Deep Dive Into iRacing's 2024 Graphic Settings | Part 2: Visual Levels of Detail

[@scottpearson4066]

Tommy could you do another part to this series regarding the current Nvidia panel settings as there are new things within it that wasn’t there on your video years ago. Currently have my panel set at let 3D application decide but didn’t know if there were better options available.

[@backmarkerbob]

I was going to ask something similar, how these new videos relate to the past nVidia settings videos

[@sachanorden19]

Unbelievable the amount of effort from him. Thanks! Never seen a settings video so detailed

[@cbremer83]

There is another trick to help CPU latency and stutter, the paid version of Process Lasso. I have been using the free version for years, but iRacing blocks CPU affinity changes as part of the anti cheat. But, you can use CPU Sets to get around this in Process Lasso. Only catch is that it is, that setting is only in the paid version. But, a lifetime license is only $40, so not a huge issue. I set the iRacing DX11 exacutable that runs when you are racing to a CPU set that locks out core 0 and 1. In the case of my 5800x that is the first core and it's virtual thread. Since DX and windows live there, that core gets a real pounding when iRacing also wants to be there. This helps a lot since iRacing will run on some other core and core 0 is pretty much left to all other things in the background. In the past, getting any game off core 0 has been a huge help in getting rid of stutter. iRacing is just a bigger pain than most games in this regard.

[@JesseFox-bb7fi]

This is only in replay settings. It doesnt work the same in the gameplay setting.

[@drorzy_0485]

Great video and research. However, I notice you’re doing most of these settings in the “replay” menu and not the actual graphics menu. Does this mean you have been doing all your benchmarking and testing using the Replays and not actual driving after making changes in the Graphics menu?

[@hunterh1033]

Imagine.. lmao

[@mmachado]

Amazing work! Thank you for this massive contribution to the community!

[@tlosbarranqueros]

Very interesting, turning up my settings and doing that compression change to 0 it helped a lot. I did turn off distortion and heat haze and MSA setting as it make visuals worst for VR in my opinion. What I was not expecting was a major drop during night races with those settings.

[@markcrooks1631]

It's so interesting to see that your settings are aligning close to what I've been finding with Pimax settings and 7950x and 4090. One thing I noticed which is good to do is particles High and full res and soft off, this prevents stutter at start of road race. Grandstands I typically have off as they save massive fps at tracks like Daytona and LeMans with a full grid.

[@SimRacer101]

5:46 I have to wonder if Heat Haze and Distortion makes more of a difference with a lesser video card. Your card has a LOT of memory. But on my laptop 4070 or another card with less memory it could have a different impact.

[@chrisbewrx]

You got a sub because your advice about distortion and heat haze completely fixed my stutter! That is crazy amazing 😅 thanks heaps man

[@Upracefan]

Why are you changing the settings of replays instead of the main graphics page?

[@mcarp22]

24:50 - 1 pass of cube maps gives actual world reflections on the cars (try driving under a bridge) instead of generic ones, more don't do anything though.

[@revolverocelot5034]

Tommy, which version of Nvidia driver do you use for 4090

[@MTBGarage]

I was intrigued by your results, but on a "average" setup, 5600x3D, 32gb, nvme ssd, 4060 8gb, all of these settings that make your setup "faster" tank my FPS anywhere from 5-20fps. (and that is while having detail on most things much lower than your setup) For me using FSR ultra has allowed me to turn on more settings and get an overall better image while still being smooth, I only target 90fps, and I can only get that in the dry, rain is giving me about 10fps hit on average, but still very playable. I have used a setup recently that was a i9/4090 at a friends and he had almost everything maxed out, it was having no problem getting over 200fps most of the time, (we're both using triple 1440p) but to my surprise the "experience" of it really wasn't any better, sure if you screenshot a frame and zoom in, I'm sure it looks better, but that's not what I care about when racing.

[@MTBGarage]

I did want to add, thanks for the compression settings, I had not heard of those and I always wondered why my custom paint I made looked like crap in replays, changed that and now it looks great!

[@R4J021]

Have you tried just running the graphic config and using those settings. My system runs way better on the config than trying to adjust it. HOWEVER I did turn dynamic objects off that's the only change. Everything else is on and maxxed. Tge game looks amazing and fps is better than what I was achieving turning this off, that off etc. Give it a try.

[@MTBGarage]

@@R4J021 there's no magic in the graphics config, generally they just reset things you already disabled. I use IR sidekick, to keep profiles and make easy changes.

[@joep6480]

I have been struggling with my 4070 Ti Super. I was PRAYING you'd post an updated video of this. Can I ask why you show us the settings in Replay instead of the Graphics tab? Do you offer help with getting folks setups right?

