Getting the Best DK2/CV1/Vive VR Experience: Guide/Compendium

[robdood]

My poor i7 and 970 can't quite keep up. I know everyone loves the higher image quality you get from supersampling, but the poor framerate near anything other than deep space kills it for me.

The time warp is great at keeping the 'feeling' smooth, but I hate when docking that the scenery outside judders about whereas my head movements look nice and smooth.

So I'm a sap who plays on VR low with no anti aliasing of any kind, just so that when I dock the scenery scrolls past smoothly. And even then it's rarely flawless. Am sure frontier could make a few more optimisations here, given when I'm casually playing on my monitor I can hit very high settings and it rarely struggles.

I'm debating upgrading my card later this year so I can squeeze out some extra shinies and keep the smooth framerate.

Not sure why I'm posting this here really, just wanted to whinge! The Great British way!

 

[drkaii]

Updated the Tweaks that apply to CV1/Vive and DK2 section with new settings coming in 2.2 and the Asynchronous Spacewarp hack for oculus

 

[Rubix]

My poor i7 and 970 can't quite keep up. I know everyone loves the higher image quality you get from supersampling, but the poor framerate near anything other than deep space kills it for me.

The time warp is great at keeping the 'feeling' smooth, but I hate when docking that the scenery outside judders about whereas my head movements look nice and smooth.

So I'm a sap who plays on VR low with no anti aliasing of any kind, just so that when I dock the scenery scrolls past smoothly. And even then it's rarely flawless. Am sure frontier could make a few more optimisations here, given when I'm casually playing on my monitor I can hit very high settings and it rarely struggles.

I'm debating upgrading my card later this year so I can squeeze out some extra shinies and keep the smooth framerate.

Not sure why I'm posting this here really, just wanted to whinge! The Great British way!

Hi, i too have an older i7 cpu (2600) and a gtx970.

I have been tweaking settings using the ASW and i am completely impressed with the results.

copy/pasted from other thread to give you an idea...

So i have been playing around with this all afternoon. I was reasonably happy with Elite Dangerous with my original settings. I had figured i had the best i could get with my gtx970.

Before ASW my settings, debug tool 1.5 and in game SS 0.65, graphics were all low to medium, shadows, bloom, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion all off. it was smooth as silk, but obviously sacrificing visuals, i could live with that.

Using this ASW i have tweaked and tweaked and ended up with the following.

debug tool 1.2 and in game SS x1.0. graphics(environment, textures, fx etc) are now all high/ultra. shadows=low, bloom=off, anti-aliasing=SMAA, ambient occlusion=medium, Depth of field=off I am in absolutely no doubt that ASW has had a HUGE impact on the visuals for my system. I get the occasional micro stutter when entering a hanger. Other than that, it's stable and looks gorgeous! (compared to what i have had for the last week)

I can push the in game SS up to 1.5 but have to turn off or put everything to low and still get some judder.

I can push the debug tool to 1.7 but have to lower the in game SS to 0.65 and have everything low to medium or disabled for it to be smooth.

The happy medium for me is debug tool 1.2 and in game SS x1.0 with all the graphics options. it is a far better experience and graphics look really lovely, even on my old system! I can definitely live with the occasional micro stutter having much better visuals.

 

[TarRokk]

Help please. My CV1 worked nice for a few hours. Now it claims, that HDMI is not connected. I did multible resets, new complete setups, changing graphic drivers etc, etc. When I switched off last night, everything was perfect. Switching on today,
the problem started. Any help? Please?

 

[bfedorov91]

look like with the update some of this isn't needed. i set steamvr back to 1.0, in game ss back to 1.0 and headset image to 1.25. with a 1080 i need to leave reprojection on for stations.. it looks like a completely different game. everything around the pilot is so crisp and sharp.. text is great.

 

[drkaii]

I added that stuff to the op last week

 

[bfedorov91]

Aren't those VR settings a little steep? My 1080 was struggling with 1.5 HMD, 1.0 SS, 1.0 steamvr SS. I had to drop HMD to 1.25 and it would still enable reprojection in stations.

