Tips for optimized rF2 performance / Guide on how to prevent low FPS

Risto Kappet

Risto Kappet

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Hello

Since rF2 is a fairly hardware intensive simulaton, needs more optimizing to run stutter free than a general game and most simracers I see have problems in one form or the other, then I feel a general (sticky) thread for guidance, FAQ and discussion regarding getting the most out of your hardware and software for rF2 is required.

I have been always simracing on mediocre hardware so getting the most bang for buck is something im very passionate about.

I will present all my knowledge to date in two seperate topics in two separate posts below:
1) Hardware monitoring and optimization
2) rF2 tips and tweaks
Hope you can find something new and please contribute further if you know better or have additional questions and problems.
 
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1) OS optimization and hardware monitoring

The programs I use for all monitoring are MSI Afterburner & HWinfo.
You can also use any alternative including Windows own Resource Monitor, but those two complete each other with graphs and statistics.

First about OS optimization, lets go straight to the point:

if you cannot keep ~0% CPU activity on your PC for an indefinite time when you are not doing anything, you are not ready for simracing!
This is more critical the less threads/cores your CPU has.

If you run a fresh install of Windows, open no program except the hardware monitor, you will see your CPU, RAM and Disk usage rise and drop every once in a while. Sometimes randomly, sometimes frequently.
An unoptimized PC is always checking for updates, installing updates, doing scheduled maintenance, antivirus scanning, etc.
This is all unacceptable if you seek an undisturbed racing experience, and can ruin your performance regardless of how much money you pumped into your computer or anything else.

Fixing this can be sorted into three steps:
1) Uninstalling and removing all unnecessary software and Windows features, including Steam overlays & friend list and other gimmick utilities, especially ones that create overlays on the screen.
2) Stopping and disabling any unused services and start-up items. This can be done simply in Window's own Task Manager.
3) Stopping and/or disabling any unnecessary scheduled tasks. This can be done in the Task Scheduler, also a Windows program.

I will not go into detail how to use them. If you have System Restore enabled (do disable it otherwise), you can pretty much do trial and error in conjunction with Google (google everything!) to reach a point where eventually you can open up your hardware monitor, leave your PC running for an hour, come back and see that the CPU usage has not moved a single time from ~0%. Then you are ready to continue.

I personally also use Auslogics Boostspeed or CCleaner because they combine utilities to do all of the above and more, registry and disk cleaning etc. A separate program with simple UI is maybe a good introduction into optimizing your PC, but eventually all the changes and adjustments can be done manually in Windows without any of the widely available programs.

And if you are running anything older than Windows 10, then upgrade now. If your PC cannot run it, then you cant expect to run rF2. Also, formatting the OS is almost never a correct solution to improve performance. Further optimization and cleaning almost always is.

Windows 11 is fine too, on modern (Intel) processors it offers slightly improved performance but can still be a bit more unstable. As of 2023, I stick to W10.

Secondly, about hardware monitoring itself.

Especially this summer there were several simracers were sweating in 40c ambient temperatures, racing with decent hardware but getting terrible performance - the hardware was thermal throttling due to over the top temperatures.
Google your hardware - modern hardware can usually go to 85c+ without a problem, modern CPUs even to 99c, but some older gen CPUs can already throttle from 65c onwards.
This is where MSI Afterburner is especially handy, you can just keep it minimized and recording during gameplay without any performance effect and when you experience a lagspike, you can straight away check the data (just like you check Motec data after driving) to pinpoint where the error was. Keep open for example all temperatures, clock speeds, CPU & GPU usage.

I will again not go into detail of how to keep your PC cool and what physical coolers and components are required to be optimised, just google how to keep your PC cool and you will be greeted with hundreds of professional writers and Youtubers who will guide you into detail regarding every area. If you experience any sign of issues, then I encourage you to take that trip and educate yourself.
Know the operation, status and capabilities of your PC as good as you can.

