HTC Vive resolution and  focus

Come on guys keep your shhhh together, ED is a pretty massive game and I'd imagine very complicated as a result.

My guess is the Rift got there first with optimisations within the Cobra engine, maybe some of these are having a detrimental effect on the vive output ?

I've never seen any evidence that the Vive ever looked OK in ED, happy to be proved wrong though.


This entire page is a joke.

They've had a Vive for quite a while way before we got them, there has been no progress in quality for months. The minor 'upgrade' with 2.1 is negligible and all I can guess it was a quick and dirty 'improvement' for readability, which it really isn't.
 
And if you go to page 1 and read through the entire thread, you'll see that I've been posting repeatedly trying to figure out why I'm not having these problems others are reporting. I'm also not doing nothing fancy except running the game on VR High, not running the Steam version of Elite, and not running SteamVR. I have a single EVGA GeForce GTX 980, nor am I using supersampling.

I know this doesn't really help those of you who are having problems, but it's clear that the issue isn't as cut and dried as others are making it out to be. Yes, the OP said they're working on it, and most people have stated they've noticed a huge improvement. I'm actually in the opposite camp, because I'd say that my VR experience has degraded a bit from what it was in Beta 4, when I first got my Vive. Not much, but the aliasing issues have gotten more noticeable than when in Beta 4, where I'd have to pay attention to notice anything wrong at all.



See, this is what I was talking about. I'm a tallish 170 cm, and from what I can see in VR, I feel like I'm about the right size. My hands and feet seem to be in the right position, and it looks like I can walk through the door of my Cobra with room to spare. I also have a chair in my VR space where the second chair is in my Cobra, and I can get up, walk to it, and sit down without feeling like I'm fumbling around blindly. Granted, I have to reset my head position when standing up first, but that's only because the pilot's chair happens to be elevated.

There has only been one time when I felt the scale was off, and that was when I tried Elite with SteamVR running in Beta 4, and it did look like a mess. Beta 5 fixed that problem, but caused the aliasing issues to go from only noticeable if I'm specifically looking for them, to noticeable in certain circumstances.

I'm not trying to diminish what you're experiencing. If you say distant objects look like fireworks, then I accept that's what you're experiencing. I'm simply not having that problem.

I can think of only two circumstances where aliasing issues become noticeable. The first is when I'm at a rear docking pad and looking at the mail slot. There are certain orientations back there where the atmospheric shield emitters sometimes break into three separate lines, rather one continuous line. The second is a night time approach to a surface base at a distance of about 25-30 kilometers. Sometimes the lights seem to flicker briefly. But the window where this happens is fairly brief, especially when you're gliding along at 2.5 km/s.

Overall, I'd rate my experience in Elite with the Vive as a 9/10, where 10 would be on par with the other VR titles I own. But then again, I suspect most VR titles avoid high contrast visuals and restrict you to small areas for a reason.

Again, I'm not saying you're not having problems. I'm trying to say that I feel the problem is probably more complex than people think it is, and repeatedly screaming

https://i.imgflip.com/15vqjc.jpg

while cathartic, really doesn't help matters at all.


That is interesting info. I guess the key difference might be your Steam VR drivers and your NVidia Drivers. Could you please share your version numbers with me? I could try to run the setup and match it as close to yours as possible with my rig (that is if you are running win 10 as I'm not reinstalling my OS again :D )

If you are 170cm tall and possibly skinny then I would understand that scale might work for you a bit better. As somebody posted earlier a scale slider would be the smartest solution for us all to make it fit our perception of reality
 
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Hi all, first post on the forum.

So I want to check with you all if its just wishful thinking of if I am onto something here.

Yesterday evening I played Elite in the Vive and had the usual issues you are all reporting, flickering, text which is difficult, etc. (still love the game in the Vive though, but there is room for improvement). Later that evening after doing something else I wanted to return to Elite, but noticed that a SteamVR Beta update had been released which I installed. After starting Elite, I immideately thought that the flickering is reduced. Its still present, but a lot less than before, especially outside of space stations. Text readability didn't imrpove though.

Anyone else noticed this or am I going crazy? I will check again later tonight, maybe my eyes were just too tired :D
 
This is what I see.

