Graphic Settings Guide Part Two: Everything You Need to Know about iRacing's Graphic Settings

[@Buzzdog1971]

The answer for those that do not want to wait 7 minutes, turn off dynamic shadows.

[@didioliverf1]

AA 8x, HDR and Dynamic Shadows this is the most FPS killers in iRacing

[@Daz555Daz]

@@didioliverf1 HDR makes zero difference to my FPS so I wonder what the difference is with your setup?

[@smoove7932]

Yes thank you for taking HOURS of your own time to test this so others dont have too. That means a lot :)

[@greenfrog42]

What a wonderful and thorough series of videos for iRacing graphics setting! Thank you so much for the hard work! A couple of thoughts: 1) you can enable/disable temporary camera edit within iRacing - it is under Ctrl+F12 -> Group tab. 2) in iRacing's graphics settings, some are CPU (render) related, and some are GPU related. If someone's PC has big disparity between CPU and GPU, one of them could be a bottle neck and therefore changing settings that uses the other processor unit may not have much effect on FPS at all - but that could mask the true FPS impact on a more CPU/GPU balanced setting. One way to tell which processor unit is the bottle neck is to turn on the meter box and watch the R (render or CPU) and G (grahics or GPU) bar. If both bar's value in milliseconds are close, then they are balanced. If one bar's value is much higher than the other, then that bar related processor unit is the bottle neck. In theory, only A/B test on the bottlenecked processor unit can truely reveal that setting's true FPS impact.

[@mjpagliaro]

Best guide I've seen on KZbin, thanks for taking the time and all the detail and explanation!

[@andyprociuk]

Thanks for this Tommy. This has really helped me, with a midrange 3070 based system it’s really important to save FPS where I can. Appreciate the time you’ve put in.

[@shawnrigby1866]

Thank you so much for all of your work and time. It's so much appreciated. Absolutely the BEST graphics video on KZbin! Amazing work.

[@TommyBrandon]

You're very welcome!

[@joeyladouceur3483]

Thank you for breaking this down so well! Your channel is a true asset to the sim racing community!

[@TommyBrandon]

I appreciate that!

[@irock5758]

Thank you so much for this. After watching I immediately went and checked out my settings. Now I’m running VR(HP reverb G2) on a RTX 3080 and a lower end CPU(I7 10700f) And only by turning the dynamic obj setting off I now basically get 90fps locked 70% of a race. Now it’s just little tweaks. And with dynamic obj off I did notice shadows in the car is gone more than anything else it effect, but having the extra fps in VR is way more important than losing that nice shadow effects. Well done on this test man!

[@Rgmekanic]

Just wanted to say thank you very much for your testing. Just getting back into iRacing and bought a new GPU for my rig PC, was really nice to finally see what effects these settings have. Since it's such a niche game, there is a severe lack of information, and you filled in a massive gap.

[@insidethreewide7133]

Well done, Tommy. I really don't have any problems myself, of course as you mentioned, it varies from track to track. "Oh look, that's a nice redwood there" lol! But I did learn from this, where the differences were in the sub settings of each configuration. (Insert crowd applause here)

[@stuartdad5417]

Thank you so much for all your hard work and then being selfless and sharing all of your data with the sim racing community. Very informative and detailed hypothesis.

[@theseusf147]

Thank you so much for putting this together and taking the time

[@jakeham1860]

And HUGE shout out for the vide, I removed the dynamic objects and helped me be able to run the daytona 24hr this coming weekend - infield I was getting 40fps, turned this off......running around 75-85 on the infield, LIFESAVER!!!!!!!!

[@holgerm420]

Thanks for the videos. One thing I noticed. You set Antialiasing in iRacing to FXAA, but in the first video, you set it to off in the nVidia driver. You might want to reconsider the driver setting.

[@Simlife101]

These settings only work for 1080p. Do these tests at 1440p its a completely different story

[@matthewgaffney853]

Ya I reconfigured after an upgrade and ran 20 races or so battling low fps. Watched this video and ran upstairs fired my rig up at like 2 am and BAAAM!!! the most important setting had a tick mark, I unticked that setting and literally doubled my fps. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR TIME!!!. Ran laps at darlington same night in bclass. Smoked my best time. 👌

[@JohnLewis-gi5vp]

This has been one of the best videos on Iracing even made. Did some of the simple suggestions offered and my frame rate has been increased. Thanks again.

