VR, Nordschleife, GT4: The Rennsport Open Beta Update Is Here

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Since its announcement in August of 2022, Rennsport had only been accessible with a beta key. Now, the sim shifts to an open beta - here's what is coming in update 1.9.0.

Closed beta keys for Rennsport had become a bit of a meme ever since the sim was revealed in August of 2022. Now, there is no need for them anymore, as the open beta has arrived - and with it, update 1.9.0 is deployed. This time around, it does feel like a proper step forward in our opinion - check out our impressions in the video above!

The latest version adds new content, some of which is part of the three-tiered Founder's Pack - which, it has to be said, is quite steeply priced.

The good thing is that the Founder's Pack is completely optional - if you can do without the Nürburgring-Nordschleife, that is. Essentially, two of the three pack tiers give players access to the the Porsche 911 GT3 R Rennsport (a modified version of the usual GT3 car) and the Green Hell.

Rennsport Founder's Pack Contents​

Gold​

  • Early access to the Nürburgring-Nordschleife
  • Car Purchase Token
  • Gold Founder's Pack Badge
Price: €19.99

Platinum​

  • Porsche GT3 R Rennsport with exclusive eVIN
  • Nürburgring-Nordschleife
  • Platinum Livery
  • Two Car Purchase Tokens
  • Gold and Platinum Founder's Pack Badges
  • Your Name on a Race Track - Billboard
Price: €39.99

Diamond​

  • Porsche GT3 R Rennsport with exclusive eVIN
  • Nürburgring-Nordschleife
  • Diamond Dynamic Livery
  • Platinum Livery
  • Two Car Purchase Tokens
  • Gold, Platinum, and Diamond Founder's Pack Badges
  • Your Name on a Race Track - On Track
Price: €69.99
Click to expand...

Besides the Nordschleife and Porsche GT3 R Rennsport (named after the Rennsport Reunion event, not the sim, by the way), the Audi R8 LMS GT4 and BMW M4 GT4 make their debuts as new content pieces. This means it also introduces a new class to Rennsport.

OverTake_RENNSPORT.jpg

The Porsche 911 GT3 R Rennsport sporting the Dynamic Diamond livery, which actually changes very slightly over time.

Furthermore, the addition of VR could be considered the second centerpiece of the update. We have not had the chance to give the mode a closer look yet, but will do so as soon as possible to find out how Rennsport performs in VR. With Assetto Corsa Competizione being notorious for its less-than-optimal VR performance and Rennsport also using the Unreal family of engines (version 5 vs. 4 in ACC's case), we would hope for siginificant improvements in this regard.

Find out everything that is new in Rennsport v1.9.0 to launch the open beta in the release notes below.

Rennsport v1.9.0 Changelog​

UI​

  • Upgraded Main menu’s “My Rennsport” tab visuals
  • Improved in-game tire status widget readability
  • In car menu automatic disable logic is no longer active while player is in pit lane
  • Updated in-game controller icons
  • Improved overall visuals for main menu screens
  • Updated loading screens
  • Simplified in-game car dashboard is now enabled by default

Spectator​

  • Implemented helicopter camera for spectators
  • Improved overall spectator system logic for smoother experience

Bugfixes​

  • Fixed issue with lap times sometimes being inconsistent across the whole race
  • Some lap times being different than race time
  • Fixed issue with scoring being messed up when players cross the finish line
  • Fixed issue with player delta being out of sync for a few seconds after player crosses S/F line
  • Fixed some cases where player progress (distance and percentage) on a lap was not updated correctly
  • Fixed problem with players disappearing from leaderboards table when they quit the game
  • Fixed issue with players receiving error message upon being disconnected from game servers which were closed gracefully
  • Fixed problem with checkpoints being triggered a little bit to early by cars
  • Fixed issue with the day-night system sometimes being out of sync for some players
  • Fixed some edge case issues occurring in pit stops system
  • Fixed some issues with dynamic in-game minimap sometimes not rotating correctly
  • Improved overall game stability

Known Issues​

  • VR:
    • No default settings
    • Flickering when loading into level
    • Some menus don’t work in VR
    • No mouse support
    • UI colour is offset in-game
    • Camera position slightly offset
  • Spectator engine audio can be missing
  • Rank can still be affected if the server/client crashes
  • Automtic Headlight assist doesn’t always trigger after stage transition
  • Going back to pits on Orchard Road can trigger a pit stop
  • Using Vulkan can cause the game to crash
  • Nvidia Reflex can cause stuttering. Recommendation is to disable it for now
  • Replays can crash when scrolling through longer replays
  • Time Trial delta is only shown when personal best time is set
  • Ghost car does not move in Time Trial Replays
  • In online races, if a car crashes at very high speeds into a wall, it can cause a mini-freeze for all connected clients and possibly crash the physics engine. Restart your client if this happens.
  • Getting a black flag in Time Trial will soft lock the player. You have to leave the Time Trial and go back to the Main Menu
  • Porsche Mission R has the wrong TC sound, fix in future patch
  • Porsche Mission R has a refuel section during the pit stop even though the battery charge doesn't increase
Click to expand...

