Surface brightness is conserved, in reality and in E: D as far as I can see.
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planets shouldn't be 3d
- Thread starter Mulbin
- Start date
In my personal experience...
Suns are massive. You just have to get closer. And when you think you are too close, get closer. And while your temp is screaming at you, get closer.
I ran out of gas next to an unscoopable star. I was in my free sidewinder so i did the only logical thing. I flew it into the sun. I got in to the point all i could see was the sun, it was massive i can assure you.
If any of you haven't flown your freebie sidewinder into a sun while in the Rift, i HIGHLY recommend it. Its terrifying. It also makes you realize how far away from the sun you actually are while scooping, thus why it looks so small.
There is also a video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_URBqfP73ms ... after dropping too close to a planet, it takes this guy almost 2 or 3 hours to actually get to the "surface" of the planet. So... they seem properly big to me.
Suns are massive. You just have to get closer. And when you think you are too close, get closer. And while your temp is screaming at you, get closer.
I ran out of gas next to an unscoopable star. I was in my free sidewinder so i did the only logical thing. I flew it into the sun. I got in to the point all i could see was the sun, it was massive i can assure you.
If any of you haven't flown your freebie sidewinder into a sun while in the Rift, i HIGHLY recommend it. Its terrifying. It also makes you realize how far away from the sun you actually are while scooping, thus why it looks so small.
There is also a video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_URBqfP73ms ... after dropping too close to a planet, it takes this guy almost 2 or 3 hours to actually get to the "surface" of the planet. So... they seem properly big to me.
Check again... we can't perceive depth over (correction) 500 meters due to the way binocular vision works (a slightly different image from each eye, over that distance both eyes see pretty much the same image), nothing to do with frame of reference. To see a sun in 3d your eyes would need to be about a thousand miles apart... although I've not met you I'm assuming this isn't the case
Frame of reference is what we use when things are further than 500 meters BECAUSE WE CAN'T see depth. Also we use focal length (how much the lense in an individual eye has to distort to focus) as another indicator... this sadly isn't replicated in VR as we are always focused at the same distance (focused... not converged, two different things).Anyway, doubting myself now that planets are being rendered with depth, will try to get that screenshot test done later on!
Depth perception and hence size also has to do with focal length. If the VR forces your eyes to focus in the close range then all the maths in the world isn't going to trick your brain into believing an object is far away and hence large, rather than smaller and closer.
If you watch a good 3d movie, try looking at places in the frame where the director isn't trying to draw your attention. It's very jarring, because to improve the 3d, they adjust the focus of the fore and background either side of where the action is. This can't be done in VR without active scanning of the viewer's eye and a lot more graphics processing power.
If you watch a good 3d movie, try looking at places in the frame where the director isn't trying to draw your attention. It's very jarring, because to improve the 3d, they adjust the focus of the fore and background either side of where the action is. This can't be done in VR without active scanning of the viewer's eye and a lot more graphics processing power.
Sorry, to address the op itself, there is no depth on the planets and stars. It's just an illusion. They are rendered exactly at the distance and size they are. A programmer confirmed this last time this discussion came up. He said that even they have noticed that some people still see depth and they peg it down to the oculus rift itself rendering different colours at different depths (try looking at a jpg of a tinder planet, look at the lava and you'll see it seems to be deep even though it's just a still image), or other illusions. There's nothing they can do to fix it on their end
I personally don't see it.
I personally don't see it.
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Also, on some (maybe all) rift screens the right side is slightly darker than the left - this can also affect the depth perception, mine does.
Isn't it a matter of proportion then?
I guess an object far away which is big enough is seen differently by both eyes.
No. It's a matter of relation of your eye-to-eye distance (IPD) to distance of the observed object. If the object is more than 200m away the 6cm distance between your eyes becomes quite insignificant in comparison, so both eyes will see the object at the same angle.
