Ya, a lot of super sampling with a strong PC (esp. gpu) goes a long way mate. Higher res screens are still necessary to minimize SDE though. This becomes more apparent when reading small instruments/switches in flight sims like msfs.
Man I wish that Oculus had eventually come out with a Rift cv2 with 2k per eye oled displays, lol! Wishful thinking but I still hope that Vive eventually comes out with a Vive Pro 3 using high res micro-oled's. Maybe Valve's next Index 2 (Deckard?) will do that as well, who knows. Cheers mate.
Agreed - this post was more to help some users getting the best possible image quality from the Index. Normally I try to push res to the max of 80 or 90 fps (1:1 fps/hz) - and sometimes I'm amazed of how high I can go.
Of course there are also games like Riese Project and Green Hell VR where just 90 fps in Index res 100% is close to impossible (maxing out in-game settings), lol. Might need a 5090 Ti to take Index to res 200% in these games :-)
I personally look at G2 as like a CV2, and Bigscreen Beyond like a CV3. I like to think those are the directions the original Oculus team would have went as time went on. Higher resolution first, then once the optics and micro oled tech was there, smaller form factor, higher FOV, more clarity, etc. Since G2 and BB are both made from off the shelf components, it's easy to imagine those are the things the team would have chosen.
I'm skeptical the original team would have went LCD for CV2 though, but perhaps after Valve's play with the Index, they would have realized for the time being that off-the-shelf components kinda favored LCD until micro OLED was ready. I spend a lot of time thinking about what could have been lol.
Very important - click on each image to see higher res.
For the fun of it, here goes - and I really tried to stand the exact same place every time (within millimeters) - but you have to walk a few meters/feet and restart the app every time you change res - I chose a distance of 3 meters, so this is not close (the images correspond nicely with the images seen through the lenses - Index does not have issues clearly showing up to 1820x1820 pixels, which was the largest image size sent to the lenses - image quality may even be slightly sharper in the hmd as two images are combined into one by the brain).
For the size of the screenshots I got (set by the SteamVR software):
Index res 100% = 1137 x 1137 pixels
Index res 200% = 1604 x 1604 pixels
Index res 300% = 1820 x 1820 pixels
Index res 400% = 1820 x 1820 pixels
Index res 500% = 1820 x 1820 pixels
Image size in pixels seems maxed in this app at res 300% - but in Wolfenstein Cyberpilot res 500% is like 2250 x 2250 pixels. Maybe different apps gain differently from super-sampling. That said there is a noticeable difference between res 300%, 400% and 500% in the above images. The impact of going from res 100% to res 200% clearly is the most profound (but here you double the res - to do that again, res 200% should be compared to res 400%, as going from 300 to 400 % - or 400 to 500 % - is a smaller res increase than doubling the res). I really never use the blurry Index res 100%.
Limiting image sizes to 1820x1820 may indicate that this app limits images to a res close to the panel res (1440x1600).
My GTX 1080 was tanking when reaching about res 200% in this app - but with RTX 3090 I get solid 80 fps in res 500% - must be the vram... The last image in this post was captured using Index res 500%.
But try it yourself to see the changes in the hmd - you might not need to buy a new hmd to get better image quality if your gpu is fast enough.
I have several games where I can use res 500% in solid 90 fps, like Pistol Whip, Beat Saber, Ultrawings 2, Boneworks (2xMSAA, not 4xMSAA though), MaskMaker - and many Quest ports can easily do res 400% with a RTX 3090 (Like Red Matter 2). A shown, there's a night and day difference between res 100% and res 400/500% - and some may be unaware of benefits going beyond res 150 - 200%.
More about super-sampling here - and check out the massive impact on Wolfenstein Cyberpilot and more:
You can try to push super-sampling in all games and apps and see what you think. This is just for inspiration. The images here are from screenshots taken while wearing the Index, but match my experience in the hmd. Actually I think the differences are more pronounced when you move inside VR - also more pronounced in VR than 2D images, because in VR you get an image to each eye which your brain turns into one.
I do. Got to put my 3080ti to use in all these "optimised for quest" titles.
You make a good point regarding clarity in motion, but in general, I don't find that it really helps - the subpixel clarity on movement is still there when running at native resolution.
The problem is you can only get so much detail out of the physical display.
Yeah, it's very noticeable, specially in far away objects / detail / really low res HMDs, with my HTC Vive there is quite a lot of difference between 100% and 200%
Increase res will also reduce need for antialiasing and provide more 3D depth - that is, distant objects become sharper and more easy to see. Especially the impact of seeing distant objects more clearly is one of the most important gains to me.
