Wanting to start a thread here for anyone using the 8k specifically for iracing. I have been playing with graphics stuff the last week or so since getting my 8k and think I stumbled on to something with the steamvr and iracing DX11 settings. For some reason even though I have a gtx 1080 ti steam recommends a video resolution setting of only 32% but after doing some tinkering with the iracing rederer it seems like I’m getting a better image by lowering the pixels setting in iracing to 70 to free up the resources to have steam cranked up to 90%. I know that iracing claims it doesn’t support outside SS but perhaps if there are other members on here running iracing with the 8k try this and provide your thoughts and perhaps some additional feedback. It seems clearer to me and the FPS is definitely stable this way where as when I have pixels in iracing at 100 and steam set to 40% I get some slight frame loss. Not bad but there is a slight stutter from dropped frames at times.
That might not apply for VR, since the graphics pipeline is very different for VR (compared to a 2D monitor).
According to iracing this specifically applies to VR. There are some good articles on the iracing forum board about it however it is and probably will continue to be a highly debated topic. I may be a victim of some placebo effect but the image is not way better one way or the other so for me the FPS stabilility is the biggest advantage. Still don’t understand why steam recommends such a low setting when I have a 1080 ti card??? That one is over my head but I’m not a whiz with stuff like that
I can think of 2 possibilities: Steam doesn’t calculate wide FOV headset requirements very well and/or a 1080Ti is a bit underpowered for the 8K.
Feel like it’s possible something else because I overclocked my gpu yesterday with msi afterburner and went to a core clock increase of 120 and memory increase of 450 and the recommendation remained the same. Not sure this should have got steam to change that but I would think it should?
Since the recommendation didn’t change, it’s likely that Steam is just using a simple GPU lookup table of relative performance.
That’s makes since because I’ve went 3 times the recommended setting and the performance is fine as long as I have my pixels settings in the iracing renderdx11 file turned down
Steam doesn’t calculate for overclocking. I have an 8700k @ 5ghz & a 1080ti @ 2040~ & ram running @ 3466.
I messed about with some settings a while back & clocked the whole lot down to base settings & found steam offered me the exact same settings as before, for each game I tried.
I can’t help you since I am a very late backer but I’m interested in how well you can get iRacing to run with an 8k and 1080ti. (I started my own similar thread
https://community.openmr.ai/t/can-we-talk-sim-racing-performance-with-the-8k/11190/42 )
Pimax wants me to make my 8k/5k+ choice now and I’m still on the fence. I want to stay with the 8k but not if it can’t keep up with the FPS. I race rF2 and it’s probably the worst FPS hog. You don’t by any chance have that one installed do you? Actually I should just assume rF2 will give slightly worse results than what you achieve with iRacing and let that guide me. Looking more and more like it will be the 5k+ for me.
Disclaimer: I haven’t tried either headset yet. I’ve officially chosen the 8K.
If you run identical settings on the 5K+ and 8K, you will get similar performance, although the 5K+ will look a bit “crisper” on those settings. When you do decide to upgrade and can increase your VR quality settings, it’s likely that the 8K will show more improvement than the 5K+, with its blocky (larger) pixels. The real question is what is most important to you: Slightly better blacks, colors, and contrast or a crisper display (especially text).
Honestly, the 2 headsets have more in common, than differences. It’s likely you would be happy with either.
I can’t speak about rf2 because the only game and sim I run is iracing. The FPS is stable with it after I tweaked some things to get it that way. Keep in mind this is on normal FOV not full. Only tried the full FOV once and it cut my FPS in half was no where close to being able to run properly so I went back to normal and haven’t circled back to that yet. I will probably spend a little time with that this week to see if some of the other changes I have made will allow me to run it there now. However the normal FOV is enough for me to be very happy as is. Such a huge increase from the rift and it will make you wonder how any of us enjoyed the VR expierence with such a small FOV. I should also note that I’m a fan of the eye candy in iracing so I have most everything on high with the exception of car detail, pit objects, particals, and dynamic objects. So with all that on I’m able to maintain the needed 80 FPS for the 8k no problem. I do wish I had a 5k plus to do a benchmark comparison with to recommend one or the other as I have heard the 5k plus provides a little clearer image but I can say with certainty that the 8k performs very well with iracing
I am sure SteamVR also takes into account at least what CPU one have, when estimating a suitable supersampling setting, and not just the GPU.
The percentage should also follow your PiTool quality setting: Should I crank that up, I expect SteamVR auto-ss would reduce its value in response, to meet the… hmm… “pixel budget” it has set for my machine. :7
I’ve cranked up the pitool setting for SS and that is something that has absolutely NO effect in iracing at all. Not even sure if I actually have to have pitool running for iracing. I’ve done some testing without even launching pitool and the sim runs fine as steamvr is the default application for iracing. However when doing that for a extended period of time iracing crashed on me on a couple occasions which it has never done when I have pitool running in the background so I just launch it to prevent a freeze up. But I can say with certainty that the SS slider in pitool has no effect when running iracing. My CPU is a intel i7 7700 non k 3.6
Well, I was only talking about the SteamVR auto-determining of suitable supersampling; Not the game.
…but what you say sounds very much in line with what you wrote earlier, about i-racing not taking into account outside supersampling settings. I guess maybe like UE4, it just ignores whatever resolution SteamVR asks for, and sets its own…
…but then your “trick” shouldn’t work, either. If anything, it should have been PiTool quality which mattered (apparent native resolution), and not it (…or whatever else might end up used in this strange world) with the SteamVR ss modifier applied… :7
That’s what I always thought and it made logical sense until all the hub bub came up months ago from the advance testers that you must increase the SS (a lot, if I remember correctly) on the 8k to get an acceptable image quality. That is, the 8k was more than just “a bit” less crisp. Wha!!! That floored me!
And this makes me think more and more that I should quit stretching and grasping to convince myself that the 8k is needed to give me max happiness with the image. Since performance is so key in racing sims I think I should “error” on the side of performance and just be confident that the 5k+ is going to look great… especially coming from a Vive.
And especially once we get the 80Hz mode for the 5k+. That should ensure I am always within the acceptable bounds of the hardware. Granted they might give us 72Hz also which could help the 8k but I’m not sure I want to drop that low with a racing sim.
Actually, since you are currently using a Vive, I think you may find the colors to be especially drab and washed out. The 8K might actually be a better choice (although there’s not a lot of difference, the 8K has better colors). (Sorry to muddy the waters; I’m trying to help you make the best decision for YOU.)
I’d be interested to hear what other Vive owners think of the Pimax 5K+ and 8K units. Which model did you pick and how does it compare?
I picked 5K+ for sim race. 90hz is important for not getting motion sickness in fast moving game like sim race.
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Hi Cmorg in general you are happy with the Fov and the image quality? it’a solid step forward from the Oculus? ( i hope).
Thank you for the feedback
Image is a step up but not the final step of what we are looking for is the full clarity that can be had with. High res monitor but definitely a leap above the image with the rift and with what little bit might be left on the table with the image is made up for by the FOV. It’s fantastic. So in summary yes I’m very satisfied. And having only had it for a week and the fact that there is so little knowledge on settings to this point I would think there will still be some steps to be taken to further improve the image with the 8k down the road. So makes for a exciting time to be a VR sim racer