While not having played pcars with it yet, fully agree. If you haven't tried "fanstatic contraption" is imo a must have for vive and falls exactly in that "close range" gaming. And having a bit of a glimpse on what all those startups and tech giants are cooking, we will likely solve the resolution problem in the next decade or so, and someone is gonna get filthy rich doing so There is new display technology, projectors into your eye, hell some built even bionic contact lenses. It's crazy, but something will work out in the end to be mass marketable. That's the only downside one has to be aware of when getting the VR devices now, every new generation still can make big jumps and it's not clear what turns in terms of technology we will see. Very exciting tech gamble
The next gen head sets should be a big jump, but to be honest I think graphics card hardware might not be up to the job. My box gets 11 out of 11 for the Steam VR performance score (1080 gtx / i5 @4.2Ghz), and this set up is struggling when I enable super-sampling. I think that the next gen of gfx cards will be able to make the stuff on the current gen headsets look a lot better, so on reflection I think the 1st gen Vive and Rifts will get noticeably more awesome when gfx hardware improves, and remain 'current' for a couple of years. Windows 10 has made my rig run a bit smoother but PCars is still a bit of a let-down. AC is still amazing, and now I've adapted more to the aliasing the racing is superb. Bezzing round Donny in the MX5, or wrestling with the Mazda 787 is amazing. And watching the replays is also really really cool. I had some races in the KTM X-Bow too, and being 'out in the open' just makes it all the more 'real'. It really is a completely different experience to using a screen. I've said a few unkind things about AC. Their API and shared memory data is still awful, but I'm really enjoying the game and my opinion about it was entirely wrong. Best VR experience ever. Although watching my kids marvel at being underwater gawping at jellyfish in theBlu is also a fun experience
Regarding VR, I would like to offer one suggestion from personal experience: don't bother with Google Cardboard-level VR goggles. Not worth the money and time if you want to use it for racing games IMO. Save for something better. I tried Oculus Rift at local BestBuy, and then ordered a $30 goggle to test with my Nexus 5 (1920*1080). The difference is day and night.
Im not sure if this is all that surprising honestly. When you supersample, you are effectively rendering 4 times as many pixels as you would at the native resolution. And I believe both the Oculus and Vive's resolutions are both higher than 1080p. I think the Oculus might be 1920x1200 (960x1200 per eye)? So, you are effectively trying to render more pixels than 4k (3840x2160). That's a lot of pixels to push, and the need in VR to maintain a high framerate, that is still going to be quite a challenge. Even on top end hardware. This generation is still simply not strong enough to push 4k resolutions at high framerates while playing on high -maxed out settings. It's still going to be a generation or two more before 4k at >100 fps at max settings is possible. Beyond that though, have you tried using Nvidia Inspector? Instead of supersampling (or using DSR), you may try using some other form of AA which doesnt inherently render the entire image at a higher resolution. May be worth a shot in any case.
Wondering to get the game while on sale. How is multiplayer situation? AMS seems rather few servers with people compared to r3e. Is AC much better? As for VR perf. There is a lot that the games can do to be smarter in terms of resolution handling and making use of hw features specific to VR (Pascal has a couple ones). Brute force is not gonna be the way for VR (Unless you use two GPUs). Also the resolution you send to HMD is bigger than their display resolution to account for distortion, so it's even more pixels than you mentioned here. The good thing is that you don't need full detail in most of the area as your brain won't notice. Hence the trickery around using rendering that accounts for the lease distortion. As developers more seriously tune their VR today's high-end shall be okay for current hw. And the optimizations will just get more important as we increase resolution on the devices.
AC is very much worth grabbing during a sale, multiplayer I'd say AC is the sim that has the most active community outside of iRacing, if ranked pick up racing is your thing (and it should be) make sure to sign up SimRacingSystems. Or like all the other sims, Racedepartments club races are a good place to start.
multiplayer seems 'ok' - better than AMS, but doesn't seem as popular as R3E but bare in mind that I'm accustomed to the R3E interface and find the AC multiplayer interface confusing, so I'm not sure how many players there are to be honest. The netcode seems fine. Hoping for better software for VR rendering. I understand the impact SS has on the sheer number of pixels I'm asking the card to push, but I'm just surprised that this is all necessary, and surprised that the latest and greatest kit can't really produce good image quality without crippling stutter. In-game AA settings are quite limited in VR (perhaps the rendering pipeline has to work differently, making MSAA and other tricks unusable?). Some kind of foveated anti-aliasing approach would be nice but I think some patent-troll might be sitting on that idea .
Not a great MP fan myself, I drive SP almost exclusively, but whenever I looked and compared, the MP activity in AC was much higher than that to be seen in RR, by several factors. If that has changed recently, then not before just the past last weeks or so. Steam Statistics also show that the average player numbers in AC MP+some SP is three times as high as in RR MP+all SP. There were times one year ago or longer when it was even factor 4 and higher. The interface in AC for MP is straight forward and to the point. The icons mostly switch on and off search options for servers. If you want to drive MP, check AC's options out. Whenever I did use it on few occasions, it worked rock-solid and reliable.
