how you guys finding VR
- Thread starter Kingston@#
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I would wait for consumer version. Will be here within a month or two at max.
HTC Vive April I believe.
Unless you can buy a DK2 very cheaply... or money is no object.
Agree if you didn't buy one by now wait another month or 2 for the real deal. There are still some things that are annoying on DK2 that the CV1 will be much better in particular the lenses. These DK2 plastic lenses suck and permanantly scratch very easily. I will going for the CV1 the day it gets released.
VR in general? Outside of horror titles (which, honestly may be TOO immersive to be fun) it's pretty pedestrian at this time. It will be great, but right now...
VR in Elite Dangerous? Worth every penny of the ~$3,000 I've spent on it.
Having a VR headset, a good set of pedals and a nice HOTAS in CQC, Combat Zones, etc, is incredible. You're not playing a game anymore, you're flying a multi-ton-laser-firing-death-dealing-machine with your head on a swivel, bobbing and weaving in what really feels like a fight for your life. Having all of these toys and exploring is incredible. If I'm on a long-distance exploration route and haven't checked what class the next star is, I feel real and tangible fear dropping out of witch-space and seeing a Neutron star, black hole, high-mass B or O class star in front of me. If I am messing around close to a gas giant, roll into a dive and see the planet come into view closer than I was expecting, my stomach lurches and there is again that real fear that I'm about to die. Not that I'm going to have to pay out insurance in Elite Dangerous, but that I the person am about to be sucked into the gravity well of a gas giant and crushed to death. My conscious mind knows that's not possible in Elite, my subconscious screams "holy crap, pull up now or that thing is going to kill us!"
As soon as a 6DoF motion chair drops to around $10k, I'm going to get one. At that point, and I'm not kidding here, I won't want to play any other video game ever again.
VR in Elite Dangerous? Worth every penny of the ~$3,000 I've spent on it.
Having a VR headset, a good set of pedals and a nice HOTAS in CQC, Combat Zones, etc, is incredible. You're not playing a game anymore, you're flying a multi-ton-laser-firing-death-dealing-machine with your head on a swivel, bobbing and weaving in what really feels like a fight for your life. Having all of these toys and exploring is incredible. If I'm on a long-distance exploration route and haven't checked what class the next star is, I feel real and tangible fear dropping out of witch-space and seeing a Neutron star, black hole, high-mass B or O class star in front of me. If I am messing around close to a gas giant, roll into a dive and see the planet come into view closer than I was expecting, my stomach lurches and there is again that real fear that I'm about to die. Not that I'm going to have to pay out insurance in Elite Dangerous, but that I the person am about to be sucked into the gravity well of a gas giant and crushed to death. My conscious mind knows that's not possible in Elite, my subconscious screams "holy crap, pull up now or that thing is going to kill us!"
As soon as a 6DoF motion chair drops to around $10k, I'm going to get one. At that point, and I'm not kidding here, I won't want to play any other video game ever again.
It is an incredible game that I think is even better with Horizons. I saw some pretty cool stuff over the 5 hrs I spent on there last night. Landing on the dark side of a planet at basically what looks like a city in a desert was pretty cool.
welcome to 2016 hurry up OCULAS and release consumer ver.
Ha! After more than a year with a similar setup, I'm inclined to agree. It's still very much a "holy expletive!" inducing game and I just imagining how much better everything will get as ED is fleshed out and consumer HMDs hit 4k or 8k... ahhhh! It's the game experience I've wanted since I was a kid, and that it's finally possible to pull it off is just lovely.
Alien: Isolation was thrilling and playing thru GTA V was fun in VR, but my god Frontier is NAILING virtual reality in such a satisfying, comfortable way. It's going to sell a lot of faceboxes. A shame they are so polite and understated, they could be crowing loudly over what an incredible VR thing it is... the damn thing just WORKS.
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A question to the folks already using VR with ED.
Ive never tried any VR yet but I hear many of you saying that there is currently a drop in graphics quality with today's technology, how much difference is there between the Rift and a top end monitor in ED?
Also I'm trying to imagine what additional viewing perspective you get with VR in your cockpit. For example in combat I can't understand how much better view I would get because if I turn my head left or right as your enemy goes past surely you will see the cockpit wall ?
I need to try it obviously!
