Sorry if this is a stupid question, I am still trying to figure all this VR stuff out.
If I look at the VR world through the headset and if I bring both controllers up to the sides of my head they seem to disappear at the edges of the vision. This seems to happen at every fov size.
I am not talking about the black bits when using smaller fov settings. There’s a bit of the virtual world that things do not show up in. Just slivers at the sides where things go invisible.
Has it something to do with distortion profiles?
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Hi there,
It sounds like you’re experiencing frustrum culling, which is where objects outside of the programmed field of view are not rendered. This is a problem that exists because 90% of VR applications were built for gen1 HMDs, the VIVE, original rift etc. These headsets all have ~90-110° FOV where the pimax has a far greater FOV.
In almost all applications you can fix this problem by enabling ‘compatible with parallel projections’. This setting can be found within pitool. Apply that, then restart steamvr and your problems should go away. Be aware, this is taxing to performance. I personally leave that setting on all the time, aside from in the VERY FEW games that dont require it such as asgards wrath. (the index, the only other HMD with canted screens and lenses, also has this setting permanently enabled to avoid this problem).
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I understand Parallel Projections. I take it frustrum culling is the thing that happens in SteamVR home and Alyx where things pop in and out on the right side of view?
The thing I am talking about happens all the time, I think.
Yeah, that’s interesting you’re still having the issue though. I play in normal FOV 120Hz, which is larger than small FOV 90hz, and I had 0 pop in during my alyx playthrough, and im on my second run thru now. I’m forgetting if the issue is entirely fixed in steamvr home though with PP enabled. Maybe check your steamvr rendered resolution with PP enabled and post that? That should be a solid way to check that it’s applying correctly
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Pimax’s actual Horizintal Large FoV is 160 as rendered (revealed by Hmdq). Normal is 140.
So if you look at a Protactor
https://images.app.goo.gl/4fciHYwuLDB4Y2iEA
160 is less than 170 making your hands disappear much sooner than 170 would or the “diagonal 200”
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That popping in and out problem is gone when I use the Alyx setting in the new drivers.
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I can confirm that PP fixes it but it’s still present in the black bit with the pink sky before Steam VR home loads.
Popping in and out still happens in VRHome at the extreme right hand side.
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IIRC there is another setting in PiTool that is specifically for culling.
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Whereabouts is this?
You might be thinking of hidden area mesh/mask, which should be left on all the time. It’s in the same spot as PP I think. There is a distortion applied to the rendered game image to counteract the lens distortion, leaving areas of the original ‘2d’ game render out of the visible lens area. This led to objects being rendered outside of the visible FOV set in the game engine (for example, even if we set the camera in unity to an FOV of110 for a vive, it might really render 130 degrees of game stuff after the geometric transformation).
This is an openvr thing that exists for all HMDs, and I’m surprised pitool allows you to turn it off in the first place. It will boost your performance by a bit to have it on.
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I believe this is also used in Oculus as well as @stonebrickStudios explained this. And that if things are not rendering right requiring this to be off the dev should be contacted of the program.
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Indeed, to quote him
‘The hidden area mask is a very significant optimization. When it’s disabled, you pay full rendering cost for all pixels, even the ones that are outside of the area that’s visible through the lense. The hidden area mask is always enabled on all other HMDs (Vive, Rift, WMR etc), so I actually think it’s not good that Pimax makes it an option that’s so easy to disable. It’s almost like allowing you to disable low persistence, it’s not really something that should ever be done. Almost no game should have issues with the hidden area mask, and if there’s a game that has, that would fully be the responsibility of the devs to fix. Everyone should really always keep it enabled, unless you see issues related to it (black areas in your view, mostly in the corners of the FOV).’
Didn’t know that dev was on these forums. Cool stuff! That game is pretty fun.
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Indeed added his explanation and pics to the getting started Faq. Though need to find time to update it preferably with snippets of Pitool interface from someone with an Rtx card to label FFR and such as the interface has had a lot of changes since first started.
He explained it when I released my review. As at that time majority of us Users were not familar with what this setting was for.
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I have it on all the time anyway.
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