Rfactor2 The VR thread -settings & tips

Not specific to VR but changing the process priority of all four rfactor2 threads from their default setting to 'realtime' has fixed any jitters and stutters that I previous had when playing in VR. Between OpenComposite and this my game has been transformed.

More information on the link below. If you have an older CPU then possibly go for "high priority" first in case "realtime" is too much for your system.

https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/processor-core-management.67902/
 
I'm at a loss with setting up the game for VR.

I've read through the first bit of this thread and applied to settings. Ingame graphics are set to low (details, blur) or off (reflections). I run fpsVR along with the game to check out what the performance is on the fly. I also tried lowering the render resolution from the automatic default of 148% to 100% with no noticable boost in performance.

As soon as I run a 40-man field of either online competitors or AI the FPS wants to drop close to 45 FPS and barely ever boost out of it. I had this on S397's SIlverstone running changeable weather in the Chequered Flag league as well as their race on Portimao (3rd party). I can run 40 AI on Portland quite smoothly for some reason, but in an online race it's just dreadful.

I do have the same thing in iRacing when running a race (not practice for some reason), but the effect wears off quite quickly and stabilizes at the expected 90 FPS.

My specs are in the signature. Any tips or advice on what I might be missing? Much appreciated.
 
Yoeri Gijsen said:
I'm at a loss with setting up the game for VR.

I've read through the first bit of this thread and applied to settings. Ingame graphics are set to low (details, blur) or off (reflections). I run fpsVR along with the game to check out what the performance is on the fly. I also tried lowering the render resolution from the automatic default of 148% to 100% with no noticable boost in performance.

As soon as I run a 40-man field of either online competitors or AI the FPS wants to drop close to 45 FPS and barely ever boost out of it. I had this on S397's SIlverstone running changeable weather in the Chequered Flag league as well as their race on Portimao (3rd party). I can run 40 AI on Portland quite smoothly for some reason, but in an online race it's just dreadful.

I do have the same thing in iRacing when running a race (not practice for some reason), but the effect wears off quite quickly and stabilizes at the expected 90 FPS.

My specs are in the signature. Any tips or advice on what I might be missing? Much appreciated.
Click to expand...

I've got a 2070 and a Ryzen 3600 @ 4.3Ghz. I've done a lot of tweaking and get a near steady 80 FPS. The list below covers the main points.

1. Edit windows startup and services to get rid of absolutely all unnecessary CPU and RAM overhead
2. Set all RF2 processes to higher priority. I've a 12 core CPU so have set to 'Realtime', you may have to opt for 'High'
3. Edit json file to limit game FPS. I have a Rift S so for me set at 80
4. Instead of using Steam VR I use Open Composite. Not sure if there is an alternative for your headset.
5. In RFactor2 video settings (pre-startup) I have Anti Aliasing (3), post processing off.
6. In game display settings I have:

Circuit Detail - Low
Player Detail - Full
Opponent Detail - Medium
Texture Detail - High
Text Filter x4
Special Effects - Low
Shadows -OFF
Shadow Blur - OFF
Soft Particles - High
Rain Drops - Ultra
Road Reflection - High
Env Reflection - High
15%
Stabilise Horizon - High

Vehicles 10
Auto Detail FPS 0
 
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Thanks for your reply. You're running much higher settings.

I'm going to try the process priority.

Any resources to help me distinguish what services I can cull from the list?
 
Let me know how you get on. I must admit looking at your specs I'm thinking that your CPU might be more of a limitation than your graphics card.

Even if you don't want to overclock your GPU, if you download MSI afterburner then you can run the game whilst logging important data such as CPU and GPU occupancy and Video Ram and System Ram along with FPS.

I did that and found that my CPU was holding back my graphics card. Updating process priority seemed to fix that issue.
 
Yoeri Gijsen said:
Thanks for your reply. You're running much higher settings.

I'm going to try the process priority.

Any resources to help me distinguish what services I can cull from the list?
Click to expand...

On the services front, I killed anything non essential that wasn't Microsoft, especially update type services. After that there are some Microsoft ones you can disable but I would recommend doing some Googling beforehand to check what they do. Some are self explanatory.
 
I'm not sure what to make of the readings, using fpsVR.

GPU frametime: ~16ms. 6.6 of 8GB (about 1.4 GB spare)
CPU frametime: ~8ms. 13.3 of 15.9 GB Memory ( 2+ GB spare)
150% Resolution.
CPU usage about 40%. CPU logical load across all cores never above 70%, usually between 45 and 65%
Quite steady 45-50 fps once I start driving, but that is just really stuttery.

