Odyssey VR performance is very poor

wabboo · May 20, 2021

I've been playing odyssey in VR and I also have poor FPS in certain situations. However, I'm more worried about the bugs that are still present. Here's a list of VR issues I've encountered in my play session:

Starting text tutorial so far to the left you can barely read it.
DSS still broken: targeting doesn't work.
in FSS when you zoom in on a planet the planet responds to your head movement.
Returning from outfitting locks you into hangar view (only remedy is going back to main menu).
Dying in conflict zone causes black world (only remedy is going back to main menu). This was resolved in Alpha.
Apex Instellar shuttles still have the 2.5D holograms.
Supercruise/hyperjump causes weird camera bug (one or more frames of some weird camera angle).

Some of these are minor glitchy bugs, but some are game breaking bugs which really need fixing fast. Low priority indeed.

DiaperLord · May 20, 2021

ApexAzimuth said:
I tried Odyssey in VR for as long as I could stand it this morning, but the performance is beyond terrible. Worst performance of almost any VR app I've us

Same and it's a real shame. I've got some of the best equipment money can buy and even with settings all set to lowest values VR is jerky and makes me feel sick. It's unplayable. I'm going back to Horizons which worked great. I think that since Frontier knew they wouldn't include VR for the on-foot stuff someone decided not to bother making it a priority at all. They must not have even tested it.

Hempstead · May 20, 2021

Not just in flight VR performance is awful… going through the letterbox, I can practically count frame “jumps.” And this is a 10 core machine, RTX2080 with an Oculus Q2.

VR Pancake performance is just also awful. Not only that, it’s buggy as hell, far worse than Alpha. Now, the fanboids can really ***storm us and cry “it’s Alpha!” And I would agree with them!

For instance, after buying two new suits, I tried to go into the upgrade suit screen. I got stuck with screen tear and the hour glass. Completely unresponsive to input. After two minutes, I had enough, so I started pushing buttons… one of the buttons I pressed was the Esc key…. I heard some key press sound, oohhh, but the screen was still stuck. So, I flip up my goggle. Lo’nbehold the small 2D screen showed the choice screen for exit to main menu or exit to desktop! And took my input to exit to desktop too! So, VR Pancake got stuck, but the system in general kept functioning! WTH? Please, buy some VR goggles for your QA. At least run some negative tests to make sure you are not breaking existing stuff!

Also, after outfitting… I got stuck too, seeing only my Python in the hangar, absolutely no nothing else. No menu, no buttons, no responding to keys and buttons! I had to bring up the Task Manager to kill ED! I didn’t even had it this bad in Alpha!

That worst idea and implementation, the VR Pancake is totally borked. I mean, instead of preventing nausea, its framerate is so bad that it’s actually nausea inducing, achieving the exact opposite of its objective! How borked can you get? Just give us a simple checkbox to let us auto switch to 2D when we disembark! I‘d rather play it on my 43” 4K HDR 120Hz real gaming monitor than that useless VR Pancake!

At the moment, the only way to play would be to play Horizon in flight. Switch to 2D. Then quit to desktop, and start in Odyssey…. Jump through the complete set of hoops in order to bypass the dog awful VR Pancake idea/implementation.

I thought Alpha phase 1 was bad! I was wrong.

AvonNZ · May 20, 2021

Hah, still waiting for the servers to settle down to even try and feel sick

A D · May 20, 2021

My 'VR' Odyssey experience has been pretty poor so far, but spent most of my time getting the key-binds organised so jury is out until I've given it a good hard look. Clearly, problems with frame rates (and I've got a i7800k + RTX 3080 + 32Gb of Ram + SSD drive) and still got the spins in 'VR pancake' mode.

This just makes me laugh in disbelief. FD takes a really good VR game and turns it into a train-wreck just because someone decided ED needed a 2D console shooter! I can see where Odyssey is heading (at least for VR players) - a curiosity.

EDIT: Turning down my VR settings helped, but a disappointing retrograde step.

[VR] scipio_77 · May 20, 2021

ApexAzimuth said:
I'm also on the original Vive, but my VR performance is absolutely awful.

What are your specs/settings, and what kind of FPS do you usually get (horizons)?

I run everything on standard medium HMD-settings with the 1080-card with no special settings except custom HUD colours.

FPS for me is smooth like it was in Horizons. I don't know exact FPS number (I think VR is fairly binary, it's either smooth or horrible). I tried violently shaking my head in stations to check for drops or jarring, but didn't notice any.

