How many people choose VR over 30+ inch displays?

[dogbite]

I find that games designed for VR take the low res into account, and everything you need to read is big and bright so it's easily recognizeable. For E, the GUI is just transfered into VR, but no modifications have been made to make it extra functional. For me, all the menus appeared far away with low res, making it hard to read.

This has been a lament from Vive owners. I own a Rift and have no problem reading anything in any game including ED except for some small instrument clusters in DCS which is because some cockpits were developed before VR was added to that sim. Vive owners may be able to offer up solutions for you.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

In ED the position of the each panel varies greatly with each cockpit.
But legibility is not just a vr problem.

With a headtracker and my 32" ultra wide, 3440×1440, the cutters info panels was just as hard if not worse than in VR.

The vive's lenses and the poor area of focus certainly doesn't help.
The rift is honestly significantly better.

 

[CylonSurfer]

I find the HOTAS tedious in E. It's a game, not a Sim. I have a X-52 Pro (e.g. for Prepare3D) and play with gamepad and keyboard.

I really love games that make proper use of the motio controls. It's like being on a holodeck, you can walk around and interact with things.



I find that games designed for VR take the low res into account, and everything you need to read is big and bright so it's easily recognizeable. For E, the GUI is just transfered into VR, but no modifications have been made to make it extra functional. For me, all the menus appeared far away with low res, making it hard to read.



In general yes, but for E, practicality is more important to me. One hour of VR play is quite straining to me, but in E I often have 4 or 6 hour sessions.

For hardware, I run an OCed 5960X and a triple Titan X (Pascal) setup.

Elite Dangerous had VR support before VR had motion control support. Motion controls do not make a VR game or the lack of them mean that a game wasn't designed for VR. I love motion control as much as anyone else but honestly I fail to see what they'd bring to the table in Elite Dangerous.

 

[Zelos1983]

This has been a lament from Vive owners. I own a Rift and have no problem reading anything in any game including ED except for some small instrument clusters in DCS which is because some cockpits were developed before VR was added to that sim. Vive owners may be able to offer up solutions for you.

Vive and Rift have identical resolution. The problem therefore remains the same.
Other Vive games with UIs designed for VR do not have the problem.
It's an issue that must be taken into account during development. "Simple" fix would be to place the HUDs nearer to the point of view.

Elite Dangerous had VR support before VR had motion control support. Motion controls do not make a VR game or the lack of them mean that a game wasn't designed for VR. I love motion control as much as anyone else but honestly I fail to see what they'd bring to the table in Elite Dangerous.

Without motion controls, a game is much less fun in VR. It's the selling factor to have your own "holodeck" in your room.
Also, you can see your motion controls ingame. But you can't see your mouse, keyboard and gamepad. Not only does it hinder immersion, it's also hard to operate.

Otherwise, you only sit down, you have much less resolution for your whole view than you would have on your screen and you can't access your other screens. All that is traded for being "3D". In my opinion, not worth it.
You can see that the game wasn't designed for VR because the VR UI is the same as the non-VR UI. It's not optimized.

 

[CylonSurfer]

Without motion controls, a game is much less fun in VR.

In your opinion. That does not mean that a game was not developed for VR. Elite Dangerous was developed long before any VR headset had motion controls.

It's the selling factor to have your own "holodeck" in your room.
Also, you can see your motion controls ingame.

I can certainly see a throttle and stick in game, they move when I move mine. "Holodeck" - you don't have one.. You have a VR HMD which provides seated, standing and room scale VR experiences. Elite Dangerous being a seated VR experience.

Otherwise, you only sit down, you have much less resolution for your whole view than you would have on your screen and you can't access your other screens.

Yes, Elite Dangerous is a seated VR game. It is also a seated flatscreen game, your ingame character is seated and as such so are you while you play. You can access any amount of other screens / applications while playing via Oculus Dash or OVRDrop.

All that is traded for being "3D". In my opinion, not worth it..

Summarising the VR mode in Elite dangerous as "3D" is just ludicrous. If you don't like VR games which do not support motion controls and / or room scale then you simply purchased the wrong game. VR support in Elite Dangerous is a seated VR experience deisgned primarily with HOTAS use in mind, not to say you could not use of the other supported control methods.

 

[Dad Rock]

I have a two screen setup for Elite and Youtube/Inara/general browsing, as well as an Oculus Rift. I have to say that my time between the two is fifty-fifty. There's no beating the Rift for immersion, but like other people say, the sharpness of the image and resolution leave much to be desired. If I'm having a chilled evening where I want to chat to friends on discord, watch things on a second monitor, and stream, I'll use the dual screen setup.

