HTC Vive resolution and focus

[Thogapotomus]

I was just going to ask the same thing. It looks bad again imo. I downloaded beta 3 and played it last night, and it looked significantly better than previously. Now, it feels like it's back where it was before. I don't think I'm going crazy, but maybe my mind is playing tricks. All I know is that last patch was the first time I could play for more than 30 minutes or so due to eyestrain (I was in game for ~4 hours) and now it seems awful again.

Maybe they forgot to carry over the user interface changes?

 

[bitstorm]

Ultimately isn;t it an issue with the screen resolution. I mean I look at the screen and I can see the rgb of each pixel. Frontier can't fix that I don't think unless they blur stuff a bit or makes the fonts bigger or something.

 

[Thogapotomus]

Ultimately isn;t an issue with the screen resolution. I mean I look at the screen and I can see the rgb of each pixel. Frontier can't fix that I don't think unless they blur stuff a bit or makes the fonts bigger or something.

Right. It isn't an issue with the screen resolution. It's an issue with ED, which is why we have this thread, started by Frontier.

Have you played any other games on your Vive? I mean, go to The Lab and inspect stuff close up. It's great, for VR at least. It's a night and day difference compared to ED.

I didn't take pictures or anything, so I can't prove things are different this patch, but it feels way worse compared to last night. (User interface panels, not the game as a whole)

 

[daveylad]

Did anyone notice any changes in todays patch?

Played for about 2 hrs last night and things seem bad again. Kept re-adjusting the headset, wiping the lenses but nothing seemed to work. Things looked blurry!

 

[Dragongard]

it is so sad to see in other vr titles what the vive can perform in comparison to elite dangerous. Its not unplayable i enjoy it nevertheless but its so damn sad Every tech demo looks better then elite.

 

[daveylad]

it is so sad to see in other vr titles what the vive can perform in comparison to elite dangerous. Its not unplayable i enjoy it nevertheless but its so damn sad Every tech demo looks better then elite.

Wholeheartedly agree. If it wasn't for the anti aliasing problem and the UI text it would be so good. I still play it in VR but find I can't play more than an hour or so before my eyes hurt!

 

[Several]

Elite is way past a tech-demo and probably complex to fix. Given time I think Frontier is able to tackle this too, they did a greatjob on the overall game so far.

 

[blestian]

For what it's worth, here is my thoughts on the text readability issue.
While sitting in my pilots seat with the Vive, most of the text is almost readable, with a squint, and really focussed look at what I'm trying to read. Now, If I lean in towards the text, it becomes nice and clear. The problem is that you can't realistically get close enough to the text to read it like that....especially while trying to land or blast some ship in combat.

My honest opinion is the the underlying issue is some sort of focusing problem.....as the text is really clear when you are almost sitting on top of it.

 

[bitstorm]

Right. It isn't an issue with the screen resolution. It's an issue with ED, which is why we have this thread, started by Frontier.

Have you played any other games on your Vive? I mean, go to The Lab and inspect stuff close up. It's great, for VR at least. It's a night and day difference compared to ED.

I didn't take pictures or anything, so I can't prove things are different this patch, but it feels way worse compared to last night. (User interface panels, not the game as a whole)

ED is unique in that it's black with high contrast colours overlaid. If you get a black background and stick say a 1 pixel orange line over it in then surely you're limited in what you can do? I mean you can anti-alias it, but surely if when you are looking at that pre-aa orange line what you seem to see are the individual rgb pixel in the screen, then traditional aa is just not going to cut it. When I view these I don't see a straight orange line, I see like a small triangle wave, which I presume is the pattern of the rgb sub-pixels red/green making orange. Maybe the choice of orange doesn't help, it's r + g equally isn't it.

Spoiler

triangle wave pixel pattern I see on orbit lines:

Actually I'll checkout the space demo in the lab tonight, that one is about as close as ED. It has orbit lines (though I don't think they are high contrast are they? blue?)

With "fixing problems" it's pretty vague, there are lots of issues, some inherent to VR, some will be faults with ED.

"We’re implementing a fix shortly which will improve the quality of focus on the UI which we hope will significantly improve the readability"

(With my very limited knowledge about building vr compatible games!) I'm thinking the space stations can certainly be improved (so much twinkle).

Fonts to a degree due to the non-black background.

"single pixel" items though, orbit lines, stars, forward hud text (not panel text) etc?

