New Rift user questions concerning 45fps vs 90fps and ASW

[Griever_XIV]

Hey guys,
Just got my rift 2 nights ago and I love it, spending most of my time tweaking settings atm though and Im wondering what is best for Elite.

I have a 1080 FTW overclocked, and I've been using the VR Ultra setting, but I notice that if I leave HMD/SS at 1, the frame rates go from 90 to 45 (ASW kicking in). If I bring us HMD to 1.5 - 1.8, I get a much clearer image but with a steady 45fps.

All the games I've played so far, Elite is the only one that has been making me motion sick (lots of spinning and no ground reference maybe). I figure I'll get used to that, but Im thinking the ASW and 45fps might be playing a role.

Do you guys think it would be better for me to aim for 90fps and leave HMD at 1-1.2 at the cost of clarity, or should 45fps with higher HMD be best?

Thanks

 

[Dibiase]

I have the 1080 as well and have been playing around with the setting for a couple weeks. I would get motion sick in the SRV when I had everything set up on Ultra. I ended up going with HMD at 1.25, SS at 1, and most of the other settings at High. This gives me a pretty steady 90 FPS and not motion sickness.

 

[Alec Turner]

Hey guys,
Just got my rift 2 nights ago and I love it, spending most of my time tweaking settings atm though and Im wondering what is best for Elite.

I have a 1080 FTW overclocked, and I've been using the VR Ultra setting, but I notice that if I leave HMD/SS at 1, the frame rates go from 90 to 45 (ASW kicking in). If I bring us HMD to 1.5 - 1.8, I get a much clearer image but with a steady 45fps.

All the games I've played so far, Elite is the only one that has been making me motion sick (lots of spinning and no ground reference maybe). I figure I'll get used to that, but Im thinking the ASW and 45fps might be playing a role.

Do you guys think it would be better for me to aim for 90fps and leave HMD at 1-1.2 at the cost of clarity, or should 45fps with higher HMD be best?

Thanks

In theory, when it says 45fps and ASW kicks in you should still be getting 90fps in the headset (the game's running at 45fps and Oculus is generating the in-between frames). I wouldn't have thought that this would contribute to motion sickness (but it might). Low frame rate definitely does but you're not really getting low frame rate. Generally re: motion sickness, ED in VR just takes some getting used to (especially the SRV). Give it time, don't push it and you should get accustomed to it in a week or so.

That said, if you're in a tweaking phase, personally I'd aim for 90fps with ASW turned off (press Ctrl+NumPad 1) under all but the most testing circumstances. That way you know your machine is generally capable of generating the frames at the quality you've specified and ASW is only kicking in for special cases.

I too have a 1080 and the settings I arrived at to achieve this were:

SS = 1.0
HMD Quality = 1.25
Bloom/Blur/Ambient Occlusion/DoF = off
Shadows = high
Anti-aliasing = off
Everything else set to the absolute max.

Also, turn down the gamma until deep space is actually black and probably turn down the HUD brightness too to reduce glare/god rays.

Worth checking out drkaii's EDProfiler if you haven't already and maybe getting some more VR friendly HUD colours.

 

[dogbite]

VR sickness, affects everyone differently and some not at all. Most get used to it in short order as they build up tolerance. if you find lower settings comfortable, start there for awhile and work your way up as you get used to it. Try turning off ASW, then your fps won't drop to 45, but only fill in the missing frames to maintain 90. If your fps is high enough with ASW off (depending on your graphics settings) you may find you can better adjust and more quickly adapt. You really need to find your own personal comfort point. As many have said, the brain is wonderful at adjusting. Avoid more intense situations, take breaks when you start to feel some nausea and you should be able to build up your "VR Legs". I have only seen a very very few posts where people don't adjust. Since motion sickness is something people get in Real Life, think of it as an excellent and convincing simulation. Some RL pilots over at DCS World have remark how thrilled they were that this happens in VR as it does in RL and makes things more convincing for them.

 

[Griever_XIV]

In theory, when it says 45fps and ASW kicks in you should still be getting 90fps in the headset (the game's running at 45fps and Oculus is generating the in-between frames). I wouldn't have thought that this would contribute to motion sickness (but it might). Low frame rate definitely does but you're not really getting low frame rate. Generally re: motion sickness, ED in VR just takes some getting used to (especially the SRV). Give it time, don't push it and you should get accustomed to it in a week or so.

