Dealing with the screen door effect

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NikoKun
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by NikoKun »

I wont know till I get my dev kit, if I wanna try something like this to fix the screen door.. I might just ignore it.

But if I did, I would have no idea how to best secure it to the screen, in a way that could be safely removed and not damage the screen.

I'd almost pay to have a high quality filter sheet, cut to size, so that we can just slide it in as an insert. Even better if the Rift's own plastic case could hold it in somehow, without needed tape. lol
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by mayaman »

I've tried all three cups. With and without three sheets of a Ziplock freezer storage bag. With the A cups, there is practically no screen door at all, but this is the least sharp of the pictures. With the C cups the picture is almost perfect for this resolution, but the FOV is slightly less. I have found that I'll put up with the decreased FOV of the B cup as its the happy median. Screendoor with the A cups and the three plys of ziploc is best but not sharp enough. I'm trying to find another material but so far this is pretty good.
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by mayaman »

Guys I've cracked this, forget all the plastic bag nonsense. I took a 3M privacy shield off of one of my monitors at work, you know the kind, they are black or smoked rather and don't let people see your screen at certain angles. Well I brought it home, and I cut it to size. I started the Unity demo without it with the C cups, which yield the greatest amount of screen door. I then placed the cut to size screen protector and noticed that the screen door was gone, but replaced by very long diagonal lines that went from one corner to the other over the entire surface of the screen. I then flipped it over again and PRESTO! The screen door is completely gone. Replaced by what looks like a much more muted diamond pattern, but the best part is that you keep sharpness and no black space between pixels that I can tell, just more color of what ever color is surround that pixel at the time. Its not perfect but its probably about as good as its going to get and miles better than without.

Hope this helps.
shole
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by shole »

I gave these plastic laminating sheets a try.
http://wanha.com/present/plasticbagmod/ ... ingbox.JPG
This gave me the best result yet:
http://wanha.com/present/plasticbagmod/ ... ngfilm.JPG
There's two sheets that are glued together at the edge, to allow easy item insertion.
The sheets are almost exactly the size of the panel.
I cut half a centimeter from the bottom and the edge bit that holds the two sheets together and only applied to other to my rift.
I forgot to take a picture of this opened but it's a stiffer sheet so it is really easy to apply neatly now.
There is subtle color noise diffraction going on but it is much less noticable than my earlier materials.

I guess the diffuser material here is the heat activated "glue" stuff, but it's dry and uniform so it works well for this :P
If the rift were ever to get hot enough to activate the substance, it would probably just get smooth.
Just be sure to apply glossy side down.
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mickman
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by mickman »

I just received a 3M sheet in the post today... I cut it to size. used several pieces of double sided foam sticky tape to hold the screen approx. 2mm off the Oculus screen and tried it out...

Not much different :( I can still see a lot of screen door effect. Perhaps it is reduced slightly but nothing to write home about. I am building a game at the moment so I have a good feel of the environment I constantly drop into.. I have noticed after viewing the terrain several times that the pixels seem to have doubled... if that makes sense.. I guess the pixels look twice as small so there's twice as many.. but there's a definite screen door effect just not as pronounced.

I've tried several different distances from the screen & so far ... with not much difference.

3M privacy filter = PF14.1W , 7.48" x 11.96"


I'll keep experimenting... . maybe i should cut another sheet & double up. or even try a 3M sheet in conjunction with a zip bag.

Or simply wait for Dev. Kit 2 :lol:
Image Image

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PatimPatam
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by PatimPatam »

shole wrote:I gave these plastic laminating sheets a try.
http://wanha.com/present/plasticbagmod/ ... ingbox.JPG
This gave me the best result yet:
http://wanha.com/present/plasticbagmod/ ... ngfilm.JPG
There's two sheets that are glued together at the edge, to allow easy item insertion.
The sheets are almost exactly the size of the panel.
I cut half a centimeter from the bottom and the edge bit that holds the two sheets together and only applied to other to my rift.
I forgot to take a picture of this opened but it's a stiffer sheet so it is really easy to apply neatly now.
There is subtle color noise diffraction going on but it is much less noticable than my earlier materials.

I guess the diffuser material here is the heat activated "glue" stuff, but it's dry and uniform so it works well for this :P
If the rift were ever to get hot enough to activate the substance, it would probably just get smooth.
Just be sure to apply glossy side down.
I did give this a try as well since it seemed quite straightforward and i happened to have some of these sheets at hand.. same specs, different brand (GBC).

