Just thought I would post this as there does not always seems to be easy to find up to date stuff in Google on VR ad ED today for the beginner to understand.
I like Elite and have recently played the old 1984 game which piqued my interest and drew me to Elite Dangerous. I decided in my head that I wanted to try it in VR but instead of jumping right in I bought the game first - Just ED, not Horizons. My system then was 4yr old Ivy Bridge CPU i5 3570K and a Radeon 270x Toxic graphics card no joystick - just keyboard and mouse. The game played well and gave me the taste I needed to forge ahead. I had read a lot about VR and how to play when you can't see our keyboard so the next purchase was Thrustmaster TM16000 (called HOTAS), this took a while to get my head around - read lots of buttons! - and TBH I think I have only just this week got to grips with the T.A.R.G.E.T software you can use to tune the HOTAS. So that was cool and made playing the game much easier. Next up was the start of upgrades to the PC this was graphics card, ram and CPU. While I was kind of committed and pretty sure I would be ok in VR (I have an FPV racing drone) I was not 100% so wanted to hedge my bets rather than invest thousands n new kit so I bought second hand...
-Nvidia 1070 GTX
-i7 3770 CPU (Not the K version, but one off the top of the line for my motherboard)
-16 GB DDR3 Ram
CPU was first and this was perfect, no issues, just using the stock cooler that came with the i5.
Then the Graphics card, unfortunately my PC Thermaltake 550w PSU was not man enough to run the 4 drives, DVD and the GTX 1070 so I had an unplanned purchase
-Corsair 750w semi modular PSU gold 80
Now everything worked and it was time for the VR HMD. Lots to choose from on ebay I had already decided on the Oculus rift so just kept my eyes open for one with the Touch controllers, sensors and headset.
-Oculus Rift
Its at this point and for the rest of the journey you realise that this is not really 100% consumer ready stuff, but I guess you probably know that - more on that later.
-Upgraded to Horizons [alien]
So the sound in the Oculus was dodgy - Crackly and also cut out - and I had run out of USB 3.0 ports. Reading up on it, seemed that the ASUS AI Suite part of my Motherboard software - was the culprit and that installing a USB 3.0 port card should solve the issue
- Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports USB 3.0 card
At first it worked using its own drivers but then it started to fail to recognise the USB connections. I reads up and seems that if you delete the original drivers then just let Windows 10 detect and install its own drivers then it will work. Well it did for me
OK so now 100% up and running I ran through the set up on the Oculus and as most people think.... "WOW its amazing" - just in the oculus at the moment. Then I started ED and again WOW.... "Ive got a space ship in my house that I can get in and fly whenever I want [up]"
Then the WOW dies down (a little just a tad) and you see stuff you want to fix - blurry text, stuttering, poor images etc. So you start to learn about FPS ( I am not a gamer on PCs, yes PS1,2,3 etc but never ever on a PC ). So you start digging around and all this terminology starts flying around
FPS
ASW
SDK / Debug tool
Graphics card set up
Overclocking (and all the Software that goes with it Prime95, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWInfo64, FurTest etc etc )
It was all a bit daunting, however I am a bit PC literate and had a poke around a couple of times overclocking stuff but always failed and always reverted to stock.
There are two ways to get FPS, 1 from the onscreen display of your HMD output, 2 direct in the HMD itself via the debug tool. I believe that the debug tool for Oculus is now shipped as part of the Oculus software. The reason I am not 100% sure is that I - following older advice - downloaded the Oculus SDK and found nothing to debug with then more searching I found this path...
C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics
in there you find the infamous "OculusDebugTool.exe"
Eventually you can find that you either run Framedrop Indicator or you put up a big ugly - Performance HUD slap bang in the middle of your View. But why!!!!
The "why" is to get the game to look and run as nice as your hardware will allow. Now there are two methods/approaches and I use both. Set your settings (Graphics Card Control Panel and in game) then check just how bad your system is performing using the debug tool... Then iterate between changes and checks.... BUT dont forget to just play the game and see if you like it as well after all not everyone cares about the Odd ASW (Asynchronous Space Warp)!
For me - and I believe everyone is different on this - the deal breaker is the text. If I cant read that as clearly as I need to then I cant play the game. After much back and forth I decided to start from zero - In order to get that as good as my hardware will allow I essentially "off" or "low" all settings and then focused just on the in game setting
HMD Quality
I started at 1 and moved up to 2 then back to 1.75. At 1.75 I was now able to start increasing the other major settings where as at 2 my GPU was maxed out and I was left with everything at Off or Low.
Note: There is one for SuperSampling in ED (much confusion online as to whether to set this "in Game" or in debug I believe that ED or Frontier have now allowed direct access to this via the In Game setting as opposed to using the de-bug tool) - again you'll learn all about this if your searching for better visuals. I leave this at 1.0. From what i can understand It essentially does the same thing as HMD Quality so quite why we have both I cant say - although I am sure there is an answer out there somewhere.
Now its worth adding at this point that along with the numerous settings for Graphics Quality "in the game", your Graphics card matches it setting for setting. After much faffing I chose to start with a default setting in the NVidia Control Panel.
Now if your like me you get to the compromise state and start digging for more... This is where Overclocking your gear might help. I use the out of the box - at least on my motherboard - ASUS AI suite to kick my i7 3770 from 3.8Ghz up to 4.2 ghz. ran Prime95 (CPU stress test software) and all seems good to go. Indeed ASUS thermal protects the CPU so even the stock cooler is ok.
Next I looked at the graphics card to eek a bit more out of it... This is not (or at least does not seem) possible with my card and indeed a lot of research later and it appears that NVIDIA themselves with their Boost 3.0 software have pretty much wrung every ounce of performance out of these cards. Ive tried numerous settings using a piece of software called MSI Afterburner but every time I change anything the performance is lower than stock.
Lastly after settling down to "in game" settings of HMD Quality @ 1.75 I decided to review the stats of the card and the machine by logging. I used two pieces of software for this
- HWInfo64 logs the CPU and memory performance (along with much more)
- GPU-z which logs the graphics card
The test I used was to launch out of a Station (not a platform) do a complete circle of it, low and fast (with the station walls above my head in sight) then re-dock.
Results: All in all my CPU is fine runs at about 50% utilisation and uses just over 7 GB of ram (for this reason I ask it to pre-render 4 frames for the GPU)
The GPU however s running at about 80% constant with peaks of 98% so its def the bottleneck, but its doing OK.
At this point I then set about tweaking the NVidia control panel settings and clawed a few more MHz back that allowed me to further increase a couple of settings to Mid level.
So quite a journey and while not everyone would do this I am sure there are people who go much further than I have.
Of course with this journeys aim of "making it all look better" one starts to eye the competition such as the Vive Pro and the higher end GPUs 1080ti and 2080ti etc... but nothing I have read so far says that there is a monumental jump. That said I am happy for anyone to say that's in correct and point me at the kit that runs HMD @ 2.0, SS @ 2.0 and Ultra settings across the board, then I would have to think hard about Christmas
Anyway loving the game and the experience and all that it offers - thank you Frontier, and thank you on this board and all across the internet for the little gems of advice regarding Oculus Rift, it def needs a steady approach to tweaking to get the most from it.
I like Elite and have recently played the old 1984 game which piqued my interest and drew me to Elite Dangerous. I decided in my head that I wanted to try it in VR but instead of jumping right in I bought the game first - Just ED, not Horizons. My system then was 4yr old Ivy Bridge CPU i5 3570K and a Radeon 270x Toxic graphics card no joystick - just keyboard and mouse. The game played well and gave me the taste I needed to forge ahead. I had read a lot about VR and how to play when you can't see our keyboard so the next purchase was Thrustmaster TM16000 (called HOTAS), this took a while to get my head around - read lots of buttons! - and TBH I think I have only just this week got to grips with the T.A.R.G.E.T software you can use to tune the HOTAS. So that was cool and made playing the game much easier. Next up was the start of upgrades to the PC this was graphics card, ram and CPU. While I was kind of committed and pretty sure I would be ok in VR (I have an FPV racing drone) I was not 100% so wanted to hedge my bets rather than invest thousands n new kit so I bought second hand...
-Nvidia 1070 GTX
-i7 3770 CPU (Not the K version, but one off the top of the line for my motherboard)
-16 GB DDR3 Ram
CPU was first and this was perfect, no issues, just using the stock cooler that came with the i5.
Then the Graphics card, unfortunately my PC Thermaltake 550w PSU was not man enough to run the 4 drives, DVD and the GTX 1070 so I had an unplanned purchase
-Corsair 750w semi modular PSU gold 80
Now everything worked and it was time for the VR HMD. Lots to choose from on ebay I had already decided on the Oculus rift so just kept my eyes open for one with the Touch controllers, sensors and headset.
-Oculus Rift
Its at this point and for the rest of the journey you realise that this is not really 100% consumer ready stuff, but I guess you probably know that - more on that later.
