Oculus Arrives today! Some questions inside...

[Durden T.]

Hi CMDRs.

Just as the title says, my rift arrives today and 'm totally excited!!

I've been reading almost all the main topics here and a bunch of others outside this forum, but there are things a bit confusing and I would like to throw some questions to the more experienced cmdrs around.

I would like to thank you in advance for your help.

My main questions are:

• Do I need to re-install ED inside Oculus Home in order to be able to use Dash feature in-game or can I just go with the default install (which in my case is through the ED launcher, not Steam).
• What is the exact difference between SS and HMD? I know both improve visual quality at the cost of performance, but don't know if one is better than the other. I guess it's about testing and finding the best balance, but just wondering...
• Being my lifetime first ever experience with VR, I fear I might have problems with headache and nausea. Any tips to avoid it?
• I read that, for best performance, monitor output quality must be lowered to minimum. How can I configure the graphic settings both for the VR and the monitor??

I really hope this thread not to be to annoying, but I'm currently a bit overwhelmed with all the config options and all that, and I've about to begin!!

Thanks cmdrs!!

 

[Hell Razor5543]

Welcome to the Elite Dangerous Galaxy in VR. This link is where I would first start digging for information;

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...t-DK2-CV1-Vive-VR-Experience-Guide-Compendium

 

[heretowatch]

1. Through testing we've discovered that in order to use Dash and see your cockpit in the background instead of a gray void space, you'll need to install and run Elite from Oculus. This can be done without purchasing a second copy, however. Compare the two videos on this page for an example of the cockpit background vs. void space. The first video shows the void space, the second shows the cockpit. It makes it easier to decide where to pin windows.

2. I'll let someone else get into the nitty gritty details here, but SS appears to have more performance cost. Not sure what your hardware is, but if you have a modern processor and a GTX1070, start at SS x1 and HMD 1.5 and go from there.

3. Start with Dreamdeck and move on to First Contact for your first VR experiences. Get used to being stationary first, then being stationary but interacting with objects. If at any point you start to feel nauseous, take a long break. When you first start Elite, get ready to take regular long breaks at 15-20 minute intervals, but stop immediately if you feel nauseous. There are comfort settings for the SRV, use those and drive slowly. Not everyone is affected by flying, but the SRV seems to universally sicken everyone at first. Concerning headaches: pay close attention to the IPD settings.

4. Once you get the HMD up and running and configure Elite to use it, I think your monitor output will default to something pretty low. But if it doesn't, the option is in the graphics settings under resolution.

 

[roastincoffee]

you'll need to install and run Elite from Oculus. This can be done without purchasing a second copy, however.

How do I install ED using my existing License Key? Oculus Elite Site doesn't say (that i can see) where to download if you already own the game.

I was hoping to just install Oculus Software and run the Elite Dangerous VR version in Steam. Seems using Rift with Elite is more involved than that.

Getting into Elite VR with Oculus seems pretty complicated. Or am I missing something?

 

[heretowatch]

I was hoping to just install Oculus Software and run the Elite Dangerous VR version in Steam. Seems using Rift with Elite is more involved than that.

Getting into Elite VR with Oculus seems pretty complicated. Or am I missing something?

There's nothing wrong with that approach, and it works seamlessly. The OP was asking specifically about the new Dash beta feature. Check out that thread I linked above if you'd like to learn more about that feature.

Editing to answer your newly-edited question: log in to your account on Frontier's website and there's an option to redeem a Steam key. You can put that key in either Oculus Home or Steam and download the game.

 

[Alec Turner]

Hi CMDRs.

Just as the title says, my rift arrives today and 'm totally excited!!

And so you should be ... it's awesome!

Do I need to re-install ED inside Oculus Home in order to be able to use Dash feature in-game or can I just go with the default install (which in my case is through the ED launcher, not Steam).

Aside from the issue of seeing your cockpit while pinning Oculus Dash windows (if that's even something you want to do) ... no, you don't.

What is the exact difference between SS and HMD? I know both improve visual quality at the cost of performance, but don't know if one is better than the other. I guess it's about testing and finding the best balance, but just wondering...

SS is a setting which the ED software uses to generate a different resolution image prior to passing that image to the Oculus rendering code while HMD quality is a setting which tells the Oculus code to do a similar thing before passing that to the headset hardware. I think pretty much everyone is in agreement that the HMD quality produces better results so my advice is to set SS to 1.0 and tweak HMDQ (start around 1.25 or maybe 1.5).

