Vireio Perception small FOV?

[cp_clegg]

Maybe FOV isn't the right term to use here, but from my experience the viewable area when using Vireio Perception is smaller than that I get when trying the various Oculus SDK demos or TF2, HL2 with native VR support.

So far I've tried Dear Esther and Mirror's Edge and in both I found that I can see the edges of the screen quite easily. I basically have black bars at the top, bottom, and sides.

Can anyone help me understand if this is expected with Vireio Perception? I thought one of the selling points of the Oculus was supposed to be the fact that you don't feel like you are looking at a "screen" because it goes to the edge of your peripheral vision. It seems my other Oculus experiences have been much closer to achieving this.

[Neil]

Are you running the games in 1280X800 with the correct aspect ratio? I don't have black bars in any games I've played with Vireio. I almost wish I did because the UI would be completely viewable!

Regards,
Neil

[cp_clegg]

Yes, I'm pretty sure I had the game resolution set to 1280x800. I will try again tonight to be sure.

I also set my desktop resolution to 1280x800 and cloned display with Oculus. I think this is necessary for Vireio to work properly with Rift correct?

[cp_clegg]

Ok so I determined this is due to what version of the Perception driver I use. I tried the 1.0.4 release and all black bars are gone. In fact you can even see the dramatic difference on the PC monitor, that the images takes up the whole thing. Whereas, if I run one of the beta drivers, I get black bars and on the cloned PC monitor also I can see large black areas around the two viewports.

Can the size of the rendered area be controlled? I want to use one of the beta drivers because 1.0.4 doesn't have Oculus head tracking. But the beta drivers render the viewable area too small.

[cybereality]

If you read the readme, you will see instructions on how to increase the FOV in certain games. Some games will have simple console commands to do this (in Dear Esther you put "fov_desired 110"). Some games require mods to do this.

Additionally, the most recent versions of the Perception app have a warping shader than shrinks the viewable area into smaller than the whole screen. This is so UI and HUD can be seen on the Rift. It may be a little aggressive, and depending on what eye-cups you use and how you adjust the Rift, you may see black areas on the edges. You may be able to adjust this, but you would need to edit the OculusRift.fx file yourself. I'm not sure off the top of my head what the fix would be.

[jpkrautw]

cp_clegg, did you ever get this resolved? I have the same issue. And just to clarify, we're not talking about the games' FOV being too small... Vireio's Rift overlay is warped too small, limiting the viewable area. Compare Tuscany to a game in Perception - in Perception, you can see the edges of the screen quite clearly. There's a significant loss of FOV that really breaks the illusion of the Rift.

I'm using the A lenses, and I'm adjusted as close to the screen as possible. I'm guessing the developer is using different lenses and wasn't aware the FOV was cut off.

[Worldstage]

cp_clegg, did you ever get this resolved? I have the same issue. And just to clarify, we're not talking about the games' FOV being too small... Vireio's Rift overlay is warped too small, limiting the viewable area. Compare Tuscany to a game in Perception - in Perception, you can see the edges of the screen quite clearly. There's a significant loss of FOV that really breaks the illusion of the Rift.

I'm using the A lenses, and I'm adjusted as close to the screen as possible. I'm guessing the developer is using different lenses and wasn't aware the FOV was cut off.

Same here; glad to see I'm not the only one with this problem. For me, the largest border is on the bottom, cutting off a good 6th or so of the total view. It isn't a huge amount overall, but more than enough to create a really disorienting effect when trying to focus on the game screen. And the top of the screen actually seems a bit farther up than it should be. I'm also using the A lenses, screen close as possible.

Are there any .ini's that could be edited to alter the projection area?

[Valez]

There doesn't seem to be a solution:

Well, then let's eliminate that absence.

Sorry, that was the short, I'm heading off answer, it wasn't clear.

The eyes get rendered at the full screen resolution (more importantly, at the full screen aspect ratio). When you put that image into half the screen you get something like this (All screen shots are without distortion for clarity).



The big black borders are there because there is nothing to put there (while maintaining the aspect ratio).

There are various ways to try and address this. Ignore the aspect ratio and stretch to the area, terrible idea.


Zoom the image in and lose the edges of the view. Better, but it creates more problems than you might think. You have to be able to bump the fov way up (additional distortion issues) to get the correct fov instead of the narrow zoomed fov you see here. This means rendering a lot more geometry that never gets seen.


In some games we might be able to get away with reprojecting using the correct aspect ratio for the side. However, this doesn't work in general because the game has already culled geometry outside of the projection the game is using so we get geometry popping in and out. imo that's worse than black borders.

[jpkrautw]

Valez - what thread did that discussion come from?

Also, the second option from that post ("Zoom the image in...") is exactly how it should work, and how native Rift support already works in all demos. ChrisJD argues that the downside is that geometry is rendered that isn't visible - well yeah, that's to be expected when rendering a rectangular image to a warped non-rectangular view! In order to cover the full FOV, of course some of the viewport will be cut off. And sure, certain elements/the HUD will be cut off, but those elements already need modding since they aren't usable in the peripheral anyways. His example is also extreme - the images wouldn't need to be expanded that much to cover the Rift's viewable area. ChrisJD also says that games would need the FOV to be set even higher than the Rifts to account for the cropping - but we're already doing that! Note that most games need to be set at 110 degrees horizontal view, when the Rift only has a 90 degree horizontal FOV - that's because we're already accounting for those extra 20 degrees of loss since the image will be cropped (except that right now it's not.)

The way Vireio works right now, it's like using a giant and horribly low-res TV set. The loss of FOV really causes the user to lose that "Rift magic" of feeling transported somewhere else. You'll see a lot of lackluster reviews of Vireio on the web for this very reason... the 3D feels off because the realistic scale is gone, and it's just not an impressive Rift-caliber experience.

[Worldstage]

To be honest, I'm perfectly happy to settle for a quick zoom-in fix for now. At this point, pretty much everything Rift and VR-related is in pre-production phases and betas; we're still tinkering away at how we can get this stuff to work, so I think it's a bit early to demand a finalized program.

With that said, I'd love to zoom in as the example above shows, but have no idea how and can't seem to find anything on it! Is it discussed in the thread that example is from?

[jpkrautw]

Yeah, that would be perfect. An "Oculus Zoomed" profile would do the trick and make Vireio usable again for those that agree with me. Here's to hoping that a dev sees this thread.

[Valez]

Well, I just figured out a way to get rid of the black borders:

I used the Steroficator fork of Vireio and set the FOV for Dear Esther to 120 (lower value may do the trick, may test a bit if i find the time) and
the borders vanished.

The reddit thread to Stereoficator:

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments ... of_vireio/


Download form Chis' site:

http://www.chrisdrain.com/hmd-stereoificator/

Use the unstable version for source games. It gives you also the option to render the HUD and menu farther away (meaning more in the center, so not
visible elements become visible).

[jpkrautw]

Good find! Too bad compatibility is so low. Will definitely keep an eye on it.

[jpkrautw]

Looks like Stereoificator is now the new version of Perception. Unfortunately, the FOV is still dramatically smaller than native Rift titles Disappointing.

[sunukun]

I had a similar issue - one day game screen in oculus suddenly got smaller. It was because of stupid combination <ctrl + mouse wheell>. Try this or changing "distortion" in settings (<ctrl+Q>).