Hi Jypson
You do not need to use the Debug tool in 2.2 beta anymore. Just use the HMD image quality (this is pixel density) and Super Sampling from within the Elite graphics options.
I think I'm finished trying to play Elite in VR.
- Thread starter CMDR Muy Bien Gato
- Start date
Hi Jypson
You do not need to use the Debug tool in 2.2 beta anymore. Just use the HMD image quality (this is pixel density) and Super Sampling from within the Elite graphics options.
Excellent write up, but I still can't get around the fact that we are talking about "consumer ready" tech here. Vive and Oculus should both be plug and play in my book. Oh well. I guess I'll have to wait a generation or two... :/
Dude that is...what is going on over there?
Got a rift on a considerably mid-range system with a mid-high range GPU (it was good a few years ago I tell you! Would have laughed if you told me I could pick up a consumer 6 core i7 with hyperthreading for £400...wait, distraction cancelled).
I had to pull graphics settings to mid-high instead of ultra (the blaspheme!
). Plays fine, absolutely none of that going on.
That's not "performance issues", that's something I would immediately work on resolving before I left the next station.
Got a rift on a considerably mid-range system with a mid-high range GPU (it was good a few years ago I tell you! Would have laughed if you told me I could pick up a consumer 6 core i7 with hyperthreading for £400...wait, distraction cancelled).
I had to pull graphics settings to mid-high instead of ultra (the blaspheme!
). Plays fine, absolutely none of that going on. That's not "performance issues", that's something I would immediately work on resolving before I left the next station.
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As promised I got my rift today, so I can give a small report back.
I was running the Beta 2.2.6 with SS on OCT (1.25) and HDM Quality ( Steam file edit in 2.1) at 1.25 (OCT in beta for some reason). I had Pretty much everything on Ultra and I was monitoring both the FPS and the way it feels in the headset.
Here comes the biggest differences:
Sense of scale - Scale felt correct in Rift, while in Vive I keep feeling like a poorly fed teenager avatar.
Fidelity/clarity - the 1.25 SS and 1.25 Pixel density (HMD quality) on Oculus deliver the same crispness as 1.25 SS and 1.5 Pixel density on Vive. This could be caused by the larger field of view I guess, making Oculus slightly lighter on the GPU
Jitters/judders and blurring - Clear winner is Rift. Even when the frame rates drop to bellow 45 the game was still without the crazy blurring we get on Vive. Rift does occasionally suffers from micro stutters (for a lack of better word), but it isn't anywhere near what we experience in Vive thanks to ATW. I haven't tried to activate ASW yet to see how it improves things.
Tracking - My feeling was that Vive is more accurate - hard to put the finger on it exactly, but Vive feels superior in tracking. Oculus has tracking that is sufficient for good experience, just not as precise as Vive.
To conclude - the headsets are almost the same and it appears that the info sent to the headsets in 2.2 beta is basically the same, but just handled differently by the compositors. I have my theory on the scale issue and I plan to test it tomorrow if I get the chance, but the main issue appears the way Vive handles dropped frames. Oculus can smooth over many sins, but Vive is handing things in a much less effective (for the end user) way thus giving those who use Vive worse experience. Frame rates on the Vive were only 2 to 3 frames lower then on Oculus, but the experience on Vive was unplayable once the FPS goes below 45 at any point, while with Oculus you might see some artifacts or micro judder, but experience remains manageable when compared to Vive.
This means that unless Valve introduces something similar to ASW any time soon, us Vive owners probably won't get a great improvement. I guess the best to hope for would be better AA solution, so we don't have to SS so much, but that is the best we can hope for. Valve should really look at their demands on the devs, as at this point they demand sustained FPS of at least 45 fps at all times and sadly I don't think that Vive users will see that with High FX and High Shadows settings with the SS settings we need any time soon.
I'll be keeping only one headset, so now I'll need to make a decision which one to keep and as Elite is not the only game I play the decision won't be all that easy as roomscale on Vive is amazing and still in my opinion worth having Vive....
I'll update others when I get more results, but these would be my preliminary feelings/findings. Of course some are subjective
Specs - i7-5820k - 3.3Ghz - 6 cores, MSI Gaming GTX 980ti (6GB) OC edition overclocked further, SSD- Samsung and Crucial, 64GB Memory...
