I have tried figuring it out in the Rendering Q&A Section, to no avail, so trying in XR instead…
I am trying to achieve the look of old, uneven glass - where everything we see through it is subjected to a slight wobbly distortion (static one, no animation). It should feel kind of like a funhouse mirror - only with refraction instead of reflection.
No matter how I try approach the thing, I always end up with very pixelated, blocky refractions - and can’t seem to be able to bring them to a nice polish.
The project is designed for VR. While it is targeted at Desktop environment with Max Settings, I wonder if there aren’t some limits imposed by VR that would make this happen.
What I notice happening is: As I open the project it typically looks OK-ish. Not as smooth and crisp as it would in non-real-time rendering, but maybe a bit aliased, yet acceptable.
As soon as I preview it in VR, the low quality kicks in and stays even in the viewport, after exiting VR. Makes me think it’s not so much about the shader as it is about engine/project settings.
Viewport right after launching the project. Did not touch anything:
Launch VR preview and close it. Viewport now looks like this:
I tried shaders with variable IOR, shaders with static IOR but noisy (albeit smooth) normals, even an actual wobbly distorted geo. The result is always the same - blocky, pixelated refractions.