VR - experimental support

[Donric]

Reverb G2/Pimax 8KX
RTX 3090 OC
I9 9900k @ 5 Ghz

after extensive testing and tweaking i have to admit i am not very pleased with the latest changes in grafics. Sure, everything looks more real, especially the skies, but I allways had a problem with the AA in this game. Finally managed to get a satisfactorily experience by turning HDR off. With the latest update this option is gone and the game seems to run with HDR on by default, what increases the shimmering on power lines, fences and roadsigns significantly for me. Until now i could run the game with 140 SS in steam @90 Hz with the Reverb and 75 Hz with the Pimax, now i am forced to push up SS and turn on reprojection to get a similar experience than before 1.40 at the cost of all that ghosting what reprojection generates. But maybe i am missing something important here?

Anyway, big thanks that we can drive on in VR

[PatricideVR]

I've been playing ETS2 for some years now and this game is amazing. since Christmas the proud owner of a Quest 2. With Virtual Desktop I can play ETS2 perfectly and it is the best thing I have in life right now besides my lovely wife . Thank you for this awesome work.

However, no matter how I tweak the settings (spending more hours tweaking than driving) I cannot get a satisfactory FPS. I came from a somewhat old CPU (3.9GHz OC'ed i5 3450) with a decent GPU (5600XT 6GB). Although in graphs I could see that both the CPU (if the process was pinned to a single core or running multicore and monitoring max thread/CPU, all via HWInfo64) and GPU not being utilized to their maximum potential. Only scaling up the resolution lowered the FPS significantly, but no matter if settings where maxed out or as low as possible, the FPS still was quite low. You can clearly see it when cars are passing by and you're looking to your left: they pass by very stuttering. Might also be a difference in timing between the images for both eyes.

So I thought to eliminate any hardware limitation and treated myself with a new PC: 5800X, 32GB RAM 3600MHz CL16, AMD 6900XT 16GB. And guess what: the performance has not increased at all. The graphs only show an even lower CPU- and GPU-usage. It is quite erratic, going up and down the whole time but never coming close to 100% for either the eurotrucks2.exe thread or the total GPU usage.

As I seem to have tried everything else (fresh Windows install, driver only install, fresh config.cfg, all kinds of changes in config.cfg, lowest scaling in game and SteamVR, config.cfg optimizations, CPU pinning, etc. etc. etc.) what else could I try to increase the framerate of the game? Should I lower the refresh rate maybe of the Oculus? Any other thoughts? Or is the software simple not capable of using the hardware properly?

Are there any golden rules? I see so many contradictory settings here (of which many I tried before, except the window setting from 20 to 0). I mean, I did not expect a huge increase, but I see people talking about 90FPS. That would be amazing. It's more around 30 FPS here, regardless of settings it seems (how to see framerate anyhow? HWInfo shows 0 as do many other tools, as they probably monitor my monitor instead of the VR FPS). The startup parameters I already have for a long time, but maybe try removing them. Also I'll use a RAM disk, although I have a NVMe drive for ETS2 already.

[grantalope]

You should be getting much better performance. I know that virtual desktop has some issues with amd cards and streaming so that might be affecting things.

what fps do you get if you set all the graphics settings to low?

I have a 5600x and a 3080 and stream the game to a quest 2 via virtual desktop at a pretty consistent 90 fps (drops in cities) with no ssao, no dof, low grass density and low mirror distance.

[Donric]

have you fpsvr installed? multi monitor setup? after 1.40 i noticed that my HMD was locked at 60 fps for some reason. I had to disable G-Sync and that solved the issue.

[Kobra Kay]

I've been playing ETS2 for some years now and this game is amazing. since Christmas the proud owner of a Quest 2. With Virtual Desktop I can play ETS2 perfectly and it is the best thing I have in life right now besides my lovely wife . Thank you for this awesome work.

However, no matter how I tweak the settings (spending more hours tweaking than driving) I cannot get a satisfactory FPS. I came from a somewhat old CPU (3.9GHz OC'ed i5 3450) with a decent GPU (5600XT 6GB). Although in graphs I could see that both the CPU (if the process was pinned to a single core or running multicore and monitoring max thread/CPU, all via HWInfo64) and GPU not being utilized to their maximum potential. Only scaling up the resolution lowered the FPS significantly, but no matter if settings where maxed out or as low as possible, the FPS still was quite low. You can clearly see it when cars are passing by and you're looking to your left: they pass by very stuttering. Might also be a difference in timing between the images for both eyes.

So I thought to eliminate any hardware limitation and treated myself with a new PC: 5800X, 32GB RAM 3600MHz CL16, AMD 6900XT 16GB. And guess what: the performance has not increased at all. The graphs only show an even lower CPU- and GPU-usage. It is quite erratic, going up and down the whole time but never coming close to 100% for either the eurotrucks2.exe thread or the total GPU usage.

As I seem to have tried everything else (fresh Windows install, driver only install, fresh config.cfg, all kinds of changes in config.cfg, lowest scaling in game and SteamVR, config.cfg optimizations, CPU pinning, etc. etc. etc.) what else could I try to increase the framerate of the game? Should I lower the refresh rate maybe of the Oculus? Any other thoughts? Or is the software simple not capable of using the hardware properly?

Are there any golden rules? I see so many contradictory settings here (of which many I tried before, except the window setting from 20 to 0). I mean, I did not expect a huge increase, but I see people talking about 90FPS. That would be amazing. It's more around 30 FPS here, regardless of settings it seems (how to see framerate anyhow? HWInfo shows 0 as do many other tools, as they probably monitor my monitor instead of the VR FPS). The startup parameters I already have for a long time, but maybe try removing them. Also I'll use a RAM disk, although I have a NVMe drive for ETS2 already.