I was running the Beta 2.2.6 with SS on OCT (1.25) and HDM Quality ( Steam file edit in 2.1) at 1.25 (OCT in beta for some reason). I had Pretty much everything on Ultra and I was monitoring both the FPS and the way it feels in the headset.
Here comes the biggest differences:
Sense of scale - Scale felt correct in Rift, while in Vive I keep feeling like a poorly fed teenager avatar.
Fidelity/clarity - the 1.25 SS and 1.25 Pixel density (HMD quality) on Oculus deliver the same crispness as 1.25 SS and 1.5 Pixel density on Vive. This could be caused by the larger field of view I guess, making Oculus slightly lighter on the GPU
Jitters/judders and blurring - Clear winner is Rift. Even when the frame rates drop to bellow 45 the game was still without the crazy blurring we get on Vive. Rift does occasionally suffers from micro stutters (for a lack of better word), but it isn't anywhere near what we experience in Vive thanks to ATW. I haven't tried to activate ASW yet to see how it improves things.
Tracking - My feeling was that Vive is more accurate - hard to put the finger on it exactly, but Vive feels superior in tracking. Oculus has tracking that is sufficient for good experience, just not as precise as Vive.
To conclude - the headsets are almost the same and it appears that the info sent to the headsets in 2.2 beta is basically the same, but just handled differently by the compositors. I have my theory on the scale issue and I plan to test it tomorrow if I get the chance, but the main issue appears the way Vive handles dropped frames. Oculus can smooth over many sins, but Vive is handing things in a much less effective (for the end user) way thus giving those who use Vive worse experience. Frame rates on the Vive were only 2 to 3 frames lower then on Oculus, but the experience on Vive was unplayable once the FPS goes below 45 at any point, while with Oculus you might see some artifacts or micro judder, but experience remains manageable when compared to Vive.
This means that unless Valve introduces something similar to ASW any time soon, us Vive owners probably won't get a great improvement. I guess the best to hope for would be better AA solution, so we don't have to SS so much, but that is the best we can hope for. Valve should really look at their demands on the devs, as at this point they demand sustained FPS of at least 45 fps at all times and sadly I don't think that Vive users will see that with High FX and High Shadows settings with the SS settings we need any time soon.
I'll be keeping only one headset, so now I'll need to make a decision which one to keep and as Elite is not the only game I play the decision won't be all that easy as roomscale on Vive is amazing and still in my opinion worth having Vive....
I'll update others when I get more results, but these would be my preliminary feelings/findings. Of course some are subjective
Specs - i7-5820k - 3.3Ghz - 6 cores, MSI Gaming GTX 980ti (6GB) OC edition overclocked further, SSD- Samsung and Crucial, 64GB Memory...
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I pretty much run 90 to 120 FPS everywhere in the game. Some times I get a dip down to 80 when loading into a star port when I first start the game. After that its 90 or above. Force run 2X super sampling from the Nvidia control panel and thats about it. Works okay but the game itself is not optimized for VR yet. We can increase pixel density all we want. However until the textures and rasterized text in the game gets a big bump, we wont see much in the way of a better visual experience. Even good video cards like the 970 series can only do so much with limited texture data. I hear when DX12 support is finally launched a lot of the VR stuff will be Ironed out.
i5 6600k
16 Gig DDR4 2400
950 GB San Data II SSD
GIGABYTE GAZ170XGAMING7 1151 ATX Mobo
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB XTREME GAMING OC EDITION
Oculus Rift CV1
i5 6600k
16 Gig DDR4 2400
950 GB San Data II SSD
GIGABYTE GAZ170XGAMING7 1151 ATX Mobo
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB XTREME GAMING OC EDITION
Oculus Rift CV1
DSR has no effect on your VR experience. You are simply supersampling the windowed version on your monitor which does nothing for your VR resolution. You would need to be running Pixel density on Oculus SDK or use the new super sampling options in Beta Horizons 2.2.5+, so I would be suprised if your FPS went below 90.....
