Graphics and performance guide for SWO
You all know Brandon, he needs no introduction by now. He's been helping with so many things on the Patreon, and with such indefatigable presence and kindness, I have no idea what I'd do without him. He truly is the Post Maester!
His latest contribution is a detailed analysis of everything there is to know in order to make Star Wars Outlaws run at its best in VR. With no further ado, I'll just step aside and let him take center stage []-D
So, you just got a shiny new Luke Ross mod and you want to grab all the extra performance you can. Well, for better or worse there are not a lot of options in terms of game settings that will get you a ton more performance unless you are coming down from the Ultra preset. This game uses software based RT and there is no rasterized fallback. Furthermore, if you are pushing performance, just the simple act of turning around and looking the other way can drastically change your fps.
The first thing I hope for when trying to optimize performance for a game is a good benchmarking video. There are people that do this as a hobby and some of them are very good at it. So, instead of trying to spend lots of time changing settings to and fro every time you reach a new planet or see a drop in fps, watch this video by one of my favorite benchmarkers. He is excellent at picking apart the visual vs performance impact of each and every setting in the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Y7nOtXM38
But wait... at some point, at least one of you brave explorers of a galaxy far away is going to venture off in search of other mods for the game. In doing so, you will most likely run across one that disables ray tracing or parts of it.
Or, you may see one that promises the possibility of optimized graphics config settings!! Let me save you the time and effort of going down that black hole of continuously restarting the game and changing the config file repeatedly until your excitement to actually play the game degrades a considerable amount. There are only a few things worth changing in the "graphics settings.cfg" file and changing other things can stop the game from loading in or possibly break it in other ways.
First off, you can disable ray tracing by changing rtenabled=true to false, but this will break the games lighting because it is RT based and there is no rasterized fallback. You will gain some decent performance but the game will just look flat and quite bad. I don't recommend doing this at all. The only RT setting I would consider changing is rtspec=On to Off but there is a drawback to doing this. This setting is ray traced specular reflections. They can appear very swimmy or shimmery in VR and it bothers me quite a bit personally.
It also leaves you with just the screen space reflections which I think look quite good in this game once you can really see them under the RT ones. The drawback is that you are going to notice the lighting and RT shaders load in more slowly, especially in the big main city. Turning rtsunshadows off, as one mod suggests, makes this even more noticeable in my opinion, so I would just leave it on. I wouldn't mess with anything else in the ray tracing section as disabling diffuse options will stop the game from loading in.
You can also control the in-game sharpening from this file. Sharpen2 defaults to .69 and you are able to lower or increase it up to 1.0, but keep in mind that the mod has a built in sharpener that defaults all the way up. It is the deblur slider in the main overlay tab. Too much sharpening will bring out the shimmering around objects and just look bad in general.
Furthermore, you can adjust the TAA up or down. I haven't tried going up and I also have only done this while using upscaling. With upscaling, it will default to taa = "Supersampling Medium". You can change this to "Supersampling Low" for a less blurry image according to my eyes. You can probably raise it to High if you wanted as well but I haven't tried it as this game doesn't really have much for aliasing issues in my experience. Changing the TAA will most likely cause the game to load slowly the first time you play it after doing so. The next time you boot it up after that it should load in normally.
You are able to use SSAO but it may also cause the game to load up slowly the first time. If you go down to ["ssao quality 3"] you can change this from Off to Low through High, possibly Ultra but I didn't notice any difference from High. It is not going to make a world of impact but you can use it in place of rtsunshadows for shading.
There are a few other things it is possible to change without breaking the game but I didn't really notice any performance or real visual impact for these. Glare, vignette, bloom.
Lastly, if you really need a bit of extra performance you can turn these to low but I only get a few fps extra from doing so and it is most likely not worth the possible loss in visuals. I haven't actually taken the time to experiment with the visual quality of changing them though:
Vegetation quality, vista quality and water quality.
After changing many of the options in this file these are the only ones that I would recommend touching. Again, messing with this file is at your own risk!! It can break things in the game and stop it from loading!
