ED and the Oculus Rift Developers Kit 2 (DK2) Discussion Thread

Hard to say I know, but what's the gut feeling of all you DK2-ers?

What difference will an assumed jump to 2560x1440 resolution make to CV1 in your opinion? Sure there will be a multitude of other tweaks too.

Will it be good enough for your average punter? Will the resolution jump be significant enough?

It should reduce the screen door effect even more than it already has been. However I doubt many rigs will be able to run that 1440p at 90Hz so most will still be gaming at 1080p
 
Hard to say I know, but what's the gut feeling of all you DK2-ers?

What difference will an assumed jump to 2560x1440 resolution make to CV1 in your opinion? Sure there will be a multitude of other tweaks too.

Will it be good enough for your average punter? Will the resolution jump be significant enough?

No not for me. Not unless the other tweaks include ways to increase the perceived detail dramatically. I see enough in the DK2 to have a high level of confidence that VR in the not too distant future will be amazing, and will find its way in to the mainstream. But it's not there yet and the assumed resolution increase will not get us past the main issues, for most people. It will be plenty good enough to impress people. But to get them to buy it and use it themselves, no.

Resolution is fine close up, but detail drops off sharply with distance, so things that are not close to you lack depth and detail. Depending on the app this can be worked around with scene design, but it will be quite limiting. It's also going to be a significant problem for video - such as sports or music events - which I think will be big for widespread adoption.

The screen door effect is also for me much too noticeable, which detracts from the whole.

For me, the FOV could also stand to improve, which may need curved screens. This is the least important for me - you don't notice so much that you're missing peripheral vision - but I think that having it will massively boost the sense of presence.

Lastly I think for mainstream adoption, controllers will have to catch up so that you can interact easily and naturally while the headset is on. Not a problem for something like Elite Dangerous - but most games and apps won't use a HOTAS!

I think CV1 will be a niche device, probably a success but not a mainstream product. For people who really want to be immersed in games it will be a must have, but for everybody else.. just something to ooh and aah over for a bit at your mates.

Most importantly though, I think that the things holding it back right now are things that will inevitably come with time. Increased resolution, the computing power to fill it, even curved screens are not insurmountable technical challenges, just iterative improvements. Key things like accurate, natural head tracking, fast enough blur-free frame rates, good stereoscopic 3D and a believable scene without distortion are all there already.

I guess the main question mark remaining is the SDE, as DK2 hasn't really dealt with that at all and it's unclear how they will eliminate it - but I think they will. And eventually, a rift with several times the detail, wider field of view and no SDE will be absolutely spectacular.
 
Down sampling from 2560 x 1440 works great resolution wise, but currently halves my framerate to about 35 fps! :p

Interesting - I'm wondering then if / when E: D supports SLI / Crossfire that can take the GPU rendering up a notch it will work better with the Rift frame rate wise?

Reason I ask is I have two 7870HDs in my PC, which are not going to be upgraded any time Soon(tm), so this is my rig to run E: D in both desktop & Rift mode (when it arrives...)
 
And eventually, a rift with several times the detail, wider field of view and no SDE will be absolutely spectacular.

I'm wondering if maybe pushing some graphics grunt onto the headset itself might be an answer, at least in the short-to-medium term. At the moment, it's just a display, but from what I understand, there are bandwidth limitations even with Displayport in terms of getting the required resolution from a PC's graphics card fast enough to enable smooth movement.

This is something that is possibly achievable with FB's money that wasn't feasible with DK1 or DK2. It may also take the load off people's PCs and give broadly the same experience for all.

It's pure speculation on my part though. :p
 
Much progress! I have absolutely no self control when it comes to elite, so I insta-cracked and ordered a Sapphire R9 280X to upgrade from the 7850. That took my framerate up to a frustrating 65-75 FPS in low graphics and full res. I tried a bit of OC but it wasn't stable. I went into the gaming settings in catalyst though and switched everything to as low as I could in there (performance texture filtering etc.), and now I'm getting in station 74-82 FPS (in the hangar, at Morton's). Obv I'll enable vwait normally. Big :) from me - when it locks in at 75 FPS the difference is staggering - you can really feel those 74FPS frames so I do hope Frontier can squeeze more out of the engine, but this is playable and so cool :)

I guess the main question mark remaining is the SDE, as DK2 hasn't really dealt with that at all and it's unclear how they will eliminate it - but I think they will. And eventually, a rift with several times the detail, wider field of view and no SDE will be absolutely spectacular.

