Our Samsung Odyssey (+) first impressions, tips, and tricks...

I am going to ■■■■ a few people off but Elite is actually similar to VTOL VR in “visual precision”. I don’t think you’d notice much difference. For a clarity comparison (minus SDE) I’d like to know what pixel density under the Oculus in DCS approached the “readability” with the O+.

Posting this from in the O+ in Virtual Desktop…which does feel more functional with the greater number of pixels and better clarity. This morning, with the brighter light in the house, I am noticing more light bleed at the bottom of the headset. With the headset feeling comfortable on my head, and my glasses on, there is a nose gap, but there is also an almost finger thickness gap extending up to just below the cheeks. This gap would close down if there was a hinge at the top of the headset (you pull the headset and it will close it down). Actually, I just raised the back headband a bit, which naturally pivots the bottom of the mask more inward and I was able to close off that gap by and large, but at the cost of putting a slight bit of pressure on my nose.

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So it looks like in my oblivious absence from fiddling with Steam VR, they have moved or eliminated the Super Sampling tab and buried it under Settings / Video / Application Resolution and it is now based on a % from 20% to 500%?

I have that slider set to Manual Override and 176%. Below that it says:

The current setting renders each eye at 1893 x 2360
The recommended setting for your GPU and headset is 176%

So should I not mess around with that setting?

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Hmmm. I haven’t played with that setting in a while. What about trying a few different values and checking image quality against frame rate and posting your impressions? I know, we ask a lot.

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So I was just hop-scotching around some games today just to get some impressions. I’m going to love this headset. I think people going from a Rift to a O+ will be pretty happy…even if it isn’t the massive leap forward (foveated rendering, etc…) that we were perhaps hoping for on the very near horizon.

First up I tried House of the Dying Sun, simply because it was in my Steam VR library and I’d never played it. I only did the first bit of the training mission to feel what it is like and the artwork and graphics are simply stunning…

Again, all of these pics are taking with an iPhone 6+ through the left O+ eye piece. Kind of hard to hit the sweet spot…but it gives a basic idea I guess…

Next I tried another sim I’ve never played - IL-2 BOS…which looks and plays fantastically. I was able to max out all the settings to Ultra and still get super fluid FPS with the O+ and my 1080 (not Ti)… Seems that sim is not very resource hungry.

These pics don’t show the full FOV…maybe 1/4 of it or 1/3…the view in game is much, much larger…I think the iPhone sensor FOV must be fairly narrow at that close a range to the eyepiece perhaps (someone who knows some maths could probably figure out the FOV vs what the O+ FOV is…)

Pictures in the next message…I’m having to sort of double post this using the PC and my iPhone Discourse Hub…which works pretty good, but I worry about losing post information as I flip back and forth between them…

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Also, with the iPhone in IL-2 the pics come out with some dark areas that aren’t there in the headset…I think it might have to do with some V-Sync or something that might be set in IL-2 that is giving a slight rolling shutter artifact on the iPhone sensor…

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I have to say, your photos indicate more vivid colors and a brighter image than I get with the Rift.

Those are unedited photos too…just straight from the iPhone to the upload…

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I agree. The phone shots alone show a marked improvement.

Man I can’t keep up with the AV8R’s. I bought a 34-inch curved display last week. So I am, what, 6 months behind? Something like that. :slight_smile:

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2D screens are so 2015 :wink:

Sounds like a nice monitor though. I’m using a 10 year old 1080p TV. I probably should consider a proper monitor at some point.

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Oh oh, I think if they have one in stock tonight at the local shop then I am going to have to do it now. This is perfect, as I can now blame @BeachAV8R even though of no fault of his. :slight_smile:

Editorial Minutiae: You could split the topic, and put your new impressions in a new one from here as a few future Rift owners would benefit from it (and would never find it in our big SO topic).

My Requests!

  • Put the SteamVR super sampling to manual, set it to 100%, so your resolution per eye shows 1440x1600 1430 x 1773 (your native panel resolution, or rather what SteamVR makes of it) and then try DCS with a PD of 1. How does it look? It should be like running the Rift at 1.6 I think?

