Project CARS 3 VR Settings

Functional Project CARS 3 VR settings

TLDR;

Please consider rating this guide if you like it!

Set your Texture Filtering and VR Supersampling values low enough to get at least 45 FPS for a passable VR experience even when racing in the rain. If you have a Ryzen 9 3950X with 64 GB RAM and an RTX 2080 Super or similar those values will likely be Anisotropic 4X and VR SuperSampling 1.5 - 1.7. The Resolution setting does not change what goes to the RIFT during racing; it does change the menus, videos, and what gets sent to the screen, so set that to whatever you want. Turn off SHADOW DETAIL.

Impacts of graphics settings on performance (as per Tom's Hardware[www.tomshardware.com]):

TEXTURE RESOLUTION: 2-4%
TEXTURE FILTERING: 1-4%
SUPER SAMPLING: > 40%
REFLECTIONS: 10% (NVIDIA) 20% (AMD)
ENVIRONMENT MAP: 35-45%
CAR DETAIL: 3-5%
TRACK DETAIL: 0-2%
SHADOW DETAIL: 10%
MIRROR QUALITY: 5-6%
MOTION BLUR: 4-5%
DETAILED GRASS: 0%
PARTICLE QUALITY: 0%
PARTICLE DENSITY: 0%

PATCH UPDATE 9/17/20:
Also updated my NVIDIA driver to latest version 456.38 and along with the patch has perhaps improved crash to desktop, still have them though so hard to tell. VR performance still just as bad, though.

Scope

The intent of the guide is to provide functional settings for Project CARS 3 VR users. The initial Project CARS 3 release VR performance was rather abysmal for a product advertised as having "best in class VR support." Codemasters did at least include VR support on day one for this product and is presumably committed to providing improvements and optimization to the VR implementation. I am encouraged by the Project CARS 3 patch 8/28/20 that did in fact fix the horrible menu stutter experienced by VR users and improved performance noticeably.

I use an Oculus Rift CV1 and typically launch using the Oculus launch option. Preliminary testing using the SteamVR launch option results in similar performance, although I have not tweaked any specific SteamVR related configuration options. If anyone has SteamVR specific recommendations please include in the comments!

Comments and suggestions are welcome and will be included as appropriate. I am certainly not a VR developer; most of this stuff I just googled to find things out and these are my assumptions so apologies in advance for mistakes and I will fix as needed.

My Specs

I have the following PC specs so your mileage may vary:
Ryzen 9 3950X
64 GB Ram
RTX 2080 Super
CV1 Oculus Rift

Settings

Can't find them?! Yup that's a feature! You have to complete the tutorial section using default settings before they show up. Don't worry, after you finish the beginning career tutorial section they will appear on the Main menu bottom of screen at far right.

Aysynchronous Spacewarp (ASW)

I tested using the Oculus Debug Tool which displays the application (Project CARS 3) display rate in cycles per second (Hz). Note that Hz is used when referencing what is actually drawn to the screen or VR lenses, however what the game is actually producing as output is measured in frames per second (FPS).

The Oculus Rift operates at 90Hz and when the application's output (Project CARS 3) is under 90 FPS the Oculus Rift will use a mechanism called Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW) to extrapolate between adjacent frames processed at 45 FPS and display them to the viewer at 90Hz. For most other racing sims, including Project CARS 2, you can get the game to run at 90Hz without the need for AWS at all by changing configuration values to match the power of your GPU. Currently it looks like Project CARS 3 is so poorly optimized for VR that I can't get it to run at 90Hz even using medium settings using a GTX 2080 super GPU. So it looks like for now if we want any sort of decent graphics we're stuck with ASW, so for a smooth display the application output (Project CARS 3) to the Oculus Rift should exceed 45 FPS so that is can use ASW effectively. This is why I attempt to configure the game to reach at least 45 FPS.

The OculusDebugTool allows you to see actual framerate rather than the interpolated ASW rate of 45 FPS, just set Asynchronous Spacewarp to Disabled. I would NOT recommend this during normal gameplay but it allows you to see and test the actual game output based on your system settings. To see the FPS in your headset set Visible HUD to 'Performance.' OculusDebugTool is at "C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics\OculusDebugTool.exe." Settings for testing shown here:

The only time I've seen Project CARS 3 at 90Hz is at the title screen prior to selecting 'START ENGINE.' Once you enter the garage the display drops to 45Hz indicating ASW and an FPS between 45 and 90 FPS.

