HTC Vive resolution and focus

[Kapow]

It´s true, optimization on planets is very good. But when go to RES.... fire effects , fog and other things like that produces so much judder even when the gpu it´s at 50 % , with or without steamvr can´t handdle these types of effects, at least for me.

Text menus ..... bah , continues as previous versions or even worst....


Text is bad
Almost any situation the game it´s better, more optimization, more effects , more missions.... more and more.... but now RES it´s full of judder with new effects. ...

Someone has suffered this situation?

My rig... i7 6700K 4,7GHz, 980ti, 32 GB 2400Mhz

Text is terrible for me too. (I would have to run supersampling at least at 1.5 but I leave it on 1)
Changing the colours for text made a huge difference. I would love it if you could change UI colours in the game so it doesn't affect your Radar target colours, and info boxes with text boxes, but maybe one day...
However I have everything on Ultra minus the terrain works where I leave the slider on 0 as I didn't see any noticable difference in my tests excluding judder. All effects and lightings are maxed out and I was in Res yesterday with my FDL and no issues or stutter.

My Rig is - i7 5820k, 64GB Ram and 980Ti-6GB, Game is on Hybrid drive, so not a pure SSD mount.

If I turn on supersampling I see jitters in quite a few places unless I don't leave it exactly on the VR high, but I found that the lighting and detail is a bit more enjoyable to me then having SS on 1.5. If I want to use SS 2x I have to use VR low which just isn't favourable to my taste, but it does make the AA less pronounced (However shockingly still not great, just good)

I really hope that FD will get to gear on this and improve the experience for the Vive users as more and more people get Vive and honestly only the ED experience is bit underwhelming in terms of Graphics as everything which is designed to work with Vive looks superb from what I've tried...

I would be very grateful if they kept us updated with any sort of timescales as that would make the waiting a little bit more comfortable with the knowledge that they are working on the issue (which I hope they are ). Sadly we can't use any Reshade injectors at the moment until he makes it compatible with HMDs (supposedly he might be working on that now..). so hopefully we will have options to modify the graphics further later on.

 

[Derage]

So when are we going to get an official response on the issue of Vive quality? It's been a week since 2.1, it's been nearly a month since this thread started and we have yet to hear anything official. Even the changelogs for the patches that stated there would be a fix seemed to be a lie. What's the deal Frontier? I have some very expensive hardware laying around right here that I specifically bought for Elite, and I can't play Elite on it..

 

[blammotoken]

So when are we going to get an official response on the issue of Vive quality? It's been a week since 2.1, it's been nearly a month since this thread started and we have yet to hear anything official. Even the changelogs for the patches that stated there would be a fix seemed to be a lie. What's the deal Frontier? I have some very expensive hardware laying around right here that I specifically bought for Elite, and I can't play Elite on it..

Visual quality is subjective of course, but I think there's a lot of misinformation and grand expectations going around. In my opinion, there is no simple 'bug' or incorrect setting on FD's part; just room for improvement.

One thing that could have been called a bug was the texture filtering on the text, which I believe is now mostly resolved. That said, some of the text (planetary landing HUD, for example) is so small that literally no amount of anti-aliasing techniques can fix it - they will just need to increase the size of those HUD elements for VR users.

The shimmering and aliasing that annoys us is a problem on Rift as well - indeed, it's a problem that plagues any VR game with a large, detailed environment and/or a deferred renderer. When we say stuff like "other Vive games look fine" we're not comparing like for like - the inside of our cockpits look as good as any other Vive game because everything is close and each element is represented by a bunch of pixels. We're seeing our shimmering issues with the more distant items where the number of pixels used to represent them is (and must be) much lower.

I understand there are things a developer can do to mitigate these issues. For example the The Lab's modified Unity renderer and Oculus new Unreal Renderer are using forward rendering and other tricks to assist. Switching Cobra to work in a similar way might (pure conjecture) help, but would likely (also conjecture) be a huge job. They could do less dramatic things too - maybe supersample or antialias the central area of the screen only, and leave the periphery at 1x, to get some compromise between quality and performance, but again this will take some time to get right. I'm no graphics programmer so of course, take any details I say with a pinch of salt.

