Sticky for optimal Windows Mixed Reality Headset settings

[Chris Simon]

Have anyone noticed some improvements after 12.1. patch to WMR for SteamVR app?
I haven't. The station menus are still jerky and I have to restart the game once in a hour or so.

 

[VR_Yata_PL]

Actually, the stuttering is almost null outside of the mission board. Judging the effects of changing settings on the frame rate is also hit-and-miss. I wish the game had a proper benchmark.

Please mark at steam vr app „ always reprojection „ and also mark „async reprojection” other options umark in developer menu , write us if that help you with station board.. It’s working great for Vive users and you still maintan 90 fps out of stations.

 

[Sweman]

I ordered the new Asus Windows Mixed Reality headset and got it yesterday. I went the Windows Mixed Reality route instead of Rift/Vive due to the inside out tracking + simplified setup and chose the Asus WMR headset over the other WMR headsets for its light weight and nice construction. Had tried the HP WMR headset before and that one is over twice the weight of the Asus one. The Samsung Odyssey was an option, but as that is not sold here in Europe and lack some features I want (no support for flipping up the display, no support for connecting custom headphones) I am happy with the Asus headset.

When I set this up I did it on my computer in the living room where I have a pc with 4770K + Vega64 and it was pretty easy to get Elite Dangerous up and running in VR. Ran into a few problems, but got past them without much hassle. First problem was that I got nothing to show up in the headset and the TV started flickering, but that went away when I changed the resolution on the TV from 2160p down to 1080p. Second problem was that the headset was not centered when I got into ED and even though that is something that I probably could have fixed with some setup in SteamVR I wanted to get on with it so I just rotated my chair a bit which worked fine in my case as I was only planning to use a XBox controller and try to fly a bit.

I am pretty new to VR in general and this was my first try of Elite in VR and it was so0oooo good. I have seen others do it in videos on youtube, but it sure is something else to do it by yourself. The feeling you get with VR immersion when it works so well as it does in Elite is probably something you need to experience as it is hard to put into words. I only had time to goof around for a little bit and encountered no issues - tracking was on point and I saw no stuttering. Looking forward to trying it out more tonight. Perhaps a rescue mission or two can get the blood flowing

 

[heretowatch]

I ordered the new Asus Windows Mixed Reality headset and got it yesterday. I went the Windows Mixed Reality route instead of Rift/Vive due to the inside out tracking + simplified setup and chose the Asus WMR headset over the other WMR headsets for its light weight and nice construction. Had tried the HP WMR headset before and that one is over twice the weight of the Asus one. The Samsung Odyssey was an option, but as that is not sold here in Europe and lack some features I want (no support for flipping up the display, no support for connecting custom headphones) I am happy with the Asus headset.

When I set this up I did it on my computer in the living room where I have a pc with 4770K + Vega64 and it was pretty easy to get Elite Dangerous up and running in VR. Ran into a few problems, but got past them without much hassle. First problem was that I got nothing to show up in the headset and the TV started flickering, but that went away when I changed the resolution on the TV from 2160p down to 1080p. Second problem was that the headset was not centered when I got into ED and even though that is something that I probably could have fixed with some setup in SteamVR I wanted to get on with it so I just rotated my chair a bit which worked fine in my case as I was only planning to use a XBox controller and try to fly a bit.

I am pretty new to VR in general and this was my first try of Elite in VR and it was so0oooo good. I have seen others do it in videos on youtube, but it sure is something else to do it by yourself. The feeling you get with VR immersion when it works so well as it does in Elite is probably something you need to experience as it is hard to put into words. I only had time to goof around for a little bit and encountered no issues - tracking was on point and I saw no stuttering. Looking forward to trying it out more tonight. Perhaps a rescue mission or two can get the blood flowing

Welcome to Elite in VR! I'm sure you'll stay

There is a keybind you can change in settings to reset your view: "reset HMD orientation" under miscellaneous. I think by default it's F12. This will center your view with where you're sitting.

 

[Pville_Piper]

I didn't realize the ASUS was out yet...

 

[Sweman]

I didn't realize the ASUS was out yet...

I believe it just came out, at least here in Sweden. Bought it from Inet (https://www.inet.se/produkt/2212360/asus-windows-mixed-reality-headset-motion-controllers)

 

[Chris Simon]

I ordered the new Asus Windows Mixed Reality headset and got it yesterday. I went the Windows Mixed Reality route instead of Rift/Vive due to the inside out tracking + simplified setup and chose the Asus WMR headset over the other WMR headsets for its light weight and nice construction. Had tried the HP WMR headset before and that one is over twice the weight of the Asus one. The Samsung Odyssey was an option, but as that is not sold here in Europe and lack some features I want (no support for flipping up the display, no support for connecting custom headphones) I am happy with the Asus headset.