Ive never tried any VR yet but I hear many of you saying that there is currently a drop in graphics quality with today's technology, how much difference is there between the Rift and a top end monitor in ED?
Also I'm trying to imagine what additional viewing perspective you get with VR in your cockpit. For example in combat I can't understand how much better view I would get because if I turn my head left or right as your enemy goes past surely you will see the cockpit wall ?
I need to try it obviously!
A lot of the ships have really quite large views and you can look up and track a ship overhead. It gives you a sense of scale of the cockpits that you don't get at ALL otherwise. It's intuitive and glorious, blows away any flatscreen monitors no matter if you drop a bit in resolution or effects to get better framerates and silky smooth headtracking. Still worth it, and they'll improve that over the years. The menus and interface in 3D works so good, too... so looking left or right to pull up those menus becomes second nature.
Its a plastic box that puts you in a spaceship, to a certain audience that's just going to be pretty appealing.
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um, 2x studio dock speakers come NOWHERE close to a full HT setup.. the reason for my post was a response to the guy who said he traded a full surround system for headphones. of course a good headset is gonna sound better than two studio dock speakers because there are only two of them..add 3 more and a sub and see what you think. I own a razer kraken 7.1..never use it because I also own a full polk tsx set with a 500w sub. i really dont even need the two buttkicker lfe mini's but they feel neat.
You raise some good points which I'll get to after I explain where I'm coming from.
I think VR is totally awesome and it can't be compared with a monitor because it is a completely new experience. I only bought Elite because it was well known for having decent VR support. I waited and when I saw that ED:H supported DK2 DirectMode via SteamVR, I pulled the trigger.
Performance wise I already had realistic expections because I come from playing DCS (Digtal Combat Simulator). I have a i7320 16GB | GTX780 3GB combo and it runs just fine for me with HMD quality Max and most other settings quite High. Some settings are bad for VR and I have found that Supersampling is the worst (leave at 1x) and Blur and Shadows are greedy features that can cause me judder in stations. I turn those off.
So what is the experience like. When it is awesome it is awesomer than any monitor. The Galmap is awesome like you would not believe. Instead of lot of little dots for stars you have balls of light that feel like they are floating in the air in front of you - it's brilliant and this is how a Starmap should work. BUT there are problems in the Galmap and the Starmap. They are hard to use in VR right now because the mouse cursor is not made for VR. So you have something awesome ... which could be much better.
So about the cockpits.
I come from DCS and that sim has the most awesome cockpits you will see in VR right now. They are 1:1 recreations of real pits and each one uses about 500k polys and 500MB of textures and some guy spends years getting one just right ... so of course they should look good.
The cockpits in ED do not have the same amount of polish and in VR you really notice this. Elite pits are rated "B" in VR. I think that is fair.
It also looks like Frontier has made the cockpits to be user friendly on a monitor. I think they achieved something good here because I can play ED on a monitor without a headtracker BUT in DCS a headtracker is almost mandatory. However this design choice makes the pits look too big in VR (you will find this is a common complaint from VR players).
So what does looking out of a "B" grade cockpit look like in ED. Amazing. Things which are closer look better but in general everything looks amazing.
To your point about the visibility. I was a little disappointed that not as many of the pits are setup for visual tracking in combat as I expected. Still the Eagle has a full canopy cockpit and perhaps many the other pure fighters have this too. I simply don't have access to expensive ships yet so I can't comment on pits I have not tried.
If you buy first generation consumer VR expecting similar quality to a desktop monitor then you will be disappointed.
If you're able to accept a drop in resolution then you get an image larger than the largest imax screen and in 3d. The 3d also helps to offset the drop in resolution because the brain is no longer having to decipher what it's seeing from a tiny flat screen called desktop monitor.
Yes, that 4k monitor gives you a tiny flat image. Everything is miniature, your spaceship cockpit looks horrible (flat, cartoony, lifeless).
VR gives you life-size 3d wherever you look. Cockpit looks stunning. HUD and side panels float in front of you. Flying over planets and it's all life-size. Generally people who play Elite with VR do not want to return to tiny flat monitors.
You're also looking around you naturally. I can look about 170 degrees behind me with Oculus DK2 and with CV1 and Vive you can look all the way around.
If your GPU lets you run Horizons with AA and supersampling then the image looks very good. You're getting stunning contrast with the displays used for these VR screens.
