elite dangerous VIVE reviews please!!!!

I tried ED in the Vive at EGX on Friday. I didn't ask what GPU it was using. Looking at the debug screen showed it was mostly pushing 90 FPS, occasionally it would drop to 80 something. I have a DK2, and I would say that the vive experience is head and shoulders above the dk2. You can still see pixels, but I found that I had to really look for them. Text was clear and readable.

If I could have bought one there and then, I would have
 
I never used a VR kit.
What's the fuss about these pixels? Are they really that protruding, in-a-way kind of pixels or ?
 
look through your screen door.
thats what it looks like inside the rift. You can get by with some tweaks, but pixel density is pixel density.
when looking at a cell phone screen with domed lenses you see the individual pixels that make up the picture.
this takes away from immersion.
 
whilst it is true the screen door is a negative to gaming in VR, ED in VR even on DK2 warts and all is still 10x better than ED on even a 4k monitor, or a 3 screen set up.

after 10 mins in Elite DK2, assuming it is set up correctly you actually do not see the screen door or the low res. it also offers a big advantage over other gamers.

other games the gains are not so great, and the limited res of DK2 in racing games can be a problem, because what you gain in terms of track positioning etc you lose in distant vision of an upcomming bend

that being said, i cant play a racing game outside of VR now either, nor ETS2, nor FSX (not sure if you are seeing a theme here, but basically anything seated for me after trying in VR has become the only way i want to play them
 
haha, yes pc gaming has been slightly ruined for me.
I have not touched assetto, ed, or dcs world since I sold my last dk2...
Cant fathom anything sim without an hmd.
 

mxcross2002

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Awesome blastard, that sounds like exactly what we're all waiting for. Man I can't wait for the Vive and Horizons, we're gonna be able to go out with multiple commanders in one ship...

We're REALLY going to have to do that huge VR wing exploration mission or something when that comes out, no more procrastination allowed!

AWESOME WHAT
 
Reports say they ran it on a titan X. Its still surprising to me that they keep demoing it in a setting with red text. That should be a crime
on a pentile VR screen like DK2, Vive and CV1 (green have twice as many subpixels in those VR screens) all have. And im still
worried that they run it on a Titan X. They really need to get the spec down to resonable level (970-980ish) or very few are going
to have a great VR experience in either Vive or CV1 wich both require 90fps to work best. They still have alot of work to do it seems.
 
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Hello people just for reference I have had a DK2 since August 2014 and have played elite for months.
So I queued up for 3 hours to try the vive at the Elite Dangerous stand. Here are my thoughts on the deb kit.
Resolution , this was a let down if honest I would say that it was better than the DK2 but only just, I would say maybe 5-10% improvement at best. I had gone with the hope that the vive text on elite would be like the green hud mod that people use to improve resolution for text in elite due to the higher resolution screen. This was not the case at all as the text was very blurry. To put this in perspective I went straight home and put my DK2 on with 1.5 super sampling with smaa anti aliasing on and it looked way better. This was done with the orange had and green hud. I think the main reason that the resolution seemed low was due to elite running at 1x super sampling or normal if you will. I had asked the man what gpu was running the game in which he said a Titan x so power should not have been a problem, he did not tell me any graphic settings at all as he did not know.
I think this raises a big problem as I think running at a high super sampling is a MUST for VR. As a side note I tried ps4vr and the text was just terrible on eve valkier . This is the problem with the ps4 just not having the power as they was jaggies everywhere (looked like looking through water) .
Comfort This was poor as it did not fit right on me but I did move it around so this was not the reason for the poor text. Felt heavy but I know it's a dev kit so no worries there.
Blacks Blacks looked very good as I did not notice any black smearing which does plague the DK2 especially on elite.
FPS Felt very smooth but didn't really notice the improvement over 75 FPS but this was only 5 min test so I think this will become more noticeable when we have this in our homes.
Overall feelings
I really enjoyed trying the vive but felt very down about the resolution of the screen as I am a big iracing, assetto corsa sim racer and really wanted to see a little better in far away objects. I think overall when we have this in our homes running sweet fx and other mods then this should help but it will be the next generation for that etc. I also think that when we play other games with the motion controls and walking about the screen resolution will not be a problem it's just in the sim games that I like.
Please don't think I am being funny was just expecting a little more from DK2
Any questions just ask guys.
 
