Pet peeve about people posting about Vive settings

Cmdr Menmnu · Nov 29, 2016

/rant
There are plenty of people posting information about graphics settings for the Vive that they say look amazing and give good performance, and yet no one seems to post their frame timing graphs showing that they are, in fact, actually getting good performance - i.e. a frametime of <11ms (90 FPS).

In particular, their suggestions rarely seem to chime with my experience and the settings I use that do meet this criteria. Do people not know how to get to these performance graphs in SteamVR?

For anyone who doesn't know, the frametime graphs for both your GPU and CPU can be displayed following the instructions here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/Frame_Timing

And taking a screenshot of them is easy. Some examples of these graphs for my GTX1070FE for Elite 2.1 are can be seen here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/266026-Performance-Review-GTX1070-FE-Vive

I certainly don't get the performance that other people claim, but I'm going to get some plots before I stick up my settings for the latest nVidia drivers and ED2.2.
/endrant

Globusdiablo · Nov 29, 2016

Cmdr Menmnu said:
...Do people not know how to get to these performance graphs in SteamVR?...

Fair point. I haven't actually checked that performance is indeed constantly over 90 FPS (not sure I care if my experience is good), and I didn't know where to find this info. I will check up on that.

On another note; FD have confirmed that different scenarios create different loads, so it really does depend on what is going on on screen.

I don't do much haz res or cz which has a lot going on on screen, so I can probably run with a higher setting than someone who does.

Bottom line is there is no "one size fits all". We'll all have to find our own way.

Aio · Nov 29, 2016

I'm running @60-70 fps but I find that works fine due to reprojection.

TorTorden_VR · Nov 29, 2016

I think there is a case of many aren't anywhere near as sharp at detecting bad framerate as they think they are when they don't have FRAPS running in the corner of the screen constantly.

I especially find the statements like "With ASW, I can now run Ultra with my 970 and it's so smooth !" amusing..

Globusdiablo · Nov 29, 2016

TorTorden said:
I think there is a case of many aren't anywhere near as sharp at detecting bad framerate as they think they are when they don't have FRAPS running in the corner of the screen constantly.

I especially find the statements like "With ASW, I can now run Ultra with my 970 and it's so smooth !" amusing..

Right. So I couldn't find a way to show fps in the Vive, but using ctrl+f shows fps on my secondary monitor. Running with HMD quality set at 1.5 it was hovering around 75 fps constantly (in station). Dialing HMD quality down to 1.25 saw fps stabling at and around 90 fps (tipping the Vive up to check

).

The general image does become a bit grainier, but it definitely becomes more fluent as well. So I don't know...

This is all with async on, and from a gtx1080 btw.

shadragon · Nov 29, 2016

OP - I started with the frame graphs, but found that what it was reporting and what I was seeing in my headset were not gelling. Having a high framerate with chunky picture was useless. I stopped looking at the framerate and started fine tuning the image I was seeing. There is no GPU out today that can give you 90FPS everywhere, all the time in Ultra, so I went for having a decent balance of performance and reasonable view. Now I only see the slightest stutter (on my 980Ti) on the launch pad while looking at menus and I can live with that. Everything else is smooth and I can play for hours with zero nausea.

I just got a notice that my Titan XP has hit customs. Once I get it, I'm only going to tweak what I can see and ignore the FPS completely.

[HJ]-RedRaven · Nov 30, 2016

Globusdiablo said:
Right. So I couldn't find a way to show fps in the Vive, but using ctrl+f shows fps on my secondary monitor. Running with HMD quality set at 1.5 it was hovering around 75 fps constantly (in station). Dialing HMD quality down to 1.25 saw fps stabling at and around 90 fps (tipping the Vive up to check ).

The general image does become a bit grainier, but it definitely becomes more fluent as well. So I don't know...

This is all with async on, and from a gtx1080 btw.

Just like I said...

But seriously, everyone varies in their appetite for detail, and the tradeoff between detail and raw frame rate.

Some Rift users don't see ASW artifacts, and get along fine. Other see every ripple and it drives them mad (like me). I turn ASW off every time I play ED.

Leoquent · Nov 30, 2016

shadragon said:
There is no GPU out today that can give you 90FPS everywhere, all the time in Ultra, so I went for having a decent balance of performance and reasonable view.

I think the 1080 gpu f.e. should be able to do that already - even in VR, if the software (E

) would support Single Pass Stereo.. Hope we will get that in E

one day... Just wanted to point out that the problems are not really on the hardware side anymore, imo.

edit: two letters

Darkfyre99 · Nov 30, 2016

Cmdr Menmnu said:
/rant
There are plenty of people posting information about graphics settings for the Vive that they say look amazing and give good performance, and yet no one seems to post their frame timing graphs showing that they are, in fact, actually getting good performance - i.e. a frametime of <11ms (90 FPS).

In particular, their suggestions rarely seem to chime with my experience and the settings I use that do meet this criteria. Do people not know how to get to these performance graphs in SteamVR?

For anyone who doesn't know, the frametime graphs for both your GPU and CPU can be displayed following the instructions here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/Frame_Timing

And taking a screenshot of them is easy. Some examples of these graphs for my GTX1070FE for Elite 2.1 are can be seen here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/266026-Performance-Review-GTX1070-FE-Vive

I certainly don't get the performance that other people claim, but I'm going to get some plots before I stick up my settings for the latest nVidia drivers and ED2.2.
/endrant

A part of the problem may be that people have different tolerances for VR side effects than others. This may allow them to tolerate, or not even notice, when their frames drop below 90fps. As a result, they may be able to crank the visual quality up higher than others can.

For example, here's a video of one of my BRC: Kick the Alien (and run like hell) attempts:

[video=youtube;N2DQ-H_3hog]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2DQ-H_3hog[/video]

I'm recording this on Ultra VR quality, using a vanilla GTX 980, in my HTC Vive. It isn't even the ti version. While I have long been puzzled by why I seem to get better performance than others, especially with a less than top of the line graphics card, my conclusion is that I simply have a higher tolerance for VR than others do... the swirling in Witchspace being the an exception.

As a result, I have the graphics set higher than someone with a similar rig, but lower VR tolerance, might do.

CapuchinSeven · Dec 1, 2016

People have different VR tolerances. It's as simple as that and your rant is a little off point.
People claiming people are not very good at spotting bad frame rate might as well just more accurately say "my VR tolerance is worse than those using these settings".