Suggestion for Improving VR readability of Text in cockpit UI

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

After seeing a lot of VR mirror screen screenshots like http://imgur.com/a/V7vVy - its obvious the current VR HMD's lack the resolution to properly display the smaller text elements in the ED ship UI.

Would it be a relatively simple change to ED to move the left and right panels a bit closer to the pilot? What are the benefits/caveats?

Obviously the left/right/chat/SRV UI panels are all rectangular polygons, fixed at a point and angle controlled by FD. They can be moved around the cockpit space.

If that origin point were moved closer (say for the right hand panel, move it closer towards the pilot - to just outside the right hand/joystick motion range, and move up say 3-4 inches (10cm). The display should then appear closer and larger. It would cover a similar amount of your (VR) vision as if you were looking at a 17-21" monitor on your desk (about 45 degrees FOV?).

This would give the UI display possibly double or more effective pixels in the HMD with which to display the text and other UI elements.

Is there any reason why the UI panels cannot be brought closer (eye fatigue? focal distance of VR HMD lenses?). Loss of situational awareness? (you wanted to look at the panel, no?) I know you can 'lean in' to improve legibility, but if the panel could be moved (even customisable by the player, DBOBE forbid), much like we adjust a car's rear-vision mirror - we could eliminate a lot of the difficulty with reading text in ED.

It might also be of help to some users with less than perfect vision (like me) out in 2D land as well!

Thoughts?

 

[wstephenson]

Good idea, repped.

The angles of the panels should also be variable - on my Vive, the side panels still appear at an angle to me (unless I stand up and move out of the cockpit seat ), therefore decreasing the available angular resolution per charaacter.

 

[Arithon]

Maybe the depth position of the panels could be soft-coded and linked to a slider in the options settings with a "near to far" range.

That way players could set the distance that works best for them, their eyesight and their HMD.

 

[Bakkster]

Is there any reason why the UI panels cannot be brought closer (eye fatigue? focal distance of VR HMD lenses?).

Eye fatigue is the big concern, Oculus suggests UI be placed 1-3 meters from the player's viewpoint. Too close and you get strain from the close vergence. I think the UI panels are already close enough that moving them closer would be the wrong fix.

The Oculus SDK does support something called layers, where the UI elements could be super sampled at a different rate than the remainder of the scene, making for much more readable UI with a miniscule performance penalty (it can also work in reverse, letting you run the game subsampled while the text remains legible). That is the correct answer for legibility.

 

[Jake Savage]

When I'm playing elite, I move my chair back, and hit f12. Then I move my chair forwards, so that way the menus are closer to me and easier to read.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

All great additions fellas - a lot of games have 'somewhat customisable' UI's - I know FD is resistant to it for whatever DBOBE reason. I understand the need for a consistent visual theme, efficiency at having all ships use the same basic interface etc.

But usability for the pilot is paramount.

Being able to angle, project the UI at a closer (or further distance, and angle it to your preference. I don't see this as being any more complex than setting a variable in place of the fixed values per-ship, and allowing adjustment under the Options (or even in the UI itself ala the HUD brightness). Different ships have different size cockpits, so there's be limits, say in a Sidey or Viper, less so in an Anaconda bridge.

Bakkster makes a good point - Oculus whitepapers do recommend various distances for UI elements etc in the VR scene design. Closer vergence does tax the eyes. But if players are defeating those design defaults, as Jakesavage is doing (and others) by sitting back, resetting, then settling in a 'pilot-forward' position so the UI is simply closer to the HMD viewpoint, and without noticeable fatigue.

Essentially, the sit back/reset/sit forward workaround is the best we have, but this damage the illusion/viewpoint of your chest arms and legs?

 

[Bakkster]

Yes, sitting forward is the only current workaround. The correct answer is still to super sample the text at a higher rate than the rest of the screen, rather than make UI distance adjustable.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I had a DK2.....
I now have a CV1.

I admit some of the text was sometimes a "bit" hard (not impossible by any stretch) to read on the DK2 however on my consumer headset? Are you guys really still finding it an issue, and if so, do you normally wear glasses but take them off for VR or something? I am just not seeing any hard to read text in VR any more.

 

[dementia]

I had a DK2.....
I now have a CV1.

