General VR discussion thread

[blurredvision]

However, this afternoon my remote isn't behaving right. The middle-click is intermittently working. It will stop working completely and won't work again until what seems the HMD goes into standby and then I put it back on. All the while, every other button on the remote works fine.

Something else to keep an eye on.

Had this happen a couple more times since originally posting this and have since found out it's the Oculus software just not responding. The remote button was responsive inside software but not when interacting with the Oculus software. I then found the controller's A button wouldn't respond either. A quick restart of the software and everything was working normally again.

I haven't been able to recreate this issue, it just seems to happen whenever it feels like it, so hopefully they're aware of it.

As for games, after a week with my Rift, I'm still enamored with Lucky's Tale. I don't get much time to play so it's been slow going, but I really haven't played much else except this. I think I'll see this one through to the end and then move on to something else.

What little I've played of Eve Valkyrie is pretty neat, but it messes with my head anytime I barrel roll, so I'll have to get used to that if I'm going to play it with any regularity. I also think it severly lacks with the controller and a proper HOTAS is required, so maybe one day I'll decide to put some money towards a cheaper set.

The only other game I've purchased so far was Bombsquad and it looks like it might be pretty fun.

I tried out BigScreen a bit last night, it's the free competitior to Virtual Desktop. I'll have to say that while the displays on the Rift aren't conducive to the smaller elements of a desktop, playing full-screen videos on YouTube was surprisingly awesome. Not amazing quality but a lot better than I thought it'd be. I had read that some people do all their Netflix watching through their headset, I can now see that as a possibility.

 

[Michael]

The resolution itself is "better" than 1080p, so you would think a desktop would be good, but I think it is a focal length and other optical tricks that just can't quite work with the current headsets for desktop replacement.

Either that or no one has quite put the real effort into it.

The VR games are cool and everything but VisiCalc is what made the apple ][ useful and that would be the real VR breakthrough. Make it so Wall Street traders have an edge using it and look out for investment.

Michael

 

[pj-]

The resolution itself is "better" than 1080p, so you would think a desktop would be good, but I think it is a focal length and other optical tricks that just can't quite work with the current headsets for desktop replacement.

Either that or no one has quite put the real effort into it.

The VR games are cool and everything but VisiCalc is what made the apple ][ useful and that would be the real VR breakthrough. Make it so Wall Street traders have an edge using it and look out for investment.

Michael

Rift and Vive are 1080x1200 per eye. That gives you a stereo 1080x1200 image, not a 2160x1200 image. That 1080x1200 is also spread across a much wider field of view than a normal monitor. I think the effective resolution of a 19" virtual monitor at a normal distance is around 640x480.

The displays need an order of magnitude more pixels before replacing a monitor becomes a viable option.

 

[cytg111]

Rift and Vive are 1080x1200 per eye. That gives you a stereo 1080x1200 image, not a 2160x1200 image. That 1080x1200 is also spread across a much wider field of view than a normal monitor. I think the effective resolution of a 19" virtual monitor at a normal distance is around 640x480.

The displays need an order of magnitude more pixels before replacing a monitor becomes a viable option.

so ~4k x 4k is a massive amount of pixels.. yet, not ape* crazy. Screens will get there soon enough, and the GPU iteration after big Pascal and Vega ... could do it (specially if designs are targetted VR). VR is allready crazy immersive and its only going to get better from here. Yay future.

edit : but yea, I got the vive and it is NOT a desktop replacement tool yet, i have to get reaaally close if I want to read the small print of some text.

 

[Sonikku]

Are there going to be cheaper VR headsets for PC's? I see $100 ones for Samsung Galaxy users. I don't have a powerful smart phone but my desktop is up to snuff. I don't have $600 for a headset but I wouldn't exactly need the full Vive rolls royce experience either, just an introduction to VR would be cool to have.

 

[Mutilator]

IMO if you don't go room scale w/motion controllers and get the full VR effect... there's not much point. Sitting in a chair and watching something on a Gear VR is one thing, actually walking around and interacting with it is quite another and what true VR is to me. Save your money, wait for the prices to come down, and bite the bullet when it works best for you. That may be buying a used Vive, it may be waiting until 2nd gen stuff starts rolling out, but don't settle and buy something just because it's cheaper now. The prices will come down, right now it's still cutting edge tech.

