Watching 3D Movies on VR (Virtual Reality) Headsets

[RefractiveIndex]

Originally Posted by cdx47

Oh ok, funny how we take certain things for granted.. I also have the Quest version. I use that, not Link to connect to the PC. Then I run the Stream version from there. Inside the Quest app there are options for bandwidth, codec, and other tweaks.

Sorry to keep pestering you

How do I use the Quest app Virtual desktop with the cable?

Many thanks.

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by RefractiveIndex

Sorry to keep pestering you

How do I use the Quest app Virtual desktop with the cable?

Many thanks.

No problem I connect to the PC but don't start Link. Then I run the Quest app. Then I run the Steam app from inside the Quest app.

[cdx47]

I've spent months of long hours tinkering, reading, adding and removing software to the display chain and configuration when I should have been watching. movies. But it's days like these that make it worth it. Before I said the the picture quality I'm getting would match a good projector. Now, the picture quality is close enough to an OLED TV that without SDE it would be the same. It doesn't affect 99% of the movies I watch but there is that 1% it does, especially some older poor picture quality movies. That's the final impossible hurdle to cross, but man am I happy and grateful to be able to watch 3D looking this good.

I "think" I'm finally going to spend more time watching than tinkering from now on

[unberechenbar]

I wish Sony would allow the PSVR2 to support 3D Blu-ray playback.

[RefractiveIndex]

Originally Posted by cdx47

No problem I connect to the PC but don't start Link. Then I run the Quest app. Then I run the Steam app from inside the Quest app.

I'm still having trouble following.

When does the cable link come into play? How are you connecting to PC without starting link?

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by RefractiveIndex

I'm still having trouble following.

When does the cable link come into play? How are you connecting to PC without starting link?

I was thinking about that. I just plug in the cable, accept USB access to my PC when asked and that's it. I've turned off Air Link so it physically connects to the PC over the cable. But it doesn't connect to the Oculus PC software until I go into the Link options and connect. Then I start Quest VD and from there I run Steam VD.

[RefractiveIndex]

Originally Posted by cdx47

I was thinking about that. I just plug in the cable, accept USB access to my PC when asked and that's it. I've turned off Air Link so it physically connects to the PC over the cable. But it doesn't connect to the Oculus PC software until I go into the Link options and connect. Then I start Quest VD and from there I run Steam VD.

My Quest 2 VD wants to connect through a Wi-Fi connection even though I've accepted USB access to the PC.

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by RefractiveIndex

My Quest 2 VD wants to connect through a Wi-Fi connection even though I've accepted USB access to the PC.

I've noticed that and I think that's how it's supposed to work. What I think happens is that you connect to the Quest via wifi, run the Steam version which then sends data over cable hence the increased bandwidth. What's interesting is that once this is set up, even after disconnecting the cable the bandwidth increase is still evident over wi-fi although that might depend on your wifi capabilities.

[RefractiveIndex]

Originally Posted by cdx47

I've noticed that and I think that's how it's supposed to work. What I think happens is that you connect to the Quest via wifi, run the Steam version which then sends data over cable hence the increased bandwidth. What's interesting is that once this is set up, even after disconnecting the cable the bandwidth increase is still evident over wi-fi although that might depend on your wifi capabilities.

Ok I have it working

Thank you very much. The horrible colour banding is gone now. I'd happily watch 2D movies on my Quest 2 now as well, as even The Batman looks great .

I think I can just enjoy watching now, I'm doubtful anymore tinkering would yield greater results at this point.

I'm under the impression the image quality improvement is due to the Quest headset handling the debanding process while if you use cable link that step is skipped during the encoding.

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by RefractiveIndex

Ok I have it working

Thank you very much. The horrible colour banding is gone now. I'd happily watch 2D movies on my Quest 2 now as well, as even The Batman looks great .

I think I can just enjoy watching now, I'm doubtful anymore tinkering would yield greater results at this point.

I'm under the impression the image quality improvement is due to the Quest headset handling the debanding process while if you use cable link that step is skipped during the encoding.

No problem I would be surprised if the banding is completely gone. There are scenes in Captain Marvel (when Danvers looks at her wrist device on an alien world) and Dune (Behind Paul's mother when Paul is running away from the sand worm) where major banding is still there, just reduced. If you really have no banding in those scenes then I will need to ask about your setup

There's no way the Quest can do debanding better than your computer GPU unless you have an extremely poor GPU.

[RefractiveIndex]

Originally Posted by cdx47

No problem I would be surprised if the banding is completely gone. There are scenes in Captain Marvel (when Danvers looks at her wrist device on an alien world) and Dune (Behind Paul's mother when Paul is running away from the sand worm) where major banding is still there, just reduced. If you really have no banding in those scenes then I will need to ask about your setup

There's no way the Quest can do debanding better than your computer GPU unless you have an extremely poor GPU.

Yes no doubt my PC GPU is better at debanding than the Quest, the problem is software associated with the cable link isn't bothering to do it. This is a known problem I've seen discussed on Reddit. Thanks to your workaround steam virtual desktop sends the data via cable to be rendered inside the virtual desktop app with the Quest hardware performing the rendering. Makes me think this gives the PC GPU a little more headroom to perform the 4K upscaling. But I'm only making guesses here.

[Killer Meteor]

Are they any VR sets that plug into a 3-d player so I can watch the disc directly?

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by Killer Meteor

Are they any VR sets that plug into a 3-d player so I can watch the disc directly?

From what I can gather there have been a few that claim to work that way, but each one costs more than your average VR hmd and has a major flaw or two. The most recent one called the Cinara Edge is a case in point. It looks good on paper but in practice it doesn't reliably connect to your blu-ray player. The Goovis does apparently connect to a blu-ray player reliably but according to the latest comments in the thread, the screen is small.

