VR kits, are they worth buying?
- Thread starter CMDR MERANGO
- Start date
Yeah, I can't say enough good things about the current VR offerings (Oculus Rift being the one I have experience with, of course). I got a chance to try out one of the early VR rigs, back in the '90s. The headset was bulky and heavy. The 3D depth was there, but not well matched to reality (distances and scales weren't very accurate). And worst of all, it was slow and laggy, even though it was only doing wireframes, and not fully rendered environments. And this was on a rig that probably had a price tag in the 6 digits. It did however have motion tracking for a gun, with which you would shoot darts at the other player. Overall I was not impressed.
So with that memory in my head, I was skeptical about how well a consumer grade VR setup would word, even with today's technology. But I was hearing good things, so I bought the Oculus Rift + Touch Controllers when the price drop was announced, mostly on a whim (a late birthday present to myself). And I was blow away. It knocked my socks off. Just the tutorial alone, with the '80s era video lab in the back of an RV, with an interactive robot, was just draw-dropping. I picked up a virtual circuit board off the table, and held it up in front of my face and looked at it from all angles, and it looked good.
Then I got my hands on a program called Discovering Space, which takes you on virtual tours around the solar system. The graphics weren't fantastic, but it was flying me through space. And then I remembered that I had this kickstarter account for Elite Dangerous, that I never got around to playing, after several years. And here I am.
I tried firing the game up in 2.5D on the monitor one evening, and I just couldn't even look at it. It's just not the same as being there.
So with that memory in my head, I was skeptical about how well a consumer grade VR setup would word, even with today's technology. But I was hearing good things, so I bought the Oculus Rift + Touch Controllers when the price drop was announced, mostly on a whim (a late birthday present to myself). And I was blow away. It knocked my socks off. Just the tutorial alone, with the '80s era video lab in the back of an RV, with an interactive robot, was just draw-dropping. I picked up a virtual circuit board off the table, and held it up in front of my face and looked at it from all angles, and it looked good.
Then I got my hands on a program called Discovering Space, which takes you on virtual tours around the solar system. The graphics weren't fantastic, but it was flying me through space. And then I remembered that I had this kickstarter account for Elite Dangerous, that I never got around to playing, after several years. And here I am.
I tried firing the game up in 2.5D on the monitor one evening, and I just couldn't even look at it. It's just not the same as being there.