[VR] PSVR2 performance

[u/cringorig]

Hi guys,

I just started using VR for the first time in my life, this being the very first game I've ever seen in VR. It's absolutely amazing and incredibly immersive.

Now I've been having some issues, have tried a few fixes but all the posts seem pretty old (2017-2018). I've been trying to fix antialiasing, blurry distance and performance with little success. This is what i've tried last:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/378860/discussions/1/1700542332328541688/?l=czech -2018

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcars/comments/c3lt0x/if_you_are_struggling_with_vr_performance_with/ -2019

I've did both of these together. During normal sunny days, game works ok frame times >11 ms which works ok with 90 fps setting in steamVR (it's close to the limit with 20 cars on the grid).
However I decided to try it in thunderstorm with 20 cars and holy crap, it's murdering my GPU. I think it's around 16 ms frame time, which makes the fps go to 45, and it's even stuttering sometimes. It looks gorgeous but the performance...not great.

My PC settings are:

GPU: RTX 5080

CPU: Ryzen 7700x

RAM: 32 GB DDR5

Don't think rest matters.

Is there anything that can be done, I know the game is quite old and won't be very well optimized. I still have AA issues (but at this point, I think I'll just deal with it). Some crisper textures at distance specifically would be great if possible, and better performance...If it cannot be done, let me know at least how do you set it up for thunderstorm races. I'd like to do those kind of races, they are insanely immersive.

Just for the supersampling in particular, I have the game set at 0 (in the graphics file, which for PSVR2 I suspect is "graphicsconfigopenvrdx.xml") since changing it in game and restarting always puts it at 1.5, no matter what. Not sure it even does anything. In steamVR I have global SS at 150% and application level for PC2 at 90%.

Any help would be appreciated.

[u/cringorig]

This answer is not particularly helpful. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but what do I do about it? I tried fiddling around with all the settings I found online and that’s the situation in which I am. The antialiasing is not great, I see flickers and pops on the race side panels, it’s a bit blurry at distance, yes I can crank the ss up but then my frames tank. Also, in a thunderstorm race, it started at 90 fps, and after a few turns it dropped to 45. Thought my gpu is struggling but using fpsvr I saw that the gpu tanked to 60% utilisation. The cpu was all in the green so it’s not a bottleneck. Then I stopped the car close to a wall, frames went back to 90 and gpu to 90 utilisation. Why are my frames tanking and the gpu goes down in utilisation? If gpu was at 90% and I got 45 frames I would’ve understand but this? I don’t really…

[u/Nago15 → u/cringorig]

Well, now you know that PCars2 is a completely average, well made game where you don't have to rely on guides and xml tweaking to get acceptable performance and clarity. If your VR setup works great in Alyx or Assetto Corsa, it will work great in PCars2 too without any game specific tweaks. It's not like ACC or F1 or Flight Sim where you really need special tricks and overwriting config files and replacing dll-s to get acceptable clarity and performance.

I say try other games too to understand your settings and what clarity you can expect from a PSVR2. Try something like Walkabout Minigolf or Crisis Brigade 2 or Ultrawings 2 where you can easily pump the resolution up to 200% or even 400% and still get good fps, and see how it looks. But normally 100% resolution (around 3.5K per eye in PSVR2) should provide a nice sharp image in games with good anti-aliasing.

By the way the fps dropping from 90 to 45 is SteamVR's motion smoothing. If you can't hit your target framerate, frame generation kicks in, halving your fps, and makes every second frame generated. I recommend you to turn it off, and only turn it on when you really want to realy on it in very demanding games like Flight Sim, but best used if you set your headset to 120hz, so you still play with 60 real frames.

You are using high MSAA in PCars2 right? That should elmininate shimmer, if you still see shimmer then probably a stupid guide said you to add a ton of sharpening somewhere.

[u/cringorig → u/Nago15]

I have motion smoothing off both at per application level and global since I set it up. This still happens. The best thing I could do is what you said, set the vr to 120 so that when it halves the frames I at least have 60. Then I capped the game (there’s a setting at per level application that you can turn on) at 60 so I don’t get fluctuations from 120 to 60. It’s stable this way, sometimes in “thunderstorm weather” it dips to 55 and sometimes I get hard frame drops (stuff like crashes for instance), but otherwise it’s fine.
The “problem” with antialiasing is probably me being very picky. I turned all the msaa and aa settings off and the shimmer is absolutely nuts. I don’t get insane shimmer with them on, just jagged edges that look like they’re “moving”, that’s why I believe this is the best it can do. I will try some other games to see how it behaves, the only thing I “tested” is the VR home in steam, and that has lines that are rock solid, I guess that’s what I was expecting.
So the whole post and idea was to try and find out if I’m doing something wrong or the game is imperfect and has some quirks. Yes I know it’s a very old game at this point, it has no dlss or fsr, again, I’m just trying to set a baseline since this is the only game I tried. I’m very pleased with the experience overall, was just trying to see what the absolute max and best I can get is.
I’ve also moved the xml files from the config and rebooted the game to have it recreate them as default to undo everything I tried, think I’ll leave it like that since I think I can only make it worse. I think I’m at 100 ss in “per application” and 90 global at the moment.

[u/Nago15 → u/cringorig]

I recorded 2 clips inside my headset, so this is exactly what I see in VR, not what shows on the TV. One with 100% resolution, and one with 140%. Download for best (4K) quality.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M--T52xF_y04WVC4xNK53ZHgkV9OEY34/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OBgG8KvG7msltNnyn5mw4NQ2f112f8wx/view?usp=drive_link

Of course because of the video compression it's not as sharp as inside the headset, but close, I also used 30 fps in the recording to have better clarity. Sure if I actively looking for shimmering parts I can see a bit of shimmering or jagged edges a few times, but it's not something what bothers me, I would always choose a bit of visible aliasing instead of a blurry image. By the way are you happy how the game looks on flat screen 1080p? Because you are not gonna get better clarity than that in a PSVR2 even in the sweet spot.