[@alexanderstratmann9478]

Very good video, just a tip: Link your first video on the discribtion, makes it easier to watch. High Tree is only on a few Tracks like hungaring, with the newer tree model.

[@tt350zJason]

New to IRacing and this was AWESOME. Thank you!!

[@jassonco]

You are a lifesaver! I lost all my settings/reconfigured hardware but, your tutorial got me back to where I needed to be, even better this time. Thank you!

[@jassonco]

iRacing graphics setup reference video. New card and these settings are still relevant!

[@davidtidbury9395]

Graphics seven never been any better. Thanks for the hard work dude.

[@vikingkombat9389]

I've been using FXAA by default in all games for years and I have a killer rig.

[@snuitmanschz2870]

Im graphic minded and experienced with settings in games, but even then i enjoyed your movie. Well done sir, you earned a subscribe from me !

[@JCrowe86]

Wow, thanks for pointing these things out! Now that I see it A/B, the dynamic shadows don't even look good to begin with. Will absolutely be turning them off.

[@19Silverboy82]

Thank you so much for your 2 videos this has made my sim look amazing to how it was I can’t thank you enough even better now the rain is here

[@SeanClarkUK]

Thanks for the awesome guide, my iRacing experience looks absolutely brilliant now and at 250fps too!!!

[@mateuscrv]

I'm brazilian and my English is terrible, but I need come here to thank you for this video! Solved my graphics settings, looks like another game!

[@RalfBlees]

This is what I wa looking for since I got my new system. My visual experience is now so much better with the same FPS.

[@GitGudRacing]

This is pure gold. Incredible work, thank you!

[@SIMSTAGE]

Thanks bro, very cool work, regards from Russia, now iRacing looks great!👍✌👍

[@FamNation]

Thanks a ton for putting this work in! The settings really helped figure out why I was struggling with FPS

[@racingonline6791]

really good,super info. Not all was good for my setup but overall i now have better view and more fps. Thanks man !!!!

[@seansowden8358]

Thanks Tommy, great video, really appreciate the time you’ve spent. 👍

[@MrChiquierdi]

Thank´s from Spain, you has help me a lot!!

[@JSmith73]

I for one find that the dynamic objects don't have *that* much of an impact, and add a huge amount of life to the car cockpit especially. Eg in a GR86, full field at Rudskogen. It might be because I'm GPU limited by triple QHD 32s, an overclocked 3070 - the 5800X3D with very decent memory not breaking a sweat? I lose 5-10fps, find the extra atmosphere well worth it. I am also a lot more meh about sharpening, but will try having it enabled to see how that feels. After your video I turned off the 3D crowds, helped claw a tiny bit back. Thanks for your stellar work.

[@AaronGoSoFast]

Awesome! That helped a lot. I also found the number of lights to be a major contributor as well. At least for me. I didn't really do any rigorous testing though. I just dialed the number of lights up to 20 and immediately watched my fps plummet down to mid 20fps territory. Then I tried it with 4 and was getting around 55fps. I ultimately settled on 3 where I got a tolerable 63fps. This was also with OBS, VRS, Firefox, and KZbin (idle) operating in the background.

[@oleboy4332]

Thanks for your time! I’m not great with computers but I’m learning since joining iRacing,

[@Sl0wL1f3]

One at a time. You must be an engineer or similar too 🙂Thank you for doing all of this!

[@pwh__66]

Very reasonable guide. I am mindful that you are referencing static images with and without the relevant settings. I was hoping you would cover drawing of cars, and memory allocation; perhaps next time? Thanks…

[@LithFox]

Yeah Dynamic Shadows are CPU based and some of the heaviest things you can have. In fact, now with more cars having NDM, the "cars" setting is also important again too (we used to lower this even back in the DX9 days)

[@davidnance3938]

Thanks Tommy good stuff really helped

[@stevencorner7241]

Great information.Helped me make iracing look so much better.many thanks for the time you took to do this video

[@AT7_Racing]

Wow! Thanks for sharing this info!

[@amsden6327]

Great content big help, thanks Tommy!!

[@tapatsos]

Super nice Video! So helpful man!

[@TPA_JW]

Amazing video. I just switched from an AMD to an RTX4080 Super and am looking for guides on how to maximize the settings in iRacing. Your three videos are amazing; thank you for creating them. What I have found is that most videos for iRacing graphics are 1+ years old. Are there any updates to your series? Also, you reference the Dynamic objects kill FPS while showing Replay settings. Are you just referring to Dynamic objects in Reply graphics or in both reply and gameplay? thanks!!

