So, it's occurred to me that there's not much discussion going on here about the rift's latency in Elite, which strikes - me at least - as being pretty poor in comparison to many of the other demos out there right now. I'm curious if anyone has had more or less success with particular set-ups and hardware. I assumed for a while that this would be fixed once the Direct-to-HMD mode would be fixed, but after experimenting around a bit with various configurations (SLI on, SLI off, x0.25 overall resolution, extended mode versus direct access etc.), it seems like the problem is systemic. At least across my system.
Now this is a little difficult to talk about, since we don't really have a proper latency tester in Elite. I'm aware that many people won't even notice latency this subtle, at least not consciously, and some won't even care. And I'll prepend this by saying that I'm not talking about any sort of latency here that's bad enough to make me feel dizzy or sick - I'm pretty happy to play for a few hours at a time. Yet, I do tend to remain aware of it and certain motions make it more noticeable than others.
Note that if you do start paying closer attention to this without having had any issues earlier, it might spoil the experience for you
It's very hard to unnotice this once you have noticed it.
In lieu of a latency tester, I suggest head-shaking as a method to verify latency. Basically, the objective is just to look at how the image responds to sharp motions of the head while you're looking at a fixed point in space. For instance a sharp and vigorous down-up nod or a side-to-side headshake. If you're listening to metal and headbanging a lot or even just nodding to the music while on the Rift in Elite, this lag I find can become noticeable and quite discomforting.
What I find happens is there's a very, very slight delay when you do that sharp nod, which gives the impression of the image in front of you floating downwards for a split-second before before it begins to mostly stay in place. If you shake your head side to side repeatedly (and I'm talking here, like, smaller vibrations, like you're motorboating someone, not doing like sweeping ninety-degree arcs) then the image begins bouncing around haphazardly - it's impossible to keep any particular point in space fixed, you lose any sense of the three-dimensional space and it's a good way to make yourself very sick, very quickly
Instead what I would expect to happen is for the image to remain relatively stable, with only a slight 'wobble' around the corners due to the headset itself shifting against my face. If you try it and find yourself going 'Well, yeah, of course it wobbles, the latency on these things is good but not that good,' then I'd like to point out that a lot of other Rift demos actually pull this off without any issues. Try playing something like Titans of Space or that TNG Engineering demo in Direct HMD Access mode and do the same test: you'll probably find that, actually, the image remains (surprisingly) stable and you can look at a point in front of you with really pretty minor distortion, even as you're shaking your head quite fast.
Now that we've got that out of the way, I'm curious if everyone else has the same experience as me, or if anyone has better latency than others? Obviously, we're going for pretty rough, subjective markers, but I reckon a can I or can I not maintain my vision focused on a point ahead of me while shaking my head really quickly benchmark is good enough for now.
I'm running SLI GTX 770s, so as I mentioned above, I'd assumed for a while that the added latency was a combination of running SLI cards and Extended Mode at the same time (Direct Access has flicker for me when SLI is enabled). Having tested it out a little more thoroughly, the lag remains even if I: disable SLI, switch to Direct Access Mode, turn to the lowest graphics settings and set both the Oculus Image Quality and SuperSampling to their lowest value all at once. Whether it's Direct Access or not, SLI or not, lowest graphics settings or not seems to make no difference.
So is the situation the same for everyone? And if anyone does find they're getting better performance than what I'm describing, what sort of configuration are you using to run the game?
Now this is a little difficult to talk about, since we don't really have a proper latency tester in Elite. I'm aware that many people won't even notice latency this subtle, at least not consciously, and some won't even care. And I'll prepend this by saying that I'm not talking about any sort of latency here that's bad enough to make me feel dizzy or sick - I'm pretty happy to play for a few hours at a time. Yet, I do tend to remain aware of it and certain motions make it more noticeable than others.
Note that if you do start paying closer attention to this without having had any issues earlier, it might spoil the experience for you
It's very hard to unnotice this once you have noticed it.In lieu of a latency tester, I suggest head-shaking as a method to verify latency. Basically, the objective is just to look at how the image responds to sharp motions of the head while you're looking at a fixed point in space. For instance a sharp and vigorous down-up nod or a side-to-side headshake. If you're listening to metal and headbanging a lot or even just nodding to the music while on the Rift in Elite, this lag I find can become noticeable and quite discomforting.
What I find happens is there's a very, very slight delay when you do that sharp nod, which gives the impression of the image in front of you floating downwards for a split-second before before it begins to mostly stay in place. If you shake your head side to side repeatedly (and I'm talking here, like, smaller vibrations, like you're motorboating someone, not doing like sweeping ninety-degree arcs) then the image begins bouncing around haphazardly - it's impossible to keep any particular point in space fixed, you lose any sense of the three-dimensional space and it's a good way to make yourself very sick, very quickly
Instead what I would expect to happen is for the image to remain relatively stable, with only a slight 'wobble' around the corners due to the headset itself shifting against my face. If you try it and find yourself going 'Well, yeah, of course it wobbles, the latency on these things is good but not that good,' then I'd like to point out that a lot of other Rift demos actually pull this off without any issues. Try playing something like Titans of Space or that TNG Engineering demo in Direct HMD Access mode and do the same test: you'll probably find that, actually, the image remains (surprisingly) stable and you can look at a point in front of you with really pretty minor distortion, even as you're shaking your head quite fast.
Now that we've got that out of the way, I'm curious if everyone else has the same experience as me, or if anyone has better latency than others? Obviously, we're going for pretty rough, subjective markers, but I reckon a can I or can I not maintain my vision focused on a point ahead of me while shaking my head really quickly benchmark is good enough for now.
I'm running SLI GTX 770s, so as I mentioned above, I'd assumed for a while that the added latency was a combination of running SLI cards and Extended Mode at the same time (Direct Access has flicker for me when SLI is enabled). Having tested it out a little more thoroughly, the lag remains even if I: disable SLI, switch to Direct Access Mode, turn to the lowest graphics settings and set both the Oculus Image Quality and SuperSampling to their lowest value all at once. Whether it's Direct Access or not, SLI or not, lowest graphics settings or not seems to make no difference.
So is the situation the same for everyone? And if anyone does find they're getting better performance than what I'm describing, what sort of configuration are you using to run the game?
