[WMR] Clarity improvement "hack"

[Kyokushin]

Source:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/719950/discussions/0/3276824488715073552/

To do:

Modify the following file:
\\STEAM\steamapps\common\MixedRealityVRDriver\resources\settings\default.vrsettings
and edit the file, changing "renderTargetScale" : 2.0 (instead of 1.0)

Optional (but recommended):
Steam supersampling: 200-220%
Steam settings: uncheck "Advanced supersampling" box

- It really works and text is clearly readable.
- "sweetspot" seems to be larger

Confirmed in games:
Elite Dangerous
DCS
Subnautica

Confirmed Glasses:
Samsung Odyssey+
Samsung Odyssey
Lenovo Explorer
... so it should give improvement in any WMR.

In game settings:
SS and HMS SS to 1.0, everything else to max. Working smoothly, tested on GTX970
In addition to above - you may give HMD SS 1.25, but it is working fine on 1080ti, and difference is hard to notice.

Technical details why a change will help:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsMR/..._to_prove_that_20_render_does_make_a/ed5zzs9/

 

[CylonSurfer]

Enjoy your reprojection. Those settings will put you in firmly at 45 FPS at all times, particularly on a GTX 970.

 

[Milner]

I'll add this to my list of things to try with the Lenovo on a 1060... so far only spent about 1 hour in game.

If the weather is rubbish when I'm off over xmas I could probably easily spend a couple of days playing with settings...

 

[Kyokushin]

Enjoy your reprojection. Those settings will put you in firmly at 45 FPS at all times, particularly on a GTX 970.

In fact the most of the job is doing that part:

Modify the following file:
\\STEAM\steamapps\common\MixedRealityVRDriver\resources\settings\default.vrsettings
and edit the file, changing "renderTargetScale" : 2.0" (instead of 1.0)

And that setting is not affecting performance.

SS 200% yes, but 150% is also good.
Even if you use lower SS then you may enjoy 'still better' clarity in due to renderTargetScale without performance impact. Its tested.

 

[BigShifta]

Enjoy your reprojection. Those settings will put you in firmly at 45 FPS at all times, particularly on a GTX 970.

I don't think OP understands/knows the difference. He's lucky to maintain 45 fps in reprojection with the stated settings (even with a 1/2080) but certainly on his 970

 

[erbse-1]

Wow, many thanks! A difference like day and night, without performance impact.
I have my lenovo explorer since the new patch and thought the fuzziness was due to the hmd or the patch. And now I realize how sharp this hmd is!

 

[CylonSurfer]

In fact the most of the job is doing that part:


And that setting is not affecting performance.

SS 200% yes, but 150% is also good.
Even if you use lower SS then you may enjoy 'still better' clarity in due to renderTargetScale without performance impact. Its tested.

I did read through the entire thread on Steam. Its very debatable as to if that setting does anything at all. However setting steam SS to 2.0 for a high res HMD such as the Samsung device would be placing waaaay to much strain on your GPU, I doubt even a 2080 would manage to produce a native 90FPS in this game, your 970 must be squeeling in pain. I cannot in all honesty say that this is good advice unless people are happy to run a setup with SteamVRs 'motion smoothing' on 100% of the time with likely dips below even 45FPS.

Out of interest what is SteamVR reporting your per eye resolution at for those supersampling settings? I'm pretty sure (for the Vive Pro at least, which I belive has a similar if not the same screens) that 50% is around native per eye resolution with 100% being almost double.

 

[Kyokushin]

There is one malcontent on Steam who admitted he not tested it and is arguing others.
A lot of people in thread confirmed it works and tested it, including me and my two friends.

I compared it few times and renderTargetScale is improving clarity no matter what SS you are using. The best it work with 200%, but is improving on any other setting also and doing that without performance impact.
So it does not matter it is 970 or 2080. renderTargetScale to 2.0 is changing nothing in performance, you may using it or not, and SS - is up to you.

