VR Headset for Sim Racing

Thanks @TheOracle . I picked the Quest up used locally for £190 and had to be quick sharp about it as the guy had plenty of interest so I’ve no doubt I could sell it on again myself and pretty much break even, maybe lose a tenner which I’m more than happy to write off as a learning experience.
There’s a 3070 over on the store for £529 at the moment which seems decent value but as you say, maybe hold out and get a good used one somewhere.
 
Well Mr glutten for punishment strikes again......I had to didn't I :cry:

You know, just to experience one and see what all the fuss is about

CwKQvvd.jpg

First things first, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I didn't have any software issues and everything worked really well.

The FOV is something else, and obviously was my main reason for wanting to try it. Damn, it is impressive. Just looking straight ahead, you can see all of the windscreen and both wing mirrors in your peripheral vision. That's really good. It is just like wearing a racing helmet in real life. It adds another dimenions to sim racing, and gave a whole new experience. Racing felt faster, and more true to life. It's really, really good!

That's where the fun ends though, everything else is crap. Clarity, comfort, heat, reflections, colour saturation (or lack of)....they are all quite bad. Oh, and the style of the headset meant I couldn't wear my bose headphones. Urgh!

It's made me confirm yet again that clarity and comfort trumps fov.....but damn, that fov is really good.

Pico still my #1, and after a brief moment of sadness at looking at a much smaller fov, I soon started smiling again.

I'm really hoping that in the future, someone can make a headset which has clarity, comfort and fov. Gonna take some GPU to power it.

Sigh, that fov though!
 
Last edited:
TheOracle said:
Well Mr glutten for punishment strikes again......I had to didn't I :cry:

You know, just to experience one and see what all the fuss is about

CwKQvvd.jpg

First things first, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I didn't have any software issues and everything worked really well.

The FOV is something else, and obviously was my main reason for wanting to try it. Damn, it is impressive. Just looking straight ahead, you can see all of the windscreen and both wing mirrors in your peripheral vision. That's really good. It is just like wearing a racing helmet in real life. It adds another dimenions to sim racing, and gave a whole new experience. Racing felt faster, and more true to life. It's really, really good!

That's where the fun ends though, everything else is crap. Clarity, comfort, heat, reflections, colour saturation (or lack of)....they are all quite bad. Oh, and the style of the headset meant I couldn't wear my bose headphones. Urgh!

It's made me confirm yet again that clarity and comfort trumps fov.....but damn, that fov is really good.

Pico still my #1, and after a brief moment of sadness at looking at a much smaller fov, I soon started smiling again.

I'm really hoping that in the future, someone can make a headset which has clarity, comfort and fov. Gonna take some GPU to power it.

Sigh, that fov though!
Click to expand...
Crikey!
I might get castigated for saying this but is there not such a thing as too much FOV? I mean, in my own car I have to move my head slightly to see the rear view and passenger wing mirror so I don’t have an issue doing it in-game.
It just goes to show there is still no perfect VR headset yet - everyone seems to have at least one gripe with each model - granted my knowledge of the subject extends to a Quest 2 and that is all.
I had to enquire about Pico Neo 3 as they only ship by default to mainland UK. I sent an email on Sunday and they just came back this morning saying it would be a £20 surcharge to post to NI. I understand some companies have to charge extra but I sell stuff on eBay all the time and I’ve never once paid close to £20 to ship to GB. I’m not ruling it out but I’ll just hold fire for a while - perhaps one will appear on eBay or even the MM ;) .
Furthermore, I’ve since got pCars working adequately even with my 1080. I got it to sit between 60-72 (a little more shimmering than I would like but not the worst). I then stopped using the debug tool and decided to just crack on for a while and enjoy it - which I definitely did!
As my main case is the upcoming F1 game I’m just going to wait for it and see where my system sits with that. If past titles are anything to go by it’s nowhere near as demanding as pCars. So a combination of that and a 3070, if the price is right, might see me through.
 
GMac11 said:
Crikey!
I might get castigated for saying this but is there not such a thing as too much FOV? I mean, in my own car I have to move my head slightly to see the rear view and passenger wing mirror so I don’t have an issue doing it in-game.
It just goes to show there is still no perfect VR headset yet - everyone seems to have at least one gripe with each model - granted my knowledge of the subject extends to a Quest 2 and that is all.
I had to enquire about Pico Neo 3 as they only ship by default to mainland UK. I sent an email on Sunday and they just came back this morning saying it would be a £20 surcharge to post to NI. I understand some companies have to charge extra but I sell stuff on eBay all the time and I’ve never once paid close to £20 to ship to GB. I’m not ruling it out but I’ll just hold fire for a while - perhaps one will appear on eBay or even the MM ;) .
Furthermore, I’ve since got pCars working adequately even with my 1080. I got it to sit between 60-72 (a little more shimmering than I would like but not the worst). I then stopped using the debug tool and decided to just crack on for a while and enjoy it - which I definitely did!
As my main case is the upcoming F1 game I’m just going to wait for it and see where my system sits with that. If past titles are anything to go by it’s nowhere near as demanding as pCars. So a combination of that and a 3070, if the price is right, might see me through.
Click to expand...

I can't wait for F1 '22, although I only had my first flight sim experience the other weekend and wow.....loved it. Nothing like sitting in a plane for an hour just chillin'

The fov isn't quite human level on the pimax, but it's about the same as wearing a crash helmet. It's really good. The upcoming pimax 12k has a wider fov yet again, and is almost human level. That's with QLED micro-led screens as well. It looks awesome, but how the hell would you be able to run it? Not even a 3090 would cope with that I don't think. My poor maths has it at 5 times more demanding than the quest, or taking into account some super sampling, three times more demanding.

