ED and the Oculus Rift Developers Kit 2 (DK2) Discussion Thread

[KING5TON]

Whilst the DK2 is a huge leap forward in screen quality along with positional tracking, and latency improvements...the resolution increase does indeed leave a lot to be desired.

I can do without positional tracking, and the latency improvements for now...and so I see no reason to change my DK1 for a DK2. I was honestly hoping the resolution would be better than it actually is. (But that said - it is all still a great experience!)

IMO it's a step up from a DK1 but not massive. I think the issue is the pentile screen and the fact that there are less red/blue subpixels than RGB which the DK1 had. A lot of people that tried the 1080p RGB HD prototype said it looked higher resolution than the DK2 does, it had other issues though such as ghosting that were resolved in the DK2.

I know the crescent bay prototype was OLED but not the subpixel arrangement, hoping they've got back to RGB layout or even stacked subpixels.
The new lenses in the crescent bay prototype apparently increase perceived resolution, they didn't confirm the screen res but many people thought it was higher than the Gear VR which uses a 1440p screen. Reading between the lines of what was said by OVR I think it was a 1440p screen with the new lenses making it look better.

IMO the resolution aside things like the 75hz low persistence display make a bigger leap over the DK1. Much more comfortable to use than the DK1.

 

[VR - wickfut]

No but I'd take the word of OVR the people that actually make the Rift rather than anecdotal evidence and they say the best single gpu you can buy is better than 2 x lesser gpus that give you similar or even better performance.
If you're happy then have at it. I'm not posting this stuff to sell more GPUs, I don't work for either AMD or Nvidia, just passing on advice that OVR have given (with links to show I'm not making it up (why would I anyway?)).

err, you're giving out advice to people on a public forum when you haven't any experience in it yourself.

Do you even own a DK2?

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Arrives tomorrow, won't get chance to tinker with it till tomorrow night but will report back what FPS I'm seeing in stations and rings either tomorrow night or sometime Saturday.
Chances are the ones at EGX they were using weren't overclocked.
I'll be overclocking mine as much as I can get away with, seen up to a 20% performance increase in some 980 OC benchmarks.
Were you playing the Beta 2 build?
Bit worrying that they haven't managed to improve performance in Beta 2 enough across the board for no judder on the current highest end GPU. Hopefully it'll come in time though.

Yes, I was playing the Beta 2 build at EGX. The frame rate drop wasn't huge, and was only noticeable once I was up above the asteroid field and they occupied the entire field of view to the horizon. Added to that it only occurred when looking left and right with the DK2. It's possible this was just a one-off issue though.

Looking forward to seeing your report I may have asked you this before - but what frame rate are you currently getting?

 

[Gods3nt]

If you can afford to drop the cash for a DK2 and get the consumer version next year and you've got a beast of a machine already (like 290x or 780ti/980) and will be able to afford to upgrade your GPU next year for consumer then go for it.
If the answer is no to any of the above I personally would wait and save the money. DK2 while great takes a lot of GPU grunt to work well and has some flaws that make it a less than perfect experience (too low res IMO mainly).
Consumer version is going to be better but will probably require even more GPU grunt.

How much will the consumer version be?

 

[KING5TON]

err, because you're giving out advice to people on a public forum when you haven't any experience in it yourself.

Do you even own a DK2?

I'm passing on advice from Oculus VR.
I've supplied links to the advice in question.
OVR have said this over and over and over again.

I'll take the word of the company that makes the damn thing over some random person on the internet whom may or may not have confirmation bias due to running SLI cards.

Yes I own a DK2.

 

[KING5TON]

How much will the consumer version be?

No one knows so far. If I had to guess I'd say £300, hopefully less.

I do know that OVR have said that they want to sell them as low as possible (see pretty much any interview with Palmer Luckey in it)
.
I can see the reasoning behind this, the lower they cost the more adoption, for a fledgling technology getting as many units out there as possible will increase the amount of content being made for it which will feed back in to the product in the future.

 

[kyoseki]

How much will the consumer version be?

$200-300 I believe is the price being bandied about.

 

[Weathers]

Would be ideal really if ED gave the option to either change the font colour of the UI to green or add an 'oculus friendly' option of a green outline to the font.

According to Abrash, green font is the the most readable colour to use with the Rift

 

[VR - wickfut]

I'm passing on advice from Oculus VR.
I've supplied links to the advice in question.
OVR have said this over and over and over again.

I'll take the word of the company that makes the damn thing over some random person on the internet whom may or may not have confirmation bias due to running SLI cards.

Yes I own a DK2.

Mate , you stated "Single cards only. " like it somehow won't work or will be a lesser experience with SLI. It does work with SLI. It works perfectly fine with SLI and I've used my DK1 and DK2 with SLI turned on since day 1. If it didn't work fine with SLI I'd just switch SLI off in the settings - but I have no need to.

And stop trying to belittle me with your "random person on the net" because it doesn't change the fact that I know from experience what I'm talking about. You on the other hand are just parroting.

 

[KING5TON]

Would be ideal really if ED gave the option to either change the font colour of the UI to green or add an 'oculus friendly' green outline to the font.

According to Abrash, green font is the the most readable colour to use with the Rift

Well humans can discern more shades of green than any other colour, it's why nightsights are green.

