DiRT Rally 2.0 DiRT 2.0: VR Update Now Live

[Paul Jeffrey]

Codemasters have released their free VR support update for DiRT Rally 2.0.

Available to download from either the DiRT Rally 2.0 Steam page or buy via the Oculus Store, a new update for DiRT Rally 2.0 is here - adding long awaited support for the inclusion of virtual reality to the game for the very first time.

When DR2.0 launched back in February, plenty of the community were up in arms about the lack of VR support for the title, which was particularly galling considering the very solid implementation Codemasters produced for the first DiRT Rally release - and now that situation has been fixed thanks to a major new, free, update for the title.

Having promised players that a post launch VR update would be brought to the DiRT 2.0 in the months after the game released, Codemasters have now come good on that promise - yesterday dropping the surprise update for players to download and use with immediate effect.

Initially expected to be exclusive to Oculus Rift, the new VR patch has a wider scope than first anticipated, adding OpenVR support to the title to allow different types of VR headset to be used within the game.

Also available in the new V1.7 update comes new liveries and the DirtFish location as a Test Drive location. To access the location select [Garage] from the My Team main menu, and then [Vehicle Options] and [Test Drive].

DirtFish is expected to be added to Freeplay in a future update. There are currently no plans to add it to Multiplayer and VR support for PS4 is not something under consideration by the studio.

DiRT 2.0 is available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC now.

Check the DiRT 2.0 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for news, mods and community discussion about this excellent rally game.

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[Jeremz Pou]

Because of the latest steam VR beta.
Go back to the non beta version.

Indeed, it was that ! Thank you !

 

[Blamer]

bought, installed and played it yesterday.
well, played is a big word, let's say 'tried not to puke' in the 10 minutes on low settings and a 1070 OC. One of the worst VR experiences I had so far!
I don't know... I feel like I have been robbed

And I even had to unistall DR1 to make room for DR2

 

[fwyflyer]

I have also tried Dirt Rally 2.o in VR on Steam with and without Steam VR. For me, it ran better without SteamVR. Regardless, the patch did not appear ready for release... The most significant problems I have observed with Dirt Rally 2.0 in VR are: 1) lack of mouse support and 2) failure to change resolution to something consistent with a VR headset. Moreover, if you were running Dirt Rally in 4k before the VR patch, Dirt Rally appears to be trying to do the VR in 4k too... which clearly canNOT work. Codies: give us a prompt to ask whether we want to play in VR, give us mouse support in VR AND allow us to maintain different screen resolutions for VR with a headset and non-VR. I am hopeful once that is done we'll all be up and running again...

 

[Kranky Pantz]

Disappointing to say the least.

I bought DR2.0 on Steam in good faith that it would be getting EQUAL treatment for VR, but deep down had my doubts due to the silence from both Codies & Oculus after that initial tease.
I still had some reservations, so opted for the standard non-deluxe version (luckily on a deep sale too) in case things didn't pan out with VR.
I could still happily use it with TrackIR and/or 4K for a semi-immersive pancake experience, so no HUGE loss.
Unless things change and this is some sort of an alpha release for VR users on Steam, I suppose I should have trusted my gut instinct.

I've been running the original DR1 since it first received VR on Steam, but always thought that the performance was oddly low in VR compared to even more demanding titles.
Should be performing better on my midrange system of an i7-9700k / GTX 1080 / 32GB's RAM / game installed on a Firecuda SSHD.

When Oculus put it on sale the other day for 63% off I figured I'd buy it in order to play it natively with the Rift, thinking that not having to run Oculus Home + Steam might save some resources.
Boy was I right for once!
Well, I'll be damned if the Oculus Home version isn't smooth as butter compared to the Steam version, almost a night & day difference.

So here we are with DR 2.0 and it's practically the same situation (so far).
Not having the Oculus API in the Steam version was in short, a dick move by both parties, knowing full well what the performance differences would be.
I'd lay the blame more on the Codies side though, because they were the ones throwing out the tease and then went silent, plus it's their baby to begin with.

