Best quality settings for STEAMVR ive found

Pimax 8K Series
41

i dont know. i havnt Pimax 5k. Just set SteamVR to 100% and look at resolution - divide it by 2

for example - u set steamvr to 100% and see something like 8000x6000 - so u can try set recomended to 4000.

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42

OK SteamVR shows 6552x5300 pixels at 100%, so I adjusted "maxRecommendedResolution” : 3276 for my 5K+!

Maybe you should edit your original post so people with 5k+ can use your advice!

I got a problem though, the “supersampleScale” : 0.25 always reset to 0.30000001192092896 when I relaunch SteamVR, it does not stick. Any idea why ?

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43

image
image869×187 4.06 KB

5k+ at 2.0 pitool and large fov \ 2

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44

What is “recommended resolution limiter”?

SteamVR does not scale anything. In Pimax case the rendered image from the app is passed directly to Pimax driver (compositor), which does both, resampling and pre-lens warp.

Here is an example:

I use P5k+, Normal FOV and PP on. In this configuration, if I set PiTool RenderQuality to 1.0 and SteamVR SS factor to 100%, recommended render target res is 3852x3288.

Now I change PiTool RQ=1.25 and SteamVR SS factor to 64%. The recommended render target res is 3848x3288. Should be the same, the small difference is possibly by the SS factor (64%) not being exactly precise.

In both configurations the game renders the image at basically the same resolution, passes it to SteamVR, which passes it to Pimax driver, which does the resampling and the pre-lens warp.

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45

Ok i have a 5k and havent really tried to change any setting. What setting should be turned off for better image?

Little confused on the maxRecommendedResolution part. If steam shows 6552x5300 what should i put.

46

After extensive testing I think I will limit myself to a SteamVR value of 50% instead of 25%.

@Gared - your settings are good but - I find there is too much alaising of the scene for my liking. That being PiTool 2, FOV Large and SteamVR 25%

I also leave motion smoothing on but instead I am looking more at PiTool Render 1.25 or 1.5, FOV Large, FFR Balanced and SteamVR 50%

Gives a slightly larger render target, a nice image and less shimmering on towns. Getting FFR stable is the fun part within Il2 but I find Nvidia Low Latency On and Virtual Reality PreRendered Frames to 1 works well but Anisotropic filtering to App-controlled helps as x16 causes FFR crash.

All fun and games.

47

My goodness, I am fairly tech savvy but this thread is beyond me :smiley:
all this should be automatic when launching a game lol

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48

I’m just about to test this on a 5k+, so I thought I’d add a clear set of instructions while doing it for the benefit of others. My disclaimer - you’re doing this at your own risk, and I’m not responsible hehe :wink:

18/01/20 - some edits with latest findings.

  1. Find your personal Steam settings file - values in here are a subset of the default settings file, and anything in personal will override the default. The default is overwritten with updates, so as the intro says, don’t touch it. If you prefer, you can autolaunch the personal config file in an editor by locating and executing ‘vrpathreg.exe’.

My Steam config path is here: D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\config

‘vrpathreg.exe’ for me is here: D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\bin\win64

  1. Locate the personal config file ‘steamvr.vrsettings’ in D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\config

  2. Make a backup of this file BEFORE making any changes, just in case things don’t go to plan. If you need to, simply replace the modified file with this backup, and you’ll be back where you started.

  3. Right click and edit the file with Notepad or similar

  4. Modify the “steamvr” section - you’ll need to ADD most of the missing lines as per Gared’s first post. You’ll need to EDIT any that already exist, such as “supersampleScale”.

Don’t allow any duplicates, the config and therefore SteamVR may break.

  1. Based on what Industria showed above, my SN203 5k+ at PiTool 2.0 with SteamVR 100% would be 8532x5264. As always, check your headset value for yourself by checking what Steam gives you. Never use your headset’s physical resolution, that is guaranteed to be incorrect.

Half of 8532 is 4266, so this should be your starting 5k+ value for “maxRecommendedResolution”, and you can try further from there. I’m informed that different 5k+ serial numbers may return different values, so check carefully.

4266 - initial test value
8532 - I’m using this with Normal FOV in ED, and combined with Motion Smoothing On and FFR (Conservative), I can maintain my baseline 45FPS in stations.
17064 - I tried this with Large FOV to compensate for the extra width, and the text clarity looks gorgeous. Unfortunately a 2080 Ti can only maintain 30FPS in stations.

  1. I assume 90Hz for the 5k+ instead of 80Hz, so edited “preferredRefreshRate” to 90 accordingly. However I use PiTool for Motion Smoothing and not SteamVR, so I presume this value is ignored anyway.

  2. So TL;DR, my personal “steamvr” section now looks like this:

“steamvr” : {
“background” : “#FF000000”,
“installID” : “YOURIDVALUE”,
“lastVersionNotice” : “1.7.15”,
“lastVersionNoticeDate” : “1568937933”,
“allowSupersampleFiltering”: true,
“allowAsyncReprojection” : false,
“allowInterleavedReprojection” : false,
“enableDistortion” : false,
“maxRecommendedResolution” : 8532,
“motionSmoothing” : false,
“preferredRefreshRate” : 90,
“supersampleManualOverride” : true,
“supersampleScale” : 0.25
}

  1. I have now the headroom to bump up the ED in-game HMD setting via EDProfiler to 1.25. This makes a notable improvement to the FFR Conservative feature imho, which otherwise shows considerably more intrusive artefacts in ED.
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49

Set Pimax quality at 50% and SteamVR at 50%. .5 * .5 == .25 exactly

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50

Blitze, you may want to know that the blurryness is NOT tied to the advanced supersample filter. That’s a very old setting and I had it inactive for a long time. It’s not new at all. Just letting you know.

