ACC VR - The definitive VR Performance Guide

[LynxSec]

Hi,

I have been polishing ACC for VR, made a guide to help others out.
This guide is mostly for Valve Index, Vive and other SteamVR headsets, not tested with Oculus. However, if you find good results with any Oculus headset, let me know so we can update the guide.

Guide on Web

In this guide i will explain in detail how to get the most out of Assetto Corsa Competizione in terms of VR Performance


This guide is up to date with 1.8, as i am not 100% happy with the VR performance introduced in 1.8.

There will probably be updates to this guide after some long-term testing, since i am not perfectly satisfied with the performance yet. However, this guide should be a good pointer or baseline for anyone looking to improve their performance in VR significantly.

Last Update: 2022-11-17

Sections:

• Introduction
• Before You Get Started
• Check Your Hardware
• Expectations
• SteamVR Settings
• Nvidia Control Panel Settings (Same should apply to AMD's control panel)
• Stop the game from showing on the screen (Optional)
• Engine.ini (Optional, not needed)
• VR Performance Toolkit
• OpenVR_FSR V2.0 (Legacy, do not use)
• In-game Graphics Settings
• Video of improved performance
• Summary

 

[Alvaro de la Orden]

I will give this a try, thx

 

[LynxSec]

I will give this a try, thx

Let me know what the results will be, and what hardware you have!

 

[Lorjeten]

You guide is perfect, thanks you so much! It made ACC playable at 75-90 fps in VR for me! (I7 11700k, RTX3080, HP Reverb G2, SteamVR 100% Res, ACC 78% Res)

But sadly with the 1.8 upadte of ACC my fps gains crumbled away...
It seemes to me, that the engine.ini file and the OpenVR_api file do have to get updated to match the new Unreal Enigne settings/changes. (I'm guessing, I don't know much about game engines)

Because: When I'm playing ACC with the new update and the deafault Engine.ini and OpenVR files in play, I get a worse performance than before, I lose about 8-10 fps. That's very sad, since I was hoping for the oposite effect with the update enabeling DLSS.
(Actually DLSS (balanced or quality) gives me a even worse experience than FSR (balanced))

When I have the custom modded Engine.ini file in play, the performance is slightly better, but I noticed right away, tht the shadows of the other cars look very ugly, way to bright. So that's also not an option then.

So my guess is tht I have to wait until someone creates a new Engine.ini file that is suited for the new 1.8 update and gives me back the nice performance I had before

Does anyone haviing a similar experience than me? I'm I dumb and missed an important setting? I hope!

Cheers!

 

[LynxSec]

You guide is perfect, thanks you so much! It made ACC playable at 75-90 fps in VR for me! (I7 11700k, RTX3080, HP Reverb G2, SteamVR 100% Res, ACC 78% Res)

But sadly with the 1.8 upadte of ACC my fps gains crumbled away...
It seemes to me, that the engine.ini file and the OpenVR_api file do have to get updated to match the new Unreal Enigne settings/changes. (I'm guessing, I don't know much about game engines)

Because: When I'm playing ACC with the new update and the deafault Engine.ini and OpenVR files in play, I get a worse performance than before, I lose about 8-10 fps. That's very sad, since I was hoping for the oposite effect with the update enabeling DLSS.
(Actually DLSS (balanced or quality) gives me a even worse experience than FSR (balanced))

When I have the custom modded Engine.ini file in play, the performance is slightly better, but I noticed right away, tht the shadows of the other cars look very ugly, way to bright. So that's also not an option then.

So my guess is tht I have to wait until someone creates a new Engine.ini file that is suited for the new 1.8 update and gives me back the nice performance I had before

Does anyone haviing a similar experience than me? I'm I dumb and missed an important setting? I hope!

Cheers!

I'm working on an update for the guide, but bare in mind that it will take some time since testing VR performance is a tedious task...

However, until then, try increasing exposure gain and lowering contrast, this will increase the brightness somewhat.

 

[Lorjeten]

I'm working on an update for the guide, but bare in mind that it will take some time since testing VR performance is a tedious task...

However, until then, try increasing exposure gain and lowering contrast, this will increase the brightness somewhat.

Nice, thanks for your effort! I will play with a bit less fps until then, it's still acceptable how it is now, just a bit sad..

I did that already, because I noticed the change in tonemapping right away.

 

[Lorjeten]

Nice, thanks for your effort! I will play with a bit less fps until then, it's still acceptable how it is now, just a bit sad..

I did that already, because I noticed the change in tonemapping right away.

Ok, I just found the settings which give me back the performance which I was used to before the 1.8 update!

