I'm on the months long waiting list until I can order mine(gods damnit valve!), got my controllers, anyone that was lucky to get one how is your experience with it so far? Is the game clearer? The fov a nice addition? Can't forget the refresh rate but I'm sure that's a given.
Anyone have an Index? Was it much of a change from your previous HMD?
- Thread starter Vahnkiljoy
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I have a Valve Index but have not tried in Elite yet because Assetto Corsa @120hz is freaking amazing. The interesting thing about 120hz is you feel it before you see it.
Does 120hz really make a difference?
I mean for it to be noticeable don't you have to be able to get above 90fps which would be the limit for 90hz? For example I play on this PC on my hdtv which is limited to 60hz so any fps above 60 is lost and does bupkis, is that not the same with VR?
I was under the impression you can't really get much above 90fps for most games in VR?
I mean for it to be noticeable don't you have to be able to get above 90fps which would be the limit for 90hz? For example I play on this PC on my hdtv which is limited to 60hz so any fps above 60 is lost and does bupkis, is that not the same with VR?
I was under the impression you can't really get much above 90fps for most games in VR?
The Valve Index can output 80, 90 & 120Hz (and I think it can do 144Hz as well).
120hz definitely makes a difference - i dont have an Index but i do have a 120Hz monitor.
When you fast pan you can easily see the difference.
Assetto is super optimised so you could run the Index panels at 120hz no problem.
No chance with Elite as it can only handle a render workload of 4 megapixels per eye (2k x 2k) at 90hz with a 2080Ti.
You would have to go a lot lower to make frametime at 120hz (33% assuming linear performance) and the scene would consequently look like a Sega arcade game from the 90s (although super smooth when you move your head around !)
When you fast pan you can easily see the difference.
Assetto is super optimised so you could run the Index panels at 120hz no problem.
No chance with Elite as it can only handle a render workload of 4 megapixels per eye (2k x 2k) at 90hz with a 2080Ti.
You would have to go a lot lower to make frametime at 120hz (33% assuming linear performance) and the scene would consequently look like a Sega arcade game from the 90s (although super smooth when you move your head around !)
Oh so in assetto you can do 100+fps in VR?
It always been my opinion if you can't do 100ish fps then 120hz screen isn't doing much more than a 60hz screen.
@Arioch I know thanks, guessing you don't understand my questions. It has to do with how having a 120hz "monitor" has zero value if your games can't do more than say 60 fps. For a higher hz panel to really be effective your machine needs to be able to feed it the necessary fps.
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So you were asking if VR games could achieve over 90fps? There’s been no benefit in doing so before the Index.
I think running an Index at 120Hz either requires a bit of a beast of a computer or dropping the game settings right down.
Personally, I prefer the eye-candy and live with 80Hz on my Rift S (with ASW occasionally kicking in) - I reckon I’m a few years away from concerning myself with high refresh rates
Got the Rift DK1, original HTC Vive and Oculus Rift CV1, and Pimax 5k+.
The FOV is of course a letdown after the Pimax, but compared to the older devices, I get ten-ish degrees more combined out of the Index than the Vive, thanks to the slight canting of the eye-tubes (...at the unfortunate cost of reduced stereo overlap), and it is of course a huge eye-opener if you come from the Rift (or had been using a Vive worn wrong).
(I measure at the "waist" of the view (EDIT2: horizontal), for about 95° per eye, and 105-110° total for both eyes together, 85° of which is in stereo. -Due to the view being truncated by the edges of the screen, and the lenses exerting a "pincushion" type distortion on what you see, your field of view ends up "saddle shaped", so the FOV actually goes a little bit past the numbers I just gave, at the "saddle peaks" above and below the semicircles that cut into the view at each cardinal point, but I would consider it somewhat "dishonest" to quote that larger number.)
The resolution is about the same as the p5k+, which is, again, a fair improvement on the two older devices -- especially taking into account that they have pentile display panels (which are characterised by only the green primary colour being the advertised resolution, whilst red and blue are only 71% of it (half as many picture elements of each in total, over two dimensions)). Having full RGB is really helpful to Elite's orange UI styling.
The sweet spot is very tight, and very close to the lenses, but once you've found it, the claim is true, that the falloff in optical clarity toward the edges is greatly reduced with the Index's lenses. That said: Personally I can't seem to get into perfect focus overall - even in the centre; I can see the screen door effect perfectly well, but not quite "get a lock" on it, in terms of focus - it kind of blurs and "wobbles around", as if I was wearing glasses of slightly wrong strength. Don't know whether this is something inherent the the HMD optics, or if I personally just need a pair of plus/minus-some-tenths correction lenses...