When I set this up I did it on my computer in the living room where I have a pc with 4770K + Vega64 and it was pretty easy to get Elite Dangerous up and running in VR. Ran into a few problems, but got past them without much hassle. First problem was that I got nothing to show up in the headset and the TV started flickering, but that went away when I changed the resolution on the TV from 2160p down to 1080p. Second problem was that the headset was not centered when I got into ED and even though that is something that I probably could have fixed with some setup in SteamVR I wanted to get on with it so I just rotated my chair a bit which worked fine in my case as I was only planning to use a XBox controller and try to fly a bit.

I am pretty new to VR in general and this was my first try of Elite in VR and it was so0oooo good. I have seen others do it in videos on youtube, but it sure is something else to do it by yourself. The feeling you get with VR immersion when it works so well as it does in Elite is probably something you need to experience as it is hard to put into words. I only had time to goof around for a little bit and encountered no issues - tracking was on point and I saw no stuttering. Looking forward to trying it out more tonight. Perhaps a rescue mission or two can get the blood flowing

Hi, welcome to the flock.
There is a headlook reset fuction in Elite which you can bind to a key or button. It resets the position of the headset. Basically if your view is not centered, you turn yourself wherever you want to be "straight ahead", press the button and the view resets in all axes.
I forgot how exactly is the fuction called and I can't check in the game, now, but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

 

[evanevery]

I have made some detailed reports about the Samsung Odyssey / ED performance (or lack thereof) in this forum. I've worked directly with two other forum members to see if we could get the Odyssey working. Of the three of us, I'm the only one who DIDN'T send my Odyssey back for a refund. However, all of us quickly/easily agreed that the Odyssey was largely completely unplayable in ED. (Two of us have a Rift and the other has a PiMax 4k to fall back on).

There appears to be one major and one minor design flaw with the Odyssey that other Windows MR HMD's might NOT have:

1. MAJOR - Edge flare from the Odyssey lenses is extremely distracting. Its way worse than the "God Rays" seen in the Rift. Seem to mostly "originate" from the location of the illumiated panels on the arms of the cockpit chair. This just appears to be a design failure on the part of Samsung which has no real solution. Might be somewhat mitigated in the ED environment if we could "turn off" the instrument candy on the cockpit chair.

2. MINOR - I thought it might be something unique to my large strangely shaped head ;-) but one of the other users I was corresponding with also reported that the Odyssey was much too tight. I ended up cvompletely removing the rear pad to get anything close to a reasonable fit.

However, the REAL KILLER is that ED is just simply unplayable with the Odyssey. I expect this is NOT unique to the Odyssey and might very well be common to all WindowsMR HMD's.

3. The screen juddering, distortion, frame dropping, etc seen in ALL of the ED screens which have mouse support (Station Menus, Galmap, Sysmap) - even if you don't USE the mouse - is absolutely horrible and makes the game completely unplayable. I expect this is likely due to the lousy mouse support code FDEV has tried to use in all of these screens (Its always caused one problem or another and is particularly troublesome in VR even when it DID work). Any shortcomings in FDEV's code as they try to overlay these screens is likely exacerbated by the SteamVR and WindowsMR4VR applets. ...and given FDEV's track record on working on code that really matters (unlike lipstick for Holo-Me), its unlikely this will get resolved any time soon..

So, what I would like to understand:

1. Has anyone actually fired up the Samsung Odyssey and thought it to be in any way useable in ED? If so, did you have another HMD to fall back on, or are you simply using the Odyssey for VR in ED because that's the only option you have?

2. Do the other WindowsMR HMD's have the same Juddering. frame dropping, ripping issues the same as what we see with the Odyssey? (IOW - Is this problem common to ED and ALL WindowsMR headsets?)

Its quite possible that other WinMR headset manufacturers might have done a better optical design than Samsung (Edge Flare), but if they all experience the same software rendering issues then there is little point in waiting for FDEV to get off their Holo-butts and fix it...

I might go and try an Asus HMD to see if it is any better than the Rift if the WinMR HMDs do not all share the same rendering issues with ED.

 

[Moohbear]

I have made some detailed reports about the Samsung Odyssey / ED performance (or lack thereof) in this forum. I've worked directly with two other forum members to see if we could get the Odyssey working. Of the three of us, I'm the only one who DIDN'T send my Odyssey back for a refund. However, all of us quickly/easily agreed that the Odyssey was largely completely unplayable in ED. (Two of us have a Rift and the other has a PiMax 4k to fall back on).