It is a good idea to have a backup copy of the file so you can replace it if you mess things up. You can also just delete the file and run the game and it will create a new default version of the file. Mostly I hope this helps others to not get seduced by the promise of even more VR performance. In the words of master Yoda... "The fear of performance loss is a path to the dark side"
OK, I might have added a word there :)
Comments (57)
this game runs very well with ray reconstruction and it's the only way to stop those flickering RT reflections. Give it a try it's great and quite light, at least with an rtx 4090 :D
I use all the new techniques available since the last update. This allows me to set the PPD in the REAL menu very high (28), but unfortunately, I have to change it back to 28 after every restart. Is there anything that I can do to save these Settings? I mean for Cyberpunk.
The game will just save whatever resolution you have selected in the game's settings. It should still save the ppd value you put in but you will have to hit the adapt resolution button whenever you restart the game. It is a bit annoying but really quick to do and hopefully you are playing for a while when you do so not that big a deal really :)
Is it possible to save the resolution settings in the real menu? Currently, I have to reset them every time I start the game
If you pick a resolution from the game's settings section (if you are talking about Cyberpunk) it will save that. If you are able to use the fov optimizations, those settings will end up being a higher ppd with the screen now sized to your headset.
Hello Apologies if this has been answered, I cant find any reference here or on Google search, and BTW I am very new to VR only just got my Q3 and not even set it up, I would really like to try this with SWO, but not 100% of the time can I switch between VR and Normal monitor with this installed? Sorry for the noob question, thanks in advance.
If you are asking if you can switch between VR and flat, yes. You can rename the dxgi.dll file that the mod installs to dxgi_bak.dll to disable the mod and play flat and then just rename back when you want to use VR again.
I'm using Oculus Link, so my connection isn't bad. Everything works fine in Mono Mode, but with AER, I see these border-like artifacts when I quickly turn around.
What kind of fps are you getting while the game is active and not paused? Try switching to Legacy and see if it goes away. Try unchecking the fov fix boxes and then checking them again.
Hi Luke Ross,Brandon I always play games in mono mode, but now that I've switched to AER, there are some things that don't happen in mono mode. , the first and most frustrating issue is that when AER is at 1/3, while turning my head quickly, I can see black borders on the Quest 3. It's like I'm looking at a wide display, and when I turn my head quickly, I reach the edges of the wide screen and see the borders for a few seconds before they correct themselves. ( I have a powerful system, and I’m sure it’s not because of that.)
ur connection = shitty, use cable mode, or turn lower the res on ur steamvr or oculus app
Will I need to pay for access to get the cyberpunk patch 2.13 update to the mod? I love supporting you and you deserve fair compensation for your hard work, but I think spending more than the $10 entry to have access is a bit excessive.
I am guessing he will release a post tomorrow. I don't know if he is including the fix with it (probably so) but the new CP update severely limits GPU usage somehow even without the mod. I would recommend just rolling back to version 2.12. Depending on what platform you are using you can just not update games and then you can keep using the Real version that works with that update. It is very possible to not have to subscribe for a game breaking update unless you really want the updated version of the game for some reason. There isn't anything really worth updating the game for in 2.13. People have said that FSR 3 does not look good in CP with this implementation. DLSS is still the better option if you can use it. You support is always welcome and appreciated of course :)
Hello LukeRoss, I deleted the VRmod from Cyberpunk by opening the bat and typing D. The deletion was successful but I still get the weird lag spikes with DLSS which means that the mod is still doing something. How can I fix it/delte VRmod completely from Cyberpunk... Thank you in advance!
That only deletes any changes you have made to the REAL overlay settings. To get rid of the mod completely you can just delete dxgi.dll and the files from the REAL folder you dropped in.
Luke your work is a gift. Your mod reveals the true wonderful soul of games. This time SWO. Your first person view implementation, and the quick change to third person and back, is marvellous. You're giving me back the child-like awe and wonder that is priceless. I wish all gamers that they find your mod and experience something that cannot be described. The irony is that so many love VR games, but have no clue what VR really is until they immerse themselves in these ‘big’ games. (And your and Brandon's support here to overcome the little hurdles to get it all up and running is just great!)
