[Rift DK2] Everything looks too small

[Zephyriel]

When playing ED with the DK2, everything feels too small, including the pilot's body. I know the scale in the game is right (characters relative to ships relative to stations and planets), but the way it is rendered in the Rift makes everything look tiny. When looking around the cockpit, I feel like Gandalf inside Bilbo's house. And when looking at my VR body I feel like Gandalf's head if it was attached to Bilbo's body. Outside, stations, asteroids and other ships don't look as big as they should.

It's not an IPD issue, because I set it both in the Rift utility, AND in the Elite config file. In the Rift demo VoxMachinae which puts you inside a robot cockpit, the scale feels just right, the pilot's body looks much bigger and the cockpit is scaled properly. It made the whole experience feel amazing and actually immersive. Right now unfortunately, in ED I don't get the feeling that I'm really inside the cockpit, I don't feel compelled to reach out and touch stuff. That fact that it works fine in VoxMachinae and also other demos I tried, tells me that it's not an issue with my Rift settings, so it has to be something related to the game. To be sure, I changed the IPD setting in ED's config file to extreme values both ways, and didn't feel any difference in the perceived scale of things. Only difference I noticed was that with a lower IPD setting, I don't need to twist my head so much for the left and right panels to pop up. The way I understand it, it's the distance between the virtual eyes that makes you feel the scale of things, so it's strange that changing the IPD doesn't change my perception in the game. In theory, setting an extremely wide IPD would mean my virtual eyes were so far apart that I'd need to cross my eyes to look at close things, but this isn't the case, which leads me to believe the IPD setting isn't properly implemented yet.

Has anyone experienced this issue in ED? Is there a solution? I understand the Rift (and probably its implementation in ED) isn't the final version, so I don't mind it if it's a problem that will be solved later. I can wait for consumer release. I just hope it won't be left like this forever, because it makes the whole experience very weird and not very enjoyable. I was looking forward to playing ED with the DK2 so much...

 

[Hamerstein]

As I understand it, the IPD setting in the Rift's SDK is to adjust the rendering of the two images generated on the Rift's screen so that the "centre" of each image is as central as possible to each pupil in your eye (IPD means inter pupilary distance - the distance between your left and right pupil). Having this set incorrectly forces your eyes to try and focus on images that are too divergent or close together - which causes eye strain as you try to abnormally focus.

The "smallness" issue isn't related to that, at least not from what I've read, it's just that some people's brains have issues with presence generated by artificial VR means and interpret the information "abnormally". An interesting thing that I tried with mine is that I think that the pilot is small too, but when I matched the position of my forearms (my HOTAS is mounted at the end of my chair arms so very similar to the cockpit arrangement in the Rift) to those of the pilot, they match up almost perfectly. Everything else matches up too, when examined in isolation (my torso is where the pilot's torso is, my legs and hip posiition match his, my legs are longer - but I'm exceptionally long legged for my height - I put it down to that) everything looks right, but I still have this impression overall that he is smaller than me.

It could be that my eye to neck distance in the Rift settings is off - so my Head is actually further away from my "body" than it should be, I'll have to experiment.

 

[Nagual]

They're not small, they're far away...

 

[natte hond]

calibrate a bid further than the position you play at was the solution my brother gave.
it works.
I only tried is a couple of hours and then decided to wait for the consumer version.
it made me feel like I outlived everyone to make it to the space age.
only my vision was impaired by that time.
its weird when you have to lean over to read the screens.

 

[grodenglaive]

It is your IPD - you need to make it smaller. That makes objects appear larger. Try it in the oculus config utility test scene - try the extreme values to see the effect it has - you won't notice 1 mm. Compare the ipd at max (75 mm) with min (55) and see what I mean. At 75 the coke can looks like a baby coke can and the playing cards, pen paper appear too small. At 55 they will all look larger.

I ended up using an IPD much smaller than my real IPD. It wasn't an E.D. thing, but a bug in the Oculus runtime that seems to only affect some people.
If you need to make your ipd even smaller than 55, you can edit the ProfileDB.json file manually. See here: https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=13417#p216107

 

[Zephyriel]

Grodenglaive > As I said in my post, I already tried changing the IPD value in Elite files to extreme values both ways, with no result, which is what leads me to believe the setting isn't properly implemented yet in this game.
In other games I tried, the scale is fine so the IPD is set right in Oculus utility. Otherwise the scale would be off in every game and not just Elite.

We shouldn't settle for the workaround that is leaning closer, because while it makes things appear closer, it doesn't change the perception that they are too small. I can look at a toy car from as close as I can, it will fill my field of vision but it won't make it look like a real car. I'll ticket this issue. Of course the rift isn't released yet so there is no hurry, but the issue should be tackled at some point. Either take the setting from oculus utility, or give us a value or a slider to adjust it as we need.

 

[KospY]

For me setting IPD in the oculus config utility is working. I tried to set 55, everything look bigger (I normaly use 65.5).
On the other hand, changing IPD in the file "Settings.xml" has no effect.

 

[Zephyriel]

I'll try changing it in Oculus then, even if it messes up other games, as long as it works in Elite

 

[Nikita]

I'll try changing it in Oculus then, even if it messes up other games, as long as it works in Elite

Changing the IPD helps, however there is definitely a rendering issue as well. The devs tried to offset that by basically only rendering depth to about 5 m or so in front of your cockpit. The world beyond that is completely flat. This works well in smaller ships, up to the cobra, because you brain will tell you that because you don't have stereo separation while look at distant objects they must be really huge. That being said, the effect breaks entirely in the bigger ships. IF you use a type-7 or type 9 the cockpit is so large that it almost extents to the perceived edge of the depth simulation, so that when you look at the canopy and the stars and objects next to it your brain tells you that infact the object beyond your canopy must be tiny in order to be in the same focal plane.

