Yo! Whatcha need?
Thanks @near_blind.
Does the Vive work well with sims too? Anyone tried both with sims?
Looks like I’m able to test both VRs here in town, Best Buy has the Rift and Microsoft Store has both Vive and Rift available for demo.
I’m heading to bed, but I’ll answer more in depth tomorrow.
tl:dr. Vive can do everything a Rift can do, but you’d probably be fine with a Rift if all you’re going to do is flight sims.
1 Like
1 Like
Yeah that’s more than good enough, I’m sure. You compare it with my team red hardware here 
You did lose a frame on the CPU but it was possibly just a glitch or something. One frame out of nearly 13k is not a big deal at all.
1 Like
More “whoa” moments this morning. So thanks to @SkateZilla - who steered me in the right direction - I was able to implement ASW successfully by making a small registry change. I verified it is working by going into my Virtual Desktop and as I cycle through the CTRL 1-2-3-4 keys, you can see the FPS and performance change on the fly. I kept the performance monitor HUD up and started DCS World…and changed the settings and CTRL-3 definitely gives a butter smooth setting (I guess locking in the FPS at 45 with ASW enabled). Upped the pixel density in DCS World to 2.5…still butter smooth (gonna give credit to the 1080 I think on that one).
Opened the C-101 - it is beautiful in VR.
Opened the Ka-50 - most of the lettering and labels are clear enough to use now - way better than when I first started tinkering.
Flew a bit around Nevada…and that C-101 is just gorgeous…what a beautiful cockpit in VR.
I’ll try P3D later and see if that ASW works with it or not (or if it is handled within FlyInside). I’m definitely buying FlyInside - it is a fantastic bit of software that really makes the Rift work well with P3D.
1 Like
Hey…my system is ready. I should buy one of these new-fangled Virtuoso Really headscarves…
1 Like
alright.
So on paper if you look at the Vive and the Rift are pretty similar. Same resolution, same field of view, practically same weight. The major differences are the means via which they track the headset, and the Rifts’ ATW/ASW. I have yet to encounter a problem with the light house system, and there seem to be a lot of satisfied Rift customers. I can’t speak/vouch for the effectiveness Asynchronous blank warp, The Vive has some means to jigger with the FPS to make it more palatable, but I don’t know how it stacks up to the Rift-magic.
So why did I buy the Vive?
-
Room Scale Vr: I bought the Vive in the first month when Rift room tech was just a glimmer in Palmer’s eye. Admittedly this was future investment on my part, I currently don’t have the space for it, and haven’t really taken advantage of it.
-
Valve: The impression I had during the research phase, and one I still hold is that Oculus/Facebook is attempting to sell and monopolize a product, while Valve is trying to nurture a platform. I’m uncomfortable with Oculus’s strategy of locking their games to their tech, and especially trying to scoop up VR titles from independent studios by offering them funding in exchange for exclusivity. For all this, I went with the company that seems to not care so long as VR is succeeding.
-
Tracking: I’m in north Texas, for six months of the year it’s like the eye of Sauron is peering in my window every evening. My TrackIr decidedly hates this. I wanted to be absolutely sure I wasn’t going to have the same problem with the Rift. Turns out my fears on this were overstated.
My Experience: It works. I’ve never had a functional issue with it that wasn’t caused by my own stupidity (occluding a light house, using a damaged HDMI cord, borking a mother board).
-
DCS. I definitely feel like Vive users are second fiddle to ED. The gui hook ups for things like VR Zoom and Pixel Density don’t do anything for the Vive, but for the latter you can force it using a few choice settings. That said it does work, and it is usable. I can’t speak too much to performance, as right now I seem to get mostly 45 FPS over land in the caucuses independent of any video settings, VR, no VR, Nevada is better; there’s an occasional stutter but as long as you’re not blasting down the strip in an F-5 with settings at max, you should be fine.
-
Elite: Works as advertised and is niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice
-
FlyInside: Works as advertised, though it did murder my FSX install, and re-install, and re-re-reinstall (this was a tacpack issue)
So for all that: Assuming you don’t care about controllers, or room scale, you’re probably fine going with a Rift unless the politics mean that much to you or you really like lasers.
4 Likes
Thanks @near_blind, really useful feedback about the Vive, especially the info about the tracking, I have struggles with my TrackIR as well due to sunlight, so that is a good factor to take into account.
1 Like
WHAT?!?!?
