EDIT: Since this post is being linked to from Reddit, I have not been able to reproduce what I happened to accomplish here by accident and since I wrote this, Oculus have made changes to image quality via updates.
-----------------------------------------
I've always had a grudge with one thing on the CV1 since day 1. I thought the image looked a little washed out and there was colorbanding in coronas and in the dark part of space in Elite, the edge between black and gas clouds wasn't smooth anymore like it was on DK2 with 0.6.0.0, it was unrealistic sharp. Something looked wrong and I tried a thousand things. I always suspected the HDMI Range for TV's to be the culprit but the Rift is supposed to bypass that and the controls are not available anyway. Read about others that their black levels fixed by running the Rift on the DVI port with an adapter, and others fixing it by reinstalling Graphics drivers. I tried it all. Fiddled with the registry. Even tried to find some hidden setting for Oculus Brightness. No luck, whatever I tried.
I have a HTC Vive now also and there space and gradients are smooth and black is really black so you all know I have something to compare too.
Anyway, my normal setup from my PC's GTX 1080 is DVI connected to an ASUS 1080p 144hz monitor and the CV1 in the HDMI. Like most single screen owners have it installed I suppose.
Today I took a long HDMI cable, put HDMI -> DVI converters at each end, disconnected my ASUS monitor from DVI and connected it to Displayport instead, and then I ran the long DVI->HDMI->DVI cable from my DVI port to my projector because I want friends to be able to watch what happens in VR on the big screen. Then I reset the HDMI range to the projector to FULL RANGE.
And now Rift black levels are fine. WHAT!?! This must be a bug, but if it's on Nvidia, Oculus or Frontier I can't tell.
I have to do further examination to find out exactly what I did that fixed it, but I won't touch it now for a while, I need to enjoy space in full color range.
If you are having bad blacks in Elite on CV1, try connecting a TV to DVI or something, change to full color range and compare.
The funniest thing with this is that the Rift still sits in the HDMI port like it always have been and that there are no settings Rift specific that I've changed. Somehow HDMI-range setting on other devices affect the Rift.
-----------------------------------------
I've always had a grudge with one thing on the CV1 since day 1. I thought the image looked a little washed out and there was colorbanding in coronas and in the dark part of space in Elite, the edge between black and gas clouds wasn't smooth anymore like it was on DK2 with 0.6.0.0, it was unrealistic sharp. Something looked wrong and I tried a thousand things. I always suspected the HDMI Range for TV's to be the culprit but the Rift is supposed to bypass that and the controls are not available anyway. Read about others that their black levels fixed by running the Rift on the DVI port with an adapter, and others fixing it by reinstalling Graphics drivers. I tried it all. Fiddled with the registry. Even tried to find some hidden setting for Oculus Brightness. No luck, whatever I tried.
I have a HTC Vive now also and there space and gradients are smooth and black is really black so you all know I have something to compare too.
Anyway, my normal setup from my PC's GTX 1080 is DVI connected to an ASUS 1080p 144hz monitor and the CV1 in the HDMI. Like most single screen owners have it installed I suppose.
Today I took a long HDMI cable, put HDMI -> DVI converters at each end, disconnected my ASUS monitor from DVI and connected it to Displayport instead, and then I ran the long DVI->HDMI->DVI cable from my DVI port to my projector because I want friends to be able to watch what happens in VR on the big screen. Then I reset the HDMI range to the projector to FULL RANGE.
And now Rift black levels are fine. WHAT!?! This must be a bug, but if it's on Nvidia, Oculus or Frontier I can't tell.
I have to do further examination to find out exactly what I did that fixed it, but I won't touch it now for a while, I need to enjoy space in full color range.
If you are having bad blacks in Elite on CV1, try connecting a TV to DVI or something, change to full color range and compare.
The funniest thing with this is that the Rift still sits in the HDMI port like it always have been and that there are no settings Rift specific that I've changed. Somehow HDMI-range setting on other devices affect the Rift.
Last edited: