Vive Pre - I've got to be doing something wrong. Anyone else?

[Ragnar Drake]

VirtualMinion, take a deep breath and remember that you're an early adopter of bleeding edge technology, of course there are going to be issues. It works well enough to be fully playable for many people (me included) despite the current issues.

This thread is specifically about the Vive's rendering for Elite Dangerous which caused shimmering and aliasing artifacts, and it looks like this is already improved in the beta and Frontier is continuing to work on it. See my reddit post for comparison screenshots and more details. Please don't derail the thread with generic support requests and complaints.

Very briefly, I think your core problem is SLI. Try disabling that and retrying, that improved things for others having this issue. You should have no trouble getting stable 90fps with a single 980Ti - start with the "VR low" preset to confirm this.

Yes, pixels are rather visible, you have 1080x1200 pixels per eye, but reduced by pentile and spread across a very large field of view. Future VR headsets will improve on this, but GPUs will also need to improve. There would be little point to release a 4k x 4k headset if it needs dual GTX 1080 cards to run simple graphics. The Rift CV1 has slightly better pixel density (same amount of pixels across a slightly smaller field of view), and it also doesn't seem to be affected by the Vive rendering bug, so it currently seems like a slightly better choice (Edit: see clarification below), though I wouldn't expect a dramatic difference. Personally, I love the roomscale experiences and wouldn't want to give them up.

Edit: The "slightly better choice" was specifically addressed to people such as VirtualMinion who appear primarily interested in seated sim experiences such as Elite Dangerous and don't care about roomscale.

 

[M66]

Sorry Kwx...but I don't want to hear from you and your 'slightly' better choice.

I want to hear from VirtualMinion...someone who can save me 900$

When they fix the issue with Elite...then we'll talk about who's 'slightly' better.

 

[Ragnar Drake]

Sorry Kwx...but I don't want to hear from you and your 'slightly' better choice.

I want to hear from VirtualMinion...someone who can save me 900$

When they fix the issue with Elite...then we'll talk about who's 'slightly' better.

Hey, no need to get hostile. I'm regretting putting so much time into investigating and documenting the Vive rendering issue, you're of course welcome to ignore me if you found that unhelpful.

I've edited my post to clarify that the "slightly better choice" was specifically addressed to people such as VirtualMinion who appear primarily interested in seated sim experiences such as Elite Dangerous and don't care about roomscale. It's just about the tradeoff of FOV vs angular resolution which will still remain after the Vive rendering issues are fixed.

 

[wstephenson]

Hey, no need to get hostile. I'm regretting putting so much time into investigating and documenting the Vive rendering issue, you're of course welcome to ignore me if you found that unhelpful.

I've edited my post to clarify that the "slightly better choice" was specifically addressed to people such as VirtualMinion who appear primarily interested in seated sim experiences such as Elite Dangerous and don't care about roomscale. It's just about the tradeoff of FOV vs angular resolution which will still remain after the Vive rendering issues are fixed.

Hey, don't be discouraged. The work you did to chase the rendering issue helped me get over the hump of disillusionment I experienced when my Vive arrived faulty. Even though the angular resolution is limited, VR is still the best way to play ED.

 

[CMDR Minion Blob]

Thanks, kwx. The definition of what's playable to one user vs. another depends on the individual baseline. My baseline is a high-end monitor setup with all settings maxed out. With that in mind, I was not expecting this level of IQ drop. No offense to anyone or even FD, I think we are all passionate about the great game they had published. As far as the Vive hardware goes, I knew I would be sacrificing some resolution in exchange for a more immersive experience the VR platform promises and (partially) delivers.

I have spent several hours today skimming various posts and suggestions. I will try the applicable suggestions and report back. To answer your Preset question, on my system VR Low vs. VR High had really no noticeable benefit. I was doing all testing in Direct Mode only. This alone was disconcerting and led me to believe we maybe dealing with some kind of major rendering issue. The framerate had predictably dropped to a literal crawl as I was raising the SS values but it regardless of the setting, it had not gotten close to 60fps, my guess was between 30-40fps max or even lower. Now I had not disabled SLI in the Nvidia Control Panel; that's one of the steps I will try tonight. Not taking advantage of SLI vs. not being able to deal with it (if it is in fact the case) is not the same in my opinion and should not be necessary. It is not for any other game.

