Oculus chromatic aberration / color separation issue

CMDR Poole · Jun 20, 2015

Hello friends,

Something changed, and I don't know when. Elite and the DK2 were performing wonderfully for some time, and then... I began to notice the colors were separating at the edges of my vision, badly.

The only place where the colors (red/green/blue) don't diverge is at the very center of the rifts display, the farther from center I look with my eyes, the more pronounced the color separation. For instance, looking at the target reticule, the two weapons hud graphics left and right of the target reticule are pretty much splayed out in red/green/blue lines.

This is also true looking at the top and bottom of the display too, so I think this rules out an IPD issue.

I'm running version 0.6 of the Oculus SDK. I WAS using SweetFX, but I've sinced uninstalled and reinstalled ED from scratch, yet the issue remains.

I can't believe this is just something I had not noticed, as it drives me crazy. It seems like something changed.

Any ideas as to how I might address this? I don't enjoy playing any longer with this issue.

Asp Explorer · Jun 20, 2015

Maybe go back to version 5, run the calibration again, and make sure your separators are set to identical positions? I've not experienced this personally so can't really help all that much

Spam · Jun 20, 2015

As above, go back to the 0.5 runtimes.

Also, sounds like it might also be worth checking out the HMD. Has it been dropped? Have you jacked the screen out/in? Popped the lenses out? Changed glasses?
The chromatic aberation is can be heavily affected by HMD position in relation the eye, something the CV1 is appraently much better for.

CMDR Poole · Jun 21, 2015

Thanks for the advice, but no dice - I reinstalled the -0.5 runtime, and verified my IPD is correct. The HMD hasn't been dropped. I've scoured the web as best as I can, guess I'll try to live with it until CV1.

Asp Explorer · Jun 21, 2015

Did you re-flash the firmware? It may seem like a useless idea - but just give it a try.

Malic · Jun 22, 2015

what is your IPD?

If it is far off what the default lens IPD is, your eyes are not in the proper positions to get the colors where they should be and you might need to get the IPD adjusters to move the lenses in/out

Frank · Jun 22, 2015

I do believe there's a procedure where the surgeon pops out your eyeballs, shaves the orbits of your skull, and then squishes your eyes back in. You'd really need to check the recommended IPD for the Oculus Rift to make sure you aren't undergoing unnecessary surgery.

Yololo69 · Jun 22, 2015

The start, stop and values of chromatic aberration probably change depending the distance between lens and screen. Did you set correctly the slider, the one below the choice of A or B lens in the configuration utility (eye relief in/out)? Perhaps you can play with this setting (full left, full right ) to see if it have an influence on your problem?

Edit: I should have better read Malic post, saying the same thing

LightPh0t0n · Aug 20, 2015

Is anyone out there having an issue with their DK2 where only some colors are getting separated? If I set my HUD colors to white, yellow, or green, everything looks perfect and the text is very readable. If I set it to pure blue (0, 0, 1) or red (1, 0, 0) it's unreadable. It's like the text gets displayed for one eye and then it's a couple of pixels over for the other eye resulting in a blurry smudge.

My first thought was chromatic separation/aberration, but I'm having trouble chalking it up to it being that when it only happens for certain colors. I tried tweaking my IP up and down but it doesn't have an effect.

Any ideas?

Malic · Aug 21, 2015

The DK2 physically has a pixel arrangement in that there is more green pixels then red and blue and they are smaller, making a sub pixel density that is higher, and that is why the white, yellow and green appear more readable, as they use the green pixels. The human eye can distinguish green better then red and blue.

The end effect can turn out looking like this: