Playing Elite with Google Cardboard

[Junky Juke]

Hello folks. I wish to share some feedback on my recent experience with a cardbord-like VR setup.
I have to say something soon: it is something worth trying. It can give you a close experience to the gaming dedicated VR sets performance.
But also it makes you understand that home made VR cannot be used on a standard basis. There are too many twists to consider. Here are my thoughts:

PROS:

- Fun! did I say fun? Yesh! I did! The moment I was able to achieve an acceptable comfort I spent the most wonderful moments of my gaming experience.
- Cheap. You have to use stuff you can easily afford or grab from your pockets. And give it a try.
- Game changer: you will never be able to play ED the old way. And never you will be able to play on a monitor (be warned about that).
- Possibility to test the physical effects of VR. You can then decide if it is the case (or not) to invest your money on a VR equipment. If you discover some heavy intolerance you saved much money.

CONS:

- cell phones get seriously hot and stressed. It is definetly not safe for our beloved pieces of tech so that:
- you have to stop your VR every now and then to relax your eyes and cool down your phone.
- trinus VR app is free to try. It will stop every 15 minutes, kinda immersion breacker until you buy it.
- low fps (even 60fps) will make your eyes tired soon.
- image quality must be compromised to gain fps's
- no positional tracking will limit your experience, do not expect too much "presence" (but yes a bit of it is there)
- some cheap VR visors can be very uncomfortable, like mine (very heavy to wear, have to often adjust its position on my face).

That said here it is my setup....

My machine (almost VR ready):
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K @4.00Ghz
RAM: 8,00 GB
OS: Win8.1 64bit
Solid state HD
GeForce GTX 750 4gb videocard

VR gear:

-VR visor for smartphones "VR Box"
-Huawuei P9 lite smartphone (no gyroscope)
-3.1 USB cable tathering
-Trinus VR
-EDtracker Pro for headtracking
-Thrustmaster T.16000M left-handed joystick + Logitech Attack 3 as right hand (I'm lefty...)
-Mouse and keyboard

At 1920x2160 resolution performance loss is great and unless you have a high performace video card it causes low fps.

At and 1920x1080 there's a great boost in performance, but you will have to stretch the image vertically through the lens adjust of trinusVR. The overall experience becomes very good and enjoyable.

Ok that's all. After two or three days of testing and playing I finally decided to buy a real Oculus Rift CV1, because I'm very enthusiast of VR and I want to have the best experience from it. I will buy a better video card and some other stuff to fully enjoy the new way to play videogames.
I hope my feedback to be useful to the ones who wish to start from a cheap solution.

Fly Safe
JJ

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

So far the winning combination.

[video=youtube_share;3GVs_Wo9LvM]https://youtu.be/3GVs_Wo9LvM[/video]

 

[Exigeous]

I wish to share some feedback on my recent experience with a cardbord-like VR setup

Thanks for sharing so much detail, that was great. I've played around a bit with making this work with my LG G3 Android phone (2560x1440). I made it work but like your experience it pales in comparison to my Rift CV1

I finally decided to buy a real Oculus Rift CV1 ...I will buy a better video card and some other stuff

You're gonna love it - if you thought Trinus was fun just wait until you get the FULL VR experience from the Rift. As you've already said it completely changes the way you'll play Elite, it really is amazing. As for your video card I'm just making sure you're planning to upgrade it before you even plug in the Rift. The issue isn't that it's "a bit slow", the issue is that it flat out won't work. The Oculus Home app checks your hardware specs and if it doesn't see a GTX 960 or higher (or enough CPU/RAM) it simply won't run. You'll just get a message that you don't meet the minimums and that's that. I haven't checked in a while so perhaps there's a way to hack it but even then I don't see how a 750 is going to be powerful enough to run two 1200x1080 panels at 90fps or even at 45fps. You'd certainly have to run with all settings at lowest, etc.

Don't mean to poo poo your plan, just hoping to help avoid issues when the CV1 arrives. There are a good number of GTX 970s on eBay under $200 which is a great buy.

