Question about how a Vireio calibrated game should look

[tothjm]

Hey friends,

So i have tried both dishonored and L4D2 and i am curious, are these games suppose to have the same scale, look and feel, of say the first person oculus demo, oculus bots?

when i test oculus bots, i feel like i am IN the game, things are too scale, nothing is really warped at all, it just looks "right"


when i try these games, it just looks liek a screen with a weird view is pushed up onto my face. I tried to do the red and blue line calibration to the best as i could understand the instructions. ( i could not get teh blue line to move... and didnt understand set red lines to the center THEN set the same red lines to a far object ).

but again my question is, am i just not calibrating these games correctly, or am i expecting too much from non native game support? OR should it look exactly like the scale and scope i see when testing oculus bots?

[Neil]

I'll help you as best I can.

First, it helps if you can increase the field of view (FOV) to 110 degrees because that's best suited for the Rift and how you perceive things through the Rift. Left4Dead 1 is better than Left4Dead 2 because FOV is accessible through a MOD described in the readme file. If someone knows of a good FOV adjustment option for L4D2, please let me know.

The red line determines the maximum amount of separation for the most distant object you can see according to your interpupillary distance (IPD). The reason you can move them is so you can approximately place them in front of each of your pupils and then use the SHOCT lines as a ruler for calibrating the separation of the most distant object.

The blue line is for convergence. You aren't supposed to change the placement of the blue line. Just align the right eyed vertical line with an up-close vertical object (e.g. the corner of a wall edge). Then compare where this wall edge is on the vertical blue line in the left eye. Is it positive, negative, or zero (neutral) parallax? As you adjust the convergence, just realign the convergence line in the right eye, and you will see the placement in the left. Do you understand?

If all three criteria are properly set, the results should be comparable.

Regards,
Neil

[tothjm]

Hey Neil,

"The reason you can move them is so you can approximately place them in front of each of your pupils and then use the SHOCT lines as a ruler for calibrating the separation of the most distant object."

So in L4D2, I did not know i had to change the FOV i thought all that was done via the driver but no worries, I can try to figure that part out. As for what you said above, Perhaps i can confusing the first red lines with the SHOCT lines. in L4D2, if i do crtl I i can get red lines, if i hit it again, i get the blue ones, and then off. Am i missing a 3rd set somewhere that i am suppose to use to set the far distance? Because i think that just covers the first red line alignment in center of my eyes, tehn the blue for convergence.

[Neil]

Hitting CTRL-I changes modes for different purposes.

1. The red SHOCT lines are for you interpupillary distance. They mark where the center of your eyes are when they are pointed straight forward. Once they are set in place, you can take the HMD off to do the remaining steps. You can move the SHOCT lines with the O,P,K,L keys. Just relax your eyes, point them straight forward (ignoring what's in the scene) and estimate the center of each eye. Remember to only open one eye at a time when making adjustments!

2. Using the F2/F3 keys, you control the game's separation. In this step, we are determining how far apart the game's cameras are. The most distant object in the scene is our point of reference. The edge of a building, a phone pole, something tall and thin - they are all good. As you are separating, the distant object should go towards the left in the left eye, and right in the right eye. If it's not doing this, the images may be reversed (hit F6 to reverse the images in the game). Your goal is to get this point of reference to touch both the SHOCT lines in the same place. If it's outside the SHOCT lines, then you have gone too far, and you are having "divergence" or forcing your eyes to separate apart from each other (something to avoid!). You will constantly be repositioning the SHOCT lines with your mouse while you are adjusting the separation.

3. Then adjust the convergence as I described earlier with the blue SHOCT lines.

4. Go back to the separation mode (red SHOCT lines), and readjust the separation if the convergence changes threw things off.

5. You may want to recheck convergence, but it should be ok by default at this point.

Regards,
Neil

[drgroove101]

Neil, thanks to the detailed explanation! I think I'm finally understanding this calibration now. I don't have my Rift yet, but have been following along with everything Rift related so I hit the ground running when I get it.

Do you know if the current release of Vireio will save your settings automatically to the profiles.xml file once you've calibrated using the SHOCT tool? It would suck to have to calibrate each time you start the game.

When does the save happen? Does it write to xml file once you exit the game, or does it write to the file after each keypress? I'd like to know because once I get a game properly calibrated, I want to make sure the settings are saved properly. I plan on calibrating each game properly and sharing my settings with everyone, I have a pretty standard IPD of 65mm so that should give people a solid starting point to calibrate to their own eyes.

Thanks!

[Baristan6]

When does the save happen? Does it write to xml file once you exit the game, or does it write to the file after each keypress?

The settings are saved 5 seconds after last keypress.

