AC GT3 @ Monza - Sunday 7th February 2021

[maxilogan]

I still have to watch the replay carefully so I will just mention the episodes I remember, above all to apologize for them.
sorry @JamKart22 for bumping your rear at L1/T2, waited for your to pass by before restarting.

I told also on TS I apologize to @Stefano La Commare if I caused him any problem towards the end of the race, there was a carnage going on and by instinct I moved to the side to avoid an orange Porsche laying in the middle of the track.

Finally, I tried to be better at getting overtaken under blue flags but I'm sure that I caused some slow down here and there, I recall a yellow Lambo and maybe others. Trying to learn something more every race, this was my second one so (unfortunately) the path to being a good back marker is still long.

Overall satisfied of the first part of the race, I promise I'll look into push to talk for TS, don't know if it was me you heard breathing or shifting but for sure in the quali it could be. I then turned off the mic on the headphones except that I sometimes turned it back on to apologize after a problem. Again, don't know if it was me but I also turned off Crew chief, which was somewhat of an handicap for my habits. I assume that if it was me, the audio from CF was captured by the mic, but I don't think I had such a high volume
My main concern has been with the second part of the race: first stint I was able to run relatively consistently and tried to catch up with @JamKart22 and battling with him. In the second stint, I don't know what happened (most probably I lost the focus because I'm not used to such long races), spun too many times (in the second variante and the second Lesmo) so, in addition to causing some mess I also lost lots of time.. I'm looking forward to the next race to be learning something more.

 

[maxilogan]

Towards the end some aggressive dude behind me in a McLaren was trying it on and so I pulled out what reserve was left to finish.

It could have been me, but if I remember correctly, I finished behind you a couple of seconds in relative terms, but almost a lap in front of you in absolute terms.. Sorry if you felt me being aggressive, if you remember any specific episode let me know

 

[Chris Down]

I love how you get almost wrecked by the kerb in Ascari (7:40) and while you're lucky to have survived it, rsr livetiming only cares about you cutting the track and moans about it

 

[640er]

I'm also considering using VR, but i've no idea how high-end your setup needs to be. My PC has a i7- 3770 with a msi radeon RX 580 8gb and 8GB of ram. Should that be enough for VR of is it just to low?

Doesn't sound too bad for me. I have the same graphics card and was testing the old Rift1 for a few days (but sold it, wasn't happy with the image quality). Even though I only had an old i5 and 8GB RAM back then, I could play AC in VR. Graphic settings around low to medium.

Now I'm using the Reverb G2 and upgraded my CPU to a Ryzen 5 (3xxx) and 16GB RAM. GPU is still the same as yours. Details are aroung high to maximum and it's running at 60FPS.

@640er

you must have had same gearing as me, did not test 1st gear start before race.
Was hooked up pre race and qualifying trying to deal with the extra 8 degrees of temperature on the rear tyre. ( failing )

I have this problem with the Nissan.....

Rev it flat out, hit first gear on as you would normally do, wait 0.5 second
flick it into neutral, then flick it back into 1st.

Hmm sounds very interesting, I'll give it a try (and will fail miserably ) thx

 

[neesve]

Doesn't sound too bad for me. I have the same graphics card and was testing the old Rift1 for a few days (but sold it, wasn't happy with the image quality). Even though I only had an old i5 and 8GB RAM back then, I could play AC in VR. Graphic settings around low to medium.

Now I'm using the Reverb G2 and upgraded my CPU to a Ryzen 5 (3xxx) and 16GB RAM. GPU is still the same as yours. Details are aroung high to maximum and it's running at 60FPS.

I will probably upgrade my RAM to 16GB in the next few days, but i'm not sure if i can upgrade the processor because of my motherboard (Asus h61M-F).

Towards the end some aggressive dude behind me in a McLaren was trying it on and so I pulled out what reserve was left to finish.

Could've been me, i had so much overspeed (and @HF2000 1 sec behind) in ascari that i tapped you on the back and spun. I anticipated on you moving out of the way (because blue flag), so sorry bout that.

 

[neesve]

Only practiced offline...
You should check your fps with 22 ai cars and the replay from yesterday.