Regarding general hardware tips - what parts to get for rF2 - again I will not google things for you, find the best deals for the newest generations of hardware yourself and follow tips from experts.
One tip stands out though: Always run your OS and rF2 on an SSD!
Numerous drivers have been trapped in a cycle of spikes resembling CPU bottlenecking when it has not been the case. Upgrading from HDD to SSD has fixed the supposed memory bandwidth bottleneck, and it will also obviously improve your quality of life and save you hours a week of loading times.

For laptops: make sure you are on full power mode wherever possible (also check the Geforce Experience program that no power saving mode is enabled)

Update 10.02.2020:

Most of the OS optimizations above can be dealt swiftly with a slick program:
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 (works on W11 too)
Simply apply the recommended settings and you are half way there
 
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rF2 tips and tweaks

First let me introduce you to player.json, a file openable by notepad where you can tweak every setting there is, much more than in the ingame menu.
Locate it at /Steam/steamapps/common/rfactor2/userdata/player

My main suggestion is that the sim should never be allowed to run rampant with unlimited FPS, but instead should be limited FPS.
I suggest doing this from the NVIDIA/AMD Control panel, rather than the player.json, it should be smoother that way.
This should be set 3 lower than your refresh rate if you use a high refresh monitor (75hz+) and Freesync/Gsync.
That limit should also be 5-15% below your minimum benchmarked unlocked framerate, for example with rF2s own [CRTLl+F] fps counter.

You can observe your GPU/CPU bottlenecking from abovementioned utility programs.
Monitoring CPU usage is difficult, because programs show the total usage, but rF2 only runs on individual threads.
Most foolproof logic is that, if you are not reaching your target FPS, but GPU usage is not at or near 100%, then you are CPU bottlenecked.

By pressing CRTL+C and CRTL+F ingame you can also bring up a frametime graph (long bars and fluctuations are bad) and a framerate monitor.

If you are bottlenecked by the CPU, then having FPS uncapped will get you to 100% CPU usage which guarantees you lag spikes and possibly also going out of real-time even in multiplayer, teleporting you into big crashes.
If you are bottlenecked by the GPU (most common), then you will simply have a varying framerate and frame time from corner to corner, which might not feel good and still leaves the door open for bigger dips, frametime fluctuations and other lags.

Plus, it is simply a waste of heat, noise and electricity if you are pumping out 250+fps.
Just like you can tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz, but less so between 144hz and 240hz monitors, then the same applies for FPS.
Also - for simracing, a smooth and persistant framerate and frametime is better than the highest occasional maximum framerate.



I will now also list some important settings that you can find from player.json
There are comments regarding each command in the file itself, so I will only add my own comments.

"Repeat Shifts":1,
even with a new wheel, its still good to apply a small doubleclick protection to not blow up your engine etc. (now also adjustable in-game)

"Head Physics":0,
"Head Rotation":0,
"Cockpit Vibration Freq1":0,
"Cockpit Vibration Freq2":0,
"Cockpit Vibration Mult1":0,
"Cockpit Vibration Mult2":0,
Any additional simulated head movement that is not your own VR head tracking is a gimmick and distorts the feeling of the car.

"Load Opponent Cockpits":false,
if you dont use driver swap, then this saves a bit of loading time and memory, few FPS

"Garage Detail":0.01,
lowers the detail of garages, so reduces the fps drop when passing them

"Max Headlights":2,
self explainatory. Some people like to run headlights even in daytime, you dont need to see any of that, except for the 2 cars around you at most.

"Max Visible Vehicles":10,
big boost, set the number half of how many people you think you want to divebomb in the race.

"Pitcrew Detail Level":1,
shows only your pitcrew in the pits, saves few fps and makes spotting yours easier.

"Rearview_Back_Clip":65,
limits mirror render distance with the number being meters. WARNING - HUGE FPS BOOST

"Steady Framerate Thresh":0 - something you dont need

"Disable Resume in Replay":1,
"Monitor Auto Replay":false,
Those increase stability when escaping to garage.