[drgroove101]

Ah thank you, that's good to know! So the be certain, the values are saved to the profiles.xml file right? One more question, If the settings are saved 5 secs after the last key press to profiles.xml, how does Vireio know what values to reset to when you press the reset button? Does it reset to values hard coded in the program or are there default values saved in a separate file? Or, are the default values loaded into memory on startup from the profiles.xml, and always reset to this until the next time you startup where it would load your last saved values as default? If this is the case, if you really screwed up your settings, you would have to redownload the program. Which wouldn't be a big deal really.

Sorry for all the questions, just wish to understand how it works.

[jf031]

Ah thank you, that's good to know! So the be certain, the values are saved to the profiles.xml file right? One more question, If the settings are saved 5 secs after the last key press to profiles.xml, how does Vireio know what values to reset to when you press the reset button? Does it reset to values hard coded in the program or are there default values saved in a separate file? Or, are the default values loaded into memory on startup from the profiles.xml, and always reset to this until the next time you startup where it would load your last saved values as default? If this is the case, if you really screwed up your settings, you would have to redownload the program. Which wouldn't be a big deal really.

Sorry for all the questions, just wish to understand how it works.

I'm not going to be of any help for your specific questions, but the way to solve any overwriting issues is to just make a backup copy of the original profiles.xml before you change anything.

[Baristan6]

Ah thank you, that's good to know! So the be certain, the values are saved to the profiles.xml file right? One more question, If the settings are saved 5 secs after the last key press to profiles.xml, how does Vireio know what values to reset to when you press the reset button? Does it reset to values hard coded in the program or are there default values saved in a separate file?

Right now Vireio just resets the variables to a default value. Here is the code

Code: Select all

separation = 0.0f;
convergence = 0.0f;
offset = 0.0f;
yaw_multiplier = 25.0f;
pitch_multiplier = 25.0f;
roll_multiplier = 1.0f;

[Neil]

Ah thank you, that's good to know! So the be certain, the values are saved to the profiles.xml file right? One more question, If the settings are saved 5 secs after the last key press to profiles.xml, how does Vireio know what values to reset to when you press the reset button? Does it reset to values hard coded in the program or are there default values saved in a separate file?

Right now Vireio just resets the variables to a default value. Here is the code

Code: Select all

separation = 0.0f;
convergence = 0.0f;
offset = 0.0f;
yaw_multiplier = 25.0f;
pitch_multiplier = 25.0f;
roll_multiplier = 1.0f;

You know what? Those are probably lousy defaults. 0 convergence is just terrible, and is probably causing confusion where none is needed. In a later version, we should create two profile branches: default settings and user settings for each individual game. If we do our job right, the default settings will have basic convergence settings that shouldn't require too much adjustment and these could kick in when we need to restore to defaults. As it is now, the defaults make the user go through a dramatic adjustment to get something useful.

Regards,
Neil

[tothjm]

I will try this all shortly here, i was definitely confused about putting the red lines in the center, then the 2nd step of adjusting the picture to a far object using the newly adjusted red lines. Glad you explained it again on here i appreciate it!

Now my last question is, after all that is done, is it still the users job to set anything else like the FOV to 110, is there no way for the drivers to auto set that per application ? Is there anything else that is on the user end other than trying to get the FOV correct?

I know doom3 may not be supported but there are people using it on the rift already, and there are about 10 different changes in game they need to make to get it to work. Really want to get dishonored to a good look similar to that of the oculus bots demo so that i can go in and enjoy it. Just want to make sure i have this all right

[Philpax]

Yes, the FOV has to be per-application. Each program/game uses its own FOV, so the user needs to set it manually. There's nothing Vireio can do about this.

[Neil]

Yes, the FOV has to be per-application. Each program/game uses its own FOV, so the user needs to set it manually. There's nothing Vireio can do about this.

...today!

We have been floating ideas on how to solve this. Bigger fish to fry right now, though.

Regards,
Neil

[Philpax]

Yes, the FOV has to be per-application. Each program/game uses its own FOV, so the user needs to set it manually. There's nothing Vireio can do about this.

...today!

We have been floating ideas on how to solve this. Bigger fish to fry right now, though.

Regards,
Neil

Indeed, there are a couple of methods I can think of; it would necessitate more per-game configuration, though. Not quite an ideal solution - but as you said, more important things to consider.

[cybereality]

I originally had adjustable FOV in the app, but I took it out. It caused more problems than it solved. Basically, its possible to change the FOV. This is not hard. The issue is that the game culls (hides) objects that it thinks are outside of the view. Regardless of the DirectX settings, the game is going to hide all kinds of geometry that is on the outer edges of the screen and this looks very strange. Especially when the objects in each eye differ, this is an instant headache. It is much better to change the FOV within the game's config or with other FOV tools.