 

[Junky Juke]

I know my video card will not do it. Infact I aready ordered my Asus 980Ti. What I didn't know is that I need at least win 8.1 to run it! Damn I will need to upgrade my OS. I hope there's no need to download the whole ED again

 

[Exigeous]

I know my video card will not do it. Infact I aready ordered my Asus 980Ti. What I didn't know is that I need at least win 8.1 to run it! Damn I will need to upgrade my OS. I hope there's no need to download the whole ED again

Good deal, you seem to know what you're doing and have done your homework so I'm not surprised you've ordered it already. Just wanted to be sure you weren't setting yourself up for a bad experience.

As for ED you shouldn't have to. You should however back up your Windows profile directory as that's where all your custom stuff is (graphical settings, keybindings, various logs). Elite is split into data (in your profile) and app (usually in Program Files). At least it's easy to re-download if you have to, assuming you have decent bandwidth. I just upgraded my cable modem to 250 mb down, 25 mb up which is insane. I installed the new 2.2.03 beta a few nights back and it finished in under 5 minutes (something like 8-10 GB of data).

You gonna go for Windows 10? Granted I'm a Windows fanboy but it really is a great OS.

 

[Junky Juke]

Yes I was thinking about upgrading my win8 OS to win10. I have ED installed on my secondary HD, so I guess there will be no problems to put it back in steam library. Oh about the videocard I will probably opt for a better one as investment in the future (it must work in SLI btw). I made contacto today with my "drugs" dealer. He is scanning for the best option.

 

[Exigeous]

... I will probably opt for a better one as investment in the future (it must work in SLI btw).

That's likely smart as you won't have to or want to upgrade again in 6 months. One thing to make sure - you know that VR doesn't support SLI at this point right? There are likely some tech coming there, NVidia has talked about a system where each GPU would render each of the eyes basically doubling your performance. But right now and in the short term if you have an SLI setup you have to disable it before playing Elite in VR. About a year ago when I built my gaming PC I went with the Titan Z 12GB card. Essentially 2 GPUs on one card with the driver treating it like SLI. When I got my Rift and tried to game in SLI everything was doubled and all screwed up, that's when I learned about the no-SLI support issue. Each time I played a VR game I'd have to go disable half of my card to do so which obviously wasn't fun at all. I wound up selling that card and got a shiny new GTX 1080 which is just fantastic.

 

[Junky Juke]

Yes I know that ED will not support SLI on VR. I placed my order today for an Asus 1070 that supports SLI. I will intall a single video card today (it is strong enought to push the oculus to the stars). So that in future I will be able to couple it with another 1070 without the need to trash yet another videocard and have more power. My room is already full of "old" videocards and motherboards

I'm shure that FD will need to adapt to dual SLI for VR in the long run. There are too many advantages doing that. By now thank you for advice. I'm so excited to get in VR, it is amazing. I'll be ready in a couple of days... fingers crossed.

 

[Exigeous]

Yes I know that ED will not support SLI on VR. I placed my order today for an Asus 1070 that supports SLI. I will intall a single video card today (it is strong enought to push the oculus to the stars). So that in future I will be able to couple it with another 1070 without the need to trash yet another videocard and have more power. My room is already full of "old" videocards and motherboards

I'm shure that FD will need to adapt to dual SLI for VR in the long run. There are too many advantages doing that. By now thank you for advice. I'm so excited to get in VR, it is amazing. I'll be ready in a couple of days... fingers crossed.

Good deal, again you definitely seem to know what you're doing - I just wanted to make sure you had the right expectations going in so you weren't disappointed when things arrive. When my Rift arrived I was hugely disappointed, I had never used one and read tons of glowing reviews. I knew there were screen door issues but all the reviews I read said it was much better in the CV1 and that you didn't notice it much. That's true but really only in relation to the DK2 which was awful in terms of screen door. So I assumed there was basically no screen door when in fact it's very noticeable. I've owned many LCD projectors over the years so I'm very familiar with and annoyed by SDE hence I was really disappointed (at first) with the Rift.

