Getting started with Rift CV1

[jw191]

Sorry for the newb questions; I'm stuck and previous screw ups have cost me a lot of time. There are lots of snippets of useful information across lots of threads, but it's hard to extract current information, and what’s best for my situation.

I picked up a Rift (CV1), a 1070ti and Voice Attack (through Steam), and encountered issues getting ED to work. I wasn't sure how best to get ED working and ended up with ED installed as standalone, through Steam and through Oculus, which I think caused some problems. VA was installed through Steam. When I launched VA, then ED through Oculus Home or Steam VR, I would just get a loading screen through the Rift. I would then have to remove the headset and login through the launcher. The game would then launch in a small window on my desktop (not full screen, and cannot be made full screen) and not through the rift. Voice Attack understood me and was responding, however did not action commands in game.

I've done a clean install of Windows I really don't want to screw up again. What is the best way to get this working?

1) Do I install ED through the standalone launcher, Steam or Oculus?

2) I assume I have to install Voice Attack through Steam as that’s where I purchased it. I'll be using KICS for now. Do I need to do anything to 'link' Voice Attack to ED, or do I just launch VA through Steam, ED through whatever is suggested in point 1, and it will apply default controls?

3) Is the procedure to start playing just a) launch VA through Steam, b) launch ED c) start playing

Is there a guide on here somewhere for how to best set the in-game settings? I'm using an 8GB 1070ti, i7 4770K, 8GB system memory, W10 Pro (1809).

Thanks for your help!

 

[Gortron]

I use ED with the standalone launcher:

1) Make sure oculus is already running
2) Make sure in the oculus setting/general that unknown sources is set to allow apps not reviewed by oculus to run.
3) In ED graphics settings will need to set to HMD[headphones] in the Display section / 3D.
play

You will only have a small window on the desktop of ED when using the rift as it's just a small mirror of one lens of the rift. I don't use voice attack at the moment but have in the past. It shouldn't matter where that is run from, I think in the settings for It there is something about keystrokes at focused window and so long as you are focused on ED by clicking on the open mirror of the rift if you aren't focussed on it for some reason then it should work.

 

[Benji85]

You want to run ed through oclus home there is zero point in running it through steam vr as you will just lose performance.
You can get a key to use in oculus home via frontier site if you log in

 

[The Lawful]

Note that you can redeem a free key for the Oculus Commander Deluxe Edition from the FD website. It's a second download, though, but you can run the game directly from Home. Running it from there will bypass the ED launcher and directly boot into the game which I find more convenient when playing in VR. AFAIK only with the Oculus edition it's also possible to pull Dash windows into the game, but I don't use that feature.

I have a separate Steam installation as well, but only use that for the beta. Oculus home also picks that up but frankly, I don't use that in Home at all. You can tell them apart via the icons, the Oculus one is colourful while the picked up one only displays a (rather ghostly) Robotic Avian. The important thing is to set the HMD with headphones option under graphics settings. The Oculus version does that automatically. Apart from that, there are command line switches (/vr rsp. /novr) that should manage that step too (in fact that's what the Oculus launcher uses internally, as we just recently found out). The game runs happily with or without Oculus Home, Steam VR is not needed at all and I told Steam somewhere not to use it (forgot about the details).

Considering VA which I also run (to command my SLF pilot around mostly AND to re-center the HMD) and much recommend, I set it so that it boots up with Windows and runs in the background. You can specify to which window it should send its commands, you can either specify the ED window or the current one which is the same when running the game. Works flawlessly in both installations. Just make sure the Rift mic is the default one in Windows Sound Settings.

Considering the graphics settings, I have a GTX1070 8GB STRIX which is factory overclocked, running on an I7-7700K machine. The best options are more or less a matter of individual taste and therefore require some tweaking. The most important settings are Supersampling (SS) and HMD image quality. On my setup, I currently run the game with SS 1.0 and HMD 1.25, everything else based on VR High defaults and FXAA antialiasing. If you start to feel uneasy, namely inside stations and on planets, turn some of the more power-hungry options down first, in particular shadows and ambient occlusion until you feel comfortable. After all, with VR it's always a matter of compromise with anything below 1/2080TI

O7,
[noob]

 

[jw191]

Thanks for your help guys. I installed ED through the launcher and got that working. Was having problems getting and staying connected to Frontier servers but that seems to have sorted itself out.