That said, if you're in a tweaking phase, personally I'd aim for 90fps with ASW turned off (press Ctrl+NumPad 1) under all but the most testing circumstances. That way you know your machine is generally capable of generating the frames at the quality you've specified and ASW is only kicking in for special cases.

I too have a 1080 and the settings I arrived at to achieve this were:

SS = 1.0
HMD Quality = 1.25
Bloom/Blur/Ambient Occlusion/DoF = off
Shadows = high
Anti-aliasing = off
Everything else set to the absolute max.

Also, turn down the gamma until deep space is actually black and probably turn down the HUD brightness too to reduce glare/god rays.

Worth checking out drkaii's EDProfiler if you haven't already and maybe getting some more VR friendly HUD colours.

Thanks for the tips, Ill try these settings tonight! Do you know if theres a way I can turn off ASW without ctrl numpad 1? My keyboard doesnt have a numpad...

 

[dogbite]

In theory, when it says 45fps and ASW kicks in you should still be getting 90fps in the headset (the game's running at 45fps and Oculus is generating the in-between frames). I wouldn't have thought that this would contribute to motion sickness (but it might). Low frame rate definitely does but you're not really getting low frame rate. Generally re: motion sickness, ED in VR just takes some getting used to (especially the SRV). Give it time, don't push it and you should get accustomed to it in a week or so.

A valid point. My thinking was that less duplicated frames might be less unsettling for those who have VR sickness. Even though ASW is returning fps to 90, duplicating half the frames may be less smooth to the unconscious mind even if the effect isn't apparent to the conscious mind. As I seem to be immune, I suppose I might be grasping at straws with that. I guess only those that do suffer could testify as to whether there is a benefit in that regard. Perhaps Griever will try it and give us his take on that one.

 

[Alec Turner]

Thanks for the tips, Ill try these settings tonight! Do you know if theres a way I can turn off ASW without ctrl numpad 1? My keyboard doesnt have a numpad...

Errr ... that's a good question (and a quick search of Oculus forums doesn't suggest a trivial answer).

One thing you could try is a neat little utility that I hear good things about called the Oculus Tray Tool ..

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5okoju/oculus_tray_tool/

I believe it has options to specify default ASW settings for each game that you run.

Note: I'm not saying you should generally run with ASW off (although you could), just that you need to turn it off in order to see the true frame rate you're getting when you press Ctrl+F in ED.

 

[Orvidius]

I too have a 1080 and the settings I arrived at to achieve this were:

SS = 1.0
HMD Quality = 1.25
Bloom/Blur/Ambient Occlusion/DoF = off
Shadows = high
Anti-aliasing = off
Everything else set to the absolute max.

Also, turn down the gamma until deep space is actually black and probably turn down the HUD brightness too to reduce glare/god rays.

I have a 1070, and pretty much agree here (quoting for reference), with some minor differences. I like to leave Bloom on, so that you get proper glowing effects. Without it, you won't see custom colors on the pulse skins and weapon effects, for instance. Bloom by itself doesn't seem to impact the framerate to any noticeable degree.

One important note is that since the Rift really boosts the brightness at the low end, you can add a custom graphics config that will help remove some of the blasted out dark colors, such as in the space clouds that should normally be almost invisible. You can add a graphics override file if it doesn't already exist. The example below also sets HUD colors, with the default orange, for reference:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<GraphicsConfig>
  <HDRNode_Reference>
    <ToeDenominator>0.2050</ToeDenominator>
    <ToeStrength>0.2300</ToeStrength>
  </HDRNode_Reference>
  <GUIColour>
    <Default>
      <LocalisationName>Standard</LocalisationName>
      <MatrixRed>1, 0, 0</MatrixRed>
      <MatrixGreen>0, 1, 0</MatrixGreen>
      <MatrixBlue>0, 0, 1</MatrixBlue>
    </Default>
  </GUIColour>
</GraphicsConfig

I have:

SS = 0.65
HMD Quality = 2.0
Blur = off
Bloom = on
Ambient Occlusion = off
Anti-aliasing = off

And Gamma set to around 25%, on the slider.