Anyway I'm playing Elite in the Vive most days now, and it's a great experience for me. The shimmer in the distance is occasionally irritating, but I can read text and play just fine, and I really don't see a dramatic quality difference between Vive and Rift any more (although I have less time spent in Rift, admittedly). Upgrading graphics card helped a lot too - this is an incredibly demanding game compared to the little arcade experiences and tech demos that I play outside of Elite on the Vive.

I've just tried to play and have fun, instead of waiting for some glorious fix to fall out of the heavens and solve all the world's VR rendering problems just for Elite. I'd wager the best we can expect is some gradual, iterative improvements over a longer period.

 

[shadragon]

Text was pretty good with 4X AA tonight. Am running standard HUD colors.

 

[Derage]

Visual quality is subjective of course, but I think there's a lot of misinformation and grand expectations going around. In my opinion, there is no simple 'bug' or incorrect setting on FD's part; just room for improvement.

One thing that could have been called a bug was the texture filtering on the text, which I believe is now mostly resolved. That said, some of the text (planetary landing HUD, for example) is so small that literally no amount of anti-aliasing techniques can fix it - they will just need to increase the size of those HUD elements for VR users.

The shimmering and aliasing that annoys us is a problem on Rift as well - indeed, it's a problem that plagues any VR game with a large, detailed environment and/or a deferred renderer. When we say stuff like "other Vive games look fine" we're not comparing like for like - the inside of our cockpits look as good as any other Vive game because everything is close and each element is represented by a bunch of pixels. We're seeing our shimmering issues with the more distant items where the number of pixels used to represent them is (and must be) much lower.

I understand there are things a developer can do to mitigate these issues. For example the The Lab's modified Unity renderer and Oculus new Unreal Renderer are using forward rendering and other tricks to assist. Switching Cobra to work in a similar way might (pure conjecture) help, but would likely (also conjecture) be a huge job. They could do less dramatic things too - maybe supersample or antialias the central area of the screen only, and leave the periphery at 1x, to get some compromise between quality and performance, but again this will take some time to get right. I'm no graphics programmer so of course, take any details I say with a pinch of salt.

Anyway I'm playing Elite in the Vive most days now, and it's a great experience for me. The shimmer in the distance is occasionally irritating, but I can read text and play just fine, and I really don't see a dramatic quality difference between Vive and Rift any more (although I have less time spent in Rift, admittedly). Upgrading graphics card helped a lot too - this is an incredibly demanding game compared to the little arcade experiences and tech demos that I play outside of Elite on the Vive.

I've just tried to play and have fun, instead of waiting for some glorious fix to fall out of the heavens and solve all the world's VR rendering problems just for Elite. I'd wager the best we can expect is some gradual, iterative improvements over a longer period.

I disagree with quality being subjective, one can find something lower acceptable but quality isn't optimal. I can't read half of the interface even if I look straight at it or get closer. So in that case the game definitely needs to be fixed. Other than that there is still the issue of AA and SS, as it looks right now as if the game is running in a lower resolution than intended. Sure, there are workarounds, but not everyone has the money to drop another small fortune to have the game run with 2.0 SS (which does nothing for text readability by the way), which shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

 

[Kapow]

Visual quality is subjective of course, but I think there's a lot of misinformation and grand expectations going around. In my opinion, there is no simple 'bug' or incorrect setting on FD's part; just room for improvement.

One thing that could have been called a bug was the texture filtering on the text, which I believe is now mostly resolved. That said, some of the text (planetary landing HUD, for example) is so small that literally no amount of anti-aliasing techniques can fix it - they will just need to increase the size of those HUD elements for VR users.

The shimmering and aliasing that annoys us is a problem on Rift as well - indeed, it's a problem that plagues any VR game with a large, detailed environment and/or a deferred renderer. When we say stuff like "other Vive games look fine" we're not comparing like for like - the inside of our cockpits look as good as any other Vive game because everything is close and each element is represented by a bunch of pixels. We're seeing our shimmering issues with the more distant items where the number of pixels used to represent them is (and must be) much lower.

