VR gets a lot of flack, often based on misinformed opinions from NON VR players, so I thought it would be good to start a thread to dispel those myths, basically now is a good time to chime in with a mistaken presumption about VR you've seen someone present, and corrections of that myth. If you post them here, I'll update this post with the myths and the corrections, and it will hopefully form a FAQ/Wiki if we get enough of them...
Each titled "spoiler" below expands with the answers to the question asked in the spoilers title:
That's a few points to start this wiki style article, let's get some more Q & A collated here, and or any corrections needed in the examples above. I'm hoping if we get enough information in this thread we can dispel a lot of the myths about VR that poison peoples opinion of it, so as to heal the division between NON VR players who think VR needs to get kicked aside to save the game, and people like myself who believe that it is perfectly viable to continue supporting VR in elite with only a couple of days of work, rather than a couple of years rewriting the entire game to support it.
Updated this post to incorporate points raised throughout this thread, and moved from bullet points to spoilers to prevent this being an insurmountable wall of text.
Each titled "spoiler" below expands with the answers to the question asked in the spoilers title:
In real money, any new gaming PC, or anything built to a decent standard of equipment in the last three to five years can run VR.
- VR isn't particularly CPU intensive, but requires a decent, not awesome, graphics card,say GTX970 or above...
- Nearly all GTX10, GTX16, or any RTX series cards can run VR
- Standalone headsets need fibre optic internet connections to function
- Typically standalone headsets are just that, standalone, although they can be linked to a PC for use on PC VR games
- Standalone headsets download games over any wifi and or USB to install them and run them locally like any smart device or games console
- SOME, but not all games require an internet connection if they are a Multiplayer experience and or for copy protection, but those games will run on normal wifi
SOME people are more susceptible to motion sickness than others, that applies to non gaming stuff as well as VR
- Certain people will find certain things in VR will trigger motion sickness, while others might find those same things OK, and or other things trigger them instead
- For example, the current VR on foot in Odyssey is rendered as a virtual floating window that is fixed in 3d space and doesn't move with the headset.
- I personally find that when playing in this mode, when my head moves but the view does not, this triggers motion sickness response in me, and I've seen others express similar opinions and experiences.
- I've also seen others express the exact opposite opinion, stating that the more immersive VR experience offered in an SRV, even driving sensibly triggers them and the ViRtual flatscreen is an absolute godsend for them.
- Many VR players have very robust "Virtual Legs" (akin to sea legs as sea sickness is motion sickness, and sea legs is the resilience against this) and aren't in the least bit bothered by such games / experiences.
VR lenses have a sweet spot centred around the Intra Pupular Distance, the distance between the players eye's pupils, in most headsets this is adjustable either with a software adjustment, or a mechanical slider as found on the Rift CV1 and Quest 2. however the Rift S was a software-only solution and wasn’t as good for many - the “sweet spot” in my right eye ended up being slightly different than the left.
- IPD adjustment ranges vary from headset, and typically cover most head sizes, however some people with unusually large or small heads will sometimes fall outside the range offered by some headsets.
- Any optician can measure IPD accurately, or you can measure it yourself with a ruler held up against your nose and using a mirror to see the distance between your pupils and make sure this ballpark measurement is covered by the range of the headset you are looking at buying.
Adding basic VR headlook to a game is little more than adding a new display configuration, the VR API asks for the pictures. Although, there some things, such as curved UI, that do work better in VR than flat screen, but it doesn't have to be done that way in order to work. Horizons does have nice curved UI displays for some areas. Although these things are nice to haves rather than necessities, so VR doesn't require anything new in actual design.
Adding VR into an already fully 3D game is very little dev work at all, and the design can usually stay as it is.
Adding VR into an already fully 3D game is very little dev work at all, and the design can usually stay as it is.