I got VA working. The problem was the key mappings. The default KICS commands did not line up to the default keys in ED, so I spent 15 mins sorting that. Most commands in ED had no keyboard bindings, probably because I’ve been using the X52. I haven’t done the VLC integration yet.

Having all this stuff running does have a bit of a performance impact. It seems to work ok on VR medium settings with HMD quality set to 1.25. Does that sound about right for my aging i7 (4770k), 8GB of system memory and a 1070Ti? I need to install the debug tool and see what FPS I’m actually getting.

I hadn’t heard of Oculus Dash until TheLawful posted. Definitely something for me to investigate. When I tried to run ED through Oculus before formatting my PC, it would always launch the ED launcher as well? Is that normal?

Control interface is all a bit challenging at the moment. X52 pro, keyboard, mouse, touch controllers… I need to sort out a system!

Thanks again for the tips.

 

[Dooguk]

Thanks for your help guys. I installed ED through the launcher and got that working. Was having problems getting and staying connected to Frontier servers but that seems to have sorted itself out.

I got VA working. The problem was the key mappings. The default KICS commands did not line up to the default keys in ED, so I spent 15 mins sorting that. Most commands in ED had no keyboard bindings, probably because I’ve been using the X52. I haven’t done the VLC integration yet.

Having all this stuff running does have a bit of a performance impact. It seems to work ok on VR medium settings with HMD quality set to 1.25. Does that sound about right for my aging i7 (4770k), 8GB of system memory and a 1070Ti? I need to install the debug tool and see what FPS I’m actually getting.

I hadn’t heard of Oculus Dash until TheLawful posted. Definitely something for me to investigate. When I tried to run ED through Oculus before formatting my PC, it would always launch the ED launcher as well? Is that normal?

Control interface is all a bit challenging at the moment. X52 pro, keyboard, mouse, touch controllers… I need to sort out a system!

Thanks again for the tips.

You can get your FPS by press ctrl-f. This is only shown on the desktop screen though (bottom left corner). VR is very taxing on your system, so Medium setting is about right. Turning things off like bloom and blur help a bit. Experiment. You can re-use buttons in different screens.

 

[He$$eeTant]

AFAIK only with the Oculus edition it's also possible to pull Dash windows into the game, but I don't use that feature

I’ve recently discovered this feature of Oculus. I get in by pressing the Oculus touch menu button. This pulls in the Oculus UI. Now select virtual desktop from the Oculus menu bar arc in front of you. Now pointing at the virtual desktop and holding the touch controller trigger you can move the screen around your cockpit and by pushing pulling the thumb stick you can zoom the window size. Once positioned, at the bottom left of the Virtual Desktop you can select to pin the window - aka keep it in your cockpit. Now press the Oculus touch menu button again and this will remove the Oculus UI leaving the virtual desktop. Now you have access to the onscreen keyboard and of course all the features of your PC.

What threw me was the idea of pinning a single window, not sure if this is supported but pinning the entire desktop is.

Enjoy.

 

[SimonNQ]

Pinning a single browser window is awesome , especially on some long flights, it's great having youtube or netflix running for those long lonely space hauls !!! I usually pin the window at my feet, that way I can just simply look up to see what is going on outside... i.e Pirates... I also use a little program called joyfocus.ahk, ( google ) this gives back focus to the main elite window as soon as I move my joystick... Happens a lot when surfing Youtube for example.. Just move the stick and elite is re-focused

To pin a single window you use the grip and trigger button on the touch controller to 'grab' the window you like, or windows you like, position them then lock them with the pin... once you have found this it is pretty awesome !! You can have inara windows open etc... very very handy..