VR News

Check out the robot dog in the The Lab’s video. Always gets an ‘awww’. The use of photogrammetry (yay, a new word!) is one of those things that works really well with VR stood up.

VR’s biggest breakout issue is that games have to be made for it especially to work well (with the exception of what we like here, which is driving/flight cockpit sims) so it becomes a chicken/egg audience/cost issue so far.

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so beach’s latest birthday thread made me doubt a little if I should skip gen 1 entirely :stuck_out_tongue:

I wonder what the opinions are over here on the rift vs the vive vs the PSVR? I know the rift seems to be the premier choice here. It is actually cheaper than the vive. But from reading about speccs and reviews I find myself favoring the vive slightly more.

While it’s a lot more work to set up as you actually need to wall-mount the stuff but I do actually have about 3*5m worth of playing area then. The only thing that worries me is the fact that I’ve got a glass dome in my room. Because I used to work nights and couldn’t sleep when it was very bright in my room. So I hung a steel bar with some curtains straight across my room. The thing is that when light shines on it it can be so reflective that even the trackIR picks it up. But if I understand the vive correctly, the wall mounted stuff are just emitters and the vive itself actually carries the sensors so it should be a non-issue. If the cables are long enough I could actually pull them over the steel bar and not be hindered by the cable at all, not having it break my immersion or cause me to trip over them.

I don’t play much else than flight sims these days. Most of the stuff coming out for it doesn’t really interest me. But some games like “onward” look amazing and really seem to work the play area and the controllers well. I’m afraid I’d be missing out on stuff like that with the rift.

The PSVR headset looks nice because you can use it as a normal display as well. A reason why mine has been collecting dust for so long is apart from the overly expensive games, the fact that it’s on the small tv in the bedroom and it’s hard to see details on it. Having it on “fullscreen” would be awesome but if it can’t connect to a PC it’s off the list.

One more thing I like about the vive is that it has a camera in the front. I know augmented reality is still a ways off but if it ever does come to a point you can just see your stick and throttle normally I hope the vive would support it. It already supports some form of AR. Mostly just to not bump into things though.

The biggest concern is the hardware, though. I don’t need to fool myself into thinking it could support 4k VR. The system is 6 years old and had its last hardware upgrade about 2-3 years ago.I ran the Steam tool to check if you are VR ready and these are my results.

So what do you guys think? what hardware are you guys running your goggles on?

Room scale has it’s attractions and the Vive’s big selling point is room scale. When Touch controllers come to the Rift (I suspect October/November) then the playing field becomes a little more even. The Vive will still have the edge in sheer space that it can track, but the Rift will be no slouch when you add another tracking camera.

But here is the thing that still makes me 100% happy with my choice of the Rift vs the Vive regarding room scale…I feel pretty sure the novelty of room scale will wear off. The closest thing I can relate to would be after a very enjoyable New Year’s Eve spent with friends. They had a brand new Wii and we all played bowling amongst other games. It was a blast and quite revolutionary at the time. My wife and ended up buying one for ourselves and it was fun for awhile but within a year it was just gathering dust on the shelf. I kind of think roomscale will end up being a similar thing. I could be wrong of course. I know my interest in flying and flight sims won’t be going away any time soon, and flight sims are something else when experienced with the Rift.

As I have said before, both the Rift and the Vive are great but for what we are looking for, the Rift has the edge right now. That could of course change with further software development, but the Rift is still lighter, more comfortable and $200 cheaper if all you want to use it for is flight or driving sims.

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I agree with Paul. VR is a new medium and we still lack the ‘killer title’ for room scale. For nearly everyone on Mudspike that loves sims, whether driving or flying, the Rift is currently the more refined device. The Vive can do sit-down very well, but with Valve their heart is really in it for trying new things. It’s actually nice that there are at least a couple of rich companies competing in this, but having different paths for getting there.

It would be worth waiting till Oct 6th before purchasing though, as that’s when the Oculus OC3 dev conf keynote is and if anything is changing in packaging/pricing then that’s the best guess.

To offer more specific opinion on what you wrote @Sryan

Correct - they aren’t really impacted by light like a TrackIR either. Ideally they should be linked, but they don’t need a connection back to the PC. It’s done with lasers and timing codes in the pulses.