- Modern games a re typically made with everything you can see being a 3d model, that is placed into a scene, and rendered to a 2 dimensional picture to be displayed as a frame on the monitor, VR just asks for two pictures at a time, one for each eye's slightly different view point
- Modern VR api's do most of the heavy lifting for the developer, acting akin to direct X.
- Back in the old DOS gaming days of the early nineties, games had to be programmed with not only the games mechanics, but coding to address the hardware at a pretty low level, so often had a limited list of peripherals they could support then direct X gave developers a way of asking the direct X to send instructions to the hardware, and directx did just that, regardless of whether it was a turtle beach, creative labs, realtek or what ever sound card.
- Same thing for graphics cards etc
- Most, if not all current headsets for PC VR can be accessed through steam VR, and or open XR, these are API's that present the games developer with a hardware agnostic interface to code to, that allows their game to be deployed on nearly all headsets without tailoring to each individual model
- Elite's implementation of Steam VR API is slightly screwy and doesn't play as nicely as it could with headsets such as those from Pimax which have two screens canted at a shallow angle as it does with the more typical design of one screen covering both eyes.
- Modern VR api's do most of the heavy lifting for the developer, acting akin to direct X.
Many people still see VR as a “gimmick” and that the “being amazed” effect will wear off after a short time. However, with the Oculus DK1 being seven years old at the time of writing this, and the VR market still going strong, it would appear that the gimmick hasn't worn off yet. Nor does it look like wearing off any time soon to the passionate VR enthusiasts. -
To quote @Arioch: I’ve been using a headset since 2017 and I still get awestruck stop-and-stare moments in the games I play
That’s with VR being my default way to play games these days, so perhaps two hours per day.
I concur with that having got into VR in 2016, and I am still very passionate about it, and often awestruck by some of the virtual experiences I have.
To quote @Arioch: I’ve been using a headset since 2017 and I still get awestruck stop-and-stare moments in the games I play
That’s with VR being my default way to play games these days, so perhaps two hours per day.I concur with that having got into VR in 2016, and I am still very passionate about it, and often awestruck by some of the virtual experiences I have.
The feeling of being “in” the game is not an exaggeration - with the precise one-to-one 6 DoF tracking, most players brain's are instantly fooled into thinking they are in a “real” place, albeit one that was sometimes obviously computer generated. Reality is a fair approximation of the experience 
I think one of the main problems between VR and non-VR players is our inability to convey the experience to them.It's just something you have to try, keep a while at it until you get accustomed to it and have your nausea in check and then you will feel the difference. It is often equaled to Track-IR but that doesn't cut it.
One key feature that is missing from any head tracking set up is the 3D stereo vision VR users experience, which works in conjunction with the 360° tracking and correct 1:1 scale the VR player sees the virtual world in to become utterly mesmerising.
Apart from the 360° look anywhere, there is none of the immersion breaking stuff in your peripheral vision like monitor edges, monitor stand, desktop etc. And because it's actually on your head, your head movements are translated into view changes on a 1:1 ratio, whereas head tracking systems need to be scaled up so you can look over your shoulder in game while still seeing your screen IRL. Then the sucker punch that no headtracking setup can offer an answer to - stereo vision. In VR you see things in 3D, on monitor they are always a flat picture. So in your cockpit sim, you are looking at a photograph of the control panels, in VR you see the switches popping out of the panel etc. The word Immersion gets banded about far too often, but to play on a head tracker is still playing a game, to play in VR is to transport your mind IN TO an alternative reality.
If you don't believe in the depth of immersion VR offers its users, check out these clips for a giggle:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMceVbo3Tm4
Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/12X043D59oas36/giphy.gif
I think one of the main problems between VR and non-VR players is our inability to convey the experience to them.It's just something you have to try, keep a while at it until you get accustomed to it and have your nausea in check and then you will feel the difference. It is often equaled to Track-IR but that doesn't cut it.
One key feature that is missing from any head tracking set up is the 3D stereo vision VR users experience, which works in conjunction with the 360° tracking and correct 1:1 scale the VR player sees the virtual world in to become utterly mesmerising.
