Valve Index Hands On

[Johnny Dioxin]

Heh heh - full-face bike helmet FoV will do me just fine :)

[nrosko]

Any chance we could see a picture of the Index through the lense vs Odyssey?

[trigen]

Delorean, after going back and forth between the Rift S, the Odyssey Plus and the Index all morning, the Index is very similar visually to the O +. Of course, you will say that is a subjective judgment and it is, but I think I would be very hard pressed to tell the difference between the two if I were blindfolded. The thing that gives the Index away is the larger FOV but the actual experience is very, very similar.

 

(And for those wondering, no, I do not possess any eye problems, .... my right eye is 20/16 and my left is 20/18. (used to be better when I was younger though))

 

I'm quite happy with my O first gen and would welcome some extra fov without upgrading to the newest hw again so that's good to hear. Suppose the fov is a bit different for everyone but how much more would you say for you on the index?

[Supmua]

Index screen measurements. This is the type of stuff I’d like to see rather than subjective measurements with your eyeballs. It is apparently not as good as Vive Pro in terms of color gamut, luminance and black level but still 18 nits brighter than OG Rift.

 

[RealDCSpilot]

@AureliusAugustus

 

Alright. Look who is back :)

 

A through the lens comparison during a night mission would also be interesting, this is where LCD panels are put to the test for real.

[RealDCSpilot]

https://ibb.co/t8gYw1F

 

 

This is all the perf.data i can get, but i don't know exactly at what resolution the game is running in the end.

Motion smoothing + reprojection leads to fps cap at 45. Over land GPU usage is at 85%...

Edited June 15, 2019 by Alec Delorean

[Supmua]

Valve Index Hands On

 

https://ibb.co/t8gYw1F

 

 

This is all the perf.data i can get, but i don't know exactly at what resolution the game is running in the end.

Motion smoothing + reprojection leads to fps cap at 45. Over land GPU usage is at 85%...

 

 

 

That’s hardly 20-30 FPS that was reported in prior post (assuming this is from the Index?). Quite decent FPS considering use of high shadows (I only use flat in my setting). With PD 1.3 it’s basically 1.3x in both horizontal and vertical pixels.

 

Gamma 2.2 is a bit high, I like 1.6-1.7 on my Vive Pro to get nice deep black color.

[Nagilem]

@trigen - I know what you mean about O+. It is a very good headset. My biggest issue, and why I am looking for a new set is the lack of clarity out of the pit. Seeing things at a distance is very fuzzy due to that anti SDE film. I get why they did it, and I do think it would be awesome in non detail games, but DCS we need to see clearly both in and out of the cockpit. I am HOPEFULLY getting a Reverb and an Index by end of the month. Fingers crossed one of them performs!

[RealDCSpilot]

@Supmua

 

The 2.2 gamma is a reference value from color grading/correction: https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/gamma-correction.htm

Something like 1.8 may also work well, i found 2.2 gets the most out of the OLED'S in my VivePro for dynamic range in color and dark to bright. White surfaces in direct sunlight look naturally bright with a glare, i'm being blinded by the sun and night missions are naturally dark (there is no pitch black in nature, only if you are deep down in a cave). However, i doubt gamma 2.2 will work well on a LCD panel.

 

@AureliusAugustus

What settings make sense to crank up 'far' higher? Except PD value there is nothing left to crank up much higher.

Heat Blur is a particle with a "refraction" shader effect, if i crank this up the particle size and his effect get's scaled up to a ridiculous amount. Resolution is just for the VR window on the monitor, Res. of cockpit displays is a waste if higher than 512 it would be pre-supersampling with supersampling on top for a small area in you field of view. No one flies with having his eyes just a couple of cm in front of one of the MFD's (so the MFD completely fills up your field of fov). MSAA is a very taxing AA technique (better trade this for super sampling), depth of field is a camera lens effect, motion blur also and SSAA is also antialiasing.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Alec Delorean

[Nagilem]

@AA - I just posted this...

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3950179&postcount=35

 

These settings have been working great on the o+. 45FPS with little to no shimmer or stuttering.

 

If you have time and can try them, maybe they would work well for you...