First, I have a nvidia 980, on the may 23(ish) drivers, I've only seen the peripheral sparklie effect that others have reported with this driver version once, and only when I was looking at a particular spot (upwards slighty to the right). It would go away if I moved my head slightly, and it also went away when my ship moved out of the area. win 10 64 bit, 24gig, SSD. vive connected via mini-displayport, direct mode.

I currently launch elite from steam big picture mode as a normal (not VR game), but have then gone into graphics and selected hmd speakers. Elite launches in the vive, and the steam front-end VR gui does NOT launch. I launch from big-picture mode because I'm using a steam controller. I don't notice any difference from launching from steamVR though.

I use VR Low, then set bloom to high (bloom looks great in VR), and have tweaked some other settings that didn't seem to affect framerate. I have SS 1.0 and anti-aliasing off. I've tried 1.5 and SSAA, but they only make minor improvements, and the frame rate becomes too sluggish, so I've decided to leave them off for now.

When starting the game, from my seated position I stretch up and lean back slightly and reset my position.

I seem 4ish feet tall/small body, ship's console/trimmings seem large.

Text is generally readable (but a bit blurry), I suspect I am above average being able to deal with blurry text/images though (as a general human trait).

The "universe" appears to be an oblong spheroid, that when in the python I could almost reach out and touch on the left side. The spheroid appears to be centered around my ship (not my seating position; which makes sense except for the fact that I can perceive it). It is especially noticeable when rotating and bright. As a result the galaxy isn't glowing in the distance, but an abstract painting on the (curved) ceiling. One time while docking with a station, the station appeared to be hitting or jutting out of the "universe" wall. Usually its not this bad, but the universe never appears to be the vast expanse that it should be.

Aliasing issues are worst on/in stations, and are also visible (and just as bad) on the windshield trim, but as this is very dark most of the time, isn't very distracting.

Starburst spokes from nearby suns on the other hand appear to be perfectly anti-aliased, even as I rotate my head or ship, and even when the spokes appear to be sub-pixel thickness. Planets also generally look good (occasional minor aliasing).

Orbit lines have aliasing issues.

I've noticed the aliasing artifacts appear to be at a different (usually closer) distance than the underlying geometry, which really does a number on my depth perception when inside or approaching a station.

Once away from a star, the galaxy/background seems like it might be a little too-bright? (but maybe if it didn't have the too-close problem, it might not seem this way anymore?)

So, is the Rift version not experiencing any of these?

I generally am able to and prefer playing in the vive in spite of these, I find the incorrect depth perception with the aliasing and the too-close background the most irritating. I can't tell if the expanding blue-lines from an approaching large mass are supposed to look like i'm flying down a tunnel (what I think was intended), or are just supposed to be at the same depth, expanding outwards. Orbit lines in general seem to be ambiguous depth at times.

p.s.
Framerate seems to drop massively when using the engineer interface (crafting an upgrade).
Virus scanners running in the background also sometimes affect the framerate. If things start getting jumpy, I look for background (supposedly) tasks.
 
This is what I see.

First, I have a nvidia 980, on the may 23(ish) drivers, I've only seen the peripheral sparklie effect that others have reported with this driver version once, and only when I was looking at a particular spot (upwards slighty to the right). It would go away if I moved my head slightly, and it also went away when my ship moved out of the area. win 10 64 bit, 24gig, SSD. vive connected via mini-displayport, direct mode.

I currently launch elite from steam big picture mode as a normal (not VR game), but have then gone into graphics and selected hmd speakers. Elite launches in the vive, and the steam front-end VR gui does NOT launch. I launch from big-picture mode because I'm using a steam controller. I don't notice any difference from launching from steamVR though.

I use VR Low, then set bloom to high (bloom looks great in VR), and have tweaked some other settings that didn't seem to affect framerate. I have SS 1.0 and anti-aliasing off. I've tried 1.5 and SSAA, but they only make minor improvements, and the frame rate becomes too sluggish, so I've decided to leave them off for now.

When starting the game, from my seated position I stretch up and lean back slightly and reset my position.

I seem 4ish feet tall/small body, ship's console/trimmings seem large.

Text is generally readable (but a bit blurry), I suspect I am above average being able to deal with blurry text/images though (as a general human trait).