JUST for VR!
Don't use any of the new implemented upscalings. No DLSS and no FSR.
You just need the "OpenVR_fsr_v2.0" file properly installed and enable NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling) in it.
Also, I'm having the deafault Engine.ini file running, and performnce is good.

 

[garry75]

Thanks, that was an improvement performance wise. That sharpness value was too high in the cfg file though, I adjusted that down to .2 I think and it was better. Completely subjectively here, but I still think it was better pre-1.8.

 

[FirstCapitan]

You guide is perfect, thanks you so much! It made ACC playable at 75-90 fps in VR for me! (I7 11700k, RTX3080, HP Reverb G2, SteamVR 100% Res, ACC 78% Res)

But sadly with the 1.8 upadte of ACC my fps gains crumbled away...
It seemes to me, that the engine.ini file and the OpenVR_api file do have to get updated to match the new Unreal Enigne settings/changes. (I'm guessing, I don't know much about game engines)

Because: When I'm playing ACC with the new update and the deafault Engine.ini and OpenVR files in play, I get a worse performance than before, I lose about 8-10 fps. That's very sad, since I was hoping for the oposite effect with the update enabeling DLSS.
(Actually DLSS (balanced or quality) gives me a even worse experience than FSR (balanced))

When I have the custom modded Engine.ini file in play, the performance is slightly better, but I noticed right away, tht the shadows of the other cars look very ugly, way to bright. So that's also not an option then.

So my guess is tht I have to wait until someone creates a new Engine.ini file that is suited for the new 1.8 update and gives me back the nice performance I had before

Does anyone haviing a similar experience than me? I'm I dumb and missed an important setting? I hope!

Cheers!

I have the same experience. With the engine.ini file of the guide, I have more FPS (10-20 aprox.), but all the game is very dark. In the menus, it doesn't matter, but in the track, its imposible to adapt to all situationes. With clear weather, ya can overexpose and you get a correct bright, but in the sunset and night all the track is black, and there is no way to see anything. With the default engine file, I lose 10-20 frames

 

[FirstCapitan]

Ok, I just found the settings which give me back the performance which I was used to before the 1.8 update!

JUST for VR!
Don't use any of the new implemented upscalings. No DLSS and no FSR.
You just need the "OpenVR_fsr_v2.0" file properly installed and enable NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling) in it.
Also, I'm having the deafault Engine.ini file running, and performnce is good.

How do you install OpenVR 2.0? Where do yo place the file? Do yo rename the original files? In the Nivida 3D panel, do you select any specific thing?. Thx.

 

[roro972301]

There is something that I don't understand at all which is : What's the point of using fsr or dlss in VR since as a result the game gets ugly af ??? I get it, those tech is supposed to give you better frametime and more fps ok, but if the cost is having an image quality as good as a potatoe, we better lower the headset resolution to have the same performance gains without an ugly clarity less image... Am I wrong ?

 

[BrightCandle]

There is something that I don't understand at all which is : What's the point of using fsr or dlss in VR since as a result the game gets ugly af ??? I get it, those tech is supposed to give you better frametime and more fps ok, but if the cost is having an image quality as good as a potatoe, we better lower the headset resolution to have the same performance gains without an ugly clarity less image... Am I wrong ?

DLSS and FSR are arguably good ways to do both anti aliasing and resolution scaling. Compared to the standard implementation in VR from the resolution setting they should do a better job at equivalent resolutions. Most importantly I think its that as a technique they can maintain sharpness of images while reducing the number of pixels going in, where the SteamVR and in game ones loose a lot of that and go very blurry and soft imaged and we have to crank the sharpness to get that back and it looks very unnatural.

Saying that while in theory this is the case in other games I have tried DLSS it looks terrible, its really obvious. For most of us running our VR headsets at least at native resolution if not its usual 100% (which is ~140% of native) is just about the minimum acceptable resolution and we would rather turn off effects, textures and basic shadows matter a lot more than particle effects or highly detailed lighting. Alas ACC by default just can't run well like that, it really needs some work on its VR implementation and its annoying that threads like this still have to exist and that the game is effectively unplayable in VR on the highest end GPUs today without a lot of tweaks.

I actually notice DLSS quite easily in games when I turn it on, it produces very obvious artefacts in most games. But I think in the youtube era where streams are all 6mbps and youtube is allowing maybe 15mbps for 1440p video all this gets nicely hidden in the compression.

 

[roro972301]

DLSS and FSR are arguably good ways to do both anti aliasing and resolution scaling. Compared to the standard implementation in VR from the resolution setting they should do a better job at equivalent resolutions. Most importantly I think its that as a technique they can maintain sharpness of images while reducing the number of pixels going in, where the SteamVR and in game ones loose a lot of that and go very blurry and soft imaged and we have to crank the sharpness to get that back and it looks very unnatural.

