Valve Index Blurry/Poor Graphics!

[Rainman2020]

Hey yall

I just got my Valve Index, and this is my first ever VR experience. I had gotten super excited about VR for months now, and had built up how good it was going to be while waiting since early July for it. However, my experience so far is very disappointing and underwhelming.

Note that i am running it at 100% graphic setting in the Index (took it off of auto). I have a brand new 10 gen Intel CPU and a 2080 Super graphic card with 16GB 3600 DDR4, so my computer is not the issue. I went thru and matched a friend's setups for the Index and think i have the correct settings to get the best picture given my PC.

Also, note that i DO need reading glasses when on the computer or reading, but i see the TV or 6 feet away just fine.
If i wear my reading glasses when in the Index, i see better close up, but further away is even blurrier than before of course. If i can see the TV 6 feet away just fine (no blurriness), i should have no need for glasses or VR lenses in VR right?

The graphics are way too blurry, with shimmering going on, some screen door effect especially at distance. Just bad graphics, but by far the worst aspect of it is the blurriness, especially when looking away from the quite small sweet spot.

In the racing cockpit in Assetto Corsa, looking at my gloves, etc is pretty good graphics (close to my 2K computer screen), but looking at the gauges is a little blurry, and looking at anything fairly long distance is quite blurry or anything out of the sweet spot is way too blurry. I feel like i am back about 10+ years in graphic quality AND it is also blurrier than i remember graphics being 10+ years ago. And it is even worse out of the sweet spot.

Does it look like for you what it looks like in this thru the lens video? This video is about how it looks for me.

Frankly, quite disappointed, already looking at returning it and going with only using a normal single screen monitor for sim racing and trying the Reverb G2 when it comes out and seeing if it gets better enough to be tolerable. I simply won't play in VR if the graphics are so blurry, poor, shimmering in the distance, etc. Maybe the G2 will be enough better to be usable.

Any ideas of what i can do to get the graphics to be better? I am pretty stunned that everyone is so hot on VR if this is how it actually looks. I found that initial balcony in Half Life to be really pretty bad blurry graphics (especially out of the sweet spot), no way i will play Half Life if that is how the graphics actually look. Dang it, was really looking forward to VR!

Randy

 

[Neilski]

If i wear my reading glasses when in the Index, i see better close up, but further away is even blurrier than before of course.

Disclaimer: I don't have a VR rig.
I just wanted to correct a misunderstanding here: VR systems don't have a varying depth like the real world - if your eyeball is able to focus on the near stuff, it'll also be focussed for the far stuff (ultimately, the display is a flat panel (or 2) with a bunch of lenses to produce a virtual image on which your eyes can focus).
That probably means the blurriness you're experiencing isn't actually caused by your eye not focussing, but instead by the rendered image not being too great...

 

[metalnwood]

If I was to suggest a headset for racing to a new person today I would suggest the G2 because htye would not be used to a larger FOV and G2 FOV for racing is fine.

Main thing is you will get the higher resolution which is the first complaint from new users.

The blurry is most likely the lack of resolution. Close objects are using many pixels and look ok, farther away you have many less pixels to represent the detail on objects so they will not look as good.

What happens with most people who stick with VR, which is the majority from what I see, is that they get used to it. It can be jarring when not used to it but it's not really an issue when it comes to actual. More resolution than the index will make the picture overall look better but I dont think it will give you a speed advantage.

I would get in, do some racing and see if it sorts itself out after some use. Your brain will adust and it won't be such an issue.

 

[Tovey13]

SS is your friend,the more you can run the better,I would turn of shadows and reflections before I would lower SS.Also make sure you have no FXAA on it just adds blur,same for advanced SS
smoothing in steam vr.

The shimmering to combat it is with AA,but also making sure you don't drop frames into re projection.

Most headsets I find if you grab the front of it and tilt it down you'll sit better in the sweet spot
and you'll have to get used to looking via turning your head then your eyes,also make sure your IPD is set for the headset it can make a difference,not only on sharpness of image but less eye strain.
If you have two sets of numbers for IPD,use the bigger number.