As much as I'm happy that VR has finally come to DR 2.0, it still feels like a slap in the face that it has been implemented so poorly and released to the public.
Not good for a first impression from two industry pioneers.

We're still in the early days of DR2.0 VR, so perhaps things will improve IF this whole performance issue between the two versions was unintentional.

Otherwise, wait for a decent sale on DR 2.0 from Oculus someday, because DR1 was selling for $5 during last holiday season, and it's only a matter of time!

 

[Deleted member 197115]

DR1 was only Oculus native, Steam Store or not. To play it in anything else you'd need Revive.
Are you saying that even DR1 version from Oculus store outperforms DR1 from Steam?
DR2 also included native support for OpenVR, perhaps at the last moment and not properly optimized considering the result. I don't see FB sponsoring further optimization for that platform.
May be Revived version of Oculus native performs better, someone needs to try it out.

 

[Kranky Pantz]

DR1 was only Oculus native, Steam Store or not. To play it in anything else you'd need Revive.
Are you saying that even DR1 version from Oculus store outperforms DR1 from Steam?
DR2 also included native support for OpenVR, perhaps at the last moment and not properly optimized considering the result. I don't see FB sponsoring further optimization for that platform.
May be Revived version of Oculus native performs better, someone needs to try it out.

From what I've been able to test, in short, yes.

With the Oculus Rift CV1, the performance when using the Oculus Store version is noticeably better than the Steam version in VR.
I don't even see a "Desktop Mode" being available for the Oculus version though, even with the Rift unplugged.
Perhaps it's been stripped down and is lean & mean with VR???

I'll gladly stick with playing my new to me $10 CAD Oculus Store version of DR1 until things get sorted out with DR2.0 VR on Steam, or someday there is a MASSIVE price drop on the Oculus Store to ease the pain of buying it 2X's.

What I'd also like to know is if the Oculus Store version of DR2.0 has the option to run the game in Desktop Mode for when the mood strikes.

 

[Spinelli]

I don't own a VR unit so I don't know much about adjustments but every VR video I see of any racing game, be it iRacing, Project Cars 2, Assetto Corsa, RFactor 2, Dirt 2.0, etc. almost always has the player using an unrealistic and "friendly" (I won't go so far to call it arcadey) view that has the view (AKA the driver's eyes, head, or seat) placed too high and too downward-titled. In reality, the view should be much lower and facing almost straight into the distance (maybe just the slightest amount downard).

Are games' views still able to be adjusted in VR mode or are players stuck with what the developer sets up?

Same question regarding FOV: Are we supposed to assume each games' developer sets up a perfect 1:1-with-real-life-scale FOV and for every different headset out there? Or do we still need to calculate and adjust the FOV (like how we have to calculate the 1:1 scale FOV with monitors depending on their size, aspect ratio, eyes-to-monitor distance, etc.)?

 

[RCHeliguy]

In my experience with DR 1.0, PC2, AC, ACC, iRacing and what I've seen of DR 2.0 the view in VR is properly to scale and you can center your HMD viewpoint exactly.

It is a natural experience looking into corners and the depth perception helps a lot.

The image you see is not equivalent to a 4K display, but it is very believable especially with recent headsets. The dashboard will look very realistic, but the resolution in the distance does suffer.

 

[Peter.]

it now only opens in vr can't play on monitor

 

[MarkR]

@Spinelli a couple of things to consider, if you are watching a Youtube 2D video of VR then you are only seeing one 'eye' and not the complete VR image.

In AC. pacrs2 and ACC yes the player can adjust the seat and head position as much as required, including the head angle - how much the driver is tilting their head up or forward. In Dirt Rally 2.0 the current adjustment is basic but it still works (though Steam VR doesn't really with Oculus). I use the shoulder straps as my guide in all the games, when I look down and the shoulder straps are aligned with my shoulders in the real world I use that as the head position. (As a result of the way VR records on one screen some people have asked me why I'm looking at my feet - in VR I'm not it's just that one screen image that makes it seem so.