These settings shift the anti-aliasing/supersampling workload to the HMD/drivers, which seems to work pretty well. The text is about as clear as it's going to get, at the Rift's resolution. It will definitely lock to 45 FPS with ASW, when inside stations. I find this acceptable personally, since the outside world is updating at 45, but your eyes still get 90 FPS for purposes of headtracking, etc.

 

[Griever_XIV]

I have a 1070, and pretty much agree here (quoting for reference), with some minor differences. I like to leave Bloom on, so that you get proper glowing effects. Without it, you won't see custom colors on the pulse skins and weapon effects, for instance. Bloom by itself doesn't seem to impact the framerate to any noticeable degree.

One important note is that since the Rift really boosts the brightness at the low end, you can add a custom graphics config that will help remove some of the blasted out dark colors, such as in the space clouds that should normally be almost invisible. You can add a graphics override file if it doesn't already exist. The example below also sets HUD colors, with the default orange, for reference:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<GraphicsConfig>
  <HDRNode_Reference>
    <ToeDenominator>0.2050</ToeDenominator>
    <ToeStrength>0.2300</ToeStrength>
  </HDRNode_Reference>
  <GUIColour>
    <Default>
      <LocalisationName>Standard</LocalisationName>
      <MatrixRed>1, 0, 0</MatrixRed>
      <MatrixGreen>0, 1, 0</MatrixGreen>
      <MatrixBlue>0, 0, 1</MatrixBlue>
    </Default>
  </GUIColour>
</GraphicsConfig

I have:

SS = 0.65
HMD Quality = 2.0
Blur = off
Bloom = on
Ambient Occlusion = off
Anti-aliasing = off

And Gamma set to around 25%, on the slider.

These settings shift the anti-aliasing/supersampling workload to the HMD/drivers, which seems to work pretty well. The text is about as clear as it's going to get, at the Rift's resolution. It will definitely lock to 45 FPS with ASW, when inside stations. I find this acceptable personally, since the outside world is updating at 45, but your eyes still get 90 FPS for purposes of headtracking, etc.

Does lowering SS and bringing up HMD really give the desired effect? It seems weird to me that you wouldnt either lose performance or quality... Ill have to test tonight.

 

[Alec Turner]

Does lowering SS and bringing up HMD really give the desired effect? It seems weird to me that you wouldnt either lose performance or quality... Ill have to test tonight.

This is a damn good question which I've yet to see a fully satisfactory answer to. From a purely objective point of view it seems like madness to ask the game to generate a lower than optimal resolution image and to then get the Oculus software to SS that up to higher than necessary resolution before finally downscaling back onto the actual HMD display. Surely "garbage in garbage out" and all that jazz? This is why I use SS=1.0 HMD=1.25 rather than say SS=0.75 HMD=1.75. However ... a lot of people swear by this, regularly doing things like SS=0.6 HMD=2.0 (which asks the game to generate only 60% of the pixels (detail?) it could generate and then gets Oculus HMD quality to scale that up to 120% of what's needed - conjuring the extra pixels out inbetweening guesswork). Sorry, that sounds like I'm having at go at people who set SS to less than 1.0. I'm not, I'm just baffled that it seems to work.

 

[Griever_XIV]

This is a damn good question which I've yet to see a fully satisfactory answer to. From a purely objective point of view it seems like madness to ask the game to generate a lower than optimal resolution image and to then get the Oculus software to SS that up to higher than necessary resolution before finally downscaling back onto the actual HMD display. Surely "garbage in garbage out" and all that jazz? This is why I use SS=1.0 HMD=1.25 rather than say SS=0.75 HMD=1.75. However ... a lot of people swear by this, regularly doing things like SS=0.6 HMD=2.0 (which asks the game to generate only 60% of the pixels (detail?) it could generate and then gets Oculus HMD quality to scale that up to 120% of what's needed - conjuring the extra pixels out inbetweening guesswork). Sorry, that sounds like I'm having at go at people who set SS to less than 1.0. I'm not, I'm just baffled that it seems to work.

Yeah ive been reading around here and on reddit and I keep seeing low SS and high HMD settings and I just cant figure out what the science behind it is. If the performance is increased, there HAS to be some sort of visual quality loss... Especially if youre asking to run the game so downscaled. Im sure someone whos tested this thoroughly could give more insight.

 

[dogbite]

Thanks for the tips, Ill try these settings tonight! Do you know if theres a way I can turn off ASW without ctrl numpad 1? My keyboard doesnt have a numpad...