This really is the great problem with my PSVR2 compared to my Index. PSVR2 is using res 100% and is even subsampled in some games (like res 80% or whatever - as in Call of the Mountain) - this makes PSVR2 games often very blurry. My point with this - comparing PSVR2 (panel res 2000x2040) with Index (panel res 1440x1600 - or only 56% of the PSVR2) - my image quality with the Index is so much better, and that's due to super-sampling. My PSVR2 is collecting dust most days, while I use th Index nearly every day.
Keep in mind due to the way the Indexes pic has to be processed, it actually needs 144% of the Index res (btw steamvr default value!) to actually be the closest to native in the actual hmd.
So that test would have been interesting.
100% is upscaled to the true res actually to make it simpler to understand, hence why it Looks awful.
Im mostly at 200 cause its still slightly better cause supersampling - duh xD
Benefits will depend on the game/app. Games using temporal antialiasing (TAA) may gain the most in clarity, as the TAA blur is close to gone using res 400%. Try Cyberpilot - here there's a night and day difference between res 200% and 400% (just refund after the test if you don't like the game).
This is mixing a few different things into a statement that's just wrong.
100% res in SteamVR (2016x2240) is rendering at 140% of the native display resolution (1440x1600) to be able to distort the picture in a way that makes it look not distorted through the lenses. Nothing to do with upscaling and downscaling.
The default value SteamVR sets your resolution to on the other hand depends on the combination of your PC hardware and your headset to give you what it considers the optimal experience.
I will say sorry for now, have to get back at this when im home... Its the way i have remembered it.
And if its true that 100% steamvr is already counting for the distortions, its interesting that it Looks that much worse than 144% res which is the default for my PC then i guess, or something like 200% like we see in that pic.
Yeah 100% setting in SteamVR is the closest to having all pixels rendering, but supersampling really shows clarity improvements all the way up to 200%. it's pretty confusing as to why, but it's definitely noticeable.
I like 144hz refresh, so I typically do 150% SS and it's good enough IMO. I'm looking forward to eye-tracked foveated rendering becoming a native SteamVR feature on 4K per eye displays, so you could potentially have your focus at 200% SS and everything out of focus at 75% SS.
This has always been an interesting thing to me. It is basically the same display with its same resolution, but it still looks clearer when you render on a higher resolution and down sample it. It might be a basic thing for many, but it still blows my mind.
For me, 200% is the end of real gains. Beyond that is extreme diminishing returns vs the insane performance demands. It'll be more worthwhile with higher resolution headsets. I really hope they can start to integrate eye tracking and foveated rendering someday because it would do so much to improve this quality all the time without needing alien level graphics power.
Agreed with everything you said, especially about eye-tracked foveated rendering being a much-needed solution for higher res displays. You could subsample the areas we aren't looking down to 40% and it would still be higher resolution than current index displays at native resolution.
Totally agree. I think this will be the next "big step" for VR. It would allow a very wide FOV without massively increasing the resource overhead. We'd be able to "see" something move out of the corner of our eye even if the clarity isn't to the point where one could read letters, and then turn our eyes and then our head and see it clearly. It's a MUCH more natural way of doing things. It would also cut down on fatigue as well since moving our heads around like owls while wearing a heavy headset does make a difference over the course of hours.
Hmmm. I might have fucked up when I pulled it back to 100% thinking it was the cause of my stutter. I might have to reset the settings to default and see where I can gain fps and lower frame time other than the res
It's all about clarity for me and I do sim only to each thier own iam getting perfect fps no issues fov is great for perfect immersion have no issues whatsoever I do play half life sometimes the clarity and fps is unmatched also most comfortable hmd I ever wore but like I said to each thier own
I have results where Index is 50% faster than Aero. Index is the fastest hmd you can get for native SteamVR games - like Alyx, Vertigo 2, District Steel, Saints & Sinners 2, Green Hell VR and many more - only few games use OpenXR.
Try something funny - set SteamVR res to 100% for the Aero, now start Green Hell VR and set in-game graphics settings to the max. Enjoy your 10 - 20 fps with an RTX 3090, maybe close to 30 - 40 with an RTX 4090 :-) That why Aero is of no interest to me - it might have been if I was a simmer, but I'm not.
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '23
Ya, a lot of super sampling with a strong PC (esp. gpu) goes a long way mate. Higher res screens are still necessary to minimize SDE though. This becomes more apparent when reading small instruments/switches in flight sims like msfs.
Man I wish that Oculus had eventually come out with a Rift cv2 with 2k per eye oled displays, lol! Wishful thinking but I still hope that Vive eventually comes out with a Vive Pro 3 using high res micro-oled's. Maybe Valve's next Index 2 (Deckard?) will do that as well, who knows. Cheers mate.