Developers, please take a look at DXVK to improve performance

Hello! So R3E is probably one of the worst performing active sim racing titles at the moment. There is a huge CPU overhead in this sim, probably at least partly caused by DX9. I wanted to try DXVK, which are a couple of .dlls that wrap any game into Vulkan and it is known for improving performance in many cases.

I have been complaining about R3E performance for long. It used to run very well, and years ago it just became terrible. In my last posts I used to have a "mediocre" Ryzen 5 2600, which I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 5600X, which is known for its strong performance, is single core as well as multi core. In ACC I can run huge grids without drops, etc.

R3E still stutters in DX9, albeit less. Yesterday I saw a post about DXVK on Reddit and I wanted to try it in R3E.
Silverstone is pretty demanding and stuttering so I tried it there. I limit my framerates as I value stability over pure numbers. With DXVK it's buttery smooth (84 FPS) with a flat frametime graph. With DX9 I still get several dips as low as into the 50s, which feels bad, creates flickering for my FreeSync monitor, etc. Unfortunately with DXVK I get a shadow bug which looks like a huge patch of flat shadow is following me, so it might need some fix for R3E, but I guess it is a very good starting point if developers would want to improve performance for modern hardware.

Screenshots below, note the frametime graph (smooth it good, dips upwards mean stutter):

DX9



DXVK (on the first image you can see the shadow bug which happens throughout the track)



Feel free to try it. Download from https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases. Open the file with 7-Zip or similar and copy d3d9.dll and dxgi.dll (or just every .dll) from dxvk-1.9.3.tar.gz\dxvk-1.9.3.tar\dxvk-1.9.3\x64\ to \steamapps\common\RaceRoom Racing Experience\Game\x64. To get rid of it delete the .dlls you copied over, that's all. I have no affiliation with the DXVK dev, just want to see R3E performance improve and curious about your results with different hardware.

I am running it on Ryzen 5600X, Radeon 5700 XT, at 1080p supersampled to 1440p.

 

The devs know about it , its also posted here in the forums by someone , it seems hit and miss , some ppl get a benefit , some dont .

Andi

 

Is it possible to add it as another starting optrion, like the non vr and vr starting option?

 

Interesting,will try it out as i have the same problems as you posted for long.

 

I don't think so. Best I can think of is setting it up as a mod via JSGME. But I am afraid with your specs that you will also get the shadow bug. Worth a try though.

Good luck, be sure to report your experience!

 

Sadly,a disappointment for me.I tested it on my "worst" track Nürburg 24 hours wich i have running @ 60 fps with 29 opponents/20 visible.With the DXVK, i have only 40 fps..so no advantage fo me.Assen steady 60 fps same conditions.

 

Yeah I tried DXVK and saw no real benefits.

In fact on some tracks I was getting marginally better FPS without it.

(i7-7700k, GTX 1080, 32GB RAM)

 

Sorry to hear. Maybe Intel + Nvidia works much better with "default" R3E than AMD + AMD, where I saw a huge benefit. Something (DXVK or not) should be done with the performance of this sim, because it's unacceptable for me as it is today and as it has been for the last couple of years, on the hardware I use.

 

Uhm… yesterday I’ve tried it a few minutes. Loading Nürburgring practice with a DTM 2020. Drove to Mercedes‘ Arena to one specific point and saw 120 FPS. Then quitted the game, copied the DLL and started new. At first loading times where a bit longer. Drove to the same place and got 165 FPS. This is the limit of my monitors and I have this as a limit in the driver. With this, Gsync is working in Fullscreen mode, without not. I really can’t believe.

But: the FPS are going down to normal when many cars are visible. Could be my graphics card limiting or something like that. When they are out of sight, I got permanently 120-165 FPS with full details on a 1440p triple screen.
I think I have to try some more but first impressions was huge here.

 

@Peter Kerenyi
I just tried it and got a huge FPS boost. With shadows enabled, FPS increased hundreds of percent. With shadows disabled, it increased at least 20-30%. The GPU usage increases with the FPS.

This was tested on a replay at the starting grid with 50 cars, using AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and AMD RX 6600.

However, that shadow bug forces me to disable shadows, so it becomes a choice between efficiency and environmental shadows. Contact shadows are fine.

Is there a fix for the shadow bug?

 

I don't think testing on a replay is the same as in-game play resource wise?

 

From my small experience, it is. Playing with a bunch of AI is different however.

 

VR works and seems more stable

 

I just noticed that there's slight stuttering with DXVK, while DX9 with VRR/v-sync/FPS cap is perfectly smooth.

 

Soon, there will be cards on the market which won't even support DX9 natively anymore:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/15/23306160/intel-directx-9-support-emulation-direct-x-12

 

There's a new version of DXVK fixing both the shadow issue and micro-stuttering. This is huge.

 

Thanks for the heads up, I never really wanted to touch R3E again but I am going to have to give it a try with this new DXVK version. (Only sim with my home track gives it a soft spot.)

 

Let us know how it works out.
For me, with many AI cars on screen, I got a 300-400% FPS increase, with zero bugs or stuttering.
I'm on AMD/AMD, with re-size bar/above 4g enabled in bios, as well as sam in the drivers. Before, this only lowered performance, but now it's amazing.

 

In the tests I did before where I got stuttering (in DX9), now I get rock solid performance (I limited to 90 FPS and it stays there).
AMD/AMD system as well, SAM enabled. No artifacts (like in previous versions of DXVK).

 

Nice!
Slightly off topic: How do you limit FPS? Do you notice any degradation in FFB when limiting compared to unlimited?