Questions for community managers regarding VR

[[VR] DDM_Reaper20]

I appreciate your perspective. Maybe I'm misrepresenting the community. It would be an interesting exercise to gather the metrics on how the VR community uses their equipment. What games are being used, how many hours, what equipment, and how long each user has had their gear. I don't want to discount someone's personal enjoyment of FPS games in VR, but for me, that type of an application is simply more of a party gimmick than an immersive VR experience.

5 Years is plenty of time to be "Well Established" in your VR tastes. I was just attempting to differntiate the folks who fire up a shiny new VR rig on Christmas morning and try and play everything available vs folks who have been doing it long enough to appreciate what works and have found their own personal niche. Perhaps I'm wrong in my assumptions...

For what its worth, and at least from my perspective, the VR issues with Odyssey have absolutely nothing to do with the new content and everything to do with the new graphics engine...

I use my VR headset exclusively for Elite Dangerous.

Or, used to. I upgraded to a RTX 4090, which, while blazing fast, does NOT WORK with my Oculus Rift S. "Your system does not fulfil minimum requirements." -- "EXCUSE ME?!" I contacted support, and was told that the 4000 series (just like AMD's 7000 series) is not supported by Meta products.
So, I had to switch to pancake mode to get my fix. NOT THE SAME AT ALL. I have a (fairly old) 40" 4K screen (it was relatively cheap, so no bragging rights), and that's still small compared to the VR experience. Yes, the image is sharper than with the Oculus Rift S & the RX 6900XT I had before, but man . . . I hope Meta hurries up and adds support. I want to turn all graphics options to 11. (Playing 4.0 exclusively.)

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

are you SURE it does not work or did it just say it won't work....... from the oculus forum
----------------
I've owned an RTX 4090 for a month now, works fine with the Oculus app, regardless as to what the app states.

Seems to be that Oculus just hasn't got off of their @sses to fix the little blue banner which says that our measly 4090's aren't up to snuff.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

Anyway, I think you'll find that most of the folks complaining about the current state of Odyssey in VR has everything to do with the greatly increased processing demands of the new graphics engine and the various VR Specific bugs that were introduced along with it.

I'd say its both from my perspective, Odyssey performs pretty poorly with VR and the new on-foot gameplay is rendered inaccessible by any reasonable measure. I know Frontier tried to reach a compromise so as not to ditch VR all together but when you combine the two things it feels like they went MVP again and quality dropped off a cliff edge.

...what that has resulted in imho is people that care, and people that don't regardless of Frontier's commitments, statements, innovation, promises?

The hope however is actually Odyssey is decent in flight and SRV in VR if you throw at it the highest PC components as of Q1 2023, I'd like the people that don't care to see it with their own eyes... I have offered to do this for the Frontier community managers, they can form their own opinions and content just be open to the possibility. What discussions happen internally is none of my business but its not unreasonable to ask community managers to engage with a section of the community that isn't onboard with the narrative.

 

[jojon]

Once they get the problems with lighting and shadows better in hand, it ought to improve the VR experience.

On some quite fundamental level, I imagine many of the game's lighting and shadow problems, in- and out of VR, are going to remain until such a hypothetical day those entire parts of the rendering pipeline are replaced with-, or at least supplemented by some amount of raytracing...

Probably exacerbated by the sheer range of scale the game works with, things like shadow maps have their inherent limitations, and the game seems to rely on a lot of particular "tricks", such as lighting of everything, including the whole planet next to you, and its moons, being governed by how you are lit -- not by their own situation; And post processing carrying a significant share of the load in what gets lumped together in discussing, as: "lighting".

The tone mapping does indeed produce stereo-mismatching results; Probably treating the left and right frames wholly independently, building a separate histogram for each, so that the eye to the side of you where there is something bright gets graded differently to the one where there is mostly empty space. This is a full-screen post-rendering-and-compositing effect, which affects everything, including ship interiors and the holographic UI elements, and is really annoying.

I happen to actually rather like how the appearence of objects in space tends to come out high-contrast, which looks realistic to my notion of things, but it also looks to me like this effect is entirely produced by post-processing, rather than actual lighting/shading, which makes it slosh a broad brush over all and everything - appropriate or not, and it goes way too far in many ways and places, delivering planets that glare a solid white until you get close enough that they fill a significant portion of the view port, and a whole universe that dims up and down like a disco light as you look around (changing the framed contents of the view)... Here's hoping for raw HDR output to HDR displays, one of these days, and no more of this windowing things down to SRGB... :7

 

[Jack Winter]

On some quite fundamental level, I imagine many of the game's lighting and shadow problems, in- and out of VR, are going to remain until such a hypothetical day those entire parts of the rendering pipeline are replaced with-, or at least supplemented by some amount of raytracing...

I do notice a continual improvement, for instance in u14 they toned down the cockpit lighting which has made object in space like nebulae brighter, there was also an improvement in how shadows behave. I'm not sure I'd hold out much hope for raytracing, but one never knows.

