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Oculus Rift Display Quality: Horrible

Aroddo
Protege
Ok, my Rift just arrived and it installed without a problem.
This is actually the first time I ever used any modern VR device.

And the highly praised quality of the display is utter shit!

The whole 'screen' you see looks like you see it through fine wire netting.
Small Text is barely readable, because the resolution feels like an old CRT VGA display.

Imagine it like this: The text above fills your ENTIRE viewport. And not only is it pixelated - you also can effortlessly see that the white font is made up out of different colored lines! Think TV before they invented LC-Displays.

Oh, the 3D effect is top notch. But you might as well be using an iPhone 1 and view it from 10 cm away to get a feel for the perceived resolution.

NOTHING you see or read on the internet prepares you for how bad the display quality is.

Cancel your orders, then try it out first if you can, then either buy or wait for the next generation.
Don't be an idiot like me and buy on good faith.

220 REPLIES 220

krectus
Protege
Oculus Home DOES looks like garbage through the headset.  Compare what you're seeing on the headset to what you're seeing on a computer monitor or of screenshots of Home and it should be night and day between a high resolution monitor and a low resolution headset.

I agree it's not a big issue once you spend most of your time gaming and less time downloading stuff and checking out all the apps and such.  The OP is highly over-reacting to this issue it's not "I demand a refund" terrible but it was quite jarring for me when first putting on the headset to see such low resolution screens the kind of which you haven't seen since CRT monitors or smartphones from 10 years ago.

The games are beautiful and immersive but looking at them through a mesh of pixels is annoying when you know how amazing they could look with a true High definition Headset

Anonymous
Not applicable

krectus said:

I agree the screen was much lower quality than I had expected.  Comparing it to an iphone 1 isn't a stretch.

However the image may look like garbage when in the home screen and looking at menus, this issue does all but go away once you are immersed in a VR game.  You BARELY notice the issue when you are active in a game and REALLY notice it when you are in menus and such.

But for a $600 "high-end" device the screen resolution is a joke and one of it's worse qualities.  They spent a lot of time getting a lot of things right, I wish they would have done so with the screen resolution.  It's embarassing that this is the released version.

I'm not going to return mine, but I am annoyed.


The screens aren't low resolution (they're higher resolution and far higher in pixel density than the 1080p monitor I'm typing this on), the reason for the lower apparent pixel density is because the screens subtend a much larger angle than a conventional monitor.  When sitting at my PC, my monitor takes up only a fairly small portion of my field of view.

The main reason the resolution can't yet be higher is there isn't graphics card hardware capable of that level of performance.  VR is very expensive - not just because you have to render each eye, but your render target needs to be about 30% larger than the actual screen since the image as sent to the Rift must be distorted to compensate for the lenses.  Plus, going for 90 Hz requires a lot, and trust me, as a DK2 user - judder is vastly, vastly worse than screendoor, even the higher levels of screendoor that the DK2 had.  Even dropping a couple FPS down in the DK2 was a horrible experience.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

krectus said:

Oculus Home DOES looks like garbage through the headset.  Compare what you're seeing on the headset to what you're seeing on a computer monitor or of screenshots of Home and it should be night and day between a high resolution monitor and a low resolution headset.



Home is far from a garbage look, but Home also does not render on the computer monitor. It's one of the complaints people have: while games and app's will mirror to the monitor, Home does not. Your reply indicates that you are unaware of this at all. Which begs to question if you have even used a Rift. I'm guessing not. So whoever you are plagiarizing with those complaints of yours kinda messed ya' up.

krectus
Protege



krectus said:

I agree the screen was much lower quality than I had expected.  Comparing it to an iphone 1 isn't a stretch.

However the image may look like garbage when in the home screen and looking at menus, this issue does all but go away once you are immersed in a VR game.  You BARELY notice the issue when you are active in a game and REALLY notice it when you are in menus and such.

But for a $600 "high-end" device the screen resolution is a joke and one of it's worse qualities.  They spent a lot of time getting a lot of things right, I wish they would have done so with the screen resolution.  It's embarassing that this is the released version.

I'm not going to return mine, but I am annoyed.


The screens aren't low resolution (they're higher resolution than the monitor I'm typing this on), the reason for the lower apparent pixel density is because the screens subtend a much larger angle than a conventional monitor.  When sitting at my PC, my monitor takes up only a fairly small portion of my field of view.

The main reason the resolution can't yet be higher is there isn't graphics card hardware capable of that level of performance.  VR is very expensive - not just because you have to render each eye, but your render target needs to be about 30% larger than the actual screen since the image as sent to the Rift must be distorted to compensate for the lenses.  Plus, going for 90 Hz requires a lot, and trust me, as a DK2 user - judder is vastly, vastly worse than screendoor, even the higher levels of screendoor that the DK2 had.  Even dropping a couple FPS down in the DK2 was a horrible experience.


Fair enough, the term low resolution is relative.  Low pixel density is more accurate, I can use that term from now on.

