Dear Space Jockeys,
I just received my DK2 two days ago and here is a summary of my experience:
My Rig = Core i7 920 OC 3.5Ghz Water Cooled w/Kraken
6GB RAM
SSDs x2
HDDs x3
Nvidia GTX 760
Oculus Rift = 1920x1080 75Hz
Acer 24" = 1920x1080 60Hz
Windows 8.1
Voice Attack
Saitek X55 Rihno
1st day: The most stressful day of my life. Well, that's not much cause I am a laid back person in general. The Rift requires extensive tinkering after the initial install of drivers and SDKs. If your current Rig is close to mine in spec you will have no problem getting the rift up and running fluidly in every demo. These demos are awesome and the rift works very well with them. But we probably don't care about Demos.. we want to know how it plays in Elite and Dangerous. It was a massive punishment to the eyes. Don't trust those youtube videos of DK2 in action.
If you are used to 1080p on the monitor. The rift will feel like Nintendo Gameboy at first. Everything is blurry like you need glasses. My sympathy to all those who do wear glasses. You will have to tinker with the Configuration software of the rift and dial in the IPD just right before you can see anything with just pass clarity. Also tinker with the belt and how it sits on your face and the alignment of the lens to your eyes - This helps immensely. The view angle of the A lens is subpar. Barely 35 Deg of clear view before image is blurry. The B lens has up to maybe 60 deg of clarity but you won't see anything beyond "Charging" sign, Chat and Info panels with clarity. So the B lens doesn't have the range for game play. Pair all this up with the constant crashing of Elite Dangerous with the use of Oculus Rift. It will lock up your computer like a champ and restarting the computer will kill the Elite Dangerous Launch Software with this error - unhandled exception: configuration system failed to initialize. You will tear your hair out trying to fix this problem. But finally with some divine intervention I fixed the problems (its good ta be religious
). And it was time to sleep... It was an exhausting up hill battle. But with a happy ending
2nd day: If you didn't throw the RIFT out of the window... by now you will start to see what the RIFT is. It is the most CRAPPIEST HARDWARE that is AWESOME. It's hard to explain.
It's like that girl, who is probably the ugliest in the classroom but you love her. She does things that no other girl does. But she ain't easy on the eyes. You can take 3 monitor surround setup and throw that out of the window. You can take the IR Tracker and throw that out of the window. The RIFT DK2 is where it's at. You will fly 1000% better. You will drive 1000% better. It will scare you 1000% more. It will make you feel like you own the Ship! OMG, inside the Type7, ASP, Cobra, Sidewinder... just OMG. I spend more time looking around the ship while trading and it kills time so fast.. I sometime hangout outside stations to further investigate my ship... its like owning your Dinky Car and being able to sit in it and drive it!
.
In combat you will never loose track of your target.. Don't care if he/she is an ace doing all kinds of buzzy bee maneuvers. Especially ships like ASP, Cobra, Viper, and Sidewinders allow you track them like a champ. This increases your situational awareness. You can see ship flanking you and new targets that engage you out of now where. Its amazing. Just keep the eye contact with your target and your hands magically guide your ship to the target... its magic... Monitors suck. It takes weeks if not month to wire your head to accept 3D movement in a monitor. The Rift is natural. Like riding a bike. When you wanna turn look for where you wanna go and lean in!
.
The down side is that everything looks like Gameboy graphics with major banding and aliasing. After you have fixed the chromatic aberrations (bleeding of red, blue, and green from the edges of objects.) You can only minimize it. I got it down to 15% of what it normally puts out. The lens are awful but you can work with it.. barely. The Gameboy Graphics you can't fix. You have to accept the fact the the line you see is literally made of 10 pixels. It's like minecraft blocky rings. You will notice this most with orbit lines and the dodecahedron station's entrance. Those grills look awful on a 1080p monitor as you approach them but they look ok when you are right next to them. On the Rift the grill will look like minecraft from far and near. It's better to turn off Orbital Rings while using DK2. The aliasing can be minimized by 30%-50% but you will need more hardware power then my setup. My hardware setup barely makes the cut for 1440p.. a little judder inside the large stations but bare able. Smooth during space combat. Some judder during Super Cruise no thanks to Frontier, who just will not fix the stutter as you approach planets in Super Cruise - the last one has nothing to do with your Hardware. Even if you were rocking GTX980 Sli, you will stutter. You can go about minimizing aliasing in two ways: Run your Rift at 1440p with or without Anti aliasing (only use x2 or x4 options don't do FXAA or SMAA.) You can also run it on 1080p and up the sampling rate with or without Anti aliasing. I prefer to run it at 1440p my hardware can process it better - This helped minimize the aliasing by 35%. You will need more hardware power for 50%. In my opinion not worth extra money. Banding goes away with tweaks to Gamma levels. Text is more readable with tweaks to UI color. I brought down the RED levels to .25 and Blues to .75.
.
In conclusion the Oculus Rift DK2 is something you will love and hate. You will refuse to fly (ED and DCS), drive (Asetto Corsa, Project Cars, and iRacing), and adventure (aliens and horrors) without it. You will hate it because your brain refuses to accept sub par graphics resolution in the year 2015. At $372 USD it is cheaper than a monitor + IR Tracker. And those can't show the Elite Dangerous world like the DK2 can.
