Oculus Dash

Micha · Oct 12, 2017

Alec Turner said:
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-das...-lets-you-use-your-pc-in-vr-oculus-connect-4/

"You’ll even be able to ‘pin’ PC apps from the dash so that they stay floating in view while you’re in a VR game."

Ok cool; well, we'll see either way how it works in December

Really looking forward to this.

CylonSurfer · Oct 12, 2017

Micha said:
Ok I just read the Dash overview, and -nowhere- does it mention being able to inject windows into existing apps.

All it talks about is being able to multitask, switch between apps, or run multiple windows and resize them as you see fit inside the new Dash space. There's not a single example or hint of being able to overlay another app into one which is "full screen".

https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-rift-core/

What it -will- allow though, is quickly "alt-tabbing" between ED and another App/website while staying within VR. Even being able to display them side-by-side and so on. Each app can be run on its own virtual monitor, which will be hardware-accelerated at the OS level, which actually is a pretty neat thing.

But it doesn't look like the holy grail of being able to inject arbitrary windows into ED will be achieved using this update.

EDIT: PS. if anybody has a better resource (I wasn't able to find one) which shows more in-depth usage and overlay ability, please post links!

LOL, keep your pants on and watch the key note video. They discuss dash and this very feature, they even show a pic of Elite with an overlayed video....

Kerrash · Oct 12, 2017

Great in theory but I wonder what is the performance impact of pinning a web page in VR?

CylonSurfer · Oct 12, 2017

This is meant to be at hardware level, Oculus have worked with AMD and Nvidia on it so hopefully good! Time will tell.

Kerrash · Oct 12, 2017

Time will tell. I doubt very much that there is zero impact however

CylonSurfer · Oct 12, 2017

Indeed - however I can run a video in the background now with 0 impact to elite so if it runs like that then great

V Dashboard has always added to much of a performance hit so any improvement over that would make it viable imo. The dash itself would still be useful even without overlaying videos or web browsers into elite, as you could simply just 'pull over', open dash, read the info you needed and then close dash eliminating any performance issues.

Wasp0 · Oct 12, 2017

Roll on December, do we all have to be 'Beta subscribers' to get this exciting update?

DaggerSnake · Oct 12, 2017

Kerrash said:
Great in theory but I wonder what is the performance impact of pinning a web page in VR?

get out the wallet, 32GB DDR4 recommended in all systems!

Full_Ninja · Oct 12, 2017

han said:
Its very easy to just have the touch controllers on the table between the hotas and just pick one up if you want to do something with the window. Done that with V with no problem, so this looks really great for Elite

Yeah thats how I do it when I use steamVR desktop mode. I simply have a vive controller sitting next to me. Anytime I need to do something on the desktop while in game I just grab the controller and press one button. Not perfect but nice to have as an option.

CylonSurfer · Oct 12, 2017

DaggerSnake said:
get out the wallet, 32GB DDR4 recommended in all systems!

Where did you read that?

Shrimp Tabasco · Oct 12, 2017

Pretty cool! Let's hope it's resource friendly. Alt+Tabbing in VR to open a website on my monitor now wrecks ma immurshun.

Micha · Oct 12, 2017

CylonSurfer said:
LOL, keep your pants on and watch the key note video. They discuss dash and this very feature, they even show a pic of Elite with an overlayed video....

Link please? I'd like to watch it.

Anyway, another article (linked before) mentioned being able to pin other apps. Odd that the actual article on the Oculus site doesn't mention this as it's been a highly requested feature.

EDIT: Found it here: https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/11/oculus-connect-4-keynote-livestream/ The Dash stuff starts shortly after 46m into the video.

Alec Turner · Oct 12, 2017

CylonSurfer said:
LOL, keep your pants on and watch the key note video. They discuss dash and this very feature, they even show a pic of Elite with an overlayed video....

Could you post a link for the keynote video - I can't find it.

han · Oct 12, 2017

Maybe we finally can put the on screen keyboard inside the cockpit! If not, we could just aim a webcam at the real keyboard and put that in the cockpit.

Wasp0 · Oct 12, 2017

han said:
Maybe we finally can put the on screen keyboard inside the cockpit! If not, we could just aim a webcam at the real keyboard and put that in the cockpit.

Funnily enough there is already an in game keyboard in our cockpits right now!!! All we need to do is to get the Fdev guys to enable it, i mean it's not as if they have anything else to do (Tongue firmly in cheek with that last statement

)

CylonSurfer · Oct 12, 2017

Micha said:
Link please? I'd like to watch it.

Anyway, another article (linked before) mentioned being able to pin other apps. Odd that the actual article on the Oculus site doesn't mention this as it's been a highly requested feature.

Alec Turner said:
Could you post a link for the keynote video - I can't find it.

Sure:
[video=youtube;wFcqQX0Gimo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFcqQX0Gimo[/video]

I think the Core 2.0 stuff starts at around the 31 minute mark.

rennarda · Oct 12, 2017

If only there was somewhere to actually PUT windows in ED that didn't obscure something important. Even the pop-up HUD side screens are annoying enough!

CylonSurfer · Oct 12, 2017

rennarda said:
If only there was somewhere to actually PUT windows in ED that didn't obscure something important. Even the pop-up HUD side screens are annoying enough! &#55357;&#56832;

I have been known to place virtual windows in the space between my toes and the bottom of the radar - low enough not to obscure the station UI when active. This has always seemed a reasonable placement to me as it obscures nothing and doesn't hurt you neck as its pretty much in view at all times.

Micha · Oct 12, 2017

rennarda said:
If only there was somewhere to actually PUT windows in ED that didn't obscure something important. Even the pop-up HUD side screens are annoying enough! &#55357;&#56832;

That'll require FDev support, but yeah, it'd be awesome if they could create either new popups or custom tabs in the existing ones for us to pin our content into.

As shown, the Oculus Dash stuff looks pretty promising. As others have mentioned, I hope they will support other input mechanisms than just Touch such as mouse or joystick or even (shock horror gasp) voice recognition. Also I hope they will enable profiles for games so that you can perma-pin other windows into it.

Hmm, time to jump into the Oculus forums

Toumal · Oct 12, 2017

So essentially, this is what I've been doing for years now.