Its interesting to see how the two major issues are each others arch nemesis.
More Resolution and run on lower speck cards. Can't see how that's gonna happen soon.
I play ED on a 65in 4k screen. I borrowed a DK2 for a few weeks and was blown away by the immersion experience in ED. It is a totally different experience, but looking at anything in the distance really was a pain and lowered the enjoyment for me. The cockpit was amazing and I actually got up and moved around inside the ship looking closely at those panels inside. Amazing detail (with a friends guidance so I did not smack into anything real world). Eventually I gave it back.

I will definitely get either the DK2 or the Vive. I have not decided yet, I think the final res has been specified for both and is similar, so that is not a factor as far as I can tell. Even though I am still playing ED, I am definitely looking forward to actually getting back INTO a ship ( even if docking in the big stations often made me very ill).
 
I will definitely get either the DK2 or the Vive.
You mean Rift (CV1), not DK2. ;)

I also have not decided yet if I get the Rift oder the Vive. I like the Vive, but on one side the Software Support on Rift looks a bit better and on the other side HTC is in financial trouble, who knows if that have not any effects on the Vive... But Lighthouse seams to be definitely better than Oculus IR Camera solution, but therefore Touch looks better than HTC's VR Controller and Oculus have also the bigger research department with great peoples.

But at the end only the complete package of Hardware and Software matters and that is difficult to say right now. I definitely don't want to buy both.
 
Seems to be some mixed experiences with the vive. It's worth noting that none of us, certainly on the ED stand at EGX had the device calibrated for our individual needs. I have a DK2 at home and I thought the Vive was afar better experience than that. Text was clear, and readable, and I had to really look for the pixels, to notice them.

A few minutes for a combat scenario wasn't really enough for me to make detailed observations, but I was impressed, and look forward to being able to purchase either Vive or CV1
 
I was demonstrating the Vive at the EGX on the Frontier stand and in the black-box cubicles at the HTC stand. "Hello" if I saw you there.

The PC's used were Core i7 but I don't know what spec. The graphics card used was a single nVidia Titan X, which meant they could demo locked to 90fps.

I had a few turns over the four days and the Vive was a jump from my DK2. The resolution was higher than the DK2 with the orange text clearly readable. There was no screen door effect. You could see pixels, in the sense that if you ran a game in 1280x1024 on a modern monitor. The screen resolution of the Vive is 2160x1200 which is the same as the CV1 will be. The Vive unit was (I think) a prototype and was as heavy as the DK2 - the CV1 is reported to be very lightweight.

The 90fps meant there was no latency when moving my head around. Currently my PC (Core i7 with GTX 970) runs Elite easily on the DK2 with DSR set to 2560x1440 downscaled to 1080p, so I cannot see any reason why the CV1 or Vive shouldn't just pop on my rig.

No, it's not super-high resolution, but without the screen-door effect your mind and eyes adjust instantly - everything looks real - it's a totally immersive experience.

I'm sure others that had a go can add their opinions of what it was like, but my summary is "Really good. Better than the DK2, but not so super-high that you'll need a monster PC to run it"
 
I think this thread should be locked, as I am now suffering from wannabuyititus, greenwithenvyitious, and #squee.


Me too. Exacerbated by the fact that Frontier aren't supporting the Rift for the foreseeable future (until some arbitrary point after SDK 1.0 hits, so I'm guessing next year at this stage, possibly not even until CV1 is out). I haven't been able to play ED since Win 10 was released.

Here's hoping the "limited quantities" of Vive that might surface this year are not that limited...
 
Firstly I come across this thread when looking from recommendations on flight sticks/joystick for ED as I bought it only last week when in the sale and I haven’t much experience with ED as yet.

I went to EGX on Sunday and had prebooked sessions earlier in the week for Playstation VR and HTC Vive/SteamVR.

My only experience with VR before Sunday was from last year’s EGX when I queued for about 2 hours at the Oculus stand and play Eve Valkyrie using the DK2, at the time I thought it was awesome although I did get a bit of motion sickness in the beginning.