If you'll indulge me let me make some suggestions for in-game settings. Remember that the native refresh rate is 90 fps so you'll want to get things setup so you're basically hitting that all the time. The new tech in the driver can compensate for dropped frames now and while it does a great job you still want to be picky about your settings. For quick and dirty I'd use the "VR Medium" preset then make sure that Supersampling = 1.0, Anti-aliasing = MLAXX2 and HMD Image Quality = 1.5 You might try HMD Image Quality at 1.25 as those are the settings I run on my AmpExtreme 1080 (the fastest non-Titan 1080). With that I get a very solid 90 fps and there AA looks very good without killing performance. I have tried SMAA Anti Aliasing as it does look a bit better but the frame rate hit just isn't worth it. My full settings are below, I spent several hours one afternoon reading about each setting to understand it's effect on frame rate vs. quality and then tested each setting to see how it impacted performance/quality. With these settings I think it looks fantastic and it's very smooth which is hugely important in VR.

Model Draw Distance = (1 tick to the left of middle)
Texture Quality = High
Shadow Quality = Medium
Bloom = Off
Blur = Off
Anti Aliasing = MLAXX2
Supersampling = 1.0
Ambient Occulsion = Medium
Environment Quality = High
FX Quality = High
Depth of Field = High
Reflections Quality = Low
Material Quality = High
Galaxy Map Quality = High
Terrain Quality = High
Terrain Work = Maximum
Terrain Material Quality = High
Jet Cone Quality = High
Field of View = Maximum
Gamma = (1 tick above middle)

Dashboard Brightness = Lowest (I find that if this is too high there is a lot of bloom around the in-cockpit text maxing it hard to read)
Disable GUI Effects = On (this turns off the little effect you see when the nav/sys panels left/right open, it's cool at first but having them pop instantly is much better)
Reduce Camera Shake = On (keeps the barf-mobile at bay)
Vehicle Motion Blackout = Off
Vehicle Maintain Horizon Camera = On (this is *very* important IMHO, it will keep you view level when driving the SRV so it moves around you rather than your head moving with it. Off it can make you VERY dizzy quickly and nothing makes me dizzy)

A few guys on Reddit asked me about my settings so I figured I'd kill two birds here. Obviously you can set things however you want, everyone has a different tolerance for dropped frames vs. image quality. Where I'm running less than High I couldn't really see the difference in High/Low anyway so for me I wanted the higher framerate as I can tell when frames start to drop and things are less than smooth.

~X

 

[Junky Juke]

Thank you so much! I cant wait for my Oculus. It had a lot of delivery issues. It was delivered to the wrong place two times in a row, so I decided to pick it by myself tomorrow. I hope it is still in perfect conditions
I guess I'll be putting everything together by tomorrow evening.

 

[loxai]

For any of you that may get a PSVR, I've been working on a Trinus PSVR. Similar to Trinus VR, but to connect PC and PlayStation VR (It does work much better than the mobile version).
http://www.trinusvirtualreality.com/psvr/
Here's a tutorial from youtuber Matownerie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSFkU2Ep7S4

 

[Exigeous]

Thank you so much! I cant wait for my Oculus. It had a lot of delivery issues. It was delivered to the wrong place two times in a row, so I decided to pick it by myself tomorrow. I hope it is still in perfect conditions
I guess I'll be putting everything together by tomorrow evening.

You're most welcome, assuming that was directed at me. If not my apologies for being an egotistical ;-)

If you have any issues with it and want a hand, explanation, setup help, blah blah blah feel free to PM me and I'm happy to lend a hand. I was a Kickstarter backer and as such have had mine since release. I have over 500 hours in Elite in my Rift, and probably another 200 in other games.

Man I need to get a life...

 

[Junky Juke]

You're most welcome, assuming that was directed at me. If not my apologies for being an egotistical ;-)

If you have any issues with it and want a hand, explanation, setup help, blah blah blah feel free to PM me and I'm happy to lend a hand. I was a Kickstarter backer and as such have had mine since release. I have over 500 hours in Elite in my Rift, and probably another 200 in other games.

Man I need to get a life...

