Black smearing and colour banding creeping back

drkaii · Oct 25, 2016

They were initially gone at the start of using the rift. Well,95% gone. But it's getting worse and worse and I'm not sure what it is. Is it elite, is it oculus runtime, is it my actual headset or graphics card degrading. Anyone else getting this? Going to borrow a monitor tomorrow to do the trick of changing the colour levels in NVCP for the HDMI port and seeing if I can at east get rid of the smearing...

EDIT: I was on Deciat in an SRV during the day and I noticed that the black smearing was GONE (I had the coalsack in the sky). It is because of the Image Space used, which fiddles with brightness/contrast/gamma to get a "dusty" kind of look. Funny thing is it was VERY similar to the way the game looked when the DK2 was still in extended mode and we could apply the Nvidia Control Panel colour settings to brightness 52%, contrast 32%, gamma 92%

All this means is that, even though it's not FD's fault there is smearing, FD can help us solve the problem by giving us brightness/contrast/gamma controls that affect the image space.

Please FD, do it. It would make SUCH a difference to VR. Right now I don't even bother to land anywhere or take part in any signal sources close to the star because the sky looks terrible, and even far away from any star, the smearing is an ever-present immersion breaker :/

Dread Lord · Oct 25, 2016

Hm strange, I got a Rift too, I didn't notice anything like black smearing or color banding.. can you explain a little what to look for and where?

ilgello · Oct 25, 2016

drkaii said:
They were initially gone at the start of using the rift. Well,95% gone. But it's getting worse and worse and I'm not sure what it is. Is it elite, is it oculus runtime, is it my actual headset or graphics card degrading. Anyone else getting this? Going to borrow a monitor tomorrow to do the trick of changing the colour levels in NVCP for the HDMI port and seeing if I can at east get rid of the smearing...

Same here Doc

Cmdr Spencer · Oct 25, 2016

Yes, it never was the same for me once it went into direct mode. Lots of colour banding and black smearing. I'm using DK2

drkaii · Oct 26, 2016

Dread Lord said:
Hm strange, I got a Rift too, I didn't notice anything like black smearing or color banding.. can you explain a little what to look for and where?

Any bright colour with a halo, against black, watch the colours. The come in bands, rather than smoothly blend. Check this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Colour_banding_example01.png

Black smearing is where black colours will smear in the direction you turn your head, sort of bleeding over into the lighter areas briefly.

Cmdr Spencer said:
Yes, it never was the same for me once it went into direct mode. Lots of colour banding and black smearing. I'm using DK2

I am using CV1 and yes, I had that with the DK2, but the CV1 basically fixed it. But it's back now.

Rubix · Oct 26, 2016

Same thing for me. i disabled ASW (which has been fantastic for me) and it certainly cleared up the colour banding. not perfect but a definite improvement.

drkaii · Oct 26, 2016

Hmm, I'll try that thanks. I also think it's connected to the rift warming up. It seems a bit better now after a while of play

[HJ]-RedRaven · Oct 26, 2016

I'm not noticing anything major. Yes, there is distinct colour banding, particularly as you turn away from a star you've just jumped to. I put it down to the compressed blacks due to the Rift keeping the OLED pixels turned on at 'almost-black' to reduce smearing (ie grey to grey performance is improved as the pixel is not coming from a completely turned -off state).

I am not sure if it started with 1.3 or not (I think I got my Rift after 1.3 so I may not have seen the original colour gamut?)

My Rift CV1 doesn't appear to need a warm-up - I don't notice any differences cold vs warm.

drkaii · Oct 26, 2016

[HJ]-RedRaven said:
I'm not noticing anything major. Yes, there is distinct colour banding, particularly as you turn away from a star you've just jumped to. I put it down to the compressed blacks due to the Rift keeping the OLED pixels turned on at 'almost-black' to reduce smearing (ie grey to grey performance is improved as the pixel is not coming from a completely turned -off state).

I am not sure if it started with 1.3 or not (I think I got my Rift after 1.3 so I may not have seen the original colour gamut?)

My Rift CV1 doesn't appear to need a warm-up - I don't notice any differences cold vs warm.

Today, warming up seemed to make a huge difference to the smearing. Also the colour banding was a bit better when I turned ASW off. It's a known bug that will be ironed out when ASW goes live.

Glad I wasn't going mad, or it wasn't some weird problem impossible to track down or due to some degradation in the hardware.