120% Resolution yielded the same results.

@Craig Waddell
 
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Yoeri Gijsen said:
I'm not sure what to make of the readings, using fpsVR.

GPU frametime: ~16ms. 6.6 of 8GB (about 1.4 GB spare)
CPU frametime: ~8ms. 13.3 of 15.9 GB Memory ( 2+ GB spare)
150% Resolution.
CPU usage about 40%. CPU logical load across all cores never above 70%, usually between 45 and 65%
Quite steady 45-50 fps once I start driving, but that is just really stuttery.

120% Resolution yielded the same results.

@Craig Waddell
Click to expand...
Any idea on what sample rate FPS VR uses? I know that MSI afterburner by default is one sample per second (1Hz). Initial testing on my system suggested CPU usage was always low. I tested again at 10hz and found a good number of spikes in the CPU usage, often nearing or saturated at 100%.

Ideally you want to try and get your GPU sitting up towards 80-90% but that will only happen if the CPU isn't bottle necked.

I should add to that that Afterburner allows you to log data to a CSV file for analysis afterwards which is a whole lot more thorough.no idea whether Fpsvr does the same.
 
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Yoeri Gijsen said:
Thanks, I'll see if I can get afterburner running.
Click to expand...
One thing I didn't mention is make sure you have V Sync off in your graphics settings.

I spent quite a long time fiddling around on my setup, looking at performance spreadsheets after races. The end results were worthwhile though as I've managed to make great improvements.
 
@Craig Waddell I've never had V-sync on.

I logged Afterburner files. I've viewed them, but can't find a way to share them. How to do that?

I've also reverted back to driver 446.15 since apparently newer versions cause frame drops in VR and Nvidia hasn't been able to solve those: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...-index-missing-dropped-frames-since-nvidia-d/

EDIT: I have to add, after trying different session settings, that rain is a big factor. No rain: 90 FPS. Rain: 45-60FPS. Mind you, I have Rain Drop on Low and Reflections off.
 
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Yoeri Gijsen said:
@Craig Waddell I've never had V-sync on.

I logged Afterburner files. I've viewed them, but can't find a way to share them. How to do that?

I've also reverted back to driver 446.15 since apparently newer versions cause frame drops in VR and Nvidia hasn't been able to solve those: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...-index-missing-dropped-frames-since-nvidia-d/

EDIT: I have to add, after trying different session settings, that rain is a big factor. No rain: 90 FPS. Rain: 45-60FPS. Mind you, I have Rain Drop on Low and Reflections off.
Click to expand...
Share the CSV file? I suspect you will have to use something like drop box. Not sure if this forum has a hosting facility.

That Afterburner tool is ideal for getting to the bottom of this problem. Firstly as you say it lets you quantify the effect of changing certain settings. Did you set the sample rate to 100ms? If so what CPU and GPU occupancies are you getting when the frame rate dips below what limit you've set? If when the frame rate dips the GPU is not anywhere near 100% then the likelihood is that your CPU is holding in back.

Rain, shadows, reflections and number of cars shown all have a big impact. So does track detail on big tracks. I've noticed that for the Nordschlife if I have track detail too high my gfx card memory maxes out at 8GB.
 
Craig Waddell said:
Share the CSV file? I suspect you will have to use something like drop box. Not sure if this forum has a hosting facility.

That Afterburner tool is ideal for getting to the bottom of this problem. Firstly as you say it lets you quantify the effect of changing certain settings. Did you set the sample rate to 100ms? If so what CPU and GPU occupancies are you getting when the frame rate dips below what limit you've set? If when the frame rate dips the GPU is not anywhere near 100% then the likelihood is that your CPU is holding in back.

Rain, shadows, reflections and number of cars shown all have a big impact. So does track detail on big tracks. I've noticed that for the Nordschlife if I have track detail too high my gfx card memory maxes out at 8GB.
Click to expand...
Thing is, I can't localize the files Afterburner stores. The only thing I can do is to go to Monitoring options, click View where it addresses logging and then run the HardwareMonitoring app related to Riva. Could you inform me of that?

I've not adjusted sample rates. Didn't look for it, nor know where to find it.

I used Riva to create an overlay on the screen and put the VR set on top of my head, not covering my eyes, but still pointing at the road.
GPU went between 70 and 80%.
Each individual core mostly stayed below 50%.

Nothing looked bottlenecked too me.

Here's a cut I put together of that test. The first bit is of me in the menus.

