VR - experimental support

[PatricideVR]

For me the game crashes quite some times when I turn my head to about 90 degrees right or left. The game then just hangs and I feel my steering wheel feedback also 'hanging'. Anyone else facing the same problem? This mostly happens when I want to look in the right mirror. If I move my head slowly, it mostly goes okay. Sometimes I forget and then it often crashes. Any ideas?

[ecstaticbrick]

Dear VR users. Are you tired of having the huge floating VR GPS burning your eyes out whilst driving at night? Well I was so, here is what I use now and it is awesome:

I did this by using the Hologram GPS by Cal: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... logram+gps
In combination with wik412's Route Advisor Mod Collection (Route_Advisor_KAAC_GSM_Center_Bottom_3LTB_NF_MCB_TCB_v6.03): viewtopic.php?t=234726

(bonus info: wik412 told me how to remove the speed icon from the info bars): viewtopic.php?p=1744723#p1744723

And, if your woried about not being able to see the other information the the GPS window displays... Just look up

Enjoy.

[Insane1]

Dear VR users. Are you tired of having the huge floating VR GPS burning your eyes out whilst driving at night?

Nope, I'm using truck's embedded GPS screen. )

[dhrto]

I mainly use the truck's embedded GPS as well. But also, you can adjust the UI overlay with these parameters in the .cfg file, to move the floating GPS to your place of liking.

Quoted from the first post:

It is possible to configure the 3D parameters of the plane on which the UI is shown using the r_manual_stereo_ui_fov* and r_manual_stereo_ui_dist* cvars. There are two sets of the parameters. One is used in menu to provide view of all corners of the ui while the other is used when driving in game to provide better view of the advisor. Additionally in the driving mode it is possible to modify position and rotation of the UI plane using r_manual_stereo_ui_x_game, r_manual_stereo_ui_y_game, r_manual_stereo_ui_yaw_game and r_manual_stereo_ui_pitch_game. This allows you to put the advisor to another place in the 3D scene. Please note that the position and rotation currently affects entire UI plane which means that it will affect the UI mirrors if you have them enabled for some reason.

[grantalope]

Did the imprudent thing and picked up a 4090. Got it paired with a 5800x3d and Reverb G2. Will write more in a day or two but initial impressions are WoW!!! with an asterix. At 1.5x basically steam "native" 3000x3000 can max out all (ssao etc) settings with low mirror detail. Buttery smooth 90 fps. Try to bump up res past that and things start to chug. Image quality... latency... etc are superb. Kudos @Komat and the rest of the team on art direction etc. I take back a lot of my grumbles over the years about the engine now that the hardware can run things properly. New lights/assets/aesthetic are incredible at a steady 90 fps fully cranked. If you game past reverb res, would probablyyyyyy recommend waiting for a 4090 ti. think these 4080 and bastard 4080 (4070) wont have the juice either... so its kinda like you gotta pay the piper... 4090 is like alien tech from my initial runs.

[Krists]

I was waiting for some early adapters to give feedback. 4090 does seem like a beast and for G2/any 144hz 4k screen, this card turns them into a bottleneck. Any other experience with VR sims such as Elite Dangerous, DCS, MS flightsim?

I am seriously considering an upgrade from 3080ti to 4090, but I need to see more reviews from SFF builders if heating will be an issue for these cards.

Currently playing on locked 45fps which is quite OK, however getting 90fps on G2 sounds like a dream!

[KingOfTheRoad77]

I am close to get weak about the 4090, too. Although I will wait until 4080 and AMD's 700x's are launched and I'll get a returned one in a shop a little bit cheaper.

@Krists :
I plan to massively UV and power limit mine to about 350W.

The German site computerbase.de did some benchmarks and noticed that letting the 4090 draw stock power up to 450 W just does provide only about 2-3% of FPS gain:
[ external image ]
https://www.computerbase.de/2022-10/nvi ... __300_watt
(It's in German, but the graphs should be self-explaining )

Even limiting it to only 300 W still makes it run significantly faster than the 3090 Ti.
Of course, these bench's are for flat monitor / 4K gaming only. And in average. They say, that there are a couple of games which show more FPS impact by limiting the power.
But that's why I am curious if it is about the same for VR. If so, there's probably no need to hesitate just because of power consumption, older power supplies or heat.

And considering heat in general, NVidia this time seems to have done a little better job than with the 30x0's:

GPU
[ external image ]

Hotspot
[ external image ]

VRAM
[ external image ]

For me, it seems as if NVidia must have used (better) cooling pads now... but I haven't seen a review with a disassembled 4090 yet, so that's just a guess of mine.

=> in terms of heat and temperatures: If you've been running a 3090 Ti so far, you'll be able to run a 4090 in any case. And especially latest, if you power limit it to ~350 W. Which I probably will do so because consuming up to +100 W just for 2-3% of FPS gain is just insane.

