Oculus Dash / Home 2.0 - Experiences & Tips Thread

heretowatch

heretowatch
I've got to chime in here and ask how other people are pinning windows if they're not able to see their cockpits. I played about 2 hours last night (it was late so maybe I'm mis-remembering?) and if you click the right Touch menu button then select "Show Desktop" from the carousel, you can reach in to your desktop and grab any of the apps you want with the right grip button. Place it anywhere you want for now, dismiss your desktop, then you can point at the app and grab it, minimize it, move it around whatever you need to do while seeing all of your cockpit. When you find the spot you want your window, hit the pin button and it'll stay there.

I really like the new features. Home could use a little more finesse, but it's beta after all. Steam games also appear to be taking performance hits.
 
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NeilF

NeilF
So can you create and use "themes". eg: Certain apps pinned in certain locations?

Surely this would be the only way to manage apps appearing in the ED hud easily? Choose a "theme" and your usual 2-3 apps appear in the right places?
 

heretowatch

heretowatch
NeilF said:
So can you create and use "themes". eg: Certain apps pinned in certain locations?

Surely this would be the only way to manage apps appearing in the ED hud easily? Choose a "theme" and your usual 2-3 apps appear in the right places?
Click to expand...

No you can't. That's addressed in Post #35 above you.

edit: this is a good idea, however. They've opened up a feedback forum for the beta phase. Chime in there.
 
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CylonSurfer

CylonSurfer
heretowatch said:
I've got to chime in here and ask how other people are pinning windows if they're not able to see their cockpits. I played about 2 hours last night (it was late so maybe I'm mis-remembering?) and if you click the right Touch menu button then select "Show Desktop" from the carousel, you can reach in to your desktop and grab any of the apps you want with the right grip button. Place it anywhere you want for now, dismiss your desktop, then you can point at the app and grab it, minimize it, move it around whatever you need to do while seeing all of your cockpit. When you find the spot you want your window, hit the pin button and it'll stay there.

I really like the new features. Home could use a little more finesse, but it's beta after all. Steam games also appear to be taking performance hits.
Click to expand...

The 'Void' is the grey background with the Dash Carousel / Virtual desktop you see when pressing your right Touches home button in non Dash supported VR titles. To my knowledge, once you exit the 'Void' in Elite you can no longer interact with any pinned application only view them in the position you placed it while in Void. When in the Void you cannot see the cockpit from Elite surrounding you, hence any moving pinned application is based on pure guess work. You pin it, close voide and review where it is in the cockpit, if you don't like its position you reopen void and then move the Window based on what you can remember of its last position within Elite cockpit and repeat this process until you are happy with the pinned apps placement.

At least that was my experience - are you suggesting that you could move pinned apps around while actually playing Elite and without returning to the Void environment?
 

NeilF

NeilF
heretowatch said:
No you can't. That's addressed in Post #35 above you.

edit: this is a good idea, however. They've opened up a feedback forum for the beta phase. Chime in there.
Click to expand...

Ta...

Beyong this I'd imagine low level control of apps appearing, not appearing, and their positions/sizes will be super useful to app developers. eg: So windows being injected into the ED Hud could be changed/manipulated on the fly.
 

heretowatch

heretowatch
CylonSurfer said:
The 'Void' is the grey background with the Dash Carousel / Virtual desktop you see when pressing your right Touches home button in non Dash supported VR titles. To my knowledge, once you exit the 'Void' in Elite you can no longer interact with any pinned application only view them in the position you placed it while in Void. When in the Void you cannot see the cockpit from Elite surrounding you, hence any moving pinned application is based on pure guess work. You pin it, close voide and review where it is in the cockpit, if you don't like its position you reopen void and then move the Window based on what you can remember of its last position within Elite cockpit and repeat this process until you are happy with the pinned apps placement.

At least that was my experience - are you suggesting that you could move pinned apps around while actually playing Elite and without returning to the Void environment?
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm suggesting that. Maybe I'll see if I can get a video tomorrow or this weekend. When I hit my right Touch's home button it brings up Dash but with Elite in the background. I select the virtual desktop option and I can select which monitor to show (I have two). I can then see the application I want to bring in to my cockpit (mumble), reach in and grab it and move it around. I'm a bit confused why this was my experience last night, but not yours. And I'm worried that I may have a neurological condition or something ;)
 

CylonSurfer

CylonSurfer
heretowatch said:
Yes, I'm suggesting that. Maybe I'll see if I can get a video tomorrow or this weekend. When I hit my right Touch's home button it brings up Dash but with Elite in the background. I select the virtual desktop option and I can select which monitor to show (I have two). I can then see the application I want to bring in to my cockpit (mumble), reach in and grab it and move it around. I'm a bit confused why this was my experience last night, but not yours. And I'm worried that I may have a neurological condition or something ;)
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I can see Elite on the Virtual Desktop from within Void - I cannot see where Pinned applications will exactly line up in the "real" Elite Dangerous cockpit when I exit Void though. To my knowledge this is the default behaviour of Dash unless the VR application in use has full Dash support which Elite doesn't have at this moment.

I think we're misunderstanding each other to be honest - I assume you cannot move a pinned window without first pressing the Home button on your right Touch controller, at which point, at least in Elite, you would be in the Void - i.e presented with your Dash Carousel, non pinned apps, any pinned apps and your Virtual Desktop all presented on a gray background. Something like this:

DL4OQ0TX0AE5cZR.jpg


From here you can move pinned apps, but say you wanted to pin an app to a particular part of your cockpit in Elite you wouldn't be able to see the cockpit surrounding you as all you can see is gray. So it would be guess work as to the depth and position that app needs to be pinned for it to show in the correct location inside Elite.
 