Probably exacerbated by the sheer range of scale the game works with, things like shadow maps have their inherent limitations, and the game seems to rely on a lot of particular "tricks", such as lighting of everything, including the whole planet next to you, and its moons, being governed by how you are lit -- not by their own situation; And post processing carrying a significant share of the load in what gets lumped together in discussing, as: "lighting".

Yes I've noticed this myself, I thought/think it's a bug where some far away stuff indeed seems to have it's light change depending on what light is shining on the player. And I'm not talking just about the effect of adjusting the players view depending on how much light is shining into our virtual eyes (which btw seems unnatural in how it behaves).

The tone mapping does indeed produce stereo-mismatching results; Probably treating the left and right frames wholly independently, building a separate histogram for each, so that the eye to the side of you where there is something bright gets graded differently to the one where there is mostly empty space. This is a full-screen post-rendering-and-compositing effect, which affects everything, including ship interiors and the holographic UI elements, and is really annoying.

I can't comment on this as my GPU (1660Ti) is too deficient to use VR, but I have tested it with my Index and noticed that the rendering of left and right eye can be inconsistent.

I happen to actually rather like how the appearence of objects in space tends to come out high-contrast, which looks realistic to my notion of things, but it also looks to me like this effect is entirely produced by post-processing, rather than actual lighting/shading, which makes it slosh a broad brush over all and everything - appropriate or not, and it goes way too far in many ways and places, delivering planets that glare a solid white until you get close enough that they fill a significant portion of the view port, and a whole universe that dims up and down like a disco light as you look around (changing the framed contents of the view)... Here's hoping for raw HDR output to HDR displays, one of these days, and no more of this windowing things down to SRGB... :7

I like the more realistic lighting, though I'm sure that some would vastly prefer the possibly prettier but unrealistic lighting of Horizons. I think they'll keep working on the lighting and that it will benefir both VR and pancake users. An improved anti aliasing would also not go amiss!

 

[Rat Catcher]

I appreciate your perspective. Maybe I'm misrepresenting the community. It would be an interesting exercise to gather the metrics on how the VR community uses their equipment. What games are being used, how many hours, what equipment, and how long each user has had their gear. I don't want to discount someone's personal enjoyment of FPS games in VR, but for me, that type of an application is simply more of a party gimmick than an immersive VR experience.

Lone Echo / Lone Echo 2 (sadly Oculus exclusives) are superb FP perspective, very immersive, games. I'm inclined to think that the majority of VR titles on PC are 1st Person in the last few years, I may be wrong in that assumption and just favouring my own preferences.

For what its worth, and at least from my perspective, the VR issues with Odyssey have absolutely nothing to do with the new content and everything to do with the new graphics engine...

Probably, or at least the lighting part of it.

Maybe folks keep "cropping up" because its really good, they like it, and would like to share that info on the forums?

I agree 100%
VR, when executed well, is quite amazing!

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

lone echo is 100% how i envisaged EVA working in VR in elite dangerous in a best case scenario.... which reminds me i need to go back to it, i have barely started it. i imagine it will look nice in my reverb G2 because it was pretty special on my CV1..... Realistically however something more akin to Adrift would be more doable however if FD wanted to support VR but at the same time not go all in on VR controls etc... it worked well, but was still pad based controls

 

[Northpin]

We all already know that VR Development is on pause. My questions to the CM's are simple. 1) Are we to expect that all development around VR is just done and that no more development will be done with vr similar to consoles? 2) Are the devs working on optimization for VR specifically? Reasons is stated below.

Lots of questions for a feature that is not supported nor even advertised as a feature in Odyssey.
So, my take on the issue is: VR is provided as is, if it works for you, it works, if it doesnt - bad luck

And i'm expecting lots and lots of "bad luck" for the owners of new shiny Radeon 7000 series cards

 

[Rat Catcher]

And i'm expecting lots and lots of "bad luck" for the owners of new shiny Radeon 7000 series cards

You'd be wrong...
My 7900 XTX arrived earlier. Works fine in both pancake and VR in EDO. Finally enough power to get a consistent 90 FPS on my Index, even in the 'difficult' bits.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You'd be wrong...
My 7900 XTX arrived earlier. Works fine in both pancake and VR in EDO. Finally enough power to get a consistent 90 FPS on my Index, even in the 'difficult' bits.

good to hear AMD cards working well in VR.... last person i spoke to said they were having awful trouble with their amd gpu (was a last gen card)...... i dont know details however

 

[Northpin]

You'd be wrong...
My 7900 XTX arrived earlier. Works fine in both pancake and VR in EDO. Finally enough power to get a consistent 90 FPS on my Index, even in the 'difficult' bits.

Well, i did read quite a number of comments from people complaining about planet issues (distortions and glitches) in Odyssey with the newest drivers in VR
But glad to be proved wrong

 

[Rat Catcher]

good to hear AMD cards working well in VR.... last person i spoke to said they were having awful trouble with their amd gpu (was a last gen card)...... i dont know details however

My 6900XT struggled to keep 90 Hz in VR in EDO - was OK at 80, mostly... I'm only judging by a 10 minute play in VR earlier, but will drop back in later. But I did choose the FC concourse as a test, a place where reprojection was guaranteed on the 6900 XT

Well, i did read quite a number of comments from people complaining about planet issues (distortions and glitches) in Odyssey with the newest drivers in VR
But glad to be proved wrong

I've had a trundle around a few bodies today, no issues seen.