ASW is explained in detail at the links below:

https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-spacewarp/

https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-asw-2-point-0-better-accuracy-lower-latency/?locale=en_US

Note that SteamVR has a similar process called Motion Smoothing:

https://www.vrfocus.com/2018/11/enjoy-judder-free-vr-with-steamvr-motion-smoothing/

Performance Settings

First update your video drivers!

https://www.nvidia.com/en-in/drivers/nvidia-update/
https://www.amd.com/en/support

Updating drivers should reduce the frequency of crashes but odds are good you will still crash randomly. Hopefully these become rare soon.



PATCH UPDATE 9/17/20:
Also updated my NVIDIA driver to latest version 456.38 and along with the patch has perhaps improved crash to desktop, still have them though so hard to tell. VR performance still just as bad, though.

Finding the sweet spot of "runs ok but not horribly ugly" is mostly a matter of trial and error. I have sacrificed some performance settings (High vs Ultra) in order to use 1.7 Super Sampling in the VR menu which to me provides a better image. Setting all options to their highest possible settings resulted in 36.6 FPS vs 45 FPS using the values shown. This 45 FPS is highly desirable as explained in the ASW section above. Still tweaking and expecting that Codemasters will continue to optimize VR performance. All performance metrics were recorded during race conditions with other vehicles present. Here is a listing of the graphics values and the percentage to which they impact performance as tested by Tom's Hardware, which is here[www.tomshardware.com]. Note their testing was not for VR, but I would imagine the impacts are similar.

TEXTURE RESOLUTION: 2-4%
TEXTURE FILTERING: 1-4%
SUPER SAMPLING: > 40%
REFLECTIONS: 10% (NVIDIA) 20% (AMD)
ENVIRONMENT MAP: 35-45%
CAR DETAIL: 3-5%
TRACK DETAIL: 0-2%
SHADOW DETAIL: 10%
MIRROR QUALITY: 5-6%
MOTION BLUR: 4-5%
DETAILED GRASS: 0%
PARTICLE QUALITY: 0%
PARTICLE DENSITY: 0%

Best settings are of course dependent on machine specs and user preferences, but as a starting point following are the settings that currently work best for me:

RESOLUTION: This controls the resolution of the output to screen, not the output to the VR headset during actual racing. However it does impact the resolution of in-game menus and videos. I tested at the minimum and maximum resolutions and detected no performance differences during driving gameplay. So you can set this to whatever you want; those who stream and whatnot may wish to set this as per their streaming requirements.

WINDOWED: This controls the output to the monitor, not the VR headset, so set as desired - I've noticed no performance impact between ON and OFF.

TEXTURE RESOLUTION: This has a measurable impact on performance and visual quality. For my specs at LOW my system shows a -73% headroom (under 90 FPS) vs HIGH which results in a -100% headroom (< 90 FPS). HIGH still allows me to run at > 45 FPS with ASW and HIGH looks a lot better so a use HIGH.

TEXTURE FILTERING: Setting to ANISOTROPIC 4X seems to be a good spot for my RTX 2080 Super graphics card. I had been using 16X but moving it down to 8X helped the FPS stabilize at over 45FPS for races but weather (rain) would still cause FPS to dip into the 30s. Changing this to ANISOTROPIC 4X stabilizes the FPS at or above 45 FPS for races with weather. Actually doesn't look much worse to me so definitely worth keeping at 4X.

V-SYNC: Controls what is sent to the monitor, not the VR headset, and tends to be a resource hog so I suggest turning it OFF.

SUPERSAMPLING: Setting here to OFF, LOW, and MEDIUM here results in 33.7 - 45 FPS respectively as per OculusDebugTool once the actual race starts. There seems to be no impact to VR performance no matter what I select, so perhaps the VR SUPERSAMPLING value is overriding this one anyway? Or maybe this value only determines supersampling done for the monitor output? If anyone knows please mention in the comments below!

PARTICLE DENSITY: Definitely a big impact on both performance and appearance. For my specs HIGH is good at 45 FPS and no jitter, changing to ULTRA still at 45 FPS but introduces jitter and artifacts.

RENDER FRAMES AHEAD governs how many frames the CPU will prepare in advance of the GPU rendering them when ready and is discussed at length in many Project CARS 2 discussions. According to the following link higher values will result in smoother yet laggy gameplay while lower values may reduce mouse and keyboard lag. For me changing from 1 to 4 seemed to result in a few extra FPS. This is also an easy value to test yourself as you can apply it without having to restart the game, unlike most other graphics settings. The linked article also mentions the NVIDIA control Low Latency Mode configuration value as an adjunct to/replacement for the Max Pre-Rendered Frames value. I tried various permutations of this value along with the RENDER FRAMES AHEAD values and did not notice any performance impact.

https://gfxspeak.com/2019/08/26/nvidia-speeds-rendering/#:~:text=They%20called%20it%20Maximum%20Pre,being%20rendered%20by%20the%20GPU.

