I have a very powerful new computer. Why can't I get it to run Odyssey in VR at satisfactory quality and speed?

I have a new PC with AMD Ryzen 9 and AMD 7900xt. I have a new HP Reverb G2. I have tried running it through Steam and adjusted settings, not that I really know what I am doing, but I can't get a smooth clear image which does not stutter, or it is unclear and really low resolution. I have updated drivers and Windows 11. Help if you can. I am hoping I can do this without having to install OpenXR or anything similar. Thanks in advance.
 
I have a new PC with AMD Ryzen 9 and AMD 7900xt. I have a new HP Reverb G2. I have tried running it through Steam and adjusted settings, not that I really know what I am doing, but I can't get a smooth clear image which does not stutter, or it is unclear and really low resolution. I have updated drivers and Windows 11. Help if you can. I am hoping I can do this without having to install OpenXR or anything similar. Thanks in advance.
Welcome to Elite: Dangerous VR. It's a tricky beast, with plenty of pitfalls that can ruin your VR experience. First thing to note is that Odyssey is notoriously badly optimized. It's really not suitable for a good VR experience. Try Legacy instead. Second thing is to look at settings. Your Reverb has a high native resolution, so there is no need for super sampling of any kind. It only produces artifacts and workload. Any kind of super sampling you can find, set to 1. Last but not least:

It's very easy to mess up VR settings, so if you get too confused, return to default settings wherever possible.

Edit: and also:
 
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Thanks. I have played ED for years and on a flat screen it is all fine. I used to run an Oculus Quest but the quality was not great, acceptable possibly but difficult to read text etc.

The HP Reverb is a great display. Crisp text but the Odyssey performance makes the game almost unplayable. What a shame.

I wonder is there anyone who can play Odyssey in VR and get a good outcome? If so what set up do you have?
 
Thanks. I have played ED for years and on a flat screen it is all fine. I used to run an Oculus Quest but the quality was not great, acceptable possibly but difficult to read text etc.

The HP Reverb is a great display. Crisp text but the Odyssey performance makes the game almost unplayable. What a shame.

I wonder is there anyone who can play Odyssey in VR and get a good outcome? If so what set up do you have?
You've entered the seventh circle of hell. First of all, experience is subjective. Some people love a fuzzy 30 frames per second. So you can't really rely on what people think good performance is.
Second: Elite: Dangerous VR has so many places where you can make a mess.

But when it works, nothing beats it. So don't give up.

I editet my initial post with a second link. Check this out also.

You'll be messing with settings in-game, in SteamVR, Nvidia Control Panel, and in Windows Mixed Reality. And they all compound and affect each other. It's a hot mess.

So now for some good news. You have the hardware to get a good experience. You just have to ignore all the "old" advice regarding older headsets, where super sampling was all the rage, because old headsets had low native resolution. This is a non-issue for you.

Start off with low/default settings in all the aforementioned apps. Install fpsVR from Steam to monitor you actual performance. You should be aiming for 90 frames per second with little or no reprojection and gpu frametime. But performance in/near starports, in RES and near planet surfaces will dip heavily, so be prepared to accept 60 fps at these locations.

Slowly work up the in-game settings. Medium settings are more than enough to make EliteVR look gorgeous. Shadows are very important, but are also a heavy load, so take them as high as you can tolerate.

So. Establish a baseline, and methodically work up from there. Be prepared for frustration and confusion. Return to these forums for support and good advice. :)

Good luck Commander.

Edit: Ignore the in-game VR presets. They are 10 years old and are all over the place.
 
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Thanks. I have played ED for years and on a flat screen it is all fine. I used to run an Oculus Quest but the quality was not great, acceptable possibly but difficult to read text etc.

The HP Reverb is a great display. Crisp text but the Odyssey performance makes the game almost unplayable. What a shame.

I wonder is there anyone who can play Odyssey in VR and get a good outcome? If so what set up do you have?

Since my post in Dec 2021 I've upgraded my GPU to a RTX 4090 and as you would hope/expect/guess can run the game on a G2 at maxed out settings and resolution, literally using brute force to get a good experience. But at a high monetray cost.
 
Since my post in Dec 2021 I've upgraded my GPU to a RTX 4090 and as you would hope/expect/guess can run the game on a G2 at maxed out settings and resolution, literally using brute force to get a good experience. But at a high monetray cost.
You've entered the seventh circle of hell. First of all, experience is subjective. Some people love a fuzzy 30 frames per second. So you can't really rely on what people think good performance is.
Second: Elite: Dangerous VR has so many places where you can make a mess.

But when it works, nothing beats it. So don't give up.

I editet my initial post with a second link. Check this out also.

You'll be messing with settings in-game, in SteamVR and in Windows Mixed Reality. And they all compound and affect each other. It's a hot mess.

So now for some good news. You have the hardware to get a good experience. You just have to ignore all the "old" advice regarding older headsets, where super sampling was all the rage, because old headsets had low native resolution. This is a non-issue for you.