I have turned off reprojection at all, in my opinion it works better than with turned on, but that is I think a personal experience. For me it with SS 200% works pretty smooth.

This settigns gives me:
+ very good clarity
+ larger sweet spot experience
+ working smooth

I was unable to reproduce that quality using in-game HMD SS settings. It gave huge performance hit in comprasition to above.

My per eye resolution is 2015x2519 for 200% SS

 

[CylonSurfer]

There is one malcontent on Steam who admitted he not tested it and is arguing others.
A lot of people in thread confirmed it works and tested it, including me and my two friends.

I compared it few times and renderTargetScale is improving clarity no matter what SS you are using. The best it work with 200%, but is improving on any other setting also and doing that without performance impact.
So it does not matter it is 970 or 2080. renderTargetScale to 2.0 is changing nothing in performance, you may using it or not, and SS - is up to you.

I have turned off reprojection at all, in my opinion it works better than with turned on, but that is I think a personal experience. For me it with SS 200% works pretty smooth.

This settigns gives me:
+ very good clarity
+ larger sweet spot experience
+ working smooth

I was unable to reproduce that quality using in-game HMD SS settings. It gave huge performance hit in comprasition to above.

My per eye resolution is 2015x2519 for 200% SS

The native per eye resolution of the SO+ is 1,440 x 1,600 per eye, no wonder you think it looks clearer at 2015x2519 (~63% gain)..... And no, the game wouldn't be pretty smooth at such an insanely high res on a 970 or even a 1080 or 2080... it would be far far from being an optimal experience with reprojection being permanently on and likely unable to keep up a lot of time.

Where have you tested your settings out of interest?

I'd hazzard a guess that whatever 'renderTargetScale' does it is also screwing up SteamVRs SS - as you say yourself, running the same SS from the in game settings adds significant overheads and effects performance. No offence, but your hardware in honestly would struggle to run a SO+ on 100% SS let alone 200%. A 970 struggles to run Elite on a Rift or standard Vive.

 

[Kyokushin]

Some planet, space, asteroid field and that cross field in asteroids (phenomena). Its smooth. Its not 90fps always, but is smooth.

Game is sclearer even on SS 110% if you want higher FPS. I wrote:
"renderTargetScale" : 2.0" (instead of 1.0)
This parameter is NOT supersampling, its WMR related parameter which is not influing performance but improving clarity.
SS in steam menu is different option.

And i told.I have turned OFF reprojection. For me - its better at now.

I think i better know how my hardware is working and how game is working, on helmet what i owe, becauese i can simply turn it on and see
If it would not give improvement there would not be any reason of writing about that. I am not alone in opinion. Even a folk in that topic got improvement.
Before writing about it i simply turned it on, off, on, off, then compared, to 100% ensure i am not spreading a crap here.

 

[CylonSurfer]

Some planet, space, asteroid field and that cross field in asteroids (phenomena). Its smooth. Its not 90fps always, but is smooth.

Game is sclearer even on SS 110% if you want higher FPS. I wrote:
"renderTargetScale" : 2.0" (instead of 1.0)
This parameter is NOT supersampling, its WMR related parameter which is not influing performance but improving clarity.
SS in steam menu is different option.

And i told.I have turned OFF reprojection. For me - its better at now.

I think i better know how my hardware is working and how game is working, on helmet what i owe, becauese i can simply turn it on and see
If it would not give improvement there would not be any reason of writing about that. I am not alone in opinion. Even a folk in that topic got improvement.
Before writing about it i simply turned it on, off, on, off, then compared, to 100% ensure i am not spreading a crap here.

A GTX 970 is not going to run Elite and a SO+ at 200% SS i.e 2015x2519 per eye. That is a fact. What ever 'renderTargetScale' does, changing it is also messing up something else in SteamVR in the process and while I cannot deny that the end result may appear as a clearer image for you the reported 2015x2519 per eye figure must be way off. A GTX 970 would struggle to run a SO+ at its native res of 1440 x 1600 per eye.

