Dear Esther

[BadServo]

Initially, I had great difficulty in getting Dear Esther to run reliably under VorpX. I have however discovered some unlikely tweaks that eliminated the problem.

Running at the Rift’s native resolution and/or using higher than 8x anti-aliasing would consistently cause my game to crash. Setting the game to 1920×1080 and limiting myself to 8x anti-aliasing causes it to operate at length with no crashing.

You will also want to expand the Field of View to near it’s maximum, most likely lower the mouse sensitivity to keep your FoV from rotating too far when you turn your head.

[mbenedict]

I’m having some difficulty getting Dear Esther to run correctly. When I start chapter 1, my view just spins wildly and nothing I’ve tried has been successful in stopping it.

I saw another post in “general” where someone described the exact same issue, but I never saw a resolution.

Any ideas?

[BadServo]

No idea what would cause that off the cuff. Any chance it’s picking up another input device like a controller or joystick you could disable? Also try disabling gamepads in the game options.

[BernieG]

hi, just bought Vorpx to run Dear Esther on a new Mac Pro with a Rift DK2.
it is supposed to work, but I can’t get it to run without severe judder, on head tracking. I have tried all sorts of configs, but no luck, and this makes it almost unusable. Any suggestions for configuration, or ideas?

this is a high end machine with twin ATI graphics boards so I am surprised it won’t run smoothly. The Tuscany demo runs very smooth.

cheers
Bernie

[BernieG]

n.b. I am running it on a (dual boot) Windows 8 OS, not Mac

[BadServo]

I can’t say with certainty that this is your problem, but the DK2 (unlike the DK1) seems to have a lot of issues with judder. Personally, I was unable to get anything aside from the “Desktop Demo” to function without nausea-inducing judder. Turns out that my primary monitor being set to 60hz was causing it. In nearly every demo or application, if I overclock my monitor to 75hz, then the judder vanishes.

I understand that this is hardly an ideal work-around as not all monitors can support such a refresh rate, but it’s certainly solved my issues. Good luck.

[Ralf]

@ BernieG: Frankly, no tests are done an Macs, so this is just a guess, but two graphics cards may cause issues in itself. If you use them in SLI/Crossfire configuration, you should disable that and see whether it helps.

Dear Esther is not a very demanding game and should run in Geometry 3D quite well normally. A workaround would be to switch to Z-buffer 3D which would give you twice the framerate (at the expense of fully natural Stereo 3D).

[BernieG]

Thanks for the suggestions folks, both very helpful. I am actually a prof, here in British Columbia and planning to use this in a project to see if VR game distraction and Immersion helps with chronic pain sufferers. so we want immersive exploartory/strategy VR games for patients to try, rather than FPS for this!

I am pretty much finding out that Oculus and high-end Macs don’t get along too well currently.

I have the 2013 Mac Pro with the twin ATI 300 cards and a Thunderbolt 27″ Cinema monitor. I suspect the later might be the issue as it won’t refresh at more then 60mHz (and can’t be over locked) and I have had a nightmre getting Dear Esther to actually load on the Rift screen. It always starts on the main display, as does the Tuscany extended mode Demo. I tried using the VR Games manager application, and setting Dear Esther to run on the Rift, and so far that is the only way I can get it there. However, I think that too may introduce lag, as interestingly,if I run the extended mode Tuscany Demo as direct to rift through the games manage app, it is amazingly smooth, but then stops after about 5 minutes with a memory error full error. I checked which graphics processor is doing what, and when the ATI cards are linked in crossfire config and one is running at 99% and the other at only 25% so I don’t think the demo is using both.

I just purchased Display Fusion to manage my monitor configuration to see if that might help, but any suggestions for getting this going on my machine very welcome, particularly:

1) how to get the Dear Esther screen opening in the Rift
2) how to get the Dear Esther menu visible in the Rift (in the opening screen it’s way off to the left and does not head track at that point).
3) any other VR exploration games I might try?

so far the only thing that works as designed on my system is Discovering Space.

cheers, and Happy New Year,
Bernie

[Ralf]

Question 1:

There is a DK2 setup guide in the vorpX help that explains two possible configurations. In short:

A. The convenient one (may not work with everything)

1. Set the Rift DK2 to “Extend Desktop to HMD”
2. Use the Rift DK2 as SECONDARY monitor in Windows
3. Set the Rift DK2 to “Portrait” mode in Windows
(might be “Landscape flipped” in Windows 8)
4. Set vorpX to “Show on DK2″ display wise in the vorpX config app.

B. The compatible one

1. Set the Rift DK2 to “Extend Desktop to HMD”
2. Use the Rift DK2 as PRIMARY monitor in Windows
3. Set the Rift DK2 to “Portrait” mode in Windows
(might be “Landscape flipped” in Windows 8)
4. Set vorpX to “Use system settings” display wise in the vorpX config app.

It is important to choose the right setting in the vorpX config app according to your display settings in Windows. It is important to choose the right setting in the vorpX config app according to your display settings in Windows.

Question 2:

vorpX has a function called EdgePeek that allows you to look around the screen. You can enable it by pressing the middle mouse button. If you don’t have a three button mouse on your Mac you can change key bindings in the config app.

In some games vorpX also can scale down the HUD. IIRC Dear Esther is among them, I’m not 100% sure though. If available for a game this function can be accessed with ALT + mousewheel or through the vorpX ingame menu (display page, “HUD Scale”).

This and other useful hints are also available in the vorpX help. The Quickstart Guide and the Essential Game Hints are especially useful.

[BernieG]

Thanks,

Finally got it running, super smooth now, but looks a bit zoomed in, but is certainly playable.

1) Turned off all Windows 8 visual effects. I.e. Set windows performance preference settings to performance, not visual.
2) Turned off antialiasing – might try adding a low level if its worth doing?
3) Run the Rift in extended Mode and used VR Game Manager to set it to run Dear Esther on the Rift Monitor.

I also installed Display Fusion,but initially had some issues with odd display configurations suddenly occurring (e.g. flipped main display). I reinstalled it and it seems to run fine now.

So, all seems good. The documentation links are helpful too. One question I can’t seem to find the answer to is if you change the VorpX settings in one game if they remain changed for other games? I am assuming each game has an individual profile.

Cheers
Bernie

[Ralf]

There is no definitive answer to that question. Some basic settings like the display configuration or your IPD value for example are stored globally, while others are saved per game, which makes more sense in most cases.

Zoomed in: Dear Esther has a FOV slider in it’s game options. Setting that to the hieghest value (maybe combined with “3D FOV Enhancement” or one of the letterbox aspect ratio modes in vorpX (display page of the config app)) will give you a natural looking image.

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