  • Try the above but with changed PD of ‘2.0’ in DCS, what’s the SteamVR say the resolution per eye is? How does it look? In the F/A-18C can you read the MFD screen button labels, i.e. can you see ‘HSI’ in green more clearly than the Rift?

  • Is there any difference in clarity for you in the above if you enable / disable motion projection (ASW stuff for WMR) from here? Using SteamVR with Windows Mixed Reality - Enthusiast Guide | Microsoft Learn

Curious to see if that helps or hinders.

I think the SteamVR automatic super sampling is a bit of an ‘easy mode’, in that it uses your CPU/GPU ‘score’ and guesses what you need. I think that it’ll be better to usually in SteamVR games just to set it manually? What do @chipwich and @Freak do, do you leave it automatic?

Fun stuff, am excited by proxy for your new HMD Chris! Wahoo! :vr:

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I do not remember changing anything about pixel density in SteamVR, was not aware that it was not native resolution by default. Will definitely check this out when I get around to VR’ing again.

As for readability, I told you twice already, the resolution is significantly better than the Rift. But it does not feel like twice as good. It feels more like 1.5 to me. But I think for most flight sims, just that bit better than gen1 is good enough.

About 7 months ago SteamVR went for an ‘automatic supersampling’ change, where it would alter the displayed resolution based on your PC performance. It might be showing you 70% of the native resolution, or it might be showing you 200%.

The resolution like you said numerous times (we’re up to twice?) is higher, but was curious to see what Chris made of the redesigned panels and lens layout in the new Odyssey Plus.

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Greatest Battles is amazing in VR. When Boddenplate is released, I’ll be UTC for a while. That is unless anyone wants to join me flying CAS in a Jug :smile:

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Will reply a bit more later…now back on mobile headed to work for a few hours. I would definitely like to split off the topic and will take a look at it this evening. I’ll also check those requests for you.

I had a chance to try a few more games. Project Cars 2 looks incredible and feels great. I just went with whatever settings I had previously used. Given how smooth it was, if anything can be turned up I will. The O+ tracking has been very good.

These pics are a touch more blurry…trying to hold the HMD and phone and hit the button while steering with the X-Box controller. :see_no_evil:

CAP 2 looks awesome and I still love the flight model and graphics style of this sim. Man I hope the gameplay starts getting added in soon. And the Queen Elizabeth carrier is really cool…

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I also fired up this goofy VR shooter game where you play these missions as a sniper or provide cover for your assets. It is a fun and quirky game that has some fun gun play mechanics. To fire a bolt action rifle you have to pull the bolt back, reach toward your shoulder to get another round, put it in the breech, push the bolt forward, then you can aim and fire. This game, more than any so far, does show how much better the Rift Touch Controllers are. They are just way smaller and feel more natural. The Odyssey hand controllers are clunky when you have both of them working together…bashing the halos that feel like basketball hoops attached to the ends of your hands. The Touch Controllers are just so much better designed and implemented…

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How do you feel target spotting in DCS (both air and ground) differs between the two sets?

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I can’t comment…haven’t been able to make it into a mission yet with just the general hopping around. Will try to get some details on that tonight if possible…

OK…if I set Steam VR SS to manual, and 100% I get 1427 x 1779 in the Steam VR Settings menu. Putting PD to 1 in DCS results in the menus being a bit fuzzy and in game, I wouldn’t say the picture looks like a Rift because there is still a lack of a screen door, but there is a slight shimmer. Of note, at that Steam setting and 1.0 PD, I went ahead and set the graphics to the HIGH preset since I knew the VR settings wouldn’t tax the system enough. You wouldn’t want to play in this setting…the shimmer is pretty bad. I think the Rift would look better at that specific setting.

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And again, a note about these pics. Taken with an iPhone with the phone just held up to a single lens. Sometimes you might see a bit of a light dot or something…that is simply my house lights in the living room probably reflecting off the lenses in the O+…those wouldn’t be there with the HMD on your head. Also, I have a case on my phone that keeps the lens about 1/3" from being flush against the O+ glass…so I think the FOV would be wider if I take my phone case off. These pics truncate the view substantially…but also focus on the “sweet spot” as it were in the center of the display.

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