I own the HP reverb which is the same panel that is in the upcoming G2
You will see further in the distance and everything is much more crisp over the CV1 I used to own
But you will run into a new issue..It's hard to power and you will have to make graphical sacrifices
to run at that resolution even without SS,I'm only on a heavily overclocked 1080ti but would honestly say I don't think the new 3080 could get the job done to run SS have high graphics and hold a locked 90 fps with 20 AI in most of the sim titles.

From what I have found is most sim titles just don't look good or run well in VR compared to ground up VR only games,and some worse then others and unfortunately the clearer your image becomes,
the more apparent these issues are.

I do a lot of 3d work so I went from CV1 blur fest focusing on the race to,oh look there's an object floating over there,repeated texture here,I can see a split vert creating a gap,it's my own nightmare haha

Sorry for the short novel

 

[Wmacky]

Welcome to VR. It is the crappy resolution!

It makes every thing further away look out of focus. It has been a issue since Oculus DK1, and every HMD since until recently. The new 4K HMD's have finally reached the level of barely acceptable resolution. You have purchased the wrong headset. You need a Pimax or a HP

 

[jeefAD]

I've given VR a few tries now and have yet to be satisfied to the point where I would give up monitors. Totally subjective, but it just hasn't been there for me yet. Curious to see how the higher res HMDs pan out...

 

[Rainman2020]

Well, i am pretty unimpressed with the Index graphics so far, but i still cannot actually take a car out in VR on a track.
See my other thread about Wheel, pedals not working in VR', i can get VR to open up with me sitting in the cockpit, but i my controls no longer work once in VR. They work immediately fine the moment i exit VR, but no controls in VR.

So, i really can't fully evaluate the graphics yet. However, strongly thinking i will return the Index for a full refund and get the G2 once it has been out awhile, and use the money saved to get a nice single monitor attached to the P1-X.

 

[GeekyDeaks]

Is it comparable to your friends headset or noticeably worse? I have the G1, but prior to that I had only used the PSVR. The G1 is a huge step up from the PSVR for me, but objects in the distance are still a little blurry. I also found the G1 to have a much larger sweet spot than the PSVR so it was easier to get clearer visuals when putting on the headset, so I am not sure if that might be an issue with the index? I tried flatscreen a few weeks ago and found the visuals were considerably better, but in practice I don't really notice whilst in a race anyway. It probably helps that I only got back into sim racing recently and my previous experience was of those from the 90s

 

[Fiberoptix]

I played quite a lot of VR on the Oculus Rift S. I thought it looked awful, like sitting very close to an older TV screen playing a playstation 3, but the immersion was amazing so I kept doing it. I was running a 1080ti , Ryzen 3rd gen combination so not the fastest PC out there but enough to run most sim games at more or less the highest clarity the headset could provide. Anything outside of sim driving sat down made me sick and I found games like dirt rally, where you go over a jump and your brain is expecting G forces which subsequently don't come, that the whole experience takes some getting used to. The immersion is great but its a pain for doing anything in the game and I generally found VR fiddly to get right, just never seemed to be something I could get going easily and quickly.

VR feels for PC gaming like a market that has yet to really take off. Its entry level price is a high baseline that brings you a level of quality which simply isn't there yet, whichever hardware you have available even the newest Nvidia cards. My opinion is GPU costs will keep VR a diminishing returns investment for some time. GPU is in such demand outside of gaming, AI/machine learning in particular that it is going to continue to be an expensive compute resource dominated by a single vendor.

Games I tried that were built for VR only like Half Life Alyx and looked amazing felt so different to playing modded systems, like all the sim games using an overlay of some kind to recreate what was developed to be on a flat panel. Perhaps a VR only sim racing game would be the way forwards.

The higher resolution headsets should improve things, I have an oculus quest 2 coming today (sadly no link cable for the PC and no video card that would run it either due to delays getting my upgrade) so it will be the first time I have tried a higher resolution panel than the Rift. I also ordered a HP g2 a few months ago now with the intent of using that for sim racing, I don't expect either to be a huge improvement that blows me away like the first experience with the Rift S did, but a step in the right direction.