Vive 3840x2160 Resolution

[Dalien]

For ages now I've felt that the Vive isn't displaying ED at a decent enough resolution on the HMD, but I'm sure I read somewhere that it's supposed to be running at the device's native resolution, and changing the resolution on the in-game options only affects the desktop window. Well, testing has shown me this isn't the case.

For example, if I change the resolution to 1920x1080 it's immediately apparent on the HMD. The "Resume" menu text is whiter and clearer and there's less edge flickering. What was even better was setting the resolution to 3840x2160 on DisplaySettings.xml via the ED Profiler tool, and this is what is now frustrating me.

The first time I ran ED it worked fine at 3840x2160, with a giant desktop window that overflowed the screen borders and a really crisp image on the HMD. But then I did the stupid thing of going into the game options to set the resolution to 1280x768 for comparison's sake. Now, it just won't let me run at 3840x2160 anymore, because as soon as the Vive kicks in it automatically sets it back to 1280x768. I've even tried write-protecting DisplaySettings.xml, but it's setting the resolution dynamically in memory it seems.

The other interesting point is that running at 3840x2160 on my GTX960 was smooth and playable, but 1920x1080 at 2.0 supersampling is laggy as hell. Isn't that the same as running at 3840x2160?

I don't know... something just doesn't feel quite right with ED's Vive display.

 

[Gunner Deckard]

Changing the resolution while using your HMD only changes the on monitor display window.

 

[Dalien]

Changing the resolution while using your HMD only changes the on monitor display window.

Yeah, you're right. I've been testing various resolution combinations today and I can only put my experience last night down to misperception on my part or some kind of placebo effect Using the Vive display mirror, what's being sent to the HMD is indeed the same regardless of how high I force the in-game resolution. Which does beg the question, is there a performance benefit to having the desktop window resolution as low as possible?

For the sake of amusement I set the Vive supersampling in Steam to 2.4 and the in-game supersampling to 2.0. Entirely unplayable on my GTX960, but there's a huuuge difference in quality. That's a whopping 7258x8064 being sent to the HMD instead of the standard 1512x1680. Here's a comparison with both images resized to the native 1080x1200 per-eye screen resolution:

To be honest it's almost too sharp on the HMD, although the stars look all twinkly and awesome. Just need an HMD now with double the native resolution to remove the screen door effect.

 

[rootsrat]

Yeah, you're right. I've been testing various resolution combinations today and I can only put my experience last night down to misperception on my part or some kind of placebo effect Using the Vive display mirror, what's being sent to the HMD is indeed the same regardless of how high I force the in-game resolution. Which does beg the question, is there a performance benefit to having the desktop window resolution as low as possible?
.

I run mine at:

Deskop - 1920 x 1080
In game SS - 0.85
HMD SS - 1.0
Steam SS - 2.0

Shadows: Medium
AA: FXAA
Ambient Occlusion: Off

The rest of the settings are on Ultra/High.

i5 4590 and GTX 1080.

For me - this is great performance with the image crisp enough to play normally without getting annoyed at low image quality.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

There is a minor resources/performance benefit to setting a lower monitor window resolution - graphics memory. Setting it to 1024x768 for example will save some VRAM compared to a 1920x1080 HD resolution window.

And, because ED is rendering at 1080x1200, any other resolution set for the monitor window is costing a (tiny bit) of performance due to the mirror window resize. Luckily, that workload is tiny... resizing is something GPUs do extremely well.

I am fairly certain ED resizes the completed frame direct from the frame buffer on the video card - meaning if you have HMD Quality (or supersampling) turned up or down, it will be resizing that flat image rather than the resized image sent to the Oculus driver for barrel distortion etc.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

From what I have tested before I thought maybe having 'only' 6GB Vram on my card was holding me back a little since usage got up to around 5.5GB while playing.

But even after upgrading to a 1080ti and I know have nearly twice that, Vram usage is still peaking at 5.5GB while playing.
What I'm trying to say is if you have more than that you have some room to play, a 1080 should have a bit extra to play with.