Any ideas to help with god rays in CV1?

davidmi58 · May 13, 2016

I love the CV1 but I am one of those people that are really struggling with the god rays issue that is caused by the Fresnel lenses in the Rift. I have tried moving it around on my face, adjusting the IPD, moving closer and farther from my face. I have tried a green hud with reduced brightness but it is pretty bad for me in ED. After playing awhile, the screen looks like it has Vaseline spread over it. (Seems to get worse as I play.) I almost prefer the experience in my DK2. The issue is there in other games but, because of the dark background of space, it is at its worse in ED.

Has anyone found anything that helps besides what I have already tried? Elite Dangerous has been one of my favorite games since beta in VR. I hope I can improve the experience somehow.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

HeavyGroovez · May 13, 2016

Honestly there is no way of getting rid of them. I fiddled with settings until i realised that it was a futile exercise.

I have tuned them out and they no longer bother me but i can understand you being annoyed by them. It took me a couple of weeks to "forget" about them.

VR Dextrovix · May 13, 2016

Having owned a DK2 where this didn't happen, it is annoying and as HeavyGroovez says, you have to tune them out of your mind. After a while you don't notice them as much.

Unfortunately, ED will suffer more with lots of blacks with high contrast colours on top. I've modified my HUD colours to try and compensate a little too.

If in the graphics options we could reduce the contrast with a slider, that would help. But FD have not acknowledged the god-ray problem as an issue in any post, as far as I know.

Khaldur · May 13, 2016

Some the Oculus forum have experimented with polarization filters. Someone claimed that the god rays were gone.
I tried to verify this using the circular polarization filter from my camera lens but I found that it was just reducing the overall brightness but not filtering out the god rays.

Twisted Melon · May 13, 2016

OP Out of curiosity how far down the back of your head do you wear the horizontal strap? The image significantly improved for me when I wore it low - and adjusted the display until the god rays pointed towards me thus minimising them - I think it might be to do if the Fresnel lens isn't at 90° to your plane of vision.

bitstorm · May 13, 2016

Khaldur said:
Some the Oculus forum have experimented with polarization filters. Someone claimed that the god rays were gone.
I tried to verify this using the circular polarization filter from my camera lens but I found that it was just reducing the overall brightness but not filtering out the god rays.

The god rays coming through a fresnel lense, I can't see polarized filters helping much except by reducing brightness as you say.

I have polarized swim googles, the reason these are useful is that reflections off the water when swimming out doors *is* polarized light, stick these on reflection goes away. I can't see how god rays due to the circular a fresnel lense can come out polarized .

Saying that I think there are at least two types of polarization, like x/y axis polarization, which is how I think the swim goggles and your camera lense will be, and rotational polarazation. Again I can't see how fresnel lenses would produce rotationally polarized god rays but maybe it's worth trying with the other type?

If you have imax cinema glasses lying around these are x/y polarized, standard non-imax 3d cinema glasses I believe are rotationally polaraized.

I'm sure someone will have these and can test?

I have some at home I think but I have Vive, I see god rays still and they are indeed annoying.

CylonSurfer · May 13, 2016

davidmi58 said:
I love the CV1 but I am one of those people that are really struggling with the god rays issue that is caused by the Fresnel lenses in the Rift. I have tried moving it around on my face, adjusting the IPD, moving closer and farther from my face. I have tried a green hud with reduced brightness but it is pretty bad for me in ED. After playing awhile, the screen looks like it has Vaseline spread over it. (Seems to get worse as I play.) I almost prefer the experience in my DK2. The issue is there in other games but, because of the dark background of space, it is at its worse in ED.

Has anyone found anything that helps besides what I have already tried? Elite Dangerous has been one of my favorite games since beta in VR. I hope I can improve the experience somehow.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

The only solution to the issue is to unplug your CV1 and then plug in your DK2.

davidmi58 · May 14, 2016

Twisted Melon said:
OP Out of curiosity how far down the back of your head do you wear the horizontal strap? The image significantly improved for me when I wore it low - and adjusted the display until the god rays pointed towards me thus minimising them - I think it might be to do if the Fresnel lens isn't at 90° to your plane of vision.

The triangle is pretty much at the base of back of my skull. However, I will try to mess with that tonight to see if it helps. I have moved that sucker almost everywhere around on my face but the results have been disappointing so far. I hope I can learn to ignore them if I can't make them any better but, right now, the overall visual experience was better in my DK2. It is that bad.

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback to everyone. I will keep trying.

Wolfox · May 14, 2016

A game that will drag attention away from the rays. This a bit like pixel peeping noticeable with dark background and high contrast.
Also in the DK2 there are reflections and in black background you notice that any image on the background is reflected upside down.
We will see how they solve the issue, maybe in CV2 or reducing the brightness of the colors.

ghcannon · May 14, 2016

Actually you could try to negate (at least some of) the effect in a shader. Perhaps also as a postprocessing step after the layers color terms of the composer have been blended but before distrotion. Needless to say you need pretty good coding & shading skillz..