I admit some of the text was sometimes a "bit" hard (not impossible by any stretch) to read on the DK2 however on my consumer headset? Are you guys really still finding it an issue, and if so, do you normally wear glasses but take them off for VR or something? I am just not seeing any hard to read text in VR any more.

Do you still need to run with a green based UI colour scheme in the CV1 as we did with the DK2?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Do you still need to run with a green based UI colour scheme in the CV1 as we did with the DK2?

i have never bothered... even with DK2 :/ (it was always on my list of things to do, i just did not get around to it. Given the screen is the same type - just higher res - then going green will still improve your display if you feel it is giving you issues, but for me esp on cv1 its not necessary)

 

[CylonSurfer]

i have never bothered... even with DK2 :/ (it was always on my list of things to do, i just did not get around to it. Given the screen is the same type - just higher res - then going green will still improve your display if you feel it is giving you issues, but for me esp on cv1 its not necessary)

Same here, I always just used the standard orange HUD in my DK2 and never really found readability to be an issue. Text looks even better in my CV1.

 

[cygnusa]

When I'm playing elite, I move my chair back, and hit f12. Then I move my chair forwards, so that way the menus are closer to me and easier to read.

THIS. Tried this last night. Works great. I actually prefer this position. It feels better than just hitting F12 and accepting where it places you.

I'm still trying to get use to the VR thing. If I look down, and if my HOTAS isn't positioned similarly to where the controls are in the game.. I get this weird thing going on. Its hilarious thinking 'why the heck is my arm in the wrong spot?'. Then once it is set in the proper spot, I think 'umm... too real.. way too real'.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

I had a DK2.....
I now have a CV1.

I admit some of the text was sometimes a "bit" hard (not impossible by any stretch) to read on the DK2 however on my consumer headset? Are you guys really still finding it an issue, and if so, do you normally wear glasses but take them off for VR or something? I am just not seeing any hard to read text in VR any more.

The main reason I was thinking about it was because the text legibility was a common complaint.

I only have the mirror window vids etc to go on... my Rift CV1 is still some ways away.
But I figure the suggestion could go a long way to helping all HMD's, including the DK2 and Vive in its current state

If your eyesight isn't great (like mine) then any help you can get is a good thing.

 

[aquantar]

All of the suggestions I have read here are a step into the right direction. I thought exactly the same when trying a "cardboard" VR setup, which btw works very well for me (Virtoba Z5, Samsung Galaxy 6). Only problem the smaller sized texts like in the menues are hardly readable . Expecially the comms window is a pain to read as is the menu of the galaxymap and the system map. The menues of the maps should at least be displayed perpendicular to the viewer always. The comms window needs to have some larger letters so "cardboard" user like me can read them. As I only have directional tracking I also cannot lean towards the menues to get closer to them. So my only hope is FD does make E a little more friendly for setups like mine.

Because: ED does look good enough on my setup, just some minor readability problems with text are obstacles to a really good experience on "better" cardboard VR solutions, imho.

 

[Globusdiablo]

...Thoughts?

Good suggestion.

When I'm playing elite, I move my chair back, and hit f12. Then I move my chair forwards, so that way the menus are closer to me and easier to read.

Clever.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I have no problems reading the GUI in the game and that is without changing the default colour.

 

[Frank]

If you don't like fiddling with xml another quick and dirty fix is to play around with the HUD brightness.

FD are aware of the problem of HUD legibility and supposedly have done something to improve it in the beta, but I'm with Mad Mike with this one.. I found the writing perfectly legible in the main game so maybe any improvement is lost on me.

If (hopefully when) FD to give us a custom colours option, I hope they don't try to make it a paid-for feature. That would make it very expensive to find the colour which produces the most highly defined text.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Holy Necro from May.

I posted this before I had my Rift - not having any direct VR experience and the flavour of the month being text legibility...
Once I was in VR I could see the text was not too bad after all. Using the Oculus Debug Tool pixel densities above 1.2 do help a bit.

Exposing the Red/Green/Blue of various UI elements shouldn't be too hard. The references are all in the game already, just parse them out and add an options switch with a box showing the colour.
FD has some odd colour system in the renderer, as any change you make to those colours affect the UI and even the colour portraits of the NPCs in station etc. Maybe its faster to 'offset' colours relative to each other as a reference rather than stating an actual RGB value for each elemnt but... FD. Wierd.

Editable UI colours would be a major QoL improvement for those who are colour blind etc.