Compositor/Dashboard render resolution always uses automatic resolution, even when manual override is active

[elvissteinjr]

See title. Basically a lot of GPUs will not get anywhere close 100% automatic resolution on high resolution/refresh rate HMDs, such as Valve Index. Many will also choose to at least override that to 100% and just live with a couple of reprojected frames or be totally fine depending on what they play.
What is not in their power is the dashboard still being blurry as it does not respect this override value. There used to be a compositor super sampling value in the config, but it does not do anything these days.
As a workaround, users can trick SteamVR into thinking they did better on the GPU benchmark. The dashboard will use the higher resulting automatic resolution value.
This is only a temporary fix, though.

If this is intentional, then it's a bad design decision to be honest. Manual override should affect the dashboard as well.

The whole thing has been addressed in a different bug report, though only buried in a response to it. I wanted to address this clearer and more directly to increase the chance of it being noticed.
Please fix this. This will increase the quality of the VR experience for many if they choose to opt in and honestly isn't all that hard to make right.

[bendotcom]

Are you saying this is happening to you, or are you reporting this on behalf of other users?

[elvissteinjr]

This applies to myself, and from reading other community reports I judged this to be a general occurrence.
It's really apparent when using a Valve Index and switching frame rates, as that's a way to easily get a lower automatic resolution. For a example a GTX 1070 will only hit around 60% automatic resolution @ 120 Hz, but I still chose to override that to 100%. The dashboard will be blurry as it ignores that setting. But a few Pimax users have reported the same behavior, so it's not an Index-only thing either.

I believe this is not much reported as it's a lot less apparent on lower resolution/frame rate HMDs + stronger GPUs combinations, or isn't an issue at all on them. Vive Pro, Rift S or even a Valve Index @ 90 Hz do get fairly close 100% automatic resolution on GTX 1070 level hardware after all.

I don't really want to act like an authority over what's happening to other users, but I'm fairly certain this isn't a case isolated to myself at the very least.

Thanks for the quick response. Honestly didn't expect something this fast.

[elvissteinjr]

Any update on this? I've had hope of this being investigated after getting that one response rather quickly.

[Sawtaytoes]

Happens for me too with my Valve Index:
https://twitter.com/Sawtaytoes/status/1261426892243996672

I thought it was related to refresh rate, but maybe it's just SteamVR Home? In the past, I noticed this issue in other games but never took any screenshots.

[Rectus]

Originally posted by Sawtaytoes:

Happens for me too with my Valve Index:
https://twitter.com/Sawtaytoes/status/1261426892243996672

I thought it was related to refresh rate, but maybe it's just SteamVR Home? In the past, I noticed this issue in other games but never took any screenshots.

That is a feature of SteamVR Home. It has it's own separate fidelity system that will automatically adjust the render resolution on the fly to prevent reprojection. It doesn't have any UI controls to turn it off though, but it is possible to turn it of temporarily in the developer console.

The issues in the above post relate to the SteamVR compositor, and I believe they were adressed a while ago.

[Sawtaytoes]

How is it a feature to override something set by SteamVR? Is this something other games to as well? I'm curious because I want to know when it's occurring and when it's not happening.

From my testing yesterday, it seems the games that were bugged in the past are fixed now. So it really is just SteamVR Home at this point.

[elvissteinjr]

I have no idea if my issue was fixed, since I just took matters in my own hands instead and wrote a tool[github.com] to keep the GPU benchmark values high enough to get the "auto" resolution I want. There have been no relevant changelogs about this, but stealth changes aren't super rare for SteamVR so maybe.
Last time I checked was a couple months back. They did add quality settings, but High was still just whatever the auto resolution was at.

However, what I'm describing only affects the VR Compositor, so pretty much just overlay rendering. What VR games do with the recommended render resolution from the runtime is up to them entirely and can't even be enforced by SteamVR.
Dynamic quality is a good thing, but SteamVR Home, The Lab and Half Life: Alyx do have options to disable it in their config files. You usually don't want to, though.

[Sawtaytoes]

Yeah, thinking about it, adjusting on the fly is like what the Nintendo Switch does to maintain framerate which is really cool.

I guess, my issue here is that my GPU has a lot more power to give and SteamVR Home (and those others you mentioned) are running with a lot of headway on my GPU. I'd only be comfortable using auto-resolution technology if it at least provided me with the best quality possible before blurring the image.