Being my lifetime first ever experience with VR, I fear I might have problems with headache and nausea. Any tips to avoid it?

Stay clear of the SRV to start with, make sure you get a decent framerate, take a break if you feel sick and maybe get a little desk fan for a bit of a fresh breeze on your face.

I read that, for best performance, monitor output quality must be lowered to minimum. How can I configure the graphic settings both for the VR and the monitor??

You can alter the display resolution in the ED graphics settings which affects the on-screen window size. So, you can make that tiny if yiu want. Alas the setting is not remembered so you have to do it every time. Personally I wouldn't bother.

I've got loads more advice to give (if you want) but I'm on mobile atm so I'll pop back in here again tomorrow.

Have fun.

P.S. check out my sticky "Best of Forum" thread ... there's a VR section at the bottom.

Oh ... and install drkaii's EDProfiler ... you'll find it really useful for tinkering with settings!

 

[Laste]

How do I install ED using my existing License Key? Oculus Elite Site doesn't say (that i can see) where to download if you already own the game.

I was hoping to just install Oculus Software and run the Elite Dangerous VR version in Steam. Seems using Rift with Elite is more involved than that.

Getting into Elite VR with Oculus seems pretty complicated. Or am I missing something?

Hi here's a link showing how to get oculus key:

https://support.frontier.co.uk/kb/faq.php?id=311

 

[Alec Turner]

Hi Durden, at a keyboard now so just gonna add a couple of things.

First, a couple of posts I've made elsewhere about HMDQ and SS settings ..

Happy to give you a starting point.

Set HMD quality to 1.25 and SS (supersampling to 1.0).
Turn off Bloom, Blur, DOF (depth of field), anti-aliasing (the HMD quality should deal with that) and ambient occlusion.
Set shadow quality to High and everything else to max.
You might also want to turn down the gamma levels a bit until space is nice and black and get yourself a clearer set of HUD colours (drkaii's "Spiritual Teal" is a a good set).

With those settings get yourself to a station (or better still a planetary base), turn off the Oculus ASW (asynchronous space warp) feature by pressing Ctrl+Numpad 1, then press Ctrl+F to display your FPS on the screen. Now peer down through the nosegap of the headset and check to see if the FPS is a green 90fps. If it hits that speed most of the time then maybe try turning the HMD quality up to 1.5. If it's significantly below 90fps then try setting SS to 0.75 and/or start turning down some of those other max settings. Don't worry too much if you can't get it close ... ASW (Ctrl+Numpad 4 to turn it back on) will compensate in normal play as long as you can get above 45fps.

o7

I must confess I've never satisfactorily understood the interaction between the SS setting and the HMD Quality setting.

As I understand it, the SS setting is basically getting the Elite: Dangerous game code to pretend you have a different resolution display to the one you actually have. For example if you're running on a 1920x1080p monitor and have SS=1.5 then the game generates frames that are 2880x1620 with all the additional finer detail that this entails. Your graphics driver than downscales these frames back to your screen resolution. This has the advantage over simple anti-aliasing techniques in that the "in-between" pixels which are filling in the gaps between your jaggies are based on real extra data from the game rather than guesswork from the AA code.

Meanwhile the HMD Quality setting is a value that's passed through to the Oculus runtime software (exactly the same value that the Oculus Debug tool wires out as "Pixels per Pixel") which causes a similar thing to happen re: the frames the Oculus software is producing and the hardware resolution of the HMD.

Vast quanities of (subjective) experimentation (documented all over these forums) appear to suggest that the Oculus software somehow does a more effective job with the HMD Quality setting than you get from increasing SS (so you get a clearer image with SS=1.0 and HMDQ=1.5 than you would with SS=1.5 and HMDQ=1.0). However, this seems to come at a performance cost so having HMDQ set much above 1.5 requires a pretty darn powerful GPU.

Now, where it gets confusing is that a lot of people, in order to get decent framerates with a high HMDQ value, deliberately downscale their SS to something like 0.75 (i.e. getting ED to only render frames that are 1440x810 in the above example). This gives the game code less work to do which reduces the load on the GPU and thereby allows the Oculus software more headroom to handle a higher HMDQ value (1.75 or even 2.0).

