- This topic has 20 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated Jan 26, 2024 3:54pm by
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Hi guys (Ralf),
Am I being stupid or is there no way yet to move the virtual screen? I have huge black space under the screen. The top of the screen almost touches the top of the vertical FOV.
I guess it relates to a wearer’s head shape, and everyone is different in that regard.
It would be cool to have an accessible menu function to be able to move the virtual (VR/Cinema/Immersive) screens up and down. Maybe one already exists that I am not aware of?
Cheers.
When the camera is centered (ALT+SPACE) the view is centered precisely to the center of the virtual screen to make sure that your view is aligned with the game’s camera view. The reason for the slight difference in space above and below the screen is that all headsets to varying degrees use a slightly asymmetric view frustum with the bottom ‘half’ being a bit larger than the top ‘half’. That’s a neat little optimization done by headset vendors to account for the fact that the human brain tends to focus on the ground. Gives a few valuable extra screen pixels where it counts.
Normal games however almost always are rendered with symmetric view frustums. Now when you align the center of a virtual screen with a symmetrically rendered game to the asymmetrical headset view frustum, the result is a little more space below the screen than above. May trick the casual observer into thinking the screen isn’t centered correctly while in fact it is.
I didn’t know about that aspect of VR headset design; that’s cool to know.
If you don’t want to play with a huge border at the bottom then the alternative is to expand the screen to completely cover the FOV, e.g. most default FullVR game profiles.
Unfortunately, because of this misalignment, to cover the full FOV available in an HMD we have to make the screen very big to get rid of the black at the bottom. Unfortunately this also means that a huge part of the screen at the top is now not visible by the user – wasted pixels, resolution, performance headroom, and gaming FOV.
I appreciate that it might be centred mathematically, however it makes more sense to centre the viewport to the field of view of an HMD in my humble opinion. Is there a way I can centre it to [my] personal preference Ralf? Maybe registry/ini tweaks of some kind?
All other virtual screens offer this adjustment since the beginning, e.g Virtual Desktop, Big Screen Beta, HelixVision; as well as many other third party apps utilising virtual screens.
Cheers.
There is nothing to add to the concise and detailed explanation in the reply to your question above.
My question was how to adjust the screen position like other virtual screen apps allow.
Your “concise” reply was to explain /why/ it wasn’t centred properly, not /how/ it can be achieved to user satisfaction – unhelpful.
This stance is unfortunate because most (every?) other virtual screen app allows this adjustment, and for good reason – only the centre of the FOV of the HMD counts, which is what the screen should be centred to.
Cheers.
vorpX is primarily about VR, that is also true for the Immersive Screen Mode. Its purpose is getting you ‘inside the game’ as good as possible if FullVR makes no sense for a game. Its purpose is explitely not recreating monitor stereo 3D with all its inherent flaws in VR, which is rather pointless since you can do that better on a monitor.
No-one is talking about Immersive Screen mode or monitors only Ralf – All screen modes, especially FullVR have this centring problem.
When you scale down the Full VR screen size so you can see the edges, e.g. so you can clearly see HUD elements traditionally at borders of screens in every game – the top (and sides) can fit well into the HMD FOV, however the bottom leaves a huge border.
One can expand the screen to cover this bottom border but then you lose a huge chunk of the top of the screen, even in FullVR. – The viewport ought to be centred to the HMD’s FOV by logic, not some arbitrary horizon which you feel ought to be the middle of the HMD.
Cheers.
I understand that you personally might consider this particular feature so important that it warrants to invest a lot of time for discussing it with me and I’m glad that you do so. Nothings stays unread, and everything gets considered.
There may however occasionally be one or the other reason why not every single wish might get implemented, even if technically it would as easy as this one. Sometimes other considerations like ease of use or keeping the number of options sane might be considered more important than a particular feature wish.
While that POV is appreciated, as others have pointed out, this feature could of course be added to “Expert Settings”, or simply ini/config file/registry tweaks so that the number of options and user experience remain constant to the general user.
Recently, the ambience feature has helped in this regard, however this issue has always been a glaring one to me, and I don’t believe I am the only person who has noticed this… Maybe it is worse on the CV1.
Anyway, I can’t twist anybody’s arm, nor do I want to. If you might want to add this feature to be default setting vs. some arbitrary horizon; that would be great as it would be a win-win for everyone – I don’t personally see any down sides – only positives.
If not, then that is a shame and a missed opportunity in my humble opinion.
Cheers.
The number of posts here slowly exceeds the threshold were I seriously start to wonder whether it would have been better to feed you some meaningless feelgood bullshit instead of giving you actual replies.
I have read and understood your wish, just like everything gets read and considered. So thanks again for investing the time. I’m always thankful for feedback, there is however no real point in trying to convince me in forum discussions. If at some point I consider an argument compelling enough, a feature wish might make it, otherwise I might have considered other things more important.
No worries Ralf.
Recap:
Request: Hey Ralf, VorpX Viewports in fullVR/virtual aren’t centred to the HMD’s field of view which is strange – there’s a significant border at the bottom. Can you fix it or allow us to adjust the viewport down? Most/every other similar app allows this for obvious reasons.
Ralf: The viewport is not centred to the field of view on purpose. I personally don’t think it’s important to have the VorpX display centred to the HMD’s FOV so won’t do it.
Got it ;-)
There seems to be some misunderstanding here:
The view actually is centered, the game’s view center gets exactly aligned to your view center in the headset. For details see the explanation in my first reply above. It would actually be off center if the space below the screen was the same size as the space above. I understand how counterintuitive that sounds, but since normal games are rendered with a symmetrical frustum aligning their center correctly to the asymmetrical headset view frustum leads to the effect you observed.
The explanation is unfortunately unsatisfactory.
Let’s take a real world analogy (i know you hate virtual monitors but the real world only has TVs and monitors so it’s easy to compare to):
– Most games in the world are played on TVs and Monitors. Every game ever created is displayed independently of how high the TV sits on a table, on the ground, mounted high on a wall etc – it doesn’t matter – the game display is always the same no matter how high you put the TV/monitor, and no-one has ever thought of this as wrong in any way – except you. It is important that the TV is in full view of the player – that is what is important – preferably at the centre of the eye line i.e. the players field of view.
The game eye-line changes instantly as soon as there is movement anyway.
I appreciate that VR is different and the mathematically correct way might be how you are describing centre. However, intuitively and logically, the centre of the viewport ought to be the centre of the HMD’s field of view for maximum viewing area and best use of resolution and pixel real estate.
Preventing losing viewing area at the top, or having a border at the bottom is much more noticeable than some ‘mathematically perfect’ view.
Anecdotally, from playing 2D games on VirtualDesktop and Big Screen Beta etc, moving the viewport screen up and down has no bearing on discomfort anyway.
Cheers.
I can only give you the two replies I gave you above several times already:
1. Aligning the centers of the (symmetrically rendered) game and the asymmetric view frustum of the headset leads to the effect you observed.
2. I read everything and am always glad about feedback. There is no point however in trying to convince me in long discussions by repeating what you said several times. I understood the first time that you would like to have another option added to the menu allowing you to change the center yourself.
BTW: You can help yourself with a little trick by moving your head down a little and pressing ALT+SPACE. When you move your head back to the original position, your view is now not centered to the screen anymore, but that way you can have the space above and below the screen sized the same if you dislike the actually centered position. So you can easily do what you want, just not with an option in the menu.
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