At any rate, I had come across this article on GameRevolution that describes the issues I'm experiencing. Sorry if it's old news for some--it's from May 2nd--but it's the best one I was able to find summarizing the experience with some additional references. It does a much more eloquent job in pointing out why it is a big issue for some adopters like me.

Each to his/her own but in my view, like the Apple Watch, the Vive at the moment is a piece of cool technology platform that is waiting for a killer app. There is nothing in the current lineup that would make me even remotely interested in the 1st gen VR platforms. For me ED is/was the justification for the investment to be made in the present rather than wait until later for a more mature and powerful future iteration. In other words was hoping to realize the ED Made for VR advertised experience (BTW, the photo on seems to be picturing an HTC Vive headset, not a Rift if you look closely. I have not experienced it on the Rift, but as it stands on the Vive it was nowhere near "cutting-edge visual quality" as I've been yearning to the days of the image clarity of my S-VHS VCR.

Of course the GTX 1080 will bring more horsepower to the party, like a new generation graphics platform always does. But the recommended VR System Requirement is a GTX 980 (or better). I just want to know what really truly works instead of marketing slogans that do not live up to claim.

Yes, I have absolutely no interest in room-scale experiences with the current-generation of hardware strapped to my face tied to a leash. But I'm very interested in an acceptable-quality VR version of ED@90fps with minimal rendering artifacts and reading the text without eyestrain.

Thanks again for all your effort in posting these details on the issue; it's great to have the means of providing all this valuable feedback to the developers and other users.

 

[Ragnar Drake]

VirtualMinion, the GameRevolution article is missing some important bits. I've tried to summarize the current state of things inhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/wiki/elitedangerous .

"VR High" isn't going to fix the undersampling issues, only supersampling helps a bit for that but it's a very inefficient way to work around the issue.

The Vive framerate is either 90 FPS or an even fraction of that. Usually it drops to 45 FPS in case of issues, but I guess 30/22.5/15 would also be possible. 45 FPS in VR already looks horribly stuttery. If you can't hit 90fps even at "VR low", something is definitely wrong, and I'm pretty sure it's a known issue with it not being able to deal with SLI.

Classic SLI with alternate frame rendering is bad for VR since it adds additional latency. There are VR specific SLI techniques but there are very few apps that can take advantage of that. I agree it would be nice if it would do the right thing automatically, but we're not there yet.

I'm fairly confident it should be possible to get significantly better quality than what we're currently seeing in the Vive without having to throw a GTX 1080 at it. The undersampling issue adds aliasing artifacts, and I think the distortion correction adds extra blur. However, even in the best case the text size in the Vive is still pretty small compared to the angular pixel size, so reading text is still not being to be a great experience. Up to you if you feel that the added immersion is worth it.

 

[J'Zargo]

I'm fairly confident it should be possible to get significantly better quality than what we're currently seeing in the Vive without having to throw a GTX 1080 at it.

I was wondering the same and asked myself if really the GFX card is the limiting factor here and if using more potential ones helps.

I did a naive approach and used the GPU-Z Tool to monitor the GPU usage using different settings on my system (ASUS Gaming GTX980Ti, i7-4770K, 16GB RAM). I have no idea how accurate the GPU-Z readings are, but it shows that my card is never fully utilized. VR-Low has a usage of ~30-40% while Ultra gets to ~50-60%.

I did the tests on a planetary surface, starting and landing in a vertical movement all the while constantly moving my head. In all settings I had juddering when moving my head, with vr-low only very occasionally.

From this it looks like there is plenty of performance reserves even on lower ranked cards, but somehow ED is not able to really get full advantage of it.

 

[CMDR Minion Blob]

Sorry about the delay, didn't get back to it until this AM. The results are pretty much the same. Disabling SLI in the Nvidia CP has led unfortunately no discernible improvement on my system. None at all.

