My new Rift! Woohoo! But a couple of questions...

[jamieboo]

I've been up and running with my rift for a couple of days now! Excellent fun!
It's my first taste of VR so everything's astonishing!
Just a couple of things I want to double check here to make sure my headset is working as well as it should.

Things are never going to be in perfect focus, right?
To the right of the on-screen throttle, how clear should the words Transmission Protocol be? If I lean close I can just about make it out, though that's more due to the general word shape rather than individual letter clarity. Is that about right?
A non-text related example is when I look at a gun I'm holding in Robo Recall I can't get it totally in focus regardless of how I position the HMD on my face, or how much I tweak the IPD slider - again, is that to be expected?
Also, in Elite, the stars are all chromatically aberrant smears. I'd read elsewhere on here that they appeared like flat dots of light rather than 'pinpricks' of light, but with me they're pretty much all these smears. And with the chromatic aberration (is that what it's called?) it's as if most stars are almost doubled with a blue clone.
That probably makes the problem sound worse than it actually appears, but I still want to double check if that's just the way it is.
In my astonishment at those elements that DO work, I don't want to overlook the slight possibility that I may have received a faulty HMD with dodgy lenses or something.

I have a 980ti and I'm using SS 0.65 and HMDQ 2.0.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Well the centre area should be in focus. But it's never going to be really sharp.
If you can see the individual pixels in the green line ipd test. That's as good as it will get.
But if you for instance are slightly myopic but don't know it. It could be a possibility.
I doubt you are, just throwing it out there.

The small text in the panels next to your controls are just low res textures. Apart from the top line it's just squiggles.

 

[zarking]

I'm new to the rift too, 1070 with an (ageing) i7 4770 (but 32GB ram).
I love the vr effect, but like you I'm.... not getting the greatest experience graphically.
My trouble is I can't get a steady 90fps in any setting, though I'm settled on 45fps which to me still looks good.
The smearing and lack of clarity is taking a while to get used to, I normally play on a 4k monitor with everything on ultra, now I'm dialling back to medium and trying to get used to (what looks like) 720p.

I have ss on 1, anything less is too much blur, I've pushed it to 1.5 but the performance hit is real I have hmd on 1 or 1.25 depending on whether I'm pushing other settings.
I've kind of accepted that medium settings are the best I'll get until I drop £1600 on a new pc, even though every other game I play in vr runs totally fine, something about elite (or my setup) means that unless I get a 1080ti with a top of the range i7 then it's low res for me.
Am I disappointed? Yes, I expected better, especially since every vr test I ran tells me my setup is "very good" and more than meets the vr requirements.
I don't know how to say this, I bought the oculus for elite, and yet I've spent more time with other games as elite is a mushy, jerky mess for me sure it does look good, and the sense of scale is great, but the lack of ultra settings and crisp graphics is depressing me, to the point I'm going back to 2d for elite until I win the lottery and can replace my PC.

I'm guessing a lot of people that rave about it are already running the latest top spec pc, or are comfortable with very reduced graphics settings, I'm not, two and a half years with elite being a crisp, smooth, amazing detail game on my 2d setup has ruined me, and the fuzzy, low res shadow of the game in VR just isn't doing it for me, controversial I know, but at least lone echo and star trek look fantastic despite my "humble" setup.

Either that or something is drastically wrong with my elite settings, but to get even a steady 45fps in a res site I've got to turn shadows, AO, bloom, blur and anti alaising off and set everything to medium, so that it looks very bland and dull.

Sucks

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Yeah res sites are just horrible.
With my 1080ti I'm settled for mostly high settings.
SS 1 and HMD q at 1.25.

AA, ambient occlusion, blur and bloom are off.

 

[Para Handy]

................

Things are never going to be in perfect focus, right?
................

