VR perf in 1080 compared to 980

[ChrisT]

Hi peeps, I have been playing ED in the 2.3 beta, and using the OverSample to get, what I consider to be better baseline quality visuals from ED. With OS at 1.0 I find....

* Much of the in-game text to be very hard to read
* Aliasing to be pretty awful. Making an approaching Corliolis, pixel crawl like a bucket of maggots :/

When I set it at 2.0 though, text was legible, and Anti-aliasing quality was decent. The really big downside though was the FPS went from 90 to 22. Which we all know is barf-land.

So, I have a 980ti, and I know that I want to use 2.0, but this gives me 22fps. Looking at a 1080, I can see that most game benchmarks suggest a speed bump of 25%? If it were a 1080ti, then your talking near 50% faster.

HOWEVER

nVidia also stated that the 1080 drivers (or is it hardware?) better support rendering of VR. Meaning 2 renders, one for each eye, takes a lot less work on the 1080.

is this just marketing? Or does the 1080 really trounce a 980 when it comes to VR. If I did stump up approx £700 to buy a 1080ti, would I expect to see my 22fps jump to 40fps (still way to low for comfort). Or does the 1080 X factor yield more fps?

Anyone have any bench marks or whatever to this effect?

 

[ChrisT]

Ah, I see, there is another thread, where this is all basically being chewed over. I shall take my eyes there.

 

[Olle3000]

I use a 1080 (not ti) and HTC vive and supersampling 1.6. It works fairly well in combat and around stations but there are dropped frames and such. It is doable but not perfect. When i know that im only going to do combat i lower SS to 1.3.

As for the 10-series abilities of rendering everything only once and display for the two eyes, as far as i understand its a technology that isnt implimented yet in most games, and i believe not in ED. Hence, the difference to your 980ti is not going to be so big. Honestly i dont think there is any hardware that allows you to play with SS 2.0 and 90 fps. The 1080ti is of course better than my 1080, but i dont think its gonna take you from 22 fps to 90. Sad but true. On the other hand you learn by heart all the text in the game after a while, so its only important to see it clearly in the beginning. Play a few hours on screen, then go back to VR with your 980 and set SS to sth that feels ok.

Best regards / Olle

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Even a 1080Ti will not give you solid HMD Quality supersampling at 2.0x levels. That's trying to render 4,320x2400 (2160x1200 multiplied by 2.0 for both axes) at 90fps? No chance. Even next-gen GPU's will likely struggle with this brute force approach (hence the work towards VR SLI, eye tracking to enable foveated rendering etc).

My GTX1080 allows Ultra VR settings with a few lowered (Blur off, Depth of Field Off, Shadows Medium, Bloom Medium, Ambient Occlusion Low) while allowing a 1.25x HMD Quality. On my Rift CV1, I turn ASW off.
1.25x makes a big impact to the visual quality, but its still rendering 2,700x1500. But most of the time I'm at or near 90fps with only a small amount of judder on loading instances etc. 85-90fps in stations.

Moving up to 1.5 is possible if I lower a LOT of seettings to minimum, but I prefer the detail over the framerate (I don't get sick even in the SRV etc). Sure, 1.5 gives a bit better 'resolution' experience, but above 1.5, the gains drop quickly. 2.0 is only marginally better than 1.5 (imo) and not worth the massive performance hit.

Olle3000 above is using 1.6x and 1.3x in combat etc. Everyone is different.

Your 980Ti is reasonable, but not powerful - at least not in VR. At high-ultra detail levels you'll be dropping into Oculus' ASW (45fps, Interleaved Reprojection on the Vive)) mode often, and 1.25x HMD Quality is probably about your realistic limit, and that will come with some judder etc. 2.0x isn't realistic even on a 1080Ti. Its a 'play-with-me' setting.

However, it does depend on how you 'see' the VR experience, whether the added ASW visual artifacts affect annoy you.

 

[Blian]

Yes, 2 ss is a no go even on the ti. I managed to squeeze a decent perf @1.5 ss and 1 x hmd but i had to massively oc my cpu. And even with these settings asw kicks in res zones and in stations. Apparently 6600k is weak for peak vr performance :/

 

[Alec Turner]

I switched from a 970 to a 1080 and there was a distinct improvement in performance. It's not earth shattering (e.g. I still can't ramp absolutely everything up to max and simply get 90fps) but it is significantly better and I no longer worry about the settings too much.