"Soft Particles":0,
"Spark Flow":0,
"Smoke Flow":false,
"Special FX":0,
"Sun Occlusion":false,
"Tire Emitter Flow":false,
"Wind and Crowd Motion":false,
"Lightning Probability":0,
"Rain Drops":false,
"Raindrop Flow":0,
"Rainspray Flow":0
A bunch of effects, but you dont need effects for performing in high level simracing esports.

For races, I suggest disabling every uneccesary ingame plugin.
Disabling replay saving can also help with stability, especially in much longer sessions.

It is also good form to disable the message centre in non-race sessions. First you will not get disrupting chat and join messages, but it also removes most of the join lag when people enter the server.

Regarding the classical settings, here is what I use as an example for you for best bang for buck, these settings gave me 145fps at all tracks in all conditions in 2020 at an average 75% GPU and 50% CPU usage with a i3 7100 and GTX 1060 6GB

rF2 config:
Anti aliasing: level 3 / 4X MSAA (further increments have small increase in quality but big effect in performance, if you have 1440p or more, you might not even need any)
Post processing: none (never go above low, the effects will be overdone and affect to performance big)
Mode: Borderless (this gives me personally more stability and allows quicker alt-tabbing, also less vulnerable to popups)
although do experiment yourself, some people have reported the opposite, especially on triplescreens.

rF2 graphics settings:
Circuit detail: Medium (usually enables all the buildings for immerssion, but not the unneccesary small details that eat most of the performance)
Player detail: High (bumps the textures up to a good level)
Opponent detail: Medium(makes opponents low detailed, but you wont be looking at them closely anyway)
Texture detail: Full (big effect for sharper textures, almost no performance cost)
Texture filter: 16x (low cost, high effect. A reasonable alternative is trilinear which makes things a bit blurry but makes textures very smooth)
Everything else: Off (Many effects like rain, reflections and smoke are hardcoded into rF2 but they still appear, just at a lower detail with this option)

Number of sound effects: minimum on 32 unless you actually notice sounds missing on big grids.
Going over 64 can really impact your CPU usage (supposedly fixed in a patch mid-2022, but I still have it lean just in case)

Also if you are running a 1440p/4K resolution, experiment with 1080p and more anti aliasing instead. If you have your monitor at a healthy distance for your eyes, then you shouldn't notice too big of a difference anyway ;)
 
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Hm, an interesting read, most thing I agree with, some things I don't. One problem is that most of those tweaks found in player.JSON do nothing. I went ahead and tested the "load opponent cockpits" setting, as that's something used in Raceroom with success, but it actually changed nothing and opponent cockpits still load fully. Same with max headlights number. I think there has been so many changes to the game that most of those player.JSON settings are now obsolete.

From my experience of helping forum users with poor performance, here are the most obvious pitfalls I have found:

- Running out of GPU RAM. This happens very easily on 2 GB cards and even 3 GB ones on recent tracks. When VRAM is exceeded, FPS in rF2 drops to almost half, which I found out the hard way with my old GPU. Solution is simple, lower opponent and track texture details and the game will eat significantly less VRAM. It also helps to close any background browser and windows, as those eat VRAM as well.
- Running in PCI-E 2.0 mode or PCI-E 3.0 at reduced PCI-E speed, e.g. 4X. Sometimes this can be solved by moving GPU to other slot, other times it requires a new motherboard. Loss in FPS is 20-30% at least, depending on GPU. I found this out the hard way as well, as I had accidentally run my GPU in a slower slot for years.
- CPU isn't performing at rated max for whatever reason. When CPU is performing normally, 99% of time it will not cause issues in rF2. Mostly people with issues are using a laptop or a bad CPU cooling solution, which causes throttling. Even an AMD FX series CPU when operating normally can handle rF2 physics in realtime without issues with a decent number of AI cars.
- Related to CPU, the most frequent issue is with wheel drivers not processing commands at fast enough rate, which stalls the physics thread. Solution here is simple, change the Controller.JSON parameter "use thread" to true.