We have other means of depth perception though, btw. by observing the parallax objects of different distance. 1 eye is sufficient for that.
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As a 3d artist and having worked on many different projects I think it is actually all to do with detail. Detail makes the difference between a ball with a few blobs on it and a gas giant with visible cloud layers etc. At the moment planets with atmospheres are generally lacking detail. The brain notices this and so does not get a sense of scale or rather an incorrect sense of scale. Even if the detail is almost imperceivable it makes all the difference. There is just so much detail in every day life that everyone takes for granted that when it is lacking we really notice it even if it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what is missing.
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Are you running the DK2 with the 4K tweak? I've spent countless hours flying at the exclusion zone of earth likes in my T9, the visuals and scale is breathtaking.
4k tweak?
Yes, 4K tweak? You mean the graphics_settings.xml planet textures section thing?
I have heard of this but not implemented it. Any links ?
Yep in the planet textures section. Apparently you can get it up to 8K. Apologies if there is another name for it, that's what I have always called it.
@Steve - Look on youtube for a guy called Obsidian Ant, he has a video dedicated to getting the best visuals out of ED. I have been using the 4K tweak for a while, made a big difference for me in the rift when floating above ELW and other planets.
You have to reapply the tweak after every patch/update
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I don't think ED is making planets "pop out". We perceive distance and scale with more cues than just binocular vision. For instance, play your favorite FPS (or even dock in ED on a monitor rather than a Rift) and do it with one eye closed. You'll probably find you start perceiving stuff in 3D because with one eye closed your brain is just using relative movement of different objects it knows the size of to do the job, instead of the parallax between the eyes. You also perceive size and distance by things like how clear the object is. This is absent in space. If you've ever been to somewhere with really really clear air, you may have seen mountains that look quite small and close, but after 100 miles of driving you still don't seem to have got any closer (because in fact they are huge and distant, but your brain perceived it wrong denied of the cues it is used to in damp, hazy Britain). I think the moon landing astronauts in fact commented on this - huge mountains hundreds of km away looked small and close because they were deprived of the normal cues for distance we have on Earth.
Since we are by nature ground pounders, most of us never exceeding 500 knots or so ever nor exceeding more than 6 miles altitude, perceiving the size of objects in space is not necessarily going to work well for us even with a perfect, 8K pixel VR headset. We are moving in E : D often at superluminal speeds in frameshift. Distant objects with no parallax from binocular vision will still move relative to the background stars unnaturally quickly, which will mean the brain tries to process this and come up with size and depth. But because we don't have anything to really compare it with things may not look as big as it is because our visual processing is comparing it to stuff we know. Instead of trying to figure the size of the nearest planet by its real relative speed of 0.87C, it's thinking the relative speed is 87mph and thus you're perceiving it much smaller than it really is.
Since we are by nature ground pounders, most of us never exceeding 500 knots or so ever nor exceeding more than 6 miles altitude, perceiving the size of objects in space is not necessarily going to work well for us even with a perfect, 8K pixel VR headset. We are moving in E : D often at superluminal speeds in frameshift. Distant objects with no parallax from binocular vision will still move relative to the background stars unnaturally quickly, which will mean the brain tries to process this and come up with size and depth. But because we don't have anything to really compare it with things may not look as big as it is because our visual processing is comparing it to stuff we know. Instead of trying to figure the size of the nearest planet by its real relative speed of 0.87C, it's thinking the relative speed is 87mph and thus you're perceiving it much smaller than it really is.
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I am using the 8K values from that video with my modest DK2 rig. It looks great in the DK2 but amazing on my 4K monitor. Also applied the other graphics mods from same.
BeeZee
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This makes sense. I don't fly very often, but when I do and look out the window when we're near the ground it looks to me like a bunch of toy houses not far away rather than large buildings a mile or two below. Has nothing to do with binocular vision, and everything to do with viewing large distances at a direction and speed the brain is not used to interpreting.