Trying to set HMD Quality (I assume that's the setting you're referring to) up to 2.0 is a BIG ask (it's an exponential increase in performance up from 1.0 with diminishing returns in noticeable graphics improvements) and you'd be better off aiming for 1.5. In fact, with my 1080, I've ended up going for SS=1.0 and HMD Quality=1.25. I've got Blooom/Blur/DOF/Anti-aliasing/Ambient Occlusion all off, Shadow quality is High and everything else is max/Ultra. That gives me a steady 90fps pretty much everywhere, even with Oculus ASW turned off (press Ctrl+Numpad 1).

Edit: there is a school of thought that recommends SS=0.65 so you can set HMD Quality up to 1.5 or even 2.0 but I personally remain unconvinced about that.

 

[ChrisT]

Ill have to give the quality trade offs more of a testing. Next week maybe. When I tried SuperSampling in non VR, I did see a marked improvement in image quality. I understand its rendering at much higher resolution, and sampling down to screen. Now, if ANY of the AA methods produced something similar, then I would not have played with it. My main gripe is Space Station Ailising at long range. All those poly edges Aliase REALLY badly. So thats my main bugbear.

It was only in Beta 2.3 that I realised SS was something we could use in VR mode. I tried it in 1.25, 1.5 and 2.0 and yes at each stage I saw pretty massive improvements in image quality. Mainly in what appeared to be actual resolution. I know this is in fact false, the VR device is still receiving the same X * Y pixels. But the AA is such it appears to be higher resolution.

Now, the HMD Quality options, this is what confuses me. I had assumed these were simply pre-sets for the various settings for things like draw distance, Ambient Occlusion quality, Shadow Quality etc. Quite a different set of options. And I assume these would have no bearing at all, on clarity (apparent pixel resolution) and Anti-Ailising quality.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback peeps. It had given me a reality check for what I could expect from a 1080ti. I may still get one, selling on my 980ti to make the £££ hit not so bad.

It seems to me then, that Frontier ideally would implement two KEY technologies to make general ED image quality better, and one just for VR.

If they could implement Temporal Anti-Alising (nVidia call it TXAA), this would have a massive quality impact on the game in general. You can see its effects here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-idCtsd8No

It basically re-uses samples from one frame, over multiple frames, to allow for much better AA and general sampling. Its actually pretty technical to implement. It does not work so well on still images, or where areas of an image did not exist in previous frames. But overall its effect on Ailising is pretty massive. It also allows you to make use of more physically real Ambient Occlusion, shadowing, bounce lighting etc. Basically anything that benefits on more samples to look good.

The other tech, is just for VR. And this is to use nVidia's multi-projection tech. Again, this seems very much like Temporal AA, in that it is storing the samples generated for one Eye, and re-using these, where it can for the other. Seems like a perfect tech to combine with Temporal AA. With both of these in place. Your VR headset would not really need more resolution. The AA quality would be so good, that you'd perceive it as being higher resolution.

Anyway, I can carry on dreaming. But if you try some VR games with TXAA, like Robinson, the Journey. You'll see super smooth graphics, no Aliasing in sight.

 

[Blian]

I just got the 1080 ti, setting is VR ultra, a little tweak here and there, and I'm getting 90 FPS with 1.5 SS. It is wonderful! Well, stations and res zones still activate ASW but I see no judder at all And I'm not finished experimenting yet

 

[Alec Turner]

Just to clarify, SS is not the thing you should be trying to increase for VR. Leave it at 1.0 (or even less) and try to maximise HMD Quality (which is the same as the old Oculus Debug Tool Pixels-Per-Pixel setting). Even HMD Quality of 1.25 will make a big difference and if you can get away with 1.5 or even higher it will look superb.

 

[Blian]

Just to clarify, SS is not the thing you should be trying to increase for VR. Leave it at 1.0 (or even less) and try to maximise HMD Quality (which is the same as the old Oculus Debug Tool Pixels-Per-Pixel setting). Even HMD Quality of 1.25 will make a big difference and if you can get away with 1.5 or even higher it will look superb.

I tried them both, adjusting SS seems better for me. I'll continue tonight with some tweaking, I'll try the reverse settings again.

 

[Alec Turner]

I tried them both, adjusting SS seems better for me. I'll continue tonight with some tweaking, I'll try the reverse settings again.

Interesting, it's good to have these accepted ideas challenged!

 

[TorTorden_VR]

I posted this in my other thread, but figure it mighr just as well pertain here.

I have spent some time tonight goofing around with fcatvr, and gotten a few measurement while launching, flying around a station and back in with my vulture.

My post from the other thread:

Felt up for some further poking.
These are my current settings.

