Elite Dangerous VR Article

It has been on my list for a while, but not really a priority.
 
I've been playing this game with my Rift the last few days. I don't have any way of logging performance data, but on a system of the following spec, GPU usage never gets past about 75%, as measured with Precision XOC. Hardly a scientific measurement, but it appears that it's not that demanding a game. This is with everything set to "Ultra." As aside to Kyle, an article about how you're capturing performance data for your graphs would be helpful, or if I'm just blind and missing it, maybe start including a link to it in your articles.

System Spec:
Graphics Card: PNY GTX 1080 Founder's Edition (runs at ~1850MHz almost continuously)
CPU: i7 5820K @ 3.8GHz
RAM: 32GB @ 2666MHz (I think? Been a while since I messed with it)
Motherboard: MSI X99A-Gaming-7

I would think a 1070 would be fine, too. I don't have a recent AMD card to test with, but I do have a 290X I could test with, if that's helpful to someone.
 
I'd be curious about the 290x

Obviously it's much cheaper than a 1070 or 1080 and most seem to say it would struggle with that game.
 
ED in VR is actually fairly demanding. I wouldn't want to play it on anything less than a 1070 or a 980Ti. Can you? Yes, but performance and visuals would be sub-par. Absolutely loving it on my Titan XP though!

Also, this isn't the kind of game that you just jump into and start playing. It requires a good bit of time to learn as it's a pretty involved space sim. It also is a game I would HIGHLY recommend you get a HOTAS for in order to play it right... then plan on spending at least an hour setting up all your controls and learning the interface. It is highly rewarding though given some invested time to learn how to play it and the immersion is fantastic, especially in VR. About as close to becoming a real space pilot in a PC game as you'll ever experience! (Well, that is until Star Citizen is released in 2026.)
 
Honestly, Elite: Dangerous is a pretty simple space sim to play once you've got a grasp on the controls and interface, and playing it in VR (or with a TrackIR if you can't afford one of the modern HMDs) saves you the hassle of binding buttons to bringing up the various interface panels, since they come up literally at a side glance.

Here's a tip: your most important controls are your 6DoF movement (seriously, map your strafe bindings, you'll need them for landing!), power distribution (not even kidding when I say that the power distributor is arguably the most important part of your ship), engine boost, supercruise, landing gear, targeting, weapon triggers/groups, chaff, and if you use 'em, heatsinks and shield cell banks. Maybe even silent running, if you fancy yourself the stealthy type.

Also, you NEED to bind the galaxy map navigation controls when playing in VR, because in what is a distressing oversight for what is otherwise a fantastically designed-for-VR game, the galaxy map's interface renders at the incorrect depth and is nigh unusable with a mouse. I can only hope they patch that later.

Take some time to figure out your bindings, KB+M and HOTAS alike. Print out a reference sheet of your mappings if you have to, learn 'em on your monitor, and once you have all that committed to muscle memory, slip on the HMD.

Now, if Elite: Dangerous is a simple space sim, what do I consider a complex space sim, then? I'd say the original Independence War is more complex already with the various stations you could view, and Rogue System takes the cake with its "DCS IN SPACE!" approach to systems modeling, down to having two different throttles for different propulsion systems on your ship and the long checklist you'll need to go through starting up all your subsystems before you even undock from a station. Too bad the latter doesn't have VR implemented just yet since it's a pre-alpha.
 
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Well. This may be the next game on my list to give a shot. My current gaming rig is a 4ghz fx-8320e with amd fury -- but i have a 390 8gb and 290x 4gb i could also test for you guys if your curious about frame rates. I may even do tests at 3, 3.5,4, and 4.5ghz to see how cpu could effect fps.

Not sure how it compares but eve: valkerie plays completely fluid on the above system (r9 390) and an amd 860k at stock speed with rx 480.
 
RazorWind said:
I've been playing this game with my Rift the last few days. I don't have any way of logging performance data, but on a system of the following spec, GPU usage never gets past about 75%, as measured with Precision XOC. Hardly a scientific measurement, but it appears that it's not that demanding a game. This is with everything set to "Ultra." As aside to Kyle, an article about how you're capturing performance data for your graphs would be helpful, or if I'm just blind and missing it, maybe start including a link to it in your articles.

System Spec:
Graphics Card: PNY GTX 1080 Founder's Edition (runs at ~1850MHz almost continuously)
CPU: i7 5820K @ 3.8GHz
RAM: 32GB @ 2666MHz (I think? Been a while since I messed with it)
Motherboard: MSI X99A-Gaming-7

I would think a 1070 would be fine, too. I don't have a recent AMD card to test with, but I do have a 290X I could test with, if that's helpful to someone.
Click to expand...
Quoting myself here, I've been playing E:D with an Oculus Rift, to the exclusion of other games, for the last couple of months on the system above, now with adequate water cooling to push the CPU to 4.3GHz and GPU to 2100.

