VR seems really blurry

[Ren]

I know the game is really pushing the envelope in the visuals, but is there any way to up the resolution in VR mode (or perhaps my setup is somehow busted)? I feel like looking through glasses smeared with Vaseline and I see a lot of visual issues like shadows blinking in and out, and some shadows not existing in one of my eyes.

In non-VR mode, the game is breathtaking and I can run it in Epic visuals, but in VR mode it seems as bad as the built-in VR of the Quest 3 in terms of visual clarity even if I turn up the visuals to Epic and take the performance hit.

For reference:
- Meta Quest 3
- Ryzen 5 5600x
- RTX3070
- 32GB RAM
- Installed to PCIe 4.0 SSD

Edit: To those who might stumble upon this later, this was resolved with using Oculus Tray Tool and enabling Supersampling 2.0. However this doesn't seem like a 'proper' solution as we shouldn't need a tool just to have the game look acceptable in VR. Cyan/developers should issue a fix for this.

[Thor Ragnarson]

Agreed VR is really low resolution and I am running a 4090 with everything max, virtual desktop all maxed out. My VR games look lovely and sharp but this definitely does not. Needs some VR resolution options added. Maxing out the settings makes no difference.

[Chaika]

Having the same problem, it's very blurry in VR regardless of settings. It almost looks like the anti-aliasing is broken. Things up close are okay but the visuals past about five meters are very indistinct.

[Aleitada]

It's blurry with DLSS and without it. It's worse with DLSS.

[ShnitzelKiller]

Yes, the shadows have blocky flickering artifacts in VR only, and what's worse they are different in each eye! At the very start I was greeted by a migraine-inducing shadow on Atrus's desk that was only visible in one eye.

One thing I noticed is that shadows of dynamic objects (levers that you can pull, for example) exhibit this problem especially badly.

It is quite a shame because many compromises have clearly been made to accommodate the VR experience, only for the graphics to be broken. It is not really playable for me.

I have everything on epic, and am running a monster build with an RTX 4090.

[SunDevilPilot]

Same blurry game play issue here.. 13900K, 4090, Quest 3, SteamVR resolution maxed out.. The menu screen and the "loading" screen are razor sharp... the actual game play is a bit blurry / soft.

[ShnitzelKiller]

Here's an example of the blocky shadow artifacts on a door handle. keep in mind it looks way worse in VR since the blocky artifacts are different in each eye.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/ShnitzelKiller/screenshot/2500142443887908645/

[Chaika]

So the blur problem comes from the game forcing TAA on. You can't disable this from the options menu. You can force TAA off by going to C:\Users\<Your Username>\Local\Riven\Saved\Config\Windows\Engine.ini and adding the lines

[SystemSettings]
r.AntiAliasingMethod=0

to the bottom of the file.
This fixes the blur problem but doesn't look very good. You get a ton of aliasing (naturally) and it also probably breaks some of the visuals, including making the shadows look even worse. But I think the game is unplayable by default, it's so blurry that it hurts to look at.

There are probably some finer-grained tweaks and adjustments you could make to the TAA to get it looking a little better, but at least this is clearly the culprit. Hopefully Cyan can take a look at this because the image quality is crippling the game in VR.

[Doughsay]

The shadow artifacts are worse than the blurriness for me, because they're different in each eye. The shadow on Atrus's desk previously noted was especially bad. Hoping maybe a future update will fix this? Valve Index + AMD 7900XTX here. Maybe it's an AMD problem?

[Rune]

Using Index res 400% the game is quite sharp - you need to use tons of super-sampling to reduce the DLSS blur.

Like in Myst VR, I'm using 80 Hz with motion smoothing - in Riven, motion smoothing is a friend, not an enemy :-)

I'm using RTX 3090, Epic graphics settings - but DLSS Performance.

Both Riven and Firmament have issues with dynamic shadows in VR, but less severe in Riven.

This is Index res 400%:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970329732/screenshots/?appid=1712350&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=imagewall

[D_sol]

Firmament had the same problem with different shadows in each eye. Only setting shadows to lowest "fixed" it. Wonder if it will also work in Riven?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/754890/discussions/0/3826415752023761418/#c3826415752023841530

Originally posted by Frogacuda:

Another persistent bug is that any Shadow setting except for Low creates crazy artifacts that look horrible in VR. I have an RTX 4070Ti with the latest drivers, so this isn't a performance or third party hardware issue, it just seems to be like that.

[pianomn485]

Has anyone got a response from the developers on this blurry issue

[Mandelbro]

Originally posted by Chaika:

You can force TAA off by going to C:\Users\<Your Username>\Local\Riven\Saved\Config\Windows\Engine.ini and adding the lines

[SystemSettings]
r.AntiAliasingMethod=0

to the bottom of the file.

To elaborate on this, 0 is no AA, 1 is FXAA, 2 is TAA, and 3 is MSAA. I have a hard time telling the difference between FXAA and MSAA but both look better than no AA and neither seem to have a performance impact. The only downside is that there is very visible dithering on shadows, if anyone can come up with a fix for this I will love you forever

One other thing I HIGHLY recommend is to set the render resolution in the graphics settings (I forget the exact name but it's the slider that goes 20-100) to 100. This is set to 50 by default if you select the "favor performance" or "low" graphics settings. I'm not 100% certain about this, but this setting appears to make it so Riven runs at a lower resolution, upscales to the resolution you have the game set at in SteamVR, which is then scaled to match what's actually displayed on your headset. Having that additional resampling step seems to result in really awful blocky artifacts. Instead, just set the best render resolution your system can handle in the SteamVR per-app graphics settings

I'm not sure if this is unique to my system, but I was able to set Texture Resolution, View Distance, and Foliage to epic with no loss in performance. Not sure what View Distance and Foliage do, but the increase in texture resolution is a significant boost to visual quality

[BigMak]

Is it limited to Quest 3 because of compression, or is it even with the close visuals? Looks great on my G2 but I have not tested it on my Quest 3 as the prescription lenses I ordered are not here yet.

[Game Cooker US Rocks VR]

Developers can add DLAA maybe.

[Ren]

Seems like this could be a Meta Quest platform specific issue. Those who commented here who don't use a Quest 3 seem to have an acceptable experience.

I would like to have the developers at least acknowledge this whether this is expected or not.