I noticed this as well (on Quest 3). Seems way too aggressive. Hopefully they add a way to tone it down.

I hope they allow us to set the inner/outer radius sizes and the percentage rendering falloff for each but I doubt it cause that might be viewed as too confusing.

Agreed, I would like a way to be able to turn foveated rendering (or is it encoding?) down or off. I have a very beefy PC and Wifi 6E + Quest 3, so it's not really necessary with my setup. (Virtual Desktop works great without it.)

Please verify that your "Render Resolution" under "General" is set to auto, and/or that it is set to to "150%." High render resolutions will produce very small foveated regions. Can you verify what your target Render Resolution is set to?

agreed, you should be able to simply disable it. surprised there are no options for this, but it's first version. maybe this means a headset is coming.

I'm above 150% because I play games at native quest 2 resolution so its not that.

I use my headset for more than gaming, reading websites the foveated rendering is too much.

let us change/disable the behavior or a per app basis. for ex, when just accessing my display for a website or playing a 2d game, I would definitely want this off.

it sounds like you want to go the route of automagically setting this to keep the ui simple, but just put some foveated settings under advanced.

or don't.

Originally posted by charlesl:

Please verify that your "Render Resolution" under "General" is set to auto, and/or that it is set to to "150%." High render resolutions will produce very small foveated regions. Can you verify what your target Render Resolution is set to?

I'm using auto render resolutions (actually all Steam VR graphics settings at default) and the blurriness is bad enough to bring me here. I have a 3060ti and I've only ever seen this foveated rendering using Steam Link (not an issue with Oculus Link or Airplay).

Originally posted by Zod:

I'm above 150% because I play games at native quest 2 resolution so its not that.

I use my headset for more than gaming, reading websites the foveated rendering is too much.

let us change/disable the behavior or a per app basis. for ex, when just accessing my display for a website or playing a 2d game, I would definitely want this off.

it sounds like you want to go the route of automagically setting this to keep the ui simple, but just put some foveated settings under advanced.

Absolutely advanced settings are needed! Plz add everything you can to advanced settings! Codec settings, FR settings.

Also vital thing missing is something similar to FOV tangent multiplier in Oculus. It reduces pixels on the edges of display that you don't see anyway due to lenses/eye position. Resulting in huge performance benefits (much more than FR). It's required for Flight Simmers.

If you turn up the encode width (or whatever it's called, the second slider down) in increases the size of clear area in the center.

Originally posted by Saberpeep:

If you turn up the encode width (or whatever it's called, the second slider down) in increases the size of clear area in the center.

When I try to do this. It always reverts back to the default value. It only allows me to reduce the value. As soon as I increase It. It jumps back down.

The primary control for foveated area should be set by "Render Resolution" instead of Encode size. Increasing Render Resolution significantly (>200%) causes a negative impact to the sampler inside the headset, even if the small foveated region is not objectionable.

Steam Link does not encode video the same way other streaming systems encode video. All AMD cards (with the current drivers), and many GTX series cards do not support encode sizes > 1024. We will auto-detect the maximum size supported by the GPU hardware in the future and correct the slider so it cannot be slid to unsupported resolutions.

There are also other negative consequences to setting encode size too large, both encode and decode.

For more information, we have created a new "Settings and Technical Details" section of the FAQ. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0E2C-406B-9135-38A4

seemingly, many users want the ability to directly adjust/turn off foveated rendering. an on/off button would be good and no longer have it tied to render resolution.

ideally, it would be displayed visually with three circles all inside a larger circle and allow us to set the radius size and compression of each.

but what render resolution turns off foveated rendering? you iys governed by render resolution but how exactly? does a larger render resolution make the inner circle larger?

Originally posted by charlesl:

The primary control for foveated area should be set by "Render Resolution" instead of Encode size. Increasing Render Resolution significantly (>200%) causes a negative impact to the sampler inside the headset, even if the small foveated region is not objectionable.

Steam Link does not encode video the same way other streaming systems encode video. All AMD cards (with the current drivers), and many GTX series cards do not support encode sizes > 1024. We will auto-detect the maximum size supported by the GPU hardware in the future and correct the slider so it cannot be slid to unsupported resolutions.

There are also other negative consequences to setting encode size too large, both encode and decode.

For more information, we have created a new "Settings and Technical Details" section of the FAQ. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0E2C-406B-9135-38A4

I had resolution set to auto and tried with 100% as well and the foveated rendering was still very aggressive. I tried to play a flat screen game in theater mode but it's almost imposslble as I can't read anything on the edges of the flat screen due to the foveated rendering without completely turning my head.

We've made major changes to how we handle this, especially on AMD GPUs in the most recent beta, please give it a shot and provide feedback: https://steamcommunity.com/games/250820/announcements/detail/3860211948182440551

Originally posted by charlesl:

We've made major changes to how we handle this, especially on AMD GPUs in the most recent beta, please give it a shot and provide feedback: https://steamcommunity.com/games/250820/announcements/detail/3860211948182440551

To me, it looks identical. The foveated encoding is not great, especially at higher resolutions. Steam Link's image quality in general looks pretty rough compared to Air Link and Virtual Desktop, but that's a whole nother issue. But the question I have regarding both is why? Specifically regarding the foveated encoding, why is it forced? You say it's because Steam Link encodes video differently, but why? What benefits were obtained as a result of doing it differently that made it worth the drawbacks?