Yes it was
BTW now that I'm in the club I guess we can leave this thread to the VR deamers. My smartphone visor is already taking dust in my storage room

 

[Scoorpio]

Hi

Ive just upgraded my GPU to a GTX 1070, and want to give this VR lark a go, but don't know which smartphone VR headset would be best, and the most comfortable

I have a Sony Xperia Z5 Premium

PC specs are

i7-3770k
GTX 1070 OC
16 GB RAM

If anyone could recommend a decent comfortable headset to go with the phone, I might nip to the shop in the morning after work and pick one up

Thanks

Jason

 

[Exigeous]

Hi

Ive just upgraded my GPU to a GTX 1070, and want to give this VR lark a go, but don't know which smartphone VR headset would be best, and the most comfortable

I have a Sony Xperia Z5 Premium

PC specs are

i7-3770k
GTX 1070 OC
16 GB RAM

If anyone could recommend a decent comfortable headset to go with the phone, I might nip to the shop in the morning after work and pick one up

Thanks

Jason

First let's set some expectations for phone based VR gaming vs. Rift/Vive "real" VR gaming. Note I left out PSVR since that's not a fully supported PC option, as such it lies between Rift/Vive and smartphones.

The difference it, well, HUGE. Even with the best and most comfortable headset for your phone you're still not going to get tracking or image quality near as good as "real" VR. While you can use a phone that has a higher PPI than the Rift/Vive, like my G3 at 1440p instead of 1080p in the Rift/Vive the image will be compressed in some way so it can be displayed on your phone via your network or even USB. Your phone and PC both likely support USB2 but there are still bandwidth issues there. Head tracking is going to be the biggest issue. Rift/Vive use cameras and external devices (lighthouses for Vive, cameras for Rift) that allow extremely precise head tracking where on a phone you can only use the accelerometer that's built it. That works great for things like Google Maps/Navigation and some small phone games but it's nowhere close to real VR.

So with that said if you're still going to go down the phone based VR path you should at least have some expectations. If you're phone is 1440p or higher you'll see next to no screen door effect. You will see image artifacts from compression and head tracking will be far less than perfect. Looking around to see stuff will be okay, fast movements for say dog fighting likely won't be.

Okay, so if you're still thinking "ah, screw this guy, it can't be that bad, just tell me what to buy and shut up!" then the answer is - do some googling and research about headsets that fit your specific phone. If you can't find a good recommendation that way go to Amazon and start reading reviews. That's what I did when I got a generic headset for my LG G3. You'll want one where you can adjust IPD (the distance between the two lenses) and distance away from the lenses (helps with focus and depth). Try to find one that people say is comfortable around the nose, that's where mine is the worst. I have an average size nose but mine puts a fair bit of pressure there.

I spent under $20 for mine shipped, some that are $100 suck and some that are $10 are awesome. Once you do get the headset start reading about Trinus and SteamVR, that's what you'll use to trick Elite into thinking you have a real headset.

Best of luck - I don't mean to poo poo your idea, just want to make sure you know what you're getting into. Once you've gotten one please do post back as I'd like to hear how it goes for you.

 

[Scoorpio]

Hi Exigeous

Thanks very much for replying and explaining in quite some detail

I have already tried googling headsets for my phone, but can't seem to find any....most seem to use Samsung or Huawei and LG, but pretty much nothing about the Xperia :-o I even went so far as to contact Sony Mobile, but they just told me that they hadn't tested any headsets, so couldnt possibly recommend anything at all and were sorry to disappoint....which they seem to be doing a lot of recently if I'm honest when it comes to their phones...

I will most definitely take your advice and go and check the reviews on Amazon, that's a great idea, thanks!!

So, apart from getting one with depth and width adjustment for the lenses, would I need a Bluetooth controller to go with it or is that a complete waste and wouldn't be used??

Thanks again for answering

 

[Scoorpio]

Well, I got one of the apparently better ones, and it does work to a degree, but it is really buggy....I set it up as described on the first page of this thread, but there seems to be a compatibility issue when Trinus is running. When it isn't running, everything is smooth on my PC monitor, but when I start and link Trinus, the screen starts to flicker and I get double images (not including the side-by-side option) which makes the game not really playable using this headset which is a shame. Aside from that issue, there is also a problem with the direction that the headset is in to look straight forward.....like to look directly forward in the ship, my headset needs to be pointing at the floor, and if I look forward from my own point of view, in the craft I am pretty much looking at the ceiling window, and I cant seem to get it straight...and also the reset button doesn't seem to do anything

I could be doing something wrong which is causing these issues as im not particularly computer wizzy, but I cant figure it out...so if anyone else had these issues and fixed them, please let me know

From the moments that it was working how I wanted, it was bloody awesome though, but at the moment a Rift or Vive is just too much out of my price range to buy one