 

[rootsrat]

Lots of useful info, thanks! I am unable to rep you again sadly...

 

[Kietrax]

Lots of stuff to try out with my new CV1 - thanks for both the switcher tool and gathering all this stuff together Dr Kaii! (more rep added to the first post for you )

One question - have you thought about trying to integrate the API calls of Audio Switcher (http://audioswit.ch/er) in there as well? That is the one thing I always forget to do when moving back to the monitor - switch the default audio devices so I sit there for a minute wondering why there is no sound before realising there is sound, it's just coming from the wrong headphones!

 

[Alec Turner]

Lots of stuff to try out with my new CV1 - thanks for both the switcher tool and gathering all this stuff together Dr Kaii! (more rep added to the first post for you )

One question - have you thought about trying to integrate the API calls of Audio Switcher (http://audioswit.ch/er) in there as well? That is the one thing I always forget to do when moving back to the monitor - switch the default audio devices so I sit there for a minute wondering why there is no sound before realising there is sound, it's just coming from the wrong headphones!

Seconded ... same here!

 

[Aekero]

super helpful thread, thanks drkaii, had a couple of questions for you (or anyone else who might know the answers

1. Sweetfx seems to offer many things that are already in game i.e. smaa or bloom. Are there specific settings it offers that are really worth using it for in ED?

2. I tried using drkaii's profiler, one thing I noticed is that ed opens a fairly large window to run on the desktop while it's running on my headset, and I though that this would be a performance hit. So, I tried the settings in the profiler to make the window smaller res, make it borderless, fullscreen etc. When I start the game the settings are applied, but as soon as ED transitions from the loading screen to the welcome menu, those settings are overwritten and the window resets back to default (1024x resolution, windowed). Is there anything I can do to persist the settings from the profiler?

Thanks again!

 

[drkaii]

super helpful thread, thanks drkaii, had a couple of questions for you (or anyone else who might know the answers

1. Sweetfx seems to offer many things that are already in game i.e. smaa or bloom. Are there specific settings it offers that are really worth using it for in ED?

2. I tried using drkaii's profiler, one thing I noticed is that ed opens a fairly large window to run on the desktop while it's running on my headset, and I though that this would be a performance hit. So, I tried the settings in the profiler to make the window smaller res, make it borderless, fullscreen etc. When I start the game the settings are applied, but as soon as ED transitions from the loading screen to the welcome menu, those settings are overwritten and the window resets back to default (1024x resolution, windowed). Is there anything I can do to persist the settings from the profiler?

Thanks again!

1. Sweetfx doesn't work with VR anymore, but if it ever does again, lumasharpen is the only one that makes a positive difference imo, and a big one at that. See the deprecated tweaks for an example
2. Known bug, no fix at the moment, gotta set it every time

 

[CMDR Zeikfried]

Good evening CMDRS !

I bought my Oculus CV1 and I really like it. No nausea or motion sickness in FPS or TPS games.
But I have an issue (or I think it is) with the SDE. I've read all information for tweaking Elite, but I really see the pixel grid and it doesn't help for immersion.
I've changed the HUD to something grey/blue, that's better to read letters than default orange. I tried the tricks with the debug tool (pixel per pixel display override 1.5) and I use ED profiler with VR Ultra with Super Sampling to 1.5.
But eventually it really doesn't help for the grid effect.
I'm asking myself because, I read everywhere that the game is beautiful in VR, so what's wrong with my oculus settings?
Is it because the technoly is young, the lenses don't offer a quality to bypass the SDE ?
I've read in Road to VR that the game has to be launched in the Oculus client; actually I launch it via Steam VR, do you think it will help? Can I add Elite to my Oculus games library?

Thanks in advance for your answers

 

[drkaii]

Good evening CMDRS !

