DiRT Rally 2.0 DR2.0 VR performance tuning and visual upgrade mods

DR2 kinda runs like a pig in VR. There's also weirdness with gamma/brightness and things being blurry. Turns out these are largely solved. Between optimizing settings, a mod for brightness and another for sharpness it can look really good in VR and the mods have no noticeable performance hits.

First a guide for gfx settings to get the most out your system. There's guidelines for visuals or performance and explanations of what's being changed. Still relevant despite ui changes since it was made. Not mine but the best I know of.


Eye Accommodation Fix
This addresses the weird gamma/brightness thing that make day/sunset stages in Sweden a white-out despite brightness settings. This works by picking a different target in the fov to base brightness scaling from making it drivable under all lighting conditions like people playing on a monitor get to enjoy.

https://www.kegetys.fi/dirt-rally-2-vr-eye-accomodation-fix-v2-0/

There are separate settings for day/night, fog adjustment parameters and new vegetation shaders that get rid of the dot/grid dithering artifacts. Love the evening gloom and actual lighting variance this mod provides... having to actually turn my headlights on to see better as dusk rules.

I've found the stock settings in the accommodation mod make headlights too dim and canopy covered areas at dusk too dark, but it can be adjusted in the .cfg:

eye accommodation mod tweak:
luminanceMaxRange=1050
luminanceMinRange=600



Contrast Adaptive Sharpening/reshade

This CAS sharpening tool has only recently became compatible with VR. I would have never believed it possible, but it's like putting on glasses you didn't know you needed or running settings on ultra -instruments readable without leaning in, can read signs in the car's mirrors, the mesh windows of crosskarts or chain link fence sharp and realistic instead of a floating blur etc.

The Sharper Eye (CAS sharpening mod)

racedepartment keeps breaking my link so if the one above doesn't work repair this one by removing the spaces in necksismods because for some reason the naughty world filter keeps replacing it with ** https://www.ne xusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/46999?tab=files&file_id=191435

Technically a Skyrim mod but made to be compatible with most games and works great in Dirt Rally 2.0. It comes with presets for Skyrim so a few values need to be changed to make dr2 colors/brightness look right.

CAS sharpener tweaks:
Brightness=1.000000
Contrast=1.000000
Saturation-0.850000

@obo
made an additional .dll to accompany reshade. He discovered a load order issue with the eye accommodation mod and his dll shim makes them work together, detailed in this post along with a link to his mod https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...-and-visual-upgrade-mods.200905/#post-3372288

If anyone knows of any other really good tweaks or guides I'm interested. Also, if anyone knows of or stumbles on to some particularly good settings for the mods above, or other mods that make the game run or look better please post them here.
 
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I didn't use the Sharper Eye reshade package. I actually used another one that has recently been posted in sim racing forums and the rF2 Discord server. That one does work in combination with the eye accommodation but I have to use the reshade helper fix as without it, one gets cancelled out. Sharper Eye was not activating for me, I have no idea why. They seem basically the same but one package works and the other doesn't. It's fine, I use the other package for all the other sims that support it now so it stays all consistent.

So the 3 options:

[settings]
; Setting this to 1 reduces the display area used by eye accomodation
overrideArea=1
; Setting this to 1 enables the accomodation override settings in 'accomodation' below
overrideAccomodation=1
; Setting this to 1 enables the color toning override settings in 'colorToning' below
overrideColorToning=1

There are 3 options where we can have a 1 or a 0. I have my file set up as per the commands above. Is that how everyone else is using it?

I can't get reshade working after the patch. If you could post a link to the rf2 one you got working in DR2 it would be greatly appreciated.

As to the 3 parameters in the eye accommodation mod I left all 3 enabled
 
Thanks, I've been playing with that one as well trying to get it to work and no dice. Do you know which .dll version you're using to make it work? Pretty sure I've tried them all and get the same crash when I try to launch it with the shim .dll there too.
 
I've worked around the mod incompatibility with a shim version of dinput8.dll. It pulls in the ReShade version of dxgi.dll when dirtrally2.exe loads, which ensures it gets control first. This seems to avoid whatever disruption is caused by the eye fix shim (d3d11.dll).

