VR or Screens? Which is FASTER for Sim Racing?

Call me a sceptic, but as much as I enjoy VR racing – the ability to look in your mirror by moving your head or simply looking around the interior of a car is special – I wasn’t convinced if I could be quicker while wearing my expensive goggles.

I would often try VR, enjoy the experience, but then remove the headset when I needed to take part in an online race. When was the last time you saw an esports professional win a league race in VR? I’m sure it’s happened, but you would hardly call it a common occurrence.

Still, something was nagging away at me after I tried KartKraft in VR and still seemed to be setting some competitive online leaderboard times. Could racing in VR be quicker than non-VR?

It was time to fire up my PC, plug in the VR headset, try not to break my glasses and set some lap times. Watch my latest video to see the results.

Comment below if you’ve enjoyed your time in VR or have yet to experience it.

0:00 Intro
2:10 iRacing
2:39 iRacing monitor
3:37 iRacing VR
5:52 ACC
6:08 ACC VR
7:30 ACC monitor
9:15 AMS2
9:33 AMS2 monitor
10:42 AMS2 VR
12:30 Conclusions

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[jamesleegte]

VR made driving sims enjoyable for me and saved me giving up this hobby. Maybe it’s because I’m middle aged and been driving for so long, but driving on flat screens my brain can’t process what’s going on. I’m quicker and more consistent in VR and I learn tracks a lot quicker in VR too. VR feels like I’m driving and you get a sense of speed, flat screens I never felt immersed or comfortable and get no sense of speed or presence. It’s great that technology gives us so many choices to find personal comfort.

[jonathankvex]

Sim racing in VR is one of the wildest experiences we have access to. I never really played video games before VR, but once I tried sim racing in VR, it blew my mind. Specifically Dirt Rally 2. If you can work past the motion sickness, it’s incredible.

[raninrai]

For me it is VR. i almost sell my rig, but decided to try VR in the last minute. It is so immersive, VR has save me from giving up this hobby.

[MiMicheIIe]

VR is just so incredibly immersive, and it'll only get better as the headsets progress. It's awesome just how real it feels.

[DesroQc]

Combining VR with Sim Racing turned a hobby into a passion. And I'm definitely quicker with the VR headset on, I can feel the car so much better, I can't see myself playing without it except when I have no choice (I'm looking at you, F1 2021!), it makes the whole experience so real !

[FreakOfMeds]

The seated VR experience has been a dream come true. It finally became complete with my recent RTX 4090 purchase. Sims are so freaking smooth they are maxing out my Reverb G2. Whether it is MS FS 2020, Project Cars 2, or Elite Dangerous, they have never run more perfectly than now. I am blown away.

[dtek]

I mainly just play VR because of the fun factor and it's why I don't think I'll use screens for iRacing. I fondly remember first doing the MX5 practice sessions being amazed at the depth perception and the ability to look around.

But that first multiplayer race is what has kept me in the VR camp, seeing other drivers around me and being able to see them in my mirrors made it feel soo immersive and I still feel on edge when going side by side through a corner whether I'm defending or attacking it's like you can sense the car next to you

[QuantumSngularity]

As everyone i started on a single panel. After a while got a good speed and was lapping consistently with times in the top 25 on every game and car i tried. Then switched to triple screen and after a brief adjustment period and motion sickness (yes you can get that one with triple screens as well as VR) i'm now permanently in top 10 and in some games, cars and tracks top 3. Was feeling pleased until about 2 weeks ago i tried Oculus Quest 2 on a friend's rig. I was shocked. On a rig that was completely alien to me, w/o my settings and with new viewing experience just 3 laps in i was already matching some of my best EVER times, especially at the fast tracks like Monza and Le Mans with big straights and hard braking points at the end of them. I could nail my braking spot on the start-finish straight of Monza EVERY.SINGLE.LAP. Time after time the difference was probably less than 10cm where even on triple screens i usually do it probably 2 out of every 10 laps. The depth perception is just on a whole another level and easily trumps the more narrow FoV. So is the ability to check your opponents and even peek over your virtual steering wheel when it gets in the way like in the 2014 LMP1 Audi R18. So after that i was amazed and a bit bumped out. The Quest 2 is $299 in the states but here it starts from $600 promo price for the 128GB. So now i'm divided between new GPU and VR headset, both of witch will set me back more than $700.
Another important point for the triple screens - even with 1080p panels, you still need above average PC since the amount of pixels you have to render is almost twice the amount of 1440p and slightly below 4k.

[Hendrycks]

I have triples and swapped to VR and I'm not going back. Having a fan on you pretty well makes me comfortable to race for hours, I can feel the depth perception which makes me more consistent and faster overall.

