By popular demand, here I hope to offer some rudimentary guidance on where to find the new configuration spreadsheets, and what to do with them. Completing the overall project has been a priority, if anyone could follow along and create generic tutorial videos in the meantime, it would be greatly appreciated.
For any particular application (DCS World, Elite Dangerous, etc), there are two or three ‘param.ods’ spreadsheets. A Template and two copies - Checklist, and ‘Fast’. Occasionally, the checklist copies may have other variants - a checklist specifically for the Pimax 5k+ for example.
For all three spreadsheets, format is the same. Top-Left corner is a checklist of PiTool, SteamVR, and App settings. End users only need to configure their settings to match. In particular, there are exactly four numbers end users particularly need to be concerned with.
PiTool - Render Quality
SteamVR - SteamVR Settings > Video > Custom Resolution
This is just very confusing to me. I expected something like a list for each game and which settings to use. Instead there are ods files which show only gibberish in notepad. What is this even?
Do I have to load this into my installation directory? Or is this something which is meant for game developement on Pimax?
@Heliosurge Except that SteamVR’s auto SS setting is not reasonable for things like DCS World or Elite Dangerous of course, where good graphical quality is right at the limit of what CPUs/GPUs can do, and setting PiTool to 1.0 will actually result in a decrease in visual quality for all Pimax headsets due to a blur filter.
@Intet Download LibreOffice. Free, open source, runs locally.
Tried that. Definitely did not remove the blur filter I am talking about, which was clearly planned to be just enough to minimize the visibility of RGB subpixels with lesser headsets.
I’m not sure if I was seeing the same blur that you are seeing, but I found I get the clearest image when I set SteamVR to 100% and only adjust PiTool quality. Currently I have it set to 0.75, which runs well on my 2080 when playing Elite D.
@neal_white_iii To get a clear image at 100% SteamVR and 0.75 PiTool Render Quality, you must have Elite Dangerous ‘HMD Quality’ set to something like 1.75. Elite Dangerous is unusual in that its built-in supersampling controls more than just supersampling. Try keeping PiTool at 1.25 and setting things from there.
@Octofox That works. Lowering PiTool Render Quality a little to 1.25-1.75x may help a bit with performance, at least when you get an 8kX.
Sure thanks. Indeed I’ll revisit the whole setup when 8KX arrives. Will have to additionally compare native / less than native / upscaled depending on app. I hope, as I have a decent PC now, that I will generally be able to get native running smoothly in most situations
I have Elite HMD Quality set to 1.0. My 2080 can’t keep an acceptable framerate with higher settings. If I put PiTool at 1.25, I need to lower SteamVR SS to 50%, which doesn’t look as good as my current settings.
That is going to be computationally expensive at best. Elite Dangerous works pretty well with Smart Smoothing, and I prefer to push it to the limits to get maximum resolution. Haze and readability matter to me a lot more than a little distortion towards the edge of the HUD on near planetary surfaces.
EDIT: You can still use the spreadsheets to make your own checklists and load calculations though.
Here’s one more tip, if you’d like to improve Elite D’s “skybox”, which contains the galaxy and stars outside of the system you are in. I tried larger values 6144 and 8192, but settled on 5K as a balance between visuals and the delay added to the witch-space tunnel, while the skybox is being rendered. This goes a long way towards making the distant stars look more real.
This changes the value of the High “GalaxyBackground” setting in the ED Graphics options:
