Finally ED looks with the quality i did expect from the 8k!
It looks sharp, clear, with minimal aliasing and artifacts.
the settings:
Smartsmoothing on
64Hz-80Hz depending on your system find the sweetspot where brainwarp will kick in
Pitool SS 1.75
Steam Video SS 20 %
Steam app SS 50%
Overall ingame SS 2.0
Ingame HMD SS 2.0
FOV small-normal depending on your system
If your gpu can’t handle it, first reduce ingame HMD before reducing the overall ingame SS
Hope this will help you, let me know what you think
@neal_white_iii
9 Likes
Thanks for the suggestion!
I can’t do this for Elite Dangerous. SteamVR doesn’t list Elite Dangerous in the apps list. I’ve tried in-game SS and found that it makes my text a little fuzzy compared to the settings I’m using:
Smartsmoothing off - when on, it just lowers my framerate and has occasional artifacts
72 Hz for best auto-SS in SteamVR
Pitool SS 2.0
Steam Video auto at recommended SS 12 %, since Manual won’t let me set it below 20%
Steam app SS cannot set this
Overall ingame SS 1.0
Ingame HMD SS 1.0
FOV normal
This looks really good for me. There is minimal color fringing with 8K and the text is quite readable.
3 Likes
have you tried fpsVR for in-game SS setting?
1 Like
I’m running fpsVR. I didn’t see an in-game SS setting for it. Also, I’d like to know how to turn off the in-game fpsVR display, but I couldn’t figure out how (so I just close it from the desktop, but I’d like a in-game toggle).
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To hide in game display you should select “hide overlay” from main panel, in the “overlays” menu. Main Panel pops up pressing system button and pointing controller over the small ingame display
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Ah, but I have no controllers. That explains why I couldn’t find any settings.
2 Likes
Did you find out with the app SS ? You have to do exactly the values because otherwise you won’t get this effect for this game. I’m really amazed how clear it looks overall and the text and its playing smooth.Maybe smartsmoothing wil cost some frames but when it kicks in you get double. FPSVR is perfect to sort it out. you see exactly when smartsmooting is kicking in, So if your running on 64 hz, tweak the ingame settings till your just above 32Hz and then it kicks in(get no artifacts with these SS settings). For the steam vr app ss you have to restart the game to see effect. The video SS you have to set to manual and 20%
edit
i did see in your ED profiler settings, that you have the framerate locked to 30 Hz you have to uncheck this for it to work.
2 Likes
Crap. I don’t know why it sometimes resets to 30. I keep setting it to unlimited, but sometimes (once or twice a year?) I find it reset. Thanks for the heads-up!
1 Like
no problem 
, i hope it works out
to see an app that isn’t listed as VR in steam… Just start the app then head to steamvr settings on your desktop and it should have your app selected under application
2 Likes
Do you know that the several supersampling factors you adjust along the road are just different multipliers, which basically just change the render target resolution?
Let me break down your SS settings to show you what you are actually setting (I am not going to comment on the smart smoothing as it should not impact the resolution).
Let’s assume that your PiTool when set at 1.0 recommends the resolution X*Y (I do not know what it is exactly as it seems to differ between 5k+ and 8k, depends also on FOV, and on how Pimax felt when they released the PiTool).
Then this sequence:
Basically means:
X*Y + (PiTool 1.75) -> (1.75*X)*(1.75*Y)
+ (SteamVR global 20%) -> 0.2*(1.75*X)*(1.75*Y)
+ (SteamVR app 50%) -> 0.5*0.2*(1.75*X)*(1.75*Y)
= 0.1*3.0625*X*Y = ~ 0.3*X*Y
So this would be equal to leaving everything at 1.0 and just moving either the app SS, or global override SS in SteamVR to 30%.
Now for the in-game settings, I am not sure whether both in-game SS and HMD quality can apply at the same time (it would not make much sense, but one never knows, let’s see if @jojon has some insight), but you definitely do not want to use in-game SS as it is just a standard supersampling, i.e Elite will render at higher res and then downsample the results before passing it further. This is the SS for the 2D version of the game.