To be quiete honest, the VR version just doesn't run very well, especially not compared to the non VR version. You can either go for forced half refresh rate and reprojection (it's called ASW with Oculus) or you could go for the full FPS but encounter regular framedrops and rubberbanding, especially in cities. That's just the way it is, I think. Maybe one day the VR version will be up to par with the normal version in the future, but for now you gotta make some compromises.

[maxanich]

Hi Guys,

I am sure, it was duscussed before, but are there any success cases to set up VR for Multiplayer?
I tried to use vorpx but not sure how to set up it properly. Maybe there were some FAQ how to do it?
Or it still not the best solution?

[AfxTwn]

I finally got a Valve Index and have been testing various settings and wondered if anyone has any advice about which settings to tweak both in SteamVR and the game's config.

Going back to the very first page in this thread, does anyone know what this means?

"As the ui mirrors are not visible in the field of view in the default ui fov settings, it is good idea to disable them to improve performance."

What are the UI mirrors being referred to, presumably not the truck's mirrors? Does this just mean the additional mirrors you can enable by pressing F2?

Just a head's up on my system specs: Intel i7 9700K (stock speed), Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super, 16GB 3200MHz DDR 4 ram and the game is ran on a M.2 SSD.

Using SteamVR's SS and I can get around 120-130% (or just below) in per-app SS setting and with global per-eye set to 150% (the default Steam suggests for my card), this gives in-game at around 194% according to fpsVR and with frametimes of around 17-20ms which is mostly fine with the odd frame drop. I haven't changed any Nvidia Control Panel settings as I didn't know if I should oh and I have Motion Smoothing set to force always on and the headset's refresh rate set to 80hz resulting in-game to it being a steady 40hz which seems fine apart from the usual edge-wobble.

Overall the graphics look good with distant objects appearing very low res and distant road signs difficult to read until I get closer. The SDE is much improved but is still noticeable although now it's more like vertical lines than a honeycomb effect and nowhere near as bad as on my Vive. I much prefer the colours and brightness but with the recent big 1.40 update to the game, I know there were a number of lighting changes introduced so i am not sure if the increased visuals is due to that or the Index. The bloom (although I have it disabled in the config anyway) isn't anywhere near as bad and anything white isn't as blinding as it used to be for me.

When it's night and properly dark it does look very dark in the Index but I think it is disabling anywhere that is darker in colour and so it appears black. When I look up at the roof in the cabin, you can't see anything and this also happens to other areas of the cabin. Whereas I used to be able to see stars out of the sunroof but now can't. There is a sort of greyish tint going on but I'm not that bothered by it.

I wouldn't say the Index feels like a significant leap forward from the Vive (at least in ETS2 and ATS) but that may be more down to the game than anything else. The reduced SDE is better but everything still has lots of fuzzy lines and edges round it (very noticeable with shadows, powerlines, pretty much anything with a straight edge) and things in the distance do look very low res and a bit blurry. Maybe a better GPU would help but I think I'll wait till the next generation (RTX 40's?) before I get anything as trying to get a GPU now is impossible and may be for some time. For the time being, I am happy with my 2070 Super and it's more than capable of running VR and even with the limitations of ETS 2, I'm still pretty happy.

[Reinhard]

What are the UI mirrors being referred to, presumably not the truck's mirrors? Does this just mean the additional mirrors you can enable by pressing F2?

Yes. UI means user interface.

[AfxTwn]

@Reinhard Thanks, I got confused and thought it was referring to the main menu of the game and didn't realise that the UI is also the overlays like the F2 mirrors and the advisor window.

[phigo]

Hi guys. I'm having no luck at all getting ETS2 (or ATS) to work with my new Valve Index. I've played both (for hours and hours and hours) with my old Rift CV1 - I remember there was a bit of a tinkering required.

I've opted into the Oculus/OpenVR beta (1.40 looks to be the latest), added -openvr as a launch option and unchecked "Use Desktop Game Theatre while SteamVR is active". This is what every guide I've seen has said to do (together with the config file edits but my priority is actually getting it running). I've set the in-game res to 1080p and disabled DOF and antialiasing.

I've tried running it from the desktop shortcut and from within Steam (both "Play Euro Truck Simulator 2" and "Launch with DirectX11 (64-bit)"), with and without SteamVR already running.

If I run with the Desktop Game Theatre box unchecked, I get a warning on launch that says "Euro Truck Simulator 2 does not support VR. It will appear on your desktop and may affect VR performance". The game launches on the screen, if I press F11 I get the briefest glimpse in the HMD before it goes entirely black. As soon as I click "Drive" in the game, the game hangs on that menu (with the "Drive" button in the middle) and the screen fades out a bit and then fades in and out until I Alt-F4 out of the game.

If I run with the Desktop Game Theatre box checked, I get a warning on launch that says "Euro Truck Simulator 2 will launch into an environment in your VR HMD as well as on your desktop. Performance may not be acceptable in this mode. To launch this game only on your desktop please exit SteamVR before launching the game." The game launches on the desktop and in theatre mode in the HMD (all the way through to actual driving).

I've tried opting into the SteamVR beta and I've tried rolling back to a previous Oculus/OpenVR beta version, neither of which made any difference. I thought maybe the fact that I'd previously used the Rift on this ETS2 install might've left a relic that the Index didn't take to so I uninstalled/reinstalled the game and nuked the directory in Documents. ATS was a clean install (I mean, I've played it before but never under this Windows/Steam install) and has exactly the same problems as above.

I'm completely out of ideas. These games were a large part of the reason I bought the Index and I've seen plenty of evidence of people playing these games with this headset so I know it works for others. My system specs are plenty good enough - 3950x and a 6900 XT.

Any ideas? Thanks.