There appears to be one major and one minor design flaw with the Odyssey that other Windows MR HMD's might NOT have:

1. MAJOR - Edge flare from the Odyssey lenses is extremely distracting. Its way worse than the "God Rays" seen in the Rift. Seem to mostly "originate" from the location of the illumiated panels on the arms of the cockpit chair. This just appears to be a design failure on the part of Samsung which has no real solution. Might be somewhat mitigated in the ED environment if we could "turn off" the instrument candy on the cockpit chair.

2. MINOR - I thought it might be something unique to my large strangely shaped head ;-) but one of the other users I was corresponding with also reported that the Odyssey was much too tight. I ended up cvompletely removing the rear pad to get anything close to a reasonable fit.

However, the REAL KILLER is that ED is just simply unplayable with the Odyssey. I expect this is NOT unique to the Odyssey and might very well be common to all WindowsMR HMD's.

3. The screen juddering, distortion, frame dropping, etc seen in ALL of the ED screens which have mouse support (Station Menus, Galmap, Sysmap) - even if you don't USE the mouse - is absolutely horrible and makes the game completely unplayable. I expect this is likely due to the lousy mouse support code FDEV has tried to use in all of these screens (Its always caused one problem or another and is particularly troublesome in VR even when it DID work). Any shortcomings in FDEV's code as they try to overlay these screens is likely exacerbated by the SteamVR and WindowsMR4VR applets. ...and given FDEV's track record on working on code that really matters (unlike lipstick for Holo-Me), its unlikely this will get resolved any time soon..

So, what I would like to understand:

1. Has anyone actually fired up the Samsung Odyssey and thought it to be in any way useable in ED? If so, did you have another HMD to fall back on, or are you simply using the Odyssey for VR in ED because that's the only option you have?

2. Do the other WindowsMR HMD's have the same Juddering. frame dropping, ripping issues the same as what we see with the Odyssey? (IOW - Is this problem common to ED and ALL WindowsMR headsets?)

Its quite possible that other WinMR headset manufacturers might have done a better optical design than Samsung (Edge Flare), but if they all experience the same software rendering issues then there is little point in waiting for FDEV to get off their Holo-butts and fix it...

I might go and try an Asus HMD to see if it is any better than the Rift if the WinMR HMDs do not all share the same rendering issues with ED.

I can describe my experience with menus like station board & galactic map. When I land at a station and launch station services, I do see some brief glitching while the menu loads. After that, it runs mostly fine, either using the mouse or the HOTAS. Switching between submenus, like commodities and mission board may or may not produce a brief glitch. Overall, it's not affecting the game, even if I'd prefer things to be smoother.
The galactic map is another problem. Loading it again causes some glitching, but the map itself is fine. However, trying to select stars is very buggy. The mouse cursor floats there and is not aligned to anything in particular. That makes things somewhat difficult :/
While playing, I do see judder, dropped frame, etc. I see some, but my system is not top notch (1060GTX/i5 3570) and my headset is 1440x1440, higher resolution than a rift or a vive... It happens mostly when the game loads something: checking a new body, ship. Overall, I think ED is very poorly optimized. Planets and stars look like they're taxing the system, making the frame rate drop. Big, poorly textured spheres are too hard to render? Seriously?

As for your other problems:
1- there's some flaring. I can see it most when the ship is sitting in the hangar with bright ceiling lights. It's annoying, but not game-breaking to me.
2-my HMD fits okay, certainly not too tight

As an aside, why are you hell bent on replacing your Rift with a WMR? Is there something wrong with it?

 

[Chris Simon]

I don't have the flares on my Dell Visor. Maybe Samsung uses a different lense than the rest of the WMR headsets or maybe it's because it has slightly larger displays and FOV.

As for the glitching when loading menus and the galaxy map, yeah, that one's really annoying. But I still hope it gets sorted. After all the WMR Steam app is still in the beta and the devs seem proactive enough.

 

[evanevery]

I can describe my experience with menus like station board & galactic map. When I land at a station and launch station services, I do see some brief glitching while the menu loads. After that, it runs mostly fine, either using the mouse or the HOTAS. Switching between submenus, like commodities and mission board may or may not produce a brief glitch. Overall, it's not affecting the game, even if I'd prefer things to be smoother.
The galactic map is another problem. Loading it again causes some glitching, but the map itself is fine. However, trying to select stars is very buggy. The mouse cursor floats there and is not aligned to anything in particular. That makes things somewhat difficult :/
While playing, I do see judder, dropped frame, etc. I see some, but my system is not top notch (1060GTX/i5 3570) and my headset is 1440x1440, higher resolution than a rift or a vive... It happens mostly when the game loads something: checking a new body, ship. Overall, I think ED is very poorly optimized. Planets and stars look like they're taxing the system, making the frame rate drop. Big, poorly textured spheres are too hard to render? Seriously?

