Optimized 80fps settings, zero stutters and mostly ultra.

[Beethy]

Edit: Doing a version for lower end systems soon. I want everyone to experience this game smoothly.

Copy these settings: https://i.imgur.com/A1Ig9dD.jpg
I'll explain some of these. The values that are on ultra look significantly better at a minimal frame loss.
- Shadows and ground cover look almost identical to ultra, at a major fps difference.
- Dynamic objects is on medium, not because of performance reasons, but because high and ultra are both broken, as it makes huge chunks of foliage draw in one frame. It's very distracting while driving. You can put this on ultra if you don't mind the major pop in problems. I am certain this is hard coded by Codemasters and cannot be fixed by any tweak. Setting it to high may be safe in most stages.
- Car reflections add detailed screenspace reflections at a major loss to FPS, ultra low to low makes the game 25% slower. Ultra low to Ultra has a 40% performance drop.

Interesting observations:
- Tree quality controls LoD distance for almost all dynamic and roadside objects. This includes bushes and crowds. This is why Ultra is a MUST. Even at high, you will see frequent LoD shifts. Check this out lol: https://i.imgur.com/MMPzBAg.jpg
- Post processing quality handles a few things. Ultra low completely disables screenspace reflections. High adds proper ambient occlusion.
- The crowd setting barely reduces performance, and low to high mostly increases the amount of people, while ultra adds very nice details and variety to crowds, some roadside FIA employees will wear yellow vests for instance.
- Weather setting controls both the density of raindrops and snowflakes, but also the amount of things in the air. Planes, birds and insects buzzing around the track. This is why you don't want to lower this setting in general.
- Mirrors don't affect FPS on my system, yes I checked in cockpit view.

For some reason, EA WRC has lots of misinformation regarding settings due to people applying their DR2.0 knowledge to this game, like how crowds and mirrors would tank FPS in that game, but not here.

If you have a Gsync/Freesync screen, you must run the game in borderless to avoid stutters or input lag.

My specs: RTX 2080 / i7 9700k / 970evo SSD / 32GB DDR4 RAM

[shadow82]

Originally posted by Beethy:

For some reason, EA WRC has lots of misinformation regarding settings

I wonder why that is the case... When in-game description of Dynamic objects is "Set the quality to Ultra Low, Low,...", how could anyone figure out what it does without assumptions ? :)

I still wish we had more details on what does what exaclty, like why is tree settings affecting LOD of road signs and how should one figure this out by reading the description ?

[Beethy]

Originally posted by shadow82:

I still wish we had more details on what does what exaclty, like why is tree settings affecting LOD of road signs and how should one figure this out by reading the description ?

Likely because it would look confusing and messy.
How would you explain (in one sentence) that post processing from the lowest setting to low adds screenspace reflections, but adds ambient occlusion from low to medium, and refines both distance and detail to ambient occlusion to high and ultra?
Or how the shader setting also controls screenspace reflections, but differently, and changes how shiny objects behave?

The real problem is that the options affect too many things in game, when they should be split up.
Ambient occlusion should have its own setting for instance, it shouldn't be lumped in with screenspace reflections. Additionally, screenspace reflections quality cannot be altered in general. It's either on or off. It is nice that we can massively reduce the SSR quality on cars, because of how heavy the FPS cost is.

I guarantee this is a Codemasters problem, not EA. As they made similar odd choices in DR2.0. In that game, particles affected birds and insects too.
And you couldn't disable SSR on the hood of your car, even if you disabled SSR completely. SSR is insanely taxing with VR, always bothered me I couldn't switch that off.

[Nazgool]

Originally posted by Beethy:

Copy these settings: https://i.imgur.com/A1Ig9dD.jpg
I'll explain some of these. The values that are on ultra look significantly better at a minimal frame loss.
- Shadows and ground cover look almost identical to ultra, at a major fps difference.
- Dynamic objects is on medium, not because of performance reasons, but because high and ultra are both broken, as it makes huge chunks of foliage draw in one frame. It's very distracting while driving. You can put this on ultra if you don't mind the major pop in problems. I am certain this is hard coded by Codemasters and cannot be fixed by any tweak. Setting it to high may be safe in most stages.
- Car reflections add detailed screenspace reflections at a major loss to FPS, ultra low to low makes the game 25% slower. Ultra low to Ultra has a 40% performance drop.