I understand that the technology is limited but I guess the main complaint and it goes back to the OP of this thread is that most reviewers didn't mention the Low Pixel density of the headset.  I guess others are saying there are lots of Youtube videos detailing this but I didn't watch those (I guess I didn't do enough research). When I put the headset on for the first time it was shocking at how visible the pixels were, at how the mesh effect made everything look like a pointillism picture.  But my review will also praise the lack of judder and great decision to go 90 HZ.

krectus
Protege

Zenbane said:


krectus said:

Oculus Home DOES looks like garbage through the headset.  Compare what you're seeing on the headset to what you're seeing on a computer monitor or of screenshots of Home and it should be night and day between a high resolution monitor and a low resolution headset.



Home is far from a garbage look, but Home also does not render on the computer monitor. It's one of the complaints people have: while games and app's will mirror to the monitor, Home does not. Your reply indicates that you are unaware of this at all. Which begs to question if you have even used a Rift. I'm guessing not. So whoever you are plagiarizing with those complaints of yours kinda messed ya' up.


You are correct Home technically doesn't mirror to the monitor.  I am comparing the images and text of the Oculus App to the SAME images and text of Home in my headset.  Also I may be a bit harsh in using the term "garbage"  it's not that bad.  But it is a pixelated mess when compared to a quality computer monitor.

GoldenRetroGames
Heroic Explorer

Aroddo said:

Wait, so you are fine with that crappy display and expect others to follow your opinion, while denying me my right to voice mine? 
What do you have to gain from that?


The issue is that you're not simply voicing your opinion.  You're forcing others to have the same opinion as you and you're not willing to accept those who have a different opinion than you.  There's a significant difference there.

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
I'm curious @krektus and @Aroddo - how old are you?
I promise I have no ulterior motive in asking the question.  I just wonder if your age might have something to do with your perception of the Rift.

We recently had a poll on the forum to see how old the average Rift owner is.  It was completely unscientific of course, but I believe the majority was in the 35-40 range.  35-40 years old represents people who grew up with Coleco, Atari, NES, Commodore 64, etc, and then saw the progression of computers and console graphics through to 4k today.  It represents a group of people who have seen truly 'awful' graphics and yet who had fun playing despite.  As a group we're probably more forgiving of 'bad graphics'.

I know I'm easily able to look past the 'poor' resolution to see the amazing technology that allows me to feel presence in a virtual world.  To be fair I don't even feel it's anywhere near as bad as you describe it.  If you grew up never knowing anything worse than PS1, you're going to be far less forgiving than someone who played Dragon Warrior on the NES.  If you grew up in the 1080p generation, 1080p is the bottom of your scale.


Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

krectus
Protege
I'm in my mid-30s but I work in the TV industry.  Grew up watching CRT TVs and using 640x480 CPU monitors.  I am a videophile.  But to your point I think it's almost the opposite, having seen 1080p HD on a daily basis and going back to something that looks like 480p SD (I know it's not really) it's absolutely jarring.  

Like when the first iphone came out no one cared about how low density the screen was, everything was like that, but have someone use an iphone 1 now and it will be jarring to them how low res those screens really were.  If the Oculus Rift came out 10 years ago there would be zero complaints about this. BUT going from opening up your oculus app on a 1080p monitor to seconds later putting on your low density headset it night and day for me.  I haven't "seen pixels" for years and back when I did you didn't care or even notice much because that was the "normal".

Anonymous
Not applicable

Zoomie said:

I'm curious @krektus and @Aroddo - how old are you?
I promise I have no ulterior motive in asking the question.  I just wonder if your age might have something to do with your perception of the Rift.

We recently had a poll on the forum to see how old the average Rift owner is.  It was completely unscientific of course, but I believe the majority was in the 35-40 range.  35-40 years old represents people who grew up with Coleco, Atari, NES, Commodore 64, etc, and then saw the progression of computers and console graphics through to 4k today.  It represents a group of people who have seen truly 'awful' graphics and yet who had fun playing despite.  As a group we're probably more forgiving of 'bad graphics'.

I know I'm easily able to look past the 'poor' resolution to see the amazing technology that allows me to feel presence in a virtual world.  To be fair I don't even feel it's anywhere near as bad as you describe it.  If you grew up never knowing anything worse than PS1, you're going to be far less forgiving than someone who played Dragon Warrior on the NES.  If you grew up in the 1080p generation, 1080p is the bottom of your scale.




Interesting idea.  For my own n=1 data point, the first console I played was an Atari 2600 (my friend's) and the first console my family owned was an NES.  I remember very fondly the first time I ever saw the words "It's dangerous to go alone, take this".

I've seen graphics in PC games come and go, from none at all (standing in a field west of a white house), to 16-color CGA/EGA graphics, to being wowed by the full 256 colors possible by VGA graphics, to the early 3D games and the beginnings of 3D graphics hardware, to modern gaming.  VR is certainly still primitive by comparison to the potential it has, but it's also an exciting time to be a gamer - like with everything else PC related, it will change so fast you'll wonder where the time went.


blanes
Rising Star
Have you checked the nerve receptors at the back of each eyeball are fully seated ?