Elite is to me a disappointment graphically in the Rift, yes the presence and scale is great but definition is not sharp at all. Saying that, in the centre of your view should be quite focused but not as sharp as say a 1440 monitor - given the pixels of course. Anything off-centre to me is blurred and moving my head instead of my eyes is taking some getting used to.

If you go to the Oculus home / store or whatever it is called - look for the free ISS application. If you load that and just go into the space station you will see just how good things could look, it is the most in-focus I have come across so far. Word of warning - in the ISS app - make sure there is nothing 1) breakable, 2) hard, 3) sharp, close by as you honestly will think you are floating and about to bang into things. (You do, but the bruises go down after a few days. )

 

[Schmack]

Elite is to me a disappointment graphically in the Rift, yes the presence and scale is great but definition is not sharp at all. Saying that, in the centre of your view should be quite focused but not as sharp as say a 1440 monitor - given the pixels of course. Anything off-centre to me is blurred and moving my head instead of my eyes is taking some getting used to.

If you go to the Oculus home / store or whatever it is called - look for the free ISS application. If you load that and just go into the space station you will see just how good things could look, it is the most in-focus I have come across so far. Word of warning - in the ISS app - make sure there is nothing 1) breakable, 2) hard, 3) sharp, close by as you honestly will think you are floating and about to bang into things. (You do, but the bruises go down after a few days. )

I'd like to find the voice who's giving the instructional for the arm movement and put a muzzle on him. It's hard enough that the movements seem to have erratic responses, but he has to quip way too often.

 

[A D]

See my post here, should also help with some of the graphics issues:

Post No 43

 

[Y2K]

welcome to VR ^_^ ive had my rift just under a year, wouldnt be without it now and play exclusively in Open/VR always have done. No its not 4k visuals but alot can be done to make it visually stunning! I run mostly ultra in settings with bloom off and shadows low, dont touch the ingame SS the best results are through oculus debug and pushing it as far as your system will go - mines at 1.7. Dont watch the fps counter if you have one enabled - go with what you see in game. for me the optimal placement the top of the rift sits just above my eyebrows, its crystal clear - experiment with the placement - its more important than you think! The single most noticeable improvement i saw was going from hdmi to a display port/hdmi adapter - gave more depth and color to everything, theres a thread on these forums about it called 'rift hdmi users' look it up. Another improvement was the VR true blacks post, also on these forms. The i7 4770 isnt an aging chip, dont be fooled!! got mine on release and its been at 4.4 ever since, its good for another 5yr no problem, it hardly breaks a sweat in anything, even in VR with my settings in Elite its only pushing 20-30% usage ( 32gig 2400 ram ). The single best upgrade you can do is your gfx card, VR eats gfx cards, the better your card - the better your experience. My 1080 is awesome, never crashed once - 6-7hrs/day in VR but im still going to upgrade to a 1080ti in the next month or so - push that debug upto x2. Once youve set things up the text should be crisp and clear just by turning your head to look at the menus - different ships also effect the quality too due to different placement of the menus. Adjusting the hud color can help - again on these forums. I run vanilla orange and its as good ad anything once set up. Elite in VR is the single most amazing game ever, ive over 14000hrs in VR soley on Elite and the sights still amaze me most nights although i e found my space legs along time ago, i remember doing a barrel role in the station first time in vr and almost chucked my lunch up over my keyboard lol - still duck in res sites though if that ship flys by a bit too close ^_^ - experiment, find your settings and leave it alone!! TURN OFF YOUR FPS - its what you see with your eyes in the HMD that matter, not some numbers on a screen you arent even looking at!

 

[zarking]

Alas I don't have the 4770k, just the plain 4770, at 3.6.
Trouble is, if I put ss to 1.7 then it gets very choppy in res sites, and in stations, which is a bit jarring
But, I'll give it a go at 1.25 on the oculus tray tool and use your settings
Do you have asw on?

