VR Help Please

CMDR Fatebinder

C
Hey,

So I am venturing into the HOTAS and VR gameplay of elite.

I currently have a Nvidia GTX 960 on a i5-6400 CPU @ 2.7 GHz with 16 GB RAM. Windows 10. Dell Insperion Desktop.

I don't have a huge amount of disposable income (Kids, Mortgage, life and all that) and so for my first jaunt I have gone for an Oculus Go and a Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas . Chosen basically for being within my current budget and not wanted to purchase anything more expensive for the time-being, until I have given the game play a try.

I don't know a huge amount about VR, is my system going to cope or do i need to beef up any aspect (i.e. the graphics card)? What are the likely issues that I may face with this setup and can I do anything about them (i.e. use specific mods etc).

Any help, guidance or assistance would be super appreciated.

Cheers
 
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Arioch

Arioch
Oculus Go is only 3 degrees-of-freedom - not the best choice you could’ve made in my opinion.

My recommendation would be to go for a second-hand Rift CV1 or a Windows Mixed Reality, if you’re on a budget. Any headset with 6 DoF, basically.

Your GTX 960 is right below the low end of the VR spectrum, the 970 is the lowest recommended spec. I played ED quite nicely on a GTX 1060 6Gb with a Rift CV1 after upgrading from a GTX 750ti (Edit: I have read old posts from a few years back of Elite running on a 960 with a Vive, performance was apparently okay with the settings turned down)
 
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LutzBY

LutzBY
Congrats. Welcome to new level of addiction. Elite is totally differnt in VR.
Been in the same situation and bought used saitek x52 and rift s.
i can totally understand limited budget, but i did not even knew that Go can play pc games. Probably ur next step to upgrade GFX to something like 1080 ti or 2080, CPU is not relevant in VR. Then decide whether u like VR expirience and wait for some oncoming well-rounded headset
 
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Globusdiablo

Globusdiablo
LutzBY said:
...CPU is not relevant in VR...
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Wow. Just categorically not true.

OP; As others have said, you would be better off with a second hand Oculus Rift.

Sorry for being the bringer of bad news, but your hardware is far below recommended specs for VR. But if you want to stick with your current motherboard and have a decent PSU, you could second hand upgrade cpu to a 6700k and gpu to a gtx980ti or gtx1070ti maybe. If DIY isn't your thing, look into buying a secondhand gaming rig with above recommended specs as minimum.

Good luck Commander!
 

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
The 960 is going to be a bit lacking. If I recall, that's what I had when I first started playing in VR (Rift CV1), and I very quickly upgraded to a 1080. You'll find I suspect that being planet-side will be tricky. Inside stations uses a lot of resources, but that's less noticeable as you probably aren't doing very much.

On the other hand, welcome to the wonderful experience of playing ED in VR. The sense of scale is wonderful. I wouldn't go back to a flat screen now, been VR'ing for a couple of years. :)

As to nausea, the only time I get it, and it's pretty rare, is when I'm doing a lot of intensive SRV driving. Under normal circumstances I can drive an SRV for quite a while, but doing the Guardian puzzle was horrible, as is farming raw materials at biological sites. I suspect all the assets at those places are a high graphics load, and I get some very jerky moments and cannot play for long. Never had nausea issues in flight, but if you do, stop immediately, let the feeling subside and you will build some tolerance.

A couple of graphics settings that can help are Reduce Camera Shake and Vehicle Maintain Horizon Camera. Oh, and I find driving with drive assist off much less nausea inducing.
 

LutzBY

LutzBY
CMDR Fatebinder said:
Occulus go is restricted to 72Hz refresh rate anyway. Hoping I wont run into nausea creating issues
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Well, it depends. Rift's 80 Hz is fine, as long as it stays 80, or 40 in case of ASW. When framereate starts to drop signinficantly, i got nausea straight away, not even recognising why. So dont go too crazy on high settings. Anyway, dunno how 960 will handle VR, cuz my 2070s is struggling with HMD quality on 1.5 and almost everything on low.
And keep in mind that image in that video is not what u gonna see inside a HMD

Globusdiablo said:
Wow. Just categorically not true.
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Yep, maybe that was a bit exaggerated, but 9700kf is never go above 40-50% load.
 
