PSVR2 iRacing Settings Guide.

PSVR2 needs four things on PC that it does not need on a PS5: Sony's PC adapter, a DisplayPort 1.4 cable, a USB Bluetooth adapter for the controllers, and a GPU that can hold 90 frames per second in iRacing. Once it is connected, three settings do most of the work: the refresh rate locked to 90Hz, Motion Smoothing off, and SteamVR's render resolution set by hand instead of left on Auto. Everything else in this guide is refinement on top of those, plus the config files, which are explained in full rather than waved at.

Before you start

Confirm every row of this table before you open any software. A missing item here is the most common reason a first attempt ends at a black screen.

What PSVR2 does not do on PC

Sony's PC support covers the display and tracking. It leaves out four things the headset does on a PS5, and no setting in this guide can turn them on.

Connect the hardware

Do this with every application closed. Most "headset not detected" reports trace back to one of these five connections.

1. Plug the PC adapter into a USB 3.0 port on the rear panel. Straight into the motherboard. A front panel port is fine only if it is wired to a USB 3.0 header. No hub and no extension cable on this link.
2. Run the DisplayPort cable from the adapter to the graphics card. The DisplayPort output on the card itself. Not the motherboard's video output, and not a docking station or KVM. Then plug the headset's cable into the adapter.
3. Plug the Bluetooth adapter into a USB 2.0 port, as far from the adapter's USB 3.0 port as you can. USB 3.0 traffic radiates noise on the same 2.4GHz band Bluetooth uses. That interference is the number one cause of a controller freezing mid-race. A short USB extension that moves the Bluetooth dongle away from the case works well here.
4. Install and run the PlayStation VR2 App. Open Steam, search for PlayStation VR2 App, install it, and launch it. It walks you through headset detection, play area setup, and controller pairing. To pair, hold PS and Create on the left controller and PS and Options on the right until the lights blink, then pick them in the app.
5. Set the IPD dial. The wheel on the underside of the headset moves the lenses to match the distance between your eyes. Turn it slowly while reading fixed text until the text is sharpest. Do not stop at "roughly centred". This single dial settles more "why is it blurry" reports than any resolution setting.

SteamVR and OpenXR

iRacing renders to the headset through OpenXR, and SteamVR is the program that provides that OpenXR connection for PSVR2. Two jobs here: make SteamVR the active OpenXR runtime, then set its video settings so nothing changes behind your back.

Set SteamVR as the OpenXR runtime

1. Open SteamVR. It is under Tools in your Steam library. If it is already running, right-click its icon in the Windows system tray instead.
2. Open Settings. Click the menu button (≡) in the top left of the small SteamVR status window, then Settings.
3. Click OpenXR in the left column, then "Set SteamVR as OpenXR Runtime". The page confirms the current runtime at the top. It has to say SteamVR. If another runtime is active, iRacing renders to it instead and PSVR2 shows nothing.
4. Click "Manage API Layers" on the same page. Switch off anything listed that is not SteamVR. Leftover layers from Oculus, Windows Mixed Reality or old overlay tools sit between iRacing and the runtime and cause crashes on launch.

Video settings

Still in SteamVR Settings, click Video in the left column and set these. Everything else on the page can stay at its default.

Per-application settings for iRacing

Click Per-Application Video Settings at the bottom of the Video page. A panel opens with a dropdown, defaulted to SteamVR Home. That dropdown lists only programs that have connected to SteamVR since it last started. Most people launch iRacing from its own app rather than from Steam, so iRacing appears here only while it is running in the headset.

So the order is: finish the iRacing section, drive a lap, then come back to this panel with iRacing still open, pick it in the dropdown and set these two values.

The same panel has a Field of View scale and Override World Scale. Neither needs changing for iRacing.

iRacing

Three parts: launch the sim in VR once so it creates its OpenXR settings, set the handful of graphics options that matter in a headset, then scale the rest to your GPU.

Launch in VR the first time

1. Open the iRacing app and join any session. A test drive or a practice session is fine. You need the sim to try to render a 3D view.
2. Accept the headset prompt. With SteamVR running and the headset on, iRacing asks whether to render to the VR headset or the monitor. Pick the headset.
3. Check the display mode is OpenXR. iRacing keeps a separate graphics configuration for each display mode. The selector is in the top right of the iRacing app. If it reads anything other than OpenXR, you are editing settings the headset never sees.

The graphics options that matter in VR

Open the graphics options: Esc while driving, or the Options screen before you join. Set these first.

Everything else, by GPU

World Detail, Shadows and Texture Quality scale with the card. Start from this row and move one step down if the frame timing check under the five settings shows drops.

The five settings that matter

If you change nothing else, change these. Between them they account for almost every report of PSVR2 in iRacing being blurry, stuttery or sick-making.

The config files

Everything so far lives in a menu. iRacing also keeps its settings in plain text files, and a few useful values are only reachable there. This chapter explains what those files are, where they are, how they are laid out, and what each value you might change actually does. None of it is required. If the sim runs well after the sections above, you can skip it.

What an .ini file is

An .ini file is a plain text settings file. iRacing reads it when the sim starts and writes it back when the sim closes. It has three kinds of line:

[Graphics Options]          ; a section header: the group the lines below belong to
MaxCockpitMirrors=0        ; a key and its value, separated by =
; a comment. Anything after a semicolon is ignored by the sim.

Three rules follow from that. Close iRacing before you edit, or it overwrites your change on exit. Change values, not keys: the sim only reads keys it wrote itself, so a key you add by hand does nothing, and a misspelt key is silently ignored. And if a file goes wrong, delete it: iRacing recreates a missing file with default values the next time it starts, which is the built-in reset.

Where the files are

iRacing keeps its settings in the iRacing folder inside your Windows Documents folder, not in the program folder.