Basically if you buy something cheaper, you'll want more and end up probably spending more in the long run. If you buy what you really want it'll cost you more up front but probably save you money in the long run. I think that makes sense?

 

[Squeetard]

LOL, I keep trying to set my vive controllers on an in game table, only to have them drop on my feet. Talk about immersed.

 

[Mutilator]

First time I did something like that was in one of the hidden rooms in The Lab - was in there popping balloons, started to lose my balance, and put my hand out to catch myself on the virtual wall. :\

 

[blurredvision]

Steam VR weekend sale: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/vr_weekend/

Good timing for me.

 

[Kaido]

Steam VR weekend sale: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/vr_weekend/

Good timing for me.

Ah man! I've been blowing full price on title after title for weeks now :biggrin:

 

[Aikouka]

I don't play DotA or any of the other MOBA games, but Valve released a new VR spectator program for DotA 2, and it sounds pretty darn cool. You can view from the standard camera perspective, or drop down into the game field at a few different height levels (including player size).

Ah man! I've been blowing full price on title after title for weeks now :biggrin:

Get that refund goin' ASAP!

 

[Kaido]

Get that refund goin' ASAP!

Not a huge Steam user, do they have a partial refund policy for games bought within a certain period of time, or is it a return-rebuy kind of thing?

 

[Aikouka]

Not a huge Steam user, do they have a partial refund policy for games bought within a certain period of time, or is it a return-rebuy kind of thing?

You can return it within two weeks as long as you haven't played it for more than two hours.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I recommend A Chair in A Room.

and...d@mmit I really don't need more things right now....but...but..

 

[Kaido]

Two more apps tonight:

1. BigScreen: (free beta) Wow, WAY better than I thought! The desktop was actually usable! You can really get a taste for how awesome virtual screens will be once the resolution on the physical screens increases. Putzed around Windows a bit & fired up a quick game of Serious Sam, which was kind of laggy but pretty cool!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/

2. Budget Cuts: (free demo) Ooooooh my gosh, this is hands-down the best VR game I've tried. You're kind of a cartoon James Bond with throwing knives that you use to kill robot guards (it's pretty fun!). I didn't like the teleportation system at first, but grew to really like it because it's usable as a game mechanic. You shoot a blue ball, which opens a window on your controller, which you can use to look around before teleporting over. The ball can also bounce off ceilings & walls, so if you have to get around an angled corridor or something, you can get tricky about it. Really really looking forward to a full version of this game!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/400940/

 

[Kaido]

Another couple of games:

1. Battle Dome: ($15) Kind of like capture the flag. You have a shooting gun & a painting gun. You move by teleporting, but you can only teleport to floor tiles that you've painted with your color. So everyone is going around spraying the map up with their color to get around, but then you also have to shoot the other team so they have to respawn, and to win, you have to kill their "core" by shooting it a bunch. I hated the teleport system at first, but once you get a few people playing with you, it actually gets to be a lot of fun because sometimes people get so focused on painting the tiles that they're not paying attention to who's shooting at them. And you can dodge with roomscale, which is pretty fun. If you like multi-player FPS games, this is a really fun one to pick up.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/484870/

2. Adr1ft: ($20) You're an astronaut stranded in space. You start out by having to get oxygen because your helmet is cracked. I died right away You begin the game in a training sphere to get used to the controls; be warned that it not only takes a good five or ten minutes to get a handle on using the spacesuit, but you may also experience some sim-sickness. I didn't so much get sick as thrown off balance when I'd do the somersault move (left or right spin); my body literally wanted to fall over haha. If you've ever dreamed of become an astronaut, try this game & you will never want to leave earth again haha.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/300060/

They just barely added full Vive support (as of yesterday); it's still a standing (or sitting) game, but they have motion controller support now instead of just gamepad support:

https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/28/htc-vive-owners-can-finally-face-the-void-in-adr1ft/

I'm still loving Tilt Brush as well. Oh man. If you have any kind of artistic background, it's just such a trip. I could literally spend HOURS a day in it if I had the free time available. Would love to see Google Sketchup in VR as well, plus stuff like Revit for doing house models. I sketched out my dream house design in Tilt Brush & it was really cool to poke my head in each room, sketch out a couch or TV set, draw up the kitchen counters, etc. VR is going to be amazing for not just 3D CGI design work, but also for pre-viz on projects like home renovations.

