Key to Oculus performance in UE is to reduce almost all post processing. Real time reflections are the biggest drain, generally just copy the post process in the VR template or couch knights and remove real-time shadowing and you will be in a good place performance wise. If that still doesn’t do it try to install the Scalability Plugin GitHub - Teddy0/ScalabilityUIPlugin: A launcher for UnrealEngine that has graphics performance options and set your settings to medium at the start. If you’re doing things right roughly 160fps in editor will translate to a stable 75fps in the rift. HMD optimizations are badly needed either way.
Forgiven. I have success at 60, but also find that quality unacceptable- at least compared to what I could get with Unity, for example.
By post processing, are you referring specifically to the settings within the postprocessingvolume object? I’ve made scenes that consisted ONLY of a flat, untextured box to stand on and a spotlight (no sky or any kind of atmosphere) and been unable to to get 75 FPS (With out lowering the hmd sp #).
I am going to try the couch knights and template scene now, will report back in a bit.
Alright I did some tests:
Paris (http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2tybmq/paris_demo_dk2_hack_download_link_included/ )
No console command line, so I wasn’t able to tinker, but using the low quality setup I got 37 FPS (Used fraps to check), Total CPU usage 12%, GPU load 70%
Couch Knights
HMD SP:100
37.5 FPS, CPU Usage 18%, GPU Load: 57%
I then used hmd vsync off, and the framerate rose to anywhere between 50-65. So far this has been the single most effective boost that hasn’t come with noticible quality loss, but it’s not perfect yet.
In order to max out at 75 FPS I had to reduce the hmd sp to 50. ewww.
I was about to try that other template file when I saw that its through github. I’m not prepared to dive into that now. I’ve never used the site before, and was a little overwhelmed when I looked into it: forks, downloading other programs to compile code- all new to me. There may come a time when I’m ready to study up and do that, but it’s not what I signed up for.
Thanks for all the help everyone. I think I’m going to roll back to runtime 0.4.2 and unreal 4.5.1, I seemed to be having some luck there. I have a friend that just got a Rift, he’s got a better machine than me, but he has been reporting problems with Unreal projects as well. At this point I feel like I’m losing interest in diagnosing the problem, I just want to pay for a program that works. I don’t really feel it’s my responsibility as a customer to fix the problems that have been reported for the better part of a year, when there clearly isn’t even a vague understanding of the problem yet. All the troubleshooting seems scattershot- One person will say to turn feature X on, while another says to turn it off. Other solutions are to reduce the quality so severely, that it wouldn’t be acceptable by 2005 standards.
I really do appreciate everyone’s assistance. I would hope that either this issue is fixed in the next major version, or at the very least, some comprehensive and official guide explaining how to address this problem. Customer’s shouldn’t be forced to go down a dozen different rabbit holes aimlessly.
First of all you must take into account that this is a developer kit and the idea is to make it work with the help of other people and to test it only. They said it many times 
i know You frustration because I am working too with the Oculus and it is getting worse with every update. My company made a huge project about Dinosaurs and we have 75 fps constantly but this is more like a movie ride. But the quality we made is very high and we avoided reducing it. I will try to post some images on the site ( we signed NDA so I must talk with some folks). We made it on 4.5 because it give us the best performance so I suggest to stick with that. There is one thing - we made our ride with very powerfull PCs in mind so we are using 970 gtx, 16 gb ram etc. I dont think that in the final version you will be able to run on a middleware machine if you want to have top AAA quality. I dont know what is going on in the Oculus team but I guess they run into some seriously problems (only my guessing). It is very strange that they can not optimise it with every version and sometimes they blame Epic and Epic blames Oculus
You don’t have to dive into GitHub, source code or anything, it’s really quite simple:
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Download the Template:
https://github.com/mitchemmc/UE4FirstPersonVRTemplate/archive/V0.4.4.zip for Oculus runtime 0.4.2 / UE4.5.1
https://github.com/mitchemmc/UE4FirstPersonVRTemplate/archive/V0.4.5.zip for Oculus runtime 0.4.4 / UE4.6.1 -
Unzip the package into your templates directory, generally in ‘C:\Program Files\Unreal Engine[Version]\Templates’
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Open UE4 and create a new project you should see a new option ‘Rift First Person’, choose that
I think your results are to be expected as your graphics card is about 1/3 the power of the top of the line cards that Oculus is using for their demos.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6970
Performance is just about there on the 780Ti and GTX980 with proper optimization. Oculus will probably be targeting the GTX980 or better as a minimum requirement as that already came out last year. They will need all the power they can get to hit 90FPS at 1080p or higher if their statements that CV1 will be higher resolution are to be believed. You’re right, the user experience to be perfect and that needs decent graphics power, so they will target enthusiasts first with top of the line machines and over time that will become the standard and CV2 might run on regular user machines.
