Just Picked Up an Oculus Rift

Axilleas · Mar 27, 2017

And I suck at Elite Dangerous again. It's almost like I'm fresh out of pilot school. I know all the things I need to do, I have my Hotas controls memorized (x52 pro), but I'm just struggling in combat with opponents that I would otherwise destroy in 2D.

I think part of it is the immersion factor of physically being in the cockpit. I can no longer check my HUD with a quick glance, I now have to physically move my head to check my stats. It's a whole new learning curve just to find where the basic information is in the cockpit now!

The other part is I'm still trying to fine tune my graphic settings for the best graphic display to performance ratio. I've read every thread I can, but just can't seem to find a balance that works. Every time I think I've found a good setting, my FPS drops below 90 and even goes down to 45 in RES and other areas that have lots going on at once. Very frustrating. (FYI, I'm on an i5-6600k, 16G DDR4 Ram, GTX 1070) Do people find using the SDK tool helps or is that outdated now? If you have a similar build, I'd love to see what settings you use that works for you. From the threads I've been reading, it appears the CPU is a bottleneck right now and I don't think there is anything much I can do until FD optimizes the game some more.

Anyway, I think it might be time for me to go on the 5kly exploration trip for Palin and really get to know the galaxy in all it's VR glory.

tl;dr I suck at combat in VR, thinking I should go exploring to appreciate what VR has to offer

Fly Dangerously CMDRS o7

Hell Razor5543 · Mar 27, 2017

I have been playing in VR for a year now, and with the CV1 since July. I struggled at first, so I went back into the Training Missions. I have not done any tweaking with my GTX970 cards, as I currently don't have any major issues.

SYN_Mars · Mar 27, 2017

Hell Razor5543 said:
I have not done any tweaking with my GTX970 cards

Are you running SLI in Elite or is it just using the single 970?

DragonIV · Mar 27, 2017

I'm only getting 60fps with my i5 6600 and a 1060gtx plus a DK2. 60fps seems fine to me.

In terms of combat, I went the opposite direction. It's way easier to track enemies, and I use Voice Attack to do things like target power plants and the like.

However, I rip the goggles off once I hop into the SRV, as that's barf bag city.

Hell Razor5543 · Mar 27, 2017

I have SLi enabled, but I don't know if Elite: Dangerous makes use of SLi.

Ashnak · Mar 27, 2017

Ok, there are several threads about VR settings.

I found this one very helpful https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/262552-EDProfiler-A-New-Display-Switcher-Robust-Settings-Profiler-Switcher-Detector! , even though I use the tool currently only for setting the HUD colours.

What seems to have the biggest effect are the Super Sampling and HMD Image Quality settings, followed by Ambient Occlusion. What is apparently important for rendering power is the product of SS and HMD - on a 1080, people report settings around 1.25 to 1.5 for the product to work. I run at 1.0 SS and 1.5 HMD (IIRC) and yes, I do drop down into the 45 FPS can't-just-remember-how-Oculus-calls-it faked mode, usually if there is a lot of other ship traffic around or inside a docking bay. It isn't unbearable, though (might have to try 1.25 HMD one of these days). Other people prefer lower SS and higher HMD settings.

As for surface travel, for me, setting the horizon to fixed made all the difference between cold sweat/"where's the bucket" and "I think this actually works ok".

What I did when switching from eyetracking to VR may be a bit extreme - but I did a clear save, and am now (still) buzzing around in a Sidewinder.

Ok, an upgraded Sidewinder - cost between 2 and 4 million, depending on configuration

DragonIV · Mar 27, 2017

Ashnak said:
As for surface travel, for me, setting the horizon to fixed made all the difference between cold sweat/"where's the bucket" and "I think this actually works ok".

I totally was unaware of this setting. Will go look for it and give the barf bucket wagon another college try. Thanks!

Axilleas · Mar 27, 2017

Ashnak said:
Ok, there are several threads about VR settings.

I found this one very helpful https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/262552-EDProfiler-A-New-Display-Switcher-Robust-Settings-Profiler-Switcher-Detector! , even though I use the tool currently only for setting the HUD colours.

What seems to have the biggest effect are the Super Sampling and HMD Image Quality settings, followed by Ambient Occlusion. What is apparently important for rendering power is the product of SS and HMD - on a 1080, people report settings around 1.25 to 1.5 for the product to work. I run at 1.0 SS and 1.5 HMD (IIRC) and yes, I do drop down into the 45 FPS can't-just-remember-how-Oculus-calls-it faked mode, usually if there is a lot of other ship traffic around or inside a docking bay. It isn't unbearable, though (might have to try 1.25 HMD one of these days). Other people prefer lower SS and higher HMD settings.

As for surface travel, for me, setting the horizon to fixed made all the difference between cold sweat/"where's the bucket" and "I think this actually works ok".

What I did when switching from eyetracking to VR may be a bit extreme - but I did a clear save, and am now (still) buzzing around in a Sidewinder.

Ok, an upgraded Sidewinder - cost between 2 and 4 million, depending on configuration

Thanks Ashnak,

I haven't messed around with the ED Profiler yet, I think I'll download it and give it a go. Should at least be helpful in managing settings easier. I'm thinking the exploration trip will be a good opportunity to find the settings that work best with the best FPS for general playing. Then I can practice combat when I get back without having to worry about tweaking settings again.

dogbite · Mar 27, 2017

SYN_Mars said:
Are you running SLI in Elite or is it just using the single 970?

