Forum Discussion
Developing w/ Dk2 for the CV
Hello fellow Oculators!
My name is Alex Van Halen and I am a student at Indiana University studying video game development. After contemplating over the final designs and format for my Senior year project, I have decided to create a survival horror from the ground up for the consumer version of the Oculus. As ambitious as this prospect seems at first glance, I know it is accomplishable and has enough leeway to be developed for a future platform just as it's released. My basic premise in posting on this forum is to ask a ton of questions all in one bundle and hopefully VR developers more seasoned than myself will be able to answer in part or full. I apologize if these questions have been asked in previous posts, I believe they are legitimate inquiries however.
1.) Firstly, as everyone has seen, the CV will require shaded pixel counts in the upper 200 millions, and a default eye target scale (whatever that is??) reaching 400 million echelons. Currently I have one 3D modeller with great PC specs that actually fulfill the CV's prereqs, however my lenovo is moderate with its gfx. As lead producer, I want to ensure that the models and environment art being produced will look great inside the CV. We do have a Dk2 shared between the two of us however, which leads me to my first Q: What precautions should I adhere to in order to develop for the CV with the Dk2 in terms of gfx, rendering, and other pertinent attributes? My ideal in this questioning is to not develop a game using the Dk2 for the CV only for its translation across platforms to fall flat on its face. Will the models and textures that look great on a Dk2 become moderate on the CV? Should we amp the 3D art to a higher level so it will translate with great gfx on the CV?
2.)My next question concerns the advancement of Gpu as time elapses. Knowing that technology changes on a dime these days and compounds upon itself in accelerating multiples, how will the scene of gfx change by the time the CV releases? As it stands, Nvidia has apexed at a 980Ti and the CV requires a 970, which means it requires a gfx card that is of very high caliber in today's market. Lets advance 9 months to the release of the CV, will a 970 be pushed down a couple ranks to become a mid-high tier card and many others have surpassed its capabilities? My reasoning for this is to assume, based on the availability/price, the potential market for the CV whether it will be hardcore gamers with the latest gfx card or mass consumers who purchase this mid-tier card at a reasonable price. Will Nvidia and others be making a big push just for the CV?
As I'm sure many of you are in the same situation, developing an end-product for the CV with the Dk2, I hope many of you will share tips or advice on this subject that ensures development quality will not be lost in this translation. Luckily, I have not yet prototyped because I want every asset to look pristine in the CV, which is why I'm here inquiring.
I Thank ye all for ye's help,
Alex V
My name is Alex Van Halen and I am a student at Indiana University studying video game development. After contemplating over the final designs and format for my Senior year project, I have decided to create a survival horror from the ground up for the consumer version of the Oculus. As ambitious as this prospect seems at first glance, I know it is accomplishable and has enough leeway to be developed for a future platform just as it's released. My basic premise in posting on this forum is to ask a ton of questions all in one bundle and hopefully VR developers more seasoned than myself will be able to answer in part or full. I apologize if these questions have been asked in previous posts, I believe they are legitimate inquiries however.
1.) Firstly, as everyone has seen, the CV will require shaded pixel counts in the upper 200 millions, and a default eye target scale (whatever that is??) reaching 400 million echelons. Currently I have one 3D modeller with great PC specs that actually fulfill the CV's prereqs, however my lenovo is moderate with its gfx. As lead producer, I want to ensure that the models and environment art being produced will look great inside the CV. We do have a Dk2 shared between the two of us however, which leads me to my first Q: What precautions should I adhere to in order to develop for the CV with the Dk2 in terms of gfx, rendering, and other pertinent attributes? My ideal in this questioning is to not develop a game using the Dk2 for the CV only for its translation across platforms to fall flat on its face. Will the models and textures that look great on a Dk2 become moderate on the CV? Should we amp the 3D art to a higher level so it will translate with great gfx on the CV?