HMD quality on the other hand will make Elite to render at higher res and not downsample the results, i.e. it will make Elite to pass the supersampled image to the OpenVR. This is the desirable route because the image does not lose the precision until the pre-lens warp is applied.
The in-game SS factors are both factoring the dimensions again so basically depending on whether they both stack on each other or just get active one or the other you would want to set Elite in-game to SS ingame to 1.0, and HMD quality to either 2.0 or 4.0.
Which would lead to:
in-game SS settings gets stacked:
0.3*X*Y @ (ED HMD 4.0) -> 0.3*(4.0*X)*(4.0*Y) = 4.8*X*Y
only one in-game SS applies
0.3*X*Y @ (ED HMD 2.0) -> 0.3*(2.0*X)*(2.0*Y) = 1.2*X*Y
So technically you are getting at the render target resolution as if you left everything at 1.0 and just applied one setting in SteamVR equaled to either 4.8 or to 1.2 (depending on which statement about the in-game SS is true).
This also shows that most of the time, you do not need to fiddle with many different settings as you are completely covered by SteamVR SS global override range (0.2-5).
6 Likes
Using 2D SS = 2.0 yields slightly fuzzy text on my system. Using HMD SS = 2.0 yields color fringing (which I see on my 8K whenever I set the render size very large). (I have upped SteamVR max render size to 8196.) When I set both 2D and HMD SS to 2.0, Elite crashes, so I assume both SSes are applied.
My settings at the top of this thread still yield the best results, but I’ll try again to see if I can set the per-app SS for Elite in SteamVR tomorrow night.
2 Likes
Why do you drive the both settings to the opposite extremes instead of using just PiTool at 1.0 and SteamVR at 48%?
2 Likes
This sounds sensible as the game output resolution is not improved but the image is anti-aliased so when the anti-aliased text gets warped it becomes more fuzzy.
This looks more like a bug in Pimax compositor than the expected behavior.
Ok, looks like it gets out of manageable bounds. So stacking two 2.0 SS factors in-game is probably equivalent to 16x 2*2*X*2*2*Y in SteamVR. One may wonder if you can see any visual difference at this huge supersampling.
1 Like
Because supposedly PiTool quality does more than just set the SS higher. My settings (as listed near the top of this thread) look good and run well on my system. I’ve tried a lot of tweaking and this is the best balance of visual quality and performance I’ve found so far.
2 Likes
Actually, it’s expected due to the rainbow subpixel patterning of the 8K. This was one of my concerns (when considering the 5K+ with its’ full RGB subpixels). The fringing mostly affects very thin lines and small text. My settings balance high resolution with minimal color fringing.
I saw extreme color fringing and < 1 FPS, before the game crashed.
Thanks for your explanation, yes i do know the settings ad up together to a final SS percentage. Only here i get different results with this game. I do think steam rendering and pitool rendering are different and give different results, also the ingame game rendering is different as you explaned. This weird combination what i never use for other games seems to be the sweetspot for this game over here.
But i will try your numbers and look for the difference
I just wish you all could see what i see, and how good it is now. Thats why i posted this, it’s the first time i enjoy playing elite with the 8k
Oke thats unfortunate with the high ingame SS, i don’t get that over here, but i’m glad you did find settings that work for you!
wow with this 1 fps result, it tells me there is a big difference how the rendering works on our pc’s. No idea what it is…
Do you also use the latest pitool beta and latest nvidea drivers? and steam non beta
I used your settings, do i get this right?
Steam manual override 0.3
Pitool 1
Steamapp 1.2
Ingame SS 1.0
Ingame HMD 2.0
My findings
Only the mainmenu text is more sharp then my settings, but on the 8k it gives much more shimmering, artifacts and a lot of colorfringing on other menu’s and in the cockpit, where @neal_white_iii is talking about.
Also it is more demanding on the CPU, it hangs a lot on 100% Thread.
Unfortunatly you don’t have an 8k to look with me.