Getting the Best DK2/CV1/Vive VR Experience: Guide/Compendium

[CMDR W E S Fisher]

HOLY , WOW. Sweeeeeeeet FX Rocks. Thanks for the thread mate. Ive repped you and atlas. The game has transformed, just imagine what sort of perfomance we can get from the CV1 when it arrives. This thread has a lot of awsome info. Well done.

Fish

 

[CMDR Holycow]

I have another tip you may want to add:

If you have an i7, unpark your cores! All week, I have been having an issue where ED would seem to lose head tracking for a split second quite frequently - even while sitting still, looking straight ahead - and would cause a grey flash on the screen. It was driving me insane, but unparking my cores with that utility completely solved the problem.

Anyway, it might be helpful to include in your guide if anyone else is having that same issue so they don't have to search for a solution as long as I did. Also, if anyone has any info on how to change the brightness of each eye individually I would be greatly interested: the right side is noticeably brighter than the left. It's not a big problem, just mildly annoying under certain lighting conditions...

This is a good tip, but what does that mean, unparking cores? My headset seems to do this as well... sort of a light grey flash on the screen from time to time. But I am not running an i7, I am running an i5.

Nice post :-] Also, remapping the Reset Oculus Position key to something that doesn't require a stretch to F12 is a must. Mine is on my HOTAS.

Agreed. I just use VA for mine... "reset" hits F12 for me.

 

[CMDR Saari]

This is a good tip, but what does that mean, unparking cores? My headset seems to do this as well... sort of a light grey flash on the screen from time to time. But I am not running an i7, I am running an i5.

Core parking is an "enhancement" brought to us by the all-knowing PC gods of Windows 7 and 8. On 4 or 8 core CPUs, Windows will cause some unused cores to go dormant until needed. You can see if Windows parks any of your cores by going to the Task Manager > Performance tab > Resource Monitor button > CPU tab. Look at the row of graphs on the right, it will show which of your cores are "parked". Switching them on and off in an intensive game like ED seems to mess with the Oculus head tracking software causing it to constantly lose and reacquire the signal which causes those annoying grey flashes (and cockpit jittering). This Tom's Hardware guide explains it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1939190/increase-fps-cpu-intensive-games-windows.html

Try it out: it completely solved the grey flashes for me. It should work for an i5 as well.

 

[Beavis Tingleball]

Core parking is an "enhancement" brought to us by the all-knowing PC gods of Windows 7 and 8. On 4 or 8 core CPUs, Windows will cause some unused cores to go dormant until needed. You can see if Windows parks any of your cores by going to the Task Manager > Performance tab > Resource Monitor button > CPU tab. Look at the row of graphs on the right, it will show which of your cores are "parked". Switching them on and off in an intensive game like ED seems to mess with the Oculus head tracking software causing it to constantly lose and reacquire the signal which causes those annoying grey flashes (and cockpit jittering). This Tom's Hardware guide explains it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-1939190/increase-fps-cpu-intensive-games-windows.html

Try it out: it completely solved the grey flashes for me. It should work for an i5 as well.

derp..I thought those grey flashes were caused by my blacklight interfering with the IR cam lmao...I will look into this "parking" asap.

 

[drkaii]

Updated the main thread with CMDR SAARI's tip and made the font a bit bigger

Nice post :-] But I did have to use one of my rift lenses to magnify the font.

One thing you don't mention, which is a massive contributor to overall image quality (and comfort) is HMD positioning. Getting it in the sweet spot can be tricky sometimes.
Also, remapping the Reset Oculus Position key to something that doesn't require a stretch to F12 is a must. Mine is on my HOTAS.

Reps for a nice bit of info. Ta very much. I'm gonna try out some of your colour setting tonight.

So guys, what do you think, should I include these or are these too "obvious"?

I am torn

 

[CMDR Holycow]

..I will look into this "parking" asap.

This has caused the biggest improvement in gameplay so far. Do it.. super fast and super simple.

 

[atlas974]

Very good compendium!

 

[Gemini Aurora]

where do I turn of shadows in starports?

Might be a noob question but where do I turn off shadows in starports?

 

[grodenglaive]

Props to the OP for this useful thread. I will enjoy testing it.

Great post. Can someone actually confirm the performance improvements from displaying the game on your main monitor? I have a 980 and my rig runs at 5ghz, I see a decrease in FPS when I use the second display.
Cheers

Not me. I got a slight decrease in performance with the mirrored display, as would be expected.

 

[giu]

Hello everybody. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, but these settings actually make things worse for me. I have an i7-4770 running at 3.40 GHz, 16 GiB RAM and a recently acquired GTX 980. My old GTX 750ti is mounted on another slot, not attached to any video device and used for physX. The OR is set as secondary monitor on the 980 HDMI port. NVIDIA driver version is 347.52 and I am running Windows 8.1.

Let us consider point 1 only. If I choose "Use NVIDIA settings", no matter the actual settings, my performance drops significantly: moving the head while docked in a station creates double images. With "Other applications control color settings" the movement is very smooth, instead. Moreover, other funny things happen:

• the rotating ship in the loading screen is inside a black "bubble", against a light gray background;
• the black shadows on the left of the main menu are made up of very large square blocks;

Does anybody has the same issues? Moreover, that may just be me, but I am not shocked at all: what exactly is the improvement that I should see? Is it only appreciable in space/supercruise (I didn't leave the station before turning this off because of the double images)?

(please forgive my english, no native speaker).

 

[Frank]

• the black shadows on the left of the main menu are made up of very large square blocks;

Does anybody has the same issues?

I get square blocks in my menu's shadows sometimes. I can fix it by restarting my service from the Oculus Configuration Utility.