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Globusdiablo

Globusdiablo
LutzBY said:
...Yep, maybe that was a bit exaggerated, but 9700kf is never go above 40% load.
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OP is sporting an i5 6400. I had a 6600k (before upgrading to 6700k) which would tank (100% load at 4.4 ghz) in stations. 6700k (4 cores/8 threads) is minimum intel cpu for VR (in my opinion).
 

TorTorden_VR

T
Truth be told, this is a rather limiting system to be running VR on. Couple that with a hackjob that is Go support I would rather recommend dropping VR for now, and simply putting that money towards a better HOTAS.

I fear OP, would with this, try the VR a few times, get sick, or just tired of all the eye candy he has to ditch and go back to the screen leaving the HMD in the box.
The minimum I would recommend is a Rift-s or tethered Quest, but both of these are many times the price of the Go.

So from that point I recommend rather spending the dosh, on a HOTAS, and wait with VR for when you upgrade the rest as well, by then most likely the VR kits that are out then will make even the dedicated ones look like pants.

And, yes, CPU matters a lot in VR.

There are big differences between a 6th series CPU and the 9, most obvious being it's got 6 cores vs 4, and thats for the i5 mid-range variant.
An i7 9700k has 8 full cores, and boosts 900mhz higher as well, so It's 25% faster, gets more done per thread task, and can do twice as much per clock than a 6700k.

And back when I was on an i7 4790k the actual pain point where my VR would start to CPU throttle was not at 100%, but anywhere around 80% utilisation, just because you aren't burning the chip, doesn't mean something isn't waiting for something else.
 
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TorTorden_VR

T
Elite in VR is as awesome as it get's, but a bad VR experience will not only not be less enjoyable, it will physically make you ill.
Great VR experiences is the best thing to happen in gaming since the Commodore 64, but bad VR, is beyond bad.

I don't like it, but I feel the best course of action for OP and his wallet is to wait a bit, just in the last few years the various hardware has matured greatly, but you need to hit the RTX level of hardware to really benefit.

But coming this fall for example. just a 3060 that I expect to launch before christmas etc would make for a very good VR card
The 960 is capable of playing 1080p games at very high settings, so it's by far from a bad card, it's just not entirely up to the task here.
 

Globusdiablo

Globusdiablo
CMDR Fatebinder said:
Cheers guys. I have dipped into some savings and bought a couple of upgrades. Went for the i7-6700 CPU and an upgraded RTX 2060 graphics card. Will mess around with the oculus go and if i have fun may upgrade later on in the year to a better headset.

Cheers for the advice.
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Congrats. That should work. Notice that the rtx2060 needs a 500w psu minimum (recommended), and remember to reset/default bios. Keep us posted.
 

aXeL

A
TorTorden said:
Truth be told, this is a rather limiting system to be running VR on. Couple that with a hackjob that is Go support I would rather recommend dropping VR for now, and simply putting that money towards a better HOTAS.

I fear OP, would with this, try the VR a few times, get sick, or just tired of all the eye candy he has to ditch and go back to the screen leaving the HMD in the box.
The minimum I would recommend is a Rift-s or tethered Quest, but both of these are many times the price of the Go.

So from that point I recommend rather spending the dosh, on a HOTAS, and wait with VR for when you upgrade the rest as well, by then most likely the VR kits that are out then will make even the dedicated ones look like pants.

And, yes, CPU matters a lot in VR.

There are big differences between a 6th series CPU and the 9, most obvious being it's got 6 cores vs 4, and thats for the i5 mid-range variant.
An i7 9700k has 8 full cores, and boosts 900mhz higher as well, so It's 25% faster, gets more done per thread task, and can do twice as much per clock than a 6700k.

And back when I was on an i7 4790k the actual pain point where my VR would start to CPU throttle was not at 100%, but anywhere around 80% utilisation, just because you aren't burning the chip, doesn't mean something isn't waiting for something else.
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This is really helpful. I was wondering whether to ditch my little 4690K and it seems like a no-brainer. I've been holding out for desktop Willow Cove in 10+ cores or Zen 3 with something like a TR 4970X next year ( I want to run workloads also ) but now I wonder if 80:20 rule says buy something like a 3950X or Comet Lake now and forget about workloads, if the difference is that great.
 