The rumors about glare in the Fresnel lenses are also true: Is is really rather bad, and tends to wash out the image, even in scenes that are not dark; But if there is lots of bright stuff overall, all across the view, to drown out the stray light, and make your pupils dilate, adapting to brighter conditions, I don't really think about it for the most time (although I don't rule out that it may be a considerable contributing factor to my aforementioned focussing difficulties) -- there is a lot of it, but it is quite dispersed, so it's more like an oilily moving thin mist distributed over a large field, than the familiar smaller bright highlights from Vive/RiftCV1. When your view is mostly black, it is outright horrible., but I don't really notice it in Elite, which is rarely actually completely dark, what with all the clouds and stuff it has in space. I did however find its exacerbating the rather limited overall dynamic range of the screens, to outright kill contrast in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which turned a dull indistinct gray, making every day an overcast one - out of doors and indoors both. This was mitigated considerably just a few hours ago, when somebody shared a preset for a postprocessing injector for that game, which boosts image contrast, and applies some sharpening - it was like getting rid of cataracts, frankly. Hopefully Valve can be talked into adding contrast, brightness, and saturation balancing into SteamVR, like Pimax did in their runtime -- or even better: OpenXR should (EDIT4: Umm, to be clear: I am not saying it "should" as in "I expect it to"; Just that "IMHO it should" :7) include a mastering standard (EDIT: ...so that a developer can build and light their HDR product to their artistic intent, once and for all, and then it falls to the VR runtime to tonemap as appropriate for the colour gamut and dynamic range capabilities of any connected device) - one can hope, at least... :7
Have yet to experience any truly smooth motion, since pushing 144 frames per seconds is not viable at the lowest supersampling levels I find acceptable, and I have not yet tried any titles with graphics that is simple enough to get there. :7
There is motion smoothing ("ATW" "ASW" in Oculus parlance), which synthesises ersatz frames, whenever one's computer can't keep up, but I can't personally stand the quality of those, so I keep that feature resolutely off. I do however allow for what Oculus would call "ASW" "ATW", which only takes the previous frame and pans it in accordance with your head rotation, when fps fall short of the target refresh rate, so you still get 144 updates for your looking around, even when you have frames repeating for several refresh cycles (EDIT3: Emphasis here on looking around, by the way; When you turn around using e.g. a thumbstick, it is rendered frames that does the turning, and you'll see stuttering and judder if you have frames repeating.)
The FOV is of course a letdown after the Pimax, but compared to the older devices, I get ten-ish degrees more combined out of the Index than the Vive, thanks to the slight canting of the eye-tubes (...at the unfortunate cost of reduced stereo overlap), and it is of course a huge eye-opener if you come from the Rift (or had been using a Vive worn wrong).
(I measure at the "waist" of the view (EDIT2: horizontal), for about 95° per eye, and 105-110° total for both eyes together, 85° of which is in stereo. -Due to the view being truncated by the edges of the screen, and the lenses exerting a "pincushion" type distortion on what you see, your field of view ends up "saddle shaped", so the FOV actually goes a little bit past the numbers I just gave, at the "saddle peaks" above and below the semicircles that cut into the view at each cardinal point, but I would consider it somewhat "dishonest" to quote that larger number.)
The resolution is about the same as the p5k+, which is, again, a fair improvement on the two older devices -- especially taking into account that they have pentile display panels (which are characterised by only the green primary colour being the advertised resolution, whilst red and blue are only 71% of it (half as many picture elements of each in total, over two dimensions)). Having full RGB is really helpful to Elite's orange UI styling.
The sweet spot is very tight, and very close to the lenses, but once you've found it, the claim is true, that the falloff in optical clarity toward the edges is greatly reduced with the Index's lenses. That said: Personally I can't seem to get into perfect focus overall - even in the centre; I can see the screen door effect perfectly well, but not quite "get a lock" on it, in terms of focus - it kind of blurs and "wobbles around", as if I was wearing glasses of slightly wrong strength. Don't know whether this is something inherent the the HMD optics, or if I personally just need a pair of plus/minus-some-tenths correction lenses...