1512x1680 is not even a setting I can select from the Graphics menu within ED VR. No comparable resolution is available, and the system always drops back to the default 1278x.... Windowed resolution. Refresh rate does reset to 90hz at least in the menu, but actual in-game FPS is much lower than that. This is with both the Predator X34 monitor (via DP) and the Vive (via HDMI) physically connected to the same 980Ti.

I did not get to test the miniDP port on the Vive yet, but I do have the cable and will try that out next. My guess is that it won't matter anyway.

The HMDPixelsPerDisplayPixel is maxed out to the right all the way, as recommended (1.00000).

I will fire up my Razer Ripsaw (currently connected to the 2nd 980Ti's HDMI port) and see if I can record some capture of the in game performance and upload it to YouTube. Will post the link here (if works).

BTW, Steam VR is a very difficult environment to run on my system. I need to disable the Razer Synapse 2.0, TrackIR 5 and Corsair Link 4.2 processes just to get Steam VR to initialize the HTC Vive hardware components, otherwise the Base Stations simply won't initialize. Once these components are disabled/terminated a reboot will initialize the Vive hardware correctly.

Despite the substandard overall visual quality and quirks of the current HTC Vive solution, I have to agree that ED VR is just an incredible experience. Running the VR Training Mission is just a jaw-dropping "you-are-there-in-the-cockpit" sensation no conventional monitor projection comes even remotely close. If and when ED gets somewhat close to the advertised level of performance; it's hard to imagine to going back to 2D flat projection on any monitor. I'm very excited about the potential. YMMV but I absolutely cannot imaging I would be able to tolerate more than 10-15 minutes of game time with the current performance. The amount of ghosting, rippling and straining of my eyes needed to try to interpret the cockpit console readouts, etc., is just not sustainable for longer periods even if I would be willing to accept the tradeoff for enhanced 3D experience vs. significantly reduced resolution and overall IQ drop.

I think it would have been more appropriate for FD to label existing Vive support as Beta given the widespread issues reported particularly on 980Ti cards.

 

[ntsarb]

Sorry about the delay, didn't get back to it until this AM. The results are pretty much the same. Disabling SLI in the Nvidia CP has led unfortunately no discernible improvement on my system. None at all.

1512x1680 is not even a setting I can select from the Graphics menu within ED VR. No comparable resolution is available, and the system always drops back to the default 1278x.... Windowed resolution. Refresh rate does reset to 90hz at least in the menu, but actual in-game FPS is much lower than that. This is with both the Predator X34 monitor (via DP) and the Vive (via HDMI) physically connected to the same 980Ti.

I did not get to test the miniDP port on the Vive yet, but I do have the cable and will try that out next. My guess is that it won't matter anyway.

The HMDPixelsPerDisplayPixel is maxed out to the right all the way, as recommended (1.00000).

I will fire up my Razer Ripsaw (currently connected to the 2nd 980Ti's HDMI port) and see if I can record some capture of the in game performance and upload it to YouTube. Will post the link here (if works).

BTW, Steam VR is a very difficult environment to run on my system. I need to disable the Razer Synapse 2.0, TrackIR 5 and Corsair Link 4.2 processes just to get Steam VR to initialize the HTC Vive hardware components, otherwise the Base Stations simply won't initialize. Once these components are disabled/terminated a reboot will initialize the Vive hardware correctly.

Despite the substandard overall visual quality and quirks of the current HTC Vive solution, I have to agree that ED VR is just an incredible experience. Running the VR Training Mission is just a jaw-dropping "you-are-there-in-the-cockpit" sensation no conventional monitor projection comes even remotely close. If and when ED gets somewhat close to the advertised level of performance; it's hard to imagine to going back to 2D flat projection on any monitor. I'm very excited about the potential. YMMV but I absolutely cannot imaging I would be able to tolerate more than 10-15 minutes of game time with the current performance. The amount of ghosting, rippling and straining of my eyes needed to try to interpret the cockpit console readouts, etc., is just not sustainable for longer periods even if I would be willing to accept the tradeoff for enhanced 3D experience vs. significantly reduced resolution and overall IQ drop.

I think it would have been more appropriate for FD to label existing Vive support as Beta given the widespread issues reported particularly on 980Ti cards.

