I’m running a MSI GS70 with the Nvidia GXT970 in High Performance Graphics (HPG) This so the Rift doesn’t access the on-board Intel graphics which is a major conflict. When I use the VR Preview in the PIE, the PIE loads my level on the Rift but the frame rate is very low. When I turn my head, I get the dreaded frame shutter effect.
So, why am I getting such bad frame rate in the PIE? Unreal must to be using the NVidia HPG settings otherwise the Rift would be blank or crash. Are there any internal settings in Unreal that needs to be set for the Nvidia HPG settings that could improve the performance.
This is a really basic level test with very little assets in it so it should run at 75 fps. I have run this very same level regularly at 75 FPS in another game editor. I’ve also run other demos levels direct to the Rift with very high frame rates and no shutter effect so my Rift is running correctly.
I do want to make the move to Unreal but I can’t work with this shutter effect so I hope there’s a solution.
My Config:
MSI GS70 running Win 8.1, 16 gigs ram.
Nvidia GForce GTX970 in High Performance Graphice mode.
Unreal 4.8
Oculus Runtime 0.6.0.1
Nvidia Driver 350.12
This has to do with Intel Optimus. If there is a way for you to disable it on your laptop, then do. Otherwise the HDMI port on your laptop is controlled by the Intel graphics chip when in PIE. You can run it as standalone from the editor, and then you should see a performance increase. Just make sure that you have set the Nvidia Control Panel to use the 970 as the primary GPU.
I’ve already considered this and stated as much in my original post. The Nvidia Driver is set to High Performance Graphics which is NVidia’s control to by bypass the Intel chip and be the only GPU. Besides, if the PIE is using the Intel chip then the Rift would either not display anything or crash like it does when the driver is set to use the Intel chip.
The only other way to disable the Intel chip is to hack the bios on my MSI GS70 and I’m not willing to do that on a brand new $2K machine as an experiment when there’s already a driver setting solution.
I just got everything working perfect with my Oculus and then I came into Unreal an hour ago to test something out and found an there was an update to UE 4.8.1. I thought “cool!” and I let it do it’s thing and update to 4.8.1
After the update the VR Previewer crashed. I went to check the Nvidia driver and it switched back to the Auto-Select graphics performance.
I tried to switch back and choose High Performance Graphics but I get an “Access Denied”! I rebooted a few times and kept getting the same Access Denied result.
I had to update to the latest Nvidia driver in order to force the High Performance Graphics. But this latest Nvidia driver conflicts with the latest Oculus runtime.
Now when I’m in the engine the VR Preview is totally grayed out!