Apart from the 360° look anywhere, there is none of the immersion breaking stuff in your peripheral vision like monitor edges, monitor stand, desktop etc. And because it's actually on your head, your head movements are translated into view changes on a 1:1 ratio, whereas head tracking systems need to be scaled up so you can look over your shoulder in game while still seeing your screen IRL. Then the sucker punch that no headtracking setup can offer an answer to - stereo vision. In VR you see things in 3D, on monitor they are always a flat picture. So in your cockpit sim, you are looking at a photograph of the control panels, in VR you see the switches popping out of the panel etc. The word Immersion gets banded about far too often, but to play on a head tracker is still playing a game, to play in VR is to transport your mind IN TO an alternative reality.
If you don't believe in the depth of immersion VR offers its users, check out these clips for a giggle:
That's a good question, I'd suggest "smooth locomotion", ie NOT teleporting, for Elite for a number of reasons:
Another teleport method is like the sprint-dash thing from Half-Life: Alyx - a normal teleport arc but you then do a swift jump to the new position. To other players it just looks like you’re doing a normal short sprint between moments of standing still.
- It's less development work to add FPV VR with the existing smooth locomotion (walking rather than teleporting)
- Teleporting presents a balancing issue, for example in a CZ a VR player could find themselves pinned down and simply teleport out of trouble, where as a non VR player would have to run the gauntlet under fire to break free
- It's more immersive to see / "feel" the journey than it would be to leapfrog your way across the scene
Another teleport method is like the sprint-dash thing from Half-Life: Alyx - a normal teleport arc but you then do a swift jump to the new position. To other players it just looks like you’re doing a normal short sprint between moments of standing still.
That would depend on which headset we are talking about, but I'll give you some comparisons for "budget" "midpoint" & "premium" headsets.
- An original first gen headset, like my Original Oculus Rift (CV1) (~£100 ebay used) is probably on par with a 1080p large screen, but not as good as a 4k TV screen
- A second gen headset, like an Oculus Rift S (CV1) (~£170 ebay used / £400 new) is probably slightly better than a 1080p large screen, but not as good as a 4k TV screen
- An HP Reverb G2 (£600 new / £450 used) is reportedly almost as good as a 4k TV
- I can pick out a lot of exquisite details in my old headset that I cannot see on monitors, like at the thargoid structures, the texture of the chitin shell has an iridescence to it that I can see and admire its beauty in VR, but don't really see or notice it on monitor.
- Because my headset is lower res being an older generation I find aiming at a distance harder because the reticule for the fixed weapon is a larger dot than I'd like, meaning with long range rails for example, at 5km out, the enemy's enture ship is smaller than the dot for aiming the weapon. Of course newer headsets have better resolutions and mitigate this.
Someone said that "A half decent VR rig - including a HOTAS because how the hell you'd play without one while using a VR headset is beyond me - and a PC capable of running it is still equal to like 2-3 months rent. Yeah nah, it's a rich boy's world." There are a couple of ways of looking at this:
- VR has been run on more modest PC's than many believe VR requires
- Some have ran VR on more modest cards such as a GTX970 / GTX980 / GTX1060
- Any gaming PC with a discrete GPU, ie not the low end GPU integrated into the CPUs, such as Intel graphics on their i5 CPU's or their AMD equivalents, can run VR at least to some degree.
- Most VR systems, Steam / Oculus, have mechanisms built in to "guess" the missing frames, filling in the gaps dropped by the GPU on the fly, although this sometimes introduces glitches. For example the Oculus "ASW" system plays havoc with the vertical lines of the ships HUD when it kicks in.
- The beauty of PC gaming is you can build it incrementally... New graphics card one year, new motherboard and chip another year reusing your old case, PSU, ram, drives and graphics card and retaining your peripherals, monitor, mouse keyboard speaker, headset, hotas. You can also be canny, and put a good motherboard in there, and a bargain basement chip, then upgrade the chip the following year, etc...