I understand there are things a developer can do to mitigate these issues. For example the The Lab's modified Unity renderer and Oculus new Unreal Renderer are using forward rendering and other tricks to assist. Switching Cobra to work in a similar way might (pure conjecture) help, but would likely (also conjecture) be a huge job. They could do less dramatic things too - maybe supersample or antialias the central area of the screen only, and leave the periphery at 1x, to get some compromise between quality and performance, but again this will take some time to get right. I'm no graphics programmer so of course, take any details I say with a pinch of salt.

Anyway I'm playing Elite in the Vive most days now, and it's a great experience for me. The shimmer in the distance is occasionally irritating, but I can read text and play just fine, and I really don't see a dramatic quality difference between Vive and Rift any more (although I have less time spent in Rift, admittedly). Upgrading graphics card helped a lot too - this is an incredibly demanding game compared to the little arcade experiences and tech demos that I play outside of Elite on the Vive.

I've just tried to play and have fun, instead of waiting for some glorious fix to fall out of the heavens and solve all the world's VR rendering problems just for Elite. I'd wager the best we can expect is some gradual, iterative improvements over a longer period.

I disagree that visual quality is subjective - Art is subjective, but visual quality can be objectified rather well and in ED the AA issues have been known for ages even when not in VR. Using 4k DSR is not the most effective way of providing AA and it is just a lazy solution by devs...

The text is " readable", but still causes eye strain - which is a big issue if you try to play for 2 or 3 hours - My migraine can attest to that.

Your points on VR and AA issues are on point and I agree. This goes greatly into the topic of "Sparkles" with Vive - http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Alex_Vlachos_Advanced_VR_Rendering_GDC2015.pdf

Ultimately the problem is that FD haven't implemented decent AA in Cobra since day one. This is something that I have pointed out a year ago on another thread and the issue persists. The problem is that with VR this problem is much much more pronounced. I agree that the text is "readable" however it causes eye strain which is definitely not desirable. My biggest fear after reading Valves advice on "Sparkle" reduction (I love the term sparkle - so cute ) is that it might include work on their assets as well as on their render engine and if that is the case I fear that Elite Dangerous won't look good in VR for years (until we get GPU's that allow 2x supersampling with Shadows and lighting on Max) as they might never adjust their assets and their engine properly to work in VR... I really hope I'm wrong about this.

My main problem is that the atmosphere in VR has a direct link to the lighting and shadow quality, so If I reduce the quality of lighting and shadows to accommodate the AA issue reduction by 2x supersampling I'm loosing all the atmosphere or I can have the atmosphere, but have pixels jumping at me left and right... To be honest the AA has been an issue in all versions of ED I can think off. Play the game on a PC in 1080p with SS at 1.0 and you will know what I mean - it just looks bad... Sadly VR multiplies this issue.

PS All of the above are my personal opinions and while I'm a programmer as well as software developer my expertise doesn't reside in VR, so I can only asses the situation from the material I've managed to read up...

I hope that ED adjust their AA to offer one specifically for VR following Valves tips, but I wonder when and if this will happen. Maybe one of the devs can come in the thread and chip in with their thoughts on the matter as I believe that a lot of us users would be interested in hearing the more technical answer to the issues.

 

[Koreldan]

so say we all !

 

[Magic Man]

Ultimately it has to come down to the implementation in ED. The Rift and Vive share the exact same resolution and similar OLED panels, the lenses and eye distance are marginal factors.
As other games have shown, there is no reason that image quality should really be that different at all.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Is it just me, or has the game started looking better since the latest nVidia driver and Vive firmware updates?

Or am I simply getting so used to things in VR that my brain's started to ignore the anti-aliasing issues?

I mean, it's still not quite "Steam Workshop Elite Themed Background" quality, but tonight as my ship was lifted up from the hanger at the back of a docking bay, and looked at the mail slot, I couldn't help but think, 'Where'd the anti-aliasing issues go?'

