VR Question from an old idiot

Just ordered a Rift S and an RX 2070 to try to migrate from my triple screen setup (going to use a spare I7 and keep the 3 screen setup for non VR games). One thing I have not considered is how do you guys (& gals) type in the search bar of the galaxy map for a specific system whilst wearing a headset? Am I missing something obvious (I am no touch typist, only a two finger jabber and too long in the tooth to learn). I hope one does not need to lift up the headset breaking the immersive experience.

Also how do you get on using INARA etc? Is this even possible? Perhaps I should have asked before blowing £800. I hope I am not going to be disappointed.

Cheers, GD
 
how do you guys (& gals) type in the search bar of the galaxy map for a specific system whilst wearing a headset?
Touch typing. It really helps. I cannot imagine writing on a keyboard in VR without touch typing.

Also how do you get on using INARA etc?
I project an external browser window into the VR environment. There are many options here. I use OVRdrop but if I understand correctly it has been superseded by other apps, it still works well for me though but check the "market".
 
With the Rift S you have something called Passthrough - you’re able to go to a black&white view of your surroundings (taken from the headset’s cameras), if you’ve got an illuminated keyboard it’s quite easy to see the keys for finger jabbing :)

As for web browsing, you can always bring up a desktop view whilst in the headset and can even “grab” the window, resize and reposition it, “pin” it in position, and it will appear in Elite as a floating window. I sometimes use this when watching the current Lore Tour livestream, the desktop window placed as an A4-sized screen just above my in-game knees.
 
With the Rift S you have something called Passthrough - you’re able to go to a black&white view of your surroundings (taken from the headset’s cameras), if you’ve got an illuminated keyboard it’s quite easy to see the keys for finger jabbing :)

As for web browsing, you can always bring up a desktop view whilst in the headset and can even “grab” the window, resize and reposition it, “pin” it in position, and it will appear in Elite as a floating window. I sometimes use this when watching the current Lore Tour livestream, the desktop window placed as an A4-sized screen just above my in-game knees.
How do I enable passthrough?
I generally simply touch type hilariously slow.
Is passthrough activated some simple way?
 
Just ordered a Rift S and an RX 2070 to try to migrate from my triple screen setup (going to use a spare I7 and keep the 3 screen setup for non VR games). One thing I have not considered is how do you guys (& gals) type in the search bar of the galaxy map for a specific system whilst wearing a headset? Am I missing something obvious (I am no touch typist, only a two finger jabber and too long in the tooth to learn). I hope one does not need to lift up the headset breaking the immersive experience.

Also how do you get on using INARA etc? Is this even possible? Perhaps I should have asked before blowing £800. I hope I am not going to be disappointed.

Cheers, GD
Firstly, you will not be disappointed. VR in ED is amazing, even with the newer mid-level HMDs such as the Rift S (I have one and an RTX 2060 card - which handles full res and decent frame rate fine).

However as stunning as the experience is, there are rough edges, one of which is the difficulty in using the keyboard and external tools. I have masses (>35 yrs serious, high level computing and networking experience, >45 years for tech in general - but very little with gaming setups), and I still can't touch type (although ED in VR is slowly fixing that!). The other is external tools access. I'm yet to get an overlay working well enough for routine web browsing (such as the web-browser taking control focus away from ED when using that, or menus raised by the browser not being visible as technically they are other windows to the underlying PC). That said. Even with those shortcomings, VR in ED is well worth it, and I find myself playing instead of spending the time refining my setup, trying to tune the above issues out. I've not tried passthrough in game yet. The above are rough edges, but to my mind the overall in flight experience still vastly outweighs them.