You can do the sums (resolution x SS x HMDQ) and see that the resulting frames might well be slightly higher-res than, say, the nearest SS=1.0 equivalent but I personally still feel like there's a garbage-in/garbage-out thing going on here which intuitvely rankles my tech' sensibilities. Consequently I leave SS at 1.0 and set HMDQ as high as it will go such that I still generally get close to 90fps (with ASW turned off to check).

P.S. I might re-use this post in the future so if there's anything substantially wrong in my understanding then I'd love to know so I can rephrase this post appropriately.

Also, I mentioned getting a small fan, well here's the one I use (which has been terrific) ..

Spoiler

(click image for Amazon link)

Lastly, I mentioned drkaii's EDProfiler but didn't give you the link, it's here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...er-Robust-Settings-Profiler-Switcher-Detector!

What's really great about EDProfiler is that it allows you to create different profiles (e.g. one for running ED in VR and one for running it on your desktop) which you can then really easily switch between before launching the game.

So, you should have had a go in VR by now, how are you getting on?

 

[Durden T.]

My fellow cmdrs, I have nothing but gratitude toward all of you and I thank each and every advice you kindly have given to me.

As cmdr Alec Turner says (by the way, your sticky "Best of the forum" thread doesn't need any presentation, I know it very well and constantly use it to find useful and interesting info about the Elite Universe, thank you for such superb work! ), yesterday I had my first go with VR and Elite and, I've gotta tell ya, it was quite a ride! even if I barely flew outside the station...


Setting the thing up was pretty flawless, with correct information and a very straight-forward guidance. It is clear to me the time and effort that has been put into the design and development of each and every part of the process. Kudos to the Oculus team for that very achievement.

I had some trouble setting up the sensors, mostly due to a very limited space in front of my desk, but I finally managed to get it going. Currently I'm not planning on playing nothing but Elite, so not a lot to worry about...

After the initial introduction and mini-game, I was thrilled to enter my Cutters deck and see the world with my new eyes...

I opened EDProfiler, sat up the "VR medium" default profile and launched ED.

I was soon looking at the new main menu that greets you when using the rift, and I couldn't help but to start the simulation.

I don't exactly know how to explain what I felt when my Cutter hologram disappeared and everything went to live, but my first thought was: "Wow, this is big...".

I sat there just looking around, impressed by the immense ship deck and the details that surrounded me. The ships systems windows were huge, and everything was looking great.

I quickly commanded the station control to elevate the ship to the main station flor, and that very moment completely got me. I really felt I was there, and that the world was alive.

It is true that Oculus changes the perception of things, of size, but my feeling was more about how huge the Cutter was, inside all that huge metal structure...

So, at that point, I through some small trip outside the station wouldn't hurt (little I knew what was coming...), so I asked disengage clearance to station control. I quickly began floating inside the station, and my first thrust and axis commands were given.

I really could feel the weight and side of the ship, and I made the approach to the "mail box" slower than usual, given the new whole perspective I was enjoying for the first time. Then, all of a sudden, I heard my ships voice: "Silent Running Activated". Sh**! What!?

I don't know if the rift is used to launch ship commands randomly without asking or I pressed it by mistake (probably the second), anyway, after switching of the shields of my very expensive and beloved Cutter, I could just wonder what on earth was I thinking when I had that command mapped, given I run a shield tank Cutter that never, ever, is meant to loss shields…

Anyway, my problems, in the short term, were others. On my very first flight with VR, I was about to exit the station with an unshielded Cutter in Open Play…

Needles to say, I made some scratches to the white paint on my way out, but nothing too horrible. The ship was still at one piece with 86% of hull. I made some flying just to get the feeling, and then requested permission to land.
On my way in, some other scratches were made, so I ended up landing in the large pad with 76% hull left. Not bad, but could have been worst.


Overall, the experience was impressive, very good, but it’s clear that a lot of work is yet to be done to have everything running smoothly.

While I was heading back to the station, I clearly saw the lack of detail at the Coriolis type station... I'll need a lot of effort and dedication to reach the sweet spot between visual quality and performance, but with a 4790K at 4.7 GHz and a powerful 1080 TI, I hope to manage a decent quality.


I’ll keep you all updated on my progress into this new and exciting world, meanwhile, fly safe commanders, and use the silent running with great caution… [big grin]