It did get rid of the screen door quite effectively without losing detail, but i didn't like very much the kind of grainy pattern that it's replaced with (i guess is the color noise diffraction that you mentioned). Personally i think i prefer the original screen door effect, but it's probably a matter of taste; still worth a try if you can't stand the screen door! Thanks for the efforts anyway!
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by Trip Rodriguez »

I wanted to post my contribution to this thread. I had an old dead compaq laptop so I gutted it for the diffusers.

I can confirm that the laptop screen diffusers were not useful, I tried them all and also combinations of multiple sheets. The screen door was only softened slightly and not worth the loss in brightness and color.

I tried one of the white garbage bags I have here in the house and it worked.... the trash bag is definitely superior to the LCD backlight diffusers LOL.

Like some others I decided I'd rather see the screen door than make the display more blurry. I've only had my Rift for two days but I'm already getting used to the screen door.

To all those who complain that the screen door breaks immersion, well that is true but the immersion is broken by the low resolution anyway. Don't get me wrong the Rift is awesome but the resolution is too low to be able to play most games effectively. That doesn't keep me from enjoying playing with it! The fonts example on the first page of this thread clearly shows the resolution problem, in Dear Esther the writing on the cliff walls near the end was mostly impossible to read because of it.
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vittorio
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by vittorio »

I have run out of time to do further tests so I will post the intermediate unsuccessful results of my attempts.

1. Adding more space between the screen and the bag film failed (to get more diffusion).
* First I tried to add some space via 1-2 mm wires at the border, but I couldn't tighten the bag film anough to have uniform spacing.
* Then I tried to add space via a overhead transparency film. But the one I've bought (for inkjet printers) are diffusion filters too with alot graininess

2. I went to a notebook repair shop and asked for defective displays, kindly they gave me 3 displays.
* Two of them combine the Top Diffusion Film with the Prism Film (but the top film doesn't have enough diffusion anyway)
* The graininess of the Bottom Diffusion Films is alot better now with new models (compared to my 15 year old notebook display), almost insignificant, but all still have too much diffusion.

Image

3. A coworker coincidentally had some diffusion filter samples from http://www.tech-films.de
* All of them had too much diffusion, the graininess was great.
* The filter with less diffusion was LM309 300um. Looking at their site there's one filter with even less diffusion, LM292 100um, but I don't have a sample. Maybe this works.

http://translate.google.at/translate?sl ... ml&act=url

No success, but it's not over yet.
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by shadows »

Hey everyone

I tried with laminating paper, the result was pretty damn impressive, just needed to use a bit of tape to keep the paper as close to the screen as possible, just had to cut tiny stripes to hold it on the excess glass on the side of the screen.

Got a tiny bit of dust or particle underneath but it's in the peripheral vision and only visible on very bright backgrounds.
I have to say, I'm pretty impressed by the result at the moment as it just seems like I'm sitting a little bit to close from a big projection screen (no color artifacting that I could notice) and text elements actually seems MORE readable with the mod than without (might be an impression, but runing the same demos (titans of space, cinemaVR, Blue Marble etc...) and downscaling from 1920*1200 give a pretty damn good image, albeit with a little more eyestrain due to the eyes trying to focus a little more maybe.

I'd advise everyone to try it out, it's really easy to pick the rift apart and back in together as long as you're carefull with the cable (last point to unclapse). Might be your thing or not, but not much to loose I'd say.

Here's a picture I took from my phone from inside the rift.

Image

PS: I apologize for the english, it's not my main language.
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Bretspot
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by Bretspot »

I have a laminating sheet... I'm so gonna try this! Thanks for the idea. I'll report on my findings.
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mayaman
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by mayaman »

Nice I'll check this out as well.
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by mayaman »

Guys, according to the secretary this is the screen she game me

3M • MFR Item # PF23.0W9

I hope this helps.
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Bretspot
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by Bretspot »

I'm conflicted.
I used a sheet of un-heated laminate paper.. The results were quite amazing...

The pixels tri-colors blended together quite nicely and the screen effect was totally eliminated. But.. there were 3 negative effects.

1. dust trapped inside now. (Avoidable in cleaner conditions)
2. Instead of looking through a screen now it feels more like looking through the world when my glasses prescription needs updating. I'd say its equivalent to having 20/60 or 20/80 vision
3. Due to some grainyness in the material, or the dust, its almost likely I'm looking through a window attached to my head with dust and graininess on it and less like things are actually 3d... It's hard to explain, but I was getting quite sick from it.

