cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Asgard's Wrath: the most awesome VR game ever? Reviews & impressions!

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Only 2 days left  ❤️ I think most of the screenshots below are from September 5, but I didn't notice them before today - click to enlarge a screenshot:

cxfbwgm3ddyb.jpgc97q5swddbfq.jpgy8p5jdvtc0m1.jpg5r7dyo2cghlt.jpg
shirm9aoyiv4.jpgi9pwayd5nd6l.jpglcnbwbs0qfcl.jpg39mg7kmetfq6.jpgfg07chbkj5em.jpg9wws5benescc.jpgcer3hs00q51u.jpgduuflf22i4qw.jpghag6rixer1d2.jpgs0bst7th4hx6.jpgp1rocpt70djs.jpgmpdmhrpvco3f.jpgkjl94fprnqe4.jpgmwtax7sumsm8.jpgum6zy5l9yjkb.jpgw0j8km6nqhpt.jpg

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"

263 REPLIES 263

MowTin
Expert Trustee

RuneSR2 said:

BTW, if someone needs a break from the game, may I recommend a movie?  😄

https://youtu.be/dQgoGccHJD4

It's basically Apocalypse Now or Heart of Darkness - 1000 years ago  😄  Actually one of my favorite movies, but it may require a special taste in movies, and it's definitely not for kids or young teenagers.

Don't be fooled by the average opinion on IMDB - this dude got it right - and it's the most popular user review on IMDB:

User Reviews

Rating 10/10

Well, I'm not sure how to put this.

This isn't the movie you would expect. This is a raw and gritty movie, a festival for your eyes, a rare piece of art that dispenses with dialogue, plot and laws of logic for the sake of great cinematography/photography, gripping ambiance and mythology. VALHALLA RISING rendered me speechless. I can't even tell you if it's good - I just want to tell you that it's worth watching. Every minute of it. It is an experience.

We do not learn much of our (anti-)hero: a warrior-slave, Mads Mikkelsen, is freed from captivity and bands with a group of crusaders who intend on heading to the Holy Land, yet end up, well, in their own little hell.

There isn't much more to say to the plot, for it hardly matters - mythology matters here, the grand sceneries matter, and the underlying message matters. It aims at showing us how superfluous the Christian God seems in a world of violence; life as a farce in the face of intangible evil. Will you desert your (Christian) God when the time has come? Here lies its main agenda: in a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. He is indeed, he ties us to the elemental powers, and rises above.

A piece of art. Take your time, be patient, and you will enjoy it like no movie before.





"Whe you have one eye, you don't need a name." 🙂 I guess that's true in some small Viking village. They just call you one eye.

It looks like my kind of movie. I remember hearing about it but I forgot about it. I'll put it on my Netflix Queue. For some reason the actor Mads reminded me of an actor in a fantastic series on Netflix called "Dark" it's about time travel. It's fantastic sci-fi. The only issue is it's in German but it has subtitles or a dubbed in English tack on Netflix. 
i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

MowTin
Expert Trustee

RuneSR2 said:


Let me get this right, you talked to the producer and did not ask about taa and the precise difference between High vs Epic settings??! Instead you just spent all the time talking about gameplay??!  :#  😄  😉



Join the discord. Various people from the dev team drop in and out. 

I found this post on reddit about UE4 TAA. This is a great comparison between his adjusted settings and default taa. There's a slider in the middle that allows you to compare the two images.

https://imgsli.com/MDU3NA

https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/6t5jnc/improving_temporal_aa/

I guess I didn't notice the blur but from that image I understand what they're talking about. I don't know much about this but it seems that with UE4 you can choose to use deferred (TAA) or forward rendering (MSAA) like Robo Recall. I think Asgard's Wrath uses deferred rendering. That explains why supersampling doesn't help much.  

Tonight, I'll try those settings then I'll try the reddit suggested settings. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/dg26oy/asgards_rath_settings_sharpen_temporal_aa_blur/

You're probably right that because there are many more cv1 headsets, the game is made to look good on the cv1. 


i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

MowTin
Expert Trustee
Another tip: You can slap the ass of one of the patrons in the bar.  >:)
i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

MowTin said:

You're probably right that because there are many more cv1 headsets, the game is made to look good on the cv1. 




It's more that CV1 was promoted in the announcement trailer for Asgard's Wrath. And a game this size must have taken at least 2 years to make, so devs only had the CV1 when they started making the game and the art. No way the devs would be able to fix everything for lcd hmds in such a short time. I don't think the devs would have used TAA if the game was designed for Rift S, but TAA looks beyond awesome and is a perfect choice for CV1.
And of course, like you said, at least 75% of all Rifts are still CV1 according to Steam Hardware Survey, so nothing's wrong in supporting CV1 as best as possible.
Now I wonder if the same goes for Stormland, it may too have had a very long development cycle where they primarily had to use CV1, because Rift-S didn't yet exist... Unfortunately designing games for the new more highres lcd hmds is not the same as designing for the original oled hmds... One dev wrote that you really need 4k textures for Index, while gen1 oled hmds just needed 2k textures. And choosing black levels and in-game lighting are very different too.

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"

MowTin
Expert Trustee
I think this has been posted before but on the Rift-S these settings improved image quality for me. It does look much clearer. 

Add this to the engine.ini file

[SystemSettings]

r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=2

r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=0.2

r.TemporalAASamples=16

r.TemporalAASharpness=1.0

r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=1.5

and this to scalibility.ini

[PostProcessQuality@3]

r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=2

and in the gameusersettings.ini

sg.PostProcessQuality=3


One tip that I should have known. Stomp your feet to break the crates. No need to keep swinging your arms. 

i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

MowTin said:

I think this has been posted before but on the Rift-S these settings improved image quality for me. It does look much clearer. 

