So I think this topic may have been hammered to death, but I’m trying to figure it out.
I have a i9900k + 3090 GPU - NVME drives and all that… so my system is beefy.
I use a PIMAX 8K X headset. 2 8k displays at 90hz, but I feel like I’m missing quality in video… I’ve got a lot of 8k video content from all providers (BadoinkVR, WankzVR, and so on…)
Currently I use whirligig - with LAV settings - WINRT or Media Foundation or DirectXShow (But BadoinkVR seems to hate this)
What settings are people running? How do I enhance my VR viewing experience? Does MADVR help with this? Is there an AI software that will make the image even more clearer?
I know there are MUCH smarter people out there than I when it comes to this, any help would be appreciated - Thank you!
8K = / = 8K
LAV Filters = DirectShow. Hardware Decoder : NVIDIA CUVID. Or D3D11. You have to test for your own configuration, usually CUVID is better. (can be found inside ‘LAV Video configuration’ in your startmenu)
madVR is despite it’s name only viable for 2D content.
Otherwise you’re pretty limited in terms of configuration. I don’t have experience with Pimax devices.
I don’t hear much good about it but like I said, I don’t know.
AI upscaling VR content doesn’t look good, as they tend to see the two pictures as one and they optimize / upscale different things on both pictures so most of the times it just gets more blurry or washed out.
Basically all 8K material in VR is upscaled native 5K/6K.
Try downloading the material with the highest average bit rate and see if you see any difference. Some studios release videos in 100+ Mb/s as an alternative download to the optimized version in e.g. 40 Mb/s. These videos are often huge so expect a 30-60 GB download instead of e.g. 10-20 GB. High bit rate will improve image quality in videos with a lot of movement or changes between each frame.
Even your system might struggle with a Pimax 8K. I’ve got a friend with a similar setup, even better actually, as you have and who is also extremely tech savvy. He always complain over shitty drivers, firmware and configuration software for Pimax and that his rig is barely enough for running Pimax 8K with full FoV. He mostly play VR games though.
In case it’s on the edges you experience bad image quality it could be an issue with the extreme FoV. Lenses combined with displays set at an angle makes perspective/projection difficult to manage.
Yeah - I’ve been noticing the bitrate difference, It just seems like it would be a bit better quality at 8k resolution. I get the PIMAX 8K X isn’t true 8K - but I think it’s the closest we got so far?
I also know that quality differences from one studio to the next.
I’m just hoping I have the right settings for my rig and it is outputting at the best quality I can get.
Whirligig seems to be the best to use thus far. I did however just get Heresphere… Not sure if that’s any better…
So I’ve tried SVP and it seems to create lag and my 6k+ videos lag - not sure how to get it to function properly. I’ve look at the how tos and followed instructions with tweaking the codecs and stuff.
Of course it adds overhead.
You were asking for better quality / upscaling. and I was under the impression that you don’t have trouble with performance.
I’m surprised CUVID is being recommended. Depending on the player and codec implementation, I think this could cause the GPU to bypass the dedicated video decoding engine (NVDEC) and instead use CUDA cores. While this might work fine, it would be horribly inefficient (and it might also not work fine). Original CUVID is super old. Some discussion of it being depreciated here: https://www.reddit.com/r/htpc/comments/5hulch/nvidia_cuvid_vs_intel_quicksync_vs_dxva2_copyback/
Update: QuickSync and CUVID are listed as, “deprecated for future removal/replacement” in LAVFilters as of version .75 (March 2021): Releases · Nevcairiel/LAVFilters · GitHub
DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) would take advantage of NVDEC as long as you have a driver installed.
I’m using DXVA. I can play 2D 60fps 8K ProRes 422 HQ files just fine (800MB/s, 3 minute clip is 170GB) using LAV. I haven’t had issues with VR, but that’s all h.264/h.265 at a saner bitrate.
Well, CUVID is the recommended method for smooth playback, also the dev from Whirligig recommends this setting and I had best gpu / cpu usage with CUVID. (6700k + 1070)
Another solution is Media Foundation with an installed HEVC Codec.
It all depends on way more of course. Resolution of the VR headset (Quest2 for example isnt using full resolution per default on PCVR), video resolution and bitrate.