As for your other problems:
1- there's some flaring. I can see it most when the ship is sitting in the hangar with bright ceiling lights. It's annoying, but not game-breaking to me.
2-my HMD fits okay, certainly not too tight

As an aside, why are you hell bent on replacing your Rift with a WMR? Is there something wrong with it?

I've got many hundreds of hours playing with the Rift. Overall I'm quite happy with it. However, I'm looking forward to a next gen headset with higher resolution and better color (OLED).

So far, the Rift is much better than anything else I've tried (I expect the Vive performs similarly). My experience (and others) with the current crop of Windows MR headsets has been miserable.

VR in ED is amazing. Amazing enough that, even if you are using a sub-standard product like the Odyssey, you may think its worth all the horrible performance that particular device brings with it. Everyone I know who's had something else to fall back on has dropped the Odyssey like a hot potato.

I have a PiMax 8K on the way and I'm looking forward to seeing how it performs. VR is important enough to me that I might be willing to try another WinMR HMD if they don't all suffer from the same miserable performance we see with the Odyssey. Most of my time in VR is spent in ED. At this point it doesn't really matter if the core of the performance is is lousy FDEV programming. Its pretty obvious that FDEV is not really spending much time doing anything really meaningful with their code code base. So it is what it is and its not likely to change any time soon. I'm just curious if the other WinVY HMD's suffer the same shortcoming in ED.

 

[evanevery]

I don't have the flares on my Dell Visor. Maybe Samsung uses a different lense than the rest of the WMR headsets or maybe it's because it has slightly larger displays and FOV.

As for the glitching when loading menus and the galaxy map, yeah, that one's really annoying. But I still hope it gets sorted. After all the WMR Steam app is still in the beta and the devs seem proactive enough.

So it sounds like all the WinMR HMD's suffer the same performance problem in ED. That's kind of what I expected and its pretty much the nail in the coffin for any of them (as far as I'm concerned)...

If you think its "worthwhile" playing ED in VR with one of these headsets, you owe it to yourself to try one that actually works properly. (Rift/Vive)

 

[Chris Simon]

So it sounds like all the WinMR HMD's suffer the same performance problem in ED. That's kind of what I expected and its pretty much the nail in the coffin for any of them (as far as I'm concerned)...

If you think its "worthwhile" playing ED in VR with one of these headsets, you owe it to yourself to try one that actually works properly. (Rift/Vive)

Like I said, I believe it will get sorted out. Most of the games work fine in WMR, so I don't see why they wouldn't try to optimize the ED performance. It's clearly a handshake problem between WMR and SteamVR apps.

But you're right, it doesn't do Elite justice, right now. I meant it's "worthwhile" to wait. Not to play.
That's why I use Vive in the meantime. ALthough it's a pain in the backside for other reasons.

 

[Violins77]

Hi there! I just thought I would chime in here with my experience with the HMD Odyssey.

First, I would like to mentioned that the issue evanevery mentioned happening were definitely real. The jittering in all mouse enabled panel was unbearable.

The situation is MUCH MUCH better now, I worked directly with Geoff from Microsoft, providing traces and describing the issue, and multiple bugs were fixed with the render. He also confirmed they are working directly with Frontier Development to fix even more.

For me the game is easily playable now. The glaring issues are definitely there, but I believe this is a limitation of the lens design. It is not really that annoying to me. One thing I would like though would be able to choose the refresh rate of the display. For Elite Dangerous, 60 hz would be enough for me, and I would be able to mostly run the game without ever triggering reprojection and "ghost images". I could obviously lower the graphics to maintan an almost constant 90 FPS, but I much prefer tha 1.5 HMD quality, even though I lock the game at 60 FPS which obviously triggers reprojection all the time.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I ordered the new Asus Windows Mixed Reality headset and got it yesterday. I went the Windows Mixed Reality route instead of Rift/Vive due to the inside out tracking + simplified setup and chose the Asus WMR headset over the other WMR headsets for its light weight and nice construction. Had tried the HP WMR headset before and that one is over twice the weight of the Asus one. The Samsung Odyssey was an option, but as that is not sold here in Europe and lack some features I want (no support for flipping up the display, no support for connecting custom headphones) I am happy with the Asus headset.

