EXPERIMENTAL: Virtual Reality

Mostly a feedback post.. setup wasn’t very intuitive, but I was able to figure it out. I’m also using my kid’s oculus, so I didn’t really know what I was doing anyways.

It took me a while how to figure out how to center the camera instead of having it hover over the vehicle. I saw the note about pressing ctrl + num5, but apparently over the years I changed the keyboard layout. Resetting all key bindings, then pressing ctrl + num5 worked.

I know there were some optimizations so folks that don’t have a powerhouse of a pc could try vr, but it would be neat to see some options to crank up the graphics in vr for those that have a higher end setup.

Once I had the camera setup, it was smooth sailing. 70-100 fps depending on the environment, and traffic.

Overall, awesome addition to an already awesome game!

 

I'm also getting a crash trying to load into VR mode. When pressing the VR launch button, everything keeps working on screen but after I put the headset on there's a freeze and then a 0x00000001 error. Interestingly trying to run it in safe+Vulkan+debug mode results in a 0xC0000005.

VRAM is getting nowhere near full (3.6/12 GB). Switching OpenXR runtime between Oculus and SteamVR makes no difference. Can't really come up with any settings I could even try changing anymore.

 

I have a HP Reverb G2 headset I was excited to try. Here's what I did for setup:

• I set SteamVR as the default OpenXR runtime via the SteamVR settings and was able to confirm the OpenXR runtime was SteamVR.
• I turned off all in-game traffic.
• I loaded into Small Grid Pure.
• I monitored my GPU memory usage throughout my sessions and attempts.

Here are my system specs:

• CPU - Ryzen 5800x
• RAM - 64GB of 3600mhz DDR4
• GPU - EVGA RTX 3080 12gb edition
• SSD - Samsung 980 Pro 2TB

Here are my results:

• On High/Ultra - unplayable mess. SteamVR reported roughly 200ms on average. Cause seems to be running out of VRAM.
• On Normal - Slightly less unplayable mess. Still ran out of VRAM.
• On Lowest - Playable/smooth but looks like

Looks like I need a GPU with way more VRAM if I want to play BeamNG VR at the moment

 

Attached MP4 of the centering issue I mentioned. As you can see it sort of snaps back and forth skipping the center ~5 degrees.

 

Despite the VRAM issues i've been experiencing (my RTX 2070 Super only has 8GB VRAM), one of the most annoying things is how recentering is controlled by BeamNG rather than the VR runtime controlling it. BeamNG really should listen for a recentering event from the runtime rather than doing it itself. When the center headset keybind is pressed it should send an event to the runtime to reset the headset as well. That way we don't have to deal with two independent recentering processes interfering with each other.

A process like this would be preferable than how it is currently:

BeamNG center HMD key/button pressed -> VR Runtime reset HMD -> BeamNG center HMD function is triggered

 

Spewing this error out even though my GPU is supported for Vulkan? Also I don't know why it's saying out that directory, think it's one of the devs haha.

Trying to test out VR but I cant get past this.

 

I am having this issue as well. I have to recenter SteamVR a bit to the left or right about 10 degrees then I am able to recenter properly using the in-game centering function.

 

As for this issue, it might be my framerate as you say. However, I would like to point out, after some extensive and very scientific testing (closing one eye at a time) it seems this flickering only happens on the screen for my right eye. Left eye has zero flickering.

 

Not a bug, but I think this is a feature that should be a requirement for VR.

We need a way to enable horizon lock for not just for the car rolling, but also pitching up and down as well. In real life, your head rotates independently from the car. Without horizon locking it feels as though the world around you is rotating and not the car which feels incredibly unnatural and sickening. Most racing simulators have proper horizon locking implemented and it increases immersion tenfold and reduces motion sickness significantly.

 

Will this run on gtx 1070, my brother wants to try it with his oculus quest 2

 

It's probably possible. I own an RTX 2070 Super which is about 30% faster than the GTX 1070 according to userbenchmark.com. I can run it at about 60 fps on lowest graphics when I am not out of VRAM. You brother might be able to run it at a lower framerate. However, Oculus Link is known to be a VRAM hog, so the GTX may have less to work with.

 

