Vive Pre - I've got to be doing something wrong. Anyone else?

Gunner Deckard

G
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/4f0g0j/possible_confirmation_of_vive_rendering

Frontier Support an hour ago*

We've been seeing a lot of questions about Vive resolution issues yes. A lot of people have been surprised by VR resolution so it's not always easy to know if people are just new to the rift or vive and expected monitor level resolutions, or if there's an actual issue. However this would seem to indicate that there is indeed something deeper going on.

We're obviously keeping a 'sharp' eye on things. :p

From what we can see so far, setting SuperSampling to 2.0 seems to largely help with this issue, but that's going to involve a performance hit for some players.

VR is very important to us as a company, we intend to be part of the spearhead in this revolution, so I can assure you we'll be investigating thoroughly.

Thanks for tagging us!

CMDR Atom
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Ragnar Drake

Ragnar Drake
Edit: I think this isn't the whole truth, and I have an idea what may be going wrong. Will follow up in a bit.

Edit 2: my alternate idea didn't pan out. Anyone have other interpretations? Still seems to be an issue with the angular resolution being just a bit too low for legible text.

Original text follows:

I found a way to capture the rendered eye views as sent to the SteamVR compositor by Elite: Dangerous, and I think the rendering is working as intended. It's definitely sending full 1512x1680 per-eye views at default "VR high" settings, but it seems that the Vive's lenses strongly magnify the center of the image. The distortion function compensates for this by drawing very small text in the center of the view, and as a result things look rather pixelated.

Please see this imgur album with test results and a Reddit thread I posted with more details.

I don't think there's a good fix for this other than aggressive supersampling which can help make it look less jagged, but that'll take a ton of GPU performance. The UI text is just a bit too small to work well for the angular resolution of the headset.
 
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Heavenly-Hammer

Heavenly-Hammer
kwx said:
I found a way to capture the rendered eye views as sent to the SteamVR compositor by Elite: Dangerous, and I think the rendering is working as intended. It's definitely sending full 1512x1680 per-eye views at default "VR high" settings, but it seems that the Vive's lenses strongly magnify the center of the image. The distortion function compensates for this by drawing very small text in the center of the view, and as a result things look rather pixelated.

Please see this imgur album with test results and a Reddit thread I posted with more details.

I don't think there's a good fix for this other than aggressive supersampling which can help make it look less jagged, but that'll take a ton of GPU performance. The UI text is just a bit too small to work well for the angular resolution of the headset.
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Nope, there is more to it. The game renders perfectly fine in the Rift and both headsets offer the same resolution, FoV notwithstanding. There are issues here, that's all there is to it.
 

Ragnar Drake

Ragnar Drake
Heavenly-Hammer said:
Nope, there is more to it. The game renders perfectly fine in the Rift and both headsets offer the same resolution, FoV notwithstanding. There are issues here, that's all there is to it.
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I think you're right, I may have an idea what's going on. Update following in a bit.

Edit: alternate idea didn't pan out. Out of ideas.
 
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Gunner Deckard

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Apparently Frontier support believes it may be an issue with the Native FOV of the Vive. I hope they get this ironed out by the time my Vive gets here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/4f0g0j/possible_confirmation_of_vive_rendering/
Frontier Support 6 points 14 hours ago

Don't worry we're on the same page as our PR team and our VR devs - and you're definitely not a pest!
We're just offering you guys the current workaround here while our tech wizards works on things. :)


For the sake of clarity, this isn't so much a bug in ED's code as it is to do with the native FOV of the Vive. Some Aliasing tweaks are on the way though, which should improve things for everyone.

CMDR Atom
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ltx

L
I think I understand the problem now.

This image demonstrates it: http://imgur.com/sDJaSfg

Elite Dangerous is correctly rendering at 1512x1680 (1.4x SS) per eye but due to Vive lens design, the visible area (FOV) in the HMD is only around 720x800 pixels. That was at lowest eye relief (standard configuration), and of course will vary depending on eye relief settings or how far your eye is from the lens.

Perhaps FDev could give us Vive users an option to render a smaller viewport at higher resolution for the Vive. More supersampling options and anti-aliasing options would be great so that we can dial them in to take full advantage of our video card while getting 90 FPS.
 
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Gunner Deckard

G
I think your onto something. I wonder why Elite suffers more than other games though. And why is Oculus so much better as reported. Do they have better lense magnification? Does Oculus cover more of the 1200x1080 area so better visual resolution? If this is the case that is.
 
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ltx

L
Gunner Deckard said:
I think your onto something. I wonder why Elite suffers more than other games though. And why is Oculus so much better as reported. Do they have better lense magnification? Does Oculus cover more of the 1200x1080 area so better visual resolution? If this is the case that is.
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AFAIK, Rift CV1 definitely has higher pixel fill rate per degree than Vive. Rift CV1's FOV is also rectangular so it is likely making better use of the visible area on OLED screens.

FDev might be able to make some tweaks to increase the resolution of the visible area in the Vive and improve SS and AA, but ultimately Vive might be the wrong HMD for ED.
 