Interesting observations:
- Tree quality controls LoD distance for almost all dynamic and roadside objects. This includes bushes and crowds. This is why Ultra is a MUST. Even at high, you will see frequent LoD shifts. Check this out lol: https://i.imgur.com/MMPzBAg.jpg
- Post processing quality handles a few things. Ultra low completely disables screenspace reflections. High adds proper ambient occlusion.
- The crowd setting barely reduces performance, and low to high mostly increases the amount of people, while ultra adds very nice details and variety to crowds, some roadside FIA employees will wear yellow vests for instance.
- Weather setting controls both the density of raindrops and snowflakes, but also the amount of things in the air. Planes, birds and insects buzzing around the track. This is why you don't want to lower this setting in general.
- Mirrors don't affect FPS on my system, yes I checked in cockpit view.

For some reason, EA WRC has lots of misinformation regarding settings due to people applying their DR2.0 knowledge to this game, like how crowds and mirrors would tank FPS in that game, but not here.

If you have a Gsync/Freesync screen, you must run the game in borderless to avoid stutters or input lag.

My specs: RTX 2080 / i7 9700k / 970evo SSD / 32GB DDR4 RAM

I'll try these settings later. I have mine on medium to high settings.

One thing I noticed is that when I set the textures to high or ultra, the fps significantly dropped from 80 to 45, even when on dash or hood cam. I have shader set to ultra and it doesn't affect fps. I have RTX 3050/16GB DDR4 RAM/i5

[Beethy]

Not sure why, since your VRAM is the same as mine. But according to this, your GPU has a harder time with many functions: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-3050-vs-Nvidia-RTX-2080/4127vs4026
In benchmarks, my card gets almost double the framerate in some games. Probably best to set textures to high, and anisotropic filtering to 8x. The visual difference will be minimal.

[pinkimo]

Hasn't dynamic objects been fixed on last patch? I tried Norway's stage yesterday and the grass was popping smoothly on max and high (didn't try medium) while it was by big chunks last time I tried.

[TeknoBug]

I have mostly similar settings, but I have to keep AA on high otherwise at low I get Matrix-like artifacts and butt ugly ground and color gradiant crap.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3078414068

[Beethy]

Originally posted by pinkimo:

Hasn't dynamic objects been fixed on last patch? I tried Norway's stage yesterday and the grass was popping smoothly on max and high (didn't try medium) while it was by big chunks last time I tried.

High appears to be fine on most stages, medium is the super safe option. Ultra is busted.

Originally posted by TeknoBug:

I have mostly similar settings, but I have to keep AA on high otherwise at low I get Matrix-like artifacts and butt ugly ground and color gradiant crap.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3078414068

LOL what the heck. Never seen that before :D. GPU?

[pinkimo]

Originally posted by Beethy:

High appears to be fine on most stages, medium is the super safe option. Ultra is busted.

Did you try ultra since last patch? I compared high and ultra on Norway (because I noticed the grass appearing by chunk before the patch) and could hardly see any difference between both, not big chunk of grass and the draw distance felt the same, so not sure the FPS cost for ultra worth it anyway (it's like 10+ fps on the ultra low performing 16 km stage at Monte Carlo).
I saw you talked about Malti in Italy to test, I'll check that tonight.

[Beethy]

Originally posted by pinkimo:

Originally posted by Beethy:

High appears to be fine on most stages, medium is the super safe option. Ultra is busted.

Did you try ultra since last patch? I compared high and ultra on Norway (because I noticed the grass appearing by chunk before the patch) and could hardly see any difference between both, not big chunk of grass. I'm not sure I can see any difference between both, the draw distance felt the same, so not sure the FPS cost for ultra worth it anyway.
I saw you talked about Malti in Italy to test, I'll check that tonight.