Rocksteady2090 · May 20, 2021

3080 10th gen intel and the game runs horrible in vr.. doesn't even run that great in 2d. Bottom line some serious optimization is needed and I hope it gets it fairly soon.

Arioch · May 20, 2021

[VR] scipio_77 said:
I run everything on standard medium HMD-settings with the 1080-card with no special settings except custom HUD colours.

FPS for me is smooth like it was in Horizons. I don't know exact FPS number (I think VR is fairly binary, it's either smooth or horrible). I tried violently shaking my head in stations to check for drops or jarring, but didn't notice any.

I’m also using a GTX 1080 - the only change I made from my Horizons’ High/Ultra settings was to drop HMDQ from 1.25 to 1.0 and that’s given me smooth performance, although I’m definitely in ASW a lot more (Quest 2, i78700, Link cable).

There are still plenty of VR specific bugs I’m experiencing - stuff only rendering in one eye, the SRV horizon comfort setting not working, “flat” holograms on the HUD, etc. - but performance is a bit better than the Alpha phases for me.

The last time I saw L/R rendering bugs in a Horizons Beta they got sorted out fairly quickly, so hopefully this will also be the case in Odyssey

BlackSpaceCowboy · May 20, 2021

It ran better than I was expecting.

i7 9700k / 3090 FTW3 / HP Reverb G2

But I wasn't actually measuring framerate. I'll do that next time. Just my impression.

It was almost always reprojecting but it was never really bad. It was like going back to the early days before many hardware upgrades. I do miss the silky smooth feeling.

The frame rate was only really bad when I switch to 3rd person perspective and play in full VR. I wish I could play the game that way but there's no hud and no way to interact with anything. Ignoring the bad frame rates in full 3rd person VR, the game looks awesome that way. It just needs a HUD and the ability to move your camerate like most 3rd person games.

After trying to bind my HOTAS, I started using and xBox controller for on foot. That works a lot better. Using the 2D screen in VR things ran very smoothly for me. I moved all my settings down from Ultra to High.

I've been playing a lot of MSFS 2020 so I've learned to tolerate low framerates. Actually MSFS 2020 feels smooth at even 30 fps.

The one thing I didn't enjoy so much was the planetary tech. It was very buggy at points. The landscape was morphings and killing any immersion. And the LOD was popping in very harshly as I approached.

But I had fun. And the 2D screen wasn't bad at all. If I can figure out some bindings where I can switch between 3rd person camera and 2D on my xBox controller then things would be pretty good.

I'll post actual numbers tomorrow.

T-CAT73 · May 20, 2021

Nice to hear that EDO is playable in reprojection-mode wirh a 3090... In summary that would be the worst performing VR App ever! And as always, as everyone with big rigs complaining about VR performance, there is one Commander with an old potato where it runs silky smooth

Stanis · May 20, 2021

Kaltern said:
At least we know why VR isn't supported for planetside stuff - there's no way it would be even close to playable. I'm almost convinced that's the REAL reason it's not in VR, and not because they couldn't do it - they just know it'll cause much vomiting. Even ASW wouldn't help with such low framerates.

I'm sure that's the main reason yes. Having a frame rate of about 100 fps or more would have been a huge constraint on the development team.

However, sad to read the poor performances of EDO. I currently run EDH with SS 1.0 and HMD 1.75 on my RTX3070 and i7 6700k, and the game is beautifull and smooth (finally !!)

Back to SS 1.0 and HMD 1.0, with perpetual tricks in options is not very... motivating.

The Lawful · May 20, 2021

Well, VR performance actually is not that bad for me except on planets and particular the SRV. I run a CV1 on a 5 years old setup, ASUS ROG 1070GTX @1890MHz and an i7-7700K, using VR high settings (mostly) and HMD Quality 1.25. As expected, the game runs slower in startports (but ok thanks to ASW), but in space including asteroid fields, it's about the same as before. Planetary surfaces are a different thing. The drop phase still runs smoothly, but any manouvres during landings, in particular turns, are sluggish and 'jumpy' now, but still bearable. Walking, ok, pancake works. The only really nasty thing is the SRV now which is unplayable, as it's feeling like 15 FPS and ASW saves the pilot from nauseating. Didn't tweak the settings yet except applying my old GraphicsConfiguration gamma overrides for turning the brightness down, as my CV1 is so bright it burns the eyes out otherwise. Worried to hear upgrading to a much more powerful GPU than mine might not cure this, but could be the reason is something else still. In any case, it's still playable for me and not utterly devastating, but just as slow as expected. YMMV. And there are numerous VR bugs left as always, but some of them they removed since the Alpha at least.

