For those on the VR fence: Oculus Rift + Touch now $399!!! (Similar to Warthog HOTAS)

[ZeroAi]

Placed in the main boards because it is for non VR gamers who might be on the fence.

If you haven't gamed in VR, it is awesome.

The Rift is an astonishing piece of kit. For $400, similar to top of the range Warthog HOTAS, you really cant go wrong. The price includes the Touch Controllers too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/6mczil/rift_touch_399_for_a_limited_time_summer_of_rifts/

You also get a bunch of bundled games and apps.

Elite is astonishing in VR

I posted something similar on my channel - this is an awesome deal for anyone who wants to get into the first gen of VR!

I have one, and I love it - but I also wish each screen was much higher res.

Oh and yes Elite rocks in VR as does Robo Recall!

Windows Mixed Reality will launch later this year with 1440x1400 pixels per eye and at a price below $399.

Compared to the Rift and Vive that only have 1080x1200 pixels per eye. I'd definitely wait until they are released. Windows Mixed Reality will have a hinge that allows you to fold up the glasses whenever you'd like to, and it is also much lighter then the older tech from Oculus and Vive.

Edit: Here's some info:
https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-windows-mixed-reality-headset/preview/

Good point, but I think the prices will be the same ($399 retail, but dev kits are $300) and they won't come with controllers like Oculus Touch.

I also do think this is a way to clear out inventory ahead of an announcement of a new Rift which will likely be much better, but cost more with Touch.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Your missing out if you don't. Don't you want a history of what you've been up to? Don't you want additional voice interface. It's you who are missing out of the full experience

i was joking..... i use voice attack, as well as EDDI and, erm... is it ED Discovery?

all great tools and all actually help users in VR.

Windows Mixed Reality will launch later this year with 1440x1400 pixels per eye and at a price below $399.

Compared to the Rift and Vive that only have 1080x1200 pixels per eye. I'd definitely wait until they are released. Windows Mixed Reality will have a hinge that allows you to fold up the glasses whenever you'd like to, and it is also much lighter then the older tech from Oculus and Vive.

Edit: Here's some info:
https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-windows-mixed-reality-headset/preview/

i am interested in these, i love the look of the motion controllers and inside out tracking is hopefully the future of VR.......

That said i have my reservations........... inside out tracking is not perfect. if your walls are too generic the tracking can get confused, and the HMD has to have line of sight with the motion controllers at all time.
the latter is not really an issue with ED at the moment of course, so as an elite dangerous VR HMD it really could be great, but as a complete VR solution? my money is still on the rift and vive having the edge.

I messaged a guy in the industry who has tried out the acer solution. he was reticent to go all in on criticising it as its not fully baked for release yet, but he said my worries were well founded and are issues right now at least.

 

[TheNavvie]

I have the dk2 and have access to a cv1 - I wouldnt spend any money changing from one to the other (if anything I slightly prefer the dk2) - this is running on a 970 on 1 pc and a 1070 on the other. Main difference noticeable between the 970 and the 1070 - is I tend to get a bit motion sick in the srv on planets if using the 970 - so while I'm not aware of any noticeable frame drop - it is happening.
Have voice attack and while it is a clever program it's basically unusable for me .... because I'm Scottish, any other regional accent will suffer similarly I think.
Sadly voice attack uses the inbuilt voice recognition in windows, which hasn't changed since windows 7 - and it's terrible. Cortanna , Siri etc can all handle me fine - not windows - not with any combination of microphones or set ups (one of my main tasks as a job is setting up voice recognition software such as Dragon naturally speaking for disabled users and I have worked in sound recording studios - so trust me when I say I have tried a fairly exhaustive number of setups).
I am reminded of this gem - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU
As a result anything not mapped to Hotas is solved by a couple of strategically placed bits of blu tack on my keboard and numpad to let me "find" my hands position on the keyboard - works not bad.
Was hoping to maybe pick up another 1070 or even 1080 to swap up the 970 - but, the price and rarity of cards thanks to coin miners is ridiculous just now - might have a good deal on a 6gb 1060 though, so might give that a whirl till AMD's new offerings come down the pipe.

Voice attack doesn't understand me either, but I have commands set up for what it thinks I'm saying.... works just as well.

Eg. I say "Jarvis, frame shift drive". VoiceAttack thinks this is "Jarvis, friendship drive" and sends the button press for FSD to ED.

 

[william1134]

I am tempted, however I am worried if it will work or not, because I didn't buy my ED through steam... so steam VR isn't going to help.

Is it easy enough to use the rift with ED when running through the ED launcher?