 

[Kaido]

I recommend A Chair in A Room.

Vive + Subpac = the ultimate combination for horror games. I'm not a huge fan of the horror genre, but VR is just such a good place to get creeped out. I stuck my bass shakers on my chair back when F.E.A.R came out & that really added to the spooky effect of the game; then playing Dreadhalls on my GearVR really let me see the potential of it. I posted this link in another thread, but I've been playing Raw Data, which is kind of a hacker/shooter/slasher game with a tiny bit of horror mixed in:

[it] has this really great scene where you're inside this building hacking the company, the alarm gets tripped, and the bodyguard robots start attack you. You're surrounded by safety glass, but the very first one to attack just starts banging his freaking head against the glass to break it like that scene from The Happening with the old lady in the house at the end. Watching a 2D version on Youtube is one thing, but seeing it in high-res VR is freaaaaaakay! (feels so much more real & the graphics don't look very cartoony at all when you're actually wearing the headset). Skip ahead to 1:55 in this video, the evil robot starts breaking in at around 2:05:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIx3xzd-xUg

I think the overall best VR game I've played so far is Budget Cuts, which is just a demo at the moment, but they have you do so much stuff with your hands (throwing knives, going through drawers to find keys, etc.) that I can really see where they can combine this with scary games to make an interactive crazy horror experience. That & throw on the subwoofer backpack with good-quality headphones and YIKES

 

[pj-]

Budget cuts is a great demo but its very much a demo and remains to be seen how much of an actual game it becomes. There's no tension once you figure out how weak the robots are. The setting is interesting and the teleport preview is a fantastic idea so I'm sure whatever they put out will be worth buying.

Dimensional is a really great game that doesn't get a lot of attention. It's well made and uses roomscale really well. Theres a free demo and I think the full game is 5 bucks. I'm not sure how long it is since I've only played the demo levels so far.

Vanishing Realms and The Gallery are also great, but the amount of content per $ is pretty low. Vanishing needs to be 2-3x longer before I would recommend it at full price. It's still in early access so that's certainly possible. The Gallery may have been the most immersive "game" experience where I actually felt like I was exploring that world.

Destinations also has a ton of cool things to see for free. Looking around on mars was one of the most impressive experiences I've had in VR, and the old mill photogrammetry location is incredibly convincing.

 

[cytg111]

Anyone had their Vive setup busted by a windows10 upgrade?

 

[Mutilator]

I haven't read most of the posts but I've seen a lot of people saying to make sure you have your Vive unplugged while doing the upgrade...

I was one of the few people I know that never went to reddit. Now I'm on the Vive subreddit every single day. 1 stop shop for all your Vive news.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I cannot get Trials of Tatooing to run for the life of me. Just crashes with out of memory error on startup.

Also disappointed that the Nvidia funhouse only runs on those cards :/

 

[Kaido]

I cannot get Trials of Tatooing to run for the life of me. Just crashes with out of memory error on startup.

Also disappointed that the Nvidia funhouse only runs on those cards :/

That's too bad, Funhouse is easily the best graphics I've seen in VR. Plus the skeet shooting game is pretty fun!

Trials of Tatooine is entirely too short, but gives you a taste of Star Wars that leaves you wanting more. Hope you get it working! Maybe a reinstall? My Vive setup is pretty buggy. I have nothing else on the computer other than Win10/updates & Steam (i7, 24gb RAM, GTX980 Ti, 250gb SSD) & Steam takes forever to load, and then if I put my headset down out of sight & put it on later, sometimes I can't bring up the VR menu using the remotes even though it can see the base stations & the remotes, so I have to do a full PC reboot to get back in. Stuff like that. Glitchy.

 

[Mutilator]

Bob Ross Tiltbrush

 

[Kaido]

Bob Ross Tiltbrush

Episode 1 of The Joy of Tilt Brush with Bob Ross features the following wonderful painting instructions: Condemning the Heathens, and that's it. The Joy of Tilt Brush was then immediately cancelled, and there will not be an episode 2.

:biggrin:

 

[Aikouka]

Ended up picking up a few games from the VR sale...

Raw Data
Tabletop Simulator
Final Approach
ZenBlade
Pool Nation VR

I'm still waiting for my VR Cover before I really get into playing some of these, and they've shipped... from Thailand. :\