Thursday, April 28, 2016

Dev update #8

This week we are not deploying desktop client patch - Android is getting small update with version 0.8.3. We optimized several things in mobile app but most of the week was spent on improving our SteamVR driver (new version is not ready yet) and searching for Android artifacting solution.

Small QOL changes


Several people suggested to hide the vertical white bar because it was visible in the viewport. It will now automatically hide after 10 seconds. Settings button will now automatically dim by 70% too.

If you want to align your cardboard to the screen, tap anywhere to show the vertical bar again (it will disappear after 30 seconds after manual toggle).


We also added "Never ask me again" option for bluetooth prompt so it won't annoy you anymore. We're leaving a small note at the bottom if it's online.

There were some other changes, optimizations mostly but nothing worth writing about. Some bytes were spared. Some bytes move a little faster.

SteamVR driver progress


As some of you noticed you had to reinstall our SteamVR driver after yesterday's Steam update. Next version of our driver will be properly registered with Steam API and won't require reinstallation anymore. Actually it won't even require manual installation, it will be done automatically.

We are not entirely sure but after some changes in our pipeline it seems that SteamVR latency is even lower now. It's hard to measure but it all seems more fluent.

New version will also allow better context switching between VR apps. More on this when it's out.

The ongoing battle with artifacts - frame loss / latency @ decoder


This is very annoying problem because whenever we finally think "Okay, that was it, fixed" something new comes up. This is the issue that can be identified by tapping top-left part of the streaming screen and seeing high (above 0.1 ms) decoder latency and constantly raising Frames lost @ decoder counter.

We had ~30 reports of this happening and we can now share some data - this is top 8 of reported problems.

Phone nameReported casesInstall count%Chip
Asus Zenfone 25895.62%Intel® Atom™ Quad Core Z3580
Galaxy S45845.95%Exynos 5410 | Snapdragon 600
Galaxy S721251.60%Exynos 8890 | Snapdragon 820
Galaxy S7 Edge23390.59%Exynos 8890 | Snapdragon 820
Redmi Note 22603.33%MediaTek Helio X10
Nexus 611100.91%Snapdragon 805
HUAWEI Honor 61812.50%Hisilicon Kirin 910 Octa Core
Xperia Z C66031283.57%Snapdragon S4

Galaxy S4 has the most problems. There were 2 users reporting hard device crashes. 
Zenfone 2 also has constant artifacting. No crashes were reported but it is still unusable if it's turning into blocky pixel mess after several seconds.
Galaxy S7/Edge seems to have something special about its decoder too.

These numbers are high because when we look at top 10 most popular devices of our users (S6 & OnePlus One leading the pack) there are 2000+ installs shared between them and 0.1% error report rate. Also, the reported errors are probably caused by something else because there were more issues than artifacting there.

One thing I would like to know. Is there anyone that got VRidge to work successfuly with bolded phones in the table? 

Please let us know if you got it to work. I know about one Zenfone 2 user that fixed it by changing CPU governor to interactive but the same didn't work for other phones. Send us an e-mailPM @ reddit or use any other contact channel listed at the right column, at the top of the page.

33 comments:

  1. S4 user, It seems to work much better at lower resolution and lower frame rate. Don't know if this helps, but what I see is a very nice image at one moment, then from that moment on till a second or two, moving your head distorts everything (it's like image gets dragged and broken), and then after the second or two, it refreshed to a nice image.

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    1. Yes this exact same thing happens with my S4, i've tried changing the cpu governor but this does not fix the problem

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    2. @Unknown (August 1)
      Try the new beta version
      https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.riftcat.vridge
      and report problems by going into settings -> diagnostics -> enable diagnostic mode. Try launching game or two (wait 20-30 secs each time) and go back to diagnostic settings and use "send logs" button.

      Delete
  2. Works fine on note 4. But if I compare image quality with moonlight is much better on moonlight. Will be posible to add moonlight code? Other thing would be so god is 1440p resolution.

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    Replies
    1. You can manually set 2560x1440 resolution and ~30-50 Mbps bitrate to see nearly perfect image in terms of quality.

      We will allow such settings via UI once we optimize everything, because sometimes such high settings can cause extra issues in current implementation.

      We can't add moonlight code because of its license. We also want to stay both AMD- and NVIDIA-friendly. There will be some vendor-specific tweaks in the future because there is a lot of room for improvements.