 

[Darth Sidious]

I gave myself a length of 1,50 cm in the rift launcher

 

[vanfanel]

I also think the scale is somewhat off. I've grown accustomed to it so it doesn't bother me anymore but for a comparison of proper scale try the vox machinae demo in the rift. The scale in that seems perfect. And as a side note I wish elite would add the same kind of body movements that vox machinae has when you lean around.

 

[Zephyriel]

So I did try changing the IPD in Oculus utility, and it worked! Setting it to the minimum (55), the scale is (almost) right for the cockpit and pilot body, close enought not to be distracting anymore.

However, like Nikita pointed out, things seem very flat outside the ship. While the massive distances in space mean that we wouldn't be able to tell how far two planets are even in real life, everything outside the cockpit actually feels really close. To be honest this gives me the feeling that I'm sitting in a simpit in front of a giant arcade game screen. Even the background stars seem to be in the same plane as whatever ship I'm looking at in front of me.

I don't understand how this issue is possible though, the game being in real scale, parallax should do its thing automatically to give us the roght sense distances... maybe the skybox is just too small? I read someone complaining about that a while back and I would agree with him now that I tried it for myself.

 

[grodenglaive]

Grodenglaive > As I said in my post, I already tried changing the IPD value in Elite files to extreme values both ways, with no result, which is what leads me to believe the setting isn't properly implemented yet in this game.

the IPD settings in the Elite files do nothing - it reads it from the actual Oculus configuration settings.

[edit] OK, I see you fixed it.
wrt the distance objects:
All the near objects like your ship interior, space stations, asteroids, etc. are rendered correctly to scale, but the background galaxy is not. It is a giant cube or sphere called a skybox that has the background texture applied to it. It is not possible to make the skybox infinitely large, so it's given a diameter small enough for your computer to manage, but hopefully large enough to not appear as a screen right in front of you. Some people, such as yourself are not fooled by the illusion. I had this problem at first, but my brain got used to it. I still notice it in brighter galaxy areas where space is not black.
The planets are probably also rendered smaller than actual size for similar reasons like was done in the "Titans of Space" demo. I find they still look pretty awesome though.

 

[Zephyriel]

I know how skyboxes work and how they can't make them infinitely large, however maybe they could make them larger than they currently are. I'm pretty sure other Rift software with space skyboxes make them look further away. For example the space background in VR desktop.

Also I'll experiment further today, but it seems that other ships and stations are not rendered in "3D", I mean there is no depth to them. The way I checked this is the following.Due to parallax, when you stare at something really close to you, things that are further away appear in double. In ED, id you look for example at one of the strucure lines on your canopy, space behind it will appear double. But I found that when looking at a station, even from very close, the stars behind it don't appear double. This means the eye focuses on the same point when you look at a very close station and when you look at the skybox, leading me to believe there is no 3D effect. We understand stations are huge because they occupy our whole field of vision, but the bottom of an Ocellus station doesn't actually "feel" further from the entrance, our brain just guesses it is due to perspective, the same way as when we look at it on a normal monitor.

I'll need to test this further to check if I'm mistaken, for example by getting as close as possible to the metal grid at the entrance of the station. When one of the bars will be pointed directly at my canopy and only a few meters away, there's bound to be some parallax when looking at further objects unless they're all rendered without depth (which is my perceptino at the moment). Maybe I'm wrong, and simply stations are far enough not to have a noticeable parallax even when viewed from near the entrance. But I really feel something is off when I play this game, while other games I've tried feel more "right", like VoxMachinae.

 

[rennarda]

But these things are supposed to be huge, and a long way away. Try doing your parallax experiment IRL with a building on the skyline in the distance against the background buildings - there's very little 3D-ness with objects so far away.

 

[grodenglaive]

I agree, hopefully they can make the skybox larger without impacting performance too much. They definitely seem larger in other games/demos I've tried.
For me the stations appear to have depth, though sometimes when approaching the landing pad things feel a bit off, like the ground is only 1 metre away when I'm still 10 metres up. Most times it looks OK though, so it might just be my perception. I haven't tested for parallax, but that should be a good indication that an object is being rendered differently for each eye.

 

[NoshDaMinsk]

Too small????

Wait till you get a Lakon Type 6 - that is huge!!!!

I like the scale I see - being a guy who is built with a lot of 'muscle at rest', it is nice to see skinny arms

Nosh

 

[KospY]

Strange, for me external object are 3D.
Distance make them "flat" sure, but it's like the real life. If I look at something 2 km away, I don't see any "3d"
Try the first training tutorial, and go very close to a canister, you will see the depth.

However, I agree about size, for me the pilot seem like a teenager. But it's maybe because I'm tall ?

 

[rennarda]

wow - setting my height to 1.50m in the Occulus control panel really does make a differnece, and makes the pilot body seem to be the right size.

 

[tinimark]

wow - setting my height to 1.50m in the Occulus control panel really does make a differnece, and makes the pilot body seem to be the right size.

What did you have it set at before? And if you don't mind me asking, what's that compared to your actual height?