Spoiler

And here is my first attempt at doing some FcatVR capturing.
(http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/fcat)

Spoiler

This was from me basically looping around the station a few times.
Part of me is ambivalent,
First things first, I have virtually no headroom.
My unconstrained fps is at 99.7.
Average delivered FPS at 87.5

And I'm _Thinking ASW isn't the problem, but the lag spikes. those are basically running my render time from 10ms to nearly 30ms, and that's no good.
I'l try doing some more tests.

Did another run.
With these settings:

Spoiler

And new fcat graph.
Quite wide, might want to open seperately.

Spoiler

Clearly these are in uncontrolled game, just me looping around the outside of a station.
So can't really say much outside of a general opinion.
Also.
Gpu load peaked at 91%
CPU at 76%

I'd love to seem more fcatvr graphs, especially from other 980ti owners, 980 etc.

 

[dogbite]

Interesting, it's good to have these accepted ideas challenged!

It's like the, recently released, IRacing sharpening tweak. What one racer likes for setting vs another is just as varied. We all see and slightly different frequencies and efficiencies. Add to that different HMD's and GPUs. It's like trying to get an opinion about "which one looks best" from a group of people while shopping for a TV. Best we can do is tweak to our own preference.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

It's like the, recently released, IRacing sharpening tweak. What one racer likes for setting vs another is just as varied. We all see and slightly different frequencies and efficiencies. Add to that different HMD's and GPUs. It's like trying to get an opinion about "which one looks best" from a group of people while shopping for a TV. Best we can do if tweak to our own preference.

I would have agreed if you had said headphones or something.

But for image displays, be them tv's, projectors, or computer monitors there are exceedingly exact and rigorous standards.
So there are TV's that are calibrated, and conforms to the standards satisfactory or not.
Once you have seen what the skin tones of a beautiful woman look from a well mastered movie and a calibrated TV.
Well most other tv's look then like something between a self tanning accident or someone who should get their kidney function checked.

Now for most tv's these days it can be calibrated, at least within reasnoble ranges. But I doubt many bother to, since getting this done properly with decent equipment, can sometimes cost as much as a decent set.

 

[dogbite]

I would have agreed if you had said headphones or something.

But for image displays, be them tv's, projectors, or computer monitors there are exceedingly exact and rigorous standards.
So there are TV's that are calibrated, and conforms to the standards satisfactory or not.
Once you have seen what the skin tones of a beautiful woman look from a well mastered movie and a calibrated TV.
Well most other tv's look then like something between a self tanning accident or someone who should get their kidney function checked.

Now for most tv's these days it can be calibrated, at least within reasnoble ranges. But I doubt many bother to, since getting this done properly with decent equipment, can sometimes cost as much as a decent set.

The TV analogy was only to reference to how a group of people in a TV store will have differing opinions about which one looks the best while they are looking at the same sets at the same time. This goes to how each sees color, contrast, gamma, etc. One guy likes the LG, another prefers the Samsung and yet another sees no difference. These are personal choices based on how we see as individuals.

Alec's response to Blian's SS ratio setting is what I was responding to. My point is that I am not surprised that he (and others) could like a setting and that others could find it less than ideal. They just see it that way.
That you mention headphones is actually rather appropriate. What we prefer as individuals is affected by frequency in both sound and vision. There too, we tweak to our preferences.

 

[shadragon]

Once you have seen what the skin tones of a beautiful woman look from a well mastered movie and a calibrated TV.

I prefer real life women, personally.

I'll try to remember to post my Vive settings when I get home. My Titan X Pascal was pricey, but delivers the goods for VR. Should have it in a new RyZen build within 4-6 months. Just waiting to see if the 16 core RyZen chip is a reality or not before jumping in.

 

[Heater]

Just made the switch from the AMD 480 to 1080 TI and all I can say is WOW what a difference.

 

[SYN_Mars]

Flash git!

 

[CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned]

Just made the switch from the AMD 480 to 1080 TI and all I can say is WOW what a difference.

Yeah I went from a Radeon HD 7970 to a 1080 GTX and, believe it or not, the Radeon blew me away even though everything was pretty much block graphics (just my first sample of VR) but the move to the 1080 is just stunning in comparison.

What settings are you using for your 1080 Ti?

Don't just stick with the VR Ultra as it really isn't all that Ultra, it's more a balance for a set of high end cards (980's included). Have a play and you can increase the resolution even more, HMD quality at 2.0 is a must even if you have to lower a few other settings even on a 1080 Ti.

 

[Heater]

Current settings, in the station this is running solid at 90 FPS...