I think your results are to be expected as your graphics card is about 1/3 the power of the top of the line cards that Oculus is using for their demos.
Oculus will probably be targeting the GTX980 or better as a minimum requirement as that already came out last year.
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$579.99 is an awful lot of $ for a minimum req. video card!!!
I am curious, why some of you are disabling AA? Doesn’t it make the screen clearer? Or it is just for performance purposes?
This is how we were able to get to 75fps in our level. First off kill everything in the post process settings in project settings (you can keep AO for static objects and anti aliasing)
Delete your reflection sphere.
Open couch knights and copy there post process volume over and replace yours with it.
Turn every light you have in your scene to static.
make sure to build lighting.
Launch and make sure you are in direct to rift mode (extended caps at 60)
Also we found that keeping it under 500 draw calls (250 in each eye) helps tremendously
Let me know if this helps it might just be a solution for us.
Saddly, the oculus is not getting the way it should be. Firs it maee huge impression on everyone. Now all you can do is turn everything off ( have game like mario 2d) ans buy 980gtx to have it barrely working. Whats the point making **** games on the oculus? I think that oculus need to make some huge changes in their programming stuff because people are not seeing that potential anymore (especially devs). Whats the point turning all lights almost off, reducing the fox, turning off antyaliasing and 95% stuff that you normally use in gamedev? This is not a cheap toy but something revolutionary. I think taht the oculus itself doesnt know how to handel it right now. Insted of sayi g us what to turn off, they should make it o work and not with every update I have more crappy game. I saw a big potential, now I have minimum to buy 980gtx for mario like game, when i buy oculus i have dozens question from oculus why I buy it, what I am going to do with it etc( they even looked at my address at google maps!), we have some stupid warning healt message for devs and they dont even know how to cooperate woth others companies ( 1. they say that some problems are because of epics engine and sometimes epic sais that it is oculus bug… Like kids, 2. Nvidia have some “magic” tool for oculus vr direct tool but strangely they will not publish it even for devs. Cant oculus talk with them to give the devs access to it so we can finally make cool stuff not some craps?).
Ps. Sorry for bad english 
We need to understand that this tech is still evolving and that it has its limitations. Sure oculus games arent going to be as shiny as other games but that doesnt mean we cant develop games. Getnamo and I presented the methods to reach 75fps fairly consistently. You can also have a very good looking game if you are creative with your draw calls and LODs, so there are ways to get great looking oculus games. We have to remember we’re at the “pong” stages of VR and need to develop for it even in its current state so VR keeps moving forward otherwise companies like nvidia and amd arent going to bother.
I think it is important to remember that there is no magic bullet. Nvidia does NOT have a super-secret tool for VR, they probably have some optimizations in their next generation hardware that were going to be released anyways but are useful for VR so they can rebrand them. Probably the biggest change is increased bandwidth between graphics cards, system memory and maybe a solution for SLI VR that doesn’t increase latency. None of those are cheap and one cannot expect to have current-generation graphics running at a higher FOV than existing games running in stereo at higher framerates than ever before (consoles are still doing 30fps and sometimes 60fps when they feel really generous in mono) with a distortion shader that needs to update at minimal latency for rendering right before scanout on the HMD. Also none of the tricks to make PC games look smooth like double and triple buffering that look fine from a distance and don’t need to respond to microscopic movements of one’s head translate to VR.