I'm not saying there's no resolution problem or visible inter-pixel space at all but I have both DK1 and DK2 in my room here and the SDE is very significantly less visible with DK2 vs DK1. Resolution obviously needs to improve a lot, but it wouldn't be fair to say the DK2 didn't improve the SDE problem at all - I know you didn't quite say that - I'd agree with 'DK2 hasn't cured the SDE problem completely' but not 'DK2 hasn't dealt with it at all'.

Hard to say I know, but what's the gut feeling of all you DK2-ers?

What difference will an assumed jump to 2560x1440 resolution make to CV1 in your opinion? Sure there will be a multitude of other tweaks too.

Will it be good enough for your average punter? Will the resolution jump be significant enough?

The step up from DK1 to DK2 makes a huge difference so a few more pixels are going to be noticable for sure but I agree with DB that we'd need 4k at least (personally I'm not even sure if that's enough!).. but for now PCs that could push 120hz at 4k are science fiction... anyway, the future is bright and once again we'll look back to Elite as the harbinger of a new gaming era! I'm a bit of a VR fanboy for sure, but I really do think the last time we had a true generational shift in gaming was when the PS2 came out, and VR will be the next.
 
Last edited:
Hard to say I know, but what's the gut feeling of all you DK2-ers?

What difference will an assumed jump to 2560x1440 resolution make to CV1 in your opinion? Sure there will be a multitude of other tweaks too.

Will it be good enough for your average punter? Will the resolution jump be significant enough?

I don't believe the consumer version 1 will be for the average punter. It'll be a product for mainly hardcore gamers/technophiles.
We won't see main stream VR for a good couple of years at least.

I think this for several reasons, OVR themselves say it, 1440p will not be good enough for your average punter, 4K will be good enough for your average punter but they won't have/buy a PC powerful enough to use it.
When cheap 4K small screens are prevalent and the GPU power that's currently unavailable to us now can be produced by low end cards of the future then VR will become more mainstream.

IF they can solve sim sickness completely (or a least for 80% of people).
No way an average punter is going to put up with something that makes you feel ill in any way. Just won't happen
 
Last edited:
I'm not saying there's no resolution problem or visible inter-pixel space at all but I have both DK1 and DK2 in my room here and the SDE is very significantly less visible with DK2 vs DK1. Resolution obviously needs to improve a lot, but it wouldn't be fair to say the DK2 didn't improve the SDE problem at all - I know you didn't quite say that - I'd agree with 'DK2 hasn't cured the SDE problem completely' but not 'DK2 hasn't dealt with it at all'.

Yeah that is fair, I didn't phrase that too well. I just see it as the one remaining significant thing for which there isn't a clear 'fix'. DK2 changed it up, but the fundamental issue that you can see the space between pixels has yet to be solved. Most of the other major things I was concerned about are either already working quite naturally (such as positional tracking), or have a clear upgrade path (such as resolution and even FOV).

I think they're moving in the right direction on all fronts - but also that for a consumer product it's all about that CV1 experience, as most will have no appreciation of the relative improvement.
 
Hard to say I know, but what's the gut feeling of all you DK2-ers?

What difference will an assumed jump to 2560x1440 resolution make to CV1 in your opinion? Sure there will be a multitude of other tweaks too.

Will it be good enough for your average punter? Will the resolution jump be significant enough?

Do you mean you assume the CV1 will jump to 2560x1440?
Unless its already been stated, I don't think that will be the case...maybe Cv2.

But I'd definitely be first in line to order.
Dk2 is amazing for Elite and you feel like you're there ....but you feel like you're there in standard definition.
A jump to 2560x1440 would dramatically improve things, though not sure how most rigs would handle it.
 
Do you mean you assume the CV1 will jump to 2560x1440?
Unless its already been stated, I don't think that will be the case...maybe Cv2.

But I'd definitely be first in line to order.
Dk2 is amazing for Elite and you feel like you're there ....but you feel like you're there in standard definition.
A jump to 2560x1440 would dramatically improve things, though not sure how most rigs would handle it.

We will need new rigs for the CV1 definitively, and another thing that everybody tends to forget is this:
They are re-using screens designed for tablets fot the DK*s, these screens are flat, a curved screen with the same definition will have a lot more pixel density on the image center with no color aberration, so for curved (1 axis) or spherical sections (2 axis of curvature) the image would be VERY sharp and almost no Sreen door effect.

