OMG! (<-- Never typed that before. It’s for girls with training bras)
But OMG! Despite myself I put in 5 minutes of effort to setup the controls in DCS. I then got into the Huey parked on a hilly farm just on the outskirts of a French village. Nothing you guys have said prepared me for that. Incredible! I flew around giggling enough to shake my training bra loose. I don’t know what happened next but I looked over to unsafe the guns and somehow lost control input. I was just along for the ride as my Huey made a dash for a couple of houses. For a split second I thought of the thing they said in Matrix about dying in the Matrix and that maybe it was true. I’m still here but it was terrifying.
That’s about it in a nutshell isn’t it? It is pretty much impossible to describe the feeling of presence until you’ve been in there. My first flight I chose the A-10A and I was just freaking out over how my brain was telling me “this is how it was always supposed to be…!!!”.
I’ll be interested to see how you feel about air to air refueling now too. To me, VR made an immense difference because I finally felt like I could really and truly judge my distance and position to the boom or drogue or whatever…it is just extremely intuitive. Same with positioning a helo relative some fixed object…hovering, precision landings…all way easier with the depth perception. Man, I’m so excited for you…LOL…
Your enthusiasm for all things sim is contagious, Beach. You should consider writing about it. I flew around in a campaign mission in 1.5 with a Ka50 and although I haven’t found hovering alone to be any easier, I certainly find that hovering while looking left, right or down is just as easy as hovering looking straight ahead. I could study vehicles like I have never really been able to do before.
I don’t think anyone really predicted that a sale of this magnitude would happen. The new permanent price point is really going to put pressure on HTC if they expect to stay competitive (even if their tracking system is better for room scale VR).
It is inevitable that prices will drop, and specs will increase.
Like our latest members of the VR Club, I really enjoy VR, but I have a wishlist of things. Increased resolution is one, FoV is another. VR gloves or similar tools for interaction would be cool. But better performance comes on the very top of the list.
All of these boxes, in my list, will be checked off. Of that, I’m sure!
I’m also conviced that VR is the future for flightsims.
I got myself the Oculus bundle together with an USB-card from amazon.
Setup was really easy and well guided except that Xbox controller not wanting to pair. A Windows restart did the trick. The Windows restart school of problem solving will never get old.
Screen resolution feels like an old Game Boy Screen. But that depth perception does some crazy stuff with the brain.
I tried it first with Thumper. That game in 2D is already very good in creating a sense of dread. It’s funny how I think it gets slightly easier to judge the timing and distances but on the other hand the assault on the senses is stronger. Was a very cool first VR experience.
After a needed break I started up DCS and created a free flight mission in the editor. Stuff was almost unreadable and I could only do it because I know where the buttons in the editor are. DCS then crashed on “Prepare Mission”. I restarted it and upped the Pixel Density to 1.2. It made the menues way easier to read. Not wanting to redo the whole mission editor stuff I just tried a KA-50 Instant Action free flight. Oh boy. My graphics card is not strong enough for any nice graphics settings (GTX970) settings but this was really cool. I hope this cryptocurrency-craze will end till my next GPU upgrade.
I will have to get used to that falling feeling when going into a bank and not being pressed into the seat while being able to see the distance to the ground. And that vertigo feeling when the death camera goes up into the sky.
I then hopped into my second most favorite module, the MiG 21. I heard it was a small cramped cockpit but it’s such a beauty. Except that green or bright red instrument needle textures. One thing that amazed me was how far from the ground the pilot sits in the plane. Even in such small plane like the MiG21.
That was even more obviuos in the A-10. That plane is huuuuuge. Sitting in the A-10 on the ground feels like sitting in an Actros drivers cab.
I still haven’t set up the “use sight as mouse” buttons. Right now I’m still using the mouse. But finding the mouse is not that easy with the head set on. What gets me every time is when I try to look at my keyboard and it just isn’t there, just more cockpit instruments.
I’m looking forward to try more stuff out in VR. When I have to be “competitive” in DCS I will sadly have to stay with TrackIR. In the situational awareness nightmare that is the MiG 21 I can “read” the readouts from most instruments depending on the direction the needle shows, But dialing in the QFE was impossible, I had to use a piece of flat land to match the barometric and radar altimeter readouts.
This might get better when I find out how to assign the zoom slider in VR and some day get a better graphics card.
What are some unmissable games (gems) in VR? I already have IL-2 BoS and Dirt Rallye and will try them out shortly. The Star Trek Bridge game looks tempting, and my inner trekkie will only resist for so long. But what else is out there?
So doing a little bit of research about the “blurriness”. My personal experience was it was highly dependent on the game, but found out some potentially useful stuff in the process. First, apparently I can adjust the Vive to accommodate glasses, the knobs for it aren’t obvious but found them finally. I guess the DK2 version of the Rift also had this adjustment, but retail version removed it for the different foam pieces instead.
The eye width. Apparently this is rather important to get right. I had just been doing it rather willy nilly but there are ways to obviously get this at home with a metric ruler, or going to the eye doctor. Which I think I’m going to go do and have it measured there and actually adjust the thing properly for once and see what the results are.
Apparently the PSVR actually has software to make this adjustment rather than having to make the adjustments manually. Does the Rift have something like this? Looks like it was at one point part of the configuration tool.
If you like military stuff, have a play with Onward - I bought it a few weeks back, but tried it for the first time yesterday, with the 249 and M9 - great fun!
It’s nice, for once, to have to actually physically remove the magazine or box, open the breech, lay over the belt, close the breech and cock the weapon before firing (and to fire only in 2-3 round bursts, as is realistic - otherwise you’ll be shooting a lot of birds).