Then I lifted off and and maneuvered towards the green side of the slot, and thought, 'Oh, there they are. '

 

[Kapow]

Is it just me, or has the game started looking better since the latest nVidia driver and Vive firmware updates?

Or am I simply getting so used to things in VR that my brain's started to ignore the anti-aliasing issues?

I mean, it's still not quite "Steam Workshop Elite Themed Background" quality, but tonight as my ship was lifted up from the hanger at the back of a docking bay, and looked at the mail slot, I couldn't help but think, 'Where'd the anti-aliasing issues go?'

Then I lifted off and and maneuvered towards the green side of the slot, and thought, 'Oh, there they are. '

Could you please let me know when did you last update/what drivers are you on ect? I can then test, but the 368.22 drivers on NVidia had the terrible purplish flicker in the corners for me , so I've downgraded the drivers... Not sure if there was any Steam VR update pushed in the last few days or if you are in Beta... I'm on Nvidia 368.19 to avoid the flicker I had in 368.22. Personally myself I've experienced little to no change in the recent updates/firmwares, so if there are some good news from other users I'm all ears

 

[Rumik]

I jumped on ED on Vive myself today and honestly? Really underwhelmed It didn't look any better than on the Oculus DK2 My res it set to 1920x1200, and I've tried quality settings High, Ultra, Low VR and High VR, but it doesn't make any difference. I'm running it on a GTX 970. Any tips on improving the quality?

Thanks

 

[mbcx4jrh]

Unfortunately I think it's you ... still looks naff compared to dk2 for me. latest nvidia drivers, latest steam vr & latest firmware..

 

[Calv45]

Game looked awful after update but once i changed quality to High VR it looks much better and runs silky smooth.Smoother than my DK2. Still get some shimmering which i resolved before the update but now is back.Not as bad though. 980 ti latest driver 368.22

 

[Kapow]

Game looked awful after update but once i changed quality to High VR it looks much better and runs silky smooth.Smoother than my DK2. Still get some shimmering which i resolved before the update but now is back.Not as bad though. 980 ti latest driver 368.22

The 368.22 drivers cause a purple shimmer on the sides (out of the core view area). Even though it is out of the main view it can be a distraction as it bleeds over to the core view area. To fix it - reinstall drivers to version 368.19- that fixed it for me. I can play it on VR high with shadows, bloom and ambient at 90fps if I leave SS on 1 or have it on VR High with settings left as they are by default and crank up the SS to 1.5.

Hope the above helps

 

[Calv45]

The 368.22 drivers cause a purple shimmer on the sides (out of the core view area). Even though it is out of the main view it can be a distraction as it bleeds over to the core view area. To fix it - reinstall drivers to 368.19- that fixed it for me. I can play it on VR high with shadows, bloom and ambient at 90fps if I leave SS on 1 or have it on VR High with settings left as they are by default and crank up the SS to 1.5.

Hope the above helps

Nice one mate,i'll give that a try tonight

[hotas]

 

[Darkfyre99]

Could you please let me know when did you last update/what drivers are you on ect? I can then test, but the 368.22 drivers on NVidia had the terrible purplish flicker in the corners for me , so I've downgraded the drivers... Not sure if there was any Steam VR update pushed in the last few days or if you are in Beta... I'm on Nvidia 368.19 to avoid the flicker I had in 368.22. Personally myself I've experienced little to no change in the recent updates/firmwares, so if there are some good news from other users I'm all ears

I've got 368.22 installed right now, and I think the firmware update was a couple of days ago, IIRC. There was also a SteamVR update on the sixth, as well as one on the 2nd. I have Steam update everything automatically, so that may have been that.

There's also a new driver update from nVidia today, waiting for the "go" signal.

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Unfortunately I think it's you ... still looks naff compared to dk2 for me. latest nvidia drivers, latest steam vr & latest firmware..

I sometimes wonder if the fact that I don't run SteamVR before running Elite (non-Steam version) is part of the reason why I'm getting better results than others. There was a brief time where I had to run SteamVR first, but it was thankfully brief.

I also play VR High, without any supersampling or tweaks besides turning blur off.