Manufacturing a custom OLED/AMOLED curved screen is doable today but not affordable for a little number of units (100K Dk2 is a good estimation max of their sales until end of this year, around 70K ordered so far). For a CV1 where they aim for an order of magnitude of millions, would make sense to desing and produce a custom screen (an samsung is collaborating and investigating with them)
 
Last edited:
Just received my tracking number for my DK2. Any tips for things to look out for or any tricks for setting it up for Elite?

As far as VR goes, I'm not so sure it will be such a huge success. Now AR, that will be huge, which is why I also backed the CastAR glasses :)

Of the two, I think I'm looking forward to the CastAR glasses more than the Oculus. I've already imagined a few games that would be absolutely awesome and game changers when coupled with CastAR. There are some really neat real world applications that would benefit from AR as well.
 
Do you mean you assume the CV1 will jump to 2560x1440?
Unless its already been stated, I don't think that will be the case...maybe Cv2.

But I'd definitely be first in line to order.
Dk2 is amazing for Elite and you feel like you're there ....but you feel like you're there in standard definition.
A jump to 2560x1440 would dramatically improve things, though not sure how most rigs would handle it.

It's almost a given that CV1 will be 1440p. Oculus has stated in multiple interviews that CV1 will have a higher resolution than 1080p and be running at 90Hz. The only other rez options would be 1440p or 4k. But since HDMI 1.4 or even 2.0 can't deliver 4k at 90Hz I don't see the jump to 4k in the cards for CV1.
 
We will need new rigs for the CV1 definitively, and another thing that everybody tends to forget is this:
They are re-using screens designed for tablets fot the DK*s, these screens are flat, a curved screen with the same definition will have a lot more pixel density on the image center with no color aberration, so for curved (1 axis) or spherical sections (2 axis of curvature) the image would be VERY sharp and almost no Sreen door effect.

Manufacturing a custom OLED/AMOLED curved screen is doable today but not affordable for a little number of units (100K Dk2 is a good estimation max of their sales until end of this year, around 70K ordered so far). For a CV1 where they aim for an order of magnitude of millions, would make sense to desing and produce a custom screen (an samsung is collaborating and investigating with them)

Palmer has already mentioned the problems with curved screens and so that's not an option for CV1.
 
It's almost a given that CV1 will be 1440p. Oculus has stated in multiple interviews that CV1 will have a higher resolution than 1080p and be running at 90Hz. The only other rez options would be 1440p or 4k. But since HDMI 1.4 or even 2.0 can't deliver 4k at 90Hz I don't see the jump to 4k in the cards for CV1.

Totally agree, there is no cabling/grapic card that can run at 4k, they already are testing it with the current generation high end cards, I really expect to see the curved screen to surprise us with bigger pixel density and no SDE.
 
Totally agree, there is no cabling/grapic card that can run at 4k, they already are testing it with the current generation high end cards, I really expect to see the curved screen to surprise us with bigger pixel density and no SDE.

A curved screen is just not going to happen as there isn't even a lens in existence that can work with a curved screen. A curved screen creates more problems than it solves:

http://rifty-business.blogspot.de/2014/01/flexible-displays-rift.html
 
Thanks for your views everyone. Pretty much what I thought: getting there quickly, but still a few years away from the ideal.

There's that Oculus Connect conference next month, and I suspect concrete details for CV1 are going to emerge from that.

Still going to buy one when they go up for order too. :)
 
We will need new rigs for the CV1 definitively, and another thing that everybody tends to forget is this:
They are re-using screens designed for tablets fot the DK*s, these screens are flat, a curved screen with the same definition will have a lot more pixel density on the image center with no color aberration, so for curved (1 axis) or spherical sections (2 axis of curvature) the image would be VERY sharp and almost no Sreen door effect.

Manufacturing a custom OLED/AMOLED curved screen is doable today but not affordable for a little number of units (100K Dk2 is a good estimation max of their sales until end of this year, around 70K ordered so far). For a CV1 where they aim for an order of magnitude of millions, would make sense to desing and produce a custom screen (an samsung is collaborating and investigating with them)

It's almost a given that CV1 will be 1440p. Oculus has stated in multiple interviews that CV1 will have a higher resolution than 1080p and be running at 90Hz. The only other rez options would be 1440p or 4k. But since HDMI 1.4 or even 2.0 can't deliver 4k at 90Hz I don't see the jump to 4k in the cards for CV1.

Great info thanks!
 
Was finally able to re-test the dk2 with ED at my friends.

After downloading and using Bilagos app to stop the services everything ran great. No more weird skewing, rotational and positional head-tracking was fine. I would imagine updating to 0.4.1 of the sdk and stopping the relevant services would have the same effect. Looks like my initial test failed as I didn't realise you had to stop the config.exe too.