FOV adjustment? Not as far as I know but the worldscale in AC, pcars 2 and ACC are perfect and to scale with the real world.

If you get a chance to try VR sit in each of the ACC cars and see just how different the driving position is. The McLaren is low and claustrophobic, looking over the wheel. The Aston, by contrast, feels like I'm sitting low in the car and looking through the top of the wheel. The difference is superb and it takes some getting used to.

In my opinion, the view in VR both in these racing games and some of the DCS world planes is exactly like sitting in the real cockpit.

 

[MarkR]

it now only opens in vr can't play on monitor

I believe you have to unplug your VR HMD to get it to work in 2D - a poor solution and another serious oversight by Codies.

 

[Spinelli]

a couple of things to consider, if you are watching a Youtube 2D video of VR then you are only seeing one 'eye' and not the complete VR image.

In AC. pacrs2 and ACC yes the player can adjust the seat and head position as much as required...

FOV adjustment? Not as far as I know but the worldscale in AC, pcars 2 and ACC are perfect and to scale with the real world.

Perfect. That's great to hear.

What about 3D depth? From everything I've read, unlike with something like Nvidia's 3D Vision, 3D depth cannot be adjusted with VR headsets and all brands/models of VR headsets actually have different amounts of 3D depth (and none use 1:1 scale for depth but all scaled down to varying amounts). I've only tried an older Oculus as well as the HTC Vive non-pro. The 3D depth was nice but there didn't seem to be that vast far-away depth achievable in something like Nvidia 3D Vision.Things that were 300m away looked more like I was looking maybe 100m away or something whereas in 3D Vision I can really make things look properly scaled in terms of depth/distance. What are your thoughts on the 3D depth of VR headsets?

 

[MarkR]

I'm no expert and can only really judge vs real world flying/track driving experience and I agree depth perception varies by game, for example, War Thunder (awful game model) somehow has superb depth perception that DCS can't match. As an aside that new Spiderman demo has superb depth too.

All the same, I see depth, distance and elevation perception as the key advantages of VR for racing games. The first time I tried the Red Bull Ring in VR I was instantly faster as I could see the drop into the last corner and judge braking so much more realistically. Previously in say the F1 games I'd overshoot that apex because the angle of the track isn't so visible on a flat-screen. Tracks like Cadwell Park and Oulton Park come alive for me in VR because of this effect. It would be good if distance clarity was somewhere near the real world but I recognise we are a fair way from that in term of both computer power and VR HMD images.

In Dirt Rally 2.0, for the short time I could stand the low res graphics and occasional stutter, it's a much better experience because I can read the camber and ruts on the track, seeing how much the track falls away makes it so much easier to judge the braking for that 'slow into hairpin right' call. Again I was a lot quicker on the one stage I tried on my first run.

Just my subjective opinion and I'm sure others with more technical knowledge could explain more about what that difference in depth/draw distance is.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The depth perception feels real to me.
In games like The Climb or even In Death if you teleport to the edge of a roof you can feel vertigo.

I had a couple over to try out VR a while ago and when the wife was standing on a small wooden stand rock climbing she asked her husband to hold her arm so she could look around... She was standing on the concrete floor of my basement. She couldn't bring herself to stand up and look around because of "the height".

In a space game like Eve Valkyrie when you are flying around and inside asteroids the depth perception is critical.

There are plenty of examples. A place where it made all the difference in the world was in my RC helicopter flight simulator. In a 2D sim there is just no sense of the danger of a large heli flying close by and it is much harder to gauge exactly how close your heli is to the ground. In VR it was MUCH more true to life.

 

[randomcallsign]

This vr implementation choice is a mess. Looks really bad on codemasters

 

[Spinelli]

I'm no expert and can only really judge vs real world flying/track driving experience and I agree depth perception varies by game, for example, War Thunder (awful game model) somehow has superb depth perception that DCS can't match. As an aside that new Spiderman demo has superb depth too.