[Nagilem]

BTW - I am using 200% SS in Steam not because it looks that much better, but rather because I am stress testing for when the Reverb arrives. Turning it down to 180% still looked very good with slightly more consistent performance. YMMV

[RealDCSpilot]

@AureliusAugustus

 

I forgot terrain shadows, yes. Set this to flat because the "highest" setting here looked pretty bad and bombs performance with a big hammer. ED has to work on this, to optimize it more. However VR performance in DCS is constantly getting better, what we have today is so much better than what we had over a year ago.

 

 

(i'm still on 2.5.4 stable)

[RealDCSpilot]

There is another downside using any kind of antialiasing in DCS in VR - spotting enemies. What should be the first dark pixel within visibility range will be smudged against the background and you be able to see it much later than with AA turned off.

 

VR without trade-offs, still a long way...

[Supmua]

Well, my son and wife are in bed and I am testing your exact settings (along with a few other adjustments) and I have to say, I am surprised. When the 2080 Ti came out, I started a thread here about the 2080 Ti and VR performance. At that time, turning things off like MSAA and SSAA and setting the Visibility Range to high instead of extreme really made a difference for me. The real killer is MSAA and terrain shadows. I am testing MSAA to off, SSAA to 2X and Visib Range to Extreme and pulling in 53 FPS with my Rift S at a pixel density of 2.0 and ~ 37 FPS with my O + at a pixel density of 1.5 on my home EVGA 2080 Ti. They are now, very, very close in overall subjective appearance. Prior to this, the Rift S had looked better than the O+, but now, very hard to tell who has the better appearance. This makes me excited to see what the Index can do on Monday. I tried your exact settings with MSAA off, SSAA off, and Visib Range to high at a pixel density of 2.0, but the roof edges, electrical line supports and runway edges shimmered more than I liked. I turned SSAA back on to 2X and Visib Range back up to extreme for a small penalty.

 

 

 

Wait a min, SSAA is supposed to be much more taxing than MSAA...since it is similar to increasing PD.

[Supmua]

Valve Index Hands On

 

@AA - I just posted this...

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3950179&postcount=35

 

These settings have been working great on the o+. 45FPS with little to no shimmer or stuttering.

 

If you have time and can try them, maybe they would work well for you...

 

 

 

It’s strange that your Odyssey SteamSS at 200% is equivalent to my Vive Pro at 100% (2016x2240). Does this mean that Odyssey at 100% is only rendering at half res?

 

On the Vive Pro this makes sense because in order to effectively apply screen wrapping, the resolution has to be 1.4x of the panel res to minimize aliasing artifacts (1440 x 1.4 = 2016, 1600 x 1.4 = 2240). By that I mean if you run at native 1.0x res it would be equivalent to running 772p res on a 1080p screen which would show ugly jagged edges, etc. I’m not sure how this works on the Odyssey.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Supmua

[RealDCSpilot]

MSAA/SSAA ... Depends on the factor (2x - 16x), however both methods cost more in VR than they are helping...

[Supmua]

Valve Index Hands On

 

MSAA/SSAA ... Depends on the factor (2x - 16x), however both methods cost more in VR than they are helping...

 

 

 

MSAA is more optimized/modern version of SSAA. A 2x SSAA image would render exactly at twice the resolution (a 4K image would render at 8K). MSAA of the same x factor is less taxing but image fidelity isn’t as good, I think of it as FXAA without fuzziness.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Supmua

[Supmua]

Got home from vacay and just had a chance to try the latest OB patch. I'm not sure what they did but I did see up to 90 fps on my Vive Pro in cockpit view (not sustained of course--but this never happened unless I'm flying against the sky). It's kinda crazy to think that the VR optimizing patch is still to come. Now I have a good feeling about the Index performance if I can coax this out of my Vive Pro. BTW, this is at PD 1.0 with SteamSS resolution at 100% (2016x2240), the graphic settings are in the second pic.

 

https://ibb.co/VSkp2PR

 

https://ibb.co/G0qQ4jT

 

Now increasing SteamSS to 150% or 2848x3168 res (must be done selectively in SteamVR settings by tabbing out and choose DCS.exe from Applications tab--doing it via Videos tab has no effect) will drop FPS to 45 and motion smoothing kicks in.

 

Edit: I've decided to turn off Enable custom resolution in SteamVR for now as I'm pretty happy with the default 150% (this way I don't have to manually input custom res for each app since mine would still default at 100%). DCS at this setting looks really good with minimal shimmering and cockpit texts are fairly sharp.

