F1 25 in VR: Finally, a step forward

VR functionality was first introduced to EA and Codemasters’ F1 series of games in F1 22, but has largely stagnated through subsequent iterations.

With many claiming that F1 25’s in-headset experience represents a significant improvement over F1 24, I donned my Pimax Crystal Light to see if this claim stacks up. Check out my thoughts below.

F1 25 in VR: Hands-on

Unfortunately, F1 25 is still very blurry in comparison to other racing sims I’ve played in VR when using the high and medium graphics presets. 

For example, driving a faux-F1 car in Automobilista 2 (probably the finest VR sim racing experience available today) is a pleasurable experience in terms of visuals, with pixel-perfect steering wheel displays and smooth performance making it a joy to use.

F1 25, on the other hand, is merely ‘ok’. On the high graphics preset, performance is fairly stable, but visual clarity is muddy, making it tricky to make out braking zones. 

I found that the default scale factor of 50 (found in the in-game VR settings menu) provided acceptably smooth performance, but raising this to above 70 was bad news for my fps (my Pimax was set to 72 Hz and High resolution settings).

Oddly, my in-headset view also tended to drift as a session progressed, requiring me to re-centre regularly, which was both irritating and immersion-breaking.

However, tailoring the myriad available graphics settings to achieve better FPS made F1 25 both look decent and perform well. I did this through lowering performance-hungry settings like shadows and mirrors, while increasing texture detail (listed as ‘Texture Streaming’), offering a good balance between smoothness and eye candy.

The settings used can be seen below.

F1 24 in VR: A refresher

Although I found F1 25’s VR abilities to be surprisingly good (albeit not quite up to AMS 2‘s standards in terms of fidelity), stepping back into F1 24 gave me pause for thought.

Even running on low graphics settings, F1 24 was nowhere near as smooth or detailed as F1 25.

Only through adjusting SteamVR’s resolution scale manually (F1 25 allows you to override this in-game via the scale factor setting, which is a time-saver) was I able to achieve acceptable fps. It verged on unplayable at times.

Those claiming that F1 25’s VR mode represents a step up on F1 24 are quite correct in my view, with the whole experience feeling much better optimised than before.

It doesn’t match up to the best sim racing VR experiences available today, but it’s a definite step forward for the series.
Do you think F1 25 works well in VR? Please share your thoughts and experiences below.