Background
When I updated to 1.5, as everyone else we had to uninstall our 0.5.0 and 0.6.0.1 Runtimes and update to the latest one (0.8). But this only give us HMD mode and therefore we had to mess with the native resolutions and refresh rates of our primary monitor and most of ours don't support 75 Hz. Mine did but the main screen flickered so often that the monitor is almost unreadable and I've always worried it might burn out or something.
But 1.5 was wonderful though because it removed the Supercruise juddering after you've been in a system for a long time. The HMD mode also finally allowed me to record what's going on screen with Nvidia Shadowplay, so I made my first YouTube video. Surprisingly even though there is a mirrored display on the desktop, the resources used for this mirrored display weren't noticably consumed.
But then I installed SteamVR for the first time. This broke the game for me.
Before installing SteamVR, when I click Play Elite Dangerous (64-bit) in the Launcher, on the taskbar a program would appear "OVR Runtime Init" or something and it disappears (I had to set OVR Runtime as an "exclusion" on my Avast Firewall though) and I could play E
with the OR DK2 on HMD mode.
After installing SteamVR, that OVR Runtime Init no longer appears. And if I start the game, I would not see the HMD options under 3D in Options>Graphics. All I could see was just the others "Off, side-by-side, and the other one". To play E with the Oculus I had to always start SteamVR first, and only after that start Play E 64 bit.
But doing it this way with the SteamVR caused a lot of problems on my machine. For some unknown reason, my framerate is constantly at 37.5 fps (that's half of the magical 75 btw) and wouldn't go any higher. When I exit the station I can get 65 to 70 fps maybe but it was bothering me because before SteamVR, I didn't have this problem (I had 65 - 70 fps in station and 75 fps anywhere outside).
[With Runtime 0.8, you can check your fps profile by opening the Oculus Configuration Utility, select Tools, Advanced, Show Performance HUD, then select Render Timing or Performance Headroom.] You should try this in game in station, in supercruise, etc before doing the next steps, and maybe make some notes to compare to for before/after trying this.
So because of SteamVR (beta/standard), I wasn't able to play at all today. The FPS was really terrible. To get rid of SteamVR, I even went as far ahead as uninstalling Steam, E and unfortunately Steam uninstalls every other game I had installed as well. Good thing I had the foresight of copying away my GraphicsConfiguration.xml and Control Bindings.binds from the Steamapps and appdata/Frontier Development folders. But after rebooting, reinstalling Steam, reinstalling E (twice), I just couldn't get back what I had before I messed around with SteamVR (Direct HMD, with the Desktop mirror that I could record, but with above 37.5 fps). It was frustrating.
Then I uninstalled and reinstalled the runtimes hoping that I could start E without Steam being on.. wishing the magical "OVR Runtime Init" would appear once again. It never came back for me.
The Solution
So what I did was, I looked into my Oculus Rift folder that I setup as a place where I can find all my VR demoes and utilities and I came across one that I often used to run older programs. It's the Runtime Switcher V3 which you can get here : https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/3paivl/rtu_package_to_switch_between_oculus_07_and_05/
It's supposed to switch between Runtime 0.7 and 0.5, but really what it does is switch your current installed runtime to 0.5.0 and vice versa. So for my case, it actually switches between 0.8 and 0.5.
Having installed that and rebooted, I quit Steam and tried to run E Laucher from the Steam folder (default is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous\EDLaunch.exe). I ran the Elite Dangerous 64-bit and a side-by-side image appeared on the desktop (nothing on the Oculus) and it was very small (800x600 split into two). Upon reaching the main menu, I went into Options then Graphics and first thing was to change the resolution to 1980x1080 so that I could see better. Then the next thing I saw was I can change Primary to Extended now! I immediately did that and voila! The primary monitor now shows my desktop, and E is in my Oculus Rift on Extended Mode!
Surprisingly, I got back what I missed most.. the advantages:
1) Got my 75 fps back outside station and in supercruise and it battles
2) I no longer have to set my primary monitor Custom Resolution to 75 Hz
3) I can again use MSI Afterburner/Riva Statistics Tuner to display on-Rift fps count so I can check my FPS without lifting the headset.
The disadvantage:
1) I could no longer record the game from the mirrored window with nVidia Shadowplay.
So far I'm a happy mammal. I don't know how long will this stay this way (playing with 0.5 runtime) or if it breaks something else somewhere else, but I haven't found any problems yet. So far just got back what I used to have and more (no supercruise lag).
If you wish to try please do so at your own risk, it is a Developer's Kit after all.
The instructions on the website I linked to is made simplified here:
Now, this 0.5 Runtime you "switch to" isn't persistent. You will always return to 0.8 (or whatever runtime is your latest) every time you reboot. So every time you wish to play E you will have to run the SDK 0.5 shortcut with Administrator privileges (that means right click the shortcut, run as Administrator). So that's a little annoying, but on the other hand I would still have had to run Steamvr before running E otherwise anyway.
Tested on my machine:
1) Running E straight from Steam (without SteamVR installed)
2) Running E straight from the EDlaunch.exe in the application folder with Steam completely closed.
Good luck, and please report if this works for you (or if doesn't).