Will you give the Rennsport open beta a try? Let us know on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
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About author
Yannik Haustein
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

More in Rennsport

Comments

Chatopex
Rennsport will be Free-to-Play with paid DLC, or it will be my worst fear... like iRacing, where you pay a high price for a car or a track. I think the developers don't even know the future of what they're creating. Watching their latest interview, the Director and CEO seemed quite lost or complicated in trying to explain what Rennsport is. I hope to see DLC like in AMB2, AC, ACC, FM8, which are more complete than what the Germans intend to sell us. It's a shame because the expectations were high. But today, despite being a demo, I wouldn't spend a dollar on what they're selling. It's not that I want to seem cheap, I just want more for a fair price. I'm also worried if this project will end well. I've always had my doubts and a hunch.

re.jpg
 
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J
Premium
Inkta said:
You had purple? Lucky, I had a green light in my right eye.
Click to expand...

I had a bunch of different issues, but the most obvious were sparkly green and purple stars mainly over the right side of my view. I did have one moment with the menu in one eye and an hourglass timer in the other, as well as black horizontal bars covering parts of the left eye.

Driving was - tricky!

With that said I have three VR runtimes installed; Steam, Oculus and OpenVR (I think), and I only tested with the Oculus one. It might work better with a different runtime, or with tweaking some of the Oculus VR settings, or just not with my Meta Quest Pro.

You'd have thought that with VR being such a requested feature and such a big part of this 1.9 release they'd give some guidance on actually using it - hopefully that advice lands soon.

However, as I noted above, the actual game is still far from release quality from a drivability / usability standpoint, which is fine as it's a Beta - but not fine that they're now charging what are really full game prices for it versions of it.

I suppose with LMU actually bringing in some cash despite being Early Access other devs will follow suit - expect to pay for beta games more in the future.

I'm pleased there's another choice for sim racers, and even more pleased it has the North Loop, (my venue of choice) so I'll keep an eye on how it develops, but I'll be spending my time in other sims until it works better.

Or watching the footy - sorry to the Dutch, that was never a pen, but go on England :)
 
Cote Dazur
From Rensport website: patch notes
  • Implemented v1 VR support in the game
    • Add -vr to Epic Launch Options to enable.
So, it is the way to access VR :confused:
Then, I guess, we will have to wait for some smart geek to let us, plebeian, know, how to make it playable.:O_o:

justageezer said:
I only tested with the Oculus
Click to expand...
I tested with Open VR/ Open Composite
 
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achi.nin
70 euros for 3 cars, a couple of tracks and your name on a track? :roflmao::roflmao::roflmao::roflmao::roflmao:

With the same money I can buy 10k Vrp and purchase the complete pack with every car and racetrack in RaceRoom, with almost half of that (39 euros) I can buy Automobilista 2 bundle with all the DLCs included during this Steam Summer Sale...

The guys at Rennsport must hate money, otherwise, I don't get their business model, it's the least competitive of all the sims on the market right now.
 
J
Premium
Fuzo said:
VR is broken for now, I have 5 fps in menus and when I finally manage to go on track, game crashes...
Click to expand...
I actually had decent framerates and graphics quality behind all the artifacts, and the game never actually crashed, though I crashed a lot due to not being able to feel any tires.

It defaulted to Epic settings on my system, which isn't exactly cutting edge any more:
i9-11900f
RX6800
32gb RAM
though that was running it at 1080p on my 4k TV screen. My Oculus settings are turned up as well, with the FPS @ 90Hz and size at 1.3x - it may work better with lower settings.

Other notes: the menus still aren't usable on a TV screen when sitting on a sofa (the text is tiny), though they looked OK in VR, the sound was a bit glitchy at the start of every run, and it didn't turn on the pit limiter by default when leaving the pits, though that's only a button-mapping away from a fix.

If someone can get it working stably in VR and come up with some FFB settings that feel drivable please post your results here, or I'll await Yannik's next post on the topic.
 
ozziecoops
Another sim released in a poor state, when are ppl going to stop buying beta and early access so we get a decent sim out of the box? So over the BS they expect us to spend our money on, financial crisis in my country have better things to spend my money on. Will stick with the sims i have over the new BS they dish out.
 
