Bigsceen Beyound for Sims, e.g Elite Dangerous or MSFS2020 !

AvonNZ

AvonNZ
Wow, this could be great if you have the existing SteamVR infrastructure, and a spare US$1000 ! 😒

This is what headsets "should" be like 😁

www.roadtovr.com

VR Veteran Studio Behind 'Bigscreen' Unveils Thin & Light PC VR Headset 'Beyond'

The team behind social VR viewing app Bigscreen today unveiled a thin and light PC VR headset that not only promises a few intriguing enthusiast-grade specs, but also a custom-made fit based on a 3D scan of your face. In short, it’s a big first for the VR veterans, who are responsible for one of …
www.roadtovr.com www.roadtovr.com
 

VR Dextrovix

VR Dextrovix
This hardware is more suited for watching 3D movies because of the limited FOV.

Having said that, it's ideal for the grey letterbox 2D content of Odyssey... ;)
 

moogleslam

moogleslam
This is definitely interesting for me for Elite Dangerous, MSFS, iRacing, and other racing sims. I still want much higher pixels per degree before I worry about FOV.

That said, Pimax Crystal has it beat with both FOV and pixels per degree, so this is interesting for the form factor only. Honestly, I'm mostly interested in this as an option that doesn't mess up my hair :)
 

AvonNZ

AvonNZ
moogleslam said:
This is definitely interesting for me for Elite Dangerous, MSFS, iRacing, and other racing sims. I still want much higher pixels per degree before I worry about FOV.

That said, Pimax Crystal has it beat with both FOV and pixels per degree, so this is interesting for the form factor only. Honestly, I'm mostly interested in this as an option that doesn't mess up my hair :)
Click to expand...
I'd be into it (if I had the cash, but not out for me until end of the year) just for the comfort alone. The fov I can deal with as I am easier immersed in VR sims, and the resolution would be out standing :)
But there are/have been many new headsets coming out this year, so will keep a watch out ;-)
 

BigBANGtheory [VR]

BigBANGtheory [VR]
The other important issue a lot of people seem to forget (or follow the marketing smoke & mirrors) is when you increase the display resolutions you place a hell of a lot more demand on the graphics processing in order to achieve acceptable frame rates.

This is why you need techniques like dynamic foveated rendering otherwise you'll be living in reprojection even with the fastest GPUs or having to make heavy compromises on the visuals. I think its a bit naughty tbh and you need to be wary of any reviewers doing the whole 'wow its super amazing' thing without showing you the numbers or relying heavily on low demand titles like VRchat and Beat Saber.

To give you context my Vive Pro 2 using SteamVR has a slightly lower display resolution than this Bigscreen HMD and the 4090 just has enough GPU grunt for ED:Odyssey without dropping the super sampling or per eye rendering resolution. Yes we know Odyssey is poorly optimised for VR but that is true of many if not most VR games that is the reality unfortunately.
 

Groman

Groman
Hey CMDRs!

I am a recent Bigscreen Beyond owner and wanted to re-open the conversation here.
The Beyond being my first owned VR and the hype around it quite high, my first experience in Elite Dangerous VR was disappointing.

I am now in a much better place and will share the issues I faced.
I am also hoping we can share tips on how to setup Elite for optimal performance and fidelity.

  1. Screen reflection - The downside of playing on a bug TV is the reflections it can create from the base stations. This manifest as erratic movements of your vision. I now have to put something in front of the TV to avoid this.

  2. Render resolution - This setting under the video section of SteamVR was set to auto and was causing artefacts and bad performance in game. I set that to manual and 70% of the native resolution of the Beyond as my RTX 4070 was struggling to provide a good VR experience. This was a major improvement for me. I believe there is also an option in Elite to change that (HMD image quality?) but I am not 100% sure and how it could conflict with the SteamVR setting.

  3. 3rd party tools - I downloaded Desktop+ from Steam and this act as an add-on to SteamVR and provide a virtual desktop to switch between the game and whatever external tools you want to use. This didn't seem to be possible with SteamVR natively. I can now easily switch to ED Discovery, Discord and my notes in a browser page.
    Turns out SteamVR can easily "alt-tab" to a virtual desktop, even bind windows to the VR controllers currently in use. I still have to search if thisis possible without the VR controllers active but switching to a browser or other app is possible natively.

  4. Performance - This is still a tricky part for me. I used to play with every graphic setting maxed out, even the ultra+ terrain quality.
    With VR, I definitely had to lower settings. Especially for planets. I am now around medium/high settings but I am still trying to find out which one is affecting the most the performance.
    I did find a Reddit post naming a few things but my experience was different than the poster, as in, some options didn't seem to change much.

