If any of you with a Steam key for ED would care to help me try and see why some people say the game looks worse when started from Steam than standalone, please see this post for the data I need: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=245795&p=3836366&viewfull=1#post3836366
HTC Vive's Resolution Issue In Elite: Dangerous Is Damning
- Thread starter JonnyBigBoss
- Start date
Just tried it with my Vive... res looks blocky but the worst thing is the jerky motion. Flying in asteroid field the movement is in juddery steps. This I attribute to the abysmal performance of SteamVR since the game runs very smoothly on DK2 with 1.3 and GTX 970.
My Vive arrived today. Only had a quick play but much better than the DK2. Personally I find it very comfortable, it's so light. Makes me wonder what the CV1 is like.
Elite looked good me and very smooth. Tried Fantatic Contraption and that was a judder fest. Also using a 970.
Will test again tomorrow when I have more time
I would have to reduce Elite Horizons to lowest detail again to have any hope of running ok with Vive because of steamvr.
It looks more pixelated than DK2 so I guess this is the issue everyone's complaining about. No way could I get away with 1.5 super sample on steamvr.
Odd that, I have a i7-4770 + (sometimes OCed) 970 and it's silky smooth on VR Low. Do you get judder with the VR Low preset, so we are comparing apples to apples here? Is this judder the default configuration on a new install via Steam? Would you care to provide me that default Settings.xml as described in the post I linked above?
The game was running fine before the ED update that came a few days before the official Oculus SDK 1.3 release. All of the issues that people have pegged as starting with that Oculus release began for me upon updating Elite to 2.0.7, which came out the Friday before Easter (with Oculus release being the following Monday.)
You played on the Vive before the SDK update? Was it similar to the Oculus experience then? I find it strange if that were the case they didn't do a rollback or something, it comes awfully close to looking like they sabotaged the Vive compatibility...
"We just have to update this new SDK for Oculus now."
"Shall we test if it breaks anything for the Vive?"
"Nah, what can possibly go wrong, it used to work fine!"
"But what about it being a launch title and everyth.."
"NO! WE SHALL ONLY TEST IT ON THE OCULUS!! IT'S FINE!"
Just one second with a Vive would've probably said enough...
To be fair though - even the DK2 was essentially unusable in multiple VR runtime releases. FD presumably tested those and found the performance acceptable enough - but many people found the result unacceptable. It's only very recently, or very long ago, that everything worked smoothly - and of course there are still problems.
I was going to travel to have some Vive hands-on time a while back, but was bluntly told it would be a wasted journey as it simply didn't work. I hope HTC / FD can get this all sorted - but I think it may not just be a simple software fix.
I find this verryyyyyy interesting, and it makes me hopeful.
![[HJ]-RedRaven](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/67/67389.jpg?1553527112){kind=avatar}
The resolution ED outputs is the same for both. FD has stated that.
The apparent or perceived resolution is lower. I'm not arguing with that - the experience is that you see less detail.
On further thought, it cannot be the driver, since that sits before the video card; it just handles the HMD tracking and possibly sound/mic/camera (on the Vive).
It could be the actual lenses, or the distortion shader that's specific to the HMD (and may be specific to ED's viewpoint/render). Any mis-match between the lens optics and the distortion filter will result in all manner of artifacts (portions 'lost', overprinted or repeated etc, or stretched or squashed together).
The output from ED is identical for both HMD's. ED says "here's a frame, deal with it and be snappy". But that doesn't mean the output is the same for both HMD's - its obvious it isn't!
There is the mesh distortion filter that is run after ED's rendering is finished but before its sent to frame buffer for final output to the HMD.
That filter bends the ED image to cater to the different lens characteristics. There are different techniques to accomplish this process.
It may well be this part that is at fault. Damaged, incorrect, or doesn't match/complement the actual shipping lenses installed in the Vive units being sold. It might effectively down-sample, or incorrectly distort the ED frame, resulting in the poor image quality that the Vive users are seeing.
The distortion shader would likely be provided by HTC/Valve, or Oculus, since the lenses are specific to the hardware (and different for the CV1, DK1 and DK2, I presume the Vive Pre is the same as the Vive).
