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Has anyone noticed that blacks are no longer true black?

LZoltowski
Champion
I have been playing some dark games recently and noticed that the blacks are not true black anymore, years ago I managed to get true blacks with turning the SPUD off but now it seems to be back. It's that strange greyish grain that seems to be stuck onto the lens. I only just noticed it after wondering some dark dungeons.
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28 REPLIES 28

Digikid1
Consultant
Well it was working fine a couple days ago. Nothing has changed except for the 1.30 update. 

RuneSR2
Grand Champion



TwoHedWlf said:

So, check spud?


 I have tried turning it on or off with little difference, flushing the spud file or trying to regenerate the mash, no difference.


I spent some time investigating this issue last night and I've come up with the same solutions you've already tried - deactivating SPUD in the Registry or deleting spud or mash files - and it seems it might help some persons while other persons don't see any benefit or get tint problems. Also most of the persons getting positive results posted their results more than 6 months ago - before the latest firmware and 1.29+ updates.  

BTW I found and liked this explanation:

"The default software settings for the Oculus CV1 remap the color space so that areas that should be a deep black instead are displayed at a higher brightness level. Because of this remapping, a black image may not produce complete darkness and near-black objects may lose their shading. The effect is less noticeable in a scene with bright and flat illumination, and it may not be noticeable in many applications. But for the types of imagery we use, this remapping can be annoying. 

The remapping may have been done as an attempt at a software fix for an optical problem. In the CV1 model, Oculus switched to using a partial fresnel lens design, which reduced weight and improved focus at the perimeter of the display. Fresnel lenses have problems with lens flare, which is even more apparent in the full fresnel used on the HTC Vive. Reducing contrast ratio decreases the visibility of the flares. Oculus apparently decided that reducing the flares was more important than having a full color range, so they ship the CV1 using the compressed color space by default.

The ideal solution would be to allow the applications running over the HMD to control the remapping, so that the developers could pick the optimum trade-offs for their scenes. The reasons why Oculus does not allow this are not clear - perhaps they did not trust their developers to make good decisions or they did not want to adjust their GPU code at the whim of the apps using their service. 

Instead, their support staff provides a "spud remover" to customers who complain which sets a registry value that is read when the service starts and can disable the color remapping."
Source: http://visualmusicsystems.com/oculushelp.htm

So anyone got a SPUD remover from Oculus support?  🙂  B) - Then again, it sounds just like a program to change the Registry value, which LZoltowski said doesn't help anymore. 

Maybe it's just me being naive, but I can't help thinking that Oculus engineers wouldn't have enabled SPUD if it wasn't necessary. I notice the problem a lot in dark screens/scenes, but my mash and spud files were generated a year ago, maybe I've got the problem for months and didn't really notice it. But like a scratch on the new car you've just bought, when first you've noticed the scratch you can't forget it or take your eyes off it...  :#  

Maybe I should contact my new friend at Oculus support - it seems that the paid Oculus supporters are being very quiet in this thread - although I bet they are reading what we're writing in this thread and that they aren't strangers to the issue we're discussing 😉

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Wildt
Consultant

RuneSR2 said:
The remapping may have been done as an attempt at a software fix for an optical problem. In the CV1 model, Oculus switched to using a partial fresnel lens design, which reduced weight and improved focus at the perimeter of the display. Fresnel lenses have problems with lens flare, which is even more apparent in the full fresnel used on the HTC Vive. Reducing contrast ratio decreases the visibility of the flares. Oculus apparently decided that reducing the flares was more important than having a full color range, so they ship the CV1 using the compressed color space by default.
I don't buy that as the main reason for the remapping - it's OLED black smear. You still get nasty god rays with white on remapped blacks.
PCVR: CV1 || 4 sensors || TPcast wireless adapter || MamutVR Gun stock V3
PSVR: PS4 Pro || Move Controllers || Aim controller
WMR: HP Reverb

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Wildt said:


RuneSR2 said:
The remapping may have been done as an attempt at a software fix for an optical problem. In the CV1 model, Oculus switched to using a partial fresnel lens design, which reduced weight and improved focus at the perimeter of the display. Fresnel lenses have problems with lens flare, which is even more apparent in the full fresnel used on the HTC Vive. Reducing contrast ratio decreases the visibility of the flares. Oculus apparently decided that reducing the flares was more important than having a full color range, so they ship the CV1 using the compressed color space by default.
I don't buy that as the main reason for the remapping - it's OLED black smear. You still get nasty god rays with white on remapped blacks.


Maybe it reduces the SDE - lately I've not been bothered a lot by the SDE, but maybe I've habituated to the SDE... Are there any other SPUD benefits? 

And who's up for sending in a ticket? 😄 Personally I think the grey fog has become too noticeable, I long for some deep black OLED darkness even if it forces me to hug my old SDE foe B)

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

JohnnyDioxin
Expert Trustee
I've been paying particular attention to this since you started the thread and so far, I have no issues.

The only cases where the blacks don't look convincing to me is where god rays interfere.

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Rift CV1; Index; Quest; Quest 2

Anonymous
Not applicable
But are you using an NVIDIA card and set it to Full Dynamic Range?
This gets reset after any graphic or major OS update.

Wildt
Consultant

MAC_MAN86 said:

But are you using an NVIDIA card and set it to Full Dynamic Range?
This gets reset after any graphic or major OS update.


Are you just gonna repeat your irrelevant question until someone answers?
PCVR: CV1 || 4 sensors || TPcast wireless adapter || MamutVR Gun stock V3
PSVR: PS4 Pro || Move Controllers || Aim controller
WMR: HP Reverb

Anonymous
Not applicable
Just so long as it is irrelevant I am happy to stop yes 😉

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
It would be great be with feedback from an Oculus engineer or similar. The grey SPUD fog is really annoying. 

BTW, of course this post wasn't made to bump this thread, but I just had to share this video  o:) 

3vxpvw8tg2om.gif

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"