 

[Darkfyre99]

Out of curiosity, how many are running the Frontier version, vs the Steam one? And are you running Steam VR?

Because I'm running the Frontier version, and I didn't run Steam VR while playing Elite.

While two hours of experience (so far) isn't a lot, I have yet to notice some of the more common complaints. The text was legible from a seated position, and orbit lines and cursors were clean to the point where I could tell which side of their orbit they were on.

I did think distant stations looked bad at first, until I realized that it was more an artifact of not having a 4K monitor, and I'd noticed that playing YouTube videos in Steam VR produced similar results. Even then, it didn't take too long before I started ignoring it.

 

[Filmgeek47]

Out of curiosity, how many are running the Frontier version, vs the Steam one? And are you running Steam VR?

Because I'm running the Frontier version, and I didn't run Steam VR while playing Elite.

While two hours of experience (so far) isn't a lot, I have yet to notice some of the more common complaints. The text was legible from a seated position, and orbit lines and cursors were clean to the point where I could tell which side of their orbit they were on.

I did think distant stations looked bad at first, until I realized that it was more an artifact of not having a 4K monitor, and I'd noticed that playing YouTube videos in Steam VR produced similar results. Even then, it didn't take too long before I started ignoring it.

Im running the steam version and can see the issues. My understanding though is that regardless of how you launch the game, steam VR is running in the background because the Vive can't function without it.

I do think some have exaggerated the issues (perhaps because the fit of the Vive is very particular; I've only just perfected the fit on mine after using it for over a week).

What I'm still seeing is that the text is readable but looks pretty awful, and there's a nasty shimmer obscuring detail on stations and basically everything outside of the cockpit. Comparing it against other distant objects (i.e. The backdrop of space pirate trainer) elite dangerous appears to have noticeably inferior distant object rendering. My personal theory is that this is due to the game trying to render objects in greater detail or resolution than the Vive can actually display, resulting in them looking worse. Granted, I'm also running the game in VR low on a GTX 780 Ti, and turning up the supersampling temporarily does seem to reduce the prevalence of the distant objects (I actually think it makes the text look blurry though).

Crossing my fingers that frontier can come up with a solution, because it does pretty bad eye strain after an hour or so.

 

[Bongsc2]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4j9km1/psa_the_april_27_steamvr_update_introduced/

I just wanted to point this reddit thread out to everyone. Apparently the latest SteamVR update introduced Fresnel glare and people in the comments section are attributing it to problems in many games including E.

This could be what is causing issues, or a large part of the problem. The OP of the thread has old SteamVR files and is able to reproduce the change in glare and image quality and has included a guide so others can check it out for themselves and the issue can become more known by developers.

Hopefully this helps get to the bottom of the issue.

 

[horizone]

Haven't read through the thread lately but this is my experience:

Oculus DK2 before official VR support with runtime 0.6.0.1
(HMD quality at max at all times, no anti-alias option)

Graphics options at in-game supersampling 1.0x: Pixelated text, lots of aliasing but still sense of sharpness.
Graphics options at in-game supersampling 1.0x, Nvidia supersampling at 1.5: (default Nvidia blur): Fuzzy hi-res
Graphics options at in-game supersampling 1.5x: SUPER CRISP (This is what I am missing)

Now with the Vive

Graphics options at in-game supersampling 1.0x: Pixelated text but still sharpness
Graphics options at in-game supersampling 1.5x: Pixelated and fuzzy at the same time.

It's just like the in-game supersamling option had some form of smoothing added that actually decreases the sharpness rather than increase it (which is why we super-sample).

 

[Darkfyre99]

Im running the steam version and can see the issues. My understanding though is that regardless of how you launch the game, steam VR is running in the background because the Vive can't function without it.

I do think some have exaggerated the issues (perhaps because the fit of the Vive is very particular; I've only just perfected the fit on mine after using it for over a week).

What I'm still seeing is that the text is readable but looks pretty awful, and there's a nasty shimmer obscuring detail on stations and basically everything outside of the cockpit. Comparing it against other distant objects (i.e. The backdrop of space pirate trainer) elite dangerous appears to have noticeably inferior distant object rendering. My personal theory is that this is due to the game trying to render objects in greater detail or resolution than the Vive can actually display, resulting in them looking worse. Granted, I'm also running the game in VR low on a GTX 780 Ti, and turning up the supersampling temporarily does seem to reduce the prevalence of the distant objects (I actually think it makes the text look blurry though).

