So...the fog in stations, does it like to roll with you too?

Hadarmil

Hadarmil
I'll preface with saying that I have absolutely no knowledge of computer graphics.
I just want to figure if this issue is something in my setup or is it normal.

When you look at the fog in the mailslot or coming out of the vents in the hangar, try rolling left or right your head while looking at it. Does it stay the same relative to you while the world rolls?

If you see/saw you'll know what I talk about. I'm using Rift CV1, BTW.
 

TorTorden_VR

T
It's a known pet peeve for vr users.
And shadows shift. I see that in pcars 2 as well.
A lot of games has the odd bit tied to head movement.
so ed is not a special case.

And before 2.4, during witch space you could make bobble heads move as you do.
 
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Chaz

Chaz
This is because the fog is essentially a flat billboard rather than volumetric, so there is no 3 dimensional effect. Meaning that when you move your head, the fog tilts and rotates to stay presented to you. You can also see this with the solar flares on stars as you fly by. This isn't just limited to VR, this also happens if you use Track IR on a flat screen. Not all the fog and particle effects are billboarded though. I've not noticed this with the fog effect as you fly through the slot for instance, and the exhaust trails from ships aren't either.
 
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Henri

Henri
the solar flares do the same.
also smoke in the cockpit goes through the glass.

and if you want to get sick....install some mining lasers in a t7 or a t9......makes me feel sick when I look at those deployed everytime.
 
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vic

V
yeah black holes also act funky too when you tilt your head. Very immersion breaking. I believe is because either ed was not primarily designed for vr or the developers just have not put the effort to correct vr anomolies . Maybe when the vr market gets large enouph.....
 

VR Mr Teatime

VR Mr Teatime
I can't remember (been over a decade since I did this stuff) whether its a DirectX function or engine specific, but there were different types of billboard you could set parameters for i.e. which axis of a billboard would rotate relative to the user's camera position. Dependent on engine, some of these kinds of assets are baked into the executable itself and some are held in external data files and normally its a fairly trivial task to change (it is a switch lol) once you have found the parameter - finding it might be less trivial however ;) There is the added complication in Elite, that rotation can occur in "all" directions being a space "sim", so it maybe that the billboard method isn't really suitable or that the billboards need to become "cruciform" i.e. like this from above +, to show a face without rotating it.

This is normally the sort of thing that will exist on a "to do" list with lower priority than say core gameplay elements, but I guess VR is still an edge case (one that is growing more mainstream though).

I hope that it's addressed at some point however.
 

[HJ]-RedRaven

[HJ]-RedRaven
This is not an issue caused by VR, or by the Rift/Vive etc. Its caused by ED's Cobra engine (many other engines have the same issue)

Textures that rotate with the viewpoint are called 'imposters'. Imposters are super cheap to render as they are just a single point with a texture attached. The texture is simply scaled with distance, and always faces the player viewpoint. Often an imposter is generated using a particle system in the game engine.

Indeed, they are not volumetric - just a simple 2D plane with the texture displayed.

The illusion works well for fog, smoke, foliage and overlapping fuzzy textures. But the illusion is shattered if you rotate the player viewpoint around the z-axis. This would never be an issue in normal 2D play on a monitor, but VR positional tracking means you can see the imposters rotate - when in reality, the smoke/fog etc should not.

The overheating smoke, station entry fog, and some of the nebula fuzzies in the galaxy map all use imposters. And ther star corona flares etc. I hate them all, immersion-wrecking.
 
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Toumal

Toumal
They fixed this for the smoke in the cockpit, which annoyingly used to rotate with your head as well. But the solar ejections and other random smoke still does the same thing and yes, it's extremely distracting.
 

Hadarmil

Hadarmil
[HJ]-RedRaven said:
This is not an issue caused by VR, or by the Rift/Vive etc. Its caused by ED's Cobra engine (many other engines have the same issue)

Textures that rotate with the viewpoint are called 'imposters'. Imposters are super cheap to render as they are just a single point with a texture attached. The texture is simply scaled with distance, and always faces the player viewpoint. Often an imposter is generated using a particle system in the game engine.

Indeed, they are not volumetric - just a simple 2D plane with the texture displayed.

The illusion works well for fog, smoke, foliage and overlapping fuzzy textures. But the illusion is shattered if you rotate the player viewpoint around the z-axis. This would never be an issue in normal 2D play on a monitor, but VR positional tracking means you can see the imposters rotate - when in reality, the smoke/fog etc should not.

The overheating smoke, station entry fog, and some of the nebula fuzzies in the galaxy map all use imposters. And ther star corona flares etc. I hate them all, immersion-wrecking.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed response. Once I noticed this I had flashbacks to doom era enemies' remains always facing you... :)
 

aspiringexpatriate

aspiringexpatriate
Toumal said:
They fixed this for the smoke in the cockpit, which annoyingly used to rotate with your head as well. But the solar ejections and other random smoke still does the same thing and yes, it's extremely distracting.
Click to expand...

And now my five year old GPU drops to 15fps traversing the mailslot, because the volumetric effects kill my GTX 670. I've already set them to low. If this was a change with 2.4, I really hope thy give us an 'off' option.

I was wondering why I had a similar drop in combat, but if it's about the in cockpit smoke, I guess that's my answer.

Great thread, glad the search engine found it for me.
 

Batapotamus

B
I noticed this in Dirt Rally with the trees. Really only when at the beginning of the race when all the trees bend or warp with your head motion.

Haven't noticed this with Elite yet but I'm sure I'm going to notice it from know on!
 
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