If I'm on my lonesome, I'll load up the Rift with an HCS voice pack and rock and roll. It depends on what you're comfortable with. The Dash 2.0 interface for pinning screens works ok-ish, but it's a little buggy and awkard to use, so I don't bother with it anymore.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Motion controlls add some fun yes, but they are incredibly generalised.
If you own a rift and not the touch, get the touch asap you are missing out on a lot, and they come with approx $80 worth of free games.

But a vr game where the main controls are recreated in reality, as with a proper hotas is for elite or a ok racing wheel for D1rt or Pcars.
It is perfection.

There is no way I would play anything like a SIM with touch controllers.
I have tested them in x-plane and it's utterly horrible in terms of input fidelity.
I don't even have a screen I can glance at when in vr.
What I am doing is using the dash desktop, just pick up my right touch and click one button, from there the touch works as my mouse and I can use all the tools and websites I want.
Just as I was pre vr in fact.

Before Dash I used bigscreen and voice attack to launch the virtual desktop and alt+tab between the two, also worked like a charm.

 

[Frank]

...
Yes, Elite Dangerous is a seated VR game. It is also a seated flatscreen game, your ingame character is seated and as such so are you while you play. You can access any amount of other screens / applications while playing via Oculus Dash or OVRDrop.
...

The technology I use to access other screens when playing in VR is called the "Lift the headset up and look at the monitor" system.

 

[Heater]

34 Inch 4k and Vive...
Vive winds hands down.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

A subjective poll and sanity check.. was just wondering how many players who have a larger display (eg 27+ inches) that would consciously choose the VR experience over the panels..

Considering all the pro's and cons so far.. its warming up to only using vr for exploration / mucking about, and a panel for everything else that involves more than basic mechanical activity.

The cons im running into so far are:

- The overall blurriness causes fatigue (my 1060 is enough to run vr smoothly at some config, is it enough for clear text and geometry definition?)
- Lack of keyboard / website support.
- Overall image degredation?

Perhaps another question is, does having a 1080ti or similar overcome the inherent issues in the vr headset, or is it what it is?

Maybe with a smaller monitor, there's less of a precedent to overcome for vr and its compelling, but with elite on a 30 inch panel like i'm using it sets a pretty high bar that doesn't feel exactly cleared.

Its also cute how external scale finally feels right with vr, but internal cockpit scale is completely off in exchange.

Is it just me, lol?

I have a 70inch 1080p screen (now relegated to another room)....... DK2 beats it, CV1 smashes it
I now use a 4k 65 inch screen with beautiful HDR support .... CV1 still smashes it.

yes purely looks wise VR cant hold a candle to 4k, but after a small amount of time you (and by you I mean me) just dont notice it.....

but the immersion... why play a videogame about a spaceship when i can fly in my space ship.

I kind of look at it like this, would you rather view your life on a screen but with excellent vision...... or live your life properly but with a mild case of cateracts, or with mild short sightedness but with no glasses.?

hopefully with CV2 or pimax 8k (maybe even vive pro?) it will no longer be an issue


But it is all subjective, there are a few who post here saying they did not get on with VR at all... they are not wrong (ok they are wrong ) it is just their view. I have wanted my own vr headset since virtuality in the early 90s so it is fair to say i have a good tolerance of these things in favour of the immersion vr brings.

now some of your points.... they are all true... but me, when i am IN my ship i dont want to use external websites.
that said i do keep meaning to play around with the oculus desktop which allows you to add a monitor screen to your cockpit.

i have a gtx 980, and i have played for far far too many hrs than can be healthy in a row, i get less eye strain than on a monitor.

1080ti will allow super sampling and more fluid framerate at high detail... but i fear you will still be at the limits of the current generation of VR...... if you struggle now i would be reticent to suggest you spleunk £650 on a gtx 1080ti.

 

[Stewart_]

I don't care how big the 2D monitor is, it would never be the same as VR. Monitors are flat, VR is 3D and immersive.

 

[ziddan]

I played elite on my 52" tv with IR headtracking and hotas, then i tried using a google cardboard, that convinced my to pick up the first Oculus DK2 i could get my hands on back in early 2015, when i first put it on i got the giggles "im in my ship, im in my ship".

Was interested in roomscale so didnt buy the CV1 because it didnt have tracked controllers and instead picked up a Vive on release day.

Havnt gone back to playing on screen.

Used an i5-4690k@4.5ghz, 8gb of ram and a gtx970 up until fallout 4vr came out, upgraded to 16gb ram and a gtx1080 which allows for a bit more supersampling in elite.

As for complaints that looking stuff up is hard, i just use the built in steam desktop, ive made it pop up about a meter/3 feet from my face and resize it down to 1.1 meter and i can use EDDB or whatever perfectly well without taking the HMD off.
Got my keyboard between the stick and throttle and mouse to the right of the stick.

Hopped over to Colonia before the long route planning with cone boost was implemented, 270ish jumps all planned using ctrl+c/ctrl+v from the neutron router page.
Took a lunch break and two bathroom breaks, other than that the HMD was on for that whole 7ish hour session.

