@Kludger beat me to it, as I’ve been trying out some race sims two the last couple of days. I pretty much will mirror what he says, except for the fact that I like the pCARS VR implementation a little better than AC, probably because I’ve spent more time in the former. I think looking out of the car, pCARS looks better (much), but the cockpits look better in AC. The Spa, Donnington, and the Glen GP courses are done exceptionally well in pC. The road textures, flying klag, and colors look richer, although pCARS is a little darker. There are some settings that are supposed to may AC look better in VR, but I’m not sure which to try, since there are a handful of suggestions. Still looking.
The driving experiences for me are about the same. I turn off all aids and think that they both have pretty good feel of the tire grip at the limit, with AC doing a little better under braking and on curb feel. I’d give the overall nod to AC, but I’m there is a bit of jitter near the center point that is noticable when driving straight. I am running all of the FFB setting stock, so you can probably dial that out. I don’t feel it with pCARS.
Of course neither might be as good as Live for Speed, which to me might have even a little better feel than the other two. I just don’t spend a lot of time in it due to lack of real life cars and tracks, not that either are bad. It’s really good on both the FFB and VR implementation. It’s also free in it’s base form, so if someone wants to check out the VR experience in LFS, it costs you nothing.
Concerning driving the 3 above listed road simulations, I basically never want to do it outside of VR now. I find myself hitting the braking points, turn-in points, and apexes much more consistently in VR. I also drive closer to the edge of the track, which can cut lap times. I had the good fortune of attending 3 days of driving school for my 50th birthday (thank you love), and one of the things the I remember is that there is the driving line and there is the driving line. Learning the line is easy. There are a set of rules for different types of turns that can be easily remembered. But doing it consistently is not.
For instance, in a turn leading onto a long straight, if you are as little as 12 inches inside of the edge of the track at turn-in, you can add .2 seconds per lap. And the thing that I had the most trouble with after mastering everything else was hitting apexes consistently. You really need to be right on them and if you get sloppy, your driving instructor will be there with a stick pointing at the curb shaking his head. It’s a game of precision and VR is almost like cheating IMO.
The head movement is so natural I found myself leaning into turns with my head and body as you would in a car. It must humorous to watch this going on.
Lastly is Dirt Rally. Wow, The VR support is rather minimal, but once I found that the hot key to recenter the view is simply the CTRL key, I got along fairly well with the rally sim. Even though the FFB forces are a bit subdued compared to the street sims, you have to move the wheel so much that it is a lot more physical. Driving a short 3 stage rally in Finland in a Group B Peugeot is a good workout. My shoulders ached and my VR goggles felt warm on my face. The experience is so immersive that one time my co-drive called, "Stay center over big jump ", that I yelled out “Oh shi—” when I found that the pace notes should have said stay slightly left. Glad the kids were in bed.
Rallycross is amazing. I just wish DR was a little brighter. I turned up the gama, but it didn’t seem to do much.
In summary, it’s a great time for driving sim fans.
Good post comparing pCARS, Assetto Corsa, and iRacing in VR.
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