God-Rays are real and disappointing coming from DK2

[Maxxgold]

I just received my Rift, and while I'm very happy with most of the changes one thing glaringly sticks out, "God-Rays". Its like having smudges on your sunglasses. Yeah you can see, but the smudge just keeps annoying you until you clean your sunglasses or get a new pair. I sympathize with anyone who is annoyed by this. Before I got my CV1 I thought people were just complaining to complain, but the God-Rays are a big negative. The issue I have is that my DK2 has no God-Rays. There is no way this ever should have been released to the public in this state. These lenses literally ruin the VR experience.  My first impression after seeing the God-Rays first hand was, why would anyone release this to the public. The lenses are fine if there is plenty of light but anything that has just a hint of darkness in it and the God-Rays are there to annoy you. I haven't enjoyed anything since putting on the CV1. I'm going to give this a try for a week to see if I can get used to it, if not; I really think I'm going to sell this unit and make a few hundred dollars and just use the DK2 until the next generation. They should have stuck with the same lenses in the DK2. Those lenses are awesome and these Fresnel lenses are terrible. I believe Lucky Palmer said he would never use Fresnel lenses. I wonder what happened to make them use lenses they said they would never use? 

[K33L]

I do have to say the god rays in mine are a lot worse than the previous video from the other poster, but from my earlier post, I have played a lot more and the god rays are barely noticeable once in game.  When just plain text on a screen however they are terrible, but since that doesn't really matter they don't bother me nearly as much.  On a plus side I don't have any red dots that ive noticed in black areas.  Just thought I would come back and share.

[Lusca]

I intend to take detailed pics of the lenses right out of the box. Then again after first wear. I'm a bit paranoid about quality control issues, considering everything I've heard.

[jab]

EVE:Valkyrie is a good example of a potentially very good VR experience being degraded by the god-rays. Especially in the menus and when the cockpit is darkly lit. First time I tried EVE:V I was like, f**k why did the EVE developers release the game with such a dark interface knowing the rays would be this bad?

[DaftnDirect]

They probably did a lot of the development, if not all the development, with the DK2 as the reference. I'm sure devs will learn to optimise for the Fresnel lenses.

[IngQuikemon]

Well, is good to know i am not crazy, i could tell that any source of light on the cockpit and on dark scenes, any light source would be like a super god ray emitter, but once the action kicks in and lights are all over the place, things get better. Any ideas of how this could be reduced? is this because of the Fresnel lenses?

[jab]

Being one of the flagship games for the CV1 release, I am pretty sure they (EVE devs) where amount the first to get pre-production CV1's during development and more importantly release QA. But I am not blaming EVE, I am blaming Oculus.

It's like the early feedback about SDE on DK's made Oculus obsessive about removing it at all cost. But for me, the god-rays are more immersion breaking then SDE ever was. And ironically there is still plenty of SDE if you look for it. Vive not being so obsessed about removing SDE seem to have hit on a better middle ground with this issue. But I still don't fully get why both of them went the Fresnel route. If the GearVR had IPD adjustment it would be 'perfect'. Acceptable SDE for this generation, focus adjustment and no god-rays.

[NamelessPFG]

I notice the light shafts/god-rays for sure, but I can ignore them for the time being.

I've never tried a DK2, but I do have a Note 4 Gear VR with very DK2-esque lenses. Sure, they don't have the Fresnel artifacts like god-rays, but they also suffer from hideous amounts of chromatic aberration along the periphery that I find incredibly annoying, especially since the Gear VR doesn't have any counter-aberration to its rendering. Maybe it saps too many GPU cycles from those weak phone SoCs.

The CV1, by contrast, has considerably less chromatic aberration and more of the screen in focus near the center. Perhaps that's why they went the Fresnel route for all I know.

No, the lenses aren't perfect, but lens design is difficult, especially if you want to keep size and weight down. Just ask anyone who's bought high-end camera lenses.

It's just too bad that the CV1's design doesn't allow for user-replaceable lenses. It may be possible, but with how that inner fabric stretches around the stock lenses, it'd be a tricky mod to make.

[pedrw]

I have the same problem and the image is a bit dark. Will future updates will solve these problems ?

[Maxxgold]

pedrw said:

I have the same problem and the image is a bit dark. Will future updates will solve these problems ?

Update: I'm still disappointed that they decided to use these lenses, but I have gotten over the God-Rays. After you play a while, the God-Rays just don't bother you as much. I have also found that if you turn the gamma up in games where they bother you, Elite Dangerous is the game i spend a lot of time playing and where the God-Rays annoyed me the most, then you can diminish the effect of the God-Ray's. I also found that adjusting the eye spacer on the bottom will redistribute the rays to the outer edges, kind of like on the Vive, just play with it till you get the rays where you can deal with them.

[jayzig]

I agree with the OP 100%. I didn't even know about this issue until i received my unit. The god rays are strong with my Rift. Elite dangerous is literally unplayable. the rays will stretch to the edge and light smudges will stretch to the peripheral depending on the scene. It is sickening. I contacted customer support to try and get a replacement or a refund. It seemed obvious to me that my Rift was defective. That's when I discovered that Oculus doesn't do returns or refunds for this issue. They say that "this is something that is apparent in all Rifts" and that my Rift "is fully functional". Boy do I feel like a chump. At least I still have my DK2.