I did however have some lingering motion sickness from earlier in the day so that may have affected it.
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Evenios
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by Evenios »

this wont fix it. the only way to fix it is a better screen its not just the screen door effect its distant objects appear more pixelated too.
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Drewbdoo
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by Drewbdoo »

Evenios wrote:this wont fix it. the only way to fix it is a better screen its not just the screen door effect its distant objects appear more pixelated too.
This thread is focused on fixing the screendoor effect. You're talking about resolution so.... yeah, what?
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by geekmaster »

Drewbdoo wrote:
Evenios wrote:this wont fix it. the only way to fix it is a better screen its not just the screen door effect its distant objects appear more pixelated too.
This thread is focused on fixing the screendoor effect. You're talking about resolution so.... yeah, what?
Evenios whines about inadequate display resolution in most threads in most forums, relevant or not. Nothing new there, and not likely to change (even after he gets a 1080p Rift)...

But I do want to try some of these methods on my Rift, just to see how it works with my sub-pixel rendering code. I want to see how readable tiny sub-pixel fonts are when using various diffusion filter materials. Even Evenios' pessimism will not stop me there, when I get to that point on my "To Do" list...
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by boone188 »

You could just buy one of these suits and start wearing it everywhere
Image
then the screen door effect will become your reality, and you'll no longer notice it!
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by Ryuuken24 »

The laminate paper totally works! It's super sweet! Using B-cups.
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by mayaman »

Link to laminate paper?
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by shadows »

Sorry for not answering earlier, was away from home.

I'll try to check what brand and model the sheet I used was from, but the glue film is pretty regular therefore even if there's a slight graininess, it doesn't feel too pronounced.
trying it with the Spacewalk or blue marble demos, it actually feels like it's on the glass of the helmet (words of a colleague of mine which are spot on).
I also switched to B cups and the effect got even greater, less eye strain, much bigger sweet spot meaning I can easily read text (actually better than with the A cups on the unmodded rift).
all it all, it really just feels as if I'm standing a little too close to my projection screen at home.

On the cons of this method:
- there is indeed a strong probability of puting dust on the screen, doing this in a steemy bathroom might help, but there will generally be dust on the laminated sheet already, maybe cleaning I'll try some alcohol on some leftover to see if it's too agressive and takes the glue off, but you can take most of the big ones out easily enough and the smaller ones aren't visible after a while (and depending on some games it's straight up impossible to see)
- there is a loss of details in the distance, but that's just as much because of the resolution than the sheet.
- some color artifacting in the distance where color starts getting a moiring effect but it only gets noticeable if you look for it. I think your brain acts like when you're nearsighted and tries to focalize on closer things.

I should be back at the office the day after tomorrow and I'll let you guys know, if I can find the packaged the sheets came in but as you can see in the screengrab, the effect seems pretty natural.

Cheers.
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by shole »

The dust between the sheet and the lens was my biggest issue too.
I find it works well enough to first wipe them clear with the lens hanky that came with the oculus box, put the film in place and then look for anything that got left in.
Then fishing the dust out with a q-tip.
I thought looking at a white screen would be optimal for finding dust, but it gives your eyes no frame of reference, I find the best way to spot dirt is looking at a bright, real VR scene, like the sky in tuscany.
Your eyes are fooled by the VR scene and any dirt specks at your peripheral vision are far more out of place, and thus more noticable, than on a blank white screen.
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by play2lose »

What is laminate paper...and where do we get it?!..

http://m.staples.com/Duck-Clear-Laminat ... uct_825000

Anyone know if this stuff would work?
shadows
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by shadows »

It's thermal laminating sheets, it's a kind of plastic sleeve in which you put a paper that you then pass inside a thermal roll (machine) so it plastifies it.

The film itself is pretty sturdy but flexible plastic and has a small coat of glue that acts like the difusor in this case.

Depending on the grain of the glue coat, you can be lucky and have a very homogenous film making the SDE completely disapear in trade of a little bluriness (think antialiasing).

I've tried several options but this was clearly the best effect and the easiest to install and keep in place (since the film as semi rigid), didn't try an LCD diffusor though, might be better.

couldn't find the exact brand I used sadly as we just keep the laminating sheets in a tray and the secretary doesn't remember what brand she ordered last time (we don't laminate stuff very often so the order might be years old).

anyway, here's an example

http://www.officemax.com/office-supplie ... rod3320010

Cheers
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Re: Dealing with the screen door effect

Post by bobv5 »

Bretspot

I bought some of that Scotch tape, but haven't been brave enough to pull my Rift apart yet. Seems to work well with laptop screen and spare Rift lens though. Did you try it on Rift yet?
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