Anyone having black smear issues and worse looking image quality in 1.3?

mumrah · Jun 5, 2015

Hi all,

Firstly, before I mention anything else, I enabled sweetfx the other night, played for an hour and haven't played since. The image quality looked pretty good when i played the other night.

I have just updated to 1.3 and have this issue where everything's got a strange artifacts (especially in the blacks), even on the main menu, you can see it, the way I can describe it is like when you watch a youtube video and it's super low quality, like 140p or something where you see blocky artifacts, anyone any ideas what may be going on? It's almost making it a bit disorientating.

I have just rolled back Oculus drivers to 0.5.01 or whatever the recommended driver is from the latest one.

Jake_blakeson · Jun 5, 2015

I have found the 1.3 has some Oculus improvements but I only saw them after removing and defaulting all the things I changed to get it working nicely in the older versions. Even the orange HUD is now almost usable. I haven't tested the live version of 1.3 yet.

cherbert · Jun 5, 2015

I wouldn't call it smearing as such but I do find space is not as black as it was. Other than that it seems like an improvement over 1.2

=AH= Sid · Jun 6, 2015

I'm finding the text on the Left and Right Panels almost unreadable now, was fine before.

spacehamburger · Jun 6, 2015

Jake_blakeson said:
I have found the 1.3 has some Oculus improvements but I only saw them after removing and defaulting all the things I changed to get it working nicely in the older versions. Even the orange HUD is now almost usable. I haven't tested the live version of 1.3 yet.

How is the orange hud usable now? Because orange is orange, or are you a wizard perhaps? Placebo effect much?

RAJA · Jun 6, 2015

mumrah said:
Hi all,

Firstly, before I mention anything else, I enabled sweetfx the other night, played for an hour and haven't played since. The image quality looked pretty good when i played the other night.

I have just updated to 1.3 and have this issue where everything's got a strange artifacts (especially in the blacks), even on the main menu, you can see it, the way I can describe it is like when you watch a youtube video and it's super low quality, like 140p or something where you see blocky artifacts, anyone any ideas what may be going on? It's almost making it a bit disorientating.

I have just rolled back Oculus drivers to 0.5.01 or whatever the recommended driver is from the latest one.

The default brightness, gamma and contrast settings may need tuning on your oculus. Use flashing bar patterns to set black and white levels with one of the VR video players.

Howl_UK · Jun 6, 2015

The black smear is an old problem and due to the way the OLED display switches off black pixels, which have a delay in switching back on again when they no longer display pure black. If you were using 0.6.0 you may have had the bug where the game starts in Direct Mode and everything has ghosting and smearing because there is no low persistence in Elite's Direct Mode at present.

I agree with cherbert that space doesn't seem as inky black as it used to. The 'skybox' is much more textured.

rennarda · Jun 6, 2015

Tweak the in-game and fx card gamma, brightness and contrast. There is a display calibration file in one of the threads on here that I installed and it works great for me.

SlackR · Jun 6, 2015

Am I still the only one using Bilagos ED app? Before every session I use it to restart oculus drivers and doable aero. Sometimes if I forget I get the smearing OP describes, but doing the above sorts it out

RaistlinUK · Jun 6, 2015

SlackR said:
Am I still the only one using Bilagos ED app? Before every session I use it to restart oculus drivers and doable aero. Sometimes if I forget I get the smearing OP describes, but doing the above sorts it out

Do you still have to do this with Windows 8.1?

SlackR · Jun 6, 2015

RaistlinUK said:
Do you still have to do this with Windows 8.1?

I honestly have no idea... I gave up on windows 8 and went back to 7 a long time ago.
It certainly wouldn't hurt to try it though... Especially resetting the drivers before hitting play.

Adam Lusardi · Jun 6, 2015

Not used it for a long time but I'm still running OR v4

mumrah · Jun 8, 2015

All seems fine now, tried the day after the 1.3 launch and everything looked normal, if not slightly marginally better, panels seemed slightly more readable. Possibly old files or some kind of driver screw up that was causing the artifacts and maybe all it needed was a reboot. Had some fun with it last night

slartybartfast · Jun 8, 2015

Ok so what happened? not been able to play for a few months ( comp died the day before wings beta ) updated today got my self comfortable put on me rift and was like every time i move my head i now get a black smear around the edges make game unplayable.
When did this start happening and how do i stop it. i only got a rift for this game and now i cant play it. Tried lowering settings to no effect even though i am using a gtx 980 and ORv5.
all help most appreciated.

Adam Lusardi · Jun 8, 2015

slartybartfast said:
Ok so what happened? not been able to play for a few months ( comp died the day before wings beta ) updated today got my self comfortable put on me rift and was like every time i move my head i now get a black smear around the edges make game unplayable.
When did this start happening and how do i stop it. i only got a rift for this game and now i cant play it. Tried lowering settings to no effect even though i am using a gtx 980 and ORv5.
all help most appreciated.

Up your gamma in game setting or via driver to stop pixels turning off as they lose latency in switching on.

CMDR Pausanias · Jun 9, 2015

I'm getting this problem. How do you cure it? I have the GAMMA set to maximum in the game and it's still there although if I lower the GAMMA it gets much worse. I'm on windows 8, how do I change contrast and brightness in the rift? How do I stop these pixels from turning off other than the GAMMA which I have already done?
Thanks.

RAJA · Jun 9, 2015

Use the graphics driver control panel to set brightness and contrast. Use VR player with black flashing bars and white flashing bar patterns to make sure you set them both correctly. Do not do it by eye/feel alone. Brightness and contrast are two things we should never set by "feel" as we are easily fooled by surrounding reference for black and white.

CMDR Pausanias · Jun 9, 2015

I have just found another solution! Which has worked perfectly just now. Whilst IN GAME, turn your rift OFF using the button on the top and then turn it back on again, re-centre the screen back in the oculus (I do this by pressing ALT TAB and selecting the rift screen, dead easy), and the problem is cured.
I tried the best resolution I've had at 2560 x 1440 and it cured it but I still find that high a setting a bit too jerky on head movements and have settled for 1920 x 1080. The graphics are brilliant now.
Thanks to RAJA above for his fix, I haven't tried it because the OFF / ON fix has worked. I have seen this black flashing bars patterns set up mentioned in threads, I have not actually seen this method of set up, treat me like an idiot and walk me through this process please, thanks in advance.