Also monitor the graphics card load while doing so, so you'll know if the 580 or your i7 is the bottleneck right now.
(I can recommend openhardwaremonitor, little tool, just run the exe. Then activate the plot and click the checkbox next to gpu load. This will write the load into a graph so you'll not only see some maximum but instead see up to the last 24h if you run the program for that long.
Very useful to check the load during some normal laps and not get the spikes from loading screens or whatever).
Alternatively I could recommend afterburner and activate "write to history", which will also record the fps, cpu loads etc etc.

Simulating the load for the graphics card for vr is kinda easy: amd should have some super resolution setting like Nvidia's DSR.
Activate it and set ac to a resolution with a similar amount of pixels.

Back up your ACOS.ini in documents/ac/cfg!!!
Changing resolution screws up your ac apps layout!!

A bit annoying to test all this but then you'll know if your system would be able to run it.

The big "you need a high end system for vr" comes from the magic true 90 fps and never dipping into asw mode.

But with my gtx 1070 and dirt rally 1, that meant really ugly super low settings (I think there is a bug that drops the vr fps way too early.. Had only 70% load...).
However once I was okay with aws and only 45 fps, I could put everything to maximum and enjoy the beautiful design of dirt rally 1

That's really helpful man, going to try that. Thanks mate.

 

[RasmusP]

Doesn't sound too bad for me. I have the same graphics card and was testing the old Rift1 for a few days (but sold it, wasn't happy with the image quality). Even though I only had an old i5 and 8GB RAM back then, I could play AC in VR. Graphic settings around low to medium.

Now I'm using the Reverb G2 and upgraded my CPU to a Ryzen 5 (3xxx) and 16GB RAM. GPU is still the same as yours. Details are aroung high to maximum and it's running at 60FPS.

Are you sure that it's constantly at 60 fps without dropping to frame insertion? If I wouldn't have known about ASW with my Rift, I probably wouldn't have noticed and only wondered about things sometimes being a bit weird.

I think with a rift, the RX580 should be fine. But the G2 in full resolution? With lowered settings it might be possible, sure, just wondering!

With the Rift you have this nice "Oculus Tray Tool" where you can configure an overlay that shows you when you're dropping into ASW and also shows you CPU and GPU independently so you'll see what's bottlenecking.
No idea if there's something similar for the G2?

Earlier today I felt the need to revisit my CSP settings since I was cold at the start of the race and sweating at the end due to the PC heating up the room.
I did some benchmarking, here are the results:

CSP basically everything activated apart from the crazy stuff:
avg 105.2 fps ; 1% low 88.2 fps
GPU load 70-85% ; CPU bottleneck

CSP disabled completely:
avg 83.2 fps ; 1% low 62.7 fps
GPU load 30-40% ; CPU bottleneck

Weather FX, Lighting FX, Particles FX disabled
avg 119.7 fps ; 1% low 91.2 fps
GPU load 85-99% ; Start = CPU bottleneck, then GPU bottleneck

This is with my racing HUD.
Tyres, Realtime, Trackmap, Sidekick, Helicorsa, ACRL Fuel

The Custom Font Rendering from CSP helps a lot regarding CPU performance.
The HUD apps are really bad for the CPU performance without this CSP feature.
The other optimizations are really nice too.

As you can see, with my 10600k @ 4.9 GHz on all cores, the big field from yesterday would put me constantly into ASW mode without CSP (below 90 fps). 60 fps/Hz on a G2 would be possible though.

With my revisited CSP settings (the big 3 disabled), 90 fps wouldn't be a problem


Anyway about the oculus in general: the image quality is so damn bad.. My eyes were hurting after more than 30 minutes. It was a nice experiment and I loved seeing everything in real scale but I sold it after 3 months.

I will probably upgrade my RAM to 16GB in the next few days, but i'm not sure if i can upgrade the processor because of my motherboard (Asus h61M-F).

You should really check your memory usage. More ram doesn't mean more fps if you don't use everything.
What's your current configuration? 1x 8GB or 2x 4GB?
Single channel vs dual channel makes a difference when you're in the CPU limit (like most people are in AC I guess).

Last time I checked DDR3 was pretty expensive... Might more sense to seel your CPU+Mobo+Ram (+maybe cooler) and buy a newer bundle, maybe used.

 

[Gunnar333]

I will probably upgrade my RAM to 16GB in the next few days, but i'm not sure if i can upgrade the processor because of my motherboard (Asus h61M-F).

Sorry, I don't want to destroy your hope that your system is too low for VR.
Sure, you can run VR on your PC. But it depends what is your personal preference.
You can run AC in VR with 45fps and low super sampling (vr render resolution setting)
But you may have problems with motion sickness and your view will be pixelated. If you can live with that it's great. VR is the best immersion you can get.