 

[Y2K]

yeh asw on auto. mine is the K chip but honestly your cpu isnt the problem here, while a great card the 980ti is holding you back. Turn blur off. shadows on lowest or even off. ingame ss leave at 1. try oculus debug at 1.3 and adjust eye candy settings so its stutter free. then try debug at 1.4. - its about getting the perfect balance between performance and visuals. Your 980ti should give you a pretty good experience.

 

[jamieboo]

Thanks for the replies everyone!
I'm interested to hear, Y2K, that everything for you is 'crystal clear'!
HMD placement is the first thing I want to sort out. If I go for your preferred 'just above eyebrows' placement (literally just above - like a mm or so) then I find that my mouth is now inside the headset! I guess I have a tiny face! But of course 'just above' is pretty vague!
So I put the headset on. I lower it and focus will improve. If I keep lowering focus will stop improving then start getting worse. So there is a obvious optimal level (to use an eyebrow reference, the top is a good 2cm above my eyebrows), but it is nowhere near 'crystal clear'. I can then tilt the headset up or down slightly, this can slightly improve things again, but it's never perfectly in focus.
I know the text on the panel to the right of the throttle is a low res texture but how clear should it be? To your eyes, how clear are the words 'Transmission Protocol'?
As for tweaking the debug tool, I haven't even tried downloading it. For some reason I had it in my head that it was a bit redundant after the latest software/runtime thingies.
But I see there's also an Oculus tray-tool thing. Has this superseded the debug tool?

In case it's important, I'm using the 382.05 drivers for my 980ti and I have a i7 5820K and 32GB RAM and all SSD's. I know benchmarks are not to be relied upon, but on VRMark I score '9150 SUPER', which sounds ok I guess?

 

[mahoon]

welcome to VR ^_^ ive had my rift just under a year, wouldnt be without it now and play exclusively in Open/VR always have done. No its not 4k visuals but alot can be done to make it visually stunning! I run mostly ultra in settings with bloom off and shadows low, dont touch the ingame SS the best results are through oculus debug and pushing it as far as your system will go - mines at 1.7. Dont watch the fps counter if you have one enabled - go with what you see in game. for me the optimal placement the top of the rift sits just above my eyebrows, its crystal clear - experiment with the placement - its more important than you think! The single most noticeable improvement i saw was going from hdmi to a display port/hdmi adapter - gave more depth and color to everything, theres a thread on these forums about it called 'rift hdmi users' look it up. Another improvement was the VR true blacks post, also on these forms. The i7 4770 isnt an aging chip, dont be fooled!! got mine on release and its been at 4.4 ever since, its good for another 5yr no problem, it hardly breaks a sweat in anything, even in VR with my settings in Elite its only pushing 20-30% usage ( 32gig 2400 ram ). The single best upgrade you can do is your gfx card, VR eats gfx cards, the better your card - the better your experience. My 1080 is awesome, never crashed once - 6-7hrs/day in VR but im still going to upgrade to a 1080ti in the next month or so - push that debug upto x2. Once youve set things up the text should be crisp and clear just by turning your head to look at the menus - different ships also effect the quality too due to different placement of the menus. Adjusting the hud color can help - again on these forums. I run vanilla orange and its as good ad anything once set up. Elite in VR is the single most amazing game ever, ive over 14000hrs in VR soley on Elite and the sights still amaze me most nights although i e found my space legs along time ago, i remember doing a barrel role in the station first time in vr and almost chucked my lunch up over my keyboard lol - still duck in res sites though if that ship flys by a bit too close ^_^ - experiment, find your settings and leave it alone!! TURN OFF YOUR FPS - its what you see with your eyes in the HMD that matter, not some numbers on a screen you arent even looking at!