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    2. Forgot to mention how to set it - go to Config/vridgeQuality.cfg to set those values.

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    3. I have try 1440p and its Incredible the quality!! The only "problem" in .cfg i cant save the mbps.When i open again .cfg i see another time 23 mbps. With project cars and revive its so good!

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    4. how you get project cars running with riftcat ??

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    5. @Carlos
      It will be overwritten whenever you reconnect your phone or click "Save" in quality settings.

      We are going to add more persistent way of storing custom settings.

      Delete
    6. Do you guys actually enjoy this? For me most of the games are either bugged or just TERRIBLY blurry and delayed.. The ones of you that like that "VR-experience", have you ever tried a GearVR? Thats just not even comparable.. :S

      I'm really excited for this project.. but atm its just a "hey look, the games run, nothing more - state"

      Same with the eye-distance.. its not possible to make it sharp for me..

      Keep up your work and thanks alot=) This shouldn't be a complaint to the fantastic developper^^

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    7. @Unknown
      Most of our users are actually running it without any major issues. It's just few phone models that are failing for reasons beyond our understanding. What is your phone model, OS & video card?

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    8. Hi Kogi, really??^^ Oh well, then excuse me for my previous post and thanks in advance for your interest in helping such an idiot as me:D

      I use a Samsung Galaxy S7. Everything runs perfect on my PC

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    9. oh now it works with my name too^^ plus is should give you further informations:P :
      PC:
      Windows 7 64x
      NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Gainward

      Phone OS:
      Marshmellow

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    10. @Trices Trices

      No worries. :)

      I can confirm that S7 and S7 Edge both have the same problem where video stream is constantly getting delayed and pixelated . I'm still trying to solve it.

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    11. @kogi

      No worries dude.. as i said, sorry for the previous post:P Wasn't in the best mood.

      Thanks for your work and keep it up! You're on an amazing project here:D

      Cheers

      Delete
    12. Gregor to play pcars you need a injector named revive. At revive page you have the instructions. This is to play oculus games on vive but works too with riftcat. Download revive and the pcars patch.

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    13. can you please provide some www link for this injector . I'll be greatfull

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  3. HUAWEI Honor 6 user, i still have artifacts with 5GHz Wifi and bluetooth disabled (so it's not a bandwidth issue)
    I can't use the NvEnc option with my GTX970 (image is not decoded on the phone.)

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  4. Hi riftcat team.

    Reporting a strange thing with my Redmi Note 2: version 0.8.2 have worked almost without artifacts (still blurry and with high latency)
    But after upgrade to 0.8.3 artifacts back again.
    I've found and installed old version 0.8.2 but artifacts remain.
    According to stats, frames lost on decoder.

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    Replies
    1. This issue can manifest in all ways you described (bluriness, latency, artifacting). We are trying to fix underlying cause but still we haven't found it. It affects several phones, including yours.

      Delete
  5. Hey are there any plans on making a gear vr compatible app?

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  6. Cannot wait for the proper implentation of Gear VR! Thanks for all your hard work, I didn't even know this was possible until today! Having a blast!

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  7. Gear vr through sidloadvr would be perfect

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  8. Xiaomi Mi3 Marshmallow, Developer ROM. SD 801 2.3Ghz quad, 2GB. No artifacts and no frame loss most of the time in SteamVR tutorial and The Lab. Only in certain scenes(LG Neuro when in pulsating neurons, Welcome to Oculus opening scene). Phone gets very, very hot tho.. Once it shuts down and refuses to turn on for about 1 mins.. but fine after cooling down a bit.

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  9. Samsung galaxy S4, lots of artifacts + phone is keep reconnecting

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    Replies
    1. S4 and Zenfone 2 are two most common phones running into problems with VRidge. We are in the process of getting them to the office.

      Pozdrawiamy. :)

      Delete
  10. Would love GearVR support aswell :-)

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    1. It's still on our to-do list. Temporary workaround
      https://riftcat.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/208609385-Can-I-play-with-VRidge-using-Samsung-GearVR-

      Delete
  11. On s4 sais this: http://prntscr.com/bj5nf7 any help?

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  12. It come up with an error when clicking the PlaySteamVR button on RiftCat. Steam pops up and says "Steam VR failed to initialized for unknown reasons. (Error:Shared IPC Compositor Invaild Connect Response (307))" On the SteamVR window that also pops up, it says "A key component of SteamVR isn't working properly. (306)"

    Any solutions?

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