 

[6xes]

Well, I got one of the apparently better ones, and it does work to a degree, but it is really buggy....I set it up as described on the first page of this thread, but there seems to be a compatibility issue when Trinus is running. When it isn't running, everything is smooth on my PC monitor, but when I start and link Trinus, the screen starts to flicker and I get double images (not including the side-by-side option) which makes the game not really playable using this headset which is a shame. Aside from that issue, there is also a problem with the direction that the headset is in to look straight forward.....like to look directly forward in the ship, my headset needs to be pointing at the floor, and if I look forward from my own point of view, in the craft I am pretty much looking at the ceiling window, and I cant seem to get it straight...and also the reset button doesn't seem to do anything

I could be doing something wrong which is causing these issues as im not particularly computer wizzy, but I cant figure it out...so if anyone else had these issues and fixed them, please let me know

From the moments that it was working how I wanted, it was bloody awesome though, but at the moment a Rift or Vive is just too much out of my price range to buy one

Moonlight App (nvidia card streaming) is all you need for Elite Dangerous

https://youtu.be/LsXZhag1SQE and use the desktop streaming option in GEforce experience C:\windows\system32\mstsc.exe
( which is simple to setup then use the 3d options in elite dangerous set to SBS )

for other 3D games you may own consider Tridef3d which works well most directx based games
dont bother with trinus etc

Headtracking is a nuisance to setup with mobile phones... consider buying a separate headtracker

 

[Scoorpio]

Hi 6xes

Thanks for the reply

I've had a look at that video, but can't seem to figure out what to do

I've downloaded Moonlight no problem, but when I go to Nvidia GeForce Experience and try to get it going with my phone, I just can't seem to do it

The screen I get when I open it up is not how it is on the video.....the GeForce Ex. version I have is 3.3.0.95, I have a GTX 1070 with i7-3770k, 16gig Ram and am using Driver version 378.49. The Gamestream section says READY with all the little boxes ticked.

I don't get the Preferences part on the Shield section on GeForce, which kinda stumps me straight away.....

Any ideas anyone??

 

[seanjo]

First let's set some expectations for phone based VR gaming vs. Rift/Vive "real" VR gaming. Note I left out PSVR since that's not a fully supported PC option, as such it lies between Rift/Vive and smartphones.

The difference it, well, HUGE. Even with the best and most comfortable headset for your phone you're still not going to get tracking or image quality near as good as "real" VR. While you can use a phone that has a higher PPI than the Rift/Vive, like my G3 at 1440p instead of 1080p in the Rift/Vive the image will be compressed in some way so it can be displayed on your phone via your network or even USB. Your phone and PC both likely support USB2 but there are still bandwidth issues there. Head tracking is going to be the biggest issue. Rift/Vive use cameras and external devices (lighthouses for Vive, cameras for Rift) that allow extremely precise head tracking where on a phone you can only use the accelerometer that's built it. That works great for things like Google Maps/Navigation and some small phone games but it's nowhere close to real VR.

So with that said if you're still going to go down the phone based VR path you should at least have some expectations. If you're phone is 1440p or higher you'll see next to no screen door effect. You will see image artifacts from compression and head tracking will be far less than perfect. Looking around to see stuff will be okay, fast movements for say dog fighting likely won't be.

Okay, so if you're still thinking "ah, screw this guy, it can't be that bad, just tell me what to buy and shut up!" then the answer is - do some googling and research about headsets that fit your specific phone. If you can't find a good recommendation that way go to Amazon and start reading reviews. That's what I did when I got a generic headset for my LG G3. You'll want one where you can adjust IPD (the distance between the two lenses) and distance away from the lenses (helps with focus and depth). Try to find one that people say is comfortable around the nose, that's where mine is the worst. I have an average size nose but mine puts a fair bit of pressure there.

I spent under $20 for mine shipped, some that are $100 suck and some that are $10 are awesome. Once you do get the headset start reading about Trinus and SteamVR, that's what you'll use to trick Elite into thinking you have a real headset.

Best of luck - I don't mean to poo poo your idea, just want to make sure you know what you're getting into. Once you've gotten one please do post back as I'd like to hear how it goes for you.

What headset did you get? Just as a starting point.