[@tonybellec2128]

Arf... For my case in VR, all is on minimum (or OFF), VR optimization on the iRacing forum is done, openXR at 60% and still drop frames in many circuits. It seems like I can't take any advantage of my RX6700XT with 3600x config 😂 Thanks for your time, appreciate a lot !

[@SizzlingPopcorn]

Thank you, Tommy! Much appreciated! 😎I've got an RTX 2080Ti with i9 9900K. My issue is not FPS while racing, but with the FPS on my streams. I lose frames or it stutters. I'll try some of these adjustments and see if it improves the streaming.

[@shelsmith2001]

Brilliant! Thank you for all your hard work. I just discovered your channel. I’m a happy new subscriber😊

[@julienguyot6400]

Bravo. Great job. Very precise and well explained.

[@Simlife101]

If you racelabs or another program for your relative and what not set max cars to 63

[@vincentgravel92]

thank you so much for all the work and sharing this with us

[@jonde664]

I’m sure the dyn shadows aren’t an immersion breaker with screens but in VR it absolutely is for me personally.😢 I’m just compensating for it with everything else off.

[@noname2031-w5r]

Amazing Detailed Video and Process thank you sir !!!!!

[@iRacerUSAF45]

Another great video...thanks!

[@racegrubb2152]

For some reason my computer does well at tracks with graphics at medium high range but when I am at Daytona with a 40 car field I have to adjust cars drawn ahead and behind down and other graphics way down. It is just Daytona and not sure why?

[@russ2387h]

Thank you for this! After following your steps, not only does the game look better but I went from avg 120fps to 170fps! Turn off Dynamic Shadows!!!

[@airsiren]

Incredible! I’ll try it later… 3080 here too, so how’s your NVIDIA configs?

[@richardlee846]

Thanks Tommy, great info!

[@nicholasmarshall3191]

What about using Windows or Nvidia Surround to run triples?

[@AlienWooshie]

only thing missing is a link to the first part in the description :)

[@Mandord]

Great Work mate!

[@Tuganotube]

Great work. Thx a lot! 🙌

[@runofthemillz]

Straight up.. thank you!

[@alees12345]

great work! thanks for your help

[@markvollert2234]

thank you so much for doing these videos

[@davidharris6977]

Well done mate 👏

[@Kozi03]

Amazing thank you so much for this!

[@jensweber7106]

"High quality trees" have only impact on newer tracks, like the rework of VIR for example, I think. Test this option there and you will notice a huge difference. I turned it off because of the newer tracks. But, if you know you are driving an older track, you can keep it checked. But I think you didn't notice a difference on Daytona or the option will be ignored on such tracks, because Daytona has the old tree model.

[@henryjames3580]

Great video bud 👍

[@ruleslawyer]

Dynamic shadows make a big difference in vr. You see a lot more cockpit and the difference is obvious there.

[@JSmith73]

With 178 degree field of view there's a huge difference on triples as well. The car cockpit really comes alive with shadows darkening the doors, moving around on the dash etc. I'm keeping this on, but am also hoping NVIDIA will sell out their massive 30xx stocks soon so we can have a price drop on 40xx cards. (3070/5800X3D, an exceptionally high value for money CPU for iRacing)

[@ruleslawyer]

@@JSmith73 its more that in vr you don’t just look in a perfect plane that you optimize for the view out the windows. You also get to look at your legs for instance.

[@banjoqc]

Hey @tommy ! I dont understand that in your ‘’ part one video’’ you say its better to use dynamic obj ‘’ in main & mirror’’ because your gpu usage gets higher = better fps but in this video you say to turn it off? 5800x3d + 4070 ti super… 2k monitor 40’’ msi 155hz so i cap my fps at 150

[@inthere2it]

What exactly are the “number of lights”, “pcf4 filter”, “dynamic cubemaps”, and “fixed cubemaps”?

[@daboxownsall]

39:34 for TL:DW gotchya screen cap.

