ghz overclocked 6-core 8086k (basically an 8700k) from siliconlottery.com. When choosing a processor for gaming, it's important to look for the highest clock rate... often the consumer-oriented CPUs can clock higher than the workstation or prosumer CPUs which have more cores. Games don't scale out to beyond 4-6 cores very well.

 

[metalnwood]

@HoiHman , benchmark says single thread the 8700k is 26% faster than yours at near clock for clock. 8700k will hit 5ghz no problem so you are looking at 30% increase for single core performance if I have it right.

 

[HoiHman]

Thanks guys,

Heading of to the simracing expo in an hour, but i will order a 9700K when i get back.
Any thought and recommendations about mobo and especially ram.

I read on the sector 3 forum that fast ram is very important for R3E since lots of internal recalculations need to be done because it's a DX9 title that running VR.

I hope a new CPU will solve my performance issues in VR, if not i'm definitely done

 

[anton_Chez]

Also with VR it's not just the raw increase in clock speed and processing vs the older models that you get. I found that going to a newer CPU just makes VR work better. It's obviously one of the most demanding scenarios to cope with, coupled with the near zero tolerance for any skipping, stutter, or anything non smooth. VR really needs a seamless experience to be worth doing at all.

 

[Mascot]

I've been a very big VR enthousiast from the beginning, but i'm starting to get fed up with VR to.

My main reason is the overall poor performance and i'm sick and tired of constantly tweaking and having to choose between (acceptable) frame rate and (acceptable) graphical settings for having a smooth VR experience.

I sold my oculus rift and moved on to the Valve index. With 1 car on track @120 fps it's amazing, especially in Iracing. But as soon as i want to a single player race in any sim with an average of 20 AI, i'm constantly battling with ridiculous low frame rates.

Motion smoothing in Steam VR is now way near the quality of ASW from Oculus and after trying so many games with very poor performance in VR, i have decided to use the Index for track days only and have moved back to "pancake racing" on the C49RG90.

My hardware specs are

I7 4470K @4700hz
16GB ram @3200hx
2080Ti

But still in VR:
ACC - Unplayable due to poor VR optimisation
Dirt Rally 2 - Unplayable due to poor VR optimisation
Pcars 2 - Unplayable (only 40 fps at the start (with medium to low settings)
AC - Only 60fps smoothing with single player races (120 fps track days)
Iracing - Super smooth in single car on track
R3E- Only 60 fps smoothing with single player races

But.... when i switch back to my monitor i get a super sharp image with all the graphical bells and whistles at very good frame rates.

I'm not sure if my experience is a common performance issue or just specific to my PC. You always see so much claims of people using high super sampling rates and claiming high fps in VR.

But is that claim of high fps also valid when you start at the back of a 20 car grid?

On the performance part right now there's not much to upgrade. Surely a 9900K will perform better, but how much since my 4770k already runs stable at 4700hz. I want to hold out to the next intel desktop release before investing another grand and being disappointed with the VR performance again.

There are also other factors in play.

The very smooth experience of the C49RG90 @5120x1440 with it's awesome picture quality and the unmatched experience of Iracing @120fps in VR has also spoiled me in such a way that i really don't want to be stuck with sub par graphics, very low res and also low frame rates to experience races in VR.

So...i'm done with VR ( but i'm still keeping my Valve Index )

I've tried pancake racing again - briefly - and yes, the IQ is beautiful at 4k. But for me everything else is worse. Cockpits looks flat without stereoscopic 3D, lighting isn't convincing, immersion becomes detachment, distance is judged by asset size and not where that asset occupies 3D space... I could go on. The biggest loss was the sensation of presence, of being IN the car and ON the track. 2D felt very 'gamey' like I was remotely operating an avatar. With VR that's ME in the car.

And as for your VR performance, something smells off. I'm maybe lucky that I'm happy with 45ASW but I run a bog-standard 6600k/980Ti combo with my Rift, CSP and Sol with medium-high settings. I have a 20-grid GT3 preset at Spa using a LOT of one-LoD car mods and it's a consistent 45ASW experience, which I find perfectly acceptable with my mid-range kit. I'll never achieve a constant 90fps so don't even attempt it.

VR and sim racing are a match made in heaven. There's no way I can start flipping pancakes again, even on Shrove Tuesday.