On the other hand, if you want high framerates and sharp image you will have to invest in a better system.
Here is an example of what is possible:
Running an HP Reverb G2 headset with full 100 super sampling is 3200x3200 pixel per eye. This is about the same as running 4K triple screens.
But with 90Hz.

So my advice is to get a used headset (Samsung Odyssey, Occulus Rift S, etc...) and try if you like it.

 

[neesve]

Are you sure that it's constantly at 60 fps without dropping to frame insertion? If I wouldn't have known about ASW with my Rift, I probably wouldn't have noticed and only wondered about things sometimes being a bit weird.

I think with a rift, the RX580 should be fine. But the G2 in full resolution? With lowered settings it might be possible, sure, just wondering!

With the Rift you have this nice "Oculus Tray Tool" where you can configure an overlay that shows you when you're dropping into ASW and also shows you CPU and GPU independently so you'll see what's bottlenecking.
No idea if there's something similar for the G2?

Earlier today I felt the need to revisit my CSP settings since I was cold at the start of the race and sweating at the end due to the PC heating up the room.
I did some benchmarking, here are the results:

CSP basically everything activated apart from the crazy stuff:
avg 105.2 fps ; 1% low 88.2 fps
GPU load 70-85% ; CPU bottleneck

CSP disabled completely:
avg 83.2 fps ; 1% low 62.7 fps
GPU load 30-40% ; CPU bottleneck

Weather FX, Lighting FX, Particles FX disabled
avg 119.7 fps ; 1% low 91.2 fps
GPU load 85-99% ; Start = CPU bottleneck, then GPU bottleneck

This is with my racing HUD.
Tyres, Realtime, Trackmap, Sidekick, Helicorsa, ACRL Fuel

The Custom Font Rendering from CSP helps a lot regarding CPU performance.
The HUD apps are really bad for the CPU performance without this CSP feature.
The other optimizations are really nice too.

As you can see, with my 10600k @ 4.9 GHz on all cores, the big field from yesterday would put me constantly into ASW mode without CSP (below 90 fps). 60 fps/Hz on a G2 would be possible though.

With my revisited CSP settings (the big 3 disabled), 90 fps wouldn't be a problem


Anyway about the oculus in general: the image quality is so damn bad.. My eyes were hurting after more than 30 minutes. It was a nice experiment and I loved seeing everything in real scale but I sold it after 3 months.



You should really check your memory usage. More ram doesn't mean more fps if you don't use everything.
What's your current configuration? 1x 8GB or 2x 4GB?
Single channel vs dual channel makes a difference when you're in the CPU limit (like most people are in AC I guess).

Last time I checked DDR3 was pretty expensive... Might more sense to seel your CPU+Mobo+Ram (+maybe cooler) and buy a newer bundle, maybe used.

I just bought a new PC so if the majority says it's just about enough to get a decent amount of FPS i think i leave for the feature. I also need new paddles (anyone recommend the csl elite with loadcell?). I think tripple 1440p will also work right?

 

[640er]

Are you sure that it's constantly at 60 fps without dropping to frame insertion? If I wouldn't have known about ASW with my Rift, I probably wouldn't have noticed and only wondered about things sometimes being a bit weird.

I don't even know whats "frame insertion" or ASW means I'm referring to the value which is shown in CM under the video settings (Frame-rate of last session (or something like that)) I've played around with the various detail settings until I reached a point where it shows 60FPS. (The FPS limit is also set to 60).

I've also tried ACC (offline race with ~15 cpu cars) and Dirt Rally 2 in VR and both games are playable at the lowest settings. That surprised me after reading a lot about how greedy ACC is.

Ah and @neesve of course I had to upgrade my MB as well to fit the new Ryzen. I think my old i5 was about the same generation as your i7 is. I bought it back in the days before Battlefield 3 came out yes that is long ago.

 

[demetri]

PS: Can somebody explain me how to get off the line? I always lose at least one or two places from the starting line :/ Usually I'm at full throttle and when the lights go out, I click into first gear.

Use the force, Luke
Seriously though, if your 1st gear is too tall you need to ride the clutch on start not letting RPMs to drop where there's no engine torque

 

[pattikins]

I just bought a new PC so if the majority says it's just about enough to get a decent amount of FPS i think i leave for the feature. I also need new paddles (anyone recommend the csl elite with loadcell?). I think tripple 1440p will also work right?

