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True black smearing in DK2

equusvenustas
Honored Guest
After the EULA post, i started to browse treads in reddit and i found about this problem, i would like to know why it happens. It has to do with the AMOLED matrix? for example, the capacitor in the pixel circuit delaying the pixel due to charge time? or what is the reason of this problem.
Knowledge, the ever growing and most powerful tool known. Pick it up! the common fools are scared of it!
158 REPLIES 158

Anonymous
Not applicable
"ThreeEyes" wrote:
Yes, I can see it in Tuscany but in my opinion it really isn't that big of a deal. I actually had to look for it to see it and it is there.

If all the reports of black smear have anyone freaked out or concerned, don't be. It's just my opinion, but I think the issue is overblown.


Have you got a chance to check out the Boiler Room demo? That is by far the worst black smearing I have seen.

Nedo
Explorer
what ThreeEyes said,
i only see it when looking for it, and for me it dont look bad at all,
similar to an open fire and the shadows move around a little.
I'm totaly ok with this, but the direct HMD access... umm not one new demo worked
beside the Demos with the SDK 😉
Order DK1 Mar 30, 2013 / Order DK2: Mar 19, 2014 / Order CV1: Jan 6, 2016 / Order HTC Vive Feb 29, 2016

Fredz
Explorer
I just received my DK2 and tested some demos but I forgot about the black smearing with the excitation. I'll retry and carefully look for it, but I didn't even remark it for my first hour of testing. So as others have said it's really not a very important problem, so now I really don't understand why people made a fuss about it.

Fredrum
Expert Protege
Well I suppose if you imagine you were in charge of a million dollar project and had to make a decision for how the game would look, could it be set in a dark forest? If all you had to go on was the dk2 screen. And someone saying that for sure it will be fixed, I promise.
If your head was on the line would you then set your game in that dark forest?
I imagine that if you are a developer it could make you careful and affect your decisions?

equusvenustas
Honored Guest
I think in a situation like that i will do and use whatever i had at hand to make sure it will look good, instead of egaging in debates and making multiple posts of how "bad" it looks and giving "feedback" with the hopes of accelerating a repair.
Knowledge, the ever growing and most powerful tool known. Pick it up! the common fools are scared of it!

Jabbah
Honored Guest
"fredrum" wrote:
Well I suppose if you imagine you were in charge of a million dollar project and had to make a decision for how the game would look, could it be set in a dark forest? If all you had to go on was the dk2 screen. And someone saying that for sure it will be fixed, I promise.
If your head was on the line would you then set your game in that dark forest?
I imagine that if you are a developer it could make you careful and affect your decisions?


The software hack fix is the "green haze". Funny thing about forests, they're kind of green man. 😉

sc4r
Honored Guest
To start off I don't have nor have I even been near a dk2.

But I have been following this thread and I need to ask all of you guys, did anyone ever confirm that this problem only happens with 100% black? Because I never saw any confirmation, instead only a couple of speculations and since then a lot of people accepted that using dark gray and no blacks is a fix. I believe that is a rumor, correct me if you are certain that I am wrong. I have seen a couple of people saying they see ghosting in many places, out of the top of my head someone said it happened with the fireplace in tuscany. No blacks there, right?

Also eVRyday said he saw it with the lamp in the office demo and that's white on grey (9:22):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t-7W61LGLU&list=UUTlgIRnl3viQb1zCJqFJwqw#t=562

Perhaps true blacks worsen the problem? Again though using gray isn't a fix.

Fredz
Explorer
"sc4r" wrote:
instead only a couple of speculations and since then a lot of people accepted that using dark gray and no blacks is a fix

I've set up a page with the most relevant threads I've found about purple smearing, I've seen the problem only mentioned with black. See : http://vrwiki.wikispaces.com/Black+smearing

I've yet to read a definitive technical answer from Samsung about the reason for this though.

In my experience with DK2 demos it only happened with black, specifically in the Millenium Falcon, Spirited Away and RedOfPaw adventure demos. I've seen the fire in Oculus World Demo (Tuscany) mentioned as well.

lamour42
Expert Protege
Sorry to revive this old thread: I didn't know of this problem and encountered it yesterday when designing a very dark space scene in my own DirectX 12 engine. The purple smearing on total black pixels was absolutely annoying.
As I do not yet have received my CV1 I encountered this in DK2 and had to fix this problem in my pixel shaders:

// prevent strange smearing effect for total black pixels (only in HMD)
return clamp(color, 0.0021973, 1.0); 

(the code ensures that all pixel colors are at least 1, never 0, in the (0-255) RGB components.)

As I use newest SDK 1.4 I guess this was never fixed for DK2 in software from oculus. Anyone knows if this is still the case for CV1? It's very ugly code to artificially alter pixel colors like this and I would rather not have to rely on this.

On the other hand removing the code and have the smearing in DK2 would be a bad thing even if CV1 does not have this problem. At least as long as a lot of people are still using DK2.