But... I wonder if "Fix 2" is still active - that may be making things 'good' for me.

 

[darkminds1911]

Well, I did see that VR sales are down 12% worldwide from last year, So looks like a dying trend...

 

[Arioch]

Well, I did see that VR sales are down 12% worldwide from last year, So looks like a dying trend...

Don’t fret, I’m sure PSVR2 launching next month will help the figures for this year

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

Well, I did see that VR sales are down 12% worldwide from last year, So looks like a dying trend...

I think most product sales would be down from last year due to the events going on in the world.
PC sales dropped 19.5% So does that look like PCs are dying out and everyone is switching to consoles?
...oh no, xbox sales were also down 15%...so consoles are a dying trend and PCs are a dying trend...that's not good. No more gaming in a few years :'(

My thoughts on why VR sales are down:
1. World events and cost of living
2. GFX cards have been unavailable or unaffordable for the last few years
3. There hasn't been any major jump in VR tech apart from "minor" res increases, which means there's little reason to upgrade
4. Like monitors, VR headsets won't be replaced every year by the user, so owners stick with one for a good few years

Down yes, out, no way

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

Well, I did see that VR sales are down 12% worldwide from last year, So looks like a dying trend...

I heard it was 2% down but regardless of the figure lets assume its -12% all that means is the rate of growth being less, it doesn't mean its in decline....
or to put it another way there were 9million units sold in 2022, some of those will be upgrades some from business but there will be new VR users aka VR adoption is growing.

 

[Arioch]

I use my VR headset exclusively for Elite Dangerous.

Or, used to. I upgraded to a RTX 4090, which, while blazing fast, does NOT WORK with my Oculus Rift S. "Your system does not fulfil minimum requirements." -- "EXCUSE ME?!" I contacted support, and was told that the 4000 series (just like AMD's 7000 series) is not supported by Meta products.
So, I had to switch to pancake mode to get my fix. NOT THE SAME AT ALL. I have a (fairly old) 40" 4K screen (it was relatively cheap, so no bragging rights), and that's still small compared to the VR experience. Yes, the image is sharper than with the Oculus Rift S & the RX 6900XT I had before, but man . . . I hope Meta hurries up and adds support. I want to turn all graphics options to 11. (Playing 4.0 exclusively.)

I don’t know if you’ve managed to get it working since this was posted, but today I fitted my new RTX 4070ti and when I went to Link my Quest 2 the Oculus desktop software had the blue banner:

“Your system doesn’t meet the upgraded minimum requirements…” etc etc.

Trying Link or AirLink just gave me the 3 pulsing dots in the headset as it attempted to connect.

I re-downloaded the desktop software and selected the “Repair” option - after it finished I still got the blue warning banner but everything works as it should do. Might be worth trying for your Rift S while waiting for the 40-series cards to get whitelisted.

 

[Aerendyl]

So true. I played Half Life Alyx on my knees in the middle of the room until I discovered the teleportation method. This is why as much as I love VR, I think on foot VR in Odyssey would be a bad move, but that's just my personal opinion and I'm only one voice among thousands. I appreciate others feel differently and maybe don't get the nausea but I feel it. Not to the point of blowing chunks but I do sway a little which is hard when moving aiming and stopping suddenly.

On the flip side of that, VR in ships is outstanding to play. With the freedom to track your targets by turning your head and watching their trajectory and reacting to it as you turn and slot in behind them to continue the fight is a joy to experience. I call it Maverick mode because you instantly become a much better pilot/commander.

I sometimes wonder if we haven't got any new ships because of the VR element and the skills needed to develop VR environments. Do they have people still on their staff who can do this? I'm a reasonable man in most things, but I'd be disappointed if any new ship didn't have a VR cockpit mode at a minimum. However I would temper that statement by saying, don't hold up releasing new ships if that's the only reason. Give us them anyway and we'll figure it out later. If it costs money which it will no doubt, then tell us and get a feel for what the community would offer/contribute if that makes sense.

I'd suggest the same for ship interiors (im pushing it now I know) but create us an interior for a small ship and let us have a look. If you get good feedback and propose decent gameplay then that's a potential revenue stream and a way forward. Charge per ship and think of the cosmetics. I'm getting off track though so I'll stop there.

On-foot VR can be challenging but I completed Doom 3 without teleportation and hardly any nausea. It was the framerate that was the killer in Odyssey - though I haven't tried it in a few months so maybe something has changed now.

 

[Aerendyl]

There is no gaming experience like what VR can offer.

Just mod Skyrim VR to 4k and explore one of the larger caves and you will treated to a gaming experience beyond any.
Take off and land the F/A 18 on a Carrier in DCS VR is spectaculy exciting.

VR take it or not, I don’t care

Combat in VR is amazing, especially in a Mamba. The field of view! I don't do much combat outside of VR, it's much less fun.

 

[Aerendyl]

This is an interesting "alternative" to VR, though I've not tried it yet:

Source: https://youtu.be/INksIv-hQqU