2.)My next question concerns the advancement of Gpu as time elapses. Knowing that technology changes on a dime these days and compounds upon itself in accelerating multiples, how will the scene of gfx change by the time the CV releases? As it stands, Nvidia has apexed at a 980Ti and the CV requires a 970, which means it requires a gfx card that is of very high caliber in today's market. Lets advance 9 months to the release of the CV, will a 970 be pushed down a couple ranks to become a mid-high tier card and many others have surpassed its capabilities? My reasoning for this is to assume, based on the availability/price, the potential market for the CV whether it will be hardcore gamers with the latest gfx card or mass consumers who purchase this mid-tier card at a reasonable price. Will Nvidia and others be making a big push just for the CV?
As I'm sure many of you are in the same situation, developing an end-product for the CV with the Dk2, I hope many of you will share tips or advice on this subject that ensures development quality will not be lost in this translation. Luckily, I have not yet prototyped because I want every asset to look pristine in the CV, which is why I'm here inquiring.
I Thank ye all for ye's help,
Alex V
5 Replies
- 1) In terms of art content creation, there is not a big difference between DK2 and CV1. While the CV1 obviously looks better, there is not a huge difference in resolution. So art made in DK2 will look fine (and probably better) in CV1 without any change. The biggest difference is the refresh, DK2 is 75Hz while CV1 is 90Hz. Which means you actually may want to be *more* conservative with a CV1 game in terms of graphical effects, since you must render at a higher resolution and refresh rate with the same content. This means in you are developing on DK2 (and plan to support CV1) you should bump up the eye buffer resolution and see if you can still hit 90fps minimum.
2) The spec for CV1 should not be changing, so if you purchase and develop for the GTX 970 you should be good for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if some devs allow for higher-end options down the road, but all games should continue to work with the 970-class rig. "cybereality" wrote:
1) In terms of art content creation, there is not a big difference between DK2 and CV1. While the CV1 obviously looks better, there is not a huge difference in resolution. So art made in DK2 will look fine (and probably better) in CV1 without any change. The biggest difference is the refresh, DK2 is 75Hz while CV1 is 90Hz. Which means you actually may want to be *more* conservative with a CV1 game in terms of graphical effects, since you must render at a higher resolution and refresh rate with the same content. This means in you are developing on DK2 (and plan to support CV1) you should bump up the eye buffer resolution and see if you can still hit 90fps minimum.
2) The spec for CV1 should not be changing, so if you purchase and develop for the GTX 970 you should be good for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if some devs allow for higher-end options down the road, but all games should continue to work with the 970-class rig.
@Cyberreality, can you elaborate on this? "you should bump up the eye buffer resolution and see if you can still hit 90fps minimum. "
How does one exactly "bump up the eye buffer resolution?"
also, is there any kind of blog\thread\list of things we can do now to assure CV1 compatibility ? I'm getting the feeling that games that perform fine on DK2 are going to struggle on the CV1.. which seems sorta counter intuitive, but not really now that you pointed it out..- @wheatgrinder: Yes, so the display resolution and the rendered resolution do not have to be the same. By default, the eye buffer would be around 30% larger than the native display resolution. For example, the DK2 screen is 1080p but the render is closer to 1440p. You can adjust this to be more or less to optimize either for performance or quality. In UE4 you would use the Screen Percentage (i.e. "hmd sp 120" to make it 120% of native). In the old Unity integration there were two values: virtual and native resolution, I can check if this is possible with the new built-in VR support.
In terms of the performance difference, the other issue (aside from resolution) is the bump from 75Hz to 90Hz. So given the same game that runs fine on DK2, i.e. at 1080P 75Hz, now has to run at 1200P 90Hz on CV1, which is more intensive. So there will have to be some optimization or compromise met, as a game that runs below performance will be uncomfortable for users. - Cyberreality,
if you could find out how I can do this test in unity with built in VR, or if its logical with the unity utilities that would be helpful.
Thanks again - OK, for the new VR support, you can adjust the rendered resolution with this API call.
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference ... Scale.htmlVRSettings.renderScale = 0.7f;
That would be about half as many pixels.
