After almost two years, Rennsport has moved to an Open Beta. With the update, VR was introduced to the upcoming sim - but the feature still has a long way to go.
Without a doubt, VR is one of the best way to increase immersion levels in sim racing. It should come as no surprise that the feature tends to be high on the list for many sim racers, and the Rennsport dev team know this. As the sim has moved on to Open Beta status, it also introduced VR via an update on July 10.
When we gathered our impressions of the update in general, we did not yet test VR, but promised to look into the feature - which this article is going to do. As for the rest of our impressions, feel free to check out the video below if you have not done so yet.
Of course, with Rennsport running on Unreal Engine 5, there were concerns about the VR performance. Assetto Corsa Competizione on Unreal 4 is not the easiest title to extract performance and good visuals from at the same time, and this extends to its VR feature as well. Does the more recent version of the engine mean this is better in Rennsport?
Luckily, it is fairly easy to do, albeit not quite straight-forward. All you need to to is right click on Rennsport in your library, click on 'Manage', then enable 'Launch Options'. There, you need to insert "-vr" (without the quotation marks) - done! Make sure your headset is connected and SteamVR is running before you click launch, then Rennsport will start in VR.
Further advice by Rennsport themselves was given via their Discord:
CONTROLS SETTINGS
VIDEO SETTINGS
The Rennsport Video menu in VR.
Without OpenXR Toolkit, these instabilities were gone, but of course, performance was worse. Even on my RTX 4080 (powering a Pico Neo 3 Link), i had to turn down graphics settings significantly - and the result looked suboptimal, to put it mildly.
Flickering fences, very noticeable jagged edges, almost-transparent artifacts in cockpit view, blurry view and pixelated menus - it was hard to look at, to be honest. Unfortunately, the sim did not play ball when it came to screenshots, so unfortunately cannot show examples.
In-game, Rennsport's VR feature is far from a looker yet.
In a test session at Hockenheim (see the screenshot above), I was able to nail the tricky Nordkurve (Turn 1) apex much more consistently and could also step on the accelerator much earlier and with more confidence. In that sense, the usual qualities of VR revealed a good base - but the performance and visuals need to be polished desperately if Rennsport wants to become a serious alternative for VR sim racers.
Have you tried Rennsport in VR already? Feel free to share your experience on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
Without a doubt, VR is one of the best way to increase immersion levels in sim racing. It should come as no surprise that the feature tends to be high on the list for many sim racers, and the Rennsport dev team know this. As the sim has moved on to Open Beta status, it also introduced VR via an update on July 10.
When we gathered our impressions of the update in general, we did not yet test VR, but promised to look into the feature - which this article is going to do. As for the rest of our impressions, feel free to check out the video below if you have not done so yet.
Of course, with Rennsport running on Unreal Engine 5, there were concerns about the VR performance. Assetto Corsa Competizione on Unreal 4 is not the easiest title to extract performance and good visuals from at the same time, and this extends to its VR feature as well. Does the more recent version of the engine mean this is better in Rennsport?
Rennsport In VR: Very Rough Start
Sadly, no. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case - but let us start at the beginning. While many VR users are more than familiar with launching sims in VR via Steam, it is a bit of a different story when using the Epic Games Launcher, as Rennsport does.Luckily, it is fairly easy to do, albeit not quite straight-forward. All you need to to is right click on Rennsport in your library, click on 'Manage', then enable 'Launch Options'. There, you need to insert "-vr" (without the quotation marks) - done! Make sure your headset is connected and SteamVR is running before you click launch, then Rennsport will start in VR.
Further advice by Rennsport themselves was given via their Discord:
CONTROLS SETTINGS
- Bind ResetVRPosition to preferred button under Cameras.
VIDEO SETTINGS
- Turn down visual Effects Quality from Epic(Will cause a green glare otherwise)
- Enable DLSS
- Tune the mainmenu and ingame distance to 3 and their scale to 1.2.
- Enable Instanced Stereo and Round Robin Occlusion Queries
The Rennsport Video menu in VR.
Performance Issues & Instability
At first, I was pleasantly surprised to find that OpenXR Toolkit worked out of the box without me having to add the usual files to the game's folders. However, this soon turned into disappointment, as Rennsport would simply crash when loading into a session - sometimes sooner than later, but always before actually allowing me to drive.Without OpenXR Toolkit, these instabilities were gone, but of course, performance was worse. Even on my RTX 4080 (powering a Pico Neo 3 Link), i had to turn down graphics settings significantly - and the result looked suboptimal, to put it mildly.
Flickering fences, very noticeable jagged edges, almost-transparent artifacts in cockpit view, blurry view and pixelated menus - it was hard to look at, to be honest. Unfortunately, the sim did not play ball when it came to screenshots, so unfortunately cannot show examples.
In-game, Rennsport's VR feature is far from a looker yet.
One Positive Takeaway
Looks and performance aside, it is possible to dial it in to run in a somewhat smooth fashion. And once it does, I felt like it helped to make Rennsport feel much more pleasant than on a monitor. While the handling is in a mostly good place as of Open Beta v1.9.0, it feels more predictable and believable in VR.In a test session at Hockenheim (see the screenshot above), I was able to nail the tricky Nordkurve (Turn 1) apex much more consistently and could also step on the accelerator much earlier and with more confidence. In that sense, the usual qualities of VR revealed a good base - but the performance and visuals need to be polished desperately if Rennsport wants to become a serious alternative for VR sim racers.
Have you tried Rennsport in VR already? Feel free to share your experience on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
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