(PS: And I'll probably be going for a Gigabyte Gaming OC once again - made very good experiences with the last two I had (2080 Ti and 3080 now), both returned ones. So if I'll go for a 4090, it will hopefully cost less than 2000€ at that time.)

[grantalope]

Think you are dead right about cooling/underwatting @KingOfTheRoad77

Hardware Nexus or someone broke down the Founder's Edition 4090 cooler and they are using very high quality thermal pads on the gpu itself. Mine runs insanely cool... like rock solid 65 degrees. My room however got much hotter than with my 3080. I had to flick on the AC and even then I was struggling with the heat. Think this points to the power draw numbers rumored in pre launch and the fact that Nvidia tuned the power draw/clocks down a bit and are holding some perf for 4090 ti. You can absolutely feel the headroom in the card; personally, I feel like the QoL tradeoffs + $$$ makes the rumored 4090 TI a bridge too far for me. A bit like the 3080 vs 3090 value prop from last gens launch.

On that power draw... I think it's also that the addition of the 4090 resulted in a noticeable stability increase across my entire system. I have a fanatec wheel and some other usb peripherals + a bunch of usb soundcards to power some diy tansducers so all in all about 12-15 usb devices. My system normally "hiccups" 2-3 times per hour where the windows usb disconnected sound plays or my usb sound card driven speakers cut out and need to be rebooted etc. I've been fine tuning my FSB and ram timings with some success, but was planning on buying a usb card (and upgraded power supply) as part of this 4090 upgrade. Now I'm not sure I need either. I think because the gpu is not running 100 % max im getting less instability and less power spikes that affect other system components on the mobo bus. I noticed something similar actually with the 5800x3D. My guess is that all these new components are so power/thermal limited that its better to clock them down and run at 70% or whatever for a sustained stressful load like vr simming. There's a reason why crypto miners settled on 70% power limits for last gens cards in order to optimize for performance/power draw etc. My 5800x3D seems better now too from a frame pacing/usage/temps perspective and my theory is that cpu or gpu bottlenecks cause the other components to boost/stress themselves to fill the gap leading to both latency and missed frames in addition to the compounding effects of heat building up (+power spikes) faster than the cooler can disperse.

I was not expecting such a dramatic improvement in overall "feel" from the 4090 upgrade and I was anticipating a dramatic boost in image quality and frames. I'm surprised at how smooth the experience is... everything from my steering input, to my bass shakers, to the clarity/color of the G2 just feels "better" "sharper" "more precise" at the smooth 90 fps with both cpu and gpu able to easily hit frame timing targets. I actually turned down my force feedback and tactile speakers last night as cranking up the settings was now affecting subtle aspects of vr immersion rather than papering over the cracks in the game engine performance.

One learning/inkling before I forget... I've been playing with FSR on the steam deck and its impressive for what it does. I had been using the Nvidia Image Scaling for sharpening via the wmr toolkit, but now that the gpu can draw all the 3000x3000 frames at a consistent 90 fps I switched over to FSR and to my eyes its a noticeable improvement to the point where I'd recommend anyone with a sub 4090 tier card lowering game settings/resolution to run at 90 fps, flicking on fsr and doing a serious evaluation/self reflection about whether fps, resolution, or in game bells and whistles do more for your immersion. With the FSR enabled it'd be fps>resolution>bells+whistles for me. This also tells me that something like proper DLSS is probably ultimately the silver bullet for this game in vr. I think that will help massively and should push the experience down the tech stack for many gpu holders long-term heading forward. DX12 and DLSS can't come fast enough for these games.

It's a hard thing to convey, but vr simmers all know the intricacies and quirks of their sim engine of choice and the stutters/flickering/jank/etc that you just get used to. To have those things go away really smooths out the experience and improves vr immersion. Also, I think I severely underrated SSAO in the past... having it on max seems to add a level of texture and detail to the roads and in the cabin that really looks fantastic on the G2. I was not expecting other compelonents I have to "sing" like this from a gpu upgrade. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but the vr game really seems "finished" in a way that it didn't before. Like I've finally started demoing it to interested friends and family whereas 2 weeks ago it was too "janky" of an experience imo for vr novices.

I will say ETS2 is almost unplayable vs ATS in VR now for me. I see like 15-20% performance delta between the two and other things like repeatable hitches in newer areas like Spain and Austria. I feel like the ATS engine code is cleaner and there are less legacy assets floating around. I have some light mods in both, but nothing major. From a design and gameplay standpoint ATS is the clear winner in VR for me as well. ATS feels like a 1.0 vr release to me, while ETS2 still seems like a 10 year old game with vr tacked on.