I've confirmed it does allow the ReShade sharpening to work, but I've never seen the eye accommodation difference in action to know whether it's defintely working. I can see the DLL has loaded so I believe it should be active. If anyone wants to give it a try just extract this DLL into the DR2.0 directory after installing both other mods.

If you want to build your own version of the DLL I can stick the code on GitHub later. I'm hoping the eye accommodation author will make whatever changes are needed to avoid it interfering with ReShade so my DLL isn't needed for long.
I was able to use both the Reshade and the eye mod with this .dll. Thank you! I took some photos that I'll post tonight after work that shows the difference I see. The CAS tweaks really added a white wash to the picture but maybe those setting were for a different version? I can't tell if the two reshades mentioned here are the same or not. I used the "Universal" one post on post #22.
 
Here are some pics I took during my "Whats better" adventures

70% SS in Steam VR per-app (HP Reverb G2)
16xAF in NVCP
Multisampling off in game
AF off in game

First pictures are the rest of the settings. Lower quality for more stability.

There are 4 locations with 8 pictures each showing different configs.

Picture order:

Base game > Eye mod> Reshade stock> Reshade CAS tweak>

Reshade+eye1.0> Reshade+eye1.1> Reshade+eyeNoCT> Reshade+eyeYesCT

The 1.0 and 1.1 are brightness levels in eye mod file. CT is colortone override in eye mod file.


The Reshade stock colors with eye mod No colortone override was most appealing to me with the headset on. Starting gates are not the best to show quality but it is the most consistent test method. I have some other pics from various parts of stages I'll post later.
 
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Here are some pics I took during my "Whats better" adventures

70% SS in Steam VR per-app (HP Reverb G2)
16xAF in NVCP
Multisampling off in game
AF off in game

First pictures are the rest of the settings. Lower quality for more stability.

There are 4 locations with 8 pictures each showing different configs.

Picture order:

Base game > Eye mod> Reshade stock> Reshade CAS tweak>

Reshade+eye1.0> Reshade+eye1.1> Reshade+eyeNoCT> Reshade+eyeYesCT

The 1.0 and 1.1 are brightness levels in eye mod file. CT is colortone override in eye mod file.


The Reshade stock colors with eye mod No colortone override was most appealing to me with the headset on. Starting gates are not the best to show quality but it is the most consistent test method. I have some other pics from various parts of stages I'll post later.
Looks great! Especially the "reshade tweak". Could you share this specific "reshade tweak" with us? Thx in advance!
 
There's a new version of Kegety's eye accommodation fix out... this one has different settings for day/night as well as modding vegetation textures (gets rid of dots and grid artifacts) and fog reduction parameters. I used it last night with the stock settings, seemed p good to me this time, v1.0 I had to change settings but the new version addresses that. Made a custom championship in Sweden with day/sunset/dusk and night stages, same with Finland but added some cloudy ones too to check haze.

Vegetation looks way better, but with a little more pop in but worth it imo. Haze and glare massively reduced, might be op.. v1 fix made it plausible/tolerable but this sort of eliminates it. Love the evening gloom and actual lighting variance this mod (including v1) provudes... having to actually turn my headlights on to see better as dusk rules.

https://www.kegetys.fi/dirt-rally-2-vr-eye-accomodation-fix-v2-0/

I ran it last night without reshade, will experiment tonight with both together. So amazed people are able to get under the hood like this and fix the things Codies weren't able to.
 
Looks great! Especially the "reshade tweak". Could you share this specific "reshade tweak" with us? Thx in advance!
The tweaks are the values in the first post ( brightness 1.0, contrast 1.0, saturation .85). Picture wise it looks ok but in my headset the colors are muted and washed out.

I have currently switched to the eye mod v.2 for a couple days now with reshade stock settings and found some settings for daytime colortoning that I like (Gamma 1.9, Saturation 0.9, Brightness 1.15, Palette 0.9). I left the night colortoning alone because it looks pretty good and I just haven't messed with it yet. Last night I recorded some videos and have have some new pics. So I'll try to post some of those soon. It won't be so many different variables though maybe just stock versus my preferred settings.
 
Made a video for fun that shows different weather changes every 20 seconds or so. The sunset weather(last one) is still a bit intense so i need to see if that is somewhat adjustable without screwing up the rest but it's not a deal breaker.