Hi. Try removing all plug and play hardware that you don't need, especially the secondary monitor.

Also temporarily deactivate all programs running on Windows startup (from the control panel, not just from the startup folder).

With a GTX 980 ti and a quad core CPU, you shouldn't have an fps problem, even in high VR quality mode.

Keep the ED screen resolution to the minimum. This is just screen resolution (not HMD resolution, which is fixed) and the higher it is the more GPU resources it consumes unnecessarily.

The bad aliasing and text clarity issues are known to the developers. It may take them several months to iron these, once they decide to.

With the fps issue resolved, you may be able to enjoy the game in VR. We are on the same boat...

Kind regards.

 

[wstephenson]

It does sound like VM's system is fully loaded, and the more bits involved, the more likelihood of something not working well with SteamVR or Vive. Such is the PC platform. I'm playing quite happily in Ultra on a OCed 970, so the problem is not intrinsic to ED.

 

[Ragnar Drake]

The 2.1 beta5 release notes mention a UI scaling change for the Vive, this sounds like a workaround for the texture undersampling issue. Can someone check if this helps? If I understand it right, text should look less shimmery, and UI lines not get as gappy at larger distances.

 

[ntsarb]

The 2.1 beta5 release notes mention a UI scaling change for the Vive, this sounds like a workaround for the texture undersampling issue. Can someone check if this helps? If I understand it right, text should look less shimmery, and UI lines not get as gappy at larger distances.

How do we download the 2.1 beta 5 version? In Steam, I'm not given the option to participate to a beta program.

 

[Faster than Jesus [VR]]

How do we download the 2.1 beta 5 version? In Steam, I'm not given the option to participate to a beta program.

You need to have purchased horizons with the beta bundle. It's not available through steam.

 

[shadragon]

The bad aliasing and text clarity issues are known to the developers. It may take them several months to iron these, once they decide to.

You wrote this today? You've either not seen the multiple dev threads addressing this subject or chose to ignore their existence. It's being worked on and has been on their list of things to do for several months at least.

 

[Derage]

It's being worked on and has been on their list of things to do for several months at least.

I really doubt that, because if it were the problems on the Vive should've been near non-existant right now. Considering how many other smaller cross-HMD games have released that have not had this issue and is probably due to the fact that they have been working with the device for quite a while. Where as the time and speed of action it takes Frontier to handle things (not even mentioning communication towards their customers) leads me to believe they have never spend an awful lot of time optimising the game for the Vive.

 

[Malic]

It is a known bug that Vibe is having problems with the current game.. with the 2.1 beta 5 the patch notes have had several fixes for the Vibe. It may be fixed there now, it just has not gotten to the live game at the moment.

 

[ntsarb]

You wrote this today? You've either not seen the multiple dev threads addressing this subject or chose to ignore their existence. It's being worked on and has been on their list of things to do for several months at least.

My understanding is that the optimisation of the game for the capabilities of the Vive may require a significant development effort. This is because the resolution of the Vive (per degree of FOV) is different from that of the Rift and the game was very likely designed with the Rift's specs in mind (look at rendering of text at particular font size).

It may also require further performance optimisations on the SteamVR library from Valve software.

Time will tell how long it takes for the game to shine on the Vive. The sooner the better.

 

[Malic]

My understanding is that the optimisation of the game for the capabilities of the Vive may require a significant development effort. This is because the resolution of the Vive (per degree of FOV) is different from that of the Rift and the game was very likely designed with the Rift's specs in mind (look at rendering of text at particular font size).

It may also require further performance optimisations on the SteamVR library from Valve software.

Time will tell how long it takes for the game to shine on the Vive. The sooner the better.

This is fixxed in the 2.1 and 1.6 betas. Check the patch notes from the last week(s), it is fixed, it is just not in the live version of the game. They are not going to make another branch of the game just for this, they have it working, they are working on all the other game-breaking bugs


https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=74

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

It certainly isn't fixed. Most of us can't even find this new slider that is supposed to be in. Text is a tiny bit better, shimmering like mad still.

 

[Malic]

This sounds like the Steam theater running in the background problem, are you sure that is not running parallel and has been shut down when Elite is running?