Start of with low/default settings in all the aforementioned apps. Install fpsVR from Steam to monitor you actual performance. You should be aiming for 90 frames per second with little or no reprojection and gpu frametime. But performance in/near starports, in RES and near planet surfaces will dip heavily, so be prepared to accept 60 fps at these locations.

Slowly work up the in-game settings. Medium settings are more than enough to make EliteVR look gorgeous. Shadows are very important, but are also a heavy load, so take them as high as you can tolerate.

So. Establish a baseline, and methodically work up from there. Be prepared for frustration and confusion. Return to these forums for support and good advice. :)

Good luck Commander.

Edit: Ignore the in-game VR presets. They are 10 years old and are all over the place.
Thanks, Globus. It sure is frustrating. Are you saying I should not set the VR (level) in the EDmenu settings?
 
So the issue is the AMD 7900xt running the game? But the RTX runs Odyssey fine in VR?
7900xt should be a bit stronger than 4070ti, so you should be fine, but don't expect miracles. Odyssey is a terrible load in VR and offers mediocre on-foot gameplay that doesn't make any sense in VR, so I will always recommend Legacy for VR commanders. It's a better game in my personal opinion.
 
Thanks, Globus. It sure is frustrating. Are you saying I should not set the VR (level) in the EDmenu settings?
Well. If you look at what the different presets do, they are all over the place. I don't think FD really put a lot of effort in to those presets initially.

As soon as you start tinkering with the in-game settings, E: D creates a custom setting anyway. Personally I would start everything at low settings, hmd quality: 1, no super sampling, shadows medium. This is all in-game.

Edit: I got the 2 mixed up. SteamVR has a resolution multiplier at default 150% if I remember correctly. You need to set both world and per app resolution multipliers at 100%, no more than that.

Windows Mixed Reality is another can of worms... Look, but leave everything at default for now.
 
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Well. If you look at what the different presets do, they are all over the place. I don't think FD really put a lot of effort in to those presets initially.

As soon as you start tinkering with the in-game settings, E: D creates a custom setting anyway. Personally I would start everything at low settings, hmd quality: 1, no super sampling, shadows medium. This is all in-game.

Windows Mixed Reality has a resolution multiplier at default 150% if I remember correctly. You need to set both world and per app resolution multipliers at 100%, no more than that.

SteamVR settings... I can't remember how it looks right now, but make sure that no resolution multiplier is above 100%.

And then you need to minimize all these windows/apps to tray on your 2D monitor (except the game of course), as soon as you have the game up and running. Windows ressource allocation will kill your performance by allocating ressource to these secondary apps if you don't.

You're looking in to a whole lot of trial and error. And most of the time you need to reset the entire PC for changes to take effect, so it's a very cumbersome exercise. But keep your head, and start by establishing a solid 90 frames per second (probably low settings). fpsVR will help you with this. Then slowly add load in the in-game settings until you reach a frames per second that you find acceptable. Just remember that load in space/supercruise is nothing compared to stations/RES/planetary installations.
Brilliant. Makes so much sense.

Thanks
 
Yup. 5800X with a 3090 isn't enough to run EDO happily on the G2 either. I've heard the 4090 can give a good experience, but I think I'll wait until the next generation until I upgrade again.

Thankfully Legacy still exists. :)
 
VR isn't plug and play, sadly there is a lot of tinkering involved. One such thing is the render resolution scaling. If you just leave everything at the default, SteamVR is rendering the game at 150%, which results in a render resolution of 3884x3792 pixels - per eye (the G2 has a panel resolution of 2160x2160 per eye). VR headsets need oversampling to account for pincushion distortion of the lenses, but they seem to overdo it a little bit on the G2 if you ask me. 100% results in a render resolution of 3124x3056 per eye.

You will have to find the right balance between visual fidelity and performance. I have no clue how to judge the performance of your GPU, as I am team NVIDIA. But I run Odyssey on a Ryzen 9 5900X with a 3080 Ti, and I have set my render scale to 60%. Yes, 60 percent. That results in a render resolution slightly larger than the panels, if I remember correctly. From the tests I did with my Eyeballs Mk.I and my lenses, there was no perceivable improvement of visual fidelity beyond 80%. In theory the sharpness of the image at the edges would improve, but the sweet spot of the (my) G2's lenses is so small, any edge improvement gets countered by the edge blurring of the lenses. Running at that high of a default resolution, while technically the headset supports and encourages it, is frankly a waste of power.

Odyssey is also very CPU-heavy, so with my settings, I still end up with reprojection (i.e. half the refresh rate, 45 fps) through both CPU and GPU limiting in busy scenarios. That's just the way it is right now. But be assured, it was much, much worse when Odyssey launched. These days, it is mostly a comfortable experience despite the problems.
 
And now it's broken again, and I'm softlocked at 60fps, and I don't why. I've been controlling it for the last 3 days, but today it doesn't work anymore. I'm stunned, but this is just Elite: Dangerous in a nutshell.

I'm not sure you can use any of my advice. Sorry.

Edit: Found it. Nvidia Control Panel had defaulted back to normal settings. It should always be set to maximum performance.
 
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