This may be why FD refers to the ED output as identical, because FD doesn't control the distortion shader - Valve/HTC and Oculus provide that to them. It might become part of ED when FD patch it in, or the shader might be installed externally in the SteamVR software (and ED just loads it/re-builds it when needed). This bit we don't know.
All speculation on my part, but given the HMD's work in other games, and the Rift works in ED, this distortion shader/filter is the likely culprit. Who knows how difficult it is to fix/change/experiment with. I just hope for Vive owners that they fix it soon.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
*Mod hat off
Thanks for this post. About your last paragraph. If those distortion shaders were at fault and if it is HTC/Valve who provides them, how come the Vive seems to work fine in other games?
Thanks for this post. About your last paragraph. If those distortion shaders were at fault and if it is HTC/Valve who provides them, how come the Vive seems to work fine in other games?
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I can do that today. I will also set down to the Low preset and give it a try but really it's crazy... With Octopus 1.3 I can set ED significantly above low. I'm doubtful about the experience if I do set ED to Low for Vive because the lack of ATW is a massive problem.
I'm using a i5 2500k CPU at 4.8ghz. The only thing that occurs to me is that I'm not PCIe 3.0 and not full bandwidth for the GTX 970. In other words the 970 on my CPU won't be running full potential....
Well I am wondering if ED was rendering to a higher res and this was dropped slightly when tuning for the Oculus, due to its slightly smaller field of view.
If so then it's possible the issue then became visible on the Vive due to ED having been previously tuned for Vive.
From the resolutions I've seen being thrown around ED is rendering to the Vive recommended resolution of x1.4 so I'm not sure.
But if it is, Frontier could be looking at rendering in higher res for Vive only which although a quick fix and would keep some folk happy, really would not be a good solution and Vive owners should not be too happy with that.
Like you say, all speculation but if it is this there are probably other ways to solve/mitigate any issue, but those are gonna need a proper investigation.
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You didn't buy a Vive for one game though ... As that would be a bit silly in reality (VR or otherwise).
VR is new tech, you are an early adopter, so these things are to be expected. The way this is being reported is that in some way FD are guilty of ruining people's lives or something. Or that its some sort of mass conspiracy to make the Vive look bad.
You can't expect stuff like this work out of the box on day 1, and to be fair to FD they have quite a bit on their plate currently getting 2.1 out of the door. I'm sure it will get fixed at some point. I mean we had to wait 6 months for AMD to sort their supercruise bug out.
Step back, take a chill pill.
Assuming you have nvidia, any juddering 'should' be resolvable by disabling SLI (entirely or just for the elite executable) and if there is still some after that you can look at changing the supersampling level to one that works best for you and also try dropping down the quality of the shadows. At first mine was unusable on 2x980Ti because of the judder. SLI off removed it almost completely and it only started to reappear if I had shadows too high or supersampling above 1.5x.
Disabling SLI? I am using a single GPU????
Supersampling below 1 you mean? Isn't that a bit crazy when DK2 is very smooth at 1.0 supersampling and above "low" settings.
You are using a 980ti... big difference in performance.
No worries - if I have the general pipeline correct, then the distortion shader is possibly program-specific. Each program renderer might have its own specific settings that require a custom VR distortion shader. I.e. Unreal4 engine might need a slightly different distortion over Cobra engine in ED. Not all renderers use the same FOVsetting, viewpoint, or handle perspective in the same way. Its certainly different for the different HMD's, and possibly complex enough that FD will only 'support' ie embed the shaders for the top-selling HMD devices.
If that's true then its certainly possible for the Vive to work in some games and be horribly broken in others. Just like some video card drivers are broken/sub-par for certain games.
I'm also guessing that the actual shader testing is done by a human, wearing the HMD for which the shader is required. A test pattern is shown, followed by tweaking of the math behind the shader, to get it to look right (to a human). A modeled/back-calculated shader based on the optics alone will probably only serve as a starting point.
But testing like this might take what, a day for ED, some testing by other hoomans and final signoff... but then it may have to wait for Valve to get around to making a patch release, or FD (or both).
Just guesses.
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