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you are enjoying it so much. Being in these worlds is pretty amazing, especially as an olderish person that started gaming with Atari :) Sometimes I jump into testing Cyberpunk and stop and think how amazing it is compared to when I was a kid. I think the world is quite different for young people now. They are so used to consuming entertainment and media at such a high rate that their ability to really enjoy it or stop to really process it seems diminished.
I got Hogwarts running in VR using steamvr/steamlink on quest 3 but there's a window in front of the game showing a 2d version of the game. Once in a while the window will disappear and I'm in VR as I'm guessing it should be but most of the time the window is blocking the view. Not sure how to turn this off. Is it a steamvr issue? I'm able to get into the REAL VR overlay and adjust things.
I'll try with Steam link in the morning but that seems weird. What platform are you running the game on, Steam? I'd go into the SteamVR settings and see if any kind of overlay or anything is turned on. You are using the latest version?
I wish you could do the Metro Trilogy.
I don't think it uses an engine he has modded yet. Plus there is a VR metro game on the way so doing one now may run the risk of getting it shut down.
I am trying to make reshade work in RDR2 and I am even using the reshade folder Luke Ross said to use, yet every time I try and launch the game, it just crashes. When I remove that folder, it launches. So I dont know how to fix it. I have tired it on HZD and it works, it is just RDR2 that I am having a problem with.
RDR2 support can no longer be given since Take 2 initiated the DMCA. You can always try the FlatscreentoVR Discord.
I have this weird issue: everythings run fine when first launching CP2077 but as soon as I take of the goggles or alt-tab to some other window and then return to the game, it stutters like crazy after exting any menu or doing a save. Any ideas what could be the cause? Problem goes away afrer restarting CP2077.
Are you playing on Steam? Have you tried clicking with your mouse into the window to make sure it is active again? Are you using headset like Quest that will go to sleep when you take it off? If you are running other programs that you alt tab into, it could be lowering the games CPU priority or something like that.
Hello I'm new thank you for what you do long live VR. I have an NVIDIA RTX 6000 on Cyber Punk the game is magnificent, on the other hand on SWO it's horrible with a disgusting fog, dear you too?
My 4090 is already out of date []-D
Final Fantasy 16 has a demo on Steam, maybe you could get a head start on that VR mod?
He is still working on Outlaws, which just released 😂 Plus, the fov fixes. Remember, he is just one guy..... with a wife now.
I am playing Cyberpunk under the latest version. When I use Mantis blades arms, V’s arms are invisible. Is there a fix?
Hopefully a fixed release will be dropping soon. No workaround for now unfortunately.
Eve'nin all. I've been giving Cyberpunk a go with the new settings, and for the most part, it's all working great. One problem I have is that I can no longer see any scan data or the list of quickhacks to choose from. Is this a known thing or have I done something stupid with my setting?
It is broken currently. Hopefully a new version will come out soon here that fixes it.
Not sure if theres something really obvious I'm missing but with both SWO and hogwarts, the games only seem to play in a very glitchy looking flatscreen with no sound, and I cant seem to find any realvr setting that seems to change this
What headset are you using? Can you put a copy of your RealVR64.log file on pastebin and post a link to it here please? The log file will be in the same game folder you put the mod files in.
Hi Brandon, the mod is causing some sort of issue with my game controller in Outlaws. I've reinstalled the game 3 times and when I try it flat screen without REAL VR installed my controller works fine, but as soon as I install the mod in my Outlaws folder and run the game, the sensitivity on everything starts going crazy fast for looking around, I can't scroll through menus properly cause even the D-Pad is going crazy when I move up and down the menus and the buttons are suddenly also not mapped properly. It definitely has something to do with the REAL VR Mod cause as I said, the game runs and works totally fine running flat without it. Any suggestions?
Have you tried disabling the Ubisoft overlay? You could also try running the Outlawsplus .exe file. Do you have any other input devices active other than mouse and keyboard? Are you using a wireless or wired gamepad? Sorry for the late reply, I was hanging out with my family for most of the afternoon/evening.