While I'm thinking of "wants" for the official vr release... let me just hammer a few points that have been bothering me for years (coming close to a decade) of playing this beta in vr:

1.) The experience of launching vr needs to be finalized. I shouod be able to click the "launch in vr" button and the game loads and then selects the ats.exe window as the focus for game inputs etc. This doesn't work smoothly far too often and has been an issue since the first beta version. Other vr games are much better about this vs 5 years ago.

1.)b) Video from the headset should output to the second monitor properly. There might be a workaround or whatever, but this should simply work out of the box. Right now I see a 95% dark screen and a little flickering window of the game engine in the bottom left. Please fix this so that when my wife walks by... sees me in my giant boondoggle vr truck sim and headset I can just gesture to the tv and say "driving by Provo" and she can at least see what I'm looking at and regret her life choices up until that point 5% less haha. I also have people in my life (like my mom) who want to try the game in vr, but it's very hard to coach them on how to get started without seeing what they see on screen.

1.)c) Touch input/controller support in the interface. I know this is probably hard for some reason I don't care about, but touch controllers should work in the interface. Gamepads in general as well since that'd help in console/steam deck scenarios as well, but a 1.0 vr release should definitely let you use the touch controllers a mouse in game menus.

~~~VR Wants~~~

2.0) True spatial audio. Please move the audio output nodes for each truck to be in the irl speaker locations in the cabin. This would dramatically increase vr immersion and work really nicely with the off ear spatial speakers on the g2 and index. I want to pipe my podcasts/spotify/radio into the game and have it "play" on the speakers so that if I move my head further away it gets quieter louder when close etc. Right now the ingame audio is incredible in spatial vr, but music/radio etc is being played over the top. Dubbed in soundtrack vs video audio recording on a camera etc. Please release an HD Audio pack with different speaker options/sound profiles/eq setting accessories so I can upgrade my trucks sound system and have it actually affect how/where I hear audio while wearing my G2. Please do this. I would pay $19.99 everyday from now until Dec 31, 2022 if this was released tomorrow and feel like I got good value for my money hahaha.

3.0) "Easy"/ "Lite" VR friendly interface. Going into menus is immersion breaking. I can get rid of the in game ui stuff with mods (floating xs etc) but to get a job or complete a job or pay a toll the game assumes I have a mouse and keyboard. This doesnt need to necessarily be a ux overhaul... although it would be nice to have a "chill" ux overhaul where getting jobs/managing your trucks was streamlined. One thought I had was just being creative about using VR specific hardware more creatively... like we know that every VR user has a microphone so why not add a "Siri" voice commands option for in vehicle commands like "turn on radio" "cruise control on" but also a simple CB option with fixed commands and answers/text something like "depot when does the customer expect delivery?" "10:30 PM tomorrow" etc This would go a long way for immersion in vr... right now I find myself fumbling for buttons... it's hard for yoir brain to process when you look down and see a truck console instead of your keyboard/button box. Like those solutions work, but there is definitely a more elegant solve for VR. Having a ipad like touch screen tablet in the vr version of the game that you could pick up and toss on the passenger seat. Quest already has hand tracking etc (Also, yes please track my hands in the cabin in VR version 1.1)Option to buy an iwatch like accessory etc etc.

There are cool ways to leverage vr in the game or creatively enhance the overall game by focusing on the vr experience. Currently, this is one of the best immersive experiences possible in vr. Most of us havent flown a fighter jet or launched a spaceship etc... even driving sims... I doubt many know the feeling of real performance cars on a race track type setting. However, we've all driven 70 mph on a highway and watched the sun set in the distance. I've never driven a truck, but I'm going to go out on a limb and trust that crusing at 70 in a truck isnt that different from my own driving experience. ATS in VR really captures that feeling. It's authentic and real and therefore immersive in a way that no other game currently is and very few games have the potential to be due to the ethereal nature of their subject matter. It's really inspiring to see so many aspects of truck simulators shine in a vr setting. The level of detail in the cabin, road layouts, truck stops, signage, tire physics, engine sound, foilage, flora, fauna, etc all come together and result in a deep level of realism thats really cool. I have a turn signal stock from a real car hooked up to my rig and when I click down in real life and see/hear the indicator turn on from the left hand side of my hearing in the game itself and the indicator sound itself sounds... just......"real" its truly magical for me. Especially so because I've had that same mundane experience of making a left hand signal and turn 10000 times in my van in real life. With this new hardware ATS is currently the best vr sim experience imo and its time that SCS pushes it out of beta and onto the stable branch. All of us truck sim players love different aspects of this game and I understand and appreciate that only a small % of people can afford a 4090 and vr headsets and insane force feedback wheels etc, but the game should cater better to both top end and lower in experiences. At the end of the day, I think every truck simmer on earth would like the chance to experience the game in a high level vr environment. It's just too fun and cool, all of us would jump at the opportunity if the hardware was available/cheap. There are a lot of things SCS is building/working, but few hhave as high an approval rating amongst fans as "high end vr simulator." We aren't quite there from a hardware perspective, but we are a hell of a lot closer than even a month ago. Releasing 1.0 of vr could also bring in a lot of new blood of enthusiasts or adjacent sim nuts who are interested in trying the game out innvr, but the current beta jank is too high a barrier for entry.