I did. Gigantic chunks all over the place. Highly distracting. It's a shame, since my game runs at 80fps almost all of the time, so I can take the performance hit. High still has some pop in, but mostly in smaller chunks, like a line of grass on the side of the road that switches from its lower LoD mesh to the full detail version. Medium negates almost all of this. It's a cleaner image during gameplay, at the cost of a pretty short fade in for foliage.
Trees on ultra thankfully keeps the draw distance quite high for things like fences, gates and other random clutter.
It's strange how draw distance is controlled by the dynamic objects and trees settings, though. Totally the wrong names for both lol

[TeknoBug]

Originally posted by Beethy:

Originally posted by pinkimo:

Hasn't dynamic objects been fixed on last patch? I tried Norway's stage yesterday and the grass was popping smoothly on max and high (didn't try medium) while it was by big chunks last time I tried.

High appears to be fine on most stages, medium is the super safe option. Ultra is busted.

Originally posted by TeknoBug:

I have mostly similar settings, but I have to keep AA on high otherwise at low I get Matrix-like artifacts and butt ugly ground and color gradiant crap.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3078414068

LOL what the heck. Never seen that before :D. GPU?

RX 6800.

[Sekiguchi]

Originally posted by TeknoBug:

Originally posted by Beethy:

High appears to be fine on most stages, medium is the super safe option. Ultra is busted.


LOL what the heck. Never seen that before :D. GPU?

RX 6800.

I get similarly weird looking reflections on a 4070ti

[PAWNSTAR]

same windsceen shimmer from reflections from inside and outside the car

[sutty18]

tried these settings. getting 70 to 85 fps with a 3070ti

[Beethy]

Originally posted by sutty18:

tried these settings. getting 70 to 85 fps with a 3070ti

Sounds about right. I have a RTX 2080 :)

[Tripokaridos]

Originally posted by Beethy:

Copy these settings: https://i.imgur.com/A1Ig9dD.jpg
I'll explain some of these. The values that are on ultra look significantly better at a minimal frame loss.
- Shadows and ground cover look almost identical to ultra, at a major fps difference.
- Dynamic objects is on medium, not because of performance reasons, but because high and ultra are both broken, as it makes huge chunks of foliage draw in one frame. It's very distracting while driving. You can put this on ultra if you don't mind the major pop in problems. I am certain this is hard coded by Codemasters and cannot be fixed by any tweak. Setting it to high may be safe in most stages.
- Car reflections add detailed screenspace reflections at a major loss to FPS, ultra low to low makes the game 25% slower. Ultra low to Ultra has a 40% performance drop.

Interesting observations:
- Tree quality controls LoD distance for almost all dynamic and roadside objects. This includes bushes and crowds. This is why Ultra is a MUST. Even at high, you will see frequent LoD shifts. Check this out lol: https://i.imgur.com/MMPzBAg.jpg
- Post processing quality handles a few things. Ultra low completely disables screenspace reflections. High adds proper ambient occlusion.
- The crowd setting barely reduces performance, and low to high mostly increases the amount of people, while ultra adds very nice details and variety to crowds, some roadside FIA employees will wear yellow vests for instance.
- Weather setting controls both the density of raindrops and snowflakes, but also the amount of things in the air. Planes, birds and insects buzzing around the track. This is why you don't want to lower this setting in general.
- Mirrors don't affect FPS on my system, yes I checked in cockpit view.

For some reason, EA WRC has lots of misinformation regarding settings due to people applying their DR2.0 knowledge to this game, like how crowds and mirrors would tank FPS in that game, but not here.

If you have a Gsync/Freesync screen, you must run the game in borderless to avoid stutters or input lag.

My specs: RTX 2080 / i7 9700k / 970evo SSD / 32GB DDR4 RAM

Can i ask why we must run in borderless window to avoid stutter and input lag ? Is this some kind of bug for this game only, or something that we have to do for all games ? I thought that VRR works on Fullscreen and Borderless .