Tell me how!!!
Nice thread…
Congrats on the Rift, Beach!
I haven’t been able to use mine for 3 weeks because the guest bedroom has been occupied. (That’s where I stash my simpit).
I’m anxious to try the ASW!
My 6yo daughter almost tore the Rift of her head when confronted with the alien in the dreamdeck demo! She didn’t even want to try the t-rex. I laughed as she tried to catch the aicraft in the small “play city” demo! I wish I had that on tape! 
She really love the “Henry the hedgehog” movie though.
2 Likes
Room Scale:
Oculus Does this fine for me, I was able to walk around my room and the VR Hanger scene for DCS as well as Steam VR Environment.
Valve:
Oculus works with Steam.
Tracking:
Oculus uses Self Identifying LEDs that have a numeric pattern built into them.They work incredibly well compared to TiR, Though I didnt test mine w/ my Windows open at Sunrise.
DCS:
Devs had the Oculus SDK and DK Units First AFAIK, Likely Why.
Also, regarding ASW, Requires Windows 8+, Updated Drivers and for it to be activated in the Registry.
Also works great on Windows 10, when trying to watch movies, some MP4s looked weird when upsampled to 90Hz+anytype of movement, ASW w/ 45 fixed that problem, but my Win10 is on my Laptop, so I cant test games until I get a new SSD for Win10 on my Gaming PC
2 Likes
I understand ED has very limited resources to funnel into VR development, and they have choices to make on what to prioritize. Outside of VR zoom everything works with the Vive, so it’s not the end of the world. Still, it’s something that I did not expect, and would want to be made aware of when choosing which product to pursue. 
Im not sure if the option was available in the SteamVR SDK, other wise the command would have both options and when compiled would have dispatched to both Oculus or Vive.
2 Likes
Fair enough, that would make it difficult, lol.
Great thread everyone! I haven’t tried the current version of Rift, but I did try the previous version and my experience seems exactly the same as those expressed here by near_blind and Beach. I really felt “present” in the sim, in the world so to speak. That being said, I couldn’t get past the low res and screen door effects and for me it was a deal breaker. When the current version became available I decided to wait it out and see what others were saying about the latest release and I’m very glad I did.
It sounds as if progress was made getting rid of most of the screen door effect and that the res is better with modern GPU’s and CPU’s. It does seem though that res is still an issue and with the cost of this hardware, coupled with the cost of replacing my GTX970 I’ll probably just have to wait until the next gen comes out. When using the previous version I also had a major headache after a hour of use and I’m wondering if it is title specific, VR in general or maybe a one time occurrence?
1 Like
I went to bed at 8pm last night because my migraine was so bad. A real ‘axe in head’ one. Before that I spent 2 hours in a title called Lunar Lander within VR and it felt great, but it didn’t cause me ‘motion sickness’ (I don’t get that so much) but a splitting headache. The frame-rate was a solid 90 fps and it all seemed ok, but sometimes that seems to happen. It sort of reminded me of the sort of migraine I would get if I drove facing into the sun for hours on end.
People say stuff like ‘VR legs’ exists, in that you do build up a tolerance, but I’ve been in/out of these things for almost a year now and still get it almost randomly. Sometimes it can really trigger odd reactions. My wife played minecraft for an hour using ‘left stick movement’ (something that my brain hates) and was fine. She played a 3rd person view of Luckey’s Tale and immediately felt ‘bad’ within 5 minutes. So, pretty random.
With Sony entering VR and people getting their PS4 VR HMD’s it will be interesting to see how widespread this is going to be.
1 Like
VR has an odd side effect on me…and I swear this is true - it makes me sleepy. 
I don’t know why, but being ensconced in those goggles and feeling the light, comfortable pressure makes me want to take a nap. I also think some of that has to do with fatigue from my brain doing battle with what it is seeing…but I’ve noticed it several times now.
I think the screen door effect is still there…I don’t know that there is much to be done about that at this current level of technology. For me though, it is very reminiscent of the early days of full motion simulator display technology. You’d often see a grainyness to the picture…so I’m fairly comfortable with it. For me, the feeling of presence and the wow factor of 3D is still overwhelming the negatives.
I swear I could just do touch and gos in the C-101 all day long because it really feels that cool. I’m going to have to give the Gazelle a whirl tonight…
2 Likes
Drop by teamspeak. I’d be interested in joining.
1 Like