Help me decide if a Vive is right for me.

Shame for Arma though, I'd rather hoped it would work like 3D glasses with simple left eye right eye images.
Right now VR is a bit of a tradeoff. You sacrifice resolution and clarity of image for the immersive experience of VR.

In actual VR games this tradeoff is absolutely worth it. But playing ordinary 2D games on a "virtual screen", while possible, even with 3D stereoscopy, not really worth it imo, the resolution is low enough to make it a huge letdown if that's what you're getting VR for. Motion controls and headtracking are what actually make VR.
 
By surprise a friend of mine is using the Rift with a Nvidia GTX 960 (overclocked) and is absolutely happy with Elite.
The fonts are crystal clear - that was a huge surprise for me.

I am using the Founders GTX 1080 with VR-High and Oculus SDK 1,5 - and I do not now what could be better for an Elite configuration.

Edit: Don't know why but all of my Oculus friends love Elite in VR and are totally extra exited about this! "Ohh!" "Wow!" "No way!" are usually the words they say.
On the other hand, many of the HTC Vive guys, say "it is cool, yes". But by far not as enthusiastic then the Oculus fan boys. Anybody has a idea, if there is a big difference between both? As from the technically point of view they look really similar to me.
 
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I'm sure you are right about the CPU, mine is overclocked to 4.2ghz but its not reported as that.
Shame for Arma though, I'd rather hoped it would work like 3D glasses with simple left eye right eye images.

Your cpu will be fine. Oculus doesn't actually benchmark in the test like Steam does, they just compare the generation of hardware to a minimum and fail you if your hardware is of earlier vintage. My i5 2550k @4.2 does just fine in VR and it is older than yours. The only title I run that would see a substantial boost from a cpu upgrade is DCS as even though they are moving to more a gpu centric engine there is still a lot of math going on in this flightsim. That being said, I can still run it quite well on my old proc and I have to say this one did concern me before my Rift arrived. The only annoyance is the constant reminder that my cpu does not meet Oculus requirements every time I start up Home. There is a registry hack to change your cpu in Windows that will get rid of this but I haven't got around to it
 
Don't know why but all of my Oculus friends love Elite in VR and are totally extra exited about this! "Ohh!" "Wow!" "No way!" are usually the words they say.
On the other hand, many of the HTC Vive guys, say "it is cool, yes". But by far not as enthusiastic then the Oculus fan boys. Anybody has a idea, if there is a big difference between both? As from the technically point of view they look really similar to me.
My guess is the Oculus guys right now only have other sitting down + game pad experiences to compare to.

"It is cool yes" would pretty much sum up my response if someone asked me about Elite in VR. Followed by a rant about how great roomscale is and how everyone and their dog need to experience it.
 
I just got my Vive and first tried roomscale, and it is        g awesome.
Didn't try ED yet, as my HOTAS is in the office and there's no space for roomscale, so the vive is currently installed in the living room.

Even my 5yo daughter loves discovering things in Vivecraft (Minecraft with Vive mod).
 
I just got my Vive and first tried roomscale, and it is g awesome.
Didn't try ED yet, as my HOTAS is in the office and there's no space for roomscale, so the vive is currently installed in the living room.

Even my 5yo daughter loves discovering things in Vivecraft (Minecraft with Vive mod).

Try out Brookhaven Experiment demo (free). That is intense room scale. Not recommended for your daughter though..
 
Well guys,
the deed has been done, ive ordered a Vive from PCworld. It will be with me sometime tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for your help and advice, it has been invaluable.

Hopefully, ill get it all fired up and working without too much hassle, but i sure know where to come if i struggle.

Once ive had a day or two with it, ill pass on my opinions.

Thanks again
tony.
 
Vive is by far the best headset currently out... but Vive is by far the worse headset for ED. The best is still the DK2 as it has none of the horrible god rays that the CV1 and Vive have from their Fresnel lenses and you can use older drivers that allow you to use reshade and other tricks to greatly improve the image/colour etc.
 
Vive is by far the best headset currently out... but Vive is by far the worse headset for ED. The best is still the DK2 as it has none of the horrible god rays that the CV1 and Vive have from their Fresnel lenses and you can use older drivers that allow you to use reshade and other tricks to greatly improve the image/colour etc.