[@ClaytonMacleod]

Further to my comment on part one that I just made a few minutes ago, I have a question. I was wondering whether or not you had tested the different shaders by starting with all of them off and just turning, say, heat haze on alone. If that’s the case, it might explain the increased variance when all shaders are off. Quite frankly, iRacing’s devs take a lot of shortcuts. And it would not surprise me at all if they’ve done some optimization with shaders on that don’t exist when all shaders are off. So even having one shader turned on could make things smoother simply because the shader code is functioning regardless of which shader you’re talking about. If you have at least one on, whatever optimizations they’ve done for when shaders are on are in play, and so things are smoother when shaders are active. Turn them all off and it goes to crap. I’m really, really hoping their next render is actually decent. What we still have now has way too many roots in the old DX9 code and is one of the reasons it really doesn’t run all that great. The update to DX11 didn’t really help as much as they were hoping it would, and I think it was probably because of how much legacy code and/or legacy code thinking was still in place. Now that they’ve got some new devs onboard and are working on a new renderer there is some hope again. Benchmarking now with a single screen and the lowest resolution possible really shows how much the current renderer is tied to CPU performance. This takes the GPU out of the equation as much as possible and really shows how bottlenecked the renderer is by its single-threaded nature. Been using iRacing since 2009, and even back then I was amazed at how poorly the renderer performed. It has been a sore point for the sim throughout its entire life. Finally going to a multithreaded renderer might be a huge gift, whenever it finally gets released, which will probably still be years from now. Hehe

[@jonnovak]

Good to see you update us all on all this stuff. im sure you know, but you can adjust the "SharpeningAmount" in the ini file also. And since you suggest having it on, i was just wondering if you had benched that with different amounts? I had once messed with the settings and found jacking it up made it look much better with very little impact to frame rates. Also, FXAA has an overkill settings int he ini file.

[@71datsun1]

Sharpening Clamp & Percentage. When you lower the Clamp you can increase Percentage and vice versa. Clamp is the distance that it's trying to sharpen everything within that distance. At a road course with long straights, objects in distance will be fuzzy until you get closer. At a small short oval, everything within the track may be within that distance. Default Clamp is 10 wt Percentage at 125%. Large tracks I lower the Clamp at 2 and increase Percentage to 250%. Short tracks I may use Clamp @15 & Percentage at 100. This setting makes big difference in VR. Using iRacing Config is a must. Allows you to make unlimited copies of app.ini files, name them and install them. I have files named VR Short Track Night, VR Short Track Day, VR Road Night, Monitor Road Night etc etc. Its a free program. Just Google it. When you open it, your .ini will be named Current. Just copy it, make changes, save and name, install it. Name 1st copy something like Backup so you can always reload your original if you get lost making changes. There are also lots of FPS available in graphics in .ini for number of cars and pits rendered ahead and in mirrors

[@mrlatte145]

What settings are altered by running the "Run Graphics Config" function in the iRacing Options & Settings? Does this undo all the things you changed in these two videos?

[@EricK-fr9fe]

I’ve noticed similar things as you. It seems the harder you make the gpu work the better. I’ve also noticed that your speed seems to affect fps. Sometimes I see my fps increase as my speed on track increases. I have a 12600k and an rx 6900xt. Triple 2k 1ms monitors. I get 144fps very easy with pretty much your same settings. I do go lower at race start but still over 100fps. wanted people to know you don’t need a 4090 to run triples…. Another note. Setting your fps cap a few numbers lower than your monitor really helps a lot. My graphics are way smoother with cap set to 142 instead of 144

[@turn7racing]

quick question ive followed along your viideo however I've noticed you keep going to replay settings, and not standard graphic settings, replay mode hasalways been lighter to run than driving.. o my question is are your settings the same for driving? and with me having a 4080gpu and and ryzon 9 3950x would it be advisable for me to copy your settings when I also use same PC for streaming

[@sulleysaad3266]

why r u in the replay tab and not graphics?

[@richardtaylor7240]

Good to see you again Tommy. Thanks for the information.

[@Rich_Jamison]

Sorry to hear about your Dad. 👍 Sending positive vibes to you and Family! 🙏

[@masterofjustice1984]

Thanks Tommy. I run a 4090 myself with triple 4k 144. I was struggling getting over 80fps. Just with your first video I've gotten over 100fps. Looking forward to trying these out tonight.

[@R4J021]

Are you able to advise what we can do with the rain. I've dialled everything in and can max out my monitors refresh rate of 144, but as soon as rain is added to the mix I drop back down to to 60 to 80 fps range. Not using SSAO or SSR at all. Just trying to find a happy medium with settings. Thanks for your hard work In putting this together.

[@BlindGoose1]

Great video, but I must say that the first one was the most useful, this video is for replay, that's not what I thought this video was about, I thought it was a continuation of the first video. Anyway, awesome job.

[@dauntlessracing4]

Interesting. Have you monitored CPU and GPU usage in these tests? I wonder how much those usages are affected by these settings. This COULD make a difference for some people, especially if they are trying to stream while playing.... some of these settings could create a little more headroom for multitasking?

[@mrb552]

Hi Tommy. Awesome videos! Do you have any recommendations for how to do the same comparison tests with our own systems? What is your method in doing testing with CapFrameX? Is there a straightforward way to setup that application for iRacing testing? I would like to try and replicate what you have done here with my meager PC. 🤣 Thanks! 🏁

[@shanecheek1]

thanks for putting in this work for the rest of us!