And the few graphics settings I found that make a significant impact:
- Rain drops. As I discovered in a post earlier, rain drops off gives an extra 20% performance boost in dry weather with recent GT3 and GTE packs.
- Post-processing and anti-aliasing. I agree with above explanation, easy FPS to be gained and users are often running these maxed for no good reason.
- Max visible AI cars, as also explained above.
- Shadows, perhaps the most FPS critical setting. It may be an idea to run shadows off, as this often gives less visual quirks than running them at low or medium.

So to sum it up, most of the times it's something with the specific PC configuration that ends up causing problems. rF2 itself has, contrary to belief, a fairly limited number of graphic settings that really impact the performance.
 
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Launger said:
I have been always simracing on mediocre hardware so getting the most bang for buck is something im very passionate about.
Click to expand...

Me too, not only with simracing games, of course.

Super interesting-thread, will try some of your advices and post some of my own (not really my own hehe).
 
Thanks for the replies and interest

Little update: since I have moved on to a 144hz screen, I have found that using simple vsync (video sync from rF2 config)is the best option if it doesnt support G-sync or Freesnyc
It results in the smoothest experience compared to any other sync or framerate limit combination and it appears that at a refresh rate of 144hz, input delay as such is absolutely not noticeable, while it was with 60hz.
One could also argue that in a racing game...simulator, a stable refresh rate, stable frametime is more desirable than smaller input lag but less consistent one. You can get used to anything, as long as its stable. As always - once you go 144hz you cannot go back.

Also note that when using vsync, the in game CRTL+C graphics bar shows as full but that doesnt reflect the real GPU usage that you have to observe externally. It just indicates that the frame queue is full, as dictated by the sync.

2020 update: Now I an a Freesync user and its all the good bits of vsync with even less input lag and flexibility under lower fps conditions.
Note that I set the frame limiter at about 140 because if I set it to 144, it might sometimes exceed 144 and that seems to disable freesync for periods.
 
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On a slight tangent, I think it's also important to go into your monitor settings and turn off any enhancements - sharpening, contrast modes, whatever. Often the cleanest is called 'gaming' mode, but it's very monitor dependent. You can remove an appreciable amount of input lag by changing from the default settings, in many cases.

I didn't have any hardware or recording equipment that allowed me to test this in isolation, but when I got 3 identical screens all connected the same way I was able to test the different modes side-by-side - and even in windows, dragging a window up and down on screen (while spanning two screens) I could see the extra lag on the default settings. My screens came with a default medium level of sharpening, plus some contrast enhancement, and switching those off definitely made a difference in testing. I feel like it's helped in game, but I'm wary of imagining such differences.
 
stonec said:
And the few graphics settings I found that make a significant impact:
- Rain drops. As I discovered in a post earlier, rain drops off gives an extra 20% performance boost in dry weather with recent GT3 and GTE packs.
Click to expand...

BWOAH! At least 20fps boost just like that in dry weather!

You guys motivated me to do some testing and improve my settings.
In Low post processing windshield rain drops dont look any good its too dark like oil, and increasing only the rain drop setting in high or max it eats your fps while it looks the same.
Time scaling x5 gives much better fps than x2 (i think i ve read that before btw).
Shadows blur in fast and optimum look the same, in my system at least (1050ti) while fast has much better fps (5+).
I already had medium quality for ai cars (may try low as well), with texture quality at 3 in player.json file, they look excellent to me even when up close.

One mistake I did is enable AA transparency with multisampling/oversampling x2 in the nvidia panel for some time now to see if its any good, it is terrible makes rf2 look like and old console game, also turned game AA down to 4, dont see any change in image quality (i was trying to get rid of object outlines flickering).
I see that in official tracks low environment (car body) reflections at low doesnt have an fps impact at all and i enabled it again, much better image quality imho because of the light reflections on the car, trackside object reflections i dont mind that much and its what eats your fps in non optimized mods unfortunately.

