Hi,

I have the demo version of LFS, 0.6U.

I have tried both command line and in game selection of OpenVR with Vridge/Riftcat. I've seen reports of this working else where, but for me I get a black screen and no sound on phone and monitor.

I've contacted Riftcat support, who have confirmed it should work with OpenVR and that I'm doing it right.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Have you tried using different streaming options in Advanced video settings from the VRidge settings? Try using the Software (High compatibility) option.

Also USB tethering gives much better performance and reliability than wireless.

I don't know why but it's working now

Thanks for the suggestions anyway. FYI it works with NVENC over wifi, but obviously better on USB 3 as you say.

I bought a USB 3 PCIe card, as my Mobo only has 2.0. The issue is the phone regularly drops out of tethering mode on USB, which kind of kills the fun.

Another question though, do you know how to set the resolution LFS sends to the VR view? The image is pretty pixellated. In the steam home room, there is much higher resolution with much less pixellation. I can't set the resolution in the screen options as it complains this is only for full screen, but VR must be used with the app windowed

The stream resolution can be set in VRidge settings. The pixelation is due to the limitations in bandwidth. You can try to increase the bandwidth from Vridge settings. But usually it is limited by how much your phone can handle. Even if you use USB 3 card, the phone may not support USB 3, so you may be getting lower speeds.

Reduce the framerate if still seeing pixelated. It's a compromise, but using a phone as VR headset is always gimmicky. Don't expect smoothness anywhere near a real VR headset. I couldn't manage it to drive anywhere near how you would on a screen, as the latency and stuttering is too high. But, It's nice to have the experience

Thanks for the reply. I would have said that the bandwidth limit leads to compression artifacts / blocks rather than pixellation. I'm getting 24Mbps over 5Ghz wifi, and 14Mbps is roughly enough for 1080p. On USB 3, I can push to 40Mbps, but it doesn't improve the image much at 1080p.

Steam Home room looks great, and pans/scrolls really smooth, so I know it's not Vridge.

I just tried Project Cars Pagani edition, and had the most visceral, immersive couple of laps I could have hoped for - excellent, and no gimmick.

This proves that the resolution issues are nothing to do with Vridge settings, and that LFS fails to perform like Project cars or steam home. I would be happy to include grabs from the phone by photographing the screen - the difference is massive - impossible to read menu text or view race distance in LFS, but Project Cars I can do both just fine.

I'm posting this in the interest of solving this - I want to experience LFS VR properly.

This looks promising, because there needs to be improvement in resolution and anti-aliasing for sure.

I am very confident about this because I am now playing Raceroom at 1440p with 1.25 supersampling (Riftcat settings) and 8x AA and FSAA on in game, and the image is beautiful, so if anyone says Riftcat can't look good, they are wrong (as long as your phone has the pixel density and bandwidth, I use an LG G6, which is perfect for VR).I am seeing no compression artifacts, and no lag either.

My first choice was LFS though, and I still want it work, as there is so much to love about this game compared the mainsream titles. Really hoping I can get it looking as good. Will try the patch tonight, thanks for the heads up.

Well it turns out there were a few factors in the blocky image:

Now the patch is installed, I am able to run at 225% rendering. 8x AA helps too. But there was still something not quite right. The shadows of the trees on the track looked bad still, but the overall image was very close now.

Finally I had another play with changing the custom resolution in SteamVR settings - still learning about all this, and playing with this in native Steam games had no effect for me, but with LFS via OpenVR, it does. This can be seen by the render target resolution in the view options going up with the increase. So I found I could go up to 200% with my Geforce 780 before things started going wrong.

With all this set, I am pleased to report, the image is really good now. Now things are clear, I am able to really see what stereo mirrors does for the realism, and for me it's huge - kudos to the devs for being the only sim that has this.

Personally I am not too bothered about licensed tracks and cars for now. In fact, I specifically want to learn in road cars. I can't relate to a ton of down force or cars that do 80mph in second gear.

For this reason, having played Project Cars, Raceroom and LFS, LFS is the best, especially for VR. So I wish the devs luck in reviving the momentum of the title!

Is Riftcat better then Moonlight?
(i use only moonlight with trackir hardware)

Quote from Xenix74 :

Is Riftcat better then Moonlight?
(i use only moonlight with trackir hardware)

I don't know the general answer, but Riftcat has a Moonlight option, I tried it, and it was not good compared to the built in streaming. By default Riftcat has NVENC enabled which uses a HW encoder, so in theory the streaming should be putting no load on CPU or GPU. I take it you have a Geforce if you are interested in Moonlight?

What trackIr hw are you using? I have bought some PS move controllers and eye cameras and plan to set up PSMoveService. This will give me room scale VR.

This is not directly for LFS, but you can put a light on the headset which should give me full head tracking in LFS rather than just rotational as with Riftcat alone.

I think Moonlight use also the NVENC encoder. The picture is very clear so far. With VSync off the latency is shorter but not so smoth...

I use an old TrackIR3 version with 6dof addon.

Ok the latency was the main issue I remember. It showed up as what seemed to be tracking latency, but I guess it could have been streaming latency. I only tried it in Steam Home.

You are on a motion platform? If so do you have any compensation of motion mapped to the tracking?

No i dont have a Motion Plattform yet.

I see, you mean 6dof tracking of the head.

I never thought about degrees of freedom to describe tracking, but this is exactly what I am aiming for with PSMoveService.

All you need for this is Riftcat for the rotational axes, and a head mounted light for the movement ones, and at least 3 playstation eye cameras. They are less than £5 each on ebay.

I will update this thread if I get it working with LFS