Add this to the engine.ini file

[SystemSettings]

r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=2

r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=0.2

r.TemporalAASamples=16

r.TemporalAASharpness=1.0

r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=1.5

and this to scalibility.ini

[PostProcessQuality@3]

r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=2

and in the gameusersettings.ini

sg.PostProcessQuality=3


One tip that I should have known. Stomp your feet to break the crates. No need to keep swinging your arms. 




Tried the above on the Index, still looked very blurry to me. But this simple setting worked like true magic - may you could try it?

It's very simple. First set settings to Low - must be done in the game. Then close the game. Then make only one modification to engine.ini, add:

[SystemSettings]
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=0

Save engine.ini and start the game - how sharp does it look? 

This is so far the only method to recreate perfect image quality on the Index, now textures look even way more detailed than CV1. But Low settings remove a lot of objects from the game, like grass, cloth animations, some cliffs etc. 

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"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Medium vs. Epic
Another thing - maybe it's caused by me forcing super sampling 1.8 on the CV1, but I might have been misled by some fire effects that I only thought worked on Epic. Taking a closer look last night, these effects are also present on Medium - and High (of course). 

For now - if you would ask me, what's the difference between Medium, High and Epic? I wouldn't be able to answer that question. Even using Low you get same textures as on Epic, but Low clearly removes tons of effects. Not so using Medium - Medium seems to have all objects and effects. Maybe the grass is thinner? Are shadows much better, but maybe only seen in some dark crypt? Is water quality better? 
Maybe TAA is less pronounced on Medium, but it's not much judging from the superb clarity of the Index, Medium still is super-blurry. I was wondering if Medium would be like TAA + FXAA, High = TAA + 2xMSAA and Epic = TAA + 4xMSAA, but that wouldn't make much sense, then ss 1.8 + Epic should bring my system down to a crawl and that doesn't happen. In fact, performance seems only slightly better using Medium than Epic, but ASW2.0 could cause some mindtricks here, lol. Or differences may be limited going from Medium to Epic...

I know that Low corresponds to the value 0 in Gameusersettings.ini, while Medium is 1, High is 2 and Epic is 3. At least the numbers change...

Right now I use Epic more for psychological reasons, because then I know I don't miss out on anything. But it kinda feels silly if Medium would save some resources and still provide an image quality I wouldn't be able to identify compared to Epic in a blind test.

Anyone knows? What are the true image quality differences of Medium, High and Epic? Uncle Google doesn't seem to have the answer either... 

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"

MowTin
Expert Trustee
@RuneSR2 I saw someone claim they fixed 99% of their revive issues by adjust shadows in the ini

I fixed almost all my fps issues on revive by going into the ini and changing the shadow settting to 1. I play on epic/120 res and every setting at 3 in the ini. Turning shadows to 1 then setting as read only eliminated 99% of dropped frames
as usual, shadows messing up vr perf
combined with the TAA fix for revive it makes this game the best vr experience available. cheers devs

r.LightFunctionQuality=1
r.ShadowQuality=2
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=1
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=1024
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.05
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=0.7
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=0.25

i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Interesting, I'll give it a shot, just tried the TAA fix again plus 150% res on the Index, still looked blurry. Blacks didn't look good compared to oled, but fov and no SDE are great on the Index.
PS. I guess you mean engine.ini?

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"

rVRcloset
Heroic Explorer

RuneSR2 said:


rVRcloset said:

This have actually been a let down for me so far, can't stand the slow "running" and too slow paced so far..
https://youtu.be/psYwSnxJMOU



I'm not wildly impressed so far, but it's not bad either. Probably 85/100 impression from me right now - this isn't Lone Echo quality in my mind. I'm getting more and more convinced that this game was designed for the CV1, TAA implemented on all detail settings makes no sense otherwise. 
Lack of real saves are annoying, would have liked a prober save system so I can access selected locations easily. And to change settings I need to start a new game or continue my game, it takes a very long time (because changing ini-files requires a full restart). 
Not having custom settings for antialiasing, foilage, postprocessing etc. is a great problem for optimizing graphics - having to edit ini-files to achieve acceptable image quality on lcd hmds is not great work by the devs. Lone Echo with full access to all settings - that's the gold standard, not hiding many parameters in 4 setting categories. 
BTW, sound is amazing on the Index, much better than CV1 - using the Index voices and music sound real, it's much more muddy on the CV1, but CV1 isn't bad.

Fun thing, I don't have performance problems even forcing ss 150% on the Index, I just want to enable some grass, lol. Saw Oasis' video, he had some grass on the beach - I don't - clearly my changes to GameUserSettings.ini do not work, although the changes to engine.ini work fine. 

Might start all over again with the CV1 ss 1.7 or 1.8. Seems to be the way the devs want us to play this game. Seems like UpLoadVR was aware of that when completing the game using the CV1. This size, the game must have taken at least 2 years to make, no way the artists had time to change a lot when Oculus suddenly introduced a lcd hmd a few months ago. 


After some more time the game have gotten better. But I stil have some complaints, the biggest is the slow moving both in human and God form.. They really need to give us a run button, or a slider to increase the movement speed!!
The Closet Sim Rig
Aourus Pro Z390 - i7 8086K 32GB Ram - MSI RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio 11GB - Windows 10  / GT Omega WS - NLR V3 - RS6 - Jetseat kw-908 / Fanatec CSW 2.5 / Fanatec ClubSport V3 pedals / Fanatec SQ Shifter 1.5 / Fanatec CS HB V.1.5 / HE SQ Shifter / SHH Shifter / TH8A Shifter / G27 Shifter - Button Box / DSD Button Box / BBJ Button Box / Wind simulator / Rift - S