One thing that IS well well worth it is using "VoiceAttack" to do anything that you'd normally jab at the keyboard (or need to find a spare hand/finger for a joystick button) for in flight. It allows you to keep your hands on the controls and not have to remember which contortions of buttons on the stick deploy the cargo scoop or whatever. VA uses the mic and earphones on the Rift, so there is no additional headset needed. A lot of tutorials are very mixed up about Voiceattack and the speech packs - You don't NEED the speech packs to use VA (in fact I'd find their inane waffle annoying after a time), but without them you'll need to set up VA yourself - not difficult, and as you learn you'll be able to do more complex things with it. For example your first VA command migh be if you say "Gear UP" or "Gear Down", VA presses "L" for you. Later on, you might refine that to use a VA plug-in from the EDDI software to feed back Information such as the landing gear status to VA. Then your VA macro can be changed to only press "L" if the gear state needs to be changed (i.e. if it's already down and you say "Gear down", it doesn't press L and RAISE the gear causing an embarrassing ship/pad interface moment)
 
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How do I enable passthrough?
I generally simply touch type hilariously slow.
Is passthrough activated some simple way?
I use an xbox 360 wireless pad so all I have to do is double tap the "logo" button but I'm not sure if it's a mappable key to other controllers such as HOTAS.

It's also activated by double tapping the menu button on the Right Touch controller.

Passthrough with my GTX1080 is slightly "wobbly" and can appear at the wrong scale or depth (I generally just close one eye when typing), but apparently it is much better on the RTX cards and has increased stereo resolution.
 
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When you start playing VR, don't forget to stand up, walk behind your chair and have a nose around your ship but when looking through floor hatches, don't head butt the wall like I did.

And make sure you get your IPD settings right. It will probably take a few days to find settings that are really comfortable. I set it a few mm wider than my actual IPD.

I also used to game with 3 monitors, using NVidia 3D Vision 2.0 and it was incredible ( before ED ). VR made me realise it was naff and I sold two of the monitors. You are going to love this.
 
Another basic VR suggestion is not to try and “push through” if you start to feel nausea - if you need to get VR legs, do short sessions over a week or so, stopping immediately if you feel sick.

The only thing that affected me was the SRV but using the “Maintain Vehicle Horizon” comfort setting cured that virtually straight away.
 
When looking a system up I just push the headset up on my head, then copy the system name to clipboard. Back in VR I can still peek out next to my nose and see enough to paste the system name into the search box. I use a Rift CV1 so no passthrough for me. :)
 
Playing elite in VR inspired me to finally learn to touch type :) there are some good learning sites out there that are free and reasonably effective. If I'm typing too slowly I just push the headset up and look at the keyboard. I've used steam VR's desktop viewer and OVRdrop to access INARA/EDDB to copy/paste system names. For me the most important thing about typing in VR was figuring out you can set a key bind to lock the comms window open. I didn't know you could do this when I started playing, and I'd invariably shift my head just enough that the comms window would close and all my text would get lost - and it was absolutely MADDENING! I don't know why it's not smart enough to remember what you were typing if you look away from the window!
 
How do I enable passthrough?
I generally simply touch type hilariously slow.
Is passthrough activated some simple way?


If you set up the Guardian System of Oculus, i.e. the boundary of your playpen, you just have to stick your head beyond the boundary and passthough shows up. My front boundary is set at exactly the edge of my gaming table, so all I have to do is to stick my head forward and the passthrough activates.
 
Does Oculus support Win10 VR commands used by WMR? If so you can just say 'Torch on' and 'Torch off' to switch pass-thru on and off.
 
There is an advantage to using a desktop view within your VR environment if you've got Voice Attack. The most common reason for using third party tools is to tell you where to go. With Voice Attack you can assign Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V keypresses to voice commands, so you can copy weirdie system names from your favourite third party tool and paste them into your galactic map... just by using your tongue
 
Oculus has it's built in Dash interface that makes anything from steam or such feel awkward and nearly unuseable.

I don't normally project anything into my environment out of personal taste, but my regular desktop is a mere click away on the controller.
Where I have full access to anything I can do on a screen. I can also project any window into the VR environment, no extra software required that is all supported by the rift native software.

As long as you are able to largely type without looking at the keyboard, that's not really going to change.
 
I play using a hotas setup but next to my stick ive got my mouse and between the throttle and stick ive got the keyboard on 3d printed brackets, for checking websites i just hit a button to bring up desktop view, system names can be ctrl-c'd from the browser and ctrl-v'd into the search field ingame.

Ive added a couple of dots of bluetac to selected keys so they are easier to find by touch, i use a non standard sized and layouted keyboard so being able to feel alt, tab and a couple of others is really useful, im able to touch type quite well and have gotten better at it since getting into vr back in 2015.
 
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