 

[CMDR MERANGO]

You can change all the options from in-game in VR - it's a non-issue.

The whole point of HOTAS is you don't need to look at it - if you need to look at a joystick to see which button to press... you're doing it wrong.

Thanks for your reply. I can assure you I can use my HOTAS blindfold in my sleep - I was making a point. My next point, using the keyboard etc?

Cheers CMIV

 

[sutex]

Just wait until 2020.. Then , you'll know if ED is alive , and VR will be so much better.

 

[TheNavvie]

Thanks for your reply. I can assure you I can use my HOTAS blindfold in my sleep - I was making a point. My next point, using the keyboard etc?

Cheers CMIV

I use VoiceAttack for some buttons, for those that are still on the keyboard I navigate from the caps lock or enter key. I use the in-game text comms and search in galmap while wearing the rift. Nothing teaches touch typing more than not being able to see the keys! (That or countless hours spent in IRC where you had to learn to type fast or the conversation moved on before you had your say.)

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I am tempted, however I am worried if it will work or not, because I didn't buy my ED through steam... so steam VR isn't going to help.

Is it easy enough to use the rift with ED when running through the ED launcher?

all versions of elite run on the rift.
the steam and frontier versions work on the vive..... I am not 100% certain if the oculus store version works on the vive.

PS if you have a rift with elite you dont use steamvr, it supports the oculus rift natively.

 

[Slopey]

Thanks 777 for the feedback. The 'need' to upgrade my game rig has been the main blockade to moving to the VR.

You don't "need" to upgrade your rig really, but from experience, going from a 970 to a 1080 with the Rift - it's a completely different (and far superior) experience. If you can upgrade, it's well worth it imho.

 

[VR andysonofbob]

You can see my rig in my spec (I think)

EDIT No you can't!
To reiterate, I run a i5 2500k @4.4, 1070, 16GB of RAM.

I run with HMD quality at 1.2 but SS left at 1. Shadows High and AO off. Everything else maxed.

My eyes tell me 1.2 HMD quality is a massive improvement over 1, with diminishing returns as I increase. 1.5 is super optimum. I will need a 1080Ti for that though. :/

Super duper playable for me. It does dip below 90FPS on occasion but the Oculus ATW whatever it is called is really good when it does dip.

If you have the cash and you are interested in VR, I think it is a no brainer.

 

[dutchy2000]

Been playing ED in VR since I dunno 1.3 or something when the DK2 was the only game in town and you had to mess around with some weird extended screen things to make it work. And in order to read the text you had to turn everything green because green was easier to read on the DK2 screen. I still have everything green to this day, as I am so used to it. All hail our new Thargoid overlords!

But seriously if you have a machine even close to being able to run the rift, do it, its game altering good, some of the other games are a lot of fun as well. I am playing blaze rush right now.

As for running ED from the rift software, you can go into your frontier account and grab an oculus key and install it in oculus home.

 

[NeilF]

Unless you heavily use the keyboard in the which case, although visually stunning, it's a pain to use.

...and if you watch videos or browse while playing I guess...

 

[Alec Turner]

going from a 970 to a 1080 with the Rift - it's a completely different (and far superior) experience

This might depend on your expectations so, in order to balance those slightly ... I did exactly the same (went from 970 to 1080 with an Oculus).

I was pretty blown away with my first Oculus/970 experiences and ED was amazing! I was already aware (having tried both Oculus and Vive at Lavecon 2016) that resolution was going to be lower and that there was going to be lots of flickering and shimmering so that didn't phase me too much (well OK, a bit, but the awe of being "in" the game and the sense of scale utterly eclipsed those minor quibbles). However, once I'd settled down and done some tweaking (thanks to the VR tips in the threads I've highlighted at the bottom of my Best of Forum thread) I found myself never fully satisfied, always convinced that if I tweaked this setting a bit and that setting a bit I could improve the quality and/or frame rate. I hated myself for constantly tweaking, I just wanted to forget about all that and get on with playing the game (which, don't get me wrong, was still stunning with the 970 and all the Oculus stuff I tried apart from ED had zero issues whatsoever).

So ... when I was fortuitously (unexpected work bonus) given the opportunity to get myself a 1080 (despite it being what I consider to be a ludicrous amount of money for "just a graphics card") I thought that finally I'd just be able to crank EVERYTHING up to the max and forget about it. Now here's the crunch point ... even with a 1080 this is still not true. The 1080 is unquestionably better but, personally, I would not say it was a completely different experience, it's "just" better. I now have SS set to 1.0, HMD quality set to 1.5, shadows on high, FXAA and most settings on Ultra/Max. I do still have to turn off Bloom, Blur, DoF and Ambient Occlusion. These settings typically keep me just the right side of 90fps in extreme areas like planetary bases. That's definitely better than the 970.