What Oculus and Epic have done is amazing when it works but to work we have to get rid of those things above and use graphics tricks to look good (Epic does a great job with all their pre-cooked lighting and effects) until graphics cards catch up again. This will only get worse before it gets better if we have higher resolution HMD’s a year after CV1, and if you use the Gear VR you immediately see its enormous potential, then feel crestfallen at how hard it is to get pretty graphics and high performance, then you get back to tweaking and it gets better from there 
I know that this is all in development stage etc. but I dont like the solutions to reduce almost everythhing. I know that there must be some optimizations BUT not hard reductions. They want to achive 90FPS to have REAL immersion but what about the graphic itsefl? Isnt this also required for real immersion? VR isnt just about 90 FPS and almost all I can see is to throw everything away to have nice real feeling moving Your head. Optimizations is OK but reducing (solution from Oculus) isnt to good. They should make it work with those things. I know that there is a lot of problems but hey… they want to make it and sell it. Nobody forced them to make it right? They want to have cool VR and in the end it will be like in the 90s where You had almost no graphic. Whats the point? It will be just a toy in few months. Think like a ordinary client who wants to buy VR tool and all he can get is crappy CG for 2.000 USD (computer + Oculus to work). And after few months I get a “trick” from Oculus to make smaller FOV… So why not completly black screen?
I love the Oculus Rift and for me it is something impressive but I dont like how the progress looks like and the solution that people give. In the end it will be normal for everyone to throw away all the CG and people from Oculus will get lazy to make it work good. They have milions of dollars to make it and what for if someone from the forum know better how to make it work? What for have they money ? Wouldnt it be cheaper to read some posts? Or hire few guys from forums to make it work? Such big company and all they are making is hitting 90 FPS for all costs. I dont want to make games where triangles are chasing boxes. I want to have real immersion with nice CG and not black borders becase it was faster ? cheaper? they have no money for develompent?
I hope there will be more pressure on them and not just to applaud them if the say “turn off this, this , this and that”. They do know how to make a stupid health warning all the time but not how to make it works. Its like a writer will make a beautifull book cover with almost no text in it. They prioritys are strange. I think that people from this forum and Oculus would make better progress if they would have the money than Oculus itself without any stupid ideas. I read dozens posts with cool ideas where a lot of people agreed with it and there are no such things implemented.
They shocked the world with Oculus, please shock the devs now with your source code (in positive way) and dont force us to reduce (not to be confused with optimize) almost everything.
Reducing FOV is not recommended at all and I have yet to see Oculus release a statement telling devs to do so.
I really think you should do the steps that I posted up earlier and see that it doesn’t look that bad. What we did when we figured this out was open a template project had it running at 75 fps then started building a level on top of that and watched the draw calls and poly count (Draw calls > poly count) Sure we dont get the super shininess that UE4 defaults to but we don’t need high end graphics to be immersed. One of the most immersive experiences right now is minecraft.
And I am afraid that 90% customers will be minecraft players. That will be the future of VR - like I said, like in the 90s…
Then its up to us developers to push the VR medium forward and get it past the 90s look. How do we do that you may ask? By working with what we got.
While Oculus is pushing for high-end hardware, i.e. GTX980, this is not what I have. I’m currently running an ASUS ROG i7 gaming laptop with a Nvidia 870M GPU. (This is a great machine) The 870M is about the same, performance wise, as a GTX660 desktop GPU. While what I have is lower then their current recommendation, I have preferred it as I believe by the time CV is released, it will be close to what a lot of users will have at home.
All of my settings are based off of the VR template that was mentioned above, with the addition of deleting one of the volumes. If you go through that post thread, you will see the one I mention. This was causing halo’s, which was annoying.
Performance wise I’m rarely -and I mean rarely- below 75fps, which is the max the DK2 can run at. Of course, almost all of my meshes are static, all lighting is static, and there are no reflection spheres. I have had them in the past, but found that I drop down to around 62fps, which is not… good.(shivers) After being at 75fps, you can really tell the difference when in the 60’s. (shivers again)
I may make a post later of the things that I have come across with the DK2. There are provisions that need to be kept in mind, and folks need to get past the belief that if it works on a computer monitor, it should work the same on the Oculus. This is a very different beast, but what a ride!
I have a GTX 980 and performance is poor.
Please note that Oculus is using 2x 980GTX in SLI AND they dont allow us to use this technology.
Not quite true, Palmer Luckey is on the record that they use a single 980GTX: Reddit - Dive into anything