EXPERIMENTAL: Virtual Reality

Wow man you're a life saver. After downloading that, I can leave my default runtime as OpenXR and use my OpenXR Toolkit. I feel like it runs a lot better with the Reverb G2 as well now that I can stay in OpenXR.

 

I've tried VR for a couple of hours and considering its an experimental feature, I am surprised at how well it works already and I cant wait for it to get better in the coming months, along with Vulkan, but I'd like to add a bunch of things that others seem to not mention/experience:

• no matter what settings I use, I cant get above 40 fps (half of my refresh rate) even on grid map, I don't understand how people with worse specs get more
• on lowest preset, my textures look like they're covered in oil (not sure if its a VR or a Vulkan issue)
• in walking mode, I cannot turn my camera at all, both snap on and snap off, the view just keeps snapping wherever it wants, in snap mode it feels like moving my cursor by one pixel makes it want to rotate 480 degrees while without snap mode, it's like my view rotates by 180 degrees every 15 degrees passed, no such issues in driving mode (PLEASE for the love of god add an option to walk wherever you are looking instead of having to use mouse to adjust my angle)

• interacting with UI constantly keeps freezing the game for up to ~20 seconds
• there is a "dead zone" of centering your view of about 5-10 degrees, and every time you center your view, it tries to snap out of that "dead zone", so I either have to re-center my view to the side in oculus and center it properly in-game, or I have to move back in real world to reduce that effect so it centers properly, but then I'll be too close to the steering wheel in-game (in the following video, I held the button so the game re-centers my view every frame)

• and most annoyingly, my right eye is constantly jittering like crazy (perhaps when my fps drops just below half refresh rate?) while my left eye renders perfectly fine which I unfortunately cant record

CPU: Ryzen 5800x @ 4.4 GHZ
RAM: 2x16 @ 3600 MHZ
GPU: RTX 3060 12 GB
Oculus Quest 2

 

Deleting my full user folder worked! Still some quirks (camera spawns underground, centering is a bit weird) but all told it works very well!

Bravo, you've made a hell of a thing.

 

If any of you are having problems similar to mine, Im gonna list the solutions I have found which have worked for me
(Format = "PROBLEM = SOLUTION")
Beamng not showing up in Headset = Set whatever display software you are using for it (e.g SteamVR, Oculus, etc) to Primary OpenXR Renderer
VR not working even after clearing cache and verifying integrity = Sadly only solution I found was a complete reinstall
VR being slow (e.g under 30FPS) = Set Steam to Steam Open Beta in the settings (You should be able to search how to do this) and then turn down the resolution per eye setting in SteamVR (I do not know which fixed it but I went from 12fps to 110fps in VR)
--- Post updated ---

I found a couple more fixes for common fps and vr bugs above, might be worth fact checking and then adding some of them

 

this may be a combination of me not knowing what i'm doing and accidentally stumbling on the solution, but i figured out roughly how to get VR running decently on my pc:
set beamng to fullscreen
set an fps limit of 90
open beamng in vulkan, then open steamvr
turn on beamng's vr mode before loading into any maps
load into a map

and with this i got pretty decent fps for a 1060

 

Tell me please, how much % you have loaded CPU and GPU at 90 FPS in VR mode, on maps: Italy, WCU, if you can better send a screenshot with indicators.

s VR high in voracity compared to a regular 4k monitor?

 

There seems to be something off with the scale, things are too small in scale.

 

I tried this today. Still no luck with audio. Also any sound-related work around hasn't worked for me. Even with all other audio devices on my computer deactivated via Windows Sound Settings the game remains quiet as soon as I launch the VR mode.

As mentioned above, it didn't resolve the issue. Unfortunately, it seems that I would have to wait for an update.

 

All of a sudden, the game magically works fine for me.

 

just writing what kind of performance im getting here so players/devs can see. before anything though, i wanna thank the devs for seeing the potential in Vulkan and how much better than DX it is, the performance gain is insane and can only get more optimised from here. (some things i would love to see optimised would be textures and dynamic reflections) not to mention the fact the devs also see the potential in VR and what it can bring to sims like this. i dont think there is a better desert racing experience anywhere else.

with one car alone i can easily manage 120 FPS and get smooth, enjoyable gameplay, bigger maps (i.e. italy, jv) do tend to have dips but otherwise gameplay is smooth. i definitely have a huge cpu bottleneck though. multiple cars tends to impact FPS a bit, but its more than playable up to about 5 or 6 cars. beamMP seems to be fine too, however performance is a little worse, i tend to get dips on maps where i didnt before, dispite being alone. 3 or 4 cars seems to be the sweetspot on smaller maps.

getting VR set up was a little bit of a task. it took like 5 or 6 game restarts for me to get it going smoothly, but when it got going it was fine, even with pc restarts. i did get total game freezes the first 3 times i tried VR, which required me to use task manager, however it hasnt happened since so im not sure what i did to fix it in all honesty.

