Commercial VR support + Headlook?

[adrinker]

From what I can tell, the option for plug and play VR is not quite upon us yet. The ability to get VR up and running, and the supporting peripherals is what is holding me back.

1. How close is either VR or ED VR support to being able to control player cockpit head look while flying in combat or flight without third-party head tracking?
2. Due to the enclosed VR device, is HOTAS generally required (i use KB + Stick) for an optimal experience, in combination with something like voice attack?
3. Is the picture quality better much more refined than that of the monitor?

I've done the early adopter thing before, and I typically regret buying V0.5 in advance of a refined commercial product. How far off is this from becoming a reality to the non-tinkerers?

 

[el_tel]

My only experience with VR is with the Oculus DK1/DK2, but to answer your questions as best I can:

1. With the DK2 (and presumably CV1 and Vive), headlock is integral - you physically look left/right/up/down, and your POV changes accordingly. The DK2 also supports tanslation movement. Third-party headlock (such as TrackIR) is not needed.

2. If you are able to touch-type, then a keyboard is useable, because you can't see the keyboard when you're wearing an HMD. You'll have difficulty finding keys otherwise. I use an X52, which has lots of easily accessible buttons, but I still need to peek at the keyboard when I need to type something (such as a system name in the Galactic map).

3. Resolution doesn't compare to a monitor (not even with the CV1 and Vive), because your eyes are much closer to the screen). I think pixel density is much more relevant than resolution as far as VR is concerned. 520ppi is the level we need (according to an article I read many moons ago). The latest phones are at about this level, so it's not unachievable, but do the GPUs yet exist to drive these displays at the required refresh rate? For me, level of immersion with an HMD more than makes up for the lack of detail and other downsides with the current tech.

 

[Agathorn]

From what I can tell, the option for plug and play VR is not quite upon us yet. The ability to get VR up and running, and the supporting peripherals is what is holding me back.

1. How close is either VR or ED VR support to being able to control player cockpit head look while flying in combat or flight without third-party head tracking?
2. Due to the enclosed VR device, is HOTAS generally required (i use KB + Stick) for an optimal experience, in combination with something like voice attack?
3. Is the picture quality better much more refined than that of the monitor?

I've done the early adopter thing before, and I typically regret buying V0.5 in advance of a refined commercial product. How far off is this from becoming a reality to the non-tinkerers?

I think the current state of VR is already better than you think it is and will only get better

With a current Oculus DK2, which is the developer kit, it is pretty much plug and play, at last as much as any other gaming device. You hook up the device, download the drivers from the manufacturer, install SteamVR, and then run E and set the device in the graphics settings in game Voila, VR.

1. They do this already, and far far better than things like TrackIR because the screen is on your face, so you aren't craning your neck one way and glancing back at the monitor. They support both rotational tracking and positional tracking. Heck you can even get up and walk around the cockpit.
2. Highly recommended, and personally I think it makes it a lot more fun. That said you can still peek under the HMD and see a keyboard if you are desperate. I still operate the galaxy map with my mouse because the controls for doing it in VR are horrible. That is more FD's fault though.
3. Here is where you will not be as happy. You are essentially strapping an LCD screen inches from your face and THEN looking at it through what is effectively a magnifying glass over each eye. There is no way around it, you see the pixels, and will continue to do so until technology gets into super high pixel density screens. We aren't there yet. It is however tolerable in exchange for the rest of the awesomeness!

 

[LordZoltan]

Not adding much more here beyond 'it works'. I use DK2 and X52 Pro, and can touch type (although occasionally I get my fingers in the wrong place, so for in-game chat can sometimes be a bit clumsy!)

The current DK2 experience, although nowhere as good as a monitor, is still astonishingly good. My 3 weeks game time (yes, not as long as most, but still far in excess of any other game I've ever played) has been done exclusively in VR and in some cases it really can give you the edge - especially in combat, if you actually remember that you can lean forward, look around etc

On the technicals/ppis and all that - I strongly recommend reading Michael Abrash's blog at Valve (before he moved to Oculus).

On refresh/low persistence etc, the series listed most recently is particularly interesting: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/ - 300-1000Mhz would be ideal refresh rate if not using the low-persistence pixel trick that Oculus pulled.

And this one, about resolution: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/when-it-comes-to-resolution-its-all-relative/

Where, at the end, he suggests that for 120 degree FOV, to achieve a display which has a similar resolution to that of the eye itself at the distance at which HMD displays are held from the eye, you'd need 8k *per* eye, which is pretty darn crazy(and significantly higher than 520ppi, more like 1250ppi or something like that)... Give it another 5 years and we might be there, but there'll need to be quite an explosion in consumer VR in order for the screen manufacturers to bother to do the R&D to produce that kind of screen, because there's simply no other application for it.

But at the moment, the biggest issue with all HMD screens is not as much density as the distance between the LED/LCD components - that give us the 'screen door' effect. Yes, I know if you reduce the gap you can therefore increase the PPI, but you could also have 'larger' RGB components too to keep the resolution down at levels that current GPUs can actually drive.

With the Vive it's still there, but less noticeable than on the DK2 (of course), but I can see that some people will still not be able to tune the black gaps out.

Elite suffers less, though, because so much of the time you are looking at black or near-black space

Ended up rambling here, sorry!

 

[grammatonfeather]

From what I can tell, the option for plug and play VR is not quite upon us yet. The ability to get VR up and running, and the supporting peripherals is what is holding me back.

1. How close is either VR or ED VR support to being able to control player cockpit head look while flying in combat or flight without third-party head tracking?
2. Due to the enclosed VR device, is HOTAS generally required (i use KB + Stick) for an optimal experience, in combination with something like voice attack?
3. Is the picture quality better much more refined than that of the monitor?

I've done the early adopter thing before, and I typically regret buying V0.5 in advance of a refined commercial product. How far off is this from becoming a reality to the non-tinkerers?

HOTAS is essential with VR. All those controls and you can't actually see your keyboard but with HOTAS you know where every button and dial is.

As others have said... Modern VR is head-tracking and not just head but body as well. Vive will track whole body. Oculus CV1 will track whole body. I use Oculus DK2.

The difference it makes cannot be compared to any of the older types of display or control systems. I've owned TrackIR twice and it's good when nothing better was available. VR makes it redundant.

Elite now works very well with VR since the Horizons launch brought SteamVR and latest Oculus runtime support.

I'd like to try Voice Attack along with an HCS voice pack.

A monitor has better sharpness but then you're looking at a tiny compressed image. That 1080 or 4k monitor? The image is tiny and compressed. Looks very sharp. You won't have that same sharpness with VR yet but in terms of realism VR beats any monitor setup. With a monitor you're looking at a tiny flat image. You're playing the game through a tiny window... there's no real connection. You need to rely very hard on imagination. With VR that's not necessary. You are there in the game world and everything is life size 3d. The 3d also compensates for the some degree of resolution lost. Let's put it this way... If someone offered me my own imax theater versus VR... I'd take the imax theater and sell it and buy a VR setup.

 

[BigDuke6ixx]

I think the current state of VR is already better than you think it is and will only get better

Yep and the OP clearly hasn't discovered YouTube. Tons of videos online showing how VR has blossomed over the last couple of years.

 

[grammatonfeather]

Yep and the OP clearly hasn't discovered YouTube. Tons of videos online showing how VR has blossomed over the last couple of years.

There is a lot of misinformation out there as well though.

Take a look at gamespot.com and it's full of numpties who think "VR is just a TV strapped to your head".