[@mikaoja4603]

yours videos the best help a loot.... now after uppdate iracing nvidia filters not work any more.... there its reshade but video settings i find its 3 years old.... can you give info whit it.....

[@hippieflip8893]

Ever since they took the load bars away on the graphics page my graphics aren’t as good and my temperatures are way lower but now nvidia has changed the overlay to where I can’t even see the temps.

[@brettloxton7154]

I would be interested to know if your gpu usage was very low on some of those tests. Some of the performance drop with lower settings could be due to the nvidia driver overhead. In some testing I did recently I noticed if the gpu (rtx4080) usage was below 30ish % frame rates would be lower/less consistent. Not sure where that actually starts to negatively fps though.

[@R4J021]

Edit to my previous comment. I listened when Tommy said his system likes to be pushed to the limit. I run the graphics config and just hit drive. The FPS difference between the config recommendations and any adjustments is actually so small. Sure dynamic objects and shadow maps made a difference but everything else i say leave it as per the config and enjoy the beauty of the game. I was chasing a dew extra fos but the game seems to do this perfectly for us. And maybe its just as tommy said, the system loves being pushed to perform better.

[@lukavujeva6584]

I came to your two videos about this topic since i getting mad with iRacing lately. I have a pretty strong PC, RTX 4080; everything worked great until some 5-6 weeks ago. All of a sudden and randomly, im having issues where, despite having strong FPS in the game, around 200+, im having some kind of background lag. Im not sure if im describing it well, but for example this week im driving at Watkins Glenn in Super Formula and each time I approach turn 5, you are in the turn, rotating car, the car is looking great, and quality, movement, fps, but the trees behind you see in you peripheral view are just lagging. I tried everything, going very low and very high with the settings and installing new drivers, and nothing helped. It is very random, I will have the same issue now, and later, it will work great. I just can not find any pattern or any settings I could turn off or on. It really drives me crazy.

[@johnsheehan3671]

How about foliage? you said nothing about it

[@bsbru88]

Any advice on the fps drop in vr would be appreciated. Will be runnin g 90 fps and all of a sudden it's down around 10-15 fps. And it won't recover. Except backing out and going back in. Which sucks in officials

[@wesleyjansen232]

This is because your gpu ran out of vram its very anoying i got the same problem that im trying to fix, 1 thing 1 found out so far when in vr and when i unfocus the iracing window my vram drops and i have 10-15% more headroom

[@budmolyneux4650]

@@wesleyjansen232 How do you unfocus the iracing window? Sorry if this is a stupid question.

[@wesleyjansen232]

@budmolyneux4650 I dont know if you got multiple screens but i just move my mouse on the other screen and click it when im in the car. You could also open another program on the same screen as iracing and click that when are in the car or even windows Explorer window

[@bradwrenn2508]

Tommy, what CPU and GPU are you running?

[@MTBGarage]

it's listed on every screen of the captures i9 13k & 4090

[@bradwrenn2508]

Thanks. Watching on my phone and could not see what the text said.

[@royrom86]

Thanks so much!!!

[@robloyst4514]

The major major thing that bothers me is that the sponsors look blurry as heck on the further cars. It’s just so annoying to me in VR. It’s like not having your glasses on, but just for distant cars like 3 cars away.

[@Kpaxlol]

Tl;dr screenshot?

[@ossr1224]

Put a 4070 in and retest. Your not in the same realm as us average users

[@samwats]

Yeah that' my problem with these videos. "Here's my benchmark on my super high end system and what worked for me" isn't actually comparable or helpful to 90% of people who don't have that kind of hardware.

[@allyhaze8300]

So why are you watchin

[@Daz5Daz]

4070 is far from average as well though.

[@atechcheck]

OK so to explain all those HIGH better than low is cause of your CPU. More you push on GPU, CPU have less to do. So basically if GPU is not struggling then CPU is Fd and if GPU is on Limit then CPU have a bit more breathing space. 1300k is good but not that good for this game (weird AF I know). Watching this so I can hopefully get my 7900X3D and 4080 to run this POS game at least at 120FPS on 1440p screen with decent visuals...

[@ilikewatchtheese]

Guy talking about fps while this video has like 10fps, and the dudes iracing setup is based on pure picture quality not the fps. How can i take this serious?

[@Drivewithbob]

Great video, but please repeating yourself. Say it once at the start amd once at the end 😮

[@jassonco]

Wizard.

[@VaethOjK]

Kinda useless video for huge majority of racers. The percentage of people running such monstrous rig is so low, that it is kinda pointless. Probably 3/4 of people viewing this video, following the same steps, will just kill their systems. I'm pretty much in complete opposition to majority of Your setup to reach my 140 FPS on "poor 4070". If You will ever try the same video in next 2 years, do it on 'regular' PC not some uber beast. Then it might actually be helpful.

[@71datsun1]

Lmfao.

[@rocasspb]

Irrelevant to the majority of the audience. Very different on reasonably weaker hardware.