I picked up ATS yesterday and have really enjoyed it so far. A definite chill experience, with the radio on and the occasional ‘Oh look, I recognize that!’ sort of moment.
One thing that wasn’t as straight-forward as I expected was setting it up for the Vive/Rift. Here’s how I got to a point where it was good to play (and the defaults are awful enough to make people ill):
- Opt in to the Steam latest Oculus/Vive enabled branch. Note: the default install will not work with VR. You can do that by finding ATS (or ETS2, both apply) in your Steam library and right mouse button menu the ‘Properties’ page. Go to the ‘BETAS’ tab and pick the most recent version. Note: past this post date might be higher, newest one is on top:
- Now start the game (it won’t be in VR just yet) and change the graphics settings. Here’s what works
– Go to ‘Simple’ settings and hit ‘High’ and accept all defaults. If you have a 1080ti, maybe ‘Ultra’.
– Turn MLAA off. It fights the renderer in VR and slows it all down.
– Turn Depth of Field Off. Really important one to do.
– Make sure Scaling is set to 100% . This is not the setting to change for clearer VR.
– Leave HDR on, but it’s the next thing to turn off if you have framerate issues.
You can exit the game.
- Go to your ‘My Documents’ folder and find the folder ‘American Truck Simulator’ etc. Find a file in there called ‘config.cfg’. Do the following:
If on Vive:
uset o_openvr_independent_timewarp “0”
uset o_openvr_interleaved_reproject “0”
uset r_manual_stereo_buffer_scale “1.5”
If on Rift
uset r_manual_stereo_buffer_scale “1.5”
This sets pixel density for 1.5, which works fine on a Nvidia 1070 level card (ish). I get around 80 fps even in towns, so it reprojects to a comfortable 45 for no sickness. If you do get issues then lower the “1.5” down to “1.0” and work your way back up in steps.
- From the Steam library entry ‘Properties’ screen again, add the Steam General / Launch Parameter to start the game in VR (you can put this in or out depending if you want to play a session in 2D or 3D) (no quotes):
Vive = “-openvr”
Rift = “-oculus”
So for example, mine looks like this (I turned off the Steam overlay / Desk game theatre options as well):
And that’s it. The only other things are keys ‘F11’ toggles between headset and screen and ‘F12’ does position reset. If the game first time doesn’t show in your HMD, try F11. Also, I find performance is much nicer if you press ‘F3’ a couple of times and toggle off the ‘floating GPS window’. Just glance at the dash like a real driver 
Works quite nicely. Wall to wall, treetop tall, good buddy!
but it’s been nice to zone out and listen to music while driving. I get an embarrassing amount of joy out of using my blinker lights correctly changing lanes, working my wipers in the rain and light flashing other trucks when they can pull in on overtake (it doesn’t work, but hey…). The in-built trucker radio streams I’ve got mapped on the D-pad as well, and it’s been interesting listening to genres of music I’d never normally do.
)