The "universe" appears to be an oblong spheroid, that when in the python I could almost reach out and touch on the left side. The spheroid appears to be centered around my ship (not my seating position; which makes sense except for the fact that I can perceive it). It is especially noticeable when rotating and bright. As a result the galaxy isn't glowing in the distance, but an abstract painting on the (curved) ceiling. One time while docking with a station, the station appeared to be hitting or jutting out of the "universe" wall. Usually its not this bad, but the universe never appears to be the vast expanse that it should be.

Aliasing issues are worst on/in stations, and are also visible (and just as bad) on the windshield trim, but as this is very dark most of the time, isn't very distracting.

Starburst spokes from nearby suns on the other hand appear to be perfectly anti-aliased, even as I rotate my head or ship, and even when the spokes appear to be sub-pixel thickness. Planets also generally look good (occasional minor aliasing).

Orbit lines have aliasing issues.

I've noticed the aliasing artifacts appear to be at a different (usually closer) distance than the underlying geometry, which really does a number on my depth perception when inside or approaching a station.

Once away from a star, the galaxy/background seems like it might be a little too-bright? (but maybe if it didn't have the too-close problem, it might not seem this way anymore?)

So, is the Rift version not experiencing any of these?

I generally am able to and prefer playing in the vive in spite of these, I find the incorrect depth perception with the aliasing and the too-close background the most irritating. I can't tell if the expanding blue-lines from an approaching large mass are supposed to look like i'm flying down a tunnel (what I think was intended), or are just supposed to be at the same depth, expanding outwards. Orbit lines in general seem to be ambiguous depth at times.

p.s.
Framerate seems to drop massively when using the engineer interface (crafting an upgrade).
Virus scanners running in the background also sometimes affect the framerate. If things start getting jumpy, I look for background (supposedly) tasks.

You are 100% on ball with the space perception. I think this happens due to the fact that it appaers that ED is sending exactly the same data to Steam VR to Encode as to Oculus SDK1.3 but the game should be optimized for either Steam VR (open VR) or for both from my understanding and so far ED seems to be optimized only for Oculus SDK.

The info about Steam VR needing slightly different set of pictures to Oculus SDK might not be correct as I'm not a VR programmer, but from my understanding ED is primarely optimized for Oculus and Vive appears to be more of a - Look it can recognize Vive too through Steam VR :D At the end of the day it was one of the guys from FD who said that the Larger FOV causes them some artifacts as the render sent to Steam VR is same as for oculus, but that reddit post is almost 2 months old and we still have no more info excluding it is worked on (last post over a month ago via this thread)
 
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ED on Vive is fine guys, this one guy here is having no problems so clearly all others who posting about issues are just outliers

And that glitchy peripheral vision with the latest drivers? Just another outlier, most people are having ​no problems at all!

Also be sure to be as polite as possible and do not express any frustration whatsoever, Frontier are definitely working on a massive fix to every Vive problem in the game and definitely aren't just ignoring it in the hopes that people will go away/put up with it. No, no videogame developer has ever tried to do that.

Roll on 2017 and Fallout 4 VR, can't wait to see what a real triple-A studio can do with this hardware
 
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You are 100% on ball with the space perception. I think this happens due to the fact that it appaers that ED is sending exactly the same data to Steam VR to Encode as to Oculus SDK1.3 but the game should be optimized for either Steam VR (open VR) or for both from my understanding and so far ED seems to be optimized only for Oculus SDK.

The info about Steam VR needing slightly different set of pictures to Oculus SDK might not be correct as I'm not a VR programmer, but from my understanding ED is primarely optimized for Oculus and Vive appears to be more of a - Look it can recognize Vive too through Steam VR :D At the end of the day it was one of the guys from FD who said that the Larger FOV causes them some artifacts as the render sent to Steam VR is same as for oculus, but that reddit post is almost 2 months old and we still have no more info excluding it is worked on (last post over a month ago via this thread)

Oculus owners seem to be having the same problem regarding how space looks: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/265339-Rift-CV1-in-ED-in-space-does-not-look-right

I believe the problem may be that the space is represented as a sphere around the ship, but the sphere is too small, so the walls are too close to the player's POV. I don't know if that makes any sense, I'm not a VR developer either, but anyway I hope FD will fix it soon, together with the AA and performance issues.
 
This is what I see.