[HJ]-RedRaven · May 14, 2016

dextrovix said:
Unfortunately, ED will suffer more with lots of blacks with high contrast colours on top. I've modified my HUD colours to try and compensate a little too.

...FD have not acknowledged the god-ray problem as an issue in any post, as far as I know.

That's because the god rays aren't FD's problem... that's firmly in the HMD maker's court. It can't be "rendered out" or fixed in-game (other than as you say, reducing contrast, although that will contribute to eye fatigue... its a balance, and again, everyone is different).

Most games aren't quite as high-contrast as ED is, and in those games most times you won't notice it. Other games VR forums aren't awash with god-ray discussions the same way we are here. For other, generally-brighter games with less total contrast it's simply not an issue. The god-rays are there, but players don't notice them as much.

We might find on planets with life/atmospheres etc, the god rays are lessened, but dextrovix is right, ED has lots of blacks and lots of bright colours. God ray paradise.

Stick with it... having had cataract surgery myself, I'm stuck with lots of god-rays ALL the time, and I can tell you (happily) that time will lessen the impact. Eventually you'll wonder why they bothered you in the first place. Just concentrate on what the game is giving you, not the HMD.

stevesideas · May 14, 2016

This single issue that everyone is experiencing is making me think about if I should cancel my order. ED is one of the main reasons I purchased the CV1 and if these god rays are going to be there ling away then I can imagine the experience being compromised too much for me to enjoy.

VR Dextrovix · May 14, 2016

This is why it really does need FD to explain to the community that whilst it is the headset manufacturers that cause this effect, the fact that space is principally black is something they can't change. However, they could then propose a solution such as to develop a slider for contrast, so people could try and see how comfortable they can make their experience by effectively dimming the display a little.

It's not like this isn't the same whichever headset you have- it happens on Rift CV1 and Vive!

megadonkeyx · May 14, 2016

if the god rays are so bad i'm sure there will be third party aspherical lens kits for the cv1 and vive eventually. oculus and htc should offer this as a purchase option, the lenses wouldn't need to be as big as the fresnel lenses basically just a bit bigger than dk2 with the rest of the "eye hole" blanked out. take your pick, god rays or chromatic abberation.

if its that bad there are other choices that don't use fresnel and are much cheaper OSVR, deepoon e2, pimax vr 4k could be ok. also interesting to note that sony seem to have not gone down the fresnel route for psvr.

davidmi58 · May 14, 2016

megadonkeyx said:
if the god rays are so bad i'm sure there will be third party aspherical lens kits for the cv1 and vive eventually. oculus and htc should offer this as a purchase option, the lenses wouldn't need to be as big as the fresnel lenses basically just a bit bigger than dk2 with the rest of the "eye hole" blanked out. take your pick, god rays or chromatic abberation.

At least for this game, I choose CA. When I see the kickstarter for the aspherical lens, I am an immediate buyer. From watching the teardowns however, lens replacement does not look very easy. Otherwise, I would have already taken those things out to see if there is actually some kind of coating on the other side I could clean off.

Whiteball · May 14, 2016

I find that it very much can depend on just how much you fiddle with positioning the CV1 on your head.
Most times I adjust slightly each time I put it on because it is never exactly the same position.

I tend to find the best result by having the headset roughly where suggested by Oculus in their setup but then tilting the 'viewing box' up slightly on the strap side pivots. This not only sharpens the picture slightly for me but also lets a little more air in at the bottom. I have no problem with heat, just don't strap it too tight to your head. Balance is more important than tightness!

Globusdiablo · May 15, 2016

I don't have an HMD yet, but follow these threads closely. This god ray problem on both major players (Oc and Vi) got me wondering. If the problem, as I understand it, is reflections amplified by high contrast levels, could the rays then be minimised by applying "black shades" to the edges of the lenses with a black magic marker pen?

I imagine this could be easy to test, and removed again with alcohol.

Please report back if you try it, as I would love to invest, but these god rays are concerning me.

Fly safe

Aio · May 16, 2016

I have no god-rays what so ever in my vive. But then a friend of mine complains about god-rays in his vive. Have anyone tried two different sets to compare if it is unit dependant?

Globusdiablo · May 16, 2016

Aio said:
I have no god-rays what so ever in my vive. But then a friend of mine complains about god-rays in his vive. Have anyone tried two different sets to compare if it is unit dependant?

You should try his set to verify that your talking about the same thing.

dutchy2000 · May 16, 2016

stevesideas said:
This single issue that everyone is experiencing is making me think about if I should cancel my order. ED is one of the main reasons I purchased the CV1 and if these god rays are going to be there ling away then I can imagine the experience being compromised too much for me to enjoy.

Yes definitely cancel that CV1, it is not worth the effort. Trust me! That way I get mine faster!