In fact using the NV supersampling you are simply costing yourself FPS for no gain unless you are running in Extended mode, but that is possible only with Vive as far as I know and it doesn't bring any benefit
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also once I got my rift I was able to asses some of the scaling issues and find a solution for Vive users - I couldn't believe that it is that simple, but by simple height adjustment values we can all have different scale and thus experience Elite in different ways - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/297612-Scaling-issue-on-Vive-Solution
I hope the above helps as personally I hated playing for a teenager...
I hope the above helps as personally I hated playing for a teenager...
One last post you may find interesting. I decided to make a video comparing ASW off and on. Of course we can only record from the 2nd screen so you can't see the effects directly, but you can see the realtime system performance and FPS. Video is under the spoiler tag below.
My PC Specs:
Win 10 Pro
ASUS Maximus VI
i7-4790K (OC)
ADATA 4GB 1600 Mhz x4
GTX 1080 Sea Hawk X (OC)
Oculus Rift CV1
Settings: VR Ultra
Bloom/Blur turned OFF
HMD Supersampling x1.5
Recording Window at 1280x720 60FPS
Recorded w/ Action!
How to Enable Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW): https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/56af3t/detailed_stepbystep_guide_to_enabling_asw_through/
What is Asynchronous Spacewarp?: http://radeon.com/en-us/asynchronous-space-warp/
[video=youtube;5MeinPCaWS0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MeinPCaWS0[/video]
My PC Specs:
Win 10 Pro
ASUS Maximus VI
i7-4790K (OC)
ADATA 4GB 1600 Mhz x4
GTX 1080 Sea Hawk X (OC)
Oculus Rift CV1
Settings: VR Ultra
Bloom/Blur turned OFF
HMD Supersampling x1.5
Recording Window at 1280x720 60FPS
Recorded w/ Action!
How to Enable Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW): https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/56af3t/detailed_stepbystep_guide_to_enabling_asw_through/
What is Asynchronous Spacewarp?: http://radeon.com/en-us/asynchronous-space-warp/
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ED is running like a champ on my CV1. ASW is just fantastic. OP needs to sort his PC out.
![[VR] Frank_G](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/59/59394.jpg?1553527111){kind=avatar}
The OP is using a Vive. There is no ASW for the Vive...
![[HJ]-RedRaven](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/67/67389.jpg?1553527112){kind=avatar}
OK here's my take on ASW after several nights mucking about with it. Sorry it turned into a bit of a wall of text.
The main difference between VR and 2D rendering is that 90 vs 45fps divide. There is no continuum of fps numbers like 2D:
- If your card takes 9ms to render a VR frame, you see 90fps (not 111fps, the additional render time is essentially wasted for the most part).
- If your card takes 12ms to render a frame, you're going to ASW mode and you'll have exactly the same experience as someone whos GPU takes 19ms for the same detail settings. Your 13ms card's power is effectively the same as the 19ms slower card. This is why sometimes you'll lower the detail and see no benefit; you have to get under the 11ms app render times to return to 90fps-land.
You're either getting 90 real frames, or 45 real frames. On really low hardware, you might lose more. There's no 60fps, 75fps, or 85.26fps. 90 or 45. That's it.
No matter the tricks VR uses to 'make up' 90fps, you're in one of two ;
- 90fps lots/all of the time (realistically very few of us, even with 1080GTX's)
- 45fps lots/all of the time lots of us with detail set too high for our hardware.
I've been testing at low and high/ultra settings too. ASW works well, with some nagging visual artifacts. Oculus has done a great job, and it will open up VR to more potential machines for sure.
I feel on a GTX1080, with high detail needs, I'm trapped between the world of fluid 90fps VR and ASW-induced artifacts in high-load situations (stations, res sites, planets).
Overclocking and dropping some detail often does nothing for the overall experience of 'judder' or hitching - because you're still mostly over 11ms render times and the switching up and down between 90 and 45fps can feel like hitching. You have to drop a fair bit of detail to take 1-2 ms off the render time.
Supersampling using the debug tool (or in-game HMD Quality setting in 2.2beta).
In essence, the ideal level of 'performance' all boils down to two factors:
1 - Visual Detail Level determines Performance
Some crave the higher detail we normally see in 2D. Some re-adjust to lower res in VR. This is pretty much the same range we see in 2D - some people love high detail. Others don't care so long as they get fluid, smooth action on-screen.