First, I have a nvidia 980, on the may 23(ish) drivers, I've only seen the peripheral sparklie effect that others have reported with this driver version once, and only when I was looking at a particular spot (upwards slighty to the right). It would go away if I moved my head slightly, and it also went away when my ship moved out of the area. win 10 64 bit, 24gig, SSD. vive connected via mini-displayport, direct mode.

snip rest of post><

+1

The text if fine for me, but the aliasing and scale are awful. I'm going to try to brute force the aliasing with a 1080, but that won't fix the scale.
 
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I'm also wondering if ED takes the IPD into account. I'm assuming the Vive (and the Rift?) makes the IPD value available to software, especially as you can't see it unless the steam GUI is running when you try to adjust it.

My IPD is 69, I'm wondering how the scale of things looks to someone with a smaller (or larger) IPD. I imagine the distance things appear to be would be what is (or is most) affected by rendering to different or mismatched IPDs. I'm not sure how much of an issue this might actually be.
 
That is interesting info. I guess the key difference might be your Steam VR drivers and your NVidia Drivers. Could you please share your version numbers with me? I could try to run the setup and match it as close to yours as possible with my rig (that is if you are running win 10 as I'm not reinstalling my OS again :D )

If you are 170cm tall and possibly skinny then I would understand that scale might work for you a bit better. As somebody posted earlier a scale slider would be the smartest solution for us all to make it fit our perception of reality

NVidia driver is 368.39
SteamVR is the current (non-Beta) version: 1465424737

I should also note that I have the non-Steam version of Elite: Dangerous Horizons, and I don't run SteamVR before playing Elite. I also have the lenses of my Vive two ticks back to accommodate my glasses, and this seems to reduce the god rays a bit, make the text more legible, and eliminates the flickering in my peripheral vision.

My own personal theory is that there is some sort of miscommunication between the Steam Version of Elite, and Steam VR, that is behind the problems others are having, but some people haven't been able to replicate what I'm experiencing themselves. It does seem to me that when I load Elite: Dangerous directly, as opposed to loading SteamVR, a lot fewer programs load in my TaskManager.

As for scale... what you're experiencing seems to be what happened when I tried loading SteamVR in Beta4, where I felt like a giant head atop a tiny body and, IIRC, there seemed to be a bit of a fisheye effect, for lack of a better term, going on as well. The effect was unnerving. Right now, when I walk around my Cobra's cockpit, I feel like I'm in a normal sized room, with normal sized chairs, and a normal sized door at the back. I really don't think our relative heights should make a difference, especially when we're in the commander's seat.

edit: and yes, I'm running Windows 10.
 
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Another observation that I haven't seen mentioned yet (but maybe it has), the ship hologram and the target hologram, as well as the holograms in the shipyard interface, and the scanner holograms, all appear to be flat two-dimensional images that update themselves based on my current viewing position, so my depth perception tells me they are flat, but all the other cues the brain uses to tell the size/shape/position of something say they are 3-dimensional. The shield rings however appear to be actually 3-dimensional (even though the rings themselves are flat).

I hope that makes sense. The ones on the scanner I don't think actually update themselves based on my viewing position, I'll try to notice next time, so they're basically a bunch of two-dimensional images floating somwhere in 3d space, for some reason the ship holograms are very disturbing compared to other objects (like stations), maybe because of the relative apparent depth they are trying to convey. Its almost like they are inside-out or 5-dimensional or something. Very weird effect. Or maybe left and right eyes have been swapped on the ship hologram itself, but is then positioned correctly within the overall space. This might be one of those things that just doesen't make sense unless you see it for yourself.

I also wonder if something backwards is going on with the anti-aliasing. Its almost like some of the jaggies are exaggerated, like light pixels are being drawn where dark ones were supposed to be, and vs-versa. Like trying to de-interlace an interlaced image, but the fields are backwards so you end up exaggerating the artifacts instead of smoothing them out. Or maybe this is just what aliasing looks like in a 3-dimensional space. (ah, if only it were as simple as flipping left/right, or up/down, or a/b somewhere...).
 