If Windows has moved your Documents folder into OneDrive, which it does by default on many new PCs, the folder is here instead:

The quickest way to get there is to press Win and R, type %USERPROFILE%\Documents\iRacing, and press Enter. If that opens the wrong place, try the OneDrive path. The folder holds car setups, replays and paints as well as the settings files, so it is large and easy to recognise.

Which file does what

iRacing keeps one renderer file per display mode. That is the detail most guides skip, and it is why an edit in the wrong file appears to do nothing.

How to edit safely

1. Close iRacing completely. The sim and the iRacing app. The sim rewrites its files on exit, so an edit made while it runs is lost.
2. Make a copy of the file first. Right-click rendererDX11OpenXR.ini, copy, paste, and rename the copy rendererDX11OpenXR.bak. If anything goes wrong, delete the original and rename the copy back.
3. Open the file in Notepad. Right-click it, Open with, Notepad. Do not use Word or any editor that adds formatting.
4. Find the section, then the key. Press Ctrl and F and search for the key name from the table below. Names are case-sensitive. Change only the number after the equals sign.
5. Save, close, and start iRacing. After a session, open the file again and check the value is still yours. If iRacing has written the old value back, that setting is controlled by the in-sim menu, and the menu is where to change it.

The values worth changing

All of these are in rendererDX11OpenXR.ini. Search for the key, and if your file does not contain it, leave it: iRacing has renamed a few of these between builds, and a key it did not write is ignored.

GPU driver settings

Two or three settings in the driver control panel. NVIDIA first, then AMD, which has a driver version problem worth knowing about before anything else.

NVIDIA

1. Open NVIDIA Control Panel. Right-click the desktop and pick it, or search for it in the Start menu. This is the control panel, not the NVIDIA App.
2. Go to Manage 3D Settings, then the Program Settings tab. Click Add and pick the sim itself, iRacingSim64DX11.exe. It lives in C:\Program Files (x86)\iRacing\. If it is not in the list, browse to that folder.
3. Set Power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance". On an RTX 3000 series card or newer this is the right setting. Those cards run cool enough that a VR session will not throttle, and the default lets the clock wander up and down as load changes, which shows as uneven frame times. On an RTX 2000 series or older, watch temperatures with a tool like MSI Afterburner during a long session, and drop back to Normal only if you actually see throttling.
4. Set Virtual Reality - Variable Rate Super Sampling to Adaptive. RTX cards only. It spends extra shading on the centre of the view, which stacks with iRacing's Fixed Foveated Rendering at no setup cost.

AMD

1. Check the driver version first. Open AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, click the gear, then System, and read the version. 25.5.1 and 25.6.1 render PSVR2 flat rather than in stereo, and users report the same on 25.8.1. 25.3.1 crashes a few minutes into a session. If you are on one of those, roll back to 25.4.1 from AMD's driver archive. AMD has acknowledged the stereo bug. Check AMD's community forum for your exact version before assuming a newer driver is safe.
2. Set a manual fan curve. In Adrenalin go to Performance, Tuning, and switch the fan to Manual. Raise the curve above the default, which is tuned for quiet desktop use rather than a 45 minute VR load.
3. Keep the GPU under 85°C. Watch it on the Adrenalin overlay (Alt and R by default) for your first few sessions. Throttling on an AMD card shows as frame times that get gradually worse over a race rather than a sudden drop, which is easy to blame on something else.

Comfort in long sessions

Frame rate and resolution are only part of comfort. These three cost nothing and make the difference between a 20 minute stint and a full race.

• Brightness at 60 to 80%. Repeated from the five settings because it matters that much. PS button, the PS VR2 icon in the SteamVR dashboard, then the brightness slider.
• A small fan aimed at your face. Moving air gives the inner ear a cue that you are moving, and it measurably reduces nausea on its own, before any setting changes.
• Build up session length. Start at 30 to 45 minutes. Once you are past an hour, take a 5 to 10 minute break every 30 minutes. Tolerance grows over repeated sessions, so do not judge the headset on a first two hour race.

Track Impulse Overlays Inside PSVR2

PSVR2 is the only headset Track Impulse has verified for PSVR2 iRacing overlays inside the headset. The panels float in the cockpit instead of sitting on a monitor you cannot see.

PSVR2 only ever runs through SteamVR on PC, so there is no runtime to get wrong. SteamVR has to be the program putting the picture into the headset for the panels to show. Run iRacing in OpenXR mode with SteamVR set as the OpenXR runtime, exactly as in SteamVR and OpenXR above. That is the combination verified on 14 September 2026. SteamVR (OpenVR) mode works as well. Oculus mode does not.

Five panels start switched on for VR: the dashboard, radar spotter, fuel calculator, relative and battle bar. Everything else stays off until you tick it. Press Alt+F11 to bring the cockpit-anchored panels back in front of you after you re-seat yourself. VR is experimental and off by default. It belongs to Pro, $3 a month, and every Pro feature is free during the public beta.

Other headsets, runtimes and sim VR modes are listed by status on the VR headset compatibility page. Setup is step by step in the overlays manual.

Troubleshooting

Symptom first, then the fix, and where in this guide the setting lives.

Hiding the play area grid for good

Bolted into a wheel and pedals, you never move, so the boundary grid is pure distraction. It is controlled by two values in SteamVR's own settings file, and the one that matters is not the one most guides point at. The file is JSON rather than .ini, but the same rules apply: close SteamVR first, back the file up, change only the values.

Open it in Notepad and find the collisionBounds block. Set the first value to 0 and save.

"collisionBounds" : {
   "CollisionBoundsColorGammaA" : 0,
   "CollisionBoundsFadeDistance" : 0,
   "CollisionBoundsStyle" : 4
}