Just tried AC in VR

Started to think about VR since I visited a track which I'm modelling. FOV and depth perception is a big deal... I use slightly larger FOV because small (realistic) FOV is garbage with single screen, the distances gets streatched out and elevations distorted obviously, while with realistic FOV surroundings are completely cut off.

Whats the selection for VR devices, are Rift and Vive the only choices, or is there anything midrange with lower price what could function as well ?

 

There is a device called Pimax. It costs two hundred and some dollars, has double the resolution of Rift and Vive, but the refresh rate is 60hz instead o 90hz on the others. Also it has head rotation but no movement tracking. For racing games head rotation only could be enough and with the increased resolution it seems a very tempting proposition. If anyone has used it in AC please share your experience.

 

Interesting, thanks for pointing it out. seems like good option. I guess some more very good options should come up in near future. But this one seems good.

 

Very interesting but (maybe because video is low-res?) I can't see any difference to my Rift picture quality...

 

I have read a testing review on a french site specialised in VR, and there is lot of remanence, and low resolution texture are very noticable due to the 4k, so it would be benific only with high resolution texture, that means only very high end computer could make it works.
For me computers are not enough powerful today to manage that resolution,
This is only a race to the high resolution but the technology required to make it comfortable is simply not yet there.

 

I wouldnt buy any other VR unit currently for the PC other than the Rift or Vive as you are sure developers will support these, pure and simple.
This 4K model would be better for movies or 360 video content but not gaming.

I read somewhere that running super sampling at 3.2 would represent how taxing a 4K display would be. Not sure if thats accurate but a unit then would rely much more on the GPU and ASW trying to fill that pixel count and maintain frames.

The 1070 / 1080 struggle to meet over 45-60 with super sampling at 2.0 apparently on many titles. Maybe someone else can confirm that has more knowledge on these matters.

 

I suspect the high resolution is seen as being their key advantage but, it seems it comes at the cost of other more critical features; good overall performance, low latency and positional tracking are absolute "must have's" for good VR imo. There are quite a few new lower-cost HMD's coming to market but, they are going to have to get the fundamentals correct to not do more harm than good.

 

Being able to get up close to objects with your face/eyes means texture resolution is an issue in VR in general at whatever display resolution.

Higher resolution is still *hugely* better even with this problem, though. The big benefit is that distant scenery has a lot more clarity. This is absolutely worth any lower res textures sticking out a bit more.

Plus with photogrammetry becoming more common and new memory standards in GDDRX5 and HBM taking over at the enthusiast end, the future looks good for improving texture quality while having the bandwidth to handle it. I reckon the quality of the textures will start mattering more than just the resolution of them. And shaders and lighting will become quite important to give a realistic 'material' look.

I really think we're ready for higher resolution VR. I dont know about 4k just yet, but a noticeable jump to something like 3000x1600(overall, so 1500x1600 per eye) and with RGB OLED's, we could see a very significant improvement with only moderately increasing the demands.

If we can get high quality eye tracking and fast and optimized foveated rendering, we'll then be in the money and can start going a bit crazy with the resolutions, potentially even having something like 4k per eye(4000x4000x2) within 3-5 years, which will basically put us at the same kind of pixels-per-degree as a 1080p monitor. At that point, general PC use and even *work* will legitimately become viable in VR.

 

I just overclocked my CPU i7 2600k and it's massively improved my VR performance. It was at 3.4ghz it's now running at 4.4ghz. All I had to do was press a button in the bios, I should have done it ages ago. Getting a solid 90fps now, when I was getting 45fps. No stuttering. AC CPU usage seems to be around 70% for the "tough battle" challenge .

I turned on PP again and started putting other settings up. The 1070 is more than capable, the CPU does seem to be very important for smooth frame rates.

 

I think i would be happy with 60fps and 2k but i guess i didn't try it so.

 

VR isnt perfect but it sure is fun and enjoyable now....

 

What rez are guys running in VR. Mine is 1920 x 1080, am I wasting gpu resources running a rez my rift can't display?

 

The Rift CV1 uses the default resolution no matter what you have set in AC.

 

I think the resolution effect the gui in game? I've not tested it in a while but im sure the apps/hud are smaller in higher resolution. Same as in pcars. Interestingly in flyinside & vorpx you can push the resolution higher & i think the result is similar to super sampling.

 

90hz is important. It's not even necessarily about general smoothness like with a 2d monitor, it's about flicker sensitivity. Basically, below a certain threshold, our eyes+brain will pick up that we're seeing frames and not real life motion, whether we consciously realize it or not. This isn't so much an issue on a flat, 2d screen that takes up a fairly small percentage of our FoV because looking through a small-ish window into a flat world cant even begin to resemble a 'real' place for us and we are very used to it. VR is a very different story. Not only do we have a vastly larger FoV of our environment, everything has proper sense of depth(or near enough with current tech). The aim is to truly replicate being a virtual world and below a certain framerate our brain *cannot* be convinced of this due to flicker from how displays flash images/frames in succession with an on/off effect. This is the flicker fusion threshold. It's generally estimated to be around 85fps or so, making 90hz a very convenient target for enabling presence.

That said, you can run games at less than 85-90fps and still be alright so long as the software is running a form of reprojection/timewarp, which essentially creates a 90fps(or even 120fps in the case of PSVR) output by filling in frames via motion prediction. It's not perfect, but it's fairly effective in still keeping the framerate high enough to fool our brains. A 60hz display just doesn't cut it for VR.

 

So thats a huge difference in the feeling with 75Hz vs 90Hz? I realized it would be a difference but if its some magic limit im not reaching up to it might be a reason to upgrade to a cv1.

 

I hate to call it a 'magic' limit, but yes, it can absolutely be the difference between feeling presence and not, even if 75hz is still incredibly immersive compared to playing in 2d.

Just realize flicker fusion threshold isn't some scientifically specific number so I wouldn't call it a 'magic limit'. As it is perception-based and everybody's physiology and brain are different, it's not definable to any specific point, but 85-90hz is generally around where studies show it to be applicable to nearly anybody, which makes it an important minimum target for a consumer VR headset. It doesn't mean it's impossible to feel presence at a lower refresh rate, but 60hz is generally considered to be an extremely low figure for achieving this that may work for somebody, but probably very very few. 75hz is going to be sufficient for more people, but still not a lot of people. 90hz is pretty much guaranteed to hit it, though. It's still complicated and sensitivity to it can even vary from app to app. Ones that require more head motion will probably lead to more sensitivity for it as that 'looking around' and having it look and feel natural is a big part of creating presence in VR.

EDIT: I should note that 90fps doesn't mean you're guaranteed to have presence, though. Presence generally involves a number of various factors coming together, performance and hitting the flicker fusion threshold being just one of them. There's a number of other ways for a specific piece of software(or hardware) to not induce presence from a user. Upgrading to a CV1 wont magically guarantee you get presence where you weren't before as your reasons for not feeling presence may be caused by reasons other than performance.

 

There are many things that can affect immersion and - especially "presence", perfect VR-PC performance is only one factor. Having a CV1 may improve your chances of reaching such a goal but, is no guarantee either. In most cases, our PC's are "Just" capable enough to get acceptable VR performance - not optimal in all situations. VR is still too new and very few titles are designed well enough from the ground up for VR - let alone existing Sim-titles to expect high levels of immersion and sustained presence; in that sense, VR has not fully "arrived" yet.

 

Well said. I even edited my comment to mention this before seeing your response.

I dont want somebody to think upgrading to CV1 will be some magical transition, cuz it may well not.

 

Yeah, it seems we are on the same page . . . at the same time!