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pz666
ozziecoops said:
Another sim released in a poor state, when are ppl going to stop buying beta and early access so we get a decent sim out of the box? So over the BS they expect us to spend our money on, financial crisis in my country have better things to spend my money on. Will stick with the sims i have over the new BS they dish out.
Click to expand...

Only in your dreams...

It's just not going to happen like that anymore... Sim racing is too complex and too niche to have big budget AAA titles released at a working state...

ACE has had 5 years of development and a game in a BETA state for 4 years as a fully released title to help cover it's development... So it doesn't count as that either...
 
S
For the folks that care, it is really good on gamepad, surprisingly good even.

I played it back in November when I got my key and put it down after a few hours, but today I have to say the progress done in that regards impressed me. It is very close to ACC and RaceRoom in term of feeling on the gamepad, you feel very much in control. It also offers a lot of customisation for the stick and triggers responsiveness, including limiting the maximum input (for instance reducing wheel rotation to 80% for more precision and less scrubbing), which I usually have to set using SteamInput for other sims.
 
Metla
Premium
ozziecoops said:
Another sim released in a poor state, when are ppl going to stop buying beta and early access so we get a decent sim out of the box? So over the BS they expect us to spend our money on, financial crisis in my country have better things to spend my money on. Will stick with the sims i have over the new BS they dish out.
Click to expand...
Lets hope this is the bottom of the curve, and people don't support this with a purchase.

Though as it looks to be the most expensive, with the least content, in the poorest state, and the most doubtful outcome I'd say it would take a madman to continue to support this debacle.
 
pz666
shadow82 said:
For the folks that care, it is really good on gamepad, surprisingly good even.

I played it back in November when I got my key and put it down after a few hours, but today I have to say the progress done in that regards impressed me. It is very close to ACC and RaceRoom in term of feeling on the gamepad, you feel very much in control. It also offers a lot of customisation for the stick and triggers responsiveness, including limiting the maximum input (for instance reducing wheel rotation to 80% for more precision and less scrubbing), which I usually have to set using SteamInput for other sims.
Click to expand...

It's been improving on the wheel side as well, it definitely drives better than some other titles on the market...

Which considering how bad any other Unreal title has been on the feel of the suspension especially is a massive step for giving me confidence in this titles future...
 
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DC WOLF
From the FAQ from their discord

VR GUIDE
How to start in VR
Right-click on RENNSPORT in your Epic Games Library -> "Manage" -> Enable "Launch Options" -> Input -vr
Download SteamVR and set it to default runtime with whatever support program it offers for your headset (We used Windows Mixed reality for SteamVR for example). Activate its motion smoothing
Some settings that are recommended before launching VR

CONTROLS SETTINGS
Bind ResetVRPosition to preferred button under Cameras.

VIDEO SETTINGS
  • Turn down visual Effects Quality from Epic(Will cause a green glare otherwise)
  • Enable DLSS
  • Tune the mainmenu and ingame distance to 3 and their scale to 1.2.
  • Enable Instanced Stereo and Round Robin Occlusion Queries

  • Rerun with -vr launch params
There's an issue with level loading which can cause heavy flickering, take care if you're sensetive to flashing lights
 
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ozziecoops
pz666 said:
Only in your dreams...

It's just not going to happen like that anymore... Sim racing is too complex and too niche to have big budget AAA titles released at a working state...

ACE has had 5 years of development and a game in a BETA state for 4 years as a fully released title to help cover it's development... So it doesn't count as that either...
Click to expand...
Well lets hope a developer has dreams like i do and wants to release something polished at 1.0 stage. Put all other developers on notice, show the users it can be done. That's my dream waking PPL up to developers taking advantage of ppl selling 1/2 baked crap that we are now expected to buy. Its no different to ppl buying a lemon as a car but most wont put up with that, they do this even thou they have probably spent thousands on a rig and PC.
 
Cote Dazur
DC WOLF said:
From the FAQ from their discord

VR GUIDE
How to start in VR
Right-click on RENNSPORT in your Epic Games Library -> "Manage" -> Enable "Launch Options" -> Input -vr
Download SteamVR and set it to default runtime with whatever support program it offers for your headset (We used Windows Mixed reality for SteamVR for example). Activate its motion smoothing
Some settings that are recommended before launching VR

CONTROLS SETTINGS
Bind ResetVRPosition to preferred button under Cameras.