All the same, I see depth, distance and elevation perception as the key advantages of VR for racing games. The first time I tried the Red Bull Ring in VR I was instantly faster as I could see the drop into the last corner and judge braking so much more realistically. Previously in say the F1 games I'd overshoot that apex because the angle of the track isn't so visible on a flat-screen. Tracks like Cadwell Park and Oulton Park come alive for me in VR because of this effect. It would be good if distance clarity was somewhere near the real world but I recognise we are a fair way from that in term of both computer power and VR HMD images.

In Dirt Rally 2.0, for the short time I could stand the low res graphics and occasional stutter, it's a much better experience because I can read the camber and ruts on the track, seeing how much the track falls away makes it so much easier to judge the braking for that 'slow into hairpin right' call. Again I was a lot quicker on the one stage I tried on my first run.

Just my subjective opinion and I'm sure others with more technical knowledge could explain more about what that difference in depth/draw distance is.

The depth perception feels real to me.
In games like The Climb or even In Death if you teleport to the edge of a roof you can feel vertigo.

I had a couple over to try out VR a while ago and when the wife was standing on a small wooden stand rock climbing she asked her husband to hold her arm so she could look around... She was standing on the concrete floor of my basement. She couldn't bring herself to stand up and look around because of "the height".

In a space game like Eve Valkyrie when you are flying around and inside asteroids the depth perception is critical.

There are plenty of examples. A place where it made all the difference in the world was in my RC helicopter flight simulator. In a 2D sim there is just no sense of the danger of a large heli flying close by and it is much harder to gauge exactly how close your heli is to the ground. In VR it was MUCH more true to life.

Ya, markR, that's exactly my concern, how the depth perception differs in between games (and even between headsets). I may be oversimplifying it but it should just be a case of increasing the seperation between the 2 views (just like is done with something like Nvidia 3D vision). I don't think it PC power or resolution affects that.

RCHeliguy, ya, the general consensus is that the depth perception is good, it's just concerning how it's game/developer dependant without user adjustability but it sounds like, for the most part, devs do a pretty good job with it.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The difference between headsets has to do with how much the field of view overlaps. When you look at the real world you have stereoscopic vision in the main center area 90-110 degrees. However your peripheral vision is from either you left or right eye and there is no depth perception until you look in a given direction.

Right now most headsets are operating in that normal vision stereoscopic area and for the most part they all get this right. According to some HP Reverb may be the only headset where the overlap between the lenses was adjusted a bit too far away from the center.

So far my experience with the Rift, Index and to a much smaller extent Samsung Odyssey is that they all have good overlap and 3D vision works well.

I wouldn't worry about this. My experience across a pretty wide variety of games is that they all work pretty well.

 

[Cote Dazur]

One step in the right direction, nice of codemasters to try to bring us VR for that title, I hope it will eventually work as well as what the other smaller studio are able to offer.
Wait and see.

 

[Rage9one]

Dirtfish? Some freeroaming would be nice in Dirt Rally 2.0

 

[RCHeliguy]

As I said earlier my i9-9900K with 1080Ti is struggling with Dirt Rally 2.0. To get it to work decently, I have to run 80 fps, turn the settings almost all the way down. The end result looks horrible!

In addition for some reason my hand brake works in game, but I have to hold the space bar down at the beginning of each stage.

Navigation is pretty bad. 1 = Enter, 4 = ESC, but then the F3 and F4 keys move you back and forth across the top categories of the menu and the arrows move around only in the center selection areas.

I set button box to be a keyboard device and that seemed to work. However the F11 key which is the HMD center is not a feature I could find anywhere to map to my button box.

I might experiment with dropping the overall resolution down to see if I can get the effects up to something passable, but as it is now I consider this game unplayable.

I'm able to run just about every other Racing sim at 120 fps with all settings up and some super sampling. The result in those sims is excellent.

Dirt Rally 1.0 looks MUCH better in VR and is playable.