Frametest.png
 
Yoeri Gijsen said:
Thing is, I can't localize the files Afterburner stores. The only thing I can do is to go to Monitoring options, click View where it addresses logging and then run the HardwareMonitoring app related to Riva. Could you inform me of that?

I've not adjusted sample rates. Didn't look for it, nor know where to find it.

I used Riva to create an overlay on the screen and put the VR set on top of my head, not covering my eyes, but still pointing at the road.
GPU went between 70 and 80%.
Each individual core mostly stayed below 50%.

Nothing looked bottlenecked too me.

Here's a cut I put together of that test. The first bit is of me in the menus.

Frametest.png
Click to expand...

To record in MSI Afterburner (see image at the link). In the graph, right click and select "properties". Then on the "Monitoring" tab you can enter "hardware polling period" (I use 100ms). Also set the file path (add .csv as the file extension to open with excel or open office). Also select what parameters you wish to log.

https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2017/10/RX-Vega-Afterburner-OC.jpg

Then when you want to log to file just right click in the graph area and select "Log History To File". Afterwards, stop logging and you can view the data in Excel.

From the graphs you have shown both the CPU and GPU are showing less than 100% but your fps is still up and down. With neither maxed out it should be steady at whatever frame rate you set in the player.json file. Either that or because of the polling period of the hardware the graphs are not showing the whole story. Or possibly a result of using Steam VR which is why I binned in for OpenComposite.
 
Yoeri Gijsen said:
I figured it out. Here's the link: https://gofile.io/d/tEloV4

I appreciate the time and attention you put into this, @Craig Waddell
Click to expand...
You're welcome Yoeri.

I had a look at the CSV file and noticed the following:

1. GPU% Never at 100%, initially around 90% and then settles between 70-80% for the remainder
2. VRam, just under 7GB all the way through
3. System RAM, initially peaked at 16GB ( I assume this is all you have installed), settled down to around 13.5GB
4. CPU Usage, generally relatively low but just like mine you have lots of spikes on a number of cores up to 100%
5. FPS not recorded. Did you click the tick box in afterburner?

So my takeaways would be it's the CPU which is holding you back. So best to remove any background services that you can do without. I use my PC just for gaming so for me that's easier to do than say someone who uses it for other tasks. You could try setting your process priority for the RFactor processes to RealTime. If that causes trouble on your system then go for High Priority. My system is also over clocked. not sure if that is an option for you?

Not sure what you can do in RFactor2 to limit CPU usage. Number of cars running will be an obvious one but no doubt there will be other settings that can help. Maybe some plugins you can disable?

System RAM, I suspect that this probably won't be an issue even though it maxed out initially. Something to be mindful of though.

I use Libre Office to view the CSV files, it's free if you don't have access to MS Office.
 
@Craig Waddell
Thanks for digging through this.

FPS was ticked, so I'm surprised it's not in the CSV.

I contacted the firm that assembled my PC when I bought it about overclocking when I upgraded to the 2070. They said it couldn't be done, unfortunately. I'm stuck with it. I've already trimmed down startup and services a bit, just from the app descriptions. I hope the next time I go online it widens the bottleneck a little. I don't usually drive with AI, so having that load off the CPU would be nice. I'm just still a little surprised the drops occured with online competitors as well.

I'll have to give RealTime priority a try.

Can't use OpenComposite, unfortunately, as it seems it does not support Vive. I haven't come across a different alternative yet.
 
Yoeri Gijsen said:
@Craig Waddell
Thanks for digging through this.

FPS was ticked, so I'm surprised it's not in the CSV.

I contacted the firm that assembled my PC when I bought it about overclocking when I upgraded to the 2070. They said it couldn't be done, unfortunately. I'm stuck with it. I've already trimmed down startup and services a bit, just from the app descriptions. I hope the next time I go online it widens the bottleneck a little. I don't usually drive with AI, so having that load off the CPU would be nice. I'm just still a little surprised the drops occured with online competitors as well.

I'll have to give RealTime priority a try.

Can't use OpenComposite, unfortunately, as it seems it does not support Vive. I haven't come across a different alternative yet.
Click to expand...

Possibly a replacement CPU off eBay may be a possibility. Something with a higher clock speed.

If you want I'll try and post the spreadsheet graphs on an image hosting site. Either that or you can connect on Facebook messenger and I'll send them that way.
 
If it's not too much trouble, I'd love to check them out through image hosting.

I've upgraded my PC in the past year (prior to considering VR, though) and replaced the GPU since it didn't meet the Vive's minimum specs. I'm not presently looking to replace more parts as the affair has already been quite the investment. :D

Thanks again, Craig!
 
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