The number of players online highly depends on when you play AC. You might end up finding only very few people doing drifting, or on a Friday night 2 weeks ago for example finding more than 10 non-password servers that aren't GT2 or GT3 or Nords, and have more than 5 people. If you want some mp action I would recommend picking up AC on sale now because: 1. The number of online players is pretty good. It's not hard to pick up a race. It sometimes could be disappointing to only find GT2/GT3 or Nords though but it depends on when you search for races. 2. The introduction of minorating plugin (a safety rating server plugin that keeps record of a player's collision/km traveled to grant a player a safety rating and kicks wreckers. Search for servers with 'MR' in the name. See minorating.com for details) makes many server a nice, clean, and competitive place to race with other people. 3. SimRacingSystem.com supports AC and has organized race every hour. If you aren't dedicated enough for a league, SRS gives an iRacing-like feeling of progress when you do these individual races. 4. You can set up a server on your own computer and get on the server on the same computer with your friends. You don't need a unique IP address for the server like that required by R3E (correct me if I'm wrong I think to set up R3E server you need a dedicated IP address). 5. You can see what the fuzz is all about yourself (pretty much the reason I bought RF2) Just my 2 cents.
thx @St3fan I had bought AC before and didn't like it, so made use of refund that time, but I also didn't give it much time. But "gotta catch them all", so went for it in the last seconds of the sale and the Porsches coming could be nice
LINK - Mixed Realities Very impressive video, illustrating both Oculas Rift DK2 and mixing its images with real world home cockpit via greenbox technology. It also illustrates the kind of blurriness you need to expect in 3D goggles, as it seems. Easy to see why racing games are made for 3D goggles - and 3D goggles for racing games. Note that the author of that video has posted a whole collection of such videos, from many different sim titles. Some of them are even better.
I consider AC my second fave sim but I just realized I haven't played it for two weeks and instead my no R3E time has been spent in AMS. The reason? Championships. It's one of the best features R3E has and it's a good one in AMS. In AC you have to have the knowledge to figure out which cars race with the one you want to use and be lucky enough to have a bunch of them (apart from the obvious classes, i. e. GT3) and set everything for one single race.
Just an update on my feelings about AC. AC - for me - seems to be some sort of acquired taste. Apart from the triple screen support (which should really be implemented in ALL sims), AC has definitely some advantages over my other racing games (R3E and pCars). But it has also some downsides. Immersion is still not as deep as I'd like it to be. I installed a lot of track/cars mods, raced all of them a lot and ended up removing all but a few. I think I have three mod cars left and about ten tracks. The cars were either graphically bad (cockpit view), lost their engine sound or were not driving very well. Some mod tracks are really very well made and fun to drive. Some of my gripes: Rev lights on my wheel: I searched for months for a way to get them working, succeeded finally and lost them again when updating firmware of my pedals/wheel (because of a brake pedal issue that is resolved now). Why in heaven's name is KUNOS not implying this ? The lights all flash when driving in the pitlane, but as soon as you hit the track: dead... Why do Fanaleds have to change their firmware every time KUNOS makes a change ? Why do we have to rely on third party devs to het these ligths working to begin with ? Plain stupid.... Why can't I use the joystick on my wheel to look around in the cockpit (and left right glance) ? Why is there so little functions/settings to map on a button box ? Who needs a horn, or even the more ridiculous complain and celebrate buttons ?? Why is your race position and delta time to the other cars only correct after completing a lap ? Why can't we move the position bar ? (It's on the bottom of my screen, covering most of the cars instruments). Why are only speedo and rev counter working (sometimes the Turbo pressure too) ? Why are oil/water temps not working ? I was going to add tire temp, but as it seems that is going to be added in the next update. Hopefully they are going to work on the tire pressure issue too. Pressure is much too high in stock settings, and lowering is not raising tire temp enough, though it does give more grip and (much) lower speed. That is not implemented as it should be. I can race the Tatuus at very low tire pressure, making it too slow and still losing tire heat until they turn blue, despite the fact that I am pushing the car very hard...not normal... Why the dirty windscreens ? You always start with a clean car and a smudgy screen. I just hate this feature. KUNOS should at least get the wipers to work, or let us start with a clear screen and clean it again when pitting. I never drive my car with dirty windscreen...( though my car itself is not always that clean) Why can't we put the car in gear (using the clutch obviously) before the starting lights go out ? Who came up with that gem ? Finishing a race: WHAM you find yourself in the pitlane, could be a lot less abrupt... OK, I' not even at the end of my list and it is already that long... Despite all that I'm having some fun in AC, mostly hotlapping, learning tracks, but it is still far from being very good/realistic.
Interesting comments fella. I agree completely about the data sources - for tinkerers like us it's very disappointing. But while the AI is a bit 'meh' I do find them to be OK (but far too timid when being overtaken), and haven't experience many issues with being turned around by them. Perhaps I'm just more awesome than you? The whole thing does feel rather unfinished though. If it wasn't for the VR support I wouldn't be so keen on it, but for me the game is good enough to enjoy, and adding VR to the mix makes it pretty compelling
Much like every other sim out there Assetto Corsa has things that make me keep coming back, and things that make me just sigh and boot up one of the other ones. AI is supposed to get another overhaul in 1.7, here's hoping it turns out well because there is something to be said for the line-ups achievable in AC. Interesting about the data, I would've thought the app system etc. made AC one of the stronger sims in that regard, that's a contender for the learned thing of the day.