So I’m pretty excited that my weak-ish little laptop actually has just enough oomph to power my Odyssey +. I came out to work today to sit around and wait for my pager to go off (it hasn’t yet!) and decided to bring my O+ with me and see how it would play with my Asus laptop. This isn’t a “power” laptop, rather it is the one I picked up prior to going to Australia that I felt would give a good mix of battery life and some game playability.
Specs:
- 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8250U
- 8GB DDR3 SDRAM’
- Intel UHD 620 + Nvidia MX150 2 GB GDDR5
- 256GB SATA3 SSD
- 13.3-inch FHD display
- 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 3.1, 1 x HDMI, 1 x microSD
All of that in a nice, slim, lightweight unit that is great for hauling around in my flight bag. I ran the Microsoft WMR “Is Your System Capable of VR” application and it said it was OK. Not great, but passable. So I brought my gear to work, downloaded the applications (SteamVR Windows WMR), and tried out my favorite VR title - VTOL VR.
To my surprise, it plays pretty well. Now, it isn’t as awesome as playing on my desktop at home with the 1080, but it works well enough. I tried 100% and 200% Steam VR settings and 200% was a bridge too far, resulting in stuttering and black rendering artifacts on the edges. The best mix of picture and performance seems to be right around 125%.
It is best to stay away from the S-Cam in the game though, as I found that resource hog has a detrimental impact on FPS. I’ll try out a few more games tomorrow if I have some time. I expect stuff like Beat Saber will be fine, but the resource heavy stuff like DCS World will probably be a no-go. I’ll try it though…and perhaps AeroFly FS2.
It definitely won’t be my go-to VR experience, but it is nice to know I can do a little light VR stuff while on the road. I can’t wait to go into the FBO and sit in the passenger area with my HMD on.