I bought my Oculus CV1 and I really like it. No nausea or motion sickness in FPS or TPS games.
But I have an issue (or I think it is) with the SDE. I've read all information for tweaking Elite, but I really see the pixel grid and it doesn't help for immersion.
I've changed the HUD to something grey/blue, that's better to read letters than default orange. I tried the tricks with the debug tool (pixel per pixel display override 1.5) and I use ED profiler with VR Ultra with Super Sampling to 1.5.
But eventually it really doesn't help for the grid effect.
I'm asking myself because, I read everywhere that the game is beautiful in VR, so what's wrong with my oculus settings?
Is it because the technoly is young, the lenses don't offer a quality to bypass the SDE ?
I've read in Road to VR that the game has to be launched in the Oculus client; actually I launch it via Steam VR, do you think it will help? Can I add Elite to my Oculus games library?

Thanks in advance for your answers

Maybe someone will have a better answer for you but what you are describing is called the "screen door effect" (edit: I see you are aware of that after re-reading). Some people don't notice it, some people can't NOT notice it. I am thankfully in the former camp, but it sounds like you are in the latter.

AFAIK, there's nothing that can be done about it - it is simply the fact that we are so close to the pixels, but google away my friend. Maybe there is something

Hopefully the CV2 will come out when Tesla (or is it Volta? They always change their project names) is out and will have a much better resolution, but it won't be till the days of 8K (or some brand new pixel technology) that we will really lose the SDE

 

[CMDR Zeikfried]

Thank you drkaii, I was pretty sure it was because of the technology, as far as we have not 4K in each eye, we'll see the SDE.
I googled some tips, and a simple solution would be to put a smartphone adhesive screen protection on the HMD screen. You'll get a bit more blurring but the SDE will be mitigated. I have to take a try

 

[Alec Turner]

I've read in Road to VR that the game has to be launched in the Oculus client; actually I launch it via Steam VR, do you think it will help? Can I add Elite to my Oculus games library?

I think drkaii has answered the SDE question (personally I don't see it either), I don't think there are any settings or tweaks to reduce it afaik.

On the subject of adding Elite to the Oculus library, much as I love Road To VR (and love their daily newsletter) I think they're wrong. It doesn't make a scrap of difference how you launch Elite. If you add it to your Oculus library (which you can do by claiming an Oculus partner key) you'll end up with two completely separate installations of Elite, taking up twice as much space on your hard disk and requiring twice as much effort to keep both updated. This is also true of Steam afaik (i.e. if you've bought the game from Frontier and installed it natively and then add it to your Steam library, I think you also end up with two copies ... three if you also do the Oculus key). Note also, installing it with either a Steam or Oculus partner keys deprives Frontier of valuable revenue - purely for the convenience of having a different way of launching the game. Don't bother is my advice.

 

[Dedlite]

When I first got my CV1, I came here - brilliant stuff. I read through it again this morning, to see what info I could glean the latest updates - nothing new that I didn't already know, but one bit that DID caught my eye was the bit about CPU and GPU overclocking. You state 'Don't overclock the CPU unless you have watercooling. That's just a general tip amongst overclockers.' Ermm...no. I'd suggest 'If cooling your CPU on air, first make your case allows enough room for adequate airflow, and use a cooler which is proven to the job, eg from overclockers.co.uk or scan.co.uk'.

 

[Ripbudd]

Why should i turn off interleaved reprojection?

 

[Raptoid]

Finally got around to installing this, got an error box at first but blew right through it. Set my GUI had the app create the folder for the GUI settings, hit Detect Current and it went green good to go right? Pointed it to the Launcher and viola. Sent you a donation nice work on this.

 

[drkaii]

Finally got around to installing this, got an error box at first but blew right through it. Set my GUI had the app create the folder for the GUI settings, hit Detect Current and it went green good to go right? Pointed it to the Launcher and viola. Sent you a donation nice work on this.

Thanks for the generous donation! Makes all the difference

Better test and send me that error if it comes up again: kaii@dr.com