First impressions, ED on the dk2 is a pretty rad experience, there are issues but the immersion is just enough to mitigate them.

Resolution is fine in the cockpit, you have to lean in a bit to read some of the UI, but not much. I was worried that the vertical lines for targets on the scanner might not be visible, but they are intact. Elements such as your hull strength are perfectly readable . Targeted objects (stations, star system, enemies) appearing outside of the cockpit are hard to read and leaning forward doesn't help, might be something Frontier can improve or provide some options to increase the size of the text in the future.

Beyond the cockpit the resolution is not so great for distant objects. Inside a space station or approaching one to dock is quite pixelated and isn't helped by the screen-door effect. I could imagine some people being very put off by that, but for me it was borderline acceptable.

The poorest aspect of the dk2 for me was that the peripheral vision was very blurred. Looking straight ahead was fine, very clear, no chromatic aberration, but to the sides, especially if you looked left/right with your eyes things got very blurred. For example on the loading screen, the text beneath the rotating ship was unreadable at the sides if you glanced left/right, but was clear straight ahead. Overall I don't think this is a problem, after all the whole point of VR is that you turn your head and not necessarily slide your eyes left/right.

For me it was the experience that sold it, you just felt so immersed in the world. I was flying around in a Lakon Type 6 and the cockpit was amazing. Being able to see your virtual body is always a cool and weird experience, but being able to look up or down through the cockpit and see the space dust whizzing by was exhilarating. The cockpit surrounding your body really sold the feeling of 3D and was just so pretty.

If you really value visual quality you will probably be disappointed with the dk2, it just doesn't currently have the resolution. However if you value the experience, then you can probably look past the current failings and just enjoy the ride. Certainly it was good enough for me to place an order for a dk2, though i'm going to have to get a new PC too. I was testing with a Titan and even then in the space stations performance was off, so my gfx465 is just not going to be up to it at all.

My hope is that in the coming releases of ED Frontier will be able to invest in further graphic optimisations. In basic testing i'd say the game currently is fill-rate limited (i.e jumping from 1080 to 1440 results in a loss of fps across the board in any scenario). Changing any or all options down to low/off have minimal impact, a few of the more expensive ones such as AA can give you a bit of a boost, but unlike other games going to low quality isn't going to double your framerate or even increase it by 50%.

I feel there is much that can be done for inside space stations, for example Wyrd (I think that's the right one, the very 'white' looking interior stations), really kills my framerate currently (20 fps), indeed the newer non dodecahedron ones all have worse performance than the older stations (40 fps). I'm hoping here some form of model LOD will be beneficial to dramatically improve performance here as there currently doesn't appear to be any, and it would be pretty easy to just remove some internal sections of the stations for vastly simplified versions without affecting gameplay or the experience too much for lower setting set ups.

One thing I really hope Frontier will deliver soon is a benchmark scene, something that us beta testers can use to provide some accurate stats concerning cpu/gpu vs resolution and framerate. It doesn't have to be anything fancy a simple scene starting in a space station, exiting, flying around, then docking, probably all pre-canned animation (since AI docking is so unpredictable). I'm kind of surprised it doesn't already exist since its vital for a game like this in order to profile any optimisations they make to ensure they are beneficial.
 
Last edited:
If you quote the text to edit, remove the quote block before saving otherwise others can't then use quote to update.