O7,

Franc Kaos · May 20, 2021

i7 10400 / 2080 Super / 16GBs / M.2 SSD
Applied for a refund... I'll re-buy it when (major if) they sort the VR out (and it's on sale - what's been released isn't worth £30 imho) - tho I think now I realise why they dropped VR from Odyssey.
Poor show Fdev. They should have told the sharegolders (happy mistype) to stick it and delay the whole thing until it was actually ready.

Stanis · May 20, 2021

A D said:
... just because someone decided ED needed a 2D console shooter! I can see where Odyssey is heading (at least for VR players) - a curiosity.

Fortnite turnover 2020: about 3 billion dollars.

: Man.. Can you just understand the huge importance of having a 2D shooter.. It's, it's.. It's just.. obvious you know.. It's future!

The Lawful · May 20, 2021

Did anybody try this (kudos to CMDR Yates)?

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/ngszgh

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/ngszgh/for_anyone_with_awful_fps_after_getting_odyssey/

I can't quite see how it should better things, but maybe it does. Will try later.

O7,

[VR] scipio_77 · May 20, 2021

The Lawful said:
Did anybody try this (kudos to CMDR Yates)?
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/ngszgh
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/ngszgh/for_anyone_with_awful_fps_after_getting_odyssey/

I can't quite see how it should better things, but maybe it does. Will try later.

O7,

I noted earlier in the thread that I didn't have any noticeable performance drops and I'm on a potato 1080 in VR. I did the "violent headshake" test during landing in a station and it was smooth and fine.

I forgot to mention that I did not play the alpha, I'm wondering if this means I avoided some kind of setting that is causing these drastic performance drops.

A D · May 20, 2021

Stanis said:
Fortnite turnover 2020: about 3 billion dollars.

: Man.. Can you just understand the huge importance of having a 2D shooter.. It's, it's.. It's just.. obvious you know.. It's future!

Haha.. not sure whether you're serious? Anyway, it's not the shooter - it's the fact that VR has really been shown the door. I went through the patch notes - nothing mentioned at all for VR that I saw.

I've only tried Odyssey VR for a couple of hours and found the following already:

In FC - soft lock when exiting outfitting.
In FC - soft lock when clicking on UC Data service.
In FC - shipyard, manage ships - camera inside the ships (i.e. actually inside looking at the model skeleton).

And, as has already been mentioned numerous times, when going from the ship to the pancake view (e.g. from ship to planet surface) its completely kills immersion. I don't mean blunts - it kills (different look, different textures, different game).

On frame rates, averaged 50-70 after lowering the settings. Have a top end rig so should be getting 90 fps easy.

All in all what can I say, I'm really disappointed with Odyssey, so much so that I'm not even sure I want to play it anymore! That shouldn't be my first experience on the biggest release for ED since Horizons. Part of this is the VR debacle, but the more I played Odyssey the more I started to notice things that have been changed for no real reason and not even an improvement - just someone thought it looked better. The you start to hit bugs and think what a pile of...... I'm hoping with some maturity and time it will improve, but right now gutted by Odyssey and wishing I hadn't bought it.

Stanis · May 20, 2021

[VR] scipio_77 said:
I noted earlier in the thread that I didn't have any noticeable performance drops and I'm on a potato 1080 in VR. I did the "violent headshake" test during landing in a station and it was smooth and fine.

I forgot to mention that I did not play the alpha, I'm wondering if this means I avoided some kind of setting that is causing these drastic performance drops.

Good news.

Just to know, can you give your exact settings of SS et HMD quality? (the most important for VR)
You have no stutters or fps drop in RES, CZ or in stations?

T-CAT73 · May 20, 2021

Can anyone confirm the above workaround? I'm thinking of taking half a day off to drive home and try it by myself... in ED VR is everything possible, think about the workaround "Jet Cones" to fix VR Framerate issues after the fleet carrier Patch...

BlackSpaceCowboy · May 20, 2021

I don't think we can be mad at FDev yet because they weren't planning on having any VR support available at Odyssey launch. It looks like they have a bunch of performance problems to workout before it's playable in VR. Then they have to deal with the HUD in VR. Because other than the HUD and maybe some comfort options, the on foot sections already work in VR in 3rd person.

Is this game playable in 2D from 3rd person perspective? I mean interacting with panels and objects?

I'm not sure why performance has dropped so much outside of stations. It looks like new lighting and shaders?? Is there a way to turn that off?