 

Edit2: Tried the Hornet instant free flight with really good results, solid 45 fps in downtown Dubai and everywhere. Zero stuttering, with good frame time in both GPU and CPU sides. I'm quite impressed with the performance now, not sure if it was due to improvement of just DCS app or SteamVR or both (my hunch is both).

Edited June 15, 2019 by Supmua

[nrosko]

As somebody mentioned previously it would be interesting to know how night time looks in these LCD HMDs, it's absolutely a no go in my cv1.

Promisingly somebody mentioned there have been some improvements in the very last update I'm also keen to see if this has helped things in VR, i will test later today.

[RealDCSpilot]

@Supmua

 

 

That's the strange thing if i check DCS.exe under the apps tab it shows SS 100% @2468x2740 fpsVR however says i'm running SS at 150%

 

Just tested SSAA at 2x and extreme visibility range, DCS never exceeded 30 fps. I will try 2016x2240 next...

[Supmua]

As somebody mentioned previously it would be interesting to know how night time looks in these LCD HMDs, it's absolutely a no go in my cv1.

Promisingly somebody mentioned there have been some improvements in the very last update I'm also keen to see if this has helped things in VR, i will test later today.

 

It's not going to be as good as Vive's OLED screen with the black nits of zero (Index's black nits is 0.153 from a Reddit post). The poster did say that he prefers to play Hellbade on the Vive Pro rather than the Index due to superior blacks. I'm not sure how the Index will fare in night flying but we'll find out soon--my hunch is that it's not going to be that great.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Supmua

[Supmua]

@Supmua

 

 

That's the strange thing if i check DCS.exe under the apps tab it shows SS 100% @2468x2740 fpsVR however says i'm running SS at 150%

 

Just tested SSAA at 2x and extreme visibility range, DCS never exceeded 30 fps. I will try 2016x2240 next...

 

The setting in SteamVR Applications tab is a *multiplier* of your Video application res settings. That's why your fps is very low especially when coupled with SSAA 2x (multiply that res by 2x meaning your final rendering res is insanely high with SSAA on).

 

At least now I know I got good choices, if I want DCS at 90 fps with my rig then I run SteamSS 100% custom but if I want image fidelity with 45 fps then I switch to default Steam SS which is 150%. Image retention also looks better and less jarring with smooth motion on, not sure if it was because of steady frame time or something else. Per fpsVR my CPU frame time stays in green always, while the GPU side is in the orange zone.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Supmua

[RealDCSpilot]

Ah found it, had to enable custom resolution once. It says the recommended setting for my GPU and Headset (2080ti VivePro) is 150%

[nrosko]

It's not going to be as good as Vive's OLED screen with the black nits of zero (Index's black nits is 0.153 from a Reddit post). The poster did say that he prefers to play Hellbade on the Vive Pro rather than the Index due to superior blacks. I'm not sure how the Index will fare in night flying but we'll find out soon--my hunch is that it's not going to be that great.

 

I understand about oled & read that Reddit post but DCS is a brown/purple splodgy mess in my cv1 at night & any darker gradients have terrible banding. So although running a test can show us the capabilities of the screen i'm not convinced it translates over to every game. For example ED space looks nothing like space. Yet hellblade darks look normal. I personally don't think the test he did with mura on worked properly. My guess is that spud in my rift only works when its told to by the game.

Like you say i guess we will find out.

[Supmua]

I understand about oled & read that Reddit post but DCS is a brown/purple splodgy mess in my cv1 at night & any darker gradients have terrible banding. So although running a test can show us the capabilities of the screen i'm not convinced it translates over to every game. For example ED space looks nothing like space. Yet hellblade darks look normal. I personally don't think the test he did with mura on worked properly. My guess is that spud in my rift only works when its told to by the game.

Like you say i guess we will find out.

 

Sorry I haven't touched my Rift in months and I'm not going to spend time messing with it now (just couldn't stomach the clarity, although I might dig it out to try the Star Wars Vader game), but night flying on my Vive Pro is not bad--still prefer my 2D UW screen though since with Reshade I could tweak it to make anything pop. You're right about the screen's full potential doesn't mean the software will realize it, I wonder if there's a way to calibrate our VR screen somehow. I have a feeling that default calibration might not be optimal (which is typically the case with any monitor or TV).

'

Edited June 15, 2019 by Supmua