[@jakeham1860]

Any chance I could ask you some questions regarding my car in races and my graphics being distorted, but all the cars around me being awesome? When I watch a replay back, all my decals are distorted, but all the cars around me are perfect and look high definition - I love to take pictures, but this pixelated stuff on my car is killing me. The paint looks great and no issues when you load it in the paint shop in iRacing to look at the Trading Paint I am using. Looks good in there..........load in to a private race/practice, my paint and decals look awesome.....go in to any race no matter how many cars on the track, go back and look at my paint in the replay, all pixelated on the decals

[@Keny-Quintanilla]

Thank you.

[@nicholasmarshall3191]

I used to race in the past with no grandstands, and would get really bad sun glare (Depending on direction/ time of day) due to the sun not being blocked by the buildings/stands.

[@bholtmeier]

Night shadow maps KILL my frame rates. Even with a 3090 I leave it off.

[@02bluehawk]

I have zero issues runing iracing on "class 2" settings (32gb ram, gtx1660, intel i5) with the fps uncapped or a capped 180fps until I go to mount Washington hill climb..... all those trees just destroy my frames to the point its unplayable (droping to 10 fps at times) in excited to try some of the tips in the video to see it I get it run decent

[@CarlWicker]

You da man!

[@kevin8798]

Really helpfull! Thank you

[@shreddedyeat5532]

A bit you forgot to talk through was the "Cubemaps". I'm not sure what these are and the performance they have? Any tips you can give? Thank you :D

[@brent2630]

Generally speaking what is a solid FPS for iRacing? I can turn some things down and get 200-400 fps. My monitor is 120hz.

[@Kingdlee_]

Great video 🎉

[@JoeCogburn]

It really helps thank you

[@caffeinepowered3957]

I had fixed the trees issue but still had chunks of the track that just bombed from 120 FPS to 40-70 FPS. Those dynamic shadows were killing my FPS at VIR with the tire walls.

[@hasole9669]

Appreciate this vid

[@davidesterza6971]

Hi Tommy, In the part one I saw that you recommended setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X in the Nvidia control panel settings. Now I see that even in the Iracing settings you have always set the same filter to 16X, does it make sense to do so? Wouldn't it be more correct to set it to Iracing only? Thank you

[@regibson23]

How do you have videos on graphics settings while your KZbin videos look like they're running at 15fps?

[@oo7mech]

regarding Anti-Aliasing: months ago other testers (DaveCam) showed test using [Off] as much better for FPS and not much difference in visuals. You didn't show us the improvement of [Off], thoughts?

[@jordenetter7707]

🔥

[@lewiss9478]

I would instead suggest using no anti-aliasing. FXAA is literally terrible and makes me feel like I need glasses, it seems like it just adds a blur to all of the sharp edges to remove them, at the cost of not being able to see anything. In my tests, SMAA was good but wasn't worth the drop of 10 in average fps I captured compared to no anti-aliasing.

[@dunnock343]

Wouldn't you fix the jaggedness fully when you have the GPU setting set to quality on the control panel from your last video? You never did fully explain why you went for performance instead of quality in that video.

[@jcsquared1111]

I have a 4070ti, and g9 ultrawide set @ 240htz I notice after the most recent update it am getting some screen tearing and its glitchy at times. Think its racelabs but im not sure weather i should be using both gsync as well as the samsung adaptive as well? Also my FPS swings from 170s down to 120s during a race is this normal?

[@taylorbertrim7625]

I use an 11900k snd 3080 12gb I isually lock thr FPS with Vsync. Do you know what causes the interior roll cage to lose it's shading and become brighter in night races?

[@jonnovak]

HDR causes my screens to bleed to whites if im bump drafting other cars, but if i back off the bumper the colors go back to normal. it pissed me off for a while until i figured out what was causing it. it was HDR. no explanation as to why but whatever

[@kishdogg1594]

I have a hp Victus 15L ryzen 5600 6600xt can i run iracing settings on High graphics 1080p? One more thing i have a Benq Monitor woth HDR and HDRI sould i use either one? Or keep it normal thanks alot

[@mrb552]

What is the fps hit for just having Object Self Shadowing on?

[@littlemuffin943]

i press alt f3 and i get the window for filters but their are no filters i can mess with.?

[@kitmilo]

Amazing video, and what a difference to the graphics and visuals. Now feels as if I am truly there! Only issue is my FPS has now dropped from 120 to 53. I run a 3090RTX with an i9 i9-12900k Hexadeca Core Processor and ASUS Z690 ROG Maximus Hero D5 ATX motherboard. Any advice?

[@Daz555Daz]

You must have made some significant changes (increase in settings) to see a drop from 120 to 53.