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  • Framerates were not good even on a 3090. On the other hand a custom Unity.exe worked great.

    What type of framerates were you getting? This might depend on the model you were viewing .. or not. My Aero arrives on Monday I believe. Glad to hear the Vive paddles worked for you! As I said above, I will be testing the older, regular Vive controllers.

  • I have an Aero on loan for a few days. Enscape works fine, I paired it with Vive paddles. But I think Enscape struggles with optimizing for VR on the fly, and the headset is obviously super demanding. Framerates were not good even on a 3090. On the other hand a custom Unity.exe worked great.


    There is distortion at the edges that I found to be somewhat distracting, I see there is an experimental distortion correction I wasn't aware of; I'll have to try it. The clarity is of course stunning, and makes it hard to back to anything else, but as with all headsets there are trade-offs.

    Running on a 3090 as well, but currently on the Index headset. You should be able to get decent framerates on the 3090, but in my experience you have to use specific Enscape settings that work better for VR. Enscape isn't as optimized as a game engine apparently, so even a 3090 can't run the top settings for larger projects. However this isn't a big deal as you get pretty good results that allow you to explore your designs. Try this:


    In "General Settings" of Enscape Disable NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Denoiser, Grass/Carpet Rendering and Restmode. I leave Hardware Raytracing and Ray traced Sin Shadows on as I didn't find any performance difference. Some of the disable settings improve performance other just improve visual quality in VR. For example DLSS just doesn't work right in VR but is enable by default.


    In "Visual Settings" of Enscape set it to rendering quality "Medium". Not only does this render faster, but I actually think it looks cleaner in VR because above Medium I always get a grainy feel in VR like things would still be fine-rendering after moving my head. In Medium everything is instant.


    Let us know if that get you decent frame rates on the Aero. I am waiting for mine to be shipped and an anxious for the resolution upgrade from the Index, as the biggest distraction for me is the shimmering from jumping pixel on lines because of the smaller resolution of the Index.

  • What type of framerates were you getting? This might depend on the model you were viewing .. or not. My Aero arrives on Monday I believe. Glad to hear the Vive paddles worked for you! As I said above, I will be testing the older, regular Vive controllers.

    Should work fine, but I'd still recomment the Index controllers. You don't need all the buttons it offers, but the back-strap is a huge quality of life improvement as it allows you to let go of the controller and relax your hand.

  • What type of framerates were you getting? This might depend on the model you were viewing .. or not. My Aero arrives on Monday I believe. Glad to hear the Vive paddles worked for you! As I said above, I will be testing the older, regular Vive controllers.

    The model certainly affect things. These weren't super complex. I use fpsVR to check frame rates in the models, and also benchmarked w/ OpenVR. Open to other tools/suggestions. For comparison on the same system:

    - Aero: OpenVR-31 | Model 1 (high) -54 | Model 2 (high) -32

    - Vive Pro: OpenVR-71 | Model 1 (high) -88 | Model 2 (high) -51

    Running on a 3090 as well, but currently on the Index headset. You should be able to get decent framerates on the 3090, but in my experience you have to use specific Enscape settings that work better for VR. ...

    Files are .exe exported from v2.9, so none of the advanced RTX features. No grass/carpet/moving vegetation. I had quality set to High for comparison to other systems/headsets I've benchmarked. But I should check the difference on Medium; I can play with it more tomorrow. There are also quality settings in the Varjo console that I did not get into at all.


    My main concern is finding the best experience for clients, who have generally have little experience w/VR. So you don't want to make them nauseous, but you want the highest possible quality to best represent the design. Someone who uses it regularly can look past the limitations, learn to not move too quickly, etc. So headset choice for a design tool might be different than for a presentation tool.

  • Files are .exe exported from v2.9, so none of the advanced RTX features.

    Maybe also try reexporting form a newer version. For me at least, in previous Enscape versions performance was a larger issue than it is now. I used to be unable to run anything at a decent framerate. Now I can run a detailed 800sqm house with furniture, people and props of all sorts in 2x4km mountain surroundings at a constant 90FPS in mediuam as well as high. I still prefer medium weirdly because high results in some pixel jumping for me. I don't know at which version the performance improved for me to a usable state, but they probably made some improvement in every version.

  • So far, my EARY update:


    (NOTE, none of these issues so far have anything to do with Enscape, but with Varjo Aero and SteamVr and Base Stations and Controllers)


    1.) Up until now I am familiar with Oculus Rift S, super simple. Plug and play.

    2.) I unfortunately got HTC Vive controllers, but not the blue ones. (Mistake #1. I have fixed and gotten the blue controllers instead. After more research this was my mistake in not reading instructions carefully enough.)

    3.) One of my two base stations is blinking red, meaning hardware malfunction. So I am only using one base station and it (from my guess/understanding) is making this inoperable)


    At first I could not use controllers, but I could see a lot of beautiful things. Inside Enscape and outside.


    Now I can use controllers but if I move my head a slight bit, things go bonkers. Again, inside Sketchup/Enscape but also everywhere else too. Google Earth VR and/or games too.


    I am in the process of doing a return on my bad base station and am looking to order another to get here. So it will be a week or two more before I can report success.