Green bar is full , is that why i have fps glitches?

FPS limiter is very useful i didnt expect that, big immersion factor for me driving looks much more stable, rf2 without sync out of the box looked somewhat arcady. I chopped off ~15 FPS from the max and it makes a huge difference! , thing is that with GT3 pack i have ~ 25 fps lower ( :confused: !) than OW like f2 and fr35 that i tested and the limiter is useless with that fps drop.

With all these i m starting to like rf2 much more.

Extremely helpful thread, thank you very much!
 
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enduser said:
BWOAH! At least 20fps boost just like that in dry weather!

You guys motivated me to do some testing and improve my settings.
In Low post processing windshield rain drops dont look any good its too dark like oil, and increasing only the rain drop setting in high or max it eats your fps while it looks the same.
Time scaling x5 gives much better fps than x2 (i think i ve read that before btw).
Shadows blur in fast and optimum look the same, in my system at least (1050ti) while fast has much better fps (5+).
I already had medium quality for ai cars (may try low as well), with texture quality at 3 in player.json file, they look excellent to me even when up close.

One mistake I did is enable AA transparency with multisampling/oversampling x2 in the nvidia panel for some time now to see if its any good, it is terrible makes rf2 look like and old console game, also turned game AA down to 4, dont see any change in image quality (i was trying to get rid of object outlines flickering).
I see that in official tracks low environment (car body) reflections at low doesnt have an fps impact at all and i enabled it again, much better image quality imho because of the light reflections on the car, trackside object reflections i dont mind that much and its what eats your fps in non optimized mods unfortunately.

Green bar is full , is that why i have fps glitches?

FPS limiter is very useful i didnt expect that, big immersion factor for me driving looks much more stable, rf2 without sync out of the box looked somewhat arcady. I chopped off ~15 FPS from the max and it makes a huge difference! , thing is that with GT3 pack i have ~ 25 fps lower ( :confused: !) than OW like f2 and fr35 that i tested and the limiter is useless with that fps drop.

With all these i m starting to like rf2 much more.

Extremely helpful thread, thank you very much!
Click to expand...

Nice that it was of help. I personally didn't know about the time scaling thing, but I'd guess it could be about rendering clouds and the sky that changes more often with x5. Regarding AA, based on an old analysis I did that I can't seem to find now, you can even turn it down to level 3. There is an obvious quality difference in screenshots from levels 1-3, but anything more than that wasn't visible to my eyes. Regarding the green bar, this is for the GPU, so you'd want that to sit at 100% all the time, else you are CPU limited. And yeah, the in-game FPS limiter is great, much better than any of the sync options. I proposed years ago to ISI it should be included in the main menu instead of buried in player.JSON.
 
Old thread I know but I followed this and it worked but then I found another thread on hear and instead of limiting Max Framerate they suggested something else, which I did.

However I now have a 144Hz monitor nd the framrate is still capped to 75FPS and Max Framerate is set to 0. So any idea what file I modded thats restricting the framerate?
 
petrolhead said:
Old thread I know but I followed this and it worked but then I found another thread on hear and instead of limiting Max Framerate they suggested something else, which I did.

However I now have a 144Hz monitor nd the framrate is still capped to 75FPS and Max Framerate is set to 0. So any idea what file I modded thats restricting the framerate?
Click to expand...

Perhaps here:
player.json
Click to expand...
The command for FPS limit is "Max Framerate":[number]
This should be set 3 lower than your refresh rate, if you use a high refresh monitor (75hz+) and Freesync/Gsync.
That limit should also be 5-15% below your minimum benchmarked unlocked framerate, for example with Fraps, around a whole lap, with traffic.
Without the limit your PC is much more vulnerable for any interruptions by other programs and also action ontrack.
Click to expand...
 
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