Havnt tried any methods of pinning videos in the cockpit but often listen to podcasts and audiobooks when playing solo.

Complaints about "missing" motion controllers in Elite, whats the point? Get hotas and you have perfect controlls and see "your hands" ingame, waving your arms has no point in Elite.

 

[Cliché]

I'm getting on a bit, and wear reading glasses, so getting the focus correct is quite tricky.

You wear reading glasses in VR? I need reading glasses, but not in VR. That could be messing you up.

I prefer VR over my 32" monitor. I tried switching back and forth for a while, but now I only play in VR. It could be my eyes, but I think it can look incredibly sharp much of the time. I don't notice SDE or godrays unless I look for them. It can be a bit blurry around the edges, but if you get used to turning your head to look at things, rather than shifting your eyes, even that isn't much of an issue. I used to play games on an Atari 2600, so I know what crappy graphics look like, and the VR experience with a Rift is not it.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

You wear reading glasses in VR? I need reading glasses, but not in VR. That could be messing you up.

I prefer VR over my 32" monitor. I tried switching back and forth for a while, but now I only play in VR. It could be my eyes, but I think it can look incredibly sharp much of the time. I don't notice SDE or godrays unless I look for them. It can be a bit blurry around the edges, but if you get used to turning your head to look at things, rather than shifting your eyes, even that isn't much of an issue. I used to play games on an Atari 2600, so I know what crappy graphics look like, and the VR experience with a Rift is not it.

Yeah, hyperopia or long sightedness would actually help make sharpen the view up.
It is near sightedness that needs correction in VR.

I kind of find the term, reading glasses, rather a misnomer.
Personally I am so near sighted I need glasses for everything, except reading if I hold the book 8cm from my nose.

 

[jamieboo]

Had an Oculus for a few months with my i7 1080ti setup, then I returned it.
For me, the technology's just not quite there yet.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Vive and Rift have identical resolution. The problem therefore remains the same.
Other Vive games with UIs designed for VR do not have the problem.
It's an issue that must be taken into account during development. "Simple" fix would be to place the HUDs nearer to the point of view.

That statement completely ignores that the lenses are hugely different between rift and vive.
In the Vive you can barely see the entire sensor radar in focus.
Whereas in the rift you can see sharply past your own ship status on the left and target logo, without having to move your head at all.

In effect, playing ED in the vive is almost twice as exhausting since you need to move your head to see anything at all.

It's a bit like in photography
A camera might have a 23mp sensor, but if the included kit lens can barely achieve a resolution of <6mp, the resulting pictures will seem less than they could hence the need for better lenses.

 

[dogbite]

Vive and Rift have identical resolution. The problem therefore remains the same.
Other Vive games with UIs designed for VR do not have the problem.
It's an issue that must be taken into account during development. "Simple" fix would be to place the HUDs nearer to the point of view.

Numerically speaking they have the same resolution but they do not have the same pixel layout, they don't have the same sweet spot, they don't have the same fresnels, they don't have the same brightness, they don't have the same drivers and they don't use the same frame duplication software. The difficulty in reading text in ED with the Vive goes back to April 2016 and is well documented in this forum. I am not a Vive owner so I can't speak to what might have improved since then, but they are definitely not the same when it comes to ED and most of those who own both have spoken on this many times here.

 

[GunnerBill]

VR - no contest.

I use 2D occasionally when I do a lot of outfitting and that now seems like a weird simulation of Elite, like watching a 20 yr old VHS on a UltraHD TV.

 

[[VR] Enexemander]

I just bought VR last week, so I'm new. But wow. What an experience! I'm not one to get overly hyped up beforehand, but for me this is the real deal.

That's not to say I would never play on my monitor again. But so long as the VR is here and convenient, I would choose VR everytime.

 

[Riktar]

My Rift gives me a headache after 30 minutes, so I prefer my 33 inch 2560x1440 monitor.
i'm using a gtx970 and the vr resolution sucks for me. It's ok to start with, but then the headache kicks in.
My questions. ..
Would a 1080ti cure my headache ? And can a 4 core i5 drive a 1080?

While I don't get headaches I do come away from ED with a sense similar to coming off a boat that has been through moderately rough waves. Kinda of like having to get my "non-vr legs" back under me. I have been trying to play through it for the past few months with no improvement. And I don't enjoy the feeling.

Now it could be it's because my R9 290 can barely get to 45 fps when not much is going on. Then again, it could be just the way I am reacting to VR.

I would hate to invest in a 1080 or 1080ti (which would obviously get my frame rates up) and still be left with a case of the wobbly's after coming off a 2 hour mission.

The way it is now, as much as I dig flying my space ship, I may just have to settle for the 2d simulation until the technology improves.