    At this point, I can only recommend Oculus Rift for anyone less than die-hard people, as it is plug-in-play. But what I saw of my models in Varjo - looks awesome and I want it that much more! I won't give in yet, too much fun is to be had. From what I have seen so far, I do believe this can work. However my hopes are going from 80% down to 60%. A lot of (a) expermining, (b) trouble, (c) waiting, and mostly (d) costs to get here. But given I still feel this is 60% going to be a great solution ... Either I am a hopeful or setting myself up for defeat. Given the work it took to get here and the visuals I have seen so far, I would not recommend this trouble to most people. However, there have been two shots I set up perfectly (without controllers) and base stations working correctly and that has me impressed/hopeful.


    Never give in, never surrender ... I will provide more updates when progress is made.

  • Thanks for the update and sorry to hear about your technical troubles. Yes, two base stations minimum. I use 4, one in each corner of the room, just for redundancy and for very rare ackward situations where my body shields a controller from two base stations simulataneously. Steam tracking is the absolute best at the moment when it does work, almost surgical accuracy. Like with most tech (and other things) the last 20% of optimization require the most effort.


    What kind of GPU do you run Aero on, and what kind of framerates are you getting?

  • What kind of GPU do you run Aero on, and what kind of framerates are you getting?

    As I said above, I have been burdened with buying the wrong controllers and having one bad base station. So I have not (yet) had time to get to testing framerates or even gotten close to that. Especially with only 1 working base station, which is brutal.


    Nonetheless, to answer your question, my hardware should not be an issue:

    CPU: Ryzen 9 5950X

    GPU: GeForce RTX 3090

  • Maybe also try reexporting form a newer version.

    I re-exported from v3.3 and yes, things seem to be performing better by roughly 10 fps.

    Also:

    - the distortion correction makes a huge difference. It still doesn't feel 100% "locked in" compared to other headsets, but nearly so.

    - The quality settings in the Varjo portal make a significant difference (+/-20fps.) On "low" I found framerates to be similar to the Vive Pro, but the Varjo still looks better. So there are plenty of options to play around with and fine-tune.


    2.) I unfortunately got HTC Vive controllers, but not the blue ones. (Mistake #1. I have fixed and gotten the blue controllers instead. After more research this was my mistake in not reading instructions carefully enough.)

    The other option is to get v1 base stations to use with the "old" controllers. Varjo works with either. Honestly I find the old base stations to be a little less fussy.

  • Hi :)
    Any update on this topic? We look into going down the same road with the Varjo headset and where wondering if you can shed some more light onto potential settings that worked for you and if you got the setup to the point where it became "plug and play" with Enscape?
    Thanks :thumbup:

  • Any update on this topic? We look into going down the same road with the Varjo headset and where wondering if you can shed some more light onto potential settings that worked for you and if you got the setup to the point where it became "plug and play" with Enscape?

    It is as plug-and-play as any other headset that uses Steam VR.

  • So I've been trying the Aero / Enscape combination for a while now and results are mixed, but it is defenitely worth it. The biggest improvement is that the resolution is awesome. If you set the Aero to run on full resolution (39 PPD) in Varjo Base, then almost alls of the pixelated jittering lines are gone that I previously saw in the Index. You seee a lot more detail too. My RTX3090 doesn't have enough steam to run Enscape at this resolution at a full 90FPS. Plan to upgrade to a 4090 when it becomes available later this year. There are some issue with the Aero like some mura or a a slight blur when moving your head, but this is more relevant for games than for architectural exploration. In Enscape you mostly move around just to get into position to then look at something. For this use case the movement blur, clears up completely. Also - I believe - the blur (and mura) might be something that is present in every current generation headset, but only visible in the Aero because of the great clarity lenses and superior resolution. It is quite possible I just didn't notice in the Index before because I was looking at artifacts caused by the frenel lenses and never had time to notice blur or mura. In total I would say that the Aero is a really good match for Enscape.

  • Burggraben,

    Good luck with RTX 4090, let us know how it goes.

    PS I noticed that MSI is going to have a LIQUID COOLED version of the RTX 4090 (no price listed yet)

    Trying to buy a 4090 for the last few days now. I'll stay with air cooling though. The pumps in water cooling system tend to fail on me and since that is a central point of failure, it is much worse than a 1 of 3 fans failing which sit on top of a massive cooler.

  • We got the Varjo Æro headset which is for us a massive improvement quality and experience wise. The one issue we come over which might be an Enscape (or GPU/Raytracing?) issue is that that we get striping/pixel binning when settings are on high/ultra as well as fireflies/glowing dots.
    Does anyone have made similar experiences and knows another workaround except for lowering to medium settings?
    Maybe a great excuse to upgrade to a 4090 but I would like to have tested all other options before ;)

    The current setup of the machine is an RTX2080 Ti and 64GB RAM. Files we often run as standalone or from Revit.

  • Personally I never run Enscape VR in High or Ultra. Even on a 4090 GPU the Medium setting is the only option that gives me a (near) constant 90FPS on the Varjo Aero.

    Not sure what you refer to with striping / pixel binning. Maybe make a video? I do see lower FPS and some slower rendering (scene building up in a similar way to pixel apearing in renderd 2D images) when moving my head in high/ultra. On Medium this does not exist.

  • Thanks for the reply burggraben. Does your answer imply that you only get low framerates but otherwise a good image on high and ultra?
    I will continue running on medium, which as you already recommended gives good framerate and experience.
    I none the less can try to make a video these days to show the striping we get on high and ultra.