Splitting out my race and flight sim PC

[RasmusP]

One of the things I want to avoid is all the broken registry crap that happens when you swap stuff around, install and uninstall programs etc. Maybe it's a little neurotic, but I want everything to run as simply as possible.

Is there anything I SHOULD leave until getting the 4070 installed?

The "keep your Windows clean for best performance" is basically a thing of the past, when using HDD instead of SSD as the system drive.
Since the needle doesn't have to jump around on the disk anymore, it's completely irrelevant, as long as there are no bugs.

And these bugs basically only happen, when you swap the CPU or GPU manufacturer.
For CPU, you're screwed, but there are barely any bugs happening.
For GPU, bugs are way more likely, but not an issue since you can use DDU to completely clean your system from the old GPU driver

So: just install whatever you want, there won't be any issues at all.
Programs don't care anyway and for Windows, there's DDU.

 

[Lesthegringo]

***starts googling DDU****

Thanks for the feedback! I will go ahead and do what I can, and will check out that DDU thing

Cheers

Les

 

[RasmusP]

***starts googling DDU****

Thanks for the feedback! I will go ahead and do what I can, and will check out that DDU thing

Cheers

Les

Display Driver Uninstaller

Download the latest nvidia driver, then:
Download DDU, unzip it, disable/unplug your Internet connection, hold shift while clicking on Windows Restart, then navigate through the appearing boot menu to start in "secure mode".
Then run DDU and let it clean up everything.
Do a normal restart, install the latest nvidia driver, then enable/plug in your Internet.

Done

 

[Lesthegringo]

In the ended I cheated a bit, and robbed the 3070 card from my flight rig temporarily.

However I can definitely confirm that it was worth it. Straight out of the box all of the weird VR effects are gone (apparently), games are starting in the correct front and center position, no getting stuck in WMR, and consistent behaviour.

I still have to go through the ball-ache of all the individual Fanatec, Next Level Racing V3, and game specific setups, but that's more remembering how to do it rather than it being a problem. I know I will be re-reading a load of my previous threads to get a lot of the answers to lot of them.

Immediately obvious is a lot smoother VR, as well as the better overall VR experience. The better CPU, coupled with maybe the change to DDR5 RAM seems to have made a lot of difference, remembering I am using the same GPU pro tem. The game that seems to have benefitted the most is ACC, which before was a decidedly choppy, stuttery experience. Now it is indistinguishable from the likes of AMS2.

How much of the improvement is due to the new hardware, and how much is due to a 'clean' install? No idea, to be honest, but I do suspect that the sheer amount of rubbish on the old PC was a factor in the erratic behaviour. Add to that the fact that the GPU will also be an upgrade when it finally arrives (over 2 months and waiting....) means I am looking at further improvements down the line.

So these are initial impressions, let's see whether that continues to be the case!

Les

 

[Lesthegringo]

I got the 4070 Super yesterday, so I duly installed it this morning. I haven't really messed around with any VR settings, I just maxed out the quality settings in the two games I tried today (AMS2 and ACC)

I'll be honest that between the 3070 and the 4070 Super I haven't noted any difference in terms of the VR quality but as I tried it on offline single player practice sessions, I suppose I am not surprised by that. It was working very nicely with the 3070, and so I imagine that once the quality of the image reaches a certain level there is not going to be any real improvement past increased frame rate. As I suspect that over a certain frame rate you are unable to perceive the difference, the only way I'll see the performance benefit is with a full grid or the weather effects.

VR continues to be a much improved experience though, only once did I get WMR dipping its nasty little oar in all the times I have been testing and playing.

My next little project will be to knock together a switch box to let me mess with the VR settings, using two way toggle switches mapped to the F keys so that I can use them with the VR set on. I'm going to make my own switches that can be distinguished by touch.

Les

 

[Neilski]

I'll be honest that between the 3070 and the 4070 Super I haven't noted any difference in terms of the VR quality but as I tried it on offline single player practice sessions, I suppose I am not surprised by that. It was working very nicely with the 3070, and so I imagine that once the quality of the image reaches a certain level there is not going to be any real improvement past increased frame rate. As I suspect that over a certain frame rate you are unable to perceive the difference, the only way I'll see the performance benefit is with a full grid or the weather effects.

I'd expect that you should either have lower power consumption for any given quality, or better quality if you turn up the wick on the new card. Have you tried increasing the pixel density (supersampling)? That might improve the perceived quality a little further, depending on how much performance headroom you have left.

 

[Lesthegringo]

I still have yet to play with all those settings; one thing I noticed yesterday is that the OpenXr is no longer appearing.

The other point is, if I'm being honest with myself, that I don't really understand what a lot of it does. My first step then has to be doing some reading up to get informed on all those details. I'm on a business trip starting today so will have a chance to check out videos on it, although without the ability to change something to see how it affects the image.

ACC as reported is much better than it was, but I want to try an improve the anti aliasing. It's quite noticeable especially on trackside barriers, power cables etc. Framerate is clearly not an issue, so hopefully I can trade off some framerate to get a better picture.


Les

 

[Lesthegringo]

I have been playing with the settings in OpenXr and ACC to see what difference it all makes. I followed the advice here

to set up and test.

I have to say that while it does all look good, there were a lot of settings that I changed just to see what difference it made, and aside from a FPS hit, I was struggling to see any visual difference! I turned the anti aliasing off, and was rather surprised that it didn't make the power lines or fences look any worse.

I tried DLSS versus FSR - again I can't see any difference. Don't get me wrong, the image quality is pretty good, with at worst case upper 70;s frame rate. However looking at the video of the recorded racing at the end, the anti-aliasing is much better in his setup.

Is it possible that the anti-aliasing settings are being overridden by some external program?

Cheers

Les

 

[Neilski]

I turned the anti aliasing off, and was rather surprised that it didn't make the power lines or fences look any worse.

OK that's weird.

Is it possible that the anti-aliasing settings are being overridden by some external program?

Yes, it's possible but I wouldn't expect it to have happened without conscious effort by a user. I don't tinker much with graphics settings (and even less with VR settings) but I am aware that - for example - the Nvidia control panel lets you choose to override the in-game settings for lots of things including anti-aliasing. Not sure if this also applies to VR headsets but it seems plausible that it could...

With any luck you'll get a more definitive reply from someone with more experience of graphics settings tweaks.

 

[RasmusP]

I'm a bit confused as well, but DLSS overwrites any anti-aliasing, resolution scale and FSR.

Maybe that helps?