When I set this up I did it on my computer in the living room where I have a pc with 4770K + Vega64 and it was pretty easy to get Elite Dangerous up and running in VR. Ran into a few problems, but got past them without much hassle. First problem was that I got nothing to show up in the headset and the TV started flickering, but that went away when I changed the resolution on the TV from 2160p down to 1080p. Second problem was that the headset was not centered when I got into ED and even though that is something that I probably could have fixed with some setup in SteamVR I wanted to get on with it so I just rotated my chair a bit which worked fine in my case as I was only planning to use a XBox controller and try to fly a bit.

I am pretty new to VR in general and this was my first try of Elite in VR and it was so0oooo good. I have seen others do it in videos on youtube, but it sure is something else to do it by yourself. The feeling you get with VR immersion when it works so well as it does in Elite is probably something you need to experience as it is hard to put into words. I only had time to goof around for a little bit and encountered no issues - tracking was on point and I saw no stuttering. Looking forward to trying it out more tonight. Perhaps a rescue mission or two can get the blood flowing

How was the VEGA 64 with ED in VR. What settings did you have?

 

[Hdale85]

Does the 4k Pimax BE have any of these issues? I saw the one guy mention that it looked way better than the Odyssey but I wasn't sure if that's just because the PPD or whatever wasn't working for him or what. Does the Pimax 4k have any lens flare issues or anything? I know it doesn't have built in tracking. The only reason I'm really trying to get something other than the rift is because chances are I won't be able to buy another device for a year or even more so trying to get the best looking experience I can, and generally I'm a bit of a videophile so I figured the SDE would drive me nuts as well as not being able to clearly read text and such. I was also looking at the Pimax 5k or 8k, but who knows when they will be out or even be available to people that didn't pre-order. Is the rift really the only good option right now?

 

[Chris Simon]

I have to say that the last beta update to steamVR improved things a LOT. I played about five hours with Dell, tonight. There is still a bit of glitching when opening the map and station services (only initially, otherwise the menus are smooth), but other than that, I haven't had a slightest problem. Usually when I played, the glitching would get progressively worse up to a point where the game collapsed or I had to restart, but today nothing. I'm going to bed, tomorrow I'm gonna post the SteamVR and in-game settings so someone who's also having problems can check.

 

[Violins77]

Does the 4k Pimax BE have any of these issues? I saw the one guy mention that it looked way better than the Odyssey but I wasn't sure if that's just because the PPD or whatever wasn't working for him or what. Does the Pimax 4k have any lens flare issues or anything? I know it doesn't have built in tracking. The only reason I'm really trying to get something other than the rift is because chances are I won't be able to buy another device for a year or even more so trying to get the best looking experience I can, and generally I'm a bit of a videophile so I figured the SDE would drive me nuts as well as not being able to clearly read text and such. I was also looking at the Pimax 5k or 8k, but who knows when they will be out or even be available to people that didn't pre-order. Is the rift really the only good option right now?

I had the Pimax 4K (not BE) before, so I can compare directly with the Odyssey which I have now. First, the resolution is slightly better on the Pimax 4K, and the screendoor effect is also better (read less visible). This, however comes with major drawbacks. There is some major ghosting, and I'm not talking "smearing" but full on ghosting, where some part of the image is at the same place twice. The color are also not nearly as accurate as the Odyssey OLED screen, and nor are the black levels. And thirs, there are some shutter glass in the Pimax 4K that are supposed to help ghosting and defog, but it creates a kind of a wavy feel clearly visible as black columns on the screens, especially visible in white areas.

Overall, it's not the same device quality. But I think the Pimax 4K is worth it for the price. Also, don't forget the MR devices are a full VR experience with motion controller and full tracking, bringing a lot more games to the table compared to the Pimax.

 

[Avago Earo]

It's a shame that WMR head sets cost twice the amount in the U.K. (and rest of Europe) as they do in the U.S.

 

[Hdale85]

I had the Pimax 4K (not BE) before, so I can compare directly with the Odyssey which I have now. First, the resolution is slightly better on the Pimax 4K, and the screendoor effect is also better (read less visible). This, however comes with major drawbacks. There is some major ghosting, and I'm not talking "smearing" but full on ghosting, where some part of the image is at the same place twice. The color are also not nearly as accurate as the Odyssey OLED screen, and nor are the black levels. And thirs, there are some shutter glass in the Pimax 4K that are supposed to help ghosting and defog, but it creates a kind of a wavy feel clearly visible as black columns on the screens, especially visible in white areas.

Overall, it's not the same device quality. But I think the Pimax 4K is worth it for the price. Also, don't forget the MR devices are a full VR experience with motion controller and full tracking, bringing a lot more games to the table compared to the Pimax.

But a lot of that should be better on the business edition cause it uses an oled panel but lower resolution I believe 1440x1440 instead of 4k or whatever the standard one uses.