The rumors about glare in the Fresnel lenses are also true: Is is really rather bad, and tends to wash out the image, even in scenes that are not dark; But if there is lots of bright stuff overall, all across the view, to drown out the stray light, and make your pupils dilate, adapting to brighter conditions, I don't really think about it for the most time (although I don't rule out that it may be a considerable contributing factor to my aforementioned focussing difficulties) -- there is a lot of it, but it is quite dispersed, so it's more like an oilily moving thin mist distributed over a large field, than the familiar smaller bright highlights from Vive/RiftCV1. When your view is mostly black, it is outright horrible., but I don't really notice it in Elite, which is rarely actually completely dark, what with all the clouds and stuff it has in space. I did however find its exacerbating the rather limited overall dynamic range of the screens, to outright kill contrast in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which turned a dull indistinct gray, making every day an overcast one - out of doors and indoors both. This was mitigated considerably just a few hours ago, when somebody shared a preset for a postprocessing injector for that game, which boosts image contrast, and applies some sharpening - it was like getting rid of cataracts, frankly. Hopefully Valve can be talked into adding contrast, brightness, and saturation balancing into SteamVR, like Pimax did in their runtime -- or even better: OpenXR should (EDIT4: Umm, to be clear: I am not saying it "should" as in "I expect it to"; Just that "IMHO it should" :7) include a mastering standard (EDIT: ...so that a developer can build and light their HDR product to their artistic intent, once and for all, and then it falls to the VR runtime to tonemap as appropriate for the colour gamut and dynamic range capabilities of any connected device) - one can hope, at least... :7
Have yet to experience any truly smooth motion, since pushing 144 frames per seconds is not viable at the lowest supersampling levels I find acceptable, and I have not yet tried any titles with graphics that is simple enough to get there. :7
There is motion smoothing (
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Interesting summary, especially the detail about the glare - good to know.
You have Spacewarp and Timewarp mixed up. Spacewarp is the extrapolation, Timewarp interpolates.
Oops! You're right - sorry. :7 (EDIT: Err... None of them interpolates, though - they're both extra-.)
So you were asking if VR games could achieve over 90fps? There’s been no benefit in doing so before the Index.
I think running an Index at 120Hz either requires a bit of a beast of a computer or dropping the game settings right down.
Personally, I prefer the eye-candy and live with 80Hz on my Rift S (with ASW occasionally kicking in) - I reckon I’m a few years away from concerning myself with high refresh rates
Made a couple typo's in there before left I home which made my last post unclear maybe. My question is because people are seems to be saying "omg 120hz makes a huge difference"...
120hz vs 60 hz means the image is refreshed 120 times per second rather than 60 times per second. For your 120hz to be worth anything you need to be able to push out, in theory, 120 frames per second so you get full advantage of that "120hz". If for example you play some new game that pushes your PC gpu to the limit and can only do say do 50 - 60 fps on high or max settings then your 120hz monitor will have zero difference to your 60hz monitor.
My question in essence is how is a 120hz hmd having such an impact if you cant push games on decent settings at a high enough fps? Unless there some eh meh software upscaling happening I don't see how it's making things so much smoother.
It's why many games have an option to limit the fps so if you have a 60hz screen you can limit the fps to 60 to avoid tearing and the like.
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I’m assuming you’re referencing Full_Ninja’s post about Assetto Corsa at 120Hz - they must have a decent rig to push the frame rate or they’ve turned settings down in the game.
As with enabling vSync in most games, the software will limit its FPS to your refresh rate. In Elite Dangerous with my Rift, I used to get 90fps. With my Rift S, I get 80fps. If I suddenly got a couple of grand to burn and bought an Index and a 2080ti to power it, I assume it would run at 120fps.
Doubtful, with the Index's increased resolution trying to achieve 120FPS in all locations would be pretty much impossible. The game doesn't keep a solid 90FPS at all times on any HMD, there are always dips in frame rates in some senarios - even on the lowest settings.
Personally I set my Index to 80Hz mode for Elite as I can up a few settings with only very minor dips below 80FPS and I run the game on a 1080Ti, 8700k with 32GB of RAM. Motion Smoothing off of course.
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Even with the lowest of the low settings? Like, SS 0.5 and HMD 0.5 along with everything else?
I tried it once on my Rift just to see - solid frame rate with stacks of headroom, just all text is an unreadable mess and outside the cockpit harkens back to First Encounters
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Thanks for the replies you two. I wasn't referencing anyone specific as I have seen some people say 120hz "wow" in various forums I visit so was just wondering if I was missing something or it's just some people dunno what 120hz means.
Seems like it works the same in VR hmd's as expected it to from what CylonSurfer is saying, it's always good the hear from people with hands on experience over what should be theoretically.
Seems like it works the same in VR hmd's as expected it to from what CylonSurfer is saying, it's always good the hear from people with hands on experience over what should be theoretically.
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Even with the lowest of the low settings? Like, SS 0.5 and HMD 0.5 along with everything else?
I tried it once on my Rift just to see - solid frame rate with stacks of headroom, just all text is an unreadable mess and outside the cockpit harkens back to First Encounters
Don't be silly
I'm not talking about going sub native res... the resolution of these HMDs is low enough as it is and to be honest most of us only want to push higher settings to combat the games frankly shocking pixel crawl.
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I have a 1080 ti and was only talking about in Assetto Corsa. There is no way any gpu can get Elite to run at 120hz in VR
Yes in Assetto Corsa I'm running @120hz with a frame time of 9ms and under. I can only run 12 cars total at that frame rate but it's worth it.
I have Assetto Corsa...that's why I asking.