Will till go for the colour properties tomorrow and see if I can get a nice balance without too strong blacks

ilgello · Oct 26, 2016

Color banding and Halo is quite terrible for me

vic · Oct 26, 2016

Cmdr Spencer said:
Yes, it never was the same for me once it went into direct mode. Lots of colour banding and black smearing. I'm using DK2

Same here! Having been playin ED since then becuase of it.
If/when this issue gets fixed I'll be back playing!

lanael · Oct 26, 2016

I'm another DK2 user who has these problems (colorbanding (feels like a posterization effect) & black smearing) since the 1.8 runtime. Tried a lot of the suggestions found on this forum to no avail.

Raptoyd · Oct 26, 2016

Yep definitely have it very noticeable when flying away from star i have jumped to. Mine also seems to improve as i play for a couple of hrs. I will pause the game for a little while and come back to it and have had situations where all the sudden it is much better. I know it is aggravating thats for sure wish they would fix this problem

Cornelius lucius · Oct 26, 2016

CV1 owner here and I've definitely noticed the colour banding. I noticed it immediately when I got the rift, and then with one of the Oculus software updates it wnet away, and then returned with another update., so it seems to be definitely software related. I haven't noticed any difference with temperature or time of use.
Can't say I've noticed any black smearing either.

THE BLOB · Oct 27, 2016

Cv1 here too it didn't really bother me while playing on my gtx 970. I upgraded today to a 1080 which meant I could crank things up a bit now the banding especially stands out didn't really notice blacks smearing and not going to look for it either &#55357;&#56832;

Rob

[HJ]-RedRaven · Oct 27, 2016

After getting out of the station in 2.2 last night, I noticed my star coronas are MUCH better. I thought I was seeing things (or not) and did a double take when I jumped away from Bhriztomeno.

Maybe the jump to LibOVR 1.4 included with ED 2.2 made a difference?

Also running the newer nVidia drivers 375.63. Maybe a difference in there too.

Anyway the banding is MUCH improved, for me at least.

Raptoyd · Oct 27, 2016

[HJ]-RedRaven said:
After getting out of the station in 2.2 last night, I noticed my star coronas are MUCH better. I thought I was seeing things (or not) and did a double take when I jumped away from Bhriztomeno.

Maybe the jump to LibOVR 1.4 included with ED 2.2 made a difference?

Also running the newer nVidia drivers 375.63. Maybe a difference in there too.

Anyway the banding is MUCH improved, for me at least.

Thanks for the info will update driver did not see a new one came out. Just downloaded Guardians but have been playing the beta and it was still bad in that

MrStarhouse · Oct 27, 2016

CV1 here. Yes I did notice this directly when starting to use 2.2 release. both banding and what you call black smearing. At that time I was inside a nebula and saw it mostly while flying towards a "hole" in the nebula, towards black space.

Since then I feel it has gotten better. I'm not sure what I've done, but maybe something of below:

- I've left the nebula on my way to Colonia, and are getting closer to the core, so the surrounding light is getting brighter and brighter.
- Yesterday installed the very latset nVidia drivers
- Bumped the gamma a few clicks up.

Other then that I don't know.

When I first saw it I was uncertain about if it was a new problem or not. But reading this, then at least I understand that I'm not alone.

drkaii · Oct 27, 2016

Just want to point out that warming the CV1 up REALLY helps. You know when it's hot at the front? The smearing is barely noticeable that point. When it's cold, it seems to be quite bad.

Secondly, colour banding is worse with the ASW tweak, so turn that off for now. Oculus have said they intend to fix that by the time they make it go live.

Lastly, yes. The higher the gamma, the less noticable the smearing. I have my gamma at about 75%, I don't like it at max as it feels like the galaxy is an atmosphere lol.

I hope hope hope we get some way to direclty affect the gamma/brightness/contrast in the CV1 and we can do away with the smearing altogether. The banding seems like it probably won't go away and I'm not sure who can fix that. Frontier, Oculus or maybe it's just the hardware.

MrStarhouse · Oct 27, 2016

drkaii said:
Just want to point out that warming the CV1 up REALLY helps. You know when it's hot at the front? The smearing is barely noticeable that point. When it's cold, it seems to be quite bad.

Secondly, colour banding is worse with the ASW tweak, so turn that off for now. Oculus have said they intend to fix that by the time they make it go live.

Lastly, yes. The higher the gamma, the less noticable the smearing. I have my gamma at about 75%, I don't like it at max as it feels like the galaxy is an atmosphere lol.

I will check the temp tonight. I know what you mean that it does get slightly warm in the front. It is strange though, maybe the OLED displays works better warm. My Oled LG TV though does not behave like that.

When I adjusted the gamma I also think I ended up somewhere in the range of 75%. It somewhat acceptable there, even though I would like it lower, around 40% somewhere.

I have not yet tested ASW, unless it is active by default in ED 2.2 / OC 1.9. But I intend to test it, then I'll see if it gets worse.