I have the Fanatec Club Sport V3 pedals, & I've been very happy with them. From what I've read, the csl elite has some design issues.

 

[RasmusP]

I also need new paddles (anyone recommend the csl elite with loadcell?).

Seeing this more often lately:
Pedals = the things that you use with your feet
Paddles = the thing you row a boat with (and are behind your wheelrim for shifting or clutching )

CSL elite: beware, I hate them, here's why:
If you have a fixed seating position where you can push onto the pedal face completely straight, then they are good.
I had them and my issue was that I'm using an office chair and a wheelstand pro v2. My legs are pushing a bit from above.
The problem is that the loadcell of these pedals is not measuring the pressure on the actual rod with the elastomers but instead measuring how much you bend the pedal arm between your foot and the elastomers-axis-rod.
Sounds complicated, and it is. It means the pedal arm acts like a spring and also the leverage changes a lot when you move your foot around on the pedal.

For me that meant after the initial excitement, I was randomly locking up, missing braking points etc etc. When I moved my foot 2cm higher, I got 30% more brake input.

Sold them (since the whole internet say that they are awesome for the price, I easily got what I paid for them because Fanatec didn't have them in stock).

I then bought the V3 clubsport pedals and they are MILES AHEAD!!!
Yes, the price isn't great but at least my brake is totally consistent now...

Have to say when spending so much on pedals, getting Heusinkvelds might be worth it, if you know you'll be simracing for the next years to come.
I wanted the easy plug & play compatibility with my CSW 2.5 wheelbase.

If you want to read about the pedal issue with more depths and some drawings:

About to purchase fanatec CSL elite LC

Hi everybody. After pretty long checked of various options , I came to the conclusions that this pedals set is probably the best one for me. I want to upgrade from my current G25. I must admit that I have always concernant regarding replacing something which is working perfectly. Well, I...

www.racedepartment.com

My calculations (measuring the pedal dimensions!):
Bottom,Middle (=100%) and Top position with my foot:

CSL Elite LC varying from: 50% ; 100% ; 150%
V3 Clubsport: 88% ; 100% ; 112%

The 12% of the V3 are actually FEELable since the pedal is easier/harder to press because of the change in leverage. With the CSL, that's not linear though!

I think tripple 1440p will also work right?

Always the same answer: Simulate the amount of pixels by setting up superresolution (VSR).
Each game scales differently with resolution. 2x resolution is NOT 0.5x fps.
Here's an overview I made, however:

 

[Enzo Fazzi]

Seeing this more often lately:
Pedals = the things that you use with your feet
Paddles = the thing you row a boat with (and are behind your wheelrim for shifting or clutching )

You have no idea how much this grinds my gears on a daily basis.
Same goes for brake and break.

 

[random2k4]

I also need new paddles (anyone recommend the csl elite with loadcell?).

I also upgraded from the standard CSL Elite pedals to the Club Sport V3. After reading a lot about pedals, like @pattikins mentioned the loadcell for the Elite pedals have issues and can be inconsistent. Would spend the extra money and go for the CLub Sport V3

 

[RasmusP]

I don't even know whats "frame insertion" or ASW means I'm referring to the value which is shown in CM under the video settings (Frame-rate of last session (or something like that)) I've played around with the various detail settings until I reached a point where it shows 60FPS. (The FPS limit is also set to 60).

ASW = Asynchronous Space Warp
Yeah, marketing...

It simply does the same every modern TV does. Inserting calculated frames that "hopefully" match the next movement.
For TVs it's simple because they can buffer the next frames and look what will happen next.

In VR though, you don't want any latency so it takes the "trajectories" of your current movement and estimates the next frame.
Your PC runs at 45 fps (Oculus Rift, ASW on), so one frame every (1000/45 = 22.22 ms) and ASW calculates a frame inbetween so you'll get 90 fps (one frame every 11.11 ms).

When you shake your head too fast and in weird directions, you'll get glitching and ghosting with ASW.

Windows Mixed Reality headsets (I think the HP G2 is one), you have something similar but I'm not using VR so I'm not up-to-date there.

Some people get motion sick from this, I didn't. Apparently, you don't either.
Or maybe you have the resolution lowered? Afaik the G2 offers different sub-resolutions that don't use the full 2160x2160 per eye.