Thats about the same conclusion I came to. The fresnel lens are my biggest worry as they are hardware. Nonetheless, i'm hopeful that someone will offer a hardware solution at some point. I will start liking fresnel lenses when I see them fitted to high end cameras.

Drivers etc, I hope, will in time, get sorted. Meanwhile, ill suffer the downgraded visuals in exchange for a heightened feeling of reality.
 
Well guys,
the deed has been done, ive ordered a Vive from PCworld. It will be with me sometime tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for your help and advice, it has been invaluable.

Hopefully, ill get it all fired up and working without too much hassle, but i sure know where to come if i struggle.

Once ive had a day or two with it, ill pass on my opinions.


Thanks again
tony.

I find the only real bonus the cv1 has over the vive is pure performance, doing the super-down-sampling with the vive and legibillity is about on par.
And unless I obsess about the fps meter I don't really notice that re-projection has kicked in either.
This and the rest is then software that will be fixed or sorted (eventually) or actual hardware issues that are never fun regardless.

In short I don't think you will regret it.
 
I opted for the CV1 because of cost, heat/weight and discreet motion sensor and I've not regretted it.

The Vive has the camera and the motion controllers. While the Oculus motion controllers will follow soon, the cost is unknown, so they may bump the CV1 price total up to match the Vive - that said, I won't need them for Elite, which is why I bought VR, so they'd be wasted money anyway (for me personally).

My advice to anyone is TRY BOTH! It's a lot of money to get buyers regret and both HMDs have pros and cons (as I've said above) and personal preference is subjective as well as games they support being a variable.

Now the whole pre-order rush is over and stock is more freely available, you'll start to see demo models. Also ask if anyone in your area has one they'd be willing to show you.

I'm spending the next two days at LaveCon with my CV1 showing all comers Elite: Dangerous in VR.
 
...
This and the rest is then software that will be fixed or sorted (eventually) or actual hardware issues that are never fun regardless.
...

I suppose that IF Elite currently does not mask off the (...unseen through the lenses...) corners of the screens from shader work load, as recommended by Valve, and IF part of FDev's coming optimisations include the addition of this practice (...when targeting OpenVR), we could indeed see a nice little bit of a performance boost - maybe enough to stave of reprojection more often. :7
 
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Great Thread!

I just read this because I was about to pull the trigger on an HTC Vive for delivery tomorrow. I've now pre-ordered a Rift for delivery on the 20th from Amazon (had a £50 gift card knocking about).

I'm pretty much exclusively intending to use VR for ED and maybe a flight sim or two for the time being until they go cordless (apparently HTC has a prototype already!) and there are more games around. From what I've read here and elsewhere ED is slightly better in the Rift even if it is not as good a bit of kit overall. As of today with the gift card, the price difference was £270 so that sealed the deal, especially being as I've never tried either and might get sea sick as hell (I get sea sick in harbour on ferries [wacky]) lol

Hopefully I've made the right decision for me.... very excited anyway!!
 
I just read this because I was about to pull the trigger on an HTC Vive for delivery tomorrow. I've now pre-ordered a Rift for delivery on the 20th from Amazon (had a £50 gift card knocking about).

My deepest condolences, but obviously there's happiness in slavery.
 
I was just referring to giving up on your own and any of your contacts personality rights due to installing facebook software on your computer.

To each their own, but being busy asking each of my contacts if (s)hes using whatsapp and if so, to delete me from their contacts is quite a hassle. My Attorney certainly rubs his hands at all the cease and desist letters he's going to write.
 
I received my Vive on Friday and I've been living in it. I played The Lab to get the experience of VR as intended, to start with, I've also bought a couple of titles from Steam to try different things and then moved to ED and that's been great. It's meant to be played like that.

Room scale is great, too, I have roughly 3x3m to use, and I use it. I get out of my seat all the time, in the game, and my seat can be found where it can be found in the game, with regards to position in the deck/room scale space... I recommend!
 
I was just referring to giving up on your own and any of your contacts personality rights due to installing facebook software on your computer.

To each their own, but being busy asking each of my contacts if (s)hes using whatsapp and if so, to delete me from their contacts is quite a hassle. My Attorney certainly rubs his hands at all the cease and desist letters he's going to write.

Oh I see. Well I'm not a fan of Facebook, got it but hardly ever log in. My plan with the rift,should it ask me to sign in to Facebook, is create a Billy no mates account especially for it.
 
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