Green = Shipped/Delivery
Yellow = Confirmed Next Batch

20/03/2014 @ 15:21 PDT - Riandor
20/03/2014 @ 16:31 PDT - Jones
20/03/2014 @ 04:48 PDT - Memnoch
20/03/2014 @ 06:42 PDT - CATPAIN KIRK
20/03/2014 @ 06:43 PDT - Rewind303
20/03/2014 @ 09:42 PDT - Ryder35
20/03/2014 @ 23:24 PDT - Diamond Dog
21/03/2014 @ 02:38 PDT - Splendour
21/03/2014 @ 22:40 PDT - Burzum
21/03/2014 @ 11:19 PDT - Gelegeus
23/03/2014 @ 01:51 PDT - Alric
25/03/2014 @ 01:57 PDT - KING5TON
27/03/2014 @ 07:07 PDT - Half Giant
01/04/2014 @ 08:50 PDT - metanoia
02/04/2014 @ 07:53 PDT - Erimus
04/04/2014 @ 07:35 PDT - vanfanel
14/04/2014 @ 08:44 PDT - Zalamander
16/04/2014 @ 01:30 PDT - MatozHagru
23/04/2014 @ 12:22 PDT - Fireblade
29/04/2014 @ 12:52 PDT - Surfr
02/05/2014 @ 06:02 PDT - Spook
03/05/2014 @ 03:05 PDT - gazza_7
05/05/2014 @ 10:44 PDT - nomisum
13/05/2014 @ 22:41 PDT - Helios
24/05/2014 @ 06:22 PDT - Crudzilla
27/05/2014 @ 13:53 PDT - Hertog
03/06/2014 @ 02:57 PDT - WarBaby2
04/06/2014 @ 09:28 PDT - Sanderson
09/06/2014 @ 08:21 PDT - fizzbann
11/06/2014 @ 11:09 PDT - mid_gen
12/06/2014 @ 09:06 PDT - Mu77ley
14/06/2014 @ 23:39 PDT - modernatomic
15/06/2014 @ 03:50 PDT - Mack71
16/06/2014 @ 05:49 PDT - Aldric
25/06/2014 @ 05:42 PDT - Tifosi
01/07/2014 @ 16:12 PDT - Anthony Jones
04/07/2014 @ 02:54 PDT - Juniper
25/07/2014 @ 02:38 PDT - Technotica
27/07/2014 @ 01:54 PDT - Mark D
05/08/2014 @ 05:33 PDT - Viajero
05/08/2014 @ 05:59 PDT - Mikevet
06/08/2014 @ 07:33 PDT - Coolts
08/08/2014 @ 04:07 PDT - Tomas
08/08/2014 @ 14:13 PDT - Ceud
16/08/2014 @ 12:56 PDT - Ref Minor
 
Last edited:
!

If you quote the text to edit, remove the quote block before saving otherwise others can't then use quote to update.

Green = Shipped/Delivery
Yellow = Confirmed Next Batch

20/03/2014 @ 15:21 PDT - Riandor
20/03/2014 @ 16:31 PDT - Jones
20/03/2014 @ 04:48 PDT - Memnoch
20/03/2014 @ 06:42 PDT - CATPAIN KIRK
20/03/2014 @ 06:43 PDT - Rewind303
20/03/2014 @ 09:42 PDT - Ryder35
20/03/2014 @ 23:24 PDT - Diamond Dog
21/03/2014 @ 02:38 PDT - Splendour
21/03/2014 @ 22:40 PDT - Burzum
21/03/2014 @ 11:19 PDT - Gelegeus
23/03/2014 @ 01:51 PDT - Alric
25/03/2014 @ 01:57 PDT - KING5TON
27/03/2014 @ 07:07 PDT - Half Giant
01/04/2014 @ 08:50 PDT - metanoia
02/04/2014 @ 07:53 PDT - Erimus
04/04/2014 @ 07:35 PDT - vanfanel
14/04/2014 @ 08:44 PDT - Zalamander
16/04/2014 @ 01:30 PDT - MatozHagru
23/04/2014 @ 12:22 PDT - Fireblade
29/04/2014 @ 12:52 PDT - Surfr
02/05/2014 @ 06:02 PDT - Spook
03/05/2014 @ 03:05 PDT - gazza_7
05/05/2014 @ 10:44 PDT - nomisum
13/05/2014 @ 22:41 PDT - Helios
24/05/2014 @ 06:22 PDT - Crudzilla
27/05/2014 @ 13:53 PDT - Hertog
03/06/2014 @ 02:57 PDT - WarBaby2
04/06/2014 @ 09:28 PDT - Sanderson
09/06/2014 @ 08:21 PDT - fizzbann
11/06/2014 @ 11:09 PDT - mid_gen
12/06/2014 @ 09:06 PDT - Mu77ley
14/06/2014 @ 23:39 PDT - modernatomic
15/06/2014 @ 03:50 PDT - Mack71
16/06/2014 @ 05:49 PDT - Aldric
25/06/2014 @ 05:42 PDT - Tifosi
01/07/2014 @ 16:12 PDT - Anthony Jones
04/07/2014 @ 02:54 PDT - Juniper
25/07/2014 @ 02:38 PDT - Technotica
27/07/2014 @ 01:54 PDT - Mark D
05/08/2014 @ 05:33 PDT - Viajero
05/08/2014 @ 05:59 PDT - Mikevet
06/08/2014 @ 07:33 PDT - Coolts
08/08/2014 @ 04:07 PDT - Tomas
08/08/2014 @ 14:13 PDT - Ceud
16/08/2014 @ 12:56 PDT - Ref Minor
 
Back
Top Bottom