City Car Driving crashes on startup with SteamVR + Oculus ("Starter Application has stopped working")

[rawdmon]

I'm posting here because I'm completely stumped at this point. City Car Driving starts up fine if I have the output device set to Monitor, but if I select VR Goggles after starting it from inside SteamVR then restart the game it crashes on startup every time with a "Starter Application has stopped working" error.

If I go in to My Documents -> forward development -> city car driving steam -> config -> mangalore.ini and change deviceOutput=1 under the [Graphics] section to deviceOutput=0 (to set the output back to Monitor) then I'm able to start the game again.

Now I also want to mention that I did actually have City Car Driving working with the Oculus and SteamVR a couple months ago after a lot of fiddling around (I don't remember how I actually finally ended up getting it working as I was just randomly trying different things). The one thing I seem to remember is that when it was working properly, the Output selection menu in City Car Driving would actually show "Oculus" instead of "VR Goggles", but I can't get it to show that again for whatever reason.

I had uninstalled the game and reinstalled it between the last time I was able to play it and now. I still had my forward development folder saved though, so all of the settings that I had configured are identical to the last time I had it working. When it was working it worked perfectly fine and ran almost completely smoothly with the occasional bit of jitter.

The computer I'm trying to run it on is an Alienware 15 R3 laptop with an Alienware Graphics Amplifier attached to it which has an NVIDIA TITAN Xp in it (the highest end gaming rated card which Nvidia currently has). I'm sure the laptop specs are adequate to run the game in VR because I've done it before on the exact same hardware.

I'm not sure what changed between when I had it working, possibly a graphics driver update or steam vr update or something affected it. I did have this exact same crash on startup issue previously before I finally managed to get it working, and like I said, I have no idea what the magic step was that I did that time which finally got it working. I have lots of other games which work perfectly fine in SteamVR, this is the only one giving me problems.

Do you have any suggestions on what I can try to get the game to recognize the headset? I really don't understand how it's not able to see it when I have like 25 other VR games which work perfectly fine with it. What am I missing here?

[rawdmon]

Alright, so I finally figured this out and it was a hassle but it's working. I'm going to document what I had to do here in case anyone else runs in to this with an Alienware Graphics Amplifier or similar external graphics card setup with a laptop or other compact computer...

So firstly, I mentioned this before but I'll repeat it here. If you selected the "VR goggle" option and now your game is crashing on startup every time you don't need to delete your entire forward development folder. You just need to edit My Documents -> forward development -> city car driving steam -> config -> mangalore.ini and change deviceOutput=1 under the [Graphics] section to deviceOutput=0 and save the file. That will switch it back to the Monitor output mode, that way you don't lose all your other settings like controller settings (in my case I didn't feel like having to completely remap my wheel setup again).

So I'm not sure that this first step was even actually necessary but I did it anyways. I went in to the Control Panel and launched the Nvidia Control Panel. In there I went to Manage 3D Settings and clicked on the Program Settings tab. I added the City Car Driving "Starter" application to the list and set the preferred graphics processor for it to "High-performance NVIDIA processor" then closed the Control Panel.

I also disabled cloud synchronization for City Car Driving within steam by going to my games library, right clicking on it, selecting Properties, then going to the Updates tab and unchecking the "Enable Steam Cloud synchronization for City Car Driving" option.

After that I shutdown my laptop, unplugged the graphics amplifier from it, plugged the Oculus Rift headset directly in to the laptop (which has a Geforce GTX 1060 in it). After that I booted up the laptop and opened the Oculus app. The first time I opened it it had an error flare stating that there was a problem and suggesting a restart, so I did a reboot. After the second reboot with the headset now plugged directly in to the laptop it came up fine.

Once Oculus was running off the laptop video card instead of the graphics amplifier one, I started the Oculus app, then I started Steam, then I launched Steam VR, then I launched City Car Driving and clicked OK on the prompt that explained that the game was going to run in the headset. Once the game was started I went to the settings and selected "VR goggles" as the output device. When the prompt came up to ask to restart I answered no. I went back to the main menu and exited the game. I then launched it again from steam with Steam VR running and this time the game came up without crashing (as it had been doing before).

Once the game was up and running with "VR goggles" selected as the output device, I put on the headset and selected to start free driving to confirm that I was getting output to the headset. I was able to confirm that I was getting output (though it was really choppy because the internal laptop card isn't really powerful enough to run the game well). I then exited the game and shutdown the laptop again.

After the laptop was shutdown I unplugged the headset from the laptop and plugged it in to the graphics amplifier then plugged the graphics amplifier back in to the laptop. I then booted the laptop back up and started the Oculus application. It threw an error like it had previously advising a reboot so I rebooted the laptop. After the reboot the Oculus app came up without errors. I then started Steam and SteamVR. After that I launched the game and this time it started without crashing. I was then able to start a free drive and had output in the headset and everything ran smoothly (since it was running off the TITAN Xp now).

I really have no idea why the game isn't intelligent enough to recognize the external card without having to go through all of this nonsense. The alienware graphics amplifier provides an actual PCIE connection (the same as if the card were inserted in a PCIE slot), so I don't understand why it was initially crashing and failing to find my headset until I went through this whole song and dance. As I said in my last post, I don't have this problem with any other of the like 25 games that I have. Very strange, but anyways, at least it's working now.

[Dried09]

Hi,
Had the same issue with my setup laptop with 1060 GTX + Oculus quest 2 in Monitor + VR Goggles mode.
It has been working for some time and then started crushing on startup loading without any error messages. The only thing I changed - disconnected laptop from tv via hdmi.

So, to not to extend the story, game should be run on discrete video card, if its not - you need to force it to do that, in my case via nVidia control panel and this will do the trick.

It's definitely should be handled by the game, but it doesn't. Devs should take an eye on this.

[Eugene Forward]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dried09:

Hi,
Had the same issue with my setup laptop with 1060 GTX + Oculus quest 2 in Monitor + VR Goggles mode.
It has been working for some time and then started crushing on startup loading without any error messages. The only thing I changed - disconnected laptop from tv via hdmi.

So, to not to extend the story, game should be run on discrete video card, if its not - you need to force it to do that, in my case via nVidia control panel and this will do the trick.

It's definitely should be handled by the game, but it doesn't. Devs should take an eye on this.

Hello,

1. Please note that the game officially supports only Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets. Vive Pro and Rift S should work.

Regarding the Index, Quest, Cosmos or any WMR-compatible devices - for now we do not have these headsets by our hands, and do not have plans to supported them in near future. Sorry.

Also please take into account these advices if you use VR with City Car Driving:

- Update your VR headset software & drivers.
- Update your video card driver to the latest version.
- Make sure you connect your VR headset before(!) starting the game.
- Do not launch/use SteamVR. If SteamVR is already running – close it before launching the game. Then just run the game in a usual way and select the VR output in the in-game settings menu.
- VR activates only after the driving session start (it does not work in the main menu).
- If you feel you still need to make lower motion sickness effects you can try disabling some of the camera inertion effects as described here - https://steamcommunity.com/app/493490/discussions/0/3277925755433585773/

2. Also please note that laptops (any) and computers with integrated video cards are not officially supported.

You can try advices below, but we cannot guarantee correct game working on laptops or computers with integrated graphics.

If your PC has both – discrete and integrated video cards, then maybe the game uses the integrated one for some reason. Try forcing the game to the dedicated one – right click on the game shortcut and select Run with GPU <your dedicated video card>. Or if you don’t have this option in the context menu, you can follow these advices – https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/pc-components/how-set-default-graphics-card-3612668/

[jafugate15]

This was all very helpful hopefully I can get it working!