The issue with IL2 is somewhere else, not here.

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51

I know Jo - Thanks, turning that off in Dev section of SteamVR was the first thing I did but it didn’t do anything for the Blurriness.

Here are my settings for the steavr settings file found in Users/…/App Data…

“steamvr” : {
“allowSupersampleFiltering” : false,
“background” : “#FF000000”,
“enableDistortion” : false,
“enableHomeApp” : false,
“installID” : “2329656033398071845”,
“lastVersionNotice” : “1.7.15”,
“lastVersionNoticeDate” : “1568937933”,
“maxRecommendedResolution” : 8192,
“preferredRefreshRate” : 72,
“supersampleScale” : 0.5

I am using the normal release candidate of SteamVR not the Beta and blur is gone. I can see detail in ground textures again, vehicles are crisp, and spotting is back out at distance and not under 2km as it was when blurred. :+1:

3 Likes
52

I’m actually happy enough with the balance of visual quality and performance here that I’m going to leave it as is for now and test further, no need to revert.

I’m not going to claim that there’s a dramatic leap in quality or anything like that, but my hunch is that I’m getting better performance for decent visuals and my previous settings were less than optimal.

i9900k + 2080 Ti and it’s now a solid 90FPS in space and 45FPS in stations and surfaces.

I was generally unable to get both balanced satisfactorily. With Elite running PP, maintaining good performance is important so probably best to prioritise Steam settings over in-game ones if the hit is indeed bigger. I’ll play around with that.

Now the main ongoing issues are not related to these settings.

  1. Keeping the headset in position so that my right eye is in focus needs constant readjustment. I have to keep pushing the headset up, left, and forward at the same time, and then getting the foam in position to stop it slipping. A few minutes of stability is all I can get. Can’t wait for the MAS + CK.
  2. Lack of AA - everything is jagged and shimmering and a real shame. I have generally kept it off for performance as I assume most people do, but not sure if something is wrong because switching any AA on results in an unplayable low res blocky mess. I can only describe it as 4bit visuals :slight_smile: Is this expected behaviour?

Overall I’m happy with the new settings so thanks @Gared :+1:

53

Do you have a counter balance? If not, I highly recommend that you cobble up something quick-n-dirty, to at least test it. Mine is 11.1 oz / 312 g, which is roughly half the weight of the headset itself. I taped 2 small wrenches together and used the Velcro loop (which held the Pimax cable in a loop for shipping) to attach it to the back of the headset. I haven’t had any trouble with slippage and there’s much less pressure on my nose and cheeks.

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54

If by “Pimax quality” you mean Render Quality in PiTool, then setting it to 0.5 will already produce 0.25 supersampling factor. Setting 50% in SteamVR will make it 12.5%.

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55

Yes but it’s never been a great solution (a weighted bag hanging off the back). It does enough to take the pressure off my nose and cheeks, without which the headset would be completely unusable for me. My left eye always stays in position, but there’s slip because the foam isn’t enough (I’ve doubled that).

I want to see if the MAS + CK will be enough to do the job, Kevin said they had though carefully about the weight balance. If not, then I’ll get a decent cw solution.

Have you ever had any success in getting a version of AA to work?

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56

Its been almost a year (in 8 days) that I have my 8K
And after all the tests I’ve made, I recommend always to use Pitool 1.5 and SS on auto…

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57

No.
1st - Pitool resolution has nothing to do with the physical resolution of the helmet screens.
Because the transformations are non-linear, and separate for each layer R G B.
(this is necessary to compensate for chromatic aberration and lens refraction)
The density of virtual pixels differs in different parts of the helmet screen.
So ANY value of Pitool SS leads to the fact that there will be no matching pixels.
I don’t know which method they used to convert. The best is a pixel weighting method, but it is also the slowest.Surely something like an approximation method, perhaps something supplemented.

2nd - SteamVR SS means the number of pixels, that is, the area, which correlates well with performance. For example, ss = 25% will be 4 times faster in FPS than 100%
But if you translate into resolution multiplicity, you need to extract the square root of the area value. Ie - 25% steamvr ss means a resolution of 2 times less, i.e. x0.5. (root of 0.25 = 0.5)
And the steamvr SS 50% means a resolution of about x0.7 of original. (0.7071067811865475 to be precise) (root of 0.5 = 0.7071067811865475)

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58

For me, all I know is visually I prefer a render target of 6136 x 4052 compared to 4340 x 2864.

There is much better clarity in the image on my 8K

Unfortunately, somethings kill the fps speed in my fav app, namely clouds which seem to be very GPU hoggish. At present they cut my fps in half compared to no clouds. Very sad.

Lower resolutions look cartoonish and introduce a lot of aliasing but at least the GPU can deal with things thrown at it.

I wonder how the screen and native 4K resolution the 8K-X will have at varying resolutions seeing as we are not fighting poor panels and the upscaler.

Anyway, Gared, thank you for your insights.
VR and tech behind it is interesting and different to 2D monitor image presentation.

59

When talking the supersampling factor I assumed the SteamVR supersampling factor, which factors the pixel count.

PiTool render quality factors image dimensions, so what I wrote relate to that.

60

Yes, for some games. Unfortunately Elite D doesn’t support “real” AA and it’s the game I play the most and has the worst aliasing of any game I play. Even with AA enabled my 8K does still have aliasing, which is due to the checkerboard subpixels (I think).

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