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spyro
Up and Coming
August 21, 2014

Please stop supporting "Extended Mode"!

Hi,

IHMO the last weeks showed very clearly that the ongoing support for rendering to the Rift by extending your desktop (and rotating it 90°) was a mistake. Made in good intentions, sure, but nonetheless a mistake. It just killed the standard. And it's not even marked as deprecated at all.

It's a real pain in the neck to switch the settings for each individual demo/game. And I don't think that will change. The reason is simple: Programmers will always take the line of the least resistance (which seems to be Extended Mode as seen in Elite Dangerous, Project Cars, Life Of Speed, even in SteamVR etc.).

And this will get worse until the consumer version release. Why should the consumer take care of HOW the images are sent to the Rift? It should ONLY be accessable through Direct HMD Mode and that's it.

I know, the transition phase will be frustrating once more but this HAS to be done to fight this chaos. I thought this was the very reason to write this driver at the first place? And now we are constantly toggling between all the Direct/Extended, Primary/Secondary Display stuff again, fiddeling around with our graphics drivers, enjoying v-sync errors and (non performance related) juddering, see games launch on the 'wrong' monitor, experience 60 fps locking AND there is Direct Mode additionally.

Now there are even special tools made just to get this managed! http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2dzf5j/beta_unofficial_vr_game_launchermanager_by_bilago/

Please make an end to this chaos. Extended Mode HAS TO DIE! NOW!



spyro

    7 replies

    Mazhurg
    Participant
    August 21, 2014
    "spyro" wrote:

    It's a real pain in the neck to switch the settings for each individual demo/game. And I don't think that will change. The reason is simple: Programmers will always take the line of the least resistance (which seems to be Extended Mode as seen in Elite Dangerous, Project Cars, Life Of Speed, even in SteamVR etc.).


    Don't know about the others, but in Elite Dangerous DK2 support (to SDK 4.x) has not yet been formally put in.

    I suspect that the next iteration will probably include DK4.x in direct mode support as the developer is actually very keen on providing an exceptional experience.
    jherico
    Inspiring
    August 21, 2014
    "spyro" wrote:
    IHMO the last weeks showed very clearly that the ongoing support for rendering to the Rift by extending your desktop (and rotating it 90°) was a mistake. Made in good intentions, sure, but nonetheless a mistake.


    It might be difficult for you to accept, but Direct HMD is not ready for prime time. It doesn't work for OpenGL applications. That right there is a show-stopper. I write all my code against OpenGL because I want it to be cross-platform. Even if it did work on my hardware with my preferred API, there's no way that Oculus is going to be able to make it work on every platform with every possible set of hardware. Extended mode will always need to be functional as a fallback mechanism.

    "spyro" wrote:
    It's a real pain in the neck to switch the settings for each individual demo/game. And I don't think that will change. The reason is simple: Programmers will always take the line of the least resistance (which seems to be Extended Mode as seen in Elite Dangerous, Project Cars, Life Of Speed, even in SteamVR etc.).


    If you're writing against the C API properly, applications should not care nor whether or not the Rift is configured in Direct HMD mode or Extended mode. They can query for whether it's enabled or not and do things like create mirroring windows, but by and large the application writers don't have to do things differently depending on what mode the Rift is in. The chaos you're so upset about is because Direct HMD mode isn't completely functional, not because programmers are avoiding doing extra work to support it. For that matter, most developers seem to be going to the Unreal/Unity approach, which again takes the distinction out of their hands.

    "spyro" wrote:
    It should ONLY be accessable through Direct HMD Mode and that's it.


    No, it has to work for customers, ideally as many as possible. Will Direct HMD mode get better? Almost certainly. Should Oculus turn the Rift into a useless brick for all the developers working with systems that Direct HMD mode doesn't yet support? No, that would be retarded.
    Brad Davis - Developer for High Fidelity Co-author of Oculus Rift in Action
    mindabuse
    Up and Coming
    August 21, 2014
    "spyro" wrote:
    IHMO the last weeks showed very clearly that the ongoing support for rendering to the Rift by extending your desktop (and rotating it 90°) was a mistake. Made in good intentions, sure, but nonetheless a mistake. It just killed the standard. And it's not even marked as deprecated at all.


    OS X does not have direct display support whatsoever. Apps can only support extended mode. Linux doesn't even have a current 0.4 SDK release...

    Per the current release notes:


    Version 0.4.1 Beta 8/11/2014 New Features
    Added Mac OS support. Mac does not currently include a display driver, so it always works in Extend Desktop mode.
    stolk
    Up and Coming
    August 21, 2014
    "spyro" wrote:
    Hi,
    Please make an end to this chaos. Extended Mode HAS TO DIE! NOW!


    I've been unable to make Direct video mode work with my win32 OpenGL game.
    Only Extended-Desktop mode works for me.
    So please keep it in until all platforms and all graphics APIs can do direct.

    Bram
    spyroAuthor
    Up and Coming
    August 21, 2014
    I see that there are many problems right now, especially regarding Linux and OSX. But why isn't the right mode triggered by the application itself when there is no other solution?

    When the engine isn't supporting Direct HMD Mode for some very good reason it should switch the device into Extended Mode itself, rotate the rendered picture itself and reset the display mode to default when exiting.

    So I should rephrase my appeal:
    "Please fix the OpenGL bugs in the Oculus driver and THEN kill Extended Mode. If not possible than make it fully transparent for the user, thank you."

    The best solution would be direct driver support by Nvidia and AMD, of course. So let's hope that all that dirty driver-/OS-hacking will not be necessary in one year.

    spyro
    echostation
    Participant
    August 21, 2014
    Extended to desktop games/demos are a pain in the ass. I gave up on all of them till direct to rift is supported. Even if you get it to work in extended mode it looks like crap. My DK2 is pretty much useless to me ATM.
    spyroAuthor
    Up and Coming
    August 7, 2015
    Better late than never. :)
    https://developer.oculus.com/blog/upcom ... y-changes/



    Many thanks. May it never come back and bring desperation over mandkind again.
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