On Sunday my first VR session was with Playstation VR which thankfully due to the prebooking I didn’t have to queue for and I just turned up at the allocated time slot. By chance, I got to play Eve Valkyrie again. It was much smoother than with the Oculus and there was no motion sickness and the head tracking was really good. The ergonomics of the Playstation VR headset are much better than the Oculus and HTC vive, I would describe it as a bit like putting on a baseball cap. However as great of the PS VR experience is I do worry whether the PS4 it up to drive the FPS, although they are double framing to take 60 fps to 120 fps which is why it felt smooth but it isn’t like every PS4 game is 60 fps anyway. Also although apparently there will be 12 VR games at launch, PC system already have about 50 VR compatible in the steam store today, I think I’ve now 4 or 5 games in my library. Since ED CQC is available on Xbox One, I can well imagine ED will be on PS VR in or around the launch window once the timed exclusive expires.

Again with the HTC Vive session I just turned up at the allocated time. I was scheduled into a sitting VR experience which was playing ED, it was essentially the first 3 training lessons from the game. No joke the PC powering the headset had the biggest case I’d ever seen, it was pretty noisy, god know what was in it. The flight stick/HOTAS I think was the Saitek X52 or pro, personally speaking, it felt flimsily. The HTC Vive was a little uncomfortable compared to the PS VR but the head tracking was good as you like I was playing Eve Valkylie you have quick get very use to looking up and around and behind for the other ships rather than straight ahead. I did find it a little difficult to read the text in the game, the pixelation was on pair with the PS VR and both were much better than the Oculus DK2. I will say I did have a bit of motion sickness at the beginning but it quickly past. Having completed the 3 training mission at the end of the session they had be stand up and look around the cockpit of the ship which very impressive. The HTC guy said the ED experience was just a prototype for EGX.

I was a little disappointed with the VR experience of playing ED on the HTC vive but that was probably as I had a really good experience with PS VR only about an hour before and although the game are similar in being space combat based they are very different games with ED being more slower paced to the very fast pace of Eve Valkyrie but ED has a lot more depth in term of game.

However…With that the said the guys and gals in the HTC Vive booth allowed me to try the standing up VR experience too. I have to say I was a bit sceptical of VR standing up beforehand. The session was in a 5m x 5m darken room with a computer in the corner with the HTC person helping you. I started off the VR experience in the white room a bit like when Neo starts his learning in the matrix, you can walk around this white room and the HTC personal helping you get you to experience walking to the wall which then appears as a grid in the VR world (like the holodeck in Star Trek) and has you touch the wall in the real world. Then they hand you the motion controllers and have you playing with helium balloons. The next experience was on a sunken pirate ship were you be knock the fish with motion controllers and you can look over the edge of the ship deck into the abyss. The following experience was doing some painting/sculpting in 3D which was very impressive and then finally there was the portal game VR experience where you can get to interact with something. I was complete blown away by the standing up VR experience, at no point did I have any motion sickness and everything was just second nature and you completely forget that it isn’t actually real, it felt very weird when the headset was taking off at the end of the session as your mind was still in the VR world.

As I said the HTC Vive and PS VR were very similar in term of pixelation and head tracking. The view of field of both isn’t perfect as in at the IMAX. The HTC Vive is still a dev headset and according to the guy in the HTC booth there is going to be an announcement in December about the consumer unit when I think the ergonomics of the Vive will be similar to the PS VR and Oculus CV1 and also the motion controller will look completely different too, plus I can imagine the dev headset it probably quite old tech for HTC/Steam so I think there will be a massive leap forward with their consumer unit.

Overall I am very excite about VR, as much as I live the PS VR and have a PS4, I just think PC is the way to go and I’ve largely switched over gaming from PS4 to PC in the last 12 months to an old Sandybridge 2500K based system now overclocked and have added a 980ti recently which is a massive step forward graphically from the PS4. Hopefully will be enough for VR, although I can see having to go to skylake next year.

All the key VR players (Steam/PS/Oculus) do at the moment seem to be very much watching each other and holding off announcing anything thinking they still have an ace in their hand in terms of yet release information whether it be features, games or price. It is going to be an interesting 6 months, but with the standing up experience alone I think SteamVR is the one to beat, I just need to find somewhere to put it.
 
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