[Feature Request] FOV setting

[phobos2077]

Oculus software allows to reduce FOV by removing pixels on the edges of the screen that are rendered, but you can't see them due to eye/lenses position (or can see but barely notice). There's separate horizontal and vertical setting. This allows for some HUGE performance gains. For example, 0.8/0.8 results in 36% less pixels to draw, that means 36% higher FPS in GPU-bound situation (which is almost always the case in VR).

Steam VR has some kind of FOV slider, but it doesn't seem to work in most cases. Instead of just reducing pixels to draw by introducing black bars, it actually zooms everything in, breaking VR effect completely. I remember it was working somewhat fine in HL:Alyx. So I guess it needs special support by games, which nobody does. Oculus FOV tangent multiplier on the other hand, always works in any VR app.

This feature is absolutely required for Flight Sim users (X-Plane, MSFS, DCS, etc.). I'm really looking forward for some alternative to Oculus Software because it's very wasteful on VRAM and barely get any updates for a couple of years now.

Please consider adding this, Flight Sim community will be very grateful!

[Stephen]

Came here to post this. It's a massive performance boost and the one reason why I'm still sticking with Oculus Link.

[Mayc]

Yes

[byteframe]

I came from an Airlink setup with the FOV tangent thing chopping off a noticeable amount of pixels for that juicy performance boost, but I might prefer to have it be configurable on the fly and per game with the steam vr option.

AFAICT it doesnt 'zoom in' so much as it just reduces on both the vertical and horiztonal at the same time, whereas with the fov tangent in oculus, you can modify them independantly.

[phobos2077]

Originally posted by ¡ byteframe 🙄 is rosy !:

AFAICT it doesnt 'zoom in' so much as it just reduces on both the vertical and horiztonal at the same time, whereas with the fov tangent in oculus, you can modify them independantly.

No, it does actually zoom in in most apps... I think this feature is only ever worked in HL:Alyx, maybe some other SteamVR-specific apps.

[King-0f-Hero]

+1

[charlesl]

In SteamVR, Under "Video Settings", click the "Per-App Video Settings" then select "Field of View" and set it to a custom scale.

Changing "Field of View" slider here proportionally adjusts both the render resolution and foveated region, so you will likely want to decrease the "Resolution Multiplier" If decreasing the "Field of View." Otherwise you will have blurriness around the center part of the image.

[phobos2077]

Originally posted by charlesl:

In SteamVR, Under "Video Settings", click the "Per-App Video Settings" then select "Field of View" and set it to a custom scale.

Changing "Field of View" slider here proportionally adjusts both the render resolution and foveated region, so you will likely want to decrease the "Resolution Multiplier" If decreasing the "Field of View." Otherwise you will have blurriness around the center part of the image.

I know about this setting, it doesn't work, as I've already mentioned (reduces actual FOV, "zooming in" instead of introducing black borders, as it should). Maybe it needs special support by the app? I tested in X-Plane 12. Oculus setting works, SteamVR one - doesn't.

[tomibeck]

+1

[charlesl]

I've tested a few titles, some titles like old friend and X-Plane require restart, but all the other titles I tried works real time, like SPT, Beat Saber, tetris effect, etc... It just appears to be that these titles haven't implemented the code to handle when the FoV changes while they're running.

[H4nter]

we need FoV in steamlink, its one of the most important things holding it back

[phobos2077]

I have tested again with current version of Steam Link and this indeed works. The trick is to disable any addons that add custom overlays - such as fpsVR and OpenXR Toolkit. Whenever these are visible - the stereo effect breaks. But otherwise it works great. Especially with the new custom FOV mode - it's exactly what I wanted! Depending on headset and where your eyes are relative to the lenses - you can reduce quite a lot without even seeing any black bars. Free image quality improvement!

Not sure if conflict with custom overlays will be possible to fix, but otherwise I'm satisfied.

PS: this same feature also works when using Virtual Desktop in SteamVR mode.