I also enjoy it more from the immersion, I'm not just sitting in my room racing, I'm at the track with ppl, we chat and go racing. I take it more seriously and it's just more enjoyable overall.

[PandorusFightStick]

i can only sim race in vr. add some bass shakers and setup correctly, and you have an immersive experience

[paulkelleway]

Ive only used the Rift S, I also have triples, I would say that if you want to be totally immersed in the car, then screens just cannot give you what VR does, they are just not in the same ball park for scale, depth and dimensionality, you can get lost in VR in a way that you just cannot with screens. However the Rift S is still not good enough in terms of visual quality, I have not tried a reverb 2.

I can understand that if you have pets, young children or you are streamer, VR is not ideal in the sense that you cannot keep on eye on your surroundings. But for me, sitting in a single seater in VR, in full 3D with the correct sense of scale is way more immersive than monitors.

[RevRideReason]

I went from single to VR to single to VR and finally Triples... 👍 For me nothing beats VR immersion however I find Triples to be the perfect balance between single (extreme comfort) and VR (extreme immersion) ... "COMFORTABILITY" especially in long races was primal for me when making my final decision and oh did I mention I get motion sickness after 20mins of VR 🤦‍♂️... sucks. Seems I can play every now and again with the virtual world but not live in it... 😂 Thanks for the video too, overall I enjoy them all in their own way👍

[antmax]

I use head tracking with a single display and that works quite well. You can set spline curves for rotation so you might have 15 degrees or real head movement is 60 in the game, that way you can look around in the game without losing sight of the screen. It's a really good compromise.

[benjaminzarkhin]

At first I struggled on DiRT Rally 2.0 on a flat screen, mostly also because that and an occasional Assetto session were my only wheel driving games. Once I tried using my Quest 2 headset in DR 2.0, it changed everything- ominous crests became predictable hill climbs and finding the optimal apex points became stupidly easy. I then swapped back to playing on my monitor, and I was surprisingly proficient in it, maybe even on par with VR.
For me the take away is that VR racing is fun and can ease first timers into flat screen racing by visualizing the courses and even interiors of the car, giving you a sense of scale of the car so that you don't get snagged on a curb or a rock.

[giraph]

That video is one of the best in terms of quality of profuction and testing thank you so much!

[pierregodin]

Great thorough test. Completely agree with your analysis and I arrive to the same conclusions. I would definitely choose VR permanently if it was more comfortable. I would also add in the pros for VR: it's a different world for rallye driving or drifting, where the car is mostly sideways. VR is soooo much better then. No question.

[JoeBlowUK]

Having both VR and triple screens, I find switching between the two far easier than from a single screen and VR. This is probably because I have pretty much identical FOV set in both.

[darkmatter]

I won 3x UK&I Skip Barber championships in iRacing using VR. The clinchers for me in favour VR were:

1) Perfect FOV in any car.

2) Being able to look left and right to check my blind spots meant I could be more confident in placing my car - and that makes a big difference with being able to hold your line in side-by-side racing or overtakes.

3) You get stereoscopic vision, which means everything is in 3D, which allows for judging distances far better than with flat 2D screens - giving greater fidelity for modulation under breaking.

If you’re struggling with overheating, put a fan in front of your face.

[DrProfSlugger]

Lap times shouldn't be why you choose either one of these. I will always race in VR because it's easier to set up than triples and I have no desire to dedicate my PC setup to a simrig. With VR, I can leave my rig to the side of my desk and hop into it when I want to race.

Honestly, the more you race in VR, the more comfortable it gets. During a race, I don't even realize the headset is on. It's really only at the beginning and end of a race that I notice it.

[Okatogurui]

I think the common misconception that people have is the more sensory input you have in sim racing, the faster you'll get. I played sim racing for a couple years on a single monitor, and when trying VR I just found the limited vision and immersion distracting, and drove a lot worse. I already had buttons on the wheel programmed to look left/right to see cars next to me.

Even things like force feedback don't necessarily make you a quicker driver. The FF on my wheel eventually broke (a logitech DFGT) so I was forced to play with it off. Contrary to what I expected, after a bit of practise I found myself beating my previous lap records and driving just as consistently (in rFactor) with no force feedback.

Also, one of the better drivers I raced against online was actually a controller player. To be fair he did use light assistance (ABS/TC), but I found it unbelievable that someone on a xbox controller could race faster on a sim game than most people with high end gear.

At the end of the day, the main sensory input you actually need to control the car is a lag-free display, high FPS and sound to hear the tyre squeel / bumps. Everything else is just for increased immersion IMO and can be compensated for with experience.