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Vertical tearing with Android N, not with Android 6.

Norman3D
Expert Protege
Hi guys,

I'm having trouble. Our game runs perfectly fine on S6 and S7 with Android 6. As soon as we update our S7 to Android N the game starts getting "vertical tearing" like described in this thread:
https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/50589/oculus-home-graphic-problem-and-other-apps#late...

Also note how in that thread an Oculus staff member claimed just 2 weeks ago to believe that Android N is still not supported by GearVR. Is this still true? Even with the S8 being released? Is this entire issue something we should worry about? We don't even know what causes it or if there is anything we can even do on our end to fix it.

Here is a reddit thread of people complaining about this specific issue as well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GearVR/comments/5z0xpp/did_samsung_throttle_cpu_performance_for_gear_vr/

So yeah, any info or help would be appreciated!
39 REPLIES 39

Norman3D
Expert Protege
Just to update everyone. Issue is now gone after today's update on Android 6 on S7. I'm going to check if it's still present on Android 7 and I'll update this post.

EDIT: Issue still present on Android 7

Leemon89
Explorer
Thanks for the update, mate! Keeping this topic fresh.

Norman3D
Expert Protege

Leemon89 said:

Thanks for the update, mate! Keeping this topic fresh.


No problem. For the record the Oculus support has not gotten in touch with me last week. So I'm hoping for this week!

Norman3D
Expert Protege


@Norman3D

You have not been forgotten!


hehe no worries! I just saw your PM :smiley:

Norman3D
Expert Protege
To add some more fuel to the fire, here is someone else complaining about this issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GearVR/comments/638zjf/john_carmacks_new_software_gives_gear_vrs_oculus/dfy...

Norman3D
Expert Protege
Additionally we have been reading up on the matter of tearing and came across this video right here from Oculus Connect 2:
https://youtu.be/NG7oLula-Xc?t=1532

It's my understanding from watching the video that the timewarp process, the game and android are all fighting for GPU resources. And if one of them hogs the gpu too much the timewarp comes in late, resulting in tearing.
Well, we have increased the GPU from 2 to 3 and the tearing is mostly gone, it does still pop up everyone now and hen. However this has obvious thermal implications, we are not reaching the 45 minute mark anymore and can only get up to 26 minutes, which is unacceptable to us and Oculus. And not to mention the fact that setting the value of GPU 2 on Android 6 works tear-free and 45+ minutes.
In other words, it seems that when updating the OS from 6 to 7 more GPU is being used by something.

Leemon89
Explorer
Thanks for the updates, Norman! We shall not forget OS becoming heavier and heavier with each update, so gradual performance loss is inevitable. I wonder will Oculus put it in a consideration, coz users are tend to update OS asap.

Leemon89
Explorer
BTW! In UE 4.16 patchnotes we have: a) mobile Slate performance improvement, b) mobile Multi-view is out of experimental and fully supports GearVR. So hopefully the engine improvements will come in help to balance things out.

Norman3D
Expert Protege

Leemon89 said:

BTW! In UE 4.16 patchnotes we have: a) mobile Slate performance improvement, b) mobile Multi-view is out of experimental and fully supports GearVR. So hopefully the engine improvements will come in help to balance things out.


Unfortunately I don't think multi-view well help out here. I believe tearing is caused due to the phone being GPU bound. Multi-view only offloads processing from the CPU to the GPU making things worse in this case.
In my specific case I'm also only using a little bit of UMG, mostly for the lobby section of the game, so once again I don't think it will be a big difference 😕

Leemon89
Explorer
Any news here?