SLI is not supported in VR at this time and has caused issues for some, if one card is not turned off.

Strangepork · Mar 27, 2017

Axilleas said:
And I suck at Elite Dangerous again. It's almost like I'm fresh out of pilot school. I know all the things I need to do, I have my Hotas controls memorized (x52 pro), but I'm just struggling in combat with opponents that I would otherwise destroy in 2D.

I think part of it is the immersion factor of physically being in the cockpit. I can no longer check my HUD with a quick glance, I now have to physically move my head to check my stats. It's a whole new learning curve just to find where the basic information is in the cockpit now!

The other part is I'm still trying to fine tune my graphic settings for the best graphic display to performance ratio. I've read every thread I can, but just can't seem to find a balance that works. Every time I think I've found a good setting, my FPS drops below 90 and even goes down to 45 in RES and other areas that have lots going on at once. Very frustrating. (FYI, I'm on an i5-6600k, 16G DDR4 Ram, GTX 1070) Do people find using the SDK tool helps or is that outdated now? If you have a similar build, I'd love to see what settings you use that works for you. From the threads I've been reading, it appears the CPU is a bottleneck right now and I don't think there is anything much I can do until FD optimizes the game some more.

Anyway, I think it might be time for me to go on the 5kly exploration trip for Palin and really get to know the galaxy in all it's VR glory.

tl;dr I suck at combat in VR, thinking I should go exploring to appreciate what VR has to offer

Fly Dangerously CMDRS o7

Man I just made the move too. Pretty awesome.

After trawling the Web for the best settings, I found moving in game supersampling down enough to allow moving the HMD quality up to 2.0 x made the most difference.

Axilleas · Mar 28, 2017

john willi said:
Man I just made the move too. Pretty awesome.

After trawling the Web for the best settings, I found moving in game supersampling down enough to allow moving the HMD quality up to 2.0 x made the most difference.

Agreed, the immersion is simply amazing.

What GPU are you using and what have you set SS to that allows you to use HMD at 2.0?

X-Terminator · Mar 28, 2017

If you're getting a steady 45fps anytime, this is due to ASW actuating for anything under 90fps for long enough. Even if you disable this (I do) by CNTRL & Numpad 1, this only disables the extra fake frames whilst still capping it at 45fps until it can achieve 90fps again. 45 is totally great enough, 30 is noticeable, but the Stations and RES both have reduced FPS but these also have some stuttered load times. In Live 2.2 this happens for 5secs upon entering these places and then is fine. In BETA 2.3.4 it is butter smooth when entering (sorry for the innuendo) and then stutters a bit when inside the Station - probably due to the extra test routines and loading NPCs.

For now I run Terrain Quality and Terrain Material Quality both on HIGH, Shadows LOW, Bloom MEDIUM, Blur OFF, and HMD SS 1.25. Although I know it will cope at both on ULTRA and HMD SS 1.5 once these areas are released.

To help in combat, all popup panels are disabled and I use VoiceAttack for constant Distributor switching. E

D runs brilliantly on my "non-compatible cpu and usb". Oculus Support do need to have proper tech training and the install program should become no cpu biased like they do and thus prevent many from getting it to even install!

Exigeous · Mar 28, 2017

First congrats and welcome to the group. Personally I didn't have any extra learning curve as I never played Elite without VR. Right after I got my Rift on opening weekend I've been flying with my Warthog and while it took a while to bind things where I wanted it that was no different than the standard learning curve. The muscle memory of where things are without needing to look will come quickly.

2 things to know if you want to do custom binds. First when you want to bind something, say Chaff, close your eyes and think about where you'd put chaff if you built this thing. Once you feel where it goes you can go into the binding menu and set that up. This leads to my 2nd thing to know - NEVER EVER EVER change the left column in bindings. Leave those alone and make your changes in the right column. There may be a few you can't do this for but do your best to keep it this way. The reason is if/when you start using apps like Voice Command it will send the default keystrokes to Elite - so if you change those defaults it can't send the keypresses to execute the command. So you'd either have to go back and set Elite to default or go into Voice Attack and find and change the keys it's sending to the ones you setup. Make sense?

Hell Razor5543 said:
I have SLi enabled, but I don't know if Elite: Dangerous makes use of SLi.

It does not. You used to have to disable it or you'd get all kinds of funky crap but now it works but you're only getting use of one GPU. Check out something like MSI Afterburner and you'll see one of the cores is pegged and the other just sitting there.

Axilleas · Mar 28, 2017

OK, so I messed around some more with the setting last night using the ED Profiler app and I think I've found my optimal settings. I set SS to 1.0 and HMD quality to 1.25x. I'm getting 70-90 FPS in RES for the most part, with it dipping lower at times. I'm pretty satisfied over all and I was able to take on most NPCs in a HAZ RES without any problems, so yay!

Also, I took this setting from the NO2O thread:

Courtesy of Pausanias

0.2, 0, -1
-1, 1, -1
1, 0.31, 1

It's a Green setting, but keeps your hostiles red on radar. Works really well with VR. After using an Orange set up for the last 2+ years, it is definitely a welcome change.