You can turn it off with the "debug tool in your Oculus folder-it's in \Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics It's handy to have a shortcut to it. You can also do things like display rendering and such in the Rift. Leave it running while using it for settings to be in effect or you can turn it off after your in game if the game allows alt/tab to the desktop

 

[Orvidius]

This is a damn good question which I've yet to see a fully satisfactory answer to. From a purely objective point of view it seems like madness to ask the game to generate a lower than optimal resolution image and to then get the Oculus software to SS that up to higher than necessary resolution before finally downscaling back onto the actual HMD display. Surely "garbage in garbage out" and all that jazz? This is why I use SS=1.0 HMD=1.25 rather than say SS=0.75 HMD=1.75. However ... a lot of people swear by this, regularly doing things like SS=0.6 HMD=2.0 (which asks the game to generate only 60% of the pixels (detail?) it could generate and then gets Oculus HMD quality to scale that up to 120% of what's needed - conjuring the extra pixels out inbetweening guesswork). Sorry, that sounds like I'm having at go at people who set SS to less than 1.0. I'm not, I'm just baffled that it seems to work.

Yeah ive been reading around here and on reddit and I keep seeing low SS and high HMD settings and I just cant figure out what the science behind it is. If the performance is increased, there HAS to be some sort of visual quality loss... Especially if youre asking to run the game so downscaled. Im sure someone whos tested this thoroughly could give more insight.

I agree that it sounds like total madness. I was skeptical too, until I tried it. It looks to me like the final visual quality inside the headset is the product (multiplication) of both settings, as is the performance, except that the HMD/Oculus does a slightly better job than software supersampling. So 0.65 x 2.0 = 1.3 overall, looks a little better than 1.0 x 1.25, and performs similarly, if not a little better. I think one way in which this is helping, is that you're getting low SS for the mirrored image on the monitor, but the HMD is doing a much higher supersampling.

I do find the text slightly easier to read than when I had it set to 1.0 and 1.25, and the performance is pretty good. The caveat is that the text readability changes with a full restart of ED, not just changing the settings and resuming the game.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

I suspect the hmd q or debug tool multiplier counts in before in game SS.

That setting hmd q to 2.0 reports a 2400x2160 panel resolution to the gamew render engine.
And then telling the engine to render at 65% via the ss setting of that leaves you just over full native resolution.

When it comes to software I subscribe to the philosophy, if it doesn't cost money. Try all the things.
And settle on what you personally prefer.

 

[Alec Turner]

I suspect the hmd q or debug tool multiplier counts in before in game SS.

That setting hmd q to 2.0 reports a 2400x2160 panel resolution to the gamew render engine.
And then telling the engine to render at 65% via the ss setting of that leaves you just over full native resolution.

When it comes to software I subscribe to the philosophy, if it doesn't cost money. Try all the things.
And settle on what you personally prefer.

Very VERY interesting theory. There may be zero truth in it but I like the concept and I like the philosophy, there's no arguing with what actually works for you. I wish we could record actual HMD headset footage for a side by side comparison but ultimately, what looks best to you is all that counts.

 

[dogbite]

I ran a test awhile back setting ss .65 hmd 2 against ss 1 hmd1 and setting the debug tool to set PD 1.325 and they looked the same to me. I never had any trouble with reading text in either case. Of course running at ss1 and hmd 1.75 now, things have never been sharper for me. I can definitely see a difference between hmd 1.5 and 1.75

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Very VERY interesting theory. There may be zero truth in it but I like the concept and I like the philosophy, there's no arguing with what actually works for you. I wish we could record actual HMD headset footage for a side by side comparison but ultimately, what looks best to you is all that counts.

Well the native resolution of the display is just that.
It is the max resolution it can show.

Rendering at a resolution and displaying on a lower resolution display makes the video hardware processing downsample and match the denser grid to the native one.
I'm sure it does some edge/contrast detection but the chief result is anti aliasing.

In truth I see no extra DETAIL from 1x to 1.25 or higher.
What we see is the difference of the the two pixel grids being matched on top of each other.
I see great difference in the smoothness, but take but legibility for instance not really any different between 1x and 2x.

So what anyone prefers is really just a preference and quite likely highly individual.

And there is nothing wrong with that.
But imo there is a great difference between more actual detail and "hey I like this better".