The CM fps rating sadly is pretty useless. It seems you have okayish fps in AC but you don't see the headroom and you don't see if you had drops below 60.

As you can see from all my posts, I think monitoring PC performance should be made a lot easier... But I guess the industry does not want people to buy the stuff they actually need...

 

[640er]

I also need new paddles (anyone recommend the csl elite with loadcell?).

I got used CSL Elite LC pedals some time ago and I'm very happy with them. Never tried more expensive gear. There's lot of other sim-related stuff I have to invest money before going to buy even better pedals.

@RasmusP
Ok now you got my curious. Will start monitoring my next session and see what I can find in the WMR setting (yes ReverbG2 is WMR)

 

[Gunnar333]

Always the same answer: Simulate the amount of pixels by setting up superresolution (VSR).
Each game scales differently with resolution. 2x resolution is NOT 0.5x fps.
Here's an overview I made, however:
View attachment 443703

Keep in mind that 2160x2160px for HP Reverb G2 is the native resolution of one of the displays. But It needs more much more render resolution with much headroomto achieve 100% scale.
On my system it's 3168x3100px
So this would be: 19641600 Pixel overall which is 2,1 times more than 9331200.

 

[neesve]

Seeing this more often lately:
Pedals = the things that you use with your feet
Paddles = the thing you row a boat with (and are behind your wheelrim for shifting or clutching )

CSL elite: beware, I hate them, here's why:
If you have a fixed seating position where you can push onto the pedal face completely straight, then they are good.
I had them and my issue was that I'm using an office chair and a wheelstand pro v2. My legs are pushing a bit from above.
The problem is that the loadcell of these pedals is not measuring the pressure on the actual rod with the elastomers but instead measuring how much you bend the pedal arm between your foot and the elastomers-axis-rod.
Sounds complicated, and it is. It means the pedal arm acts like a spring and also the leverage changes a lot when you move your foot around on the pedal.

For me that meant after the initial excitement, I was randomly locking up, missing braking points etc etc. When I moved my foot 2cm higher, I got 30% more brake input.

Sold them (since the whole internet say that they are awesome for the price, I easily got what I paid for them because Fanatec didn't have them in stock).

I then bought the V3 clubsport pedals and they are MILES AHEAD!!!
Yes, the price isn't great but at least my brake is totally consistent now...

Have to say when spending so much on pedals, getting Heusinkvelds might be worth it, if you know you'll be simracing for the next years to come.
I wanted the easy plug & play compatibility with my CSW 2.5 wheelbase.

If you want to read about the pedal issue with more depths and some drawings:

About to purchase fanatec CSL elite LC

Hi everybody. After pretty long checked of various options , I came to the conclusions that this pedals set is probably the best one for me. I want to upgrade from my current G25. I must admit that I have always concernant regarding replacing something which is working perfectly. Well, I...

www.racedepartment.com

My calculations (measuring the pedal dimensions!):
Bottom,Middle (=100%) and Top position with my foot:

CSL Elite LC varying from: 50% ; 100% ; 150%
V3 Clubsport: 88% ; 100% ; 112%

The 12% of the V3 are actually FEELable since the pedal is easier/harder to press because of the change in leverage. With the CSL, that's not linear though!


Always the same answer: Simulate the amount of pixels by setting up superresolution (VSR).
Each game scales differently with resolution. 2x resolution is NOT 0.5x fps.
Here's an overview I made, however:
View attachment 443703

Great help man, thanks. I think i'll have some testing to do, thanks again mate. I'm going to think about the paddles

 

[RasmusP]

Keep in mind that 2160x2160px for HP Reverb G2 is the native resolution of one of the displays. But It needs more much more render resolution with much headroomto achieve 100% scale.
On my system it's 3168x3100px
So this would be: 19641600 Pixel overall which is 2,1 times more than 9331200.

Depends on the quality you want I guess. I have to say on my Oculus Rift I didn't really see much difference (apart from my GTX1070 melting) when going from native resolution to 3x supersampling. Locked ASW to have a good A/B comparison. The blurry mess stayed a blurry mess and aliasing wasn't really an issue with CSP's TAA (I disabled TAA and went with 4x MSAA to see if the blurry mess would clear up. Nope... ).

I guess I would be totally fine with 2160x2160 per eye then!

With your resolution... I guess you're running a RTX3090?