[Just_Discovered_3D]

Originally Posted by cdx47

From what I can gather there have been a few that claim to work that way, but each one costs more than your average VR hmd and has a major flaw or two. The most recent one called the Cinara Edge is a case in point. It looks good on paper but in practice it doesn't reliably connect to your blu-ray player. The Goovis does apparently connect to a blu-ray player reliably but according to the latest comments in the thread, the screen is small.

A decade ago, quasi-VR visors like that were cheap Chinesium and priced accordingly. Now they're better quality but 10x the price.

That Goovis seemed interesting until the price tag. Call it closed-mindedness, but a product named "Goovis" doesn't seem like one that should come with an $800 price tag (and that's during a sale).

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by Just_Discovered_3D

A decade ago, quasi-VR visors like that were cheap Chinesium and priced accordingly. Now they're better quality but 10x the price.

That Goovis seemed interesting until the price tag. Call it closed-mindedness, but a product named "Goovis" doesn't seem like one that should come with an $800 price tag (and that's during a sale).

I keep looking around for something better than what I have got, but I end up back where I started. None of them beats the color and contrast of the OG Quest. That's before we get into the extra post processing I can do to improve both.

[evertec]

I just got a Pico 4 and that's my go-to now for 3D movies now. I've had the Rift, both quests, Reverb G2 and others, and the combination of resolution, portability, field of view, and lenses make the Pico 4 great for movies. In fact, I even like the experience better than my 65" LG Oled passive 3d... you can make the virtual screen fill the entire FOV or more without any crosstalk unlike the LG, and the resolution, though still not as good, isn't so much worse that you feel like you're missing out by a lot.

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by evertec

I just got a Pico 4 and that's my go-to now for 3D movies now. I've had the Rift, both quests, Reverb G2 and others, and the combination of resolution, portability, field of view, and lenses make the Pico 4 great for movies. In fact, I even like the experience better than my 65" LG Oled passive 3d... you can make the virtual screen fill the entire FOV or more without any crosstalk unlike the LG, and the resolution, though still not as good, isn't so much worse that you feel like you're missing out by a lot.

Congrats

Resolution is definitely not an issue with the Pico My old Quest has much lower resolution but I loose zero details. (With post processing, I would actually challenge anyone with a 4K version of the same movie to better it.) The issues you have are to do with contrast and colors, not resolution. I almost bought the Pico 4 but stuck with my old Quest for exactly that reason. If you compare the two devices then as long as you are not hyper-sensitive to SDE, you will see a clear advantage with the old Quest. If SDE does bother you then the Pico might be better.

[evertec]

Originally Posted by cdx47

Congrats

Resolution is definitely not an issue with the Pico My old Quest has much lower resolution but I loose zero details. (With post processing, I would actually challenge anyone with a 4K version of the same movie to better it.) The issues you have are to do with contrast and colors, not resolution. I almost bought the Pico 4 but stuck with my old Quest for exactly that reason. If you compare the two devices then as long as you are not hyper-sensitive to SDE, you will see a clear advantage with the old Quest. If SDE does bother you then the Pico might be better.

Maybe I'm just more sensitive to resolution and SDE but the Pico looks much better to me on movies to me than the Quest 1 did. Sure, the blacks aren't as good, but they're not terrible either, and colors are quite good IMO. I'm not sure how you can say you're losing zero details when the resolution of the quest can't come close to displaying the full 1080p resolution per eye of a 3D Bluray (1440x1600 per eye and with a pentile matrix, vs 2160x2160 full RGB of the pico 4)

[cdx47]

Originally Posted by evertec

I'm not sure how you can say you're losing zero details when the resolution of the quest can't come close to displaying the full 1080p resolution per eye of a 3D Bluray (1440x1600 per eye and with a pentile matrix, vs 2160x2160 full RGB of the pico 4)

Your assumption "on the face of it" is reasonable based on the numbers. But I know that the Quest resolution is close enough not to make much of a difference. I'm confident in that assessment because I'm watching on a very large screen so if there was a resolution deficiency then I would see it. I make doubly sure by extracting the full 1920x2160 FullHD3D resolution (1080p per eye) which when played, downscales to the Quest native resolution. If it's on the disc then it's on my screen. Finally I post process the image to increase the visibility of that detail. It's why I can confidently compare my final results with 4K discs which for the most part are usually 2K upscaled. For movies shot in 4K and above then put on a 4K DI I'm not so sure

HtH

[evertec]

Originally Posted by cdx47

But I know that the Quest resolution is close enough not to make much of a difference. I'm confident in that assessment because I'm watching on a very large screen so if there was a resolution deficiency then I would see it. I make doubly sure by extracting the full 1920x2160 FullHD3D resolution (1080p per eye) which when played, downscales to the Quest native resolution. If it's on the disc then it's on my screen. Finally I post process the image to increase the visibility of that detail. It's why I can confidently compare my final results with 4K discs which for the most part are usually 2K upscaled. For movies shot in 4K and above then put on a 4K DI I'm not so sure

I'm not sure how you're so confident you're not losing resolution if you haven't actually compared it to the pico4 or other high resolution headset? How do you know it's not even that much better on it? I'm pretty confident you're not seeing the full potential resolution because even the pico 4 isn't quite high enough to show the full clarity of the dual 1080P images unless you were to blow the virtual screen up so big that you have to move your head around 180 degrees or so. I know this because I have an LG 4K OLED that can display the full 1080P per eye and it's a good bit clearer than the pico if I set the screen sizes to be equivalent. And it's waaay clearer than my original Quest.