The level of detail you set determines the time your CPU and GPU take to render each frame. This includes boosting the resolution by use of debug tool supersampling, which places additional load on the GPU.
Your GPU has 11ms to render a VR ready frame (2 viewpoints, 2160x1200 resolution) to maintain true 90fps. That's hard, even for a 1080GTX at High/Ultra detail settings. Really, only the GTX Titan Pascal is playing at 85-90fps at high and ultra detail settings with moderate supersampling.
True 90fps with detail settings that keep App Render times at or below 11ms offers the best experience. There's no distorted frames being inserted, and the scene and head-tracking feels fluid.
With ATW active (your Rift is missing frame submits and ATW is inserting frames on the fly, or when ASW is on due to continuous frame rate drop), you're locked at 45fps and your GPU has a leisurely ~20ms to render a VR ready frame. But you still experience 90fps in VR, with each real frame interleaved with an ASW-generated frame to take the place of a missed submit frame.
Visual quality is reduced, because each ASW-generated frame isn't perfect. Its an approximation generated from preceding frames, and Oculus hopes your eyes won't be quick enough to notice the difference.
ED has varying levels of scene load, but there are three main scenarios I see regularly;
- Space, quiet, not much going on = 90fps
- Stations, not much going on but render-costly transparent menus - 90/45fps
- Engineer Stations, planets, RES sites = 45fps
2 - Sensitivity to Missed Frames
Missed frames cause trouble. From barely perceptible hitching as ATW inserts a dropped frame and adjusts pre-render timing, to slideshow judder when more than two frames are being dropped, they're bad.
Player sensitivity to these tiny changes can range from "What judder?" to "Judder is ruining my ED experience; I ragequit" scenarios. Usually using the 'poor optimisation' argument that noone really short of an engine coder is able to justify.
The human eye/brain is superb at nit-picking oddities we see or perceive. Current VR is in the 'uncanny valley' of being close to a real experience as you look about in a synthetic world, but some aspects still don't look right. Judder is one of those aspects, hitching another. Odd menu-bleeds and wiggly HUD lines as well. Everyone's mileage varies, by degree of annoyance and also by particular aspect.
ASW is great - its a logical evolution from ATW and obviously has more power over render timing given your card is suddenly releived of half the required frame submit deadlines (90fps down to 45fps). I feel its a decent trade-off for the slight reduction in visual quality, but sometimes those defects are obvious. ASW will improve, no doubt about that.
The main difference between VR and 2D rendering is that 90 vs 45fps divide. There is no continuum of fps numbers like 2D:
- If your card takes 9ms to render a VR frame, you see 90fps (not 111fps, the additional render time is essentially wasted for the most part).
- If your card takes 12ms to render a frame, you're going to ASW mode and you'll have exactly the same experience as someone whos GPU takes 19ms for the same detail settings. Your 13ms card's power is effectively the same as the 19ms slower card. This is why sometimes you'll lower the detail and see no benefit; you have to get under the 11ms app render times to return to 90fps-land.
You're either getting 90 real frames, or 45 real frames. On really low hardware, you might lose more. There's no 60fps, 75fps, or 85.26fps. 90 or 45. That's it.
No matter the tricks VR uses to 'make up' 90fps, you're in one of two ;
- 90fps lots/all of the time (realistically very few of us, even with 1080GTX's)
- 45fps lots/all of the time lots of us with detail set too high for our hardware.
I've been testing at low and high/ultra settings too. ASW works well, with some nagging visual artifacts. Oculus has done a great job, and it will open up VR to more potential machines for sure.
I feel on a GTX1080, with high detail needs, I'm trapped between the world of fluid 90fps VR and ASW-induced artifacts in high-load situations (stations, res sites, planets).
Overclocking and dropping some detail often does nothing for the overall experience of 'judder' or hitching - because you're still mostly over 11ms render times and the switching up and down between 90 and 45fps can feel like hitching. You have to drop a fair bit of detail to take 1-2 ms off the render time.
Supersampling using the debug tool (or in-game HMD Quality setting in 2.2beta).
In essence, the ideal level of 'performance' all boils down to two factors:
1 - Visual Detail Level determines Performance
Some crave the higher detail we normally see in 2D. Some re-adjust to lower res in VR. This is pretty much the same range we see in 2D - some people love high detail. Others don't care so long as they get fluid, smooth action on-screen.