Numerous source suggest different percentages, but there are as many VR headsets on steam as there are 4k monitors, a poll by Exigeous shows ~24% play in VR
View attachment 242881
A reddit poll of 1627 participants found the following:
View attachment 242881
A reddit poll of 1627 participants found the following:
- ~40% of the respondents stated that they play ED in VR at least sometimes.
- ~28% of the respondents stated that they play ED in VR at least equally as in 2D.
- ~16% of the respondents stated that they play ED exclusively in VR.
- I'm citing figures from originally dug up by @VR Golgot that the flight sim community more broadly sits at around 17% HMD ownership.
Prior to the no-VR bombshell in the odyssey announcement, VR players were largely quiet, unspoken. We didn't make a fuss about VR, until then. When last year, when we tried to campaign to get VR back in the game, and met massive opposition, not from the company, but from our fellow players, a lot of schadenfreude shown towards us....
So with the company acting against us on one hand, and a large portion of the playerbase turning on us in the forums, we felt besieged. Collectively we VR players were backed into a corner, "up against" the company and the community, and so started three months of forum warfare. It is worth remind everyone that essentially we VR players are little more than Elite players, albeit with fancy display peripherals, and 4K or Ultrawide users aren't exposed so such hostility...
So with the company acting against us on one hand, and a large portion of the playerbase turning on us in the forums, we felt besieged. Collectively we VR players were backed into a corner, "up against" the company and the community, and so started three months of forum warfare. It is worth remind everyone that essentially we VR players are little more than Elite players, albeit with fancy display peripherals, and 4K or Ultrawide users aren't exposed so such hostility...
Not necessarily, it seems like a lot of the pieces are already within the game Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stXoDBNmXdw&t=6s
...this guys shows how its possible to get first person VR in odyssey right now, it works my pressing camera sweet button and free camera button at the same time, this puts you into first person in camera sweet, you then just press the button to control character, and turn the camera suite ui off, you can then walk around in first person VR you can fire your gun etc, see the real scale of ships places, buildings, it works right now, you don't get the on foot UI but the fact it works, proves it would be very little work for them to do it, you have a UI in the SRV so even that code is already in the game. Although it will need some work to integrate them, maybe polishing some parts.
...this guys shows how its possible to get first person VR in odyssey right now, it works my pressing camera sweet button and free camera button at the same time, this puts you into first person in camera sweet, you then just press the button to control character, and turn the camera suite ui off, you can then walk around in first person VR you can fire your gun etc, see the real scale of ships places, buildings, it works right now, you don't get the on foot UI but the fact it works, proves it would be very little work for them to do it, you have a UI in the SRV so even that code is already in the game. Although it will need some work to integrate them, maybe polishing some parts.
First off, even 2.31% of Steam is still a HUGE number of active headsets, Steam has 120 million monthly active users,62.6 million people use Steam on a daily basis. so 2.31% of the market is more than four times as many players that Elite has in total.
Another way of digesting the Steam stat is to say that there are as many VR headsets registered on Steam as there are 4k Monitors.
Sticking with the Steam stats, they only represent, erm, Steam VR users, and doesn't necessarily include Oculus users. For example, I started in VR in 2016, pretty much sticking to the Oculus store/walled garden, but didn't join Steam until 2019. Not including Oculus users does massively skew the stats, as the Quest 2 is currently the fastest selling headset, with millions already sold and sales estimated at 9 Million units by years end. It's obvious VR users are not a small niche.
Apart from Steam/Oculus, there is the market segment Elite belongs to and the associated demographics to consider....VR is much more prevalent in the Sim genre, and VR is a sim, so it is reasonable to assume that VR is more prevalent within the Elite player base than it is in the general gaming community. Furthermore, Elite has had VR from the first Alpha, and was marketed as "made for VR from the ground up" so it stands to reason that there would be even more VR users within Elite than the general flight sim community, which in turn has more VR than the general gaming population.