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Orvidius

Orvidius
What's funny is that the thing that disappointed me most, has almost nothing to do with Dash itself.

I got a chance to try all of this out last night, and one of the first things I wanted to do, was simply to pin the iTunes mini-player into my cockpit. This worked flawlessly. However, because it's a light grey color, it seems blindingly bright in my cockpit. And iTunes doesn't have a dark theme, or any way to install a theme or change colors that I can find for iTunes 12. I spent about an hour looking for themes or a way to recolor it, and then downloaded MusicBee, since it can import your iTunes playlists, and is very customizable, and free. However, when you pin that into Dash, it displays as a blank panel. Whatever method it's using for the player's UI, it doesn't play nicely with Dash.

So after all of that, I'm back to not pinning my music player. I've been controlling iTunes by using the remote control app on my phone, and looking through the nose-gap on the Rift.
 

heretowatch

heretowatch
CylonSurfer said:
I think we're misunderstanding each other to be honest - I assume you cannot move a pinned window without first pressing the Home button on your right Touch controller, at which point, at least in Elite, you would be in the Void - i.e presented with your Dash Carousel, non pinned apps, any pinned apps and your Virtual Desktop all presented on a gray background.[...]
Click to expand...

I think I'm understanding you just fine (though, admittedly, your description is much better than mine), but that isn't the behavior I observed last night. I recall doing all of that while my cockpit was in view. I'm wondering if our methods are different for grabbing the window and pinning it.
 

xyphic

X
heretowatch said:
No you can't. That's addressed in Post #35 above you.

edit: this is a good idea, however. They've opened up a feedback forum for the beta phase. Chime in there.
Click to expand...
I made a suggestion earlier today with a few extra ideas thrown in: https://riftcorebeta.uservoice.com/...ferent-configurations-for-different-games-app

ETA: The idea I had is basically to have a set of viewports that don't have windows bound to them, but that you can save off as a configuration. When you load into the game you open the desktop and fling windows at the appropriate viewports to bind them. This way they're always in the same place and you can configure what you want to appear and where.

It would also be cool if the game could inform Dash about "scenes" and you can bind a configuration to a scene. So you might have one scene for each cockpit, one for station menu, etc. and you could have a different configuration for each scene. Viewports would be named so that the same window is visible in different locations in different scenes without having to bind for every scene.
 
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CylonSurfer

CylonSurfer
heretowatch said:
I think I'm understanding you just fine (though, admittedly, your description is much better than mine), but that isn't the behavior I observed last night. I recall doing all of that while my cockpit was in view. I'm wondering if our methods are different for grabbing the window and pinning it.
Click to expand...

Well at least we're on the same page. It's just odd that what you are seeing shouldn't technically be possible unless Elite fully supported dash, which it doesn't at the moment. Hence why we see the Void and not what you describe.

I'd be very interested to see what you do and know how you achieved that - if you know what I mean. I stopped playing at around 11pm GMT last night and certainly didn't see what you describe but there were updates to Core 2.0 after that time.
 
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heretowatch

heretowatch
CylonSurfer said:
Well at least we're on the same page here. It's just odd that what you are seeing shouldn't technically be possible unless Elite fully supported dash, which it doesn't at the moment. Hence why we see the Void and not what you describe.

I'd be very interested to see what you do and know how you achieved that - if you know what I mean. I stopped playing at around 11pm GMT last night and certainly didn't see what you describe but there were updates to Core 2.0 after that time.
Click to expand...

Trust me when I say I'm eagerly anticipating the end of the work day so I can get home and test it again. I finished playing at 5am GMT, not sure if I received any updates though.

Any other observations from the forum users??

xyphic said:
I made a suggestion earlier today with a few extra ideas thrown in: https://riftcorebeta.uservoice.com/...ferent-configurations-for-different-games-app
Click to expand...
I voted for your idea, sounds pretty good. I also added one just before you did.
 

Wasp0

Wasp0
heretowatch said:
Trust me when I say I'm eagerly anticipating the end of the work day so I can get home and test it again. I finished playing at 5am GMT, not sure if I received any updates though.

Any other observations from the forum users??


I voted for your idea, sounds pretty good. I also added one just before you did.
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Heretowatch, would really appreciate a simpletons guide to how you do this after you have checked it out, Pretty Please. Imagine trying to explain it to your granny.....Aim at level. :) :)
 

evanevery

evanevery
How is one supposed to use the "virtual keyboard"? I'm guessing it requires me to use my Oculus controllers to peck away at the keys...
 

Wasp0

Wasp0
Wasp0 said:
Heretowatch, would really appreciate a simpletons guide to how you do this after you have checked it out, Pretty Please. Imagine trying to explain it to your granny.....Aim at level. :) :)
Click to expand...


I've sorted my own issue. Got 2 screens pinned to my ED session. Nice.

I don't suppose we can interact with them when in ED? like i mean in say ED Engineer, can you scroll up and down the Materials when pinned in ED?

Thanks
 

heretowatch

heretowatch
Wasp0 said:
I've sorted my own issue. Got 2 screens pinned to my ED session. Nice.

I don't suppose we can interact with them when in ED? like i mean in say ED Engineer, can you scroll up and down the Materials when pinned in ED?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I think you have to open up Dash again to interact with the window (not positive though). Now the big question: could you see your cockpit as you were placing those two windows?
 
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