Saying that while in theory this is the case in other games I have tried DLSS it looks terrible, its really obvious. For most of us running our VR headsets at least at native resolution if not its usual 100% (which is ~140% of native) is just about the minimum acceptable resolution and we would rather turn off effects, textures and basic shadows matter a lot more than particle effects or highly detailed lighting. Alas ACC by default just can't run well like that, it really needs some work on its VR implementation and its annoying that threads like this still have to exist and that the game is effectively unplayable in VR on the highest end GPUs today without a lot of tweaks.

I actually notice DLSS quite easily in games when I turn it on, it produces very obvious artefacts in most games. But I think in the youtube era where streams are all 6mbps and youtube is allowing maybe 15mbps for 1440p video all this gets nicely hidden in the compression.

The sad story is that i've tried a bunch of settings with this new v1.8 and I ended up by simply using default resolution of the headset (oculus quest2 default resolution settings, not the native one), 90% redering resolution in the game and 200 pixel density. I get a pretty stable 45 fps with asw to simulate 90fps required. If i enable fsr to get an upscaled and better image clarity, I loose to much in dashboard clarity and far object distance. If I want to bring back sharpness, I need to play with the sharpness slider in fsr setting and of course the game looks very unatural

 

[Olivier Boissel]

I have the same experience. With the engine.ini file of the guide, I have more FPS (10-20 aprox.), but all the game is very dark. In the menus, it doesn't matter, but in the track, its imposible to adapt to all situationes. With clear weather, ya can overexpose and you get a correct bright, but in the sunset and night all the track is black, and there is no way to see anything. With the default engine file, I lose 10-20 frames

Hi,
Not in VR but I use the engine.ini tweak for better sharpness quality and fps gain.
I found that the "r.EyeAdaptationQuality=0" setting line cause the dark problem.
See this post : https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?posts/1204769

 

[wwwpuntoit]

for me it seems as though dlss makes the gpu work even harder and decreased the frametime.
i do not see any fps improvement unfortunately, i think openVR mod worked better than this.
i have a 3060ti and a ryzen 7 3700x

 

[cnhoff]

for me it seems as though dlss makes the gpu work even harder and decreased the frametime.
i do not see any fps improvement unfortunately, i think openVR mod worked better than this.
i have a 3060ti and a ryzen 7 3700x

Same for me on a 3080, which is quite disappointing, given the very good performance boost i am enjoying on other non-VR titles. Enabling DLSS always has been a no-brainer for me so far...

 

[tennenbaum]

You guide is perfect, thanks you so much! It made ACC playable at 75-90 fps in VR for me! (I7 11700k, RTX3080, HP Reverb G2, SteamVR 100% Res, ACC 78% Res)

But sadly with the 1.8 upadte of ACC my fps gains crumbled away...
It seemes to me, that the engine.ini file and the OpenVR_api file do have to get updated to match the new Unreal Enigne settings/changes. (I'm guessing, I don't know much about game engines)

Because: When I'm playing ACC with the new update and the deafault Engine.ini and OpenVR files in play, I get a worse performance than before, I lose about 8-10 fps. That's very sad, since I was hoping for the oposite effect with the update enabeling DLSS.
(Actually DLSS (balanced or quality) gives me a even worse experience than FSR (balanced))

When I have the custom modded Engine.ini file in play, the performance is slightly better, but I noticed right away, tht the shadows of the other cars look very ugly, way to bright. So that's also not an option then.

So my guess is tht I have to wait until someone creates a new Engine.ini file that is suited for the new 1.8 update and gives me back the nice performance I had before

Does anyone haviing a similar experience than me? I'm I dumb and missed an important setting? I hope!

Cheers!

Same here 3080/G2. DLSS and FSR with new update 1.8 result in a decreased picture quality. I also feel as if the engine.ini file (which i like a lot) doesn't work as well anymore as before the 1.8 update.

 

[DirkW]

I think the problem with DLSS and FSR are that they upsample an image with some kind of averaging, fuzzy logic or call it AI, which makes that the image for the left eye most often has slight differences to the one for the right eye, and even the slightest differences in both images in VR are extremely noticeable and uncomfortable. For me, not useable in VR at all.

 

[Chipless]

I'm working on an update for the guide, but bare in mind that it will take some time since testing VR performance is a tedious task...

However, until then, try increasing exposure gain and lowering contrast, this will increase the brightness somewhat.

I look forward to the update of this guide. Thanks for your efforts! I haven't tried ACC for a long time, but was hoping to jump back in after this 1.8 update. However, since I only use VR, I will wait until there is a solid setup for VR again.

 

[l1fecoach]

I've tried your guide workaround. But after I changed these settings with the mod ACC don't start and always don't response no image in vr