A reddit poll of 1627 participants found the following:
Another way of digesting the Steam stat is to say that there are as many VR headsets registered on Steam as there are 4k Monitors.
Sticking with the Steam stats, they only represent, erm, Steam VR users, and doesn't necessarily include Oculus users. For example, I started in VR in 2016, pretty much sticking to the Oculus store/walled garden, but didn't join Steam until 2019. Not including Oculus users does massively skew the stats, as the Quest 2 is currently the fastest selling headset, with millions already sold and sales estimated at 9 Million units by years end. It's obvious VR users are not a small niche.
Apart from Steam/Oculus, there is the market segment Elite belongs to and the associated demographics to consider....VR is much more prevalent in the Sim genre, and VR is a sim, so it is reasonable to assume that VR is more prevalent within the Elite player base than it is in the general gaming community. Furthermore, Elite has had VR from the first Alpha, and was marketed as "made for VR from the ground up" so it stands to reason that there would be even more VR users within Elite than the general flight sim community, which in turn has more VR than the general gaming population.
A reddit poll of 1627 participants found the following:
- ~40% of the respondents stated that they play ED in VR at least sometimes.
- ~28% of the respondents stated that they play ED in VR at least equally as in 2D.
- ~16% of the respondents stated that they play ED exclusively in VR.
- I'm citing figures from originally dug up by @VR Golgot that the flight sim community more broadly sits at around 17% HMD ownership.
Like any other activity, preparing your Roomscale VR space before hand can eliminate problems before they occur.
- Boundaries can be set and/or generated to define the edges of your play area. This includes furniture that you don't want to move. When your headset or hand controllers get too close to these boundaries, they'll appear in your VR space as a warning.
- Depending upon the type VR system you use, these boundaries can be anywhere from a very noticeable "holodeck" grid, to a barely noticeable pattern on the floor, and even a type of "night vision" overlay of your physical environment.
- Pre-set boundaries can easily include landmarks, so that you orient yourself in the physical space.
- Cables can be run under rugs, attached to ceilings, or along walls so that they won't get in your way.
Motion sickness varies from person to person, both in what triggers it in the first place, and how severe it is when triggered. While it is true that some people can acclimate, this is not universal a universal trait. In some cases, trying to train yourself to overcome a trigger just makes it stronger, rather than weaker!
Stopping to take a break at the early stages of the onset of the motion sickness, as in minor dizziness and or mild nausea, seems to be a more successful approach rather than pushing complete illness.
Stopping to take a break at the early stages of the onset of the motion sickness, as in minor dizziness and or mild nausea, seems to be a more successful approach rather than pushing complete illness.
"VR users will have an unfair advantage because they can fire blindly around cover using their controllers, which is something monitor players can't do!"
Response 1: Yes but play any VR FPS (even with aim assist on!), fire blindly around the corner and watch how many hits you get. Zero? This is true for both single player games like Alyx or multiplayer games.
Response 2: Any player firing around cover would end up eating grenades. Because that is why we have grenades in PvP.
On the other hand...
Monitor players have:
Response 1: Yes but play any VR FPS (even with aim assist on!), fire blindly around the corner and watch how many hits you get. Zero? This is true for both single player games like Alyx or multiplayer games.
Response 2: Any player firing around cover would end up eating grenades. Because that is why we have grenades in PvP.
On the other hand...
Monitor players have:
- compressed FoV so they don't need to turn their eyes or heads to see periphery targets
- no need to physically align the gun to ensure the crosshair is aimed at the target - when the target is in the crosshair: shoot. THIS IS HUGE!
- 100% focus on all items in crosshair, regardless of distance
- mouse or controller aiming which stays perfectly steady unlike holding a gun
Updated this post to incorporate points raised throughout this thread, and moved from bullet points to spoilers to prevent this being an insurmountable wall of text.
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