I had always noticed that in some scenes with a lots of really fast motion (such as when the launch pads turn around inside a space station, prior to launching your ship), I would notice a smearing effect of the heads-up display. I'd wondered in the past if this was part of the game, but more recently started to suspect that was reprojection doing it's thing.

Yesterday, I finally figured out how to display the framerate, so I periodically checked as I played for a few hours, and it turns out that the game is using reprojection quite a bit - maybe 20% of the time. Now, GPU duty cycle only ever goes above about 75% when the game is loading up initially. During actual play, it's more like 60-70%, even with a lot going on. This, to me, suggests that while a fast graphics card is needed for this game in VR, the real limiting factor currently is the CPU. Unfortunately, the SteamVR performance log tool doesn't produce usable data from this game, so it's hard to really diagnose what's going on. Anyone have any ideas as to how to diagnose the issue further?

Other players report similar behavior with Vive setups as well, so it sounds like the problem is not unique to the Rift. Luckily, even at 45 FPS, the game is totally playable - you don't even notice, really, unless you're looking for it.

Edit: Also, frustratingly, it's not like there's much to upgrade to from my 5820K. I don't think more cores is the answer here, but the fastest CPU on the market - the 7700K - isn't that much faster.
 
I've ordered a Thrustmaster HOTAS setup. Going to give it a whirl.


RazorWind - Agree don't think going to the 7700 will be that much better. I did from a 3770 and don't feel that much of a bump.
 
Cool man.

My commander's name is TheChafing. Feel free to send me a friend request; we'll wing up and go bounty hunting or something.
 
RazorWind said:
I've been playing this game with my Rift the last few days. I don't have any way of logging performance data, but on a system of the following spec, GPU usage never gets past about 75%, as measured with Precision XOC. Hardly a scientific measurement, but it appears that it's not that demanding a game. This is with everything set to "Ultra." As aside to Kyle, an article about how you're capturing performance data for your graphs would be helpful, or if I'm just blind and missing it, maybe start including a link to it in your articles.

System Spec:
Graphics Card: PNY GTX 1080 Founder's Edition (runs at ~1850MHz almost continuously)
CPU: i7 5820K @ 3.8GHz
RAM: 32GB @ 2666MHz (I think? Been a while since I messed with it)
Motherboard: MSI X99A-Gaming-7

I would think a 1070 would be fine, too. I don't have a recent AMD card to test with, but I do have a 290X I could test with, if that's helpful to someone.
Click to expand...

I'd be very surprised if you can maintain 90fps at ultra with HMD quality at 1.0x with the 1080 in all situations. Stations, hangers, areas around bases, asteroids and any instance with a lot of ships drops be under 90 with ease at a mix of ultra and high settings. 1.5x will drop it down even lower outside of super cruise and empty space. The game also seems CPU limited in VR in busy areas and ASW will kick in with timings going over 11ms and all four cores maxed out. For reference my 1080 tends to be in the 1900-2000MHz range most of the time with ED in VR.

I am doubtful the 1080Ti would be sufficient for a solid 90fps at ultra but its on my list after the VKB MCG+gunfighter base and some crosswinds.

RazorWind said:
Quoting myself here, I've been playing E:D with an Oculus Rift, to the exclusion of other games, for the last couple of months on the system above, now with adequate water cooling to push the CPU to 4.3GHz and GPU to 2100.

I had always noticed that in some scenes with a lots of really fast motion (such as when the launch pads turn around inside a space station, prior to launching your ship), I would notice a smearing effect of the heads-up display. I'd wondered in the past if this was part of the game, but more recently started to suspect that was reprojection doing it's thing.

Yesterday, I finally figured out how to display the framerate, so I periodically checked as I played for a few hours, and it turns out that the game is using reprojection quite a bit - maybe 20% of the time. Now, GPU duty cycle only ever goes above about 75% when the game is loading up initially. During actual play, it's more like 60-70%, even with a lot going on. This, to me, suggests that while a fast graphics card is needed for this game in VR, the real limiting factor currently is the CPU. Unfortunately, the SteamVR performance log tool doesn't produce usable data from this game, so it's hard to really diagnose what's going on. Anyone have any ideas as to how to diagnose the issue further?

Other players report similar behavior with Vive setups as well, so it sounds like the problem is not unique to the Rift. Luckily, even at 45 FPS, the game is totally playable - you don't even notice, really, unless you're looking for it.

