[Feature Request] - HMD refresh rate in game profile

Hi,

I’d really like to be able to choose the frequency per game.
I often play at 120hz (144 is ghosting with my 5k+), when my computer is able to. But there is games where my computer cannot keep a stable 120hz (90-115 for example), and the experience is not so great (reprojection, etc…)
For these games, the best experience for me is to set a lower refresh rate, like 90hz to be sure to be stable. And the magic returns.

This is why I really think this may be a good idea to be able to change the refresh rate by game, even if it has to be an “advanced setting” in the profile, and I understand that the HMD has to reboot to apply this setting. In fact I was thinking of this before PE, and really hoping to do this in PE.

Example : I prefer to play at 90 hz with very high graphics, very clear, crisp, than playing with lower graphics or unstable fps, that was the case before with HL Alyx, and still with heavy games like NMS.

Thx !

2 Likes

The problem is the headset needs to reboot (as You mention) when changing refresh rate.

I don’t think this will be a very nice experience when wearing the headset… :upside_down_face:

Sometimes, changing refresh rates also takes a while (or requires service restarts) for me.

I guess it could be an option, but I think there’ll be a lot of complaints because of it.

4 Likes

I totally agree, that is why I suggested to have this in an advanced profile setting.
I consider myself as an advanced user, like a lot of Pimax users, but not all.

Regarding the overall experience, my personal point of view is that I’m ready to loose some seconds during reboot to have a great game experience but I understand that it would not be the case for all users.

To be honest, the experence is worst now because I have to take off my HMD to change the refresh rate, or more often via desktop view into steamvr to change the refresh rate, the HMD reboot, then I click on the “system” button on my index controller to restart steamvr (while still wearing thje headset) then my game. And doing the same procedure for the next game. It only can be better :slight_smile:

I don’t know if other users are doing the same refresh changing depending on games (a few !), if not, you can forget what I said :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes

I totally agree with you guys. I have banged my head over this for a while since my initial plan was to have ALL game-related and HMD settings in each game settings profile.

Here’s a few fundamental problems though:

  1. As you said already, reboot is required. The reboot might vary in length from headset to headset. My old 5K+ sometimes takes 20 seconds to reboot (it reboots like 3 times to just change Hz). This could lead to all kinds of problems upon game start. Especially since upon reboot, PE is automatically terminated and I have no control over the HMD until PE is back again. Batch files could fix this and I already discussed an idea @PimaxUSA came up with a while ago. Its possible, but it will never be stable and could be quite frustrating. At least until PiTool engineers can speed up and make the refreshrate change more stable and fast.

  2. Maybe the biggest problem currently is that, due to the limitations of Pitool and its runtime, only 1 of the HMD settings (the settings that requires reboot) can be changed per reboot. I know its retarded, but thats how it is. Thats the reason I prevented to change Refreshrate AND backlight at the same time in PE. Only one can be changed at a time. And thats because it wouldn’t work anyway as only one argument is executed upon HMD reboot. I tested this many times and tried workarounds. But no success. Only last argument sent is applied.

So basically, changing from 90Hz and Backlight 1 to 120Hz and Backlight 2 wont work instantly. Needs 2 reboots.

Im sure we can improve this over time, but its a lot up to Bill and the engineers to change the execution process of HMD settings. Let me discuss this again with the team…

4 Likes

Yeah they used to have this feature in PiTool along time ago, but It would cause a weird band of color that coukd only be solved by rebooting the headset

when I told them about it the feature mysteriously disappeared from Pitool in the next version

Im guessing it never really worked.

https://community.openmr.ai/t/horizontal-bar-software-glitch/20864?u=drowhunter