Hi Brandon, SWO, on my G2, is crashing/ freezing every time. I can't get past the start when the mod menu appears. To close the game down, I have to stop it in task manager. https://pastebin.com/skCw2iKp
I'll check it out on my G2, haven't tried the new release with it yet. Double check and make sure you have all the settings correct from the post. Fixed instead of cinematic view, windowed and not borderless etc.
ANy idea what is wrong. Also is this the right place to post this problem ? If not, I am sorry. I have an 4090 + a Beyond, but cannot get CP2077 or SWO to play in VR... Help
Did you put all the files from the real folder directly into the x64 folder for CP? You have run the game flat previously, correct?
Fixing folder permissions... Successfully processed 1071 files; Failed processing 0 files Working around NVIDIA V-Sync bug... 'RealRepo\Vdesync' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. 'RealRepo\Vdesync' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Installing graphics settings preset... 'RealRepo\rxrepl' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. 'RealRepo\rxrepl' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Copying game specific files... The system cannot find the file specified. The system cannot find the file specified. Cleaning up... All done! Press any key to continue . . .
I have downloade V13.0 and tried it on SWO and got the following text, after which the mod did not work
I mean add this LR-Instructions.txt to the ZIP file...
I wonder if it is possible to add a simple text file... LR-instructions.txt... to give newcomers a list of instructions how to install LR's MOD. I know we can see this on the Internet, but some are getting old and you never know if ther is a better way. Also Luke's instructions how to set up SWO (see above) is a great file to add as a SWO chapter. I think Luke Ross MOD is the best creation in the game world.
Thanks for the kind words and we are very glad you are enjoying Luke's work :) We have talked about making a readme file or something similar to what you are suggesting but it would end up being a hassle to keep up and change things. I don't know that a readme would help any more than having the install directions in each games release post. People still fail to read and follow those at times so I don't really know that they would open a readme and read and follow that any better. It also would possibly be pretty long since there are so many supported games and people may open it and just give up at the sight of how long it is :)
Hi there, new to the whole pcvr + mod thing. I installed the CP mod yesterday and managed to open up the game. But it was completely pixelated, I tried different game settings but nothing worked. I own a RTX 3070 + psvr2. What should I do? Thanks in advance.
Make sure to select a higher resolution in the games settings. If increasing the resolution has no impact, make sure you don't have motion blur on.
Thanks Brandon !!!!! This seems a Nightmare, I hope with new game patches this will improve. Is Avatar also RT based with no fallback to Raster ?
If Luke does Avatar, I will definitely mess around with the settings :)
Brandon is amazing support. You guys are the ultimate team. I couldn't have even imagined you were going to do outlaws. When I heard it was coming, I was pretty sad that we wouldn't have it in VR. Then bam. Miracles! Even with a return of camera offsets! 200 to the left, 3600 forward, is pretty much first person on the fly for immersive moments D-) What a world to explore. Some crashes but it could just be the game. San Francisco has been sick. London would be rad. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much! Too bad more of the world can't experience this stuff.
The optimizations are cool! I see some issues even with the vfov optimization (main screend and huds roate funny like fishbowl or barrel distorted different. The games look perfect and do perform better as advertised! Noooice optimizations!. Is there a way to turn off HUD elements in Cyberpunk? I wish there was a way to force huds to be displayed ina 3d space like quadlayer or something
There is a mod called Huditor that some people have used to adjust and resize HUD elements, I don't know about turning them off though.
You the man B! yes I follow the benchmark dude too. good vids he has
Awesome thanks Brandon! Using a PS5 Controller. I'll give it a try as I'm currently playing it right now. Absolutely loving it btw and thanks so much to you and Luke for all your efforts 🙏
Thanks so much for the tips! Btw I'd like to move the camera closer in to Kay. Is that in the SWO Tab in the REAL VR Menu? For some reason I can't get my cursor to go up to the top section of the menu to toggle over to SWO. Any suggestions?
If the game window exceeds your monitor, you won't be able to reach with your mouse. If you are using a game pad, which you should, you can hold x or square button and use the bumper buttons to move left or right in the tabs. If you only have a mouse, you will have to shrink the window back down using the ppd slider in order to reach.