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Gunner Deckard

G
I don't think there is anything they can do to change the resolution of what the FOV covers in the Vive. Isn't that physically impossible? Sounds like they are going to try and tweak the Image Quality such as better AA SS ext.... I will give it a good go with my setup when I get the Vive try to max out SS. I'm running a I7-4770k @4.4 and 980ti heavily overclocked and 32gig ram. So I have some wiggle room. Really disappointing if its the case that the Vive has limited resolution coverage due to lens magnification. ED should be able to greatly improve the IQ in the Vive I believe they can.
 

ltx

L
Gunner Deckard said:
I don't think there is anything they can do to change the resolution of what the FOV covers in the Vive. Isn't that physically impossible? Sounds like they are going to try and tweak the Image Quality such as better AA SS ext.... I will give it a good go with my setup when I get the Vive try to max out SS. I'm running a I7-4770k @4.4 and 980ti heavily overclocked and 32gig ram. So I have some wiggle room. Really disappointing if its the case that the Vive has limited resolution coverage due to lens magnification. ED should be able to greatly improve the IQ in the Vive I believe they can.
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I believe you are correct. The only other thing I can think of is avoiding rendering what is not visible in Vive's FOV, and put the freed up capacity towards rendering the visible area at higher SS and with more AA.
 

wstephenson

wstephenson
Doesn't that image exaggerate the number of lost pixels?
A correct version would read
"
The game renders at 1512x1680, and this is downscaled to 1080x1200 display pixels providing 1.4xSS. Of these, around 720x800 are visible due to the circular FOV created by the Vive lens.
"

So the AA pixels are not 'lost', but contribute to better IQ at display resolution. Only the difference between display resolution and the 'visible area' is wasted.
 

Ragnar Drake

Ragnar Drake
ltx said:
I think I understand the problem now.

This image demonstrates it: http://imgur.com/sDJaSfg

Elite Dangerous is correctly rendering at 1512x1680 (1.4x SS) per eye but due to Vive lens design, the visible area (FOV) in the HMD is only around 720x800 pixels. That was at lowest eye relief (standard configuration), and of course will vary depending on eye relief settings or how far your eye is from the lens.

Perhaps FDev could give us Vive users an option to render a smaller viewport at higher resolution for the Vive. More supersampling options and anti-aliasing options would be great so that we can dial them in to take full advantage of our video card while getting 90 FPS.
Click to expand...

Sorry, this doesn't match my test just now. I can see a lot more of the picture than the red circle while wearing the headset normally, and can see most of the intended FOV when squeezing it against my face to compress the foam. I suspect this depends on face shape and other factors, but it's not generally true that it wastes so many rendered pixels.
 

jojon

J
ltx said:
I think I understand the problem now.

This image demonstrates it: http://imgur.com/sDJaSfg

Elite Dangerous is correctly rendering at 1512x1680 (1.4x SS) per eye but due to Vive lens design, the visible area (FOV) in the HMD is only around 720x800 pixels. That was at lowest eye relief (standard configuration), and of course will vary depending on eye relief settings or how far your eye is from the lens.
...
Click to expand...

If that is all you can see, you should definitely throw away the foam gasket from your Vive. You must have something like very deep-set eyes and/or very prominent brow/cheek bones -- enough so that you can't get close enough to the lens, even with eye relief dialled all the way in.

For maximum FOV, you want an about 8mm air gap between lens and eye, and that should give you just about the entire rendered circle. (EDIT: some more should come into view on the righ side, if you swivel your eyeballs to look left, and vice versa, because of your pupil offsetting itself from "the sweet spot".)
 
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ltx

L
kwx said:
Sorry, this doesn't match my test just now. I can see a lot more of the picture than the red circle while wearing the headset normally, and can see most of the intended FOV when squeezing it against my face to compress the foam. I suspect this depends on face shape and other factors, but it's not generally true that it wastes so many rendered pixels.
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Strange, I can't see the entire FOV even if I take off the foam and press the headset against my face.

The only way I can see to the edge of the OLED screen is if i remove the foam and look up at the lens from an angle below the sweet spot.

Are you able to actually see the legs of your avatar while looking straight??

Either way, it would be great to have an option not to render outside of the visible FOV. HMD users with deep set eyes or ones that have eye relief turned up wouldn't see the entire viewport.

Update: this is what I see with one eye if I press the headset really hard against my face compressing the foam: http://i.imgur.com/IuJJfKi.png
 
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ltx

L
kwx said:
Sorry, this doesn't match my test just now. I can see a lot more of the picture than the red circle while wearing the headset normally, and can see most of the intended FOV when squeezing it against my face to compress the foam. I suspect this depends on face shape and other factors, but it's not generally true that it wastes so many rendered pixels.
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Did you close one of your eyes when you did the test of what you could see? With both eyes open you could see much larger horizontal area but that's coming from using both screens.
 

Ourg

O
1st I was going to get the vive cause i dont want to give my money to facebook. But after all this issue i think i'll get the rift. Frontier is known to be very very long to fix bug.
 

Heavenly-Hammer

Heavenly-Hammer
Ourg said:
1st I was going to get the vive cause i dont want to give my money to facebook. But after all this issue i think i'll get the rift. Frontier is known to be very very long to fix bug.
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If ED is your only reason to buy into VR, get a Rift. But understand by the time you get that Rift (July) it will be an issue of the past.
 

Heavenly-Hammer

Heavenly-Hammer
Gunner Deckard said:
Vive will be here next week. No reason to jump ship. And I can press SS for better quality with my system till FD comes up with better solutions.
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I was talking to him, as he presumably not ordered anything yet. If ED is someone's only reason to get VR and they can get it soon, the Rift will offer the fastest path to a good experience. If he can't get it like this month, better to get s Vive.
 
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