I got my hands on the Vive and a nvidia 1080!! \o/
Started ED in a crazed frenzy and... holy mother of god, what a jagged mess!! Luckily i'm a old consoles collector and settled my mindset to a 90s arcade or N64 mode and allowed myself to be awed with:

1. The perception of my cockpit and my ship's size;
2. The whole different (better) sense while in battle. Even my combat tactics where affected since i have the ability to raise my head and see my enemy above me;
3. That weird out-of-my-body experience of walking on my bridge;
4. See your enemy exploding as you pass by just looking with your own head... sooooo natural!
5. To feel the HUD commands as in a real ship: when you're focused in the external events, some sound tells you that something is going on and you have to look for a sensor to take a reading. You are really there! :)

Ok, now i have a problem: It's IMPOSSIBLE to go back and play ED on a 2D monitor without feeling that you are trapped and tied to a chair unable to move your head and with a narrow window to look. AND it is depressingly scary to start the game with the VIVE again and risk to get cut by those jagged shimmering damn sharped "lines".

Does anyone feeling the same??

P.S. sorry about my potential poor english.
 
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I got my hands on the Vive and a nvidia 1080!! \o/
Ok, now i have a problem: It's IMPOSSIBLE to go back and play ED on a 2D monitor

Yes (I could go back to the 2D monitor in a pinch, but I really don't want to).

So, I play in the Vive despite the current situation.

Also, non-ED issues: When I first got the Vive and put it on, I immediately noticed the screen door (including, at least for me, that I can see the individual red and blue elements (the green is really hard to see individually though) if I look hard enough). I noticed the god rays, the Fresnel rings if you squint or look towards the edges, the chromatic abberation. The general low-resolution, mostly noticeable with text. The googles/looking through binoculars effect.

But none of that stuff matters, its still mind-blowing. I'm sure in 3 or 4 generations of VR devices, we'll look back at how bad this 1st gen was, but its like the first time people saw moving pictures, and despite the black and white, 2D, inaccurate frame-rate and various blemishes, people felt the need to get out of the way when the train came at them.

I can't wait until ED gets up to the standard of everything else I've seen in the Vive so far. And look forward to when we've got 8k per eye, 180deg FOV and the GPU/CPUs to drive it. And HDR (altough I suspect the Vive/Rift are already at least a bit higher than LDR).

(I am ignoring prior attempts at VR, and referring to this one as 1st gen; the others seeming like pre-1.0 proofs of concept).
 
So what is the best advice for setting with the vive ATM then to make the text readable, the graphics pretty and the game playable? Force SSx2 on the settings, change the setting to 'VR high' (is there a preset for this somewhere?) rather than ultra on everything and change the UI to green?
 
So what is the best advice for setting with the vive ATM then to make the text readable, the graphics pretty and the game playable? Force SSx2 on the settings, change the setting to 'VR high' (is there a preset for this somewhere?) rather than ultra on everything and change the UI to green?

My advice would be to squint and move your face closer to the text to be able to read it. Or at least that's what I do, and it works :) (except with the target's name)
SMAA can help a little bit in some situations, but I didn't found any setting to really fix it. Didn't change UI colours though so I don't know about that.
SS2x could help too, but as far as I know it's not really an option even with a 1080.
 
My advice would be to squint and move your face closer to the text to be able to read it. Or at least that's what I do, and it works :) (except with the target's name)
SMAA can help a little bit in some situations, but I didn't found any setting to really fix it. Didn't change UI colours though so I don't know about that.
SS2x could help too, but as far as I know it's not really an option even with a 1080.

hmm, I'm surprised by that. I'll try it tonight and let you know ;)
 
hmm, I'm surprised by that. I'll try it tonight and let you know ;)

You can check latencies and lost frames with Steam's Vive app. Let us know how it goes inside a Coriolis looking at the entrance. I hope it works fine, but everything I read says SS2.0 drops too many frames.
 
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with my 980ti which I've overclocked to it's slightly unreasonable limit I can run VR High with no AA (makes little difference anyway) and SS 1.5. On these settings the default text with orange theme is still hard to read, but if you change it to Greenish or blueish it becomes "readable". Going to SS2x didn't seem to improve the text as much as going to 1.5 and it kills framerate regardless of the quality settings in certain parts of the game such as bulleting board, letter box on entry (ok once in the station) or Outfitting and planets, so I wouldnt' recommend it unless you have strong stomach.
 
You can check latencies and lost frames with Steam's Vive app. Let us know how it goes inside a Coriolis looking at the entrance. I hope it works fine, but everything I read says SS2.0 drops too many frames.

Is that something called up from Steam VR or something I need to install separately?
 
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