Edit: Also, frustratingly, it's not like there's much to upgrade to from my 5820K. I don't think more cores is the answer here, but the fastest CPU on the market - the 7700K - isn't that much faster.
Click to expand...

You want to check the timing for the frames: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/Frame_Timing
Chances are you are going over 11ms waiting on the CPU and reprojection or ASW kicks in or you just have the settings too high for all situations. ED will make use of 6-8 threads so if you are hitting 4.3GHz on six cores the 7700K is likely going to be a side grade or down grade. In my experience my 6600K @ 4.4 is equally CPU limited with the Rift at a mix of mostly ultra and a few high settings as it is by my GTX 1080 @ 1.9-2.0GHz.
 
Ankle said:
I'd be very surprised if you can maintain 90fps at ultra with HMD quality at 1.0x with the 1080 in all situations. Stations, hangers, areas around bases, asteroids and any instance with a lot of ships drops be under 90 with ease at a mix of ultra and high settings. 1.5x will drop it down even lower outside of super cruise and empty space. The game also seems CPU limited in VR in busy areas and ASW will kick in with timings going over 11ms and all four cores maxed out. For reference my 1080 tends to be in the 1900-2000MHz range most of the time with ED in VR.

I am doubtful the 1080Ti would be sufficient for a solid 90fps at ultra but its on my list after the VKB MCG+gunfighter base and some crosswinds.



You want to check the timing for the frames: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/Frame_Timing
Chances are you are going over 11ms waiting on the CPU and reprojection or ASW kicks in or you just have the settings too high for all situations. ED will make use of 6-8 threads so if you are hitting 4.3GHz on six cores the 7700K is likely going to be a side grade or down grade. In my experience my 6600K @ 4.4 is equally CPU limited with the Rift at a mix of mostly ultra and a few high settings as it is by my GTX 1080 @ 1.9-2.0GHz.
Click to expand...
I left the graphics settings at whatever the default is; it may not be the "ultra" preset. At any rate, GPU load never reaches 100%. Ever. It gets up to mid 90s during that initial "preparing shaders" thing it does when the game loads, and then never goes above about 80% during the actual game.

I've tried using the frame timing graph, but it just shows 95%+ as "idle." Maybe it just doesn't work with the Rift?
 
RazorWind said:
I left the graphics settings at whatever the default is; it may not be the "ultra" preset. At any rate, GPU load never reaches 100%. Ever. It gets up to mid 90s during that initial "preparing shaders" thing it does when the game loads, and then never goes above about 80% during the actual game.

I've tried using the frame timing graph, but it just shows 95%+ as "idle." Maybe it just doesn't work with the Rift?
Click to expand...

It should work if you are using SteamVR. If you launch from the oculus store or launch from steam as desktop and then configure it for the rift you'd need the rift debug tool to check timings.

Its worth checking your settings as VR Ultra and Ultra are not the defaults and VR Ultra is much lower than Ultra. Your biggest FPS hits in VR is going to be ambient occlusion and shadows. IMO turning shadows below high isn't worth it as you lose all the atmosphere from the visuals as real time shadows are gone.

If you have Super Sampling enabled ingame you'd probably want to set that to 1.0 and use HMD quality instead. Essentially the same except the Oculus API is used to handle the scaling.
 
RazorWind said:
Cool man.

My commander's name is TheChafing. Feel free to send me a friend request; we'll wing up and go bounty hunting or something.
Click to expand...

I've just gotten started. Spent the weekend trying to overcome various issues, learning / setting up controls (still doing some of that). Looks like they've done a really good job with the game from the little bit I've seen, still a pretty good learning curve to it. I was finally able to make a couple of runs last night and earn some quick cash. Poor little Sidewinder is weak ATM. But I can already see it once again eating up a lot of spare time in the future. :) I'm EliteHeretic
 
The attention to detail for the graphics in this game is pretty impressive. Even just from the little bits I've seen so far. Going from viewing planetery rings as you approach them down into the belts of rocks within them "rocks" :alien:
 
I played this for a while in VR. Some notes:

- Runs fine on a 1080 (no surprise there I guess)
- Learning curve initially is steep. You definitely want to set up everything and get used to it on your monitor first, then got to VR. It has a massive key binding list.
- There are a lot of things to do, although initially I just ended up "space trucking" to make credits for a better ship.
- It's not really a massive multiplayer game. There are many "instances" of players, each only have something like 16 players

All in all I don't regret buying it, but it can get a little boring after a while depending on what you like. It's a true space sim with decent physics. You have to do most things manually so it can be time consuming.
 
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