Crossing my fingers that frontier can come up with a solution, because it does pretty bad eye strain after an hour or so.

Tonight when I load Elite, I'll take a peek to see if Steam VR is running in the background or not. As far as I can tell, Elite looks about as good as the other VR titles I've played. I feel kind of weird not having these issues, so I'm hoping we can narrow down some of the potential variables.

 

[jojon]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4j9km1/psa_the_april_27_steamvr_update_introduced/

I just wanted to point this reddit thread out to everyone. Apparently the latest SteamVR update introduced Fresnel glare and people in the comments section are attributing it to problems in many games including E.

This could be what is causing issues, or a large part of the problem. The OP of the thread has old SteamVR files and is able to reproduce the change in glare and image quality and has included a guide so others can check it out for themselves and the issue can become more known by developers.

Hopefully this helps get to the bottom of the issue.

Well, the fresnel glare is an issue with the properties of the lens; actual physical optical hardware, and if a SteamVR update made it appear worse, that would have to be due to a contrast change in the SteamVR graphical interface.

If we want to be able to see the stuff in the darkness outside our cockpits, in Elite, instead of just a big blob of unwanted light; What we would need, would be a way to dim the bright holograms and cabin accent lights that surround us -- heck, that would be the case even without the glare, just like the instrumentation etc in a car. :7

EDIT: Actually... If I press my eyeballs all the way up to the lenses, and look towards an edge, I can see the fringes around the rendered image out of the corner of my eye, in the opposite direction (as well as the edge near the nose, where the image halves meet), and you know what? -In Elite, it's white out there, past the distorted circular picture. Some of that white light could leak in, too; Even without a direct line of sight, there is internal reflection within the optical assembly...

 

[Mike Kangaroo]

I see no difference between running it through steam or through its own launcher. It does look pixelated but its still enjoyable enough, the guard rails to the entrance of space stations look awful with the pixelation and yeah the text is bad but readable. Looking forward to their tweaks to make it nice and clear like other games though!

I do see the fresnel glare a little bit when looking at the star field, was wondering if turning down the UI glow would help. Also, wonder if they had thought about putting a slight tint on the other side of the lenses to reduce that... or maybe it would make the whole thing more blurry.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Okay, just checked, and I do not see Steam VR running in any of my processes. There are a couple of HTC/Vive processes running, but nothing Steam related that isn't there normally.

Could someone else who doesn't run the Steam version see if they're getting similar results?

Oh, and for reference I have a single EVGA GeForce GTX 980 graphics card.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I ran Elite with Steam VR running this morning, and let me tell you, there was quite a difference.

First and foremost, I noticed the god rays for the first time. Definitely annoying.

Second, MacKenzie Relay looked awful when I arrived. It's one of the fancy stations, and it was like someone turned on the high-beams in the place. I couldn't even see the holographic numbers!

The worst part was that I had to restart my computer just to get things back they were.

Could someone else please test this and see if they get similar results?

 

[J'Zargo]

Okay, just checked, and I do not see Steam VR running in any of my processes. There are a couple of HTC/Vive processes running, but nothing Steam related that isn't there normally.

Could someone else who doesn't run the Steam version see if they're getting similar results?

If you are running ED directly (as I am doing), you will notice 2 processes being started and running while ED is being played (vrserver and vrcompositor), which are both part of the steamvr system.

So although the steamvr gui is not running, the steamvr engine is.

And in my experience, I had no difference running ED with steamvr gui open or not. ED is playable, but has some serious AA issues, as well as frame drop issues in certain scenarios. E.g. Try out asteroid mining. When you hit the asteroid with the mining laser and the chunks are coming flying out the stuttering is horrendeous. And this on my MSI GTX980Ti Gaming fgx card, i7-4770K, 16GB system.

Just lets hope FDev gains more VR rendering experience and provide more optimized VR experiences along the way.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Thanks for the reply.

I took a quick peak this morning, and there's actually another process that runs while Steam VR is open that isn't there when you run Elite without it. I'll do some testing when I get home from work. I'll definitely try out the asteroid mining to see what happens.

So far, I'm not having the issues other people are describing, except during that that one test with Steam VR. Elite looks just as good as other VR games IMO, and I'd like to find out why if I can.