But is it £500 better? With my hand on my heart?? Nah. Do I regret buying the 1080? Nah.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

tell you what i got so lucky with my overclocked GTX980

i got it black friday 2014 for £400 and it came with game which i sold for 20 quid and 20 quid of warthunder credit which i wanted anyway. it was meant to be a stop gap for vr until the 10xx series of cards launched, and despite the GTX1070 & 1080 being everything i could have hoped for.... my GTX980 just continued to impress - and still does today, so much so that it has allowed me to skip a generation.

I reckon i will probably pick up a GTX 1170 when that comes out, which going on the GTX 7 series, 9 series and 10 series will perform a few % faster than a GTX1080ti it should leave me sorted then for another 3 years or so, and will certainly leave me tooled up ready for oculus rift CV2 / VIVE gen 2 VR.

my quandry then will be my gaming TV. @1080p it is vastly low resolution for such a high end card in the future.... but to get rid of a perfectly functional 70inch gaming TV for peanuts that cost me £2000 for a 4k equivalent just does not sit well with me.

 

[nigeljk]

I noticed this (UK) bundled deal the other day (Oculus + controllers £399):
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/ult...d-oculus-touch-controllers-for-mind-blowing-v

 

[777Driver]

I did exactly the same (went from 970 to 1080 with an Oculus).

Pretty much why I went straight for 1080TI.

 

[Jakester13]

*Eeek* - it's arrived!!!

Nice boxes. Great presentation. Feels quality.

But but but but.... ordered USB3 card a few hours later and it arrives tomorrow - PS Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card is 56% off on Amazon just now. £17.99 instead of £40 - (My MoBo's USB3 isn't supported)

:S

o7

(Now just need to see how much I can sell my 2 x MSI 970s for, to see how much extra I need to get a 1070 or better.... any takers?)

(Coz I read SLI or having 2 cards won't help performance... unless any experts can inform me better: Are 2 970s better than 1 without SLI enabled?)

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

*Eeek* - it's arrived!!!

Nice boxes. Great presentation. Feels quality.

But but but but.... ordered USB3 card a few hours later and it arrives tomorrow - PS Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card is 56% off on Amazon just now. £17.99 instead of £40 - (My MoBo's USB3 isn't supported)

:S

o7

(Now just need to see how much I can sell my 2 x MSI 970s for, to see how much extra I need to get a 1070 or better.... any takers?)

have you considered trying it using usb 2? it will probably work albeit with slightly lower resolution tracking. (just whilst you wait)

 

[wrmiller]

While the price is getting better, I currently only have one game to use VR with, and that ends up making it a very expensive add-on for just one game.

I justified the recent money spent on the Warthog and VKB pedals because I can and do use them for different games. I think the next logical step for me would be a 34" monitor as I prefer to play games at the highest resolution I can.

 

[CMDR Dreamstate]

*Eeek* - it's arrived!!!

Nice boxes. Great presentation. Feels quality.

But but but but.... ordered USB3 card a few hours later and it arrives tomorrow - PS Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card is 56% off on Amazon just now. £17.99 instead of £40 - (My MoBo's USB3 isn't supported)

:S

o7

(Now just need to see how much I can sell my 2 x MSI 970s for, to see how much extra I need to get a 1070 or better.... any takers?)

(Coz I read SLI or having 2 cards won't help performance... unless any experts can inform me better: Are 2 970s better than 1 without SLI enabled?)

You're honestly better off saving up for a single 1060/1070/1080 card, as dual-970's will only snag you a few extra frames if you're lucky (I think it'll help with the Vram, but that's about it, because a second card will only run on your second PCI-E slot which is 8x speed, not 16x if you are running off the single rail - and depending on your motherboard, it may split the speed of your 16x to 8x per card - therefore, same performance). Edit; you'll also need a power supply capable of running both cards too.

SLI is slowly being phased out with the newer generation cards as GPU manufacturers have realised it is just niche and the majority of consumers only focus on the one card - so instead of making something lots-of-now sub-par cards to SLI with, they'll just make one slightly more expensive and driven by quality so you only need one.

Can't remember which company first started off this multiple GPU/SLI war, but it's a good thing it is just slowly going back to one card.

Most people who use SLI are benchmark frenziests who love to do nothing else but spend £10,000 on a machine to get the best 3D benchmark score of the year lol.