I don't play other sim games in the same obsessive way that I do ETS2 so any comments re:4090 performance I have there can be smarized as "it's fast." Like alien tech fast. I fired up RDR2 last night on a high refresh 4k hdr display and the performance/image quality was jaw dropping and "next gen" in a way that I've rarely seen especially the last 10 years as so many jumps across tech have been "incremental." Display/vr tech jumped a lot since 2010, but in a way the 4090 is the first GPU that unlocks things like 4k120hz hdr butter smooth stutter free gaming at insane settings with ray tracing etc. There's a network effect of both your display, the gpu, and the game all feeling way better as a complete package vs the lift of a single component. In a way... I can understand and even justify Nvidia pricing the 4090 at the place they did... and that's definitely not at all what I was thinking just a week ago.

[Krists]

I saw this setup on reddit and as I have the same case and based on @grantalope feedback, I feel very tempted to try it out.

A bit worried about the CPU cooling solution, but as I only play games on my PC, I will try the cooler out before going all in with 4090.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments ... ame=iossmf

@grantalope - can you provide some fpsvr or msi afterburner report on FPS as well as deliveries/routes in new locations in ATS/ETS2?

[KingOfTheRoad77]

On that power draw... I think it's also that the addition of the 4090 resulted in a noticeable stability increase across my entire system. I have a fanatec wheel and some other usb peripherals + a bunch of usb soundcards to power some diy tansducers so all in all about 12-15 usb devices. My system normally "hiccups" 2-3 times per hour where the windows usb disconnected sound plays or my usb sound card driven speakers cut out and need to be rebooted etc. I've been fine tuning my FSB and ram timings with some success, but was planning on buying a usb card (and upgraded power supply) as part of this 4090 upgrade. Now I'm not sure I need either. I think because the gpu is not running 100 % max im getting less instability and less power spikes that affect other system components on the mobo bus. I noticed something similar actually with the 5800x3D. My guess is that all these new components are so power/thermal limited that its better to clock them down and run at 70% or whatever for a sustained stressful load like vr simming.

Yeah, I suspect this overall auto-adjustments every millisecond also to be responsible for some of the stuttering and other issues. For me, it's hard to believe that this does not affect performance in any way if you're running a VR sim (or any other game claiming 99,9% performance for all the time), and CPU and GPU always change their state of load. Not at least because all those little adjustments do cost computing power as well, even if it is just a tiny little bit. So it sounds absolutely logical to me, to UV / under-watt CPU and/or GPU a bit in order to get a more stable and smoother experience in overall.

... but now that the gpu can draw all the 3000x3000 frames at a consistent 90 fps I switched over to FSR and to my eyes its a noticeable improvement to the point where I'd recommend anyone with a sub 4090 tier card lowering game settings/resolution to run at 90 fps, flicking on fsr and doing a serious evaluation/self reflection about whether fps, resolution, or in game bells and whistles do more for your immersion.

Since using OpenXR, I've tried both NIS and FSR - and I don't like NIS: Especially road textures look much worse and more blurry than with FSR almost to the point it "hurts" my eyes
So, although if I don't have stable 75 FPS in every situation with my 8K-X @3080 & 5600X, I'd always prefer FSR over NIS. And to be honest: I cannot notice any major performance difference between both of them.

I will say ETS2 is almost unplayable vs ATS in VR now for me. I see like 15-20% performance delta between the two and other things like repeatable hitches in newer areas like Spain and Austria. I feel like the ATS engine code is cleaner and there are less legacy assets floating around. I have some light mods in both, but nothing major. From a design and gameplay standpoint ATS is the clear winner in VR for me as well. ATS feels like a 1.0 vr release to me, while ETS2 still seems like a 10 year old game with vr tacked on.

Hmmm... as soon as I get into newer ATS towns in Colorado, Wyoming or Montana, I experience almost the same FPS drops than with the newer urban areas in ETS2. And if it gets night and I have to switch on lights, any difference that may be there between the two games, disappears completely. So, I can't really say whether ETS2 or ATS is better or "worse".
But fact is, too: The more I get stable 75 FPS, the more significant and annoying any stutter and juddering gets as well. I've played with ~50-65 FPS for years - and didn't bother about it at all - since using fholger and now OpenXR...

Also, I think I severely underrated SSAO in the past... having it on max seems to add a level of texture and detail to the roads and in the cabin that really looks fantastic on the G2.

Okay... good to know...
The first times I've tried it (soon after release), everything looked a bit weird, shadows and depths didn't really fit to VR-3D.
=> Is this gone?