Vive Pro Screen door effect

[Rosieox]

I bought the Vive back when it first came out.  Love the VR but hated the screen door effect.   The press release for the Vive Pro stated that it got rid of the screen door effect so I purchased it for $800.   The graphics are only slightly better, (which I don't care about), but... the screen door effect is NO better.   Feeling a little frustrated for paying $800 for little to no upgrade.   I do love my Vive and not here to bash, but wanted to know if there is a firmware, setting, hookup, etc., that I'm missing.   

[TomCgcmfc]

nk@Rosieox  All VR headset have some SDE.  The main thing that improves it is higher resolution headset screens.  I think my Vive Pro and Cosmos have far less SDE than my Rift cv1 (= same res as your OG Vive).  I now find that I only see SDE if I look hard for it and am viewing something on a bare light background.  Like everything in life, if you look hard enough for a problem you will find one, lol!

It also helps to make sure you are getting the best image quality by doing things like proper headset placement, IPD settings, and graphics settings (like SS). 

How much you can improve the quality of your graphics is heavily dependant on how powerful you PC is.  About 6 months ago I went from a pretty good gaming laptop (AW 17r4; i7 7700hq, gtx1060 6gb) to a proper gaming desktop (i9 9900k water cooled, gtx1080ti, 32gb ram) and this made all my VR headsets seem to go to generation 2 overnight!  I your PC specs are on the low side you will never get much better results with high end headsets like the Vive Pro or Index imho.  In many cases I think people should spend $ improving their PC's before upgrading headsets.

[HackPerception]

@Rosieox - Which press release are you referring to? I don't see the screen-door effect mentioned in any of our first party press releases (announcement release). We marketed Pro primarily around resolution. The primary reduction in screen door effect on the Pro is that the pixel pitch (the distance between the pixels) is smaller due to there being 78% more pixel count overall compared to the Vive. That said, the Vive Pro uses a pentile OLED arrangement, there are limitations to screen door effect due to that specific type of pixel arrangement.

You may be confusing Pro for Cosmos - we specifically are marketing Cosmos as having lower screen door effect, not Pro. This is because Cosmos has switched out OLED panels for LCD panels that have more uniform pixels and smaller spaces between the pixel elements which leads to minimized perceived screen door effect.

[Jakey]

I tried the vive in the shops, it was amazing, even with the SDE.

I decided to purchase the vive pro. The SDE is certainly less prominent with this upgrade, giving more immersive looking graphics.  But, yes, if you look for the SDE, you'll find it. Though it's certainly not "in your face" and impossible to ignore like with the vive.

Rosieox, it seems a bizarre thing to say, that you don't care about improved graphics?

Also, the vive pro is more than just a graphics resolution upgrade. It has other improvements over the basic model.

[Rosieox]

On 12/31/2019 at 3:40 PM, VibrantNebula said:

@Rosieox - Which press release are you referring to? I don't see the screen-door effect mentioned in any of our first party press releases (announcement release). We marketed Pro primarily around resolution. The primary reduction in screen door effect on the Pro is that the pixel pitch (the distance between the pixels) is smaller due to there being 78% more pixel count overall compared to the Vive. That said, the Vive Pro uses a pentile OLED arrangement, there are limitations to screen door effect due to that specific type of pixel arrangement.

You may be confusing Pro for Cosmos - we specifically are marketing Cosmos as having lower screen door effect, not Pro. This is because Cosmos has switched out OLED panels for LCD panels that have more uniform pixels and smaller spaces between the pixel elements which leads to minimized perceived screen door effect.

Th

This was your CES press release to vrfocus.com.....

https://www.vrfocus.com/2018/01/hands-on-htc-vive-pro-what-screendoor-effect/

As I stated in my original post, I do love the Vive, just not happy with paying $800 for the "upgrade" that is such a marginal step up.   The screen door effect is practically the same and the resolution is just slightly better.  NOT worth $800.   

In my original post I asked if there is a setting I missed or firmware.  I guess there is not and I'm stuck with an $800 imitation of the original. 

 

[HackPerception]

@Rosieox - The copy you linked are VRFocus' conclusions about SDE, not ours. As I've said previously, there is definitely a reduction in SDE from the higher resolution panels which means the pixel elements are packed together more tightly (448 PPI for OG Vive vs 615 for Pro; a 37% increase in pixel density). The 78% resolution bump is actually really significant for rendering text and small details- there's alot of small details which are indistinguishable on first gen HMD's that are only visible in higher resolution HMDs such as text on dials and gauges on flight sims.  As Jakey alluded to, a huge portion of the final quality that you see rendered out on the HMD will be GPU dependent and mediated by ensuring all of the ergonomic adjustments have been calibrated to you and most importantly by the supersampling (resolution multiplier) settings on the "video" page of SteamVR's video settings. Try going in and setting custom values for your applications; if you're overriding the settings there is going to be some trial and error as you figure out which value works best for your specific GPU. The resolution multiplier is the key setting to controlling the resolution of the content displayed on the HMD - this setting is where you'll have the greatest affect on the quality you see. If you have a weak GPU and are using automatic settings, there's a pretty good chance that you're rendering below 100% SS; going above 100% SS on a higher resolution display makes a huge difference in what you experience but you need a powerful GPU to drive increased resolutions.

Between the 78% display resolution increase and higher resolution multiplier values, there is actually quite a substantial difference between the precieved quality you can experience on a Pro vs an original Vive, there are over 2 million additional pixels to work with on the Pro. It is definitely an iteration on the original Vive and was the highest quality panel we could source at the time of release. Past a certain point, there needs to be a new generation of panel technology that's specific to VR displays to see things like SDE more fully eliminated. We specifically switched to LCD on the Cosmos in-part so we could leverage the tighter pixel arrangement to reduce precieved SDE, but each panel technology has pros and cons.

Things like screen door effect however are hardware dependent - that's not something you can change via firmware as it's specifically dependent on the arrangement and size of the pixels on the panel.

 

 

[Rosieox]

Thank you.  That is what I was looking for.