I think work has a batch of valve index headets somewhere, I might see if I can borrow one for the week just to try.

Oh, I did buy a second pico due to my dead pixel and guess what.......that one also has a dead pixel. I'll try once more!
 
TheOracle said:
Well Mr glutten for punishment strikes again......I had to didn't I :cry:

You know, just to experience one and see what all the fuss is about

CwKQvvd.jpg

First things first, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I didn't have any software issues and everything worked really well.

The FOV is something else, and obviously was my main reason for wanting to try it. Damn, it is impressive. Just looking straight ahead, you can see all of the windscreen and both wing mirrors in your peripheral vision. That's really good. It is just like wearing a racing helmet in real life. It adds another dimenions to sim racing, and gave a whole new experience. Racing felt faster, and more true to life. It's really, really good!

That's where the fun ends though, everything else is crap. Clarity, comfort, heat, reflections, colour saturation (or lack of)....they are all quite bad. Oh, and the style of the headset meant I couldn't wear my bose headphones. Urgh!

It's made me confirm yet again that clarity and comfort trumps fov.....but damn, that fov is really good.

Pico still my #1, and after a brief moment of sadness at looking at a much smaller fov, I soon started smiling again.

I'm really hoping that in the future, someone can make a headset which has clarity, comfort and fov. Gonna take some GPU to power it.

Sigh, that fov though!
Click to expand...

haha, you really are :) Going for the worst headset maker of all, Pimax!!

What are you going to do with the Pimax now?
 
Index FOV is nice, mainly the vertical FOV, which really helps in flight sims as you can look up and down without having to turn your head - makes following enemies in combat much easier.
The horizonal FOV is pretty good, but it's still fairly narrow.

The only two things making me keep my Index currently are that bigger FOV and the uncompressed video image, which paradoxically makes it look sharper than the Quest 2 despite it being lower resolution.
 
TheOracle said:
It's being sent back. I don't want to, but feel it's the right thing to do.

...and I'll probably end up buying the 12k model just to see what it's like
Click to expand...

The problem with Pimax is that things don't improve the more you pay. The most expensive Pimax have the same problems as the cheaper models. And you seem to have got lucky and got one that's actually decent. The build quality on most of them is terrible.
 
melmac said:
The problem with Pimax is that things don't improve the more you pay. The most expensive Pimax have the same problems as the cheaper models. And you seem to have got lucky and got one that's actually decent. The build quality on most of them is terrible.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I heard they were very hit and miss. Some people had screen flickering for instance. They are a beta product really, but they are at the bleeding edge of technology.

I just want to experience 200 horizontal fov with QLED screens.
 
Last edited:
Which sim with decent VR implementation has the lowest performance requirements for VR? I have just a 1660 gfx card which I gather is about as minimum as you can go for VR, but would like to give the Q2 a spin and give sim racing a try.
 
I still think iRacing has the best graphics-to-GPU-load ratio. It's not the prettiest sim, but it doesn't take a lot of GPU horsepower to get a decent-looking experience in VR. (Particularly if you enable SPS in the graphics options menu)

I had to tinker with the text file to fix eye alignment with my Reverb, but I have read that Oculus doesn't require that step.

The Madness engine (PC, PC2 and AMS2) is more VR-friendly from an interface standpoint because it uses gaze control (where you look at what you want to select and press a button on your wheel, or just stare at it for a couple seconds and it will just "click" it for you.)
 
Last edited:
To add my 2 cents...
iRacing runs fine on my rig (3090 + 5950x) but out of all sims currently I would say Dirt 2.0 looks and runs the best, but ONLY once you've added the openvr_fsr DLL to the directory. I don't have all settings to max but everything is buttery smooth day/night/raining on my G2 with steam scaling at 100%. Also Dirt 2 VR was one game I specifically upgraded my CPU for back in the day and saw great improvement in framerate.
 
Andy D said:
To add my 2 cents...
iRacing runs fine on my rig (3090 + 5950x) but out of all sims currently I would say Dirt 2.0 looks and runs the best, but ONLY once you've added the openvr_fsr DLL to the directory. I don't have all settings to max but everything is buttery smooth day/night/raining on my G2 with steam scaling at 100%. Also Dirt 2 VR was one game I specifically upgraded my CPU for back in the day and saw great improvement in framerate.
Click to expand...
What CPU are you running, or were you running when you made this upgrade?
 
So my 3070 arrived and after having to order a cable to connect it to the PSU all appears to be good.
I have to say I haven't noticed a great deal of improvement with regards fps, particularly in pCars, however my headroom has improved - it's at least in positive digits now!
As I've mentioned above, pCars is definitely CPU limited so I wasn't expecting miracles with just the improved GPU - hopefully F1 22 is more GPU intensive.
My only other alternative is to grab a 9700k as that would be a straight swap into my 8600k system. I'm not sure I have the enthusiasm to go searching for, and installing, a new system.
 
GMac11 said:
So my 3070 arrived and after having to order a cable to connect it to the PSU all appears to be good.
I have to say I haven't noticed a great deal of improvement with regards fps, particularly in pCars, however my headroom has improved - it's at least in positive digits now!
As I've mentioned above, pCars is definitely CPU limited so I wasn't expecting miracles with just the improved GPU - hopefully F1 22 is more GPU intensive.
My only other alternative is to grab a 9700k as that would be a straight swap into my 8600k system. I'm not sure I have the enthusiasm to go searching for, and installing, a new system.
Click to expand...

It's started :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom