I’ve done a lot of testing as I got a rift s recently and as others have said, CPU is a huge (unexpected for me) bottleneck in VR. It’s because the draw call is different for vr; the cpu and gpu can’t overlap in their work. So if your settings are low to improve performance, the gpu will finish the frame faster and call back to the cpu, increasing its load, and if you go into ASW mode remember that the cpu is having to create those frame reprojections as well. So it snowballs.
I have a weak cpu and I found turning detail settings up actually made performance more consistent. Load that gpu to slow it down. I’m always in ASW but there’s no helping that. (I have a new cpu coming tomorrow)
The other thing I discovered is about supersampling. There’s some talk floating around that the SS in the VR software is somehow different than just using the settings in the game. I don’t think this is true. Or if it was true it’s not any longer. I do think there might be a difference somehow in the order they are applied, but the effect is such that at least for ED, I think you’re best off using the in-game settings only since they are predictable and a known commodity. I’ve done a ton of testing and I’m convinced there’s no difference in image quality with one over the other, and there is no secret way to get “free” SS using the VR software without a performance hit.
I think you should set it up this way for ED using in-game settings only :
Start by setting. HMD to 2.0 and SS to 0.5.
This will give you exactly the same GPU load as leaving them both at native res and it looks the same for close objects, but because of the order the effects are applied distant objects as well as HUD target text and orbit lines will appear considerably smoother. This is an important visual upgrade since this game has such high contrast hard lines, especially at distance. It doesn’t make your screen text clearer, but it’s not loading your GPU any more than native so it’s all good.
Then if your computer can handle it, start bumping up the SS setting to improve clarity of the whole image, not just distant things, but leave HMD maxed at 2.0 always.
That’s my two cents.
I have a weak cpu and I found turning detail settings up actually made performance more consistent. Load that gpu to slow it down. I’m always in ASW but there’s no helping that. (I have a new cpu coming tomorrow)
The other thing I discovered is about supersampling. There’s some talk floating around that the SS in the VR software is somehow different than just using the settings in the game. I don’t think this is true. Or if it was true it’s not any longer. I do think there might be a difference somehow in the order they are applied, but the effect is such that at least for ED, I think you’re best off using the in-game settings only since they are predictable and a known commodity. I’ve done a ton of testing and I’m convinced there’s no difference in image quality with one over the other, and there is no secret way to get “free” SS using the VR software without a performance hit.
I think you should set it up this way for ED using in-game settings only :
Start by setting. HMD to 2.0 and SS to 0.5.
This will give you exactly the same GPU load as leaving them both at native res and it looks the same for close objects, but because of the order the effects are applied distant objects as well as HUD target text and orbit lines will appear considerably smoother. This is an important visual upgrade since this game has such high contrast hard lines, especially at distance. It doesn’t make your screen text clearer, but it’s not loading your GPU any more than native so it’s all good.
Then if your computer can handle it, start bumping up the SS setting to improve clarity of the whole image, not just distant things, but leave HMD maxed at 2.0 always.
That’s my two cents.
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