Brightness help needed.

[CaTaPulT]

Hello.

I just got my Vive yesterday and would very much like to know how to turn down the brighness in the Vive, it's way too bright. I was very surprised to see that no software has this feature, either the Vive setup software or SteamVR itself. After reading, I tried the trick of going from "Direct" mode to "Extended" mode, changing the bringhtness settings using the Nvidia control panel and then as soon as I switch back to "Direct" mode, the changes do not make it over to "Direct" mode, only in Extended mode do the lower brightness settings work.

Is there a "ini" or system file that can be edited where one can lower the brightness?

Any help would be greatly appreciated since the Vive's brightness is driving me nuts.

Regards: Jack

[Synthesis]

I don't have my HMD in front of me, but I believe that from within the headset menu, there's a setting for "Night Mode" which dims it a bit. That may only be in the beta release.

Give that a try and see if it helps.

Thanks,
-John C

[CaTaPulT]

Thanks John, it is in the options from the Vive (Steam) dashboard and not it the SteamVR app (on regular monitor). I have tried this it does help a little but it would be fantastic to be able to adjust the brightness, contrast, gamma to personal favorite settings depending on what you are doing in the Vive. In example, I'm a sim racer and both Project Cars and Assetto Corsa are quite bright in the Vive and there's no way of turning it down which make the screen door effect even more visible than it needs to be. If you have one or both of these titles, please give it a try and see what you think. :)

Regards: Jack

[Synthesis]

If it's just a couple of games that are too bright, have you tried turning them down in their own settings?

[CaTaPulT]

Hi John.

Unfortunately, both Project Cars and Assetto Corsa do not have brightness controls in game or in options menu. :(

Yesterday, SteamVR did a update and Project Cars is even brighter now since the SteamVR update, so bright in fact that it's unplayable. Assetto Corsa didn't seem to have gotten much brighter though. It would be so cool if SteamVR and or the Vive Dashboard could include a brightness control right below the volume slider in the dashboard, this would make life so much easier for the end user. :)

Regards: Jack

[Synthesis]

Thanks for the feedback!
We'll pass that on to our developers. You might also let the development team of Project Cars and Assetto Corsa know this is happening as well.

Thanks!

-John C

[CaTaPulT]

Hi John.

Can you please ask the Devs if there are command line settings (numbers) to adjust the brightness in the Vive...... here's why I ask this......

My first introduction to VR was a few weeks ago, I bought a Chinese HMD called the Pimax, the Pimax software (Piplay) had a debug section in it where you could issue some command line commands to the headset.... Brightness control worked like this....

Low Level 1 (darkest) I would type 10033001

Low Level 2 (Default) 10033002

High Level 1 (a little brighter) 10033011

High Level 2 (brightest setting) 10033036

I wonder if there's something like this for the Vive that is undocumented?

This would be great for adjusting the brightness of the Vive, everyone's eyes are different, for me, the Vive is just a little too bright for certain thing (racing sims) (even with night mode on), so it would be great to be able to turn down that brightness. :)

Thanks for your time.

Regards: Jack

[renatogiga]

bumping up the question, as I also would like to reduce the brightness setting on my HMD. I am currently developing for UE4, and 10h+ usage everyday with high brightness will make me go blind on a few months :robotlol:

 

In honesty I feel the Night mode is almost tolerable for most games, so having at least a "low brightness" setting where something similar to night mode is permanently on would already help a lot.

 

Thank you!

[HackPerception]

     ,

     In short, the answer is that it's possible but not advisable in most cases. Steam VR's night mode changes not only the brightness but the color temperature and other characteristics in a calibrated manner. The reason you can't outright control the brightness levels of the Vive is that the image will be prone to black smearing past a certain threshold and having fixed values ensures that color reproduction is identical across all Vive HMDs.

 

     Since you're a developer you might have some luck with this... One way that you're able to control these settings is to switch from direct mode into extended mode and then use your GPU's control panel to modify the values as you see fit. By switching over though your experience will be prone to stuttering and other graphics hiccups and it's overall not really recommended but is possible. You can also adjust the global rendering settings within UE4 to lower the brightness of the camera output.  Lastly, you can always use physical blocking methods such as sunglasses or polymer filters if you absolutely need to. Sometimes I use prescription sunglasses when working to avoid eye strain. 

 

     P.S. I've given you a Developer tag so you can post in our dev forums.