When I updated to 1.5, as everyone else we had to uninstall our 0.5.0 and 0.6.0.1 Runtimes and update to the latest one (0.8). But this only give us HMD mode and therefore we had to mess with the native resolutions and refresh rates of our primary monitor and most of ours don't support 75 Hz. Mine did but the main screen flickered so often that the monitor is almost unreadable and I've always worried it might burn out or something.
But 1.5 was wonderful though because it removed the Supercruise juddering after you've been in a system for a long time. The HMD mode also finally allowed me to record what's going on screen with Nvidia Shadowplay, so I made my first YouTube video. Surprisingly even though there is a mirrored display on the desktop, the resources used for this mirrored display weren't noticably consumed.
But then I installed SteamVR for the first time. This broke the game for me.
Before installing SteamVR, when I click Play Elite Dangerous (64-bit) in the Launcher, on the taskbar a program would appear "OVR Runtime Init" or something and it disappears (I had to set OVR Runtime as an "exclusion" on my Avast Firewall though) and I could play E
with the OR DK2 on HMD mode.After installing SteamVR, that OVR Runtime Init no longer appears. And if I start the game, I would not see the HMD options under 3D in Options>Graphics. All I could see was just the others "Off, side-by-side, and the other one". To play E
with the Oculus I had to always start SteamVR first, and only after that start Play E 64 bit.But doing it this way with the SteamVR caused a lot of problems on my machine. For some unknown reason, my framerate is constantly at 37.5 fps (that's half of the magical 75 btw) and wouldn't go any higher. When I exit the station I can get 65 to 70 fps maybe but it was bothering me because before SteamVR, I didn't have this problem (I had 65 - 70 fps in station and 75 fps anywhere outside).
[With Runtime 0.8, you can check your fps profile by opening the Oculus Configuration Utility, select Tools, Advanced, Show Performance HUD, then select Render Timing or Performance Headroom.] You should try this in game in station, in supercruise, etc before doing the next steps, and maybe make some notes to compare to for before/after trying this.
So because of SteamVR (beta/standard), I wasn't able to play at all today. The FPS was really terrible. To get rid of SteamVR, I even went as far ahead as uninstalling Steam, E
and unfortunately Steam uninstalls every other game I had installed as well. Good thing I had the foresight of copying away my GraphicsConfiguration.xml and Control Bindings.binds from the Steamapps and appdata/Frontier Development folders. But after rebooting, reinstalling Steam, reinstalling E (twice), I just couldn't get back what I had before I messed around with SteamVR (Direct HMD, with the Desktop mirror that I could record, but with above 37.5 fps). It was frustrating.Then I uninstalled and reinstalled the runtimes hoping that I could start E
without Steam being on.. wishing the magical "OVR Runtime Init" would appear once again. It never came back for me.The Solution
So what I did was, I looked into my Oculus Rift folder that I setup as a place where I can find all my VR demoes and utilities and I came across one that I often used to run older programs. It's the Runtime Switcher V3 which you can get here : https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/3paivl/rtu_package_to_switch_between_oculus_07_and_05/
It's supposed to switch between Runtime 0.7 and 0.5, but really what it does is switch your current installed runtime to 0.5.0 and vice versa. So for my case, it actually switches between 0.8 and 0.5.
Having installed that and rebooted, I quit Steam and tried to run E
Laucher from the Steam folder (default is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous\EDLaunch.exe). I ran the Elite Dangerous 64-bit and a side-by-side image appeared on the desktop (nothing on the Oculus) and it was very small (800x600 split into two). Upon reaching the main menu, I went into Options then Graphics and first thing was to change the resolution to 1980x1080 so that I could see better. Then the next thing I saw was I can change Primary to Extended now! I immediately did that and voila! The primary monitor now shows my desktop, and E is in my Oculus Rift on Extended Mode!Surprisingly, I got back what I missed most.. the advantages:
1) Got my 75 fps back outside station and in supercruise and it battles
2) I no longer have to set my primary monitor Custom Resolution to 75 Hz
3) I can again use MSI Afterburner/Riva Statistics Tuner to display on-Rift fps count so I can check my FPS without lifting the headset.
The disadvantage:
1) I could no longer record the game from the mirrored window with nVidia Shadowplay.
So far I'm a happy mammal. I don't know how long will this stay this way (playing with 0.5 runtime) or if it breaks something else somewhere else, but I haven't found any problems yet. So far just got back what I used to have and more (no supercruise lag).
If you wish to try please do so at your own risk, it is a Developer's Kit after all.
The instructions on the website I linked to is made simplified here:
Now, this 0.5 Runtime you "switch to" isn't persistent. You will always return to 0.8 (or whatever runtime is your latest) every time you reboot. So every time you wish to play E
you will have to run the SDK 0.5 shortcut with Administrator privileges (that means right click the shortcut, run as Administrator). So that's a little annoying, but on the other hand I would still have had to run Steamvr before running E otherwise anyway.Tested on my machine:
1) Running E
straight from Steam (without SteamVR installed)2) Running E
straight from the EDlaunch.exe in the application folder with Steam completely closed.Good luck, and please report if this works for you (or if doesn't).
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