What are the summer 2021 options and opinions on VR sim racing?

[Gav Elias]

I am just about to get back into sim racing and one of the things that put me off previously was the lack of immersion with a single monitor, but when I tried triple monitors they simply took up too much space and still didn't quite give me the immersion I was looking for.

For this reason, having recently watched some YouTubers' views (such as Jimmy Broadbent, Driver61, ViperConcent, Tiatmarduke etc), they all seem to unanimously agree that VR gives you the next level of immersion that is as close to real racing and driving as can be expected.

I am running an older-ish machine, but still more than capable with a Core i7 Extreme Edition 4960X 12 core CPU, 64GB RAM and a GTX 1080 GPU, and can run VR, though may have to notch a couple of newer titles down a bit in terms of graphics quality.

Just wondering what the VR options are nowadays and what are the views of using VR for sim racing?

Cheers in advance!

 

[Elaphe]

VR is not to show of, but to enjoy. A cockpit with triples, dashboard screens, button boxes full of labels, all set up so that it looks like a real racing cockpit looks great on videos and will amaze anyone because it looks like the real thing.

A cockpit for VR can be much more simple (no need for all that stuff you already have in the game). Also, the VR experience cannot be shown to your viewers. It has to be experienced by yourself. Those are the reasons many youtubers will show their expensive rigs with triples and not with VR.

Actually many gamers who have invested a lot of money and time to set up their rigs with triples and all the surrounding elements have convinced themselves that VR is uncomfortable, lacks resolution and have other defects that makes it not worth.

As you may guess, VR is the way to go for me. Immersion is the most important factor. Headsets are getting better every day. But the best of all is that you no longer have to be content with a generic setup because the virtual world will allow you to actually be in any car you want.

 

[Gav Elias]

Thanks for the thoughts. For me, the reason I am considering VR is for the same reasons you outline in your reply, that is to immerse myself as much as possible in the experience.

 

[BrightCandle]

VR just plain makes me faster. It is likely a combination of the depth perception and ideal FOV but the presence and sense of speed is just correct. There is also nothing like the immersion of looking out the side window at a car you are trying to outbrake or accelerate out of a corner next to and using as much of the margin as you can.

The main thing I think to really take account of is that VR uses a lot of CPU and GPU, you are regularly running >4k resolutions in games with a VR lense correction distortion and on top of that Supersampling or Multi sampling and must achieve 90 fps, it is a heavy process and you want the latest kit to do it especially in games like ACC. How much is going to depend on your headset and the games you intend to play but it is likely time to get a new CPU and GPU given both are quite old now.

 

[Stephen Gibbs]

I have sold up now so not sim racing at the mo but VR was my goto and on a gaming laptop woth a i7 7700, 16gb ram and 1060gtx.
Raceroom, Iracing and Assetto Corsa all ran fine, ACC was a bit of a pig but managed to run it ok after a lot of tweaking. I would say the 1070 would be way better although I guess it depends also on headset.

I was using a Samsung Oddysey Plus using WMR.

Still wish I had kept hold of it, the immersion and fun is next level compared to single screen.

 

[Gav Elias]

I have 2 pretty capable machines for VR (I think). I would mainly use my desktop, but my laptop would likely be used every now and again too. The machines I own are:

DESKTOP (Custom Build)
CPU: Intel Core i7 4960X Extreme Edition 12 Core (6 physical + 6 hyperthreaded) @ 4.5GHz
RAM: 64GB DDR3 Crucial Ballistix
GPU: MSI GTX 1080Ti
SSD: Multiple drives varying between 120GB and 1TB for various things
HDD: Multiple mechanical drives from 2TB to 8TB for mass storage

LAPTOP (Asus ROG)
CPU: Intel Core i7 8750H 12 Core (6+6 again) @ 4.1GHz
RAM: 32GB DDR4 Crucial
GPU: NVidia GTX 1060Ti + Intel UHD 630
SSD: 1TB Crucial
HDD: 2TB Seagate

They both report as being VR ready and rudimentary checks online via various "checkers" (albeit not wholly reliable) say I should be able to play with fairly high settings, with my laptop needing a few things notched down if need be.

 

[Gav Elias]

VR just plain makes me faster. It is likely a combination of the depth perception and ideal FOV but the presence and sense of speed is just correct. There is also nothing like the immersion of looking out the side window at a car you are trying to outbrake or accelerate out of a corner next to and using as much of the margin as you can.

The main thing I think to really take account of is that VR uses a lot of CPU and GPU, you are regularly running >4k resolutions in games with a VR lense correction distortion and on top of that Supersampling or Multi sampling and must achieve 90 fps, it is a heavy process and you want the latest kit to do it especially in games like ACC. How much is going to depend on your headset and the games you intend to play but it is likely time to get a new CPU and GPU given both are quite old now.

Cheers for this. Very useful info! However, whereas I would obviously like the top spec available etc, I'm more than happy focusing my investment on the immersion at the moment, getting things like the VR, wheel, cockpit etc, even if it means I have to notch the quality of the graphics in game down a bit. I would then likely look to upgrade the computer hardware at a later date. I'm hoping that with this approach I can get away with not upgrading the PC hardware for at least the next 12 or so months.

 

[Novopaine]

Just a quick thing about hyperthreading. It's not 6+6. What hyperthreading does is it virtually splits a single core into 2 logical (virtual) cores to squeeze a bit more work out of it. It's like VR for CPUs. At it's heart, it's only 6 cores but capable of running 12 streams of work. This is why you will see people write it like 6/12, with 12 referencing the # of threads it can process simultaneously. Sometimes it means a 30% increase, and sometimes it means 0% increase. I've seen close to a 100% increase when using rendering software (like Blender).

The 4960 is no slouch and still holds up pretty well. Memory speeds have doubled over the years, so the one place you could get a bottleneck is with memory. It's tough to say without knowing your memory speed. If it's DDR3-1600, you're on the bottleneck edge. If it's 2133 you're probably good for a little bit longer.

The 1080ti is a great card but it will struggle with some of the more recent VR headsets, especially in simulators. It should be totally fine with an original Oculus Rift CV1 or maybe a Rift S, but jumping to something newer like a HP G2, you will have to turn the graphic settings way down. You "might" be able to get away with a Valve Index.

I have an older Oculus Rift CV1 and using a 5700x which is close to the 1080ti in performance. It runs the CV1 well but the resolution is not the greatest. I'm holding out for the generation of headsets, and I will definitely need a faster card to run it.

 

[Novopaine]

I also wanted to add, VR in sim racing is pretty awesome. If you're trying to decide if it's worth considering, my opinion is a big fat YES, but only if your hardware can push the frames out fast enough. VR is very demanding. Framerates have to be ultra stable or it will make you feel dizzy.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Look into ultrawide monitors like G9. VR while more immersive requires constant tinkering, latest and greatest hardware, and will never deliver you the same image quality as good monitor at much higher framerate and settings than you can afford with VR. Headtracking solution like TrackIR help close the gap between two even more.
For the record I used to have Samsung Odyssey, Odyssey Plus, and most recently HP G2.
Haven't been racing in VR for months since getting G9 monitor.

 

[deandsfsdfewsad]

My 2080ti is killed by my HP Reverb G2 but in some way, I like that because when I jump to the 4000 series of Nvidia GPU it's like I'll get another upgrade in detail and performance and even then I doubt the 4090 will use all of its potential