Touch will help Rift a lot, the gambit is on how well it gets adopted by Oculus rather than the ‘all in’ approach by Valve. Is there anywhere you can get a Vive demo in a store?

Tron mode as it’s been nicknamed on Vive is pretty basic. You can see your hands/keyboard etc but not really that well. It’s more just to not bump into that glass coffee table.

It’s almost inevitable you’ll want to upgrade. Lots of titles aren’t really optimized for VR and pure horsepower is the only way to burn through that. The trouble is that if you don’t make 90 fps then the reprojection / AsycTimeWarp can help but it becomes bothersome. Oculus and ASW play nicer with the 3DOF rotation of sit-down, while Valve don’t want to go there (they want you stood up, where 3DOF doesn’t help that much). I’m not saying you have to upgrade, but just to mentally prepare yourself for probably upgrading :slight_smile:

VR Funhouse. Not helping with the ‘It’s a Wii thing isn’t it?’ :slight_smile:

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Nice Sony VR review. So, we’re up to three major vendors selling VR headsets. Cool.

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With more entrants…is there specific programming that must accommodate each? I mean, does DCS VR work for all brands? Seems like it could get crowded if you have to write code for many platforms?

Sony is really in it to sell PS/4 Pros, so they are on their own island. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a display driver appear for it on the PC, but it would be hacked up rather than authorized by the big S.

Vive and Oculus have their own SDK’s but porting between them is trivial (depending on if it is sit-down, stand-up or room-scale type of game). The three emerging VR platform markets are now:

  • Mobile VR. Oculus/Samsung Gear VR. Google Daydream.
  • Console VR. Sony, with Microsoft about Spring next year (not counting Hololens).
  • PC VR. HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and a couple of other things from smaller companies.

So it is possible to port games between platforms like it’s possible to make EA NHL run on PC or Mobile, sometimes they won’t just to push their own platform exclusive.

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Probably gonna wait for the 2nd gen stuff, though

Oculus Connect 3 (Oculus dev conference) keynotes and stuff coming up at 10am PST

Twitch

Announced so far:

Async SpaceWarp as part of the SDK to provide lower-end PC support (drops to 45 fps and does the same synthetic frame as current ASW but for 3DOF).

Touch controllers for $199 (another constellation camera included) available on December 6th.

Extra 3rd camera to be able to do room-scale for another $79, available at same time as touch. Bit of a fragmented market then.

Ok guys. A little rant incoming.

About those hand controllers. WTF. How am I supposed to use them in games like DCSW?
I have to grab my HOTAS and stuff. I had hoped they finally give us something that isn’t as clunky and impractical as those Vive thingies. Like, a glove for example.

Natural point sells camera systems for motion capture that track such dots, it works fine (they use several cameras though).

I had imagined:

  • a camera or two (think TrackIR)
  • Gloves with dots on them, so their positions can be tracked
  • you activate the gloves with some command so you don’t accidentally grab stuff all the time. For example putting your little finger and thumb together. Then grabbing stuff (clicking) happens by putting thumb and index finger together, and right clicks are done by putting middle finger and thumb together. A small vibrating pad in the glove gives feedback (so you notice your hand is in the right position for grabbing something).

How hard can that be?
Those controllers on the market now are… meh. They limit you very much.

…and yes, as an engineer I know it is hard. But dammit, why can’t we be there already. That’s what misses in VR.

Apparently it’s extremely hard. As the last and longest keynote speaker (the guy who gave up his Microsoft stock options) detailed. It sounds like they are pointing to roughly a 5 year time frame before the technology matures. It was fascinating to hear him discuss all of the technological challenges. I suppose that we shouldn’t be surprised as long as it took the CV1 to come to market.

Yeah, we have seen it with the leap motion.
Actually not a bad idea, and they did show some impressive stuff that was actually working. Especially cool because no glove is needed at all, but… well, let’s say it isn’t working that well.

Lone Echo looked interesting, as far as games go.

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Bad news for @BeachAV8R, Fly Inside is looking for VR testers on X-Plane 10… :wink:

https://flyinside-fsx.com/

If they pick me. I’ll buy one.

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Hmm. VR Army here we come…

:vr: :vr: :vr: :vr: :vr: :vr: :vr:

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