I know right! I want him to get woefully confused and end up in sad alcoholism 
Together we can make this work!
1 Like
I think we need to recognize that VR isn’t a new concept. There have been previous attempts at making it work but the tech wasn’t really up to the task and the cost of the units was prohibitively expensive.
Now we have the tech to make it work well, and at a price point that is, while not cheap, at least affordable to those who are used to buying the latest consumer tech (I’m writing this on an iPad Pro that cost a good bit more than the Rift CV1). Headsets will only get more capable. I’m not so sure that the prices will drop at the high end any time soon though.
I just hope that the big players don’t abandon PC Gamers (i.e. us) in favor of cheaper mobile phone based units which would not fit our needs at all.
1 Like
This looks pretty cool…
A pretty fair summary of where we are, in terms of investor talk:
1 Like
Yep, the free beta was pretty fun. The ‘top down toys’ actually works pretty well.
So for those that have them - is Oculus Touch something I should pull the trigger on? I’m tempted with the release of Ultrawings. Is Touch worth it?
I have the touch controllers. They are very neat but I am not really using them all that much, mainly because I am having fun with flying the Viggen in DCS (which is marvelous in VR).
The games I have for the controllers are The Climb and Arizona Sunshine. The Climb really is very neat and fun to play. Arizona Sunshine is also fun if you like shooting Zombies :).
I am tempted to pick up Ultra-wings for a bit of light hearted flying fun, but Landfall looks good too (which doesn’t use Touch controllers)… Decisions decisions.
1 Like
Ultra-wings downloading as I type this. Landfall it turns out is a twin-stick shooter rather than a RTS, so probably not my cup of tea.
I’ll report back soon 
1 Like
I read that Ultra Wings is pretty cool with the touch controllers. Being able to hit the ignition switch and stuff…should be interesting. Can’t wait to hear. My Amazon Touch Controller order is in your virtual hands Paul…
Well, it’s quite fun. The Ultralight is the first aircraft that you qualify in. The first missions cover takeoff, flying the aircraft and landing. The Touch controls work well with it. The first missions after the “qualification” involve flying through target rings as fast as you can. After that you are told that you can fly to another island, land and purchase the airport there.
It’s very “Lite” as far as the operation of the aircraft is concerned… open the fuel valve (which seems to be kind of fiddly), turn on the magneto and then press the start button. You then grab the stick and throttle, and off you go. You have to be quite generous with the stick movement. It feels like you are flying a B747 rather than an Ultralight but that’s ok I guess.
I think Kai would enjoy it a lot
Is it worth dropping $200 on Touch controllers for Ultra-wings? I would have to say no, but the controllers are very cool, and if you are planning to play games such as the Climb (which is great) and some of the other Touch titles, then I say go for it. I have to admit that I have been buying titles to have something to do with the controllers though…and I still spend most of my VR time playing DCS, which of course does not need them.
I hope that helps at least a little.
1 Like
I tried Ultrawings yesterday, and I must say I was impressed!
Yes, kind of minecraft terrain look-a-like, but great FPS. And I must say they have some nifty water graphics.
Using the touch controllers was easier and better than I thought it would be.
I quickly ran into the no. 1 problem with moving around in a VR world. There was something not so virtual obstructing my hands. Had to move my joystick and throttle out of the way to be able to reach the virtual controls of the cockpit.
Once this was solved, everything worked pretty well. As @PaulRix says, interacting with the fuel valve was finicky. You have to “grab” it like you would scoop up a full hand of sand, to close your fingers around it. Trying to pinch it between the thumb and index finger doesn’t work.
The flightmodel isn’t bad. A bit sluggish, and very draggy, which is true of many ultralights. You need to keep the approach quite steep to make unpowered landings.
There is some gyro physics in there as the nose yaws some at power changes.
Rudder is controlled by the left touch controller joystick. I wish they made it possible to use real controllers instead of touch controllers, but it works. And as I said earlier, better than I thought it would. Grabbing the stick with your touch controller feels quite intuitive.
I love the FBO user interface. A laptop where you accept missions. Move a few post-it notes on a board to change settings, and then grab your helmet an put it on your noggin’. Very cool!
Well worth the money, IMO. Worth to buy the controllers for Ultrawings! I don’t know? But the Touch Controllers may see some use in DCS as well, and that is a reason to get them. And their implementation in Ultrawings gave me hopes for DCS. Interacting with a VR cockpit is more intuitive than I thought it would be. Did I mention that already?
Been googling a bit to look at 2010 projections(the year after Avatar) for 3D tv’s and most of the articles read much like the projections for VR, and we all know how big of a success the 3D TV is!
Well, I’m going to enjoy the flop that VR is going to be while it withers on the vine. You flat earthers don’t need depth perception anyway…
3 Likes
I was smart enough to skip the ‘Buy a 3D TV to play sims better fad’. Did you get burnt or could not afford it?
To my recollection, Avatar in 3D was a bit of a surprise. It blew me away in the cinema, but I didn’t see a future for 3D TV’s at the time and I have no real interest in buying one even now.
VR is a different animal, at least when it comes to gaming. It is something that has been on the horizon since the late 1980’s/early 1990’s. I think it will be a niche market for some time to come, but I don’t see it going away.
2 Likes
We also ended up with faster consumer LED panels out of that 3D cul-de-sac too (helpful for VR, ironically), in that 240 Hz got driven by that need and most new TV’s still have it. It’s like is 1080p here to stay, in that more people buy it today than 4k still?
Or another example is non-hybrid electric cars, in that fewer people buy them than hybrids and they are showing a similar adoption curve to 3D TV’s, so it’s game over for Elon? That feels a bold call.
I feel VR/AR in some form is inevitable, and if it’s not this flop then it’ll come around again. The feeling of immersion and ‘VR Presence’ in gaming is an order of magnitude more impressive than watching ‘Dances with 6ft Smurfs’ at home in 3D with funny glasses on.
1 Like
My point was is that the whole 3D thing got shoehorned onto all TV’s, but nobody got the glasses or content to play on it so it petered out as a method to consume media. The faster LED panels were not a result of the 3D hype though, that is a natural development of using LED’s as a display method compared to the LCD/Plasma tech that we started out with.
Electric cars are a different market, with a different public. Musk aimed at making it a high-class vehicle, to then lower production costs for cheaper vehicles. He has a plan, that is feasible and realistic.
For VR, hardware costs simply cannot fall as much as they can for electric cars. It would require some massive change, which I simply do not see happening anytime soon. Perhaps in a decade or so we will have the tech capable of that.
VR/AR is probably inevitable. But this round? It’s still very shaky and certainly not a run race.
I dunno. A decade is a looooong time in tech. I think mainstream VR is way closer than that. Like one generation away.
1 Like
The speed of light and heat dispensation is currently a rather annoying and limiting factor in electronic design. That’s why the last few generations of cell phones only has made very small steps forward. Nothing special or interesting happening there.
The problem with increasing speed, and why we are currently limited in that regard is largely noise. The Amp Hour did a very interesting interview with pretty much the person that wrote the book on noise control about that.
So no, currently it’s not a run race yet in that regard either.