My Oculus just arrived!
- Thread starter Perjoss
- Start date
I've been lucky enough to borrow an Oculus for a few weeks and it's been so much fun.
Wish I had £400 spare right now to buy my own, I have to give this one back soon
I have a DK2 you can have, I wont be back home till the UK bank holiday Aug though. Am pretty sure those DK2's are selling cheap now, not even worth me selling it, you'll still have a great experience with ED.
Congratulations OP!!! Don't forget to go in to the graphics settings and up the supersampling and HMD image quality. EDs default VR settings are a little low for most.
My TITAN X card is pre-Pascal, so I go with 1.25 SS and 1.5 HMD image quality (if memory serves). Also, do yourself a favor and turn antialiasing off. It just makes everything look fuzzy when it's turned on.
Once you've got all your settings dialed in, you'll wonder how you ever played ED without the CV1. It transforms ED from a simple space game to a truly amazing visual experience.
My TITAN X card is pre-Pascal, so I go with 1.25 SS and 1.5 HMD image quality (if memory serves). Also, do yourself a favor and turn antialiasing off. It just makes everything look fuzzy when it's turned on.
Once you've got all your settings dialed in, you'll wonder how you ever played ED without the CV1. It transforms ED from a simple space game to a truly amazing visual experience.
Top bloke. Rep + Respect pal o7
The other day I was on the Oculus site with a Rift bundle in my basket considering checking out, but in the back of my mind I'm hearing "screen door, godrays, tracking issues, low res" and I just can't click the "spend £400" button. Honest opinions on the rift/vive seem difficult to come by. Help...
The "screen door" thing is not really an issue for me. It only matters if you have the unnatural ability to hold your head perfectly still for hours at a time.
I've been playing ED on the CV1 for nearly 900 hours and I still have no idea what a "godray" is. I don't think I've ever seen one, though.
There are no tracking issues with the Rift, unless you sit more than 20 feet from the dual-sensors that you get with the current sale bundle. Or behind a brick wall. Either way is bad judgement, IMO.
The low-res is only if you go with the default in-game settings for ED, and is adjustable via the super-sampling and HMD image quality settings. All other VR games have higher native resolutions, so no settings fiddling is required for them. ED is a special case since it's VR-compatible, rather than VR-native. A year ago, the resolution was much lower than it is now. 2.2 fixed that for us.
I got my Rift and Touch for full price last year, so if you're thinking about ever buying a Rift, you should absolutely do it now. Plus, you'll get a real advantage in-game by using one. No headlook controls necessary, full depth-perception, easier landings, easier target tracking in combat, etc. Plus, seeing pretty much anything in this game in VR is enough to make even the most stern people giggle with child-like excitement.
Also, while I'm thinking about it, I'll bust another Rift myth. I wear glasses while using my Rift CV1. They actually fit perfectly, and don't contact the lenses at all. The headset is quite roomy inside. If you're near-sighted, definitely wear your glasses with the Rift. The lenses focus to infinity, so if you need glasses normally, you'll still need them with the Rift, even though the screens are only about 2 inches in front of you.
Oh, most importantly, be sure you have the right graphics card for the job. I believe the bare minimum is a GTX 980, but if I were you I'd get one of the newer ones, like the 1060 or 1070. They're much better suited for VR. My card is about 3 years old, but it was OP to begin with so it works nicely. Also, SLI does not really work with VR, so if you have multiple cards like I do, you'll want to turn SLI off.
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What's the peripheral vision like? I hear a lot of people talking about a tunnel vision like effect due to the round lenses. Currently, I sit about 2 feet from a 27" monitor and I'm used to a crystal clear, sharp image with a high fov (I've cranked the fov right up in the game), how does the VR experience compare to something like that?
Please, bear with me if you will, I would only probably use the rift for ED (which I don't currently play due to burnout) and Project Cars/Dirt Rally so £400 is a lot of layout for 3 games.
At the risk of "having a new one ripped" by the VR aficionados I'll tell you my feelings about this. I have not done any tuning-up of the graphics yet, I am taking my time over the whole thing, so my experience in Elite is not complete. I found that only the area directly in front was sharp, peripheral detail seemed blurred, meaning there was a definite sweet-spot (well, area) so I found myself moving my head to bring anything into the sharpest relief instead of being able to just move my eyes. This was most noticeable in the cockpit or SRV when normally I glance to an instrument or suchlike, here I found to have that sharp I needed to move my head.
Now a caveat - in the VR titles I have looked at, this does not seem so apparent. So I think maybe it is either something I can overcome in the E D graphics "tuning" or maybe one just gets used to it. Coming from a pin-sharp 27" 1440 display, the loss of sharpness is difficult.
As people will tell you, the 3D E D in the Rift is terrific, sizes, distances the sheer grandeur is simply terrific. I am not even slightly tempted to return my Rift for a refund, it is that good.
Finally, back to what I was saying about other VR titles - even just the ISS package (free) makes the £400 seem worth it. The picture is much clearer than that in E D (for me anyway) and the sensation of actually floating weightless in the ISS is simply amazing. I have bruising still on my arms from flailing about trying to stop myself crashing into walls. You have got to try it even just for that.
To me, the peripheral vision is almost the same as if you were really sitting in the chair. I have the lenses set to the narrowest position, so I see just a bit of black at the outermost edges of my vision, but it's not something you can actually focus on, so it isn't an issue for me. Think of it like wearing one of those old monocular snorkel masks. The lenses are on a track that allows them to move farther apart/closer together by using a small slider underneath the headset, so you can adjust it to your liking.
The lenses have a good-sized "sweet spot", so looking around is easy. Looking straight ahead, all the HUD is laid out right in front of you clear as day, so you only need look left or right for the side-displays. It's actually eerily natural to look around the cockpit. I tried playing once on my 60" LEDTV while I was waiting for a new HOTAS, and it felt very claustrophobic. That was sitting less than 5 feet from it.
I believe you can still adjust the FOV even when using the Rift, so you can adjust it to your liking. As for sharpness, it all depends on how much your rig can handle. VR images require several times more graphics power to generate than their 2-D counterparts, so the more powerful card the better. For a comfortable VR experience, you want 90 FPS (any less may cause discomfort, i.e. nausea in those who suffer from motion sickness), and if you have an older card, cranking up the HMD and SS values to the max may lower it too much. I know the resolution can be cranked up pretty high, but my card can't seem to handle it without a framerate drop (I'm a computer novice, so there are probably settings somewhere I can adjust to improve that, but I don't know what those settings are).
With the exception of a single hour, I've played all my time in ED with the Rift, so I don't really have a sense of how the resolution compares. You might take some time to adjust. The big thing with VR is the 3D aspect, and the sense of presence. I have my resolution settings set to about half of what the game will allow, so things can be fuzzy at great distances, but I'm so overwhelmed by the sense of actually being there that I often find that I don't care about the resolution. And again, if I bought a better card or learned more about how to control my current card, I could probably improve that experience.
Hmmmmm. It sounds delicious tbh. It was after watching Obisidan Ant's video on the rift (damn his convincing silky tones) that I started seriously considering it as a way to revitalise ED for me (plus bridge commander looks like fun).
Balls to it. Cup of tea and cig be damned, I'm gonna have to get my head in the game I think.