 
Just to see what would happen I placed your .dll in my directory and launched the game but it immediately crashes flagging dxgi.dll in the crash window. Did the same thing for repeated attempts. Deleted it and it launched and ran fine, with both mods functioning.

Wonder why there are differences in behavior, just works without fuss on my machine but you need a workaround to achieve, which is incompatible with my build. Either way, glad you found a way to make it work and hopefully kegety can shed some light on this.

I can't get reshade working after the patch. If you could post a link to the rf2 one you got working in DR2 it would be greatly appreciated.

As to the 3 parameters in the eye accommodation mod I left all 3 enabled

Thanks, I've been playing with that one as well trying to get it to work and no dice. Do you know which .dll version you're using to make it work? Pretty sure I've tried them all and get the same crash when I try to launch it with the shim .dll there too.

I’m having the same problems and can’t get the reshades to work. The alternative .dll causes the same crash as you.
Did you manage to get it working?

Thanks for highlighting these btw.
 
I’m having the same problems and can’t get the reshades to work. The alternative .dll causes the same crash as you.
Did you manage to get it working?

Thanks for highlighting these btw.
I did manage to get it working. I'm using the the universal reshader he released (not the Skyrim version), using either the normal .dll for that one or the one for 64bit in the folder (forgot which one is currently active) along with the .dll shim and also had to enable the Vulcan shaders option in Steam settings.

I disabled the eye accommodation mod (temporarily) to reduce variables to make sure I could get reshade working in its own, then added eye accommodation back and the shim to make reshade load first.


 
I did manage to get it working. I'm using the the universal reshader he released (not the Skyrim version), using either the normal .dll for that one or the one for 64bit in the folder (forgot which one is currently active) along with the .dll shim and also had to enable the Vulcan shaders option in Steam settings.

I disabled the eye accommodation mod (temporarily) to reduce variables to make sure I could get reshade working in its own, then added eye accommodation back and the shim to make reshade load first.


Thanks bud, got it working now. Used the 64bit .dll and the fix. Cheers.
 
Wow the eye accomodation fix changed the game for me in the oculus rift. Much more realistic vision in rain and snow, I could hardly see where I was going before.

Haven't tried the reshade, but will give it a go soon.

-edit, went ahead and tried it, simply installed as it stated. Incredible difference, i was highly skeptical but it's like I upgraded headsets or something. No performance hit either and for free! So glad to have found this, thanks for sharing.
 
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Wow the eye accomodation fix changed the game for me in the oculus rift. Much more realistic vision in rain and snow, I could hardly see where I was going before.

Haven't tried the reshade, but will give it a go soon.

-edit, went ahead and tried it, simply installed as it stated. Incredible difference, i was highly skeptical but it's like I upgraded headsets or something. No performance hit either and for free! So glad to have found this, thanks for sharing.

Awesome, glad it's working, it still blows me away at how much better it is with the accommodation and the sharpening is icing on the cake. I did end up changing luminanceMinRange=600 even in the new version.. had the same issue on dusk stages, particularly in New England but with it at 600 it's simply glorious any time of day/night
 
Don't know anything about the WMR headsets, but on Oculus using the Oculus Tray Tool you can adjust the Mirror FOV, which adjusts the FOV on the monitor and not the headset.

Changing this down to 0.8 vertical and horizontal gives a 10-15% increase in performance which is huge if you're like me and still using a 1070.

Found this tip on the iracing forums but works just as well with DR.
 
Wow the eye accomodation fix changed the game for me in the oculus rift. Much more realistic vision in rain and snow, I could hardly see where I was going before.

Haven't tried the reshade, but will give it a go soon.

-edit, went ahead and tried it, simply installed as it stated. Incredible difference, i was highly skeptical but it's like I upgraded headsets or something. No performance hit either and for free! So glad to have found this, thanks for sharing.
Hi, do you have to run the game in SteamVR/OpenVR mode for Reshade to work? In Assetto Corsa you do, and the performance cost is significant. Thanks.
 
Wow looks very nice. Now with better graphics the pop in draw distance is pretty annoying as I can actually see so well. Trees and grass on certain tracks appear from nowhere or change resolution. I tried messing with graphics but not even low settings seem to get rid of this behavior. Anyone got a fix for this?
 

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