The level of detail you set determines the time your CPU and GPU take to render each frame. This includes boosting the resolution by use of debug tool supersampling, which places additional load on the GPU.
Your GPU has 11ms to render a VR ready frame (2 viewpoints, 2160x1200 resolution) to maintain true 90fps. That's hard, even for a 1080GTX at High/Ultra detail settings. Really, only the GTX Titan Pascal is playing at 85-90fps at high and ultra detail settings with moderate supersampling.
True 90fps with detail settings that keep App Render times at or below 11ms offers the best experience. There's no distorted frames being inserted, and the scene and head-tracking feels fluid.
With ATW active (your Rift is missing frame submits and ATW is inserting frames on the fly, or when ASW is on due to continuous frame rate drop), you're locked at 45fps and your GPU has a leisurely ~20ms to render a VR ready frame. But you still experience 90fps in VR, with each real frame interleaved with an ASW-generated frame to take the place of a missed submit frame.
Visual quality is reduced, because each ASW-generated frame isn't perfect. Its an approximation generated from preceding frames, and Oculus hopes your eyes won't be quick enough to notice the difference.
ED has varying levels of scene load, but there are three main scenarios I see regularly;
- Space, quiet, not much going on = 90fps
- Stations, not much going on but render-costly transparent menus - 90/45fps
- Engineer Stations, planets, RES sites = 45fps
2 - Sensitivity to Missed Frames
Missed frames cause trouble. From barely perceptible hitching as ATW inserts a dropped frame and adjusts pre-render timing, to slideshow judder when more than two frames are being dropped, they're bad.
Player sensitivity to these tiny changes can range from "What judder?" to "Judder is ruining my ED experience; I ragequit" scenarios. Usually using the 'poor optimisation' argument that noone really short of an engine coder is able to justify.
The human eye/brain is superb at nit-picking oddities we see or perceive. Current VR is in the 'uncanny valley' of being close to a real experience as you look about in a synthetic world, but some aspects still don't look right. Judder is one of those aspects, hitching another. Odd menu-bleeds and wiggly HUD lines as well. Everyone's mileage varies, by degree of annoyance and also by particular aspect.
ASW is great - its a logical evolution from ATW and obviously has more power over render timing given your card is suddenly releived of half the required frame submit deadlines (90fps down to 45fps). I feel its a decent trade-off for the slight reduction in visual quality, but sometimes those defects are obvious. ASW will improve, no doubt about that.
Yeah, been plug and play for me, not sure what to tell you. I got the vive May 1st, took me less than half an hour to be in the roomscale setup and once that was complete, I've never had to touch it ever again. My wife or myself, pick up the Vive when we feel like playing and just play. My only issue is the renderer bug in Elite and trying to redo the height via the room setup did nothing.
I just installed beta 7... same settings as in beta 6 ingame SS1.0 and HMDQuality 1.0 and pretty much medium/high settings... and the game is again fixed to 30fps... so its unplayable. I need that 45-90fps. I have Asus Stric Gtx1080 overclocked to almost 2.1ghz... Im beginning to feel that bying Vive was a huge mistake.
I wouldn't feel that way. I've got my Oculus yesterday and it is already packed to go back
Yes I'm sending my Oculus back as while the ASW is cool and the game runs on higher detail the immersion was lower (in my opinion) This is probably due to the less accurate tracking. Vive has drivers that still need work, but the colours and tracking are much better then on Oculus, so lets hope that ED fixes what they can on their end (FPS drops - by adding reprojection cues when needed and a scale slider for those where scale is an issue) and Steam VR improves with some form of asynchronous reprojection. If these 3 magical things happen we will have better EXP on Vive in my opinion, so not all is lost I wouldn't feel that way. I've got my Oculus yesterday and it is already packed to go back
I take some of my words back
I was messing with targetMultiplier again and it was for somereason stuck to 2.0 So now im back to smooth medium-hi settings with SS1.0 and HMD1.25!
Great post, clear explanation, agreed 100%
I wouldn't feel that way. I've got my Oculus yesterday and it is already packed to go back
My CV1 tracks perfectly and I have no plans to sent it back. Sounds like you didn't have it set up correctly.