  5. Vision - This might seem obvious but I felt like my vision was worse in VR, as in, I have a slight astigmatism and nearsightedness and I would notice it more with VR.
    I usually play without glasses but I felt much more comfortable wearing contact lenses when using the Beyond. I am now thinking of buying their prescription lenses for the Beyond.
 
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Groman

Groman
BigBANGtheory [VR] said:
To give you context my Vive Pro 2 using SteamVR has a slightly lower display resolution than this Bigscreen HMD and the 4090 just has enough GPU grunt for ED:Odyssey without dropping the super sampling or per eye rendering resolution.
Click to expand...
This. I definitely have to compromise on the quality with my RTX 4070.

Do you by chance, know a way to have two different setting profiles?
One for flat screen and one for VR would be great.
 

jojon

J
Groman said:
Hey CMDRs!

I am a recent Bigscreen Beyond owner and wanted to re-open the conversation here.
The Beyond being my first owned VR and the hype around it quite high, my first experience in Elite Dangerous VR was disappointing.

I am now in a much better place and will share the issues I faced.
I am also hoping we can share tips on how to setup Elite for optimal performance and fidelity.

  1. Screen reflection - The downside of playing on a bug TV is the reflections it can create from the base stations. This manifest as erratic movements of your vision. I now have to put something in front of the TV to avoid this.

  2. Render resolution - This setting under the video section of SteamVR was set to auto and was causing artefacts and bad performance in game. I set that to manual and 70% of the native resolution of the Beyond as my RTX 4070 was struggling to provide a good VR experience. This was a major improvement for me. I believe there is also an option in Elite to change that (HMD image quality?) but I am not 100% sure and how it could conflict with the SteamVR setting.

  3. 3rd party tools - I downloaded Desktop+ from Steam and this act as an add-on to SteamVR and provide a virtual desktop to switch between the game and whatever external tools you want to use. This didn't seem to be possible with SteamVR natively. I can now easily switch to ED Discovery, Discord and my notes in a browser page.

  4. Performance - This is still a tricky part for me. I used to play with every graphic setting maxed out, even the ultra+ terrain quality.
    With VR, I definitely had to lower settings. Especially for planets. I am now around medium/high settings but I am still trying to find out which one is affecting the most the performance.
    I did find a Reddit post naming a few things but my experience was different than the poster, as in, some options didn't seem to change much.

  5. Vision - This might seem obvious but I felt like my vision was worse in VR, as in, I have a slight astigmatism and nearsightedness and I would notice it more with VR.
    I usually play without glasses but I felt much more comfortable wearing contact lenses when using the Beyond. I am now thinking of buying their prescription lenses for the Beyond.
Click to expand...
2. They compound. If you have 400% in SteamVR, x2.0 HMD Quality squares that resulting resolution again, resulting in 16 times the amount of pixels to render (..and then in-game Supersampling multiplies that result once more (difference is it does its own downscaling before handing over the frame pair to SteamVR)).

4. Screen-space ambient occlusion takes a fair bit performance without doing much good in VR IMHO (renders wrong in stereo), so you could chuck that out, I think. Volumetric clouds from ultra to high cuts out a ton of load.

5. HMDs are usually tuned to focus the (whole) display somewhere between 1-2m; Whatever gives you good vision at that range in real life should do the trick...
 

pFVD

P
Groman said:
Do you by chance, know a way to have two different setting profiles?
One for flat screen and one for VR would be great.
Click to expand...
Look for EDProfiler. For me, with a Quest 2, I personally find dropping textures to medium and both shadow quality options to lower than my flat settings are the main performance options that allow a better frame rate in VR compared to flat. There are many options that have little to no visual difference in VR (ymmv) that can be lowered; it's an older video now, but on YouTube look for CMDR Exigeous (spelling may be wrong) who has a great guide on the performance impact of settings in ED.
 

Groman

Groman
pFVD said:
Look for EDProfiler. For me, with a Quest 2, I personally find dropping textures to medium and both shadow quality options to lower than my flat settings are the main performance options that allow a better frame rate in VR compared to flat. There are many options that have little to no visual difference in VR (ymmv) that can be lowered; it's an older video now, but on YouTube look for CMDR Exigeous (spelling may be wrong) who has a great guide on the performance impact of settings in ED.
Click to expand...
Finally took the time to watch this again and took some notes. Thanks for bringing that up.
I'll have to check what he mentioned as well about customizing the different predefined profiles so they can be used to recall your own profiles.
EDProfiler is nice but if I can do it in game, that is even better.

Also, in my case, the biggest mistake I made was not checking how many more pixels I was asking my computer to render in VR.

From the 3840*2160 (8.3M) of my flatscreen to the 3560*3560 (26.6M) of the VR, my 4070 was bound to struggle :-D
I didn't know that actual render resolution is 1.4 times the headset resolution!
 
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