But... if you can't get over a drop in pixel resolution then it's not for you. I regard conventional gaming setups as dead now as far as I'm concerned and I'm not alone in this. My VR using friends also don't want to play games without it.
You raise some good points which I'll get to after I explain where I'm coming from.
I think VR is totally awesome and it can't be compared with a monitor because it is a completely new experience. I only bought Elite because it was well known for having decent VR support. I waited and when I saw that ED:H supported DK2 DirectMode via SteamVR, I pulled the trigger.
Performance wise I already had realistic expections because I come from playing DCS (Digtal Combat Simulator). I have a i7320 16GB | GTX780 3GB combo and it runs just fine for me with HMD quality Max and most other settings quite High. Some settings are bad for VR and I have found that Supersampling is the worst (leave at 1x) and Blur and Shadows are greedy features that can cause me judder in stations. I turn those off.
So what is the experience like. When it is awesome it is awesomer than any monitor. The Galmap is awesome like you would not believe. Instead of lot of little dots for stars you have balls of light that feel like they are floating in the air in front of you - it's brilliant and this is how a Starmap should work. BUT there are problems in the Galmap and the Starmap. They are hard to use in VR right now because the mouse cursor is not made for VR. So you have something awesome ... which could be much better.
So about the cockpits.
I come from DCS and that sim has the most awesome cockpits you will see in VR right now. They are 1:1 recreations of real pits and each one uses about 500k polys and 500MB of textures and some guy spends years getting one just right ... so of course they should look good.
The cockpits in ED do not have the same amount of polish and in VR you really notice this. Elite pits are rated "B" in VR. I think that is fair.
It also looks like Frontier has made the cockpits to be user friendly on a monitor. I think they achieved something good here because I can play ED on a monitor without a headtracker BUT in DCS a headtracker is almost mandatory. However this design choice makes the pits look too big in VR (you will find this is a common complaint from VR players).
So what does looking out of a "B" grade cockpit look like in ED. Amazing. Things which are closer look better but in general everything looks amazing.
To your point about the visibility. I was a little disappointed that not as many of the pits are setup for visual tracking in combat as I expected. Still the Eagle has a full canopy cockpit and perhaps many the other pure fighters have this too. I simply don't have access to expensive ships yet so I can't comment on pits I have not tried.
DCS cockpits look amazing but they haven't optimised the sim for VR at all and I don't think it's any kind of priority for them. I can't run DCS at all on my 680 with VR now. Even on minimum the judder is severe.
Not sure what you mean with the B grade Elite cockpits...
They aren't based on fighter aircraft so there aren't any photographed textures. There aren't the hundreds of switches and dials but look around a typical cockpit in Elite and you notice very nice detail like power and signal cables routed around the frame and lots of details. This contrasts starkly with the over-simplistic cockpits I've seen on Star Citizen.
Cockpits look great on Elite even on the low detail I'm using on my vintage GPU.
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I have looked around and the cockpits are OK ... in VR they are a 'B'. Frontier are not shy about ranking things A-E so ... it isn't bad to have a 'B' rated cockpit. As you say, ED runs on a 680 and an Xbox and it has consistent VR performance. There is nothing wrong with 'B'.
What would make an "A" cockpit?
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You have your IPD set up correctly if things look too big. Certainly I've not heard this complaint before.
I haven't either. The cockpits are life-size but that's what we want with VR. Does sound like he doesn't have correct IPD or has some eyesight problem.
That is an 'A' pit in VR. I have a screenshot of a throttle body from an Elite pit and don't think it's ready to be posted next to that. In VR you need to use a lot more polygons. Everywhere where you could have gotten away with a texture in 2D ... you need polys because you can't rely on 2D tricks like using normal maps for detail.
Problem is you're comparing Elite to a real-world cockpit full of dials and switches. Elite doesn't need all that. It's not really a sensible comparison. I installed DCS again today after 3 months absence and pleased to find they updated it to latest 800 runtime.
Performance is increased too.
Elite cockpits are great. Lot of detail as I said. Power routing and data cables, lots of frame details, cockpit details. It's all there. Comparing it to an SU25 or A10 cockpit isn't a sensible comparison.
It also depends on the ship and the Diamondback Scout has a lot of detail. Much more than the default ship.
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