Reduce jagged, scintillating lines

[matemaster]

I have been messing with VR settings for quite long time. Now I am satisfied with clarity and FPS but the
most annoying thing now for me are those jagged, scintillating lines especially in stations on far away objects
Now I run HMD quality at 0.5 (turning this higher only amplifies the jagged-scintillating effect).
What is better to use to remove this effect SS in game or SS in steam VR or something else ?

 

[A D]

Don't know your rig, but if it has the grunt use following:

- Antialising = FXAA (not the best AA, but best on jaggies).
- Supersampling = 1.5
- HMD = 1.5

If SS and HMD too much for your rig lower one or the other to 1.25.

 

[NeilF]

Don't know your rig, but if it has the grunt use following:

- Antialising = FXAA (not the best AA, but best on jaggies).
- Supersampling = 1.5
- HMD = 1.5

If SS and HMD too much for your rig lower one or the other to 1.25.

Just to refresh my memory, all these settings can be set within EDs graphics settings?

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

Just to refresh my memory, all these settings can be set within EDs graphics settings?

You can set all options in ED, yes.

I will try FXAA myself this evening. Thank you A D for sharing!

 

[Kizbot]

I have been messing with VR settings for quite long time. Now I am satisfied with clarity and FPS but the
most annoying thing now for me are those jagged, scintillating lines especially in stations on far away objects
Now I run HMD quality at 0.5 (turning this higher only amplifies the jagged-scintillating effect).
What is better to use to remove this effect SS in game or SS in steam VR or something else ?

Surely reducing it to 0.5 just results in the headset using two physical pixels to show a single rendered pixel, which would just make it blurry. Doesn't it end up looking like the screen is foggy when it's not?

 

[jojon]

If you have a top of the line GPU, just once try to set both supersampling and HMD Quality to 2.0 (...assuming SteamVR ss=1.0; If it's 4.0, HMDQ at 1.0 produces the same effective result).

Aah, this is what the game is supposed to look like. Unfortunately it is not practical to play the game at 16 times nominal work load, and for some reason Elite begins to stream down texture mipmaps, even if you have plenty of VRAM to spare, but hey... :7

 

[matemaster]

Surely reducing it to 0.5 just results in the headset using two physical pixels to show a single rendered pixel, which would just make it blurry. Doesn't it end up looking like the screen is foggy when it's not?

I found that low HMD quality can be 100% compensated by steam VR supersampling.
HMD quality can be set only by large increments same as in game SS. Steam VR SS allows much more subtle tuning. I get better results setting HMD to 0.5 in game SS to 0.85, max SS from my pimax 4k and steam VR SS 3.5

 

[WordSmith]

I'm okay with my overall game experience, but if I wanted to increase the text quality, what could do?

I'm using a Rift, but not with steam, and Dr Kai's graphics picking utility doesn't work on my system.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

I'm okay with my overall game experience, but if I wanted to increase the text quality, what could do?

I've found that increasing the HMD Image Quality has the greatest impact on the sharpness of text. Even going from 1.00 to 1.25 is quite noticeable. Obviously it depends on your graphics card power how high you can set it to. But play with the Anti Aliasing setting at the same time - for me the text is sharpest when AA is either off or SMAA (I have HMQ IQ set to 1.50 and SS to 1.00), the settings in-between make the text slightly fuzzy. Again, SMAA will make the GPU work harder.

 

[seanguzzi]

Don't know your rig, but if it has the grunt use following:

- Antialising = FXAA (not the best AA, but best on jaggies).
- Supersampling = 1.5
- HMD = 1.5

If SS and HMD too much for your rig lower one or the other to 1.25.

This really helped, thank you.

 

[NW3]

...for some reason Elite begins to stream down texture mipmaps, even if you have plenty of VRAM to spare, but hey... :7

ED will switch to low res textures whenever your framerate drops below some threshold. I'm not sure what the threshold is exactly, but it's somewhere below 30 fps.

 

[jojon]

ED will switch to low res textures whenever your framerate drops below some threshold. I'm not sure what the threshold is exactly, but it's somewhere below 30 fps.

Oh, so that's it? I've been wondering. :7

Sounds a little odd, though, because as far as I know, texture size has no effect on framerate, as long as one use mipmapping, removing the need for excessively taxing filtering, and there is enough memory to keep them at-the-ready, so you don't have to shunt them back and forth...

 

[evanevery]

I have been messing with VR settings for quite long time. Now I am satisfied with clarity and FPS but the
most annoying thing now for me are those jagged, scintillating lines especially in stations on far away objects
Now I run HMD quality at 0.5 (turning this higher only amplifies the jagged-scintillating effect).
What is better to use to remove this effect SS in game or SS in steam VR or something else ?

I found that simply setting the "HMD Quaility" to 1.5x was all that was required to improve the image (especially the jaggies). I saw no real visual benefit from changing the supersampling or anti-aliasing. Furthermore, increasing the supersampling will substantially increase the load on your graphics card.