-Upgraded to Horizons [alien]
So the sound in the Oculus was dodgy - Crackly and also cut out - and I had run out of USB 3.0 ports. Reading up on it, seemed that the ASUS AI Suite part of my Motherboard software - was the culprit and that installing a USB 3.0 port card should solve the issue
- Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports USB 3.0 card
At first it worked using its own drivers but then it started to fail to recognise the USB connections. I reads up and seems that if you delete the original drivers then just let Windows 10 detect and install its own drivers then it will work. Well it did for me
OK so now 100% up and running I ran through the set up on the Oculus and as most people think.... "WOW its amazing" - just in the oculus at the moment. Then I started ED and again WOW.... "Ive got a space ship in my house that I can get in and fly whenever I want [up]"
Then the WOW dies down (a little just a tad) and you see stuff you want to fix - blurry text, stuttering, poor images etc. So you start to learn about FPS ( I am not a gamer on PCs, yes PS1,2,3 etc but never ever on a PC ). So you start digging around and all this terminology starts flying around
FPS
ASW
SDK / Debug tool
Graphics card set up
Overclocking (and all the Software that goes with it Prime95, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWInfo64, FurTest etc etc )
It was all a bit daunting, however I am a bit PC literate and had a poke around a couple of times overclocking stuff but always failed and always reverted to stock.
There are two ways to get FPS, 1 from the onscreen display of your HMD output, 2 direct in the HMD itself via the debug tool. I believe that the debug tool for Oculus is now shipped as part of the Oculus software. The reason I am not 100% sure is that I - following older advice - downloaded the Oculus SDK and found nothing to debug with then more searching I found this path...
C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics
in there you find the infamous "OculusDebugTool.exe"
Eventually you can find that you either run Framedrop Indicator or you put up a big ugly - Performance HUD slap bang in the middle of your View. But why!!!!
The "why" is to get the game to look and run as nice as your hardware will allow. Now there are two methods/approaches and I use both. Set your settings (Graphics Card Control Panel and in game) then check just how bad your system is performing using the debug tool... Then iterate between changes and checks.... BUT dont forget to just play the game and see if you like it as well after all not everyone cares about the Odd ASW (Asynchronous Space Warp)!
For me - and I believe everyone is different on this - the deal breaker is the text. If I cant read that as clearly as I need to then I cant play the game. After much back and forth I decided to start from zero - In order to get that as good as my hardware will allow I essentially "off" or "low" all settings and then focused just on the in game setting
HMD Quality
I started at 1 and moved up to 2 then back to 1.75. At 1.75 I was now able to start increasing the other major settings where as at 2 my GPU was maxed out and I was left with everything at Off or Low.
Note: There is one for SuperSampling in ED (much confusion online as to whether to set this "in Game" or in debug I believe that ED or Frontier have now allowed direct access to this via the In Game setting as opposed to using the de-bug tool) - again you'll learn all about this if your searching for better visuals. I leave this at 1.0. From what i can understand It essentially does the same thing as HMD Quality so quite why we have both I cant say - although I am sure there is an answer out there somewhere.
Now its worth adding at this point that along with the numerous settings for Graphics Quality "in the game", your Graphics card matches it setting for setting. After much faffing I chose to start with a default setting in the NVidia Control Panel.
Now if your like me you get to the compromise state and start digging for more... This is where Overclocking your gear might help. I use the out of the box - at least on my motherboard - ASUS AI suite to kick my i7 3770 from 3.8Ghz up to 4.2 ghz. ran Prime95 (CPU stress test software) and all seems good to go. Indeed ASUS thermal protects the CPU so even the stock cooler is ok.
Next I looked at the graphics card to eek a bit more out of it... This is not (or at least does not seem) possible with my card and indeed a lot of research later and it appears that NVIDIA themselves with their Boost 3.0 software have pretty much wrung every ounce of performance out of these cards. Ive tried numerous settings using a piece of software called MSI Afterburner but every time I change anything the performance is lower than stock.
Lastly after settling down to "in game" settings of HMD Quality @ 1.75 I decided to review the stats of the card and the machine by logging. I used two pieces of software for this
- HWInfo64 logs the CPU and memory performance (along with much more)
- GPU-z which logs the graphics card
The test I used was to launch out of a Station (not a platform) do a complete circle of it, low and fast (with the station walls above my head in sight) then re-dock.
Results: All in all my CPU is fine runs at about 50% utilisation and uses just over 7 GB of ram (for this reason I ask it to pre-render 4 frames for the GPU)
The GPU however s running at about 80% constant with peaks of 98% so its def the bottleneck, but its doing OK.
At this point I then set about tweaking the NVidia control panel settings and clawed a few more MHz back that allowed me to further increase a couple of settings to Mid level.
So quite a journey and while not everyone would do this I am sure there are people who go much further than I have.
Of course with this journeys aim of "making it all look better" one starts to eye the competition such as the Vive Pro and the higher end GPUs 1080ti and 2080ti etc... but nothing I have read so far says that there is a monumental jump. That said I am happy for anyone to say that's in correct and point me at the kit that runs HMD @ 2.0, SS @ 2.0 and Ultra settings across the board, then I would have to think hard about Christmas
Anyway loving the game and the experience and all that it offers - thank you Frontier, and thank you on this board and all across the internet for the little gems of advice regarding Oculus Rift, it def needs a steady approach to tweaking to get the most from it.