VIDEO SETTINGS
  • Turn down visual Effects Quality from Epic(Will cause a green glare otherwise)
  • Enable DLSS
  • Tune the mainmenu and ingame distance to 3 and their scale to 1.2.
  • Enable Instanced Stereo and Round Robin Occlusion Queries

  • Rerun with -vr launch params
There's an issue with level loading which can cause heavy flickering, take care if you're sensetive to flashing lights
Click to expand...
Thank you, this is probably the missing information we need to get VR to work, I have seen video in VR, so some people have figured it out. Going to try tomorrow.
 
pz666
ozziecoops said:
Well lets hope a developer has dreams like i do and wants to release something polished at 1.0 stage. Put all other developers on notice, show the users it can be done. That's my dream waking PPL up to developers taking advantage of ppl selling 1/2 baked crap that we are now expected to buy. Its no different to ppl buying a lemon as a car but most wont put up with that, they do this even thou they have probably spent thousands on a rig and PC.
Click to expand...

When the AAA developers who have the money can't do it, and even the industry darlings in iRacing and Kunos can't...

It's just not going to happen anytime soon... Unless global economics change so that these companies don't need to turn a profit before they've done 5-10 years of work... Whilst that would appease a lot of artists and those looking to move into the technological age... There's a lot of people who want the old ways to continue to cripple our evolution...
 
G
DC WOLF said:
From the FAQ from their discord

VR GUIDE
How to start in VR
Right-click on RENNSPORT in your Epic Games Library -> "Manage" -> Enable "Launch Options" -> Input -vr
Download SteamVR and set it to default runtime with whatever support program it offers for your headset (We used Windows Mixed reality for SteamVR for example). Activate its motion smoothing
Some settings that are recommended before launching VR

CONTROLS SETTINGS
Bind ResetVRPosition to preferred button under Cameras.

VIDEO SETTINGS
  • Turn down visual Effects Quality from Epic(Will cause a green glare otherwise)
  • Enable DLSS
  • Tune the mainmenu and ingame distance to 3 and their scale to 1.2.
  • Enable Instanced Stereo and Round Robin Occlusion Queries

  • Rerun with -vr launch params
There's an issue with level loading which can cause heavy flickering, take care if you're sensetive to flashing lights
Click to expand...
Thanks, I tried all that. But this has to be the worst VR implementation that I've ever tried. It's even worse than WRC. OpenXR native doesn't show anything, SteamVR with OpenXR runtime launched with a heavily flickering menu image, after finding how to start a race the computer FROZE. This is the first time in 3 years or something that my computer completely locked up and that ctrl+alt+del didn't do anything even after turning off the VR headset. Doesn't get worse than this. That's with the Pimax Crystal and a 4090 for whatever it's worth.

EDIT: After trying and trying, it seemed to work partially with DX11 but only when visual effects are turned to LOW. OpenXR toolkit makes the game crash, PimaxXR is heavily instable, with SteamVR to OpenXR runtime it works but the performance is horrible. Somehow there seems to be some form of quad views foveated working, it flickers heavily with PimaxXR, with SteamVR it doesnt support eye tracking. And no matter what setting I use at 100% resolution with DLAA/TSR etc. it still shimmers heavily. It's simply not usable/playable at this moment at all.

@kpduke No, a beta should work/be playable, this is pre-alpha state. It should be used for the dev's only until they got some basic functionality working. That simply isn't the case for VR users, it's so unstable that we cannot say anything about how it drives.
 
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Metla
Premium
pz666 said:
When the AAA developers who have the money can't do it, and even the industry darlings in iRacing and Kunos can't...

It's just not going to happen anytime soon... Unless global economics change so that these companies don't need to turn a profit before they've done 5-10 years of work... Whilst that would appease a lot of artists and those looking to move into the technological age... There's a lot of people who want the old ways to continue to cripple our evolution...
Click to expand...
I can't imagine these projects (WRC,LMU, Rennsport) are turning a profit, Nor are they likely to as the market isn't rewarding them for their poor efforts. Seems that the dev threshold for success and quality in sim-racing is well below the threshold for absolute failure in other genres.

The money burnt on salaries alone for the time spent getting Rennsport into a state that isn't even usable makes no sense, and its doubtful it could be recovered.
 
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K
Premium
besides the 90% of comments being about unneccesary vr, and the payment system to the uneducated comments on the unreal game engine... none of you are saying how it looks and drive, its a free beta so just try it. ill try it just to see how it drives - the other commentary is useless as it is a BETA!
 
D
kpduke said:
besides the 90% of comments being about unneccesary vr, and the payment system to the uneducated comments on the unreal game engine... none of you are saying how it looks and drive, its a free beta so just try it. ill try it just to see how it drives - the other commentary is useless as it is a BETA!
Click to expand...
The Ureal Engine has proven over and over that VR is not a feature it excells at. UE is capable of really amazing graphics but I have yet to read about any sim that truly performs well with the UE package and VR. One upcoming racing title dropped UE solely on it's poor VR performance. Educated or not, the perception is VR is crapola via UE.
 

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