again i wanna thank the devs for adding this feature, ive wished for it since around 2018, even before i had a VR headset lol. it genuinley is a dream come true lol.

specs:

Headset: Vive Pro 2 running in performance mode (2448x1224, 120hz)
GPU: RTX 3070FE (stock clocks)
CPU: R5 3600 (stock clocks)
RAM: 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz
(game is installed on an M.2 SSD)

in game settings:

Window view: Empty (however reusing one eye doesnt noticeably affect FPS for me)

Mesh: High
Texture: Lowest
Lighting: Normal
Shadows: Partial
Shaders: Low
PP: Lowest
Ansiotropic: 16x

AO: Enabled
Tyremarks: 500
Grass: 0.65
all not mentioned are off

ps, any performance tips are greatly appreciated

 

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, when going OFFROAD, grass, dirt and water particles come through the floor of the car. Has the Dev team noticed this? Just wondering if this will be something that can be fixed?

 

its been like that for years

 

VR is working great for me (5800X3D, 64GB, 3090Ti, Index), but there are a couple of things I would like.

When starting in VR, it looks like the default forward position is based on the roomscale setup. Can we get this to mactch initial headset orientation, or remember the last centred orientation?

The other thing I'm after is options to add damping to head roll, pitch and yaw. I don't want "forward" to be locked to the car or the horizon, but to be smoothed out as I travel over rough terrain. I'm pretty sure this is what is giving me motion sickness outside of VR when driving on bumpy terrain, but in VR it's pretty brutal. I'm saying that as someone that in Elite has tumbled an SRV down the side of a mountain, and in iRacing done a barrel roll in a Skippy, both with no ill effects.

 

TLDR, 9.5/10 love it, cant wait for it to get polished

Runs well for me, I didnt touch my settings from nonVR (high preset) and was getting 60s-70s that I find tolerable (5600, 32gb ram, 6900xt, quest 2 via link. I certainly have a cpu bottleneck and my performance widgets reflected that)
My main gripe is invisible controllers, I love how the interaction boxes are usable but my hands are invisible. Besides that is the scale off? it felt like I was a lot larger in the car than I should be.
Walking mode was a trip until I realized that forward on my controller was where the UI was, not where my head was pointing.

 

POSSIBLE FIX FOR SOUND ISSUES: Launching the game after SteamVR does work, but with SteamVR open, the launcher is bypassed on startup and you don't get the option to go into Vulkan. Launching from the folder allows you to access the launcher, but it breaks VR.

Adding "-gfx vk" to the BeamNG launch options in Steam forces the game to open in Vulkan; then you can launch it with VR already running and the game will recognize that audio output device.

 

WOOHOO! I finally got it running decent on my Reverb G2. Specs are Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 2070, 32g ddr4, gamer mobo overclocking mild with liquid cooling on cpu. This is beyond amazing, I didn't expect something this soon, and this great after I put the work in to get it running fine on a WMR headset from the instructions in this thread.
My two cents to getting this running buttery smooth -
-Open Steam VR, then click the hamburger to go to settings and set the render resolution way down from the stock 3000x3000 per eye. The G2 renders at 2160x2XXX, so anything beyond that resolution is just rounding edges out for you
-That should give you a lot more headroom to mess with the settings, I was able to very quickly get 45fps stable on mostly normal settings other than textures, and most of the fancy stuff flipped on

-I did like someone else mentioned and made the desktop mirror smaller, I tested the time trial in Utah using a Hirochi Sunburst with manual transmission on a T-248 with the TH8A shifter and this is EXACTLY WHAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR HOLY CRAP. FFB worked great after reinstalling the Thrustmaster software
-Never had triples, this is the fastest I've been able to drive comfortably in this game, it really makes a huge difference
-Got the same error on close as everyone else

I made an account to come post and help you guys out, as things come up I will ping em here. It did take some reboots and fidgeting like any MASTER RACE experimental stuff, but the outcome was so promising that I can't complain considering what this software is. Cheers and thanks to the BeamNG team!

 

I’m pretty sure that .30.1 or .30.2 made it so SteamVR forces you to open with Vulkan.

 

It apparently does not. Without manually setting it in the launch options BeamNG gave me the "relaunch game in Vulkan" error.

--- Post updated ---
My performance is decent with a 3070 and an R5 3600, I can get 90 on emptier maps but West Coast is rough. For some reason Utah consistently crashes after I drive over that bridge in front of the default highway spawn. Don't know if that's specific to the area or related to the time in motion after setting off.

 

Also! To switch back to WMR as main OpenXR option for iRacing - you can't reset it in the SteamVR settings. You have to open WMR and on the top a thing will say that there is an error and WMR isn't the main whatsit, click FIX IT and that changes it back to WMR for OpenXR host.
For iRacing.