 

[Kyokushin]

Hm. So you are telling me i am unable to play the game on my hardware on which i am playing it already? [heart]

renderTargetScale is a parameter in WMR driver. You can simply change it and test.
SupserSampling is hitting performance. I wrote. I have no permanent 90FPS on my gtx970, but game is working smooth enough with turned OFF reprojection.
If smoothness will be not enough for you, then you can lower SS, and in due to renderTargetScale parameter change you will still receive clearer image.

renderTargetScale change is reported to WMR driver devs with ask to look a closer into it.

What helmet do you owe?

 

[CylonSurfer]

Hm. So you are telling me i am unable to play the game on my hardware on which i am playing it already? [heart]

renderTargetScale is a parameter in WMR driver. You can simply change it and test.
SupserSampling is hitting performance. I wrote. I have no permanent 90FPS on my gtx970, but game is working smooth enough with turned OFF reprojection.
If smoothness will be not enough for you, then you can lower SS, and in due to renderTargetScale parameter change you will still receive clearer image.

renderTargetScale change is reported to WMR driver devs with ask to look a closer into it.

What helmet do you owe?

I have been playing Elite in VR for long enough to know:

- A GTX 970 struggles to maintain 90FPS on a Rift or Standard Vive
- A GTX 980 struggles to maintain 90FPS on a Rift or Standard Vive
- A GTX 1070 struggles to maintain 90FPS on a Rift or Standard Vive
- A GTX 1080 can maintain 90FPS on a Rift or Standard Vive and maybe some SS as well.

This information is well documented here in the forums based on many years of VR experience.

Now, with this in mind you are telling me, that the weakest GPU listed, the one that can barely scrape by for use with VR on one of the 2 first gen VR headsets, i.e ones with a lower res than your headset, is now magically running the game "smootly" on a headset which has a higher native resolution AND and that you are super sampling it? The simple answer is: It isn't.

I will repeat again, changing 'renderTargetScale' "may" improve your precieved visual clarity, however and quite evidently changing said value is messing up the SteamVR SS settings and the values it is reporting back to you. Your hardware cannot run Elite at 2015x2519 per eye at anything that remotely resemanbles playable.

I have no quibble with you changing your 'renderTargetScale' setting, I'm not going to sit here and say that doing so doesn't improve your precieved visual quality, but what I am saying is that doing so clearly breaks something else because it is not possible for you to play the game at such a high res on your hardware - if that is important to you or not is up to you...

 

[Kyokushin]

Thats right. I am telling exactly that.
Maybe you missed, but i wrote i have not 90 FPS always, but it is smooth enough to play.

So you are refusing to test "renderTargetScale" but you can say it will do nothing. Nice.
So please note a lot of pople tested it and proved it is working.

Even that folk here:

Wow, many thanks! A difference like day and night, without performance impact.
I have my lenovo explorer since the new patch and thought the fuzziness was due to the hmd or the patch. And now I realize how sharp this hmd is!

he is not blind, and i am not blind.


I would even record a video through the helmet lenses, but unfortunately i do not have 120fps hi res camera at now.

What helmet you have now?

 

[Robinus]

I have the Lenovo Explorer headset.

changing the renderTargetScale setting works without a doubt.

First: I know it works anyway, because after that change ("renderTargetScale : 1.0") the graphics card crashed (I had to turn off the overclock)

Second: I see the difference. Delicate, subtle difference in fonts. The fonts are sharper - better visible. I experimented with reading the fonts in Elite Dangerous (shortcuts below the PIPs settings)

I did not notice any changes in performance.
The game run like a charm on the set Steam SS:140%

 

[CylonSurfer]

Thats right. I am telling exactly that.
Maybe you missed, but i wrote i have not 90 FPS always, but it is smooth enough to play.

So you are refusing to test "renderTargetScale" but you can say it will do nothing. Nice.
So please note a lot of pople tested it and proved it is working.

