Valve, please let us turn off the foveated encoding.

[Positive Possum]

I am sure this looks fine on the Quest 2, as the edges of the fresnel lens probably help to mask this like they help mask fixed foveated rendering. But for those of us with the Quest 3, it really hinders the visuals badly.

The massive sweet spot and edge to edge clarity of Meta's pancake lens promotes looking around by moving only your eyes. The fixed foveated encoded makes that no longer possible as now only the center of your view is clear while the edges are very blurry. It essentially turns their pancake lens back into fresnel lens.

Going back to Virtual Desktop after using Steam Link for a few hours really highlights just how poor Steam Link's visuals are when using the Quest 3. I tried increasing the width to 1536px like a few others recommended, it doesn't help. Please give us a way to turn it off. I bought an RTX 4090 for a reason, I don't need this to be always on

[DerPole]

Infact it doesn't look right on quest 2. Playing pop1 I have to turn my head unnaturally high to get into the sweet spot. But it has the best stability especially with an amd card (rx 6800)

[Chipboard]

I concur that this should be optional. Also please fix encoding for Intel Arc series!

[Mayc]

should be optional. There is no point in high-end equipment with pancake lenses now having to see blurred edges as if they were fresnel lenses.

[Crowbar_XL]

It doesnt look fine on the quest 2 either

[MartyPG13]

I was looking for a Quest 3 setting - so that answers why this looks absolutely terrible.

Valve, give an option to turn this off it looks garbage - I'm going back to the far superior Virtual Desktop.

[charlesl]

In general, we are in the process of evaluating other mitigations. For now, if the foveated region is too small for your taste, we recommend decreasing the render resolution in order to increase the size of the foveated area at this time.

@DerPole AMD Support has a hard limit of 1024 encode resolution at the time of this writing which is very small. We are working with AMD to resolve the issue and open it up to 1344 max. If you are sensitive at all to the foveated region, you will either need to turn down your "Render Resolution" significantly until we have a resolution for the issue for AMD.

[QK-]

i just don't understand why they don't allow us to turn it off it looks horrible and takes me out of the immersion immediately

[Positive Possum]

Originally posted by charlesl:

In general, we are in the process of evaluating other mitigations. For now, if the foveated region is too small for your taste, we recommend decreasing the render resolution in order to increase the size of the foveated area at this time.

@DerPole AMD Support has a hard limit of 1024 encode resolution at the time of this writing which is very small. We are working with AMD to resolve the issue and open it up to 1344 max. If you are sensitive at all to the foveated region, you will either need to turn down your "Render Resolution" significantly until we have a resolution for the issue for AMD.

Thanks for commenting! Does this actually work? I messed with the render resolution a bunch and it doesn't seem to change the size...?? And decreasing the resolution also ends up making the foveated area look even worse(more blurry).

[Zod]

foveated rendering results in a larger performance boost, correct me if i'm wrong but foveated encoding just saves bandwidth. I have enough bandwidth, let me disable this.

It's baffling if you haven't already decided that you are going to allow this to be optional given how many users have requested it.

foveated encoding and rendering are great features, especially in a future where eye tracking might be more common, but they should both be optional and be configurable, the size of the radii, the resolution falloff.

[cyberspacenaut]

This is the one thing that is preventing me from using Steam Link. The blurry edges are extremely noticeable on the Quest 3’s pancake lenses

[Agony]

I legit thought my Q3's lenses were dirty.

[Space Coyote]

I agree. This is what is keeping me on Virtual Desktop. I really want to use Steam Link but this needs an option to disable. I'm using AMD and lowering the render resolution just makes everything look terrible (I guess, to match the edges?) 🤔

[Mayc]

Originally posted by charlesl:

In general, we are in the process of evaluating other mitigations.

On some computers the only possible mitigation is to allow it to be turned off completely. it makes no sense to be forced to see blurry edges of your screen to save bandwidth when you have a 6e router at 1 meter with plenty of bandwidth and a 4090.

[Positive Possum]

Originally posted by Mayc:

Originally posted by charlesl:

In general, we are in the process of evaluating other mitigations.

On some computers the only possible mitigation is to allow it to be turned off completely. it makes no sense to be forced to see blurry edges of your screen to save bandwidth when you have a 6e router at 1 meter with plenty of bandwidth and a 4090.

100% agreed. This is my setup as well. Let me turn it off.

[excellsior_ger]

Originally posted by charlesl:

In general, we are in the process of evaluating other mitigations.

is your sofware vr-link really a step forward for pcvr-streaming?

the biggest advantage of pcvr-gameing is: it looks better!
why does it look better? better effect + the option for higher rendertargets

Valve's implementation punishes users that have invested in better rigs and could run game in higher rendertarget for better image quality but than the sharper circle shrinks together.

for my 4090, even the older, not updated for quest 3, meta air link implementation gives me the better image without blurry edge or low rendertargets and does not punish me if i supersample the image, same for virtual desktop ...