Summary:
- SteamVR driver update (fixes to reduce image flickering, apps crashing and some frame skips).
- 2560x1440 is the new render resolution for SteamVR. 2560x1440 stream option available in UI.
- Intel Quick Sync encoding support for Intel HD Graphics users. Mobile app update required.
- Random logouts fixed (probably).
- New beta invites will be limited starting next week.
Desktop client version is 0.5.4.2, mobile app version is 0.8.5.
SteamVR driver update
With last update we've rewritten most of our SteamVR driver so it wouldn't rely on old Oculus components. This created some bugs. Depending on GPU load and power, games could flicker, fail to render every other frame and sometimes crash during scene loading. These issues should be fixed with this update. We are still trying to find cause of frame skips in some scenarios.
1440p render resolution for SteamVR
Last update we reduced SteamVR resolution from 2364x1461 to 1920x1080. Now we are setting render resolution to 2560x1440. This should give higher quality even on 1080p phones (less aliasing). Keep in mind that stream resolution is still configurable through stream quality options. We will eventually tie render resolution to stream resolution but currently rendering will be hardcoded to 1440p.
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| Elite: Dangerous looks a lot nicer now |
We're also adding Very High preset for stream quality with 2560x1440 @ 60 FPS. That's 80% more pixels on your screen and the difference is quite noticeable, especially with small UI elements.
Intel Quick Sync encoding for Intel HD Graphics (Intel Core CPUs)
There are a lot of you with laptops running Intel HD Graphics integrated GPUs. Those chips (starting with Intel HD Graphics 2000+ from 2011) also have video encoders built-in. We are now supporting Intel Quick Sync encoding.
It's not laptop-only change. If you have, for example, GeForce 560 Ti which is not supported, but you also have Intel Core with Quick Sync, you should be able to run VRidge sucessfuly now. Please keep in mind that your motherboard needs to support using integrated graphics too.
We tested Intel HD Graphics 4000 at up to 2560x1440p and encoding performance was comparable to GPU encoders.
Intel HD Graphics will be used as encoder only. Start the game on your best graphics processing unit (you can start game on discrete video card and use Quick Sync encoding). See this article if you don't know how to force using discrete GPU on your laptop.
Minor fixes (probably, confirmation needed):
We tried to fix some of the minor annoyances. Let us know if you experience any of problems below after this update:
- Random logouts in less than 60 minutes after starting the game.
- "Remember me" option forgetting your credentials if you exited RiftCat after less than 60 minutes since starting last game.
Freezes during phone pairing process.Confirmed - not fixed- Laptop users will see instructions on how to start games on discrete GPUs if VRidge notices game running on integrated graphics.
Limiting VRidge beta access for new users
Next week we are going to switch beta into limited mode for new users (if you are already in beta it doesn't affect you).
Why?
VRidge was posted to tens of big news sites. We are currently trying to fix problems but we had to respond to hundreds of e-mails and spent a lot of time and money to scale up our infrastructure to handle massive incoming traffic spike (you might have noticed 2 downtimes lasting 15-20 minutes).
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| +500% traffic increase on Monday |
We are very grateful for media coverage but now we understand the reasons why betas are either closed or open but very short (stress tests). We want to focus on development and bugfixing now. We have enough users now to test pretty much every configuration on the planet.
When we woke up on Monday and saw our server stats we felt like this.
We know about some annoying bugs (Zenfone 2, Galaxy S4, some Radeons). We are still investigating it.
We need to make it clear somewhere during installation that VRidge is designed to run native VR games only. We also need to make system requirements more visible because large majority of error reports (and bad reviews) we are getting is coming from people trying to use VRidge on unsupported hardware/OS. It's kinda our fault because we could have made information above more visible.