 

[SlackR]

This has caused the biggest improvement in gameplay so far. Do it.. super fast and super simple.

Will try this... How has it improved?

I have a 5960x so plenty of cores

 

[drkaii]

Very good compendium!

Thanks Atlas, good to see you here. Hope you're getting lots of lovely rep as a result of all this

Might be a noob question but where do I turn off shadows in starports?

Sorry, that's just me phrasing it badly! I mean, manually turn off shadows WHILE in starports. There isn't a separate option. I personally am always changing the settings depending on where I am or what I am doing.

Hello everybody. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, but these settings actually make things worse for me. I have an i7-4770 running at 3.40 GHz, 16 GiB RAM and a recently acquired GTX 980. My old GTX 750ti is mounted on another slot, not attached to any video device and used for physX. The OR is set as secondary monitor on the 980 HDMI port. NVIDIA driver version is 347.52 and I am running Windows 8.1.

Let us consider point 1 only. If I choose "Use NVIDIA settings", no matter the actual settings, my performance drops significantly: moving the head while docked in a station creates double images. With "Other applications control color settings" the movement is very smooth, instead. Moreover, other funny things happen:

• the rotating ship in the loading screen is inside a black "bubble", against a light gray background;
• the black shadows on the left of the main menu are made up of very large square blocks;

Does anybody has the same issues? Moreover, that may just be me, but I am not shocked at all: what exactly is the improvement that I should see? Is it only appreciable in space/supercruise (I didn't leave the station before turning this off because of the double images)?

(please forgive my english, no native speaker).

I'm sorry, I have no idea why you are being affected this way. Sorry that's so. Maybe someone here has a suggestion?

It's obviously not working or you'd definitely be somewhat shocked by now...btw are you using DVI or HDMI?

 

[CMDR Holycow]

Will try this... How has it improved?

I have a 5960x so plenty of cores

You may have plenty of cores, but ED has to turn them off if parked, to use them.. on, off, on, off... it causes studders in the game. Unparking my cores eliminated studders when planets load in SC, studders when going into a hyperjump, and has iliminated the grey overlay you get once in a while just fly around. The ENTIRE game plays smoother (not framerate)

 

[Pate]

Hello everybody. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, but these settings actually make things worse for me. I have an i7-4770 running at 3.40 GHz, 16 GiB RAM and a recently acquired GTX 980. My old GTX 750ti is mounted on another slot, not attached to any video device and used for physX. The OR is set as secondary monitor on the 980 HDMI port. NVIDIA driver version is 347.52 and I am running Windows 8.1.

Let us consider point 1 only. If I choose "Use NVIDIA settings", no matter the actual settings, my performance drops significantly: moving the head while docked in a station creates double images. With "Other applications control color settings" the movement is very smooth, instead. Moreover, other funny things happen:

• the rotating ship in the loading screen is inside a black "bubble", against a light gray background;
• the black shadows on the left of the main menu are made up of very large square blocks;

Does anybody has the same issues? Moreover, that may just be me, but I am not shocked at all: what exactly is the improvement that I should see? Is it only appreciable in space/supercruise (I didn't leave the station before turning this off because of the double images)?

(please forgive my english, no native speaker).

Yep, same thing happened to me. I have the same CPU and RAM amount but only a single GTX 970. Weird blockiness and lots of stutter, I had to revert to the original settings. Reverting the settings was not much of a problem for me, as I don't have any major problems with the original settings. Just wanted to test out different settings in case some actually help.

Oh, and by the way, on my Windows 8.1 OS I had no parked cores, so running the CPU parking utility did nothing. I do get stutters when the planets load, though. The game is installed on a fast SSD disk, so it should load stuff reasonably fast.

 

[Commander Pew Pew]

I do get stutters when the planets load, though.

Whatever settings I choose, stars and planets (while in super cruise) always cause judder.

 

[Thebadmf]

We may have a similar issue and I have a noob question so here goes. How do you set DSR? I've only had the 970 for a month, I had enabled the >1080p resolutions in the NVIDIA software but never noticed that they can be set separately for the Rift and the monitor.

So, in the NV Panel I have the Rift set to DSR 1.5 (resolution enabled and applied to the rift), the game (when running the Rift) is set to 1080. Is this using DSR?

 

[Commander Pew Pew]

So, in the NV Panel I have the Rift set to DSR 1.5 (resolution enabled and applied to the rift), the game (when running the Rift) is set to 1080. Is this using DSR?

Personally, I cannot see the difference (see my screenshots earlier in this thread).

 

[SlackR]

You may have plenty of cores, but ED has to turn them off if parked, to use them.. on, off, on, off... it causes studders in the game. Unparking my cores eliminated studders when planets load in SC, studders when going into a hyperjump, and has iliminated the grey overlay you get once in a while just fly around. The ENTIRE game plays smoother (not framerate)

I've unparked them all and will have a play tonight. Anything that Improves the experience is a bonus on my book.

edit: didn't notice a difference. Conclusion: the cores I unparked weren't being used in the first place .

 

[carabassa]

We may have a similar issue and I have a noob question so here goes. How do you set DSR? I've only had the 970 for a month, I had enabled the >1080p resolutions in the NVIDIA software but never noticed that they can be set separately for the Rift and the monitor.

So, in the NV Panel I have the Rift set to DSR 1.5 (resolution enabled and applied to the rift), the game (when running the Rift) is set to 1080. Is this using DSR?

I think you have to manually select de new resolution in the game.
You will notice it is working because you will see it better and because it will have A LOT of judder (at least my GTX 970 had a lot with 1.5).