I just received my DK2 two days ago and here is a summary of my experience:
My Rig = Core i7 920 OC 3.5Ghz Water Cooled w/Kraken
6GB RAM
SSDs x2
HDDs x3
Nvidia GTX 760
Oculus Rift = 1920x1080 75Hz
Acer 24" = 1920x1080 60Hz
Windows 8.1
Voice Attack
Saitek X55 Rihno
1st day: The most stressful day of my life. Well, that's not much cause I am a laid back person in general. The Rift requires extensive tinkering after the initial install of drivers and SDKs. If your current Rig is close to mine in spec you will have no problem getting the rift up and running fluidly in every demo. These demos are awesome and the rift works very well with them. But we probably don't care about Demos.. we want to know how it plays in Elite and Dangerous. It was a massive punishment to the eyes. Don't trust those youtube videos of DK2 in action.
If you are used to 1080p on the monitor. The rift will feel like Nintendo Gameboy at first. Everything is blurry like you need glasses. My sympathy to all those who do wear glasses. You will have to tinker with the Configuration software of the rift and dial in the IPD just right before you can see anything with just pass clarity. Also tinker with the belt and how it sits on your face and the alignment of the lens to your eyes - This helps immensely. The view angle of the A lens is subpar. Barely 35 Deg of clear view before image is blurry. The B lens has up to maybe 60 deg of clarity but you won't see anything beyond "Charging" sign, Chat and Info panels with clarity. So the B lens doesn't have the range for game play. Pair all this up with the constant crashing of Elite Dangerous with the use of Oculus Rift. It will lock up your computer like a champ and restarting the computer will kill the Elite Dangerous Launch Software with this error - unhandled exception: configuration system failed to initialize. You will tear your hair out trying to fix this problem. But finally with some divine intervention I fixed the problems (its good ta be religious
). And it was time to sleep... It was an exhausting up hill battle. But with a happy ending 2nd day: If you didn't throw the RIFT out of the window... by now you will start to see what the RIFT is. It is the most CRAPPIEST HARDWARE that is AWESOME. It's hard to explain.
It's like that girl, who is probably the ugliest in the classroom but you love her. She does things that no other girl does. But she ain't easy on the eyes. You can take 3 monitor surround setup and throw that out of the window. You can take the IR Tracker and throw that out of the window. The RIFT DK2 is where it's at. You will fly 1000% better. You will drive 1000% better. It will scare you 1000% more. It will make you feel like you own the Ship! OMG, inside the Type7, ASP, Cobra, Sidewinder... just OMG.
I spend more time looking around the ship while trading and it kills time so fast.. I sometime hangout outside stations to further investigate my ship... its like owning your Dinky Car and being able to sit in it and drive it! .
In combat you will never loose track of your target.. Don't care if he/she is an ace doing all kinds of buzzy bee maneuvers. Especially ships like ASP, Cobra, Viper, and Sidewinders allow you track them like a champ. This increases your situational awareness. You can see ship flanking you and new targets that engage you out of now where. Its amazing. Just keep the eye contact with your target and your hands magically guide your ship to the target... its magic...
Monitors suck. It takes weeks if not month to wire your head to accept 3D movement in a monitor. The Rift is natural. Like riding a bike. When you wanna turn look for where you wanna go and lean in! .
The down side is that everything looks like Gameboy graphics with major banding and aliasing
. After you have fixed the chromatic aberrations (bleeding of red, blue, and green from the edges of objects.) You can only minimize it. I got it down to 15% of what it normally puts out. The lens are awful but you can work with it.. barely. The Gameboy Graphics you can't fix. You have to accept the fact the the line you see is literally made of 10 pixels. It's like minecraft blocky rings. You will notice this most with orbit lines and the dodecahedron station's entrance. Those grills look awful on a 1080p monitor as you approach them but they look ok when you are right next to them. On the Rift the grill will look like minecraft from far and near. It's better to turn off Orbital Rings while using DK2. The aliasing can be minimized by 30%-50% but you will need more hardware power then my setup. My hardware setup barely makes the cut for 1440p.. a little judder inside the large stations but bare able. Smooth during space combat. Some judder during Super Cruise no thanks to Frontier, who just will not fix the stutter as you approach planets in Super Cruise - the last one has nothing to do with your Hardware. Even if you were rocking GTX980 Sli, you will stutter. You can go about minimizing aliasing in two ways: Run your Rift at 1440p with or without Anti aliasing (only use x2 or x4 options don't do FXAA or SMAA.) You can also run it on 1080p and up the sampling rate with or without Anti aliasing. I prefer to run it at 1440p my hardware can process it better - This helped minimize the aliasing by 35%. You will need more hardware power for 50%. In my opinion not worth extra money. Banding goes away with tweaks to Gamma levels. Text is more readable with tweaks to UI color. I brought down the RED levels to .25 and Blues to .75. .
In conclusion the Oculus Rift DK2 is something you will love and hate. You will refuse to fly (ED and DCS), drive (Asetto Corsa, Project Cars, and iRacing), and adventure (aliens and horrors) without it. You will hate it because your brain refuses to accept sub par graphics resolution in the year 2015. At $372 USD it is cheaper than a monitor + IR Tracker. And those can't show the Elite Dangerous world like the DK2 can.