Video Card is a GTX 980, i7 quad core processor, robust motherboard, SSD, and 16 gigs of RAM.

 

[Derage]

Soon another week has passed and another week we heard nothing on the matter from Frontier.

With every day passing I just get more and more the feeling they are just going to let the issue 'solve' itself, meaning they'll eventually claim the hardware is the issue and not the game and that we should all upgrade to €800+ GPUs. Even though there are plenty of cross-HMD VR games releasing that do not seem to have so much issues with rendering on both devices. Hell, I'm almost sure my cardboard VR attempt for Elite looked on par with how the Vive renders.

 

[FragMonkey]

Bumping this as we still need a solution from FDEV.

 

[Kapow]

I've got 368.22 installed right now, and I think the firmware update was a couple of days ago, IIRC. There was also a SteamVR update on the sixth, as well as one on the 2nd. I have Steam update everything automatically, so that may have been that.

There's also a new driver update from nVidia today, waiting for the "go" signal.

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I sometimes wonder if the fact that I don't run SteamVR before running Elite (non-Steam version) is part of the reason why I'm getting better results than others. There was a brief time where I had to run SteamVR first, but it was thankfully brief.

I also play VR High, without any supersampling or tweaks besides turning blur off.

Video Card is a GTX 980, i7 quad core processor, robust motherboard, SSD, and 16 gigs of RAM.

I see no noticable difference between launching with Steam VR on or Off. Both look jagged, sparkly without SS at least on 1.5 which of course means shadows on Medium or low and ambient lighting off . I've tried to do side by side and my mate helped me as well and unless there is some placebo effect, neither of us could see a noticable difference... The scale is equally broken on both and we both felt like having a body of a 12 year old selfs when looking down at the body... each of us have different iris distance settings and we have tweaked the lenses for our own distances.. Results were the same regardless..

Hi everyone,

We’ve had a number of people mentioning that their experience in the HTC Vive is not as sharp or contains resolution/focus issues which are specific to aliasing.

We wanted to post up a quick update on our progress relating to these issues and keep you informed.

We’re implementing a fix shortly which will improve the quality of focus on the UI which we hope will significantly improve the readability. We are continuing to work on additional anti-aliasing techniques and hope to be able to share more news on these improvements soon.

We understand the frustration that this can cause and we truly appreciate your patience while we continue to work on additional fixes.

Thanks

Zac

Would be really nice to hear from Zac if this will be fixed as my mate has an order on Vive and is now considering dropping the order as ED is his main game.. Sadly oculus is not an option at the moment plus he does love the room scale (same as me) Excluding ED I love my Vive on other games and would not trade for Oculus, but I really really hope that FD shares some news about the new AA and lets us know that they are working on the scaling bug as well.. is there anything you could share with us Zac?

 

[SpeedMATS]

Zac,

It's been exactly a month since your communication stating there would be an update with 'significant' improvement to text readability. Recent updates have shown a negligible improvement (from my perspective) but no further word from FD.

Its clear there is a strong appetite by the early Vive adopters to understand what the FD stance is on the quality issues. This is very apparent across many forums.

Personally I've been playing Dangerous for over a year now after re-discovering it since the 80's when I was using a BBC Micro. And I've been having a great time. In fact I ended up buying a PC and Hotas just for this. Adding the Vive into the mix and considering I'm not that interested in other games I've probably invested close to £2,500 just to fly a space ship!! That's some serious cash (especially when you have 4 kidlings).

My point is there are plenty of people who have heavily invested in the tech to get the best experience. Don't get me wrong, what we have now is incredible. But it could be better. We know that and FD have said it.

It could be that the Cobra engine is fundamentally misaligned with VR and major re-engineering is required. Or it's a much lighter effort but due to 2.1 drop, resources are scarce to allocate to the problem. Maybe you have 1 bod locked in a room and not allowed out until incremental fixes are rolled out.

Whichever, we just need an indication of what's what and what your VR roadmap looks like. Knowing something is days, weeks or months away will go a long way to calming the VR community down.

Thanks for listening