Even that folk here:


he is not blind, and i am not blind.


I would even record a video through the helmet lenses, but unfortunately i do not have 120fps hi res camera at now.

What helmet you have now?

I think something is being lost in translation here.

> So you are refusing to test "renderTargetScale" but you can say it will do nothing. Nice.

No, I am saying this:

Changing 'renderTargetScale' "may" improve your precieved visual clarity, however and quite evidently changing said value is messing up the SteamVR SS settings and the values it is reporting back to you. Your hardware cannot run Elite at 2015x2519 per eye at anything that remotely resembles playable. We know how the GTX benchmarks in this game on much lower per eye resolutions, The 970 wouldn't maintain 45FPS at 2015x2519.

 

[Kyokushin]

But it can because i am playing on it. And it is not slideshow. Its pretty smooth. I can play for three hours and i am not feeling issues. I wrote. its not 90 FPS always on 200 SS, and SS anyone can adjust to his own preferences.
The point of discussion is renderTargetScale, but best visual effect it will give on SS 200.

At now a two other folks confirmed it is improving clarity.

What helmet you owe now?

 

[CylonSurfer]

But it can because i am playing on it. And it is not slideshow. Its pretty smooth. I can play for three hours and i am not feeling issues. I wrote. its not 90 FPS always on 200 SS, and SS anyone can adjust to his own preferences.
The point of discussion is renderTargetScale, but best visual effect it will give on SS 200.

At now a two other folks confirmed it is improving clarity.

What helmet you owe now?

A GTX 970 cannot run this game at 45FPS at the resolution of 2015x2519 - this is a fact mate. When you change the setting you are it's breaking the per eye resolution value reported back to you by SteamVR... We are not discussing clarity - we are discussing what else changing that setting does to SteamVR, which is clearly something as your hardware is not capable of running Elite at 2015x2519. You can test this by simply reverting your changes to their default values and then adjusting the in game SS to something close to 2015x2519 per eye and see what happens....I'll tell you what will happen, the game will become a slide show when it actually runs at that res.

 

[Kyokushin]

You are writing me i cannot do what i am already doing. Its coming to be a comedy mate.

A discussion is about clarity improvement - please look at the topic.
I wrote setting which are improving clarity at best.

Update:
I reverted renderTargetScale to 1.0 again, ran the game, on SS 200, noticed degradation of clarity, it works without noticable impact on FPS.
I updated renderTargetScale to 2.0 again, and clarity and sharpness back.

WMR devs also told an any change of SS more than 150% will not bringe the improvement. It is the partial true, becaue after setting renderTargetScale to 2.0 you can notice a difference between 150 and 200. As i wrote, a discovery is reported to MS devs.

My exact hardware is:
i5 2500K@4.2 GHz
16 GB ram
Gigabyte GTX 970 G1, tweaked +80Mhz on clock and +180 on mem.

 

[CylonSurfer]

You are writing me i cannot do what i am already doing. Its coming to be a comedy mate.

A discussion is about clarity improvement - please look at the topic.
I wrote setting which are improving clarity at best.

Update:
I reverted renderTargetScale to 1.0 again, ran the game, on SS 200, noticed degradation of clarity, it works without noticable impact on FPS.
I updated renderTargetScale to 2.0 again, and clarity and sharpness back.

WMR devs also told an any change of SS more than 150% will not bringe the improvement. It is the partial true, becaue after setting renderTargetScale to 2.0 you can notice a difference between 150 and 200. As i wrote, a discovery is reported to MS devs.

The only comedy here is that you are incapable of comprehending what is being explained to you. A GTX 970 cannot run this game at the resolution you are claiming SteamVR is running it at at anything that resembles a decent frame rate. This is not a debatable subject, it is proven fact. If you feel the game runs smoothly for you at that resolution you clearly have some very, very, very low standards or are delusional.

Anyway, good luck to you and your 970 If you're happy with that low level of performance.