SHADOW DETAIL - Turn this OFF! Thanks to Darkangle for pointing this one out. Even setting this to LOW seems to introduce sproradic jitter, turning OFF improves things greatly.

VR Settings

Hoping that Codemasters will continue to improve and optimize the VR performance. Currently these settings provide a clear image with minimal stutters during races with weather.

All things being equal using mostly HIGH settings and ANISOTROPIC 16X filtering here are some VR metrics during clear weather:

SUPERSAMPLING 2.0 28 FPS
SUPERSAMPLING 1.7 36 FPS
SUPERSAMPLING 1.5 45 FPS

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: The values above with ANISOTROPIC 16X dropped considerably for races during bad weather so I changed to ANISOTROPIC 4X resulting in the following values during rain:

SUPERSAMPLING 2.0 36.6 FPS
SUPERSAMPLING 1.7 >= 45 FPS

So I currently have it set to 1.7 and can live with 45 FPS using ASW. Definitely NOT "Best in class" but maybe we give Codemasters thanks for implementing it from day one and hope they continue to improve. Some races still cause FPS to drop below 45 when around lots of vehicles; currently using this as impetus to get ahead of the pack and stay there!

Additional Configuration Values

There are a number of configuration values that are stored in .xml files located at:

C:\Users\XXXXX\AppData\Local\Slightly Mad Studios\Project CARS 3

Many of these values are persisted from what the user enters via the Project CARS 3 Settings screen, however there are some that are only accessible by editing the configuration files directly. Simply open the file(s) with the text editor of your choice, edit, and see how the change impacts visual quality and performance. Following are some suggested edits including hiding crowds and setting Sharpness values as per Bombzey and Darkangle that have been carried over from Project CARS 2:

Set HideCrowds to true as per the following (line 37) in GraphicsConfigDX11.xml, GraphicsConfigOculusDX11.xml, or starvrsettings.xml in the above directory as appropriate:

<prop name="HideCrowds" data="true" />

Edit the following (lines 64 - 66) in GraphicsConfigDX11.xml, GraphicsConfigOculusDX11.xml, or starvrsettings.xml in the above directory as appropriate:

<prop name="SharpeningStrength" sharpeningstrength="2.200000" />
<prop name="SharpeningClamp" sharpeningclamp="0.060000" /> (try also "0.090000")
<prop name="OffsetBias" offsetbias="1.000000" />

Explanation for values and link from which it is taken follow below (PC2 thread):

Strength (0.0->3.0, default 0.0) - the strength of the sharpening, zero being off. I find a subtle amount like 0.6 to be a good starting point. Too high a value will cause shimmering effects and a generally unnatural look to the image. Note that having sharpening on at all will have a small performance cost, but the size of that hit doesn't vary with the amount of sharpening.
Clamp (0.0->1.0, default 0.045) - limits the amount of sharpening at the local pixel level (if you have a large continuity difference between the original pixel and blurred pixel it limits the amount of offset applied).
Offset (0.0->6.0, default 1.0) - the offset from the current pixel for the sampling pattern (so if it's 1 it will sample neighbouring pixels, any less and it will bias towards the central pixel, any more and it will start sampling pixels outside the normal kernel).

http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/showthread.php?55045-Blurred-Vr-(Oculus)&p=1484134&viewfull=1#post1484134

Please consider rating this guide if you like it!

[Xniperwolf]

my settings are not saved when changing in game options, any idea?

[DmAnd]

Why is it so important to turn shadow detail off? There is no explanation for that.

[DmAnd]

Yeah the VR mode is for sure broken. Flickering crap, bad perf even on top end hardware

[Cacazor]

Nvidia settings that remove the shimmer
https://steamcommunity.com/app/958400/discussions/0/3935537639870470950/#c3935537639871245762

[ac]

works fine on 3070 dirty... you must not know how to use Windows

[dirtyundies]

Pointless guy, the VR mode is broken, Oculus debug telling me -60% performance with everything on the lowest possible setting.... The only way my pc gets any faster is by upgrading me 3080 to a 3090, lol.

[Quinnman88]

Great Info here! Thank you so much for your involvement with the community to share such lengthy and valuable information.

[greekfurnace]

Thank you for putting in the time!

[Faust]

@Bombzey I updated to show that post patch and by modifying my nvidia driver to 456.38 i have had zero crash to desktops after 20 or so races, so that is definitely improved, may have been the driver though. I honestly don't see any performance increase after the patch but I will certainly update as needed if I notice something helpful.

[Bombzey]

Hi Faust, will you be making any guide tweaks after the new patch?