TorTorden_VR

T
aXeL said:
This is really helpful. I was wondering whether to ditch my little 4690K and it seems like a no-brainer. I've been holding out for desktop Willow Cove in 10+ cores or Zen 3 with something like a TR 4970X next year ( I want to run workloads also ) but now I wonder if 80:20 rule says buy something like a 3950X or Comet Lake now and forget about workloads, if the difference is that great.
Click to expand...


I started my VR setup with a 4690k and a 980ti, and I noticed the cpu would run higher than GPU in many cases, so bought a 4790k. That made the obvious pain point for me in elite VR as being the GP U, so I also upgraded that to a 1080ti, before the whole crypto craze, :) and again I was seeing almost frame pauses, in high physics environments like a resource site or combat site I would see nearly 10-15 fps, not just 45 and spacewarp. I almost ended up avoiding these areas entirely and this was my primary reason to play elite :s

I went from that i7 4790k to an i7 8700k and 3200mhz ddr4 ram and the difference was staggering, suddenly my 1080ti simply unlocked itself and I can reach 80 most situations in Elite if I dial settings, I choose to keep some eye candy and possibly hit spacewarp in some rare situattions, like SRV in settlements or large bases, but even during those times It's still smooth.

Right now, today, and even though Intel has launched new CPU's, I'd go with an 3900x or some such, even less.
This latest generation of Ryzen is nice, I built a system for my nephew not long ago with one, and it just smokes my 8700k at multithreaded tasks, it should, and I'm certain it's more than keeping up in single threaded ones as well, while maintaining nearly 20c lower temps.

The future is multicore, multithreaded, and Elite and VR in particular makes excellent use of it.
Now if just DCS could catch up that would be great.
 

Ganogati

Ganogati
My wife plays ED on VR-Medium(ish) settings running an i7-4770k and a GTX 1080 and it really looks decent. To be honest, my newer Ryzen 2700 and GTX 2080 don't perform all that much better (in ED VR, I mean)

Personally, I think the i5-6400 is going to be just fine for this and wouldn't focus on that at all given a budget. I'd try to get my hands on a GTX 1070 or 1080 if possible, and save up for a Rift S. It's the best "bang for buck" VR headset out there. My step up was Dev Kit 1 -> CV1 -> Vive -> Vive Pro, and I can honestly say that the difference between the CV1 and the Vive Pro was night and day. And to be understanding, the Rift S is even clearer and better looking (the VP is kinda old).

With that said, if you're on a really tight budget and want to get away with $400 or less total, I'd snag a CV1 and just try it out on your current system. The older headsets don't require nearly as much oomph, and the only thing you lose is a bit of clarity due to resolution. Just kind of imagine that you've got poor eyesight. =D Tracking, immersion, etc? The CV1 is absolutely fantastic for all of that.
 
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CMDR Fatebinder

C
So just waiting for some conversion cables for new PSU, GPU, CPU but thought i'd try the Occulus Go / ALVR on my old rig whilst waiting for the post. Even through the bad graphics, it was amazing! Can't wait to setup the new rig, but absolute game changer! :0)
 

aXeL

A
Ganogati said:
My wife plays ED on VR-Medium(ish) settings running an i7-4770k and a GTX 1080 and it really looks decent. To be honest, my newer Ryzen 2700 and GTX 2080 don't perform all that much better (in ED VR, I mean)
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All I got from this is that your wife plays ED. My other half glazes over before I get to the 'D' in ED. You are the Master of relationships and are obligated to teach us...
 

Ganogati

Ganogati
aXeL said:
All I got from this is that your wife plays ED. My other half glazes over before I get to the 'D' in ED. You are the Master of relationships and are obligated to teach us...
Click to expand...

lol. Married a fellow programmer; comes with the territory. Mind you, sandboxes like ED aren't her first choice generally and she wouldn't play if I didn't; she's more the Mass Effect/Dragon Age kinda RPG player, but she loves sci fi so she doesn't mind playing it with me here and there.
 

CMDR Fatebinder

C
So new rig is in and had a play around with it last night. Fair to say the immersion was awesome!

I'd now like to improve the graphics as I was expecting with a RTX 2060 to get a crisper image, currently although i have it on Ultra VR it still looks like SD quality. Is the advice in the announcement on 'optimising' section still valid? Or is there a better guide to follow to improve settings?

Cheers
 
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