Tried this - ss at 1, HMDQ at 1, 1.5 in debug tool. I like it. Prefer it to both ss0.65, HMDQ 2.0 and ss1.0, HMDQ 1.5. Cheers

 

[Y2K]

yup. crystal clear! if i focus i can make out individual pixels, all the onscreen text is clear and readable without having to move in towards it as you say. The position of the hmd all depends on the person, move it around untill you get the best results i was just saying for me it sits just above - probably touching my eyebrows. ingame ss vs oculus debug make alot of difference, ive tried them all and the best results are to leave in game settings alone and use the debug tool for ss. Download ED Profiler - again somewhere on these forums, its excellent for adjusting settings.

 

[jamieboo]

Really? Crikey! All I can think is that I must be slightly myopic then!
Although I will have a play with the debug tool - or tray tool - when I get the chance.

I can also make out all important text without having to lean in, I just mentioned the incidental 'Transmission Protocol' part of the texture as that seems to be a threshold where things go out of focus. I mean can you discern the holes in the 'o's in the word Protocol?

 

[Y2K]

yeh. all text is easily readable. dont forget my system will run it at 1.7ss in the debug tool - makes a hell of a difference! Dont mess about with the ingame ss honestly ive tried it all over the last year.
1. download the oculus debug tool. Vids on utube explaining what to do.
2. download Dr kaiis EDProfiler - edits all tbe gfx settings.
3. run

once your set up and happy with the gfx settings, run oculus home. click on the library. then run debug tool and try 1.3 in the ss and press enter. now minimize it. Run ED. - Adjust settings/ss accordingly.

 

[jamieboo]

Hmm.
So I opened Elite and returned SS and HMDQ to 1.0. I had a little look at the graphics. I closed Elite.
Then I found the debug tool in the Oculus>Support folder (so no need to download it) I changed to 1.7. I did this by just typing in 1.7 where it says Pixels Per Display Pixel Override, then hit Enter. I kept the debug tool open. Is that right?
Then I reopened Elite and honestly couldn't make out that much difference in the graphics quality. The Transmission Protocol word/texture was still blurry. I did notice increased lagginess though so something was going on.
But why did things not appear sharper?
Y2K, you mention clicking on the Library in Oculus Home. Why is that? I haven't downloaded Elite to my Oculus Home. I just run it from the Frontier Launcher. Maybe changing the level in the debug tool only properly works if Elite is run from Oculus Home?
Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Y2K]

im not sure if the debug tool works by just running it through the ED launcher.. Couldnt say, but by the sounds of it its not. To get the debug tool working that the way, you open oculus home, goto library then run the debug tool and enter your wanted ss as you did. I leave it open yes. If you goto your account in the FD store and look up 3rd party keys/codes cant remember which theres a code for the oculus home. Another suggestion would be to run oculus home, goto library and then run the debug tool ect.. ect.. After that run your FD launcher since it still goes through the oculus software.

 

[mahoon]

I don't run elite through Oculus Home either (nor Steam). I do find the Debug tool well, a bit buggy. Sometimes the values stick other times not at all. My starting routing tends to go: launch elite launcher, open debug tool. Hit play on elite launcher, wait until I'm sitting the hangar - alt tab to debug tool, enter the values (hit enter so ensure it's registered - 1.5 will go to 1.500000), then click on elite client and start playing. I do this for all games that require tweaking. I leave the debug tool open on the desktop too but I don't think minimizing it makes any difference. To test, get the framerate visible and select 'force 45 fps, either with or without the ASW' if the fps counter stays at 45 you're good. If it goes above, the values haven't been applied - close debug tool and try it again.

 

[dape]

when i used the debugtool I went in this order and it worked fine:

have HMD set to 1.0 ingame and exit to desktop before you start

open Frontier Launcher
open Oculus Home
open Debug tool and enter desired value for ss
do not close debug tool
launch ED

 

[jamieboo]

when i used the debugtool I went in this order and it worked fine:

have HMD set to 1.0 ingame and exit to desktop before you start

open Frontier Launcher
open Oculus Home
open Debug tool and enter desired value for ss
do not close debug tool
launch ED

That's exactly what I did but I didn't really notice any change.