Could also be related to the subpixels are there are more green than red/blue (i.e. there are 960x1080 green subpixels per eye but less red/blue (can't remember how many off the top of my head))

 

[KING5TON]

Mate , you stated "Single cards only. " like it somehow won't work or will be a lesser experience with SLI. It does work with SLI. It works perfectly fine with SLI and I've used my DK1 and DK2 with SLI turned on since day 1. If it didn't work fine with SLI I'd just switch SLI off in the settings - but I have no need to.

And stop trying to belittle me with your "random person on the net" because it doesn't change the fact that I know from experience what I'm talking about. You on the other hand are just parroting.

Read my posts again. You appear to be hearing something other than what I actually posted.
I did not say it wouldn't work. I said that OVR have said that currently SLI/Xfire are not ideal because they add a frame of Latency due to AFR. Motion to photon latency is an important part of VR and ideally you shouldn't add any latency to the process if you can help it. Because of this they (not me) recommend the best single GPU over SLI/xfire.

Believe what you want though, if people want to take your advice based on your "experience" or the advice I'm passing on (with the source of that advice) from the makers of the HMD that's up to them.

Another point to add to this is that OVR have never demo'ed any the rift versions on SLI/xfire setups as far as I'm aware. Do you think that might be due to what I've been talking about?

 

[VR - wickfut]

Read my posts again. You appear to be hearing something other than what I actually posted.
I did not say it wouldn't work. I said that OVR have said that currently SLI/Xfire are not ideal because they add a frame of Latency due to AFR. Motion to photon latency is an important part of VR and ideally you shouldn't add any latency to the process if you can help it. Because of this they (not me) recommend the best single GPU over SLI/xfire.

Believe what you want though, if people want to take your advice based on your "experience" or the advice I'm passing on (with the source of that advice) from the makers of the HMD that's up to them.

Another point to add to this is that OVR have never demo'ed any the rift versions on SLI/xfire setups as far as I'm aware. Do you think that might be due to what I've been talking about?

You are a person with zero experience of something, arguing against my first hand experience of something with the argument of "well that's what someone else has said"

Let that sink into your skull for a moment.

 

[Mark D]

...... Let that sink into your skull for a moment.

Easy tiger!

 

[VR - wickfut]

Easy tiger!

what?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sink+in

 

[knowles2]

I had a go at EGX on the oculus I think my eyes needed longer to adjust to it and the five minutes I got on the game simply wasn't long enough, it didn't help that my eyes started to water either. or the bloke back seat driving .

But the Oculus was pretty cool and will be even more immersive once the pilots get proper bodies and they solve the blurry text issue.

Wish I could have spent longer with it and I didn't have time to make to the Oculus lounge

 

[Ref Minor]

You are a person with zero experience of something, arguing against my first hand experience of something with the argument of "well that's what someone else has said"

Let that sink into your skull for a moment.

To be fair, you are one person with his own subjective view and the "someone else" is the manufacturer of the rift.

 

[AlienHack]

As i wrote some dozen pages ago in this thread.

Elite Dangerous is super playable for hours with a powerfull card (r9 290x) and with some standar option that have to be chosen. (disable aero, force vsync and disable oculus service)

i play for hours with the rift on and have no issues. the frames are 75 and rarely drop to 55-65 when inside stations. this adds the known ghosting effect but its not that bad. Out in space and in battles everything is perfect.

Now what iwant to MENTION is that there is an option in ED menus, in the graphics, wich says "3d seperation ( ecperimental) " , well i never had changed it and it was always at its default setting which is lowest.

So today i tried maxing it!! OMG!!!

the game got MUCHMUCH more extra 3d depth!!! its like another game!!! even the small button in your chair now have depth like they are carved. so is the walls and when you now fly next to a ship you can see details that are in 3d like pipes weapons etc!!!

people that play ED with DK2 TRY MAxing this option!!!

 

[Orion03]

So... should I buy an Oculus Rift to try it out?

 

[kyoseki]

people that play ED with DK2 TRY MAxing this option!!!

What you're actually adjusting is the interocular distance (I think the rift calls it IPD - interpupilary distance, the distance from the center of one pupil to the center of the other) of the cameras used to render each eye, it should really be set to whatever your real IPD is.

With it set to max, it probably considers you some strange human/hammerhead shark hybrid.

So... should I buy an Oculus Rift to try it out?

Yes, although there's something like a 2 month lead time on them right now.

 

[Weathers]

As i wrote some dozen pages ago in this thread.

Elite Dangerous is super playable for hours with a powerfull card (r9 290x) and with some standar option that have to be chosen. (disable aero, force vsync and disable oculus service)

i play for hours with the rift on and have no issues. the frames are 75 and rarely drop to 55-65 when inside stations. this adds the known ghosting effect but its not that bad. Out in space and in battles everything is perfect.

Now what iwant to MENTION is that there is an option in ED menus, in the graphics, wich says "3d seperation ( ecperimental) " , well i never had changed it and it was always at its default setting which is lowest.

So today i tried maxing it!! OMG!!!

the game got MUCHMUCH more extra 3d depth!!! its like another game!!! even the small button in your chair now have depth like they are carved. so is the walls and when you now fly next to a ship you can see details that are in 3d like pipes weapons etc!!!

people that play ED with DK2 TRY MAxing this option!!!

I can't make out any difference whatsoever :S