 

[NW3]

Sounds a little odd, though, because as far as I know, texture size has no effect on framerate, as long as one use mipmapping, removing the need for excessively taxing filtering, and there is enough memory to keep them at-the-ready, so you don't have to shunt them back and forth...

It has no significant effect on a highend video card. It can make a world of difference on a low-end card without sufficient memory to hold all the textures or a low-end computer with a slow hard drive. To me, it appears that ED loads the smallest mipmaps first and then loads the higher resolutions. Occasionally, I see a low-res mipmap for the first few frames, especially when starting the game in an SRV on a planet surface. Anyway, ED supports a wide range of video cards and when the framerate drops, it tries to automatically boost the framerate.

 

[NeilF]

On the topic of video quality and the OR, what's all this talk of using a DisplayPort adapter for your video card and it improving the visuals on the OR? - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/278996-Rift-hdmi-port-users

 

[jojon]

It has no significant effect on a highend video card. It can make a world of difference on a low-end card without sufficient memory to hold all the textures or a low-end computer with a slow hard drive. To me, it appears that ED loads the smallest mipmaps first and then loads the higher resolutions. Occasionally, I see a low-res mipmap for the first few frames, especially when starting the game in an SRV on a planet surface. Anyway, ED supports a wide range of video cards and when the framerate drops, it tries to automatically boost the framerate.

Ah, yes - texture popping has been with us for a long time; Titles on Unreal Engine 3 used to be infamous for it, as I recall.

On the topic of video quality and the OR, what's all this talk of using a DisplayPort adapter for your video card and it improving the visuals on the OR? - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/278996-Rift-hdmi-port-users

If nothing else; From what I've heard, Windows can sometimes default to television "legal" ranges for HDMI; An old remnant from CRT days and analogue signals, where you don't use RGB values all the way down to zero and all the way up to 255. One can use a DP port, for which no such assumption is made, since the output is expected to go to a monitor and not a television set, or one can keep using the HDMI one, and go into Windows graphics settings, and tell it to use full range values (EDIT: May require plugging a monitor into the port in questions, since in direct mode, the Rift doesn't show up as a monitor).

 

[NeilF]

Ah, yes - texture popping has been with us for a long time; Titles on Unreal Engine 3 used to be infamous for it, as I recall.



If nothing else; From what I've heard, Windows can sometimes default to television "legal" ranges for HDMI; An old remnant from CRT days and analogue signals, where you don't use RGB values all the way down to zero and all the way up to 255. One can use a DP port, for which no such assumption is made, since the output is expected to go to a monitor and not a television set, or one can keep using the HDMI one, and go into Windows graphics settings, and tell it to use full range values (EDIT: May require plugging a monitor into the port in questions, since in direct mode, the Rift doesn't show up as a monitor).

Ahhh... This? - https://pcmonitors.info/articles/correcting-hdmi-colour-on-nvidia-and-amd-gpus/

So just ensure "Set Dynamic Range" to "Full" - https://pcmonitors.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Nvidia-dynamic-range-option.png

I wouldn't be surprised since this broke news over a year ago if this is now a non-issue? ie: The drivers/software no longer reduce the HDMI colour range!?



What do you mean by "Direct Mode"?

 

[jojon]

Ahhh... This? - https://pcmonitors.info/articles/correcting-hdmi-colour-on-nvidia-and-amd-gpus/

So just ensure "Set Dynamic Range" to "Full" - https://pcmonitors.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Nvidia-dynamic-range-option.png

Looks like it - I have never fiddled with it myself, actually, until just now.

I notice I erroneously pointed finger at the Windows display settings, when it is in fact the NVidia control panel one should go to... :7 (I wonder if that is to say the problem does not occur with drivers for GPUs of other makes..?)

I wouldn't be surprised since this broke news over a year ago if this is now a non-issue? ie: The drivers/software no longer reduce the HDMI colour range!?

I suppose you'd still want the limited range, if outputting to a device that expects it...
Dunno, really, sorry. :7

What do you mean by "Direct Mode"?

At one point Oculus stopped treating the Rift as a system monitor, going though the standard relevant Windows APIs, and instead "speaks" to it more directly.

There used to be all sorts of oddities before that, most noteably VBlank sync only being available for one's primary monitor, no matter what goes out other ports.

As a consequence, the Rift no longer shows up as a connected monitor.

 

[NW3]

I wouldn't be surprised since this broke news over a year ago if this is now a non-issue? ie: The drivers/software no longer reduce the HDMI colour range!?

Unfortunately, it is still an issue for NVidia's drivers, even in Windows 10.

 

[NeilF]

Unfortunately, it is still an issue for NVidia's drivers, even in Windows 10.

Really? So probably wise to get one of those Displayport adapters then and run the OR off that? I assume I just move it from the HDMI slot to one of those in a Displayport with no setting up issues? Just turn on and it'll work?