Hi there, seeing the news of this made me extremely excited. Primarily I am a VR streamer who plays beat saber, but BeamNG is my most played game to date, and the original reason i got a PC in the first place, back in 2014.
I streamed the game today, and after going through the known issue thread, I've noticed some anomalies. (I do also have the VOD, if you'd like.)
Specs: 4070ti, 10900k, 32gb ddr4 3600, Quest 2 via Link @ 3.0 @ 90hz (also on latest GPU drivers)
Ran at Low-Medium Low with Motion Blur off as well as Dynamic Reflections.
- AO causes flickering on all maps and objects, making me nearly go insane when I tried it out LMAO.
- Some maps have texture issues (VR only) such as Johnston Valley, I played that and it ended up with the whole of my screen merging into a texture in the distance, similar to older versions of the game where if you were to crash a car in the wrong way it would cause it to expand a single texture.
- Anything above Medium settings causes my VRAM to limit out @12GB - however it is playable when ASW is turned off at around 30fps. Below this, I get a very smooth 90fps consistently, even on Utah with AI on. It's insanely immersive when it works.
- Force feedback sometimes does not work at all on my G29, only working when I plug in another controller such as an Xbox controller, forcing it to detect what input I am using (this issue has never been present before.)
- Cycling cameras too quickly can make the game crash
- Struggle to click onto JBeam nodes when using the mouse since it uses the headsets view, so the mouse in headset and on monitor don't always match. Same issue when opening doors for example.
Things I liked:
- Moving your head outside the car causes the audio to use out of game audio. I thought this was an AWESOME QoL feature and just increased that immersion that bit more.
- Sense of speed was fantastic, especially on exterior cameras. They worked superbly showing the camera move back and slightly increasing the FOV.
- Generally, when the settings were right, it ran super well. The exact experience I've always wanted when playing BeamNG - combining my 2 favourite things together.
Points of improvement:
- Two (or more) predefined game settings for inside and outside of VR. My PC can usually handle 150fps~ on Utah on Ultra, however in VR it doesn't match that at all. Being able to cycle through presets (or maybe even having recommended ones) would work fantastically in this case.
- It took me a while to find the rendering option for my camera, it would be cool to have this as a first time setup menu for example the first time you set up VR.
Things I would look forward to seeing:
- Hand Tracking using the Oculus SDK (I believe this should work through Quest 2 and other hand tracked headsets. I cannot remember if this is standalone only though, apologies if it is.) I'd love to be able to open doors, lift roofs and generally interact more with the environment with this.

Absolutely incredible update and for a day 1 with no patches yet, I am insanely happy with the result. Can't wait to see more, and once again your development never ceases to amaze me. Thank you <3

 

Seeing as you're a fellow Reverb G2 user, is there any hope of getting away from steamvr? The performance difference between steamvr and OpenXR/VR is huge, and motion reprojection/foveated rendering would be a nice added benefit.
BTW thank you for acknowledging my suggestion for graphics presets on the subreddit

 

I need to set my pimax 8kx resolution to 75% for it to work, now a mid-mesh,mid-texture,mid-shader and others all low setting on grid map v2 gives me roughly 90fps, loading italy causes instant crash because not enough vram, guess I'll save up for a 4090, my 6900xt simply isn't gonna cut it.

 

Thank You


Unverified Top Tip: Drag the BeamNG window on your desktop to be as small as possible, it usually helps for VR games.

Also, you might want to consider adding instructions somewhere to the original post.

(But yes, HP Reverb G2 is working quite nicely in game, RTX3060 does struggle with it a bit though, but not upset about that, its a heavy game, great work devs )

 

I need to turn on parallel projection in my pimax settings, otherwise left-right eye image wouldn't line up, this option costs some performace.
I also noticed that PimaxXR as the OpenXR runtime wouldn't work in sim, which is something might be worth looking into.

 

Just popping in to say thanks and be a data point. VR support was what finally got me to buy the game today. I realize it will take some optimizations and imo it was a bold move to enable it knowing the current-gen GPUs were going to struggle etc etc. Big ups for taking the leap!

Specs:

• i5-12600k
• 3080 Ti OC (12 GB)
• 2x16 GB DDR4 3600 MHz
• Quest 2

How I am using it:

• Oculus set as OpenXR runtime
• Not using SteamVR
• Resolution and refresh rate set in the Oculus app
• Starting the game in Vulkan mode
• OculusDebugTool performance monitor to know how I'm doing frame rate wise
  
• Settings at low, no AA, no aniso

Results:

• Borderline playable at 2100p/72Hz. Depending on what's on the screen, may or may not stutter into tearing/ASW. Headroom 25-35%, but it still stutters. Some settings can be bumped to normal and AA can be enabled without seeming to affect it too much.
• Rather unplayable at 2700p/90Hz. Mostly in ASW land with super heavy tearing that for some reason seems worse in the right eye. Headroom in the red, 5% at most.
• "When" I switch to VR seems to make a difference. Switching in the launch screen, then loading in seems to be giving better results than loading in, then opening settings and switching to VR.
• Changing graphics settings after loading into VR nukes the performance from orbit, to the point where it's better to take the helmet off and kill the process. Must be something leaking there.

Super excited to see where this goes! Losing the bumper when kissing the wall in a drift felt so much cooler than the deathspin in other games

Idk if you have seen these, but on the off-chance you haven't: one and two excellent presentations on VR rendering caveats.

 

BeamNG.drive 0.30.0.0 0xCFFFFFFF STATUS_APPLICATION_HANG happens on Vulcan even out of vr i dont have any antivirus ive hard reinstalled and it seems to persist no matter what settings i ch
anger ive got a 4090 ryzen 7700x and 32 gb of ram it lets me drive for about 2 minute's then freezes and i have to force quit it any ideas anyone?

 

NEVERMIND, ONLY SEEMS TO WORK IN A LEVEL, NOT ON MAIN MENU
The workaround seems to be to uninstall stuff like vorpx, but I've never used software like that before. I just have oculus and steam running in the background. Reset view in the oculus UI doesn't do anything, and the reset view in beamNG doesn't seem to do anything. Is there a way I can make a custom offset in-game to fix this?

 

Well... That didn't work at all...(This is gridmap with NO mods enabled)