General VR Catch-All

Its unfortunate that Oculus is not shipping with Touch controllers, but once those exist the two PC options really are too similar to possibly make a 'wrong' choice. We're not seeing an aggressive push for exclusive properties, which is great for us. The Vive works just as well sitting down as the Rift. The Rift works just as well as the Vive when standing (with Touch controllers). The main advantage for the Vive is with a bigger room.

You see with games like Budget Cuts and Hover Junkers that the gameplay is virtually the same whether you stand with feet essentially planted or you can step a few feet in any direction.

If the ability to move around a 10'x10' area becomes a really popular mechanic, version 2 of the Rift will definitely have to adapt. We're just a few youtube videos of broken hands from people accidentally punching their walls, tvs, and spouses away from that popularity absolutely not being the case.

TheGameguru wrote:

Kinda sucks on the PC side that we have no real standard.. so in the end many consumers will probably pick the "wrong" unit... hopefully we have some sort of system where games created for one will show up for the others.

The Rift is already supported in SteamVR I believe, while Oculus and Valve continue to claim the other party is holding up the Vive's support of Oculus Home store. Assuming the two companies can figure that out, and with how few true exclusives there are, I would guess that you won't be able to by the "wrong" unit. Plus, I believe both HMDs support playing games without using their native launchers.

polypusher wrote:

If the ability to move around a 10'x10' area becomes a really popular mechanic, version 2 of the Rift will definitely have to adapt.

Why? Oculus and independent development studios have confirmed that the Rift can handle room-scale just fine with a second camera but Oculus is skeptical that 10'x10' play areas will be a consumer driving in the near term so they are not encouraging development of room scale games.

As you go on to mention, I am guessing that the real reason Oculus is pushing seated and with the Touch, standing; is the fear of liability.

Gumbie wrote:

Got my order in on Amazon this morning. Stock lasted about 5 minutes there.

Nice. By the time the page loaded for me properly, they were all gone. I managed to snag a bundle on BestBuy.com an hour later though.

zeroKFE wrote:

Tempting.

But what I really want are your hands on experiences comparing how the final consumer kits work with Elite, because that's the game that's forever tempting me to splurge and buy one or the other.

Fear not! I intend Elite to be my primary means of comparing the two experiences, as it's about the closest thing to a even playing field in the near term. Controllers aside, it should be a pretty good comparison on quality of HMD, tracking, and tracking volume.

As I understand it, FD are releasing the Vive+Oculus compatible version on the 28th.

I've used a near-final Oculus CV1 and controllers. I've held and tried on a Vive Pre and controllers, but not used one. Very much looking forward to the final versions. But I have a few impressions so far:

re: Oculus and "room scale"

It has nothing to do with liability. They are just talking up their strengths and down playing their weaknesses, just like anyone else would.

Tracking:

Oculus has an inferior tracking solution at the moment. The tracking volume is shorter and narrower with the camera vs the "inside out" tracking Vive is doing. You can add an additional camera (need yet another USB3 port!), and they are shipping an extra one with the controllers, but it doesn't have the same volume and FOV as the Vive. I expect Rift 2 will make major changes in this area, as it's is the weakest point for Oculus right now.

Vive has a much, much better tracking solution with Lighthouse. In pretty much every way. They can track more devices, at a lower overhead. The total FOV of the volume is wider and deeper per device. They are "dumb" devices and do not require any connection to the HMD or computer. You can run with one, or two, seated or standing. They can also easily support third party controllers and peripherals like the hand tracking gloves demoed by Manus recently.

Controllers:

I think Oculus wins in the controller dept in terms of ergonomics, but not functionality. Oculus has fewer buttons, no track pad, and is somewhat hampered by the narrow tracking volume of the camera (you can exit the tracking volume pretty easy with your hand if you have a desktop setup for example). Supposedly you can do gestures too, but I've not seen this working yet, and it's sounds like it's limited to pointing , giving a thumbs up, and small things like that. It's really a shame they didn't have this ready at launch. I think they misjudged this.

I think Vive may ultimately win here as they are open to third party devices that can leverage the existing Lighthouses.

HMD:

Oculus also has a slightly more polished HMD. The weight distribution is a little better, and it's slightly lighter. But honestly, the differences in the HMDs is very, very small. You will quickly tune out any differences. My only concern on the Oculus is durability. The fabric is neat and all, but if it tears you'll forever have dust problems.

Badferret wrote:

Why? Oculus and independent development studios have confirmed that the Rift can handle room-scale just fine with a second camera but Oculus is skeptical that 10'x10' play areas will be a consumer driving in the near term so they are not encouraging development of room scale games.

This!

Orphu wrote:

The tracking volume is shorter and narrower with the camera vs the "inside out" tracking Vive is doing. You can add an additional camera (need yet another USB port!), and they are shipping an extra one with the controllers, but it doesn't have the same volume and FOV as the Vive. I expect Rift 2 will make major changes in this area, as it's is the weakest point for Oculus right now.

Well said Orphu.

Regarding gestures, that's up to the inventiveness of the developer I think. If I'm holding my left hand palm up in front of me with (or without) some button combination, that can be a 'gesture' to enable some kind of menu. It could just as easily be a gesture to summon a tiny (TINY) bunny to sit on your hand (best game)
Waltz of the Wizard tries to do some gestures such as for throwing a magic missile but it seems like early detection is pretty poor. I think that's software more than hardware.

Orphu wrote:

Oculus has an inferior tracking solution at the moment. The tracking volume is shorter and narrower with the camera vs the "inside out" tracking Vive is doing. You can add an additional camera (need yet another USB3 port!), and they are shipping an extra one with the controllers, but it doesn't have the same volume and FOV as the Vive. I expect Rift 2 will make major changes in this area, as it's is the weakest point for Oculus right now.

Vive has a much, much better tracking solution with Lighthouse. In pretty much every way. They can track more devices, at a lower overhead. The total FOV of the volume is wider and deeper per device. They are "dumb" devices and do not require any connection to the HMD or computer. You can run with one, or two, seated or standing. They can also easily support third party controllers and peripherals like the hand tracking gloves demoed by Manus recently.

Actually, from my understanding, optical has an advantage when it comes to tracking multipile objects. The Lighthouse basestation don't "see" anything, so to add more tracked things, you will need an object that is self powered and communicating to the Vive. Take Rockband guitars for example, with the Rift, you sprinkle some IR emitters on the guitar and the camera can see it and track it just fine with a minimal amount of power on the guitar. For the Vive, you need the laser receivers and whatever kind of comms solution that the the Vive controllers use, it can be done, but at a somewhat higher cost per added tracked item.

And this article, which quotes the Oculus CEO, demonstrates that they are thinking long term.

Oculus' motion tracking does use a different technology – optical sensors connected directly to your PC vs. the Vive's non-optical "Lighthouse" laser emitters which can simply be plugged into a wall outlet. But the Rift's optical trackers are no less capable of room-scale stuff: we've walked around roughly a 5 x 5 ft. space in Oculus Touch demos and it's exactly like a more compact version of a Vive demo in a 15 x 15 ft. space. To take it up to that large a space, the Rift just needs a second positional tracker (and an extra USB port on your PC), which will apparently be bundled with the Oculus Touch controllers.

This quote is from Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe, right after last June's Rift launch event (in an interview I was part of, along with four or five other reporters):

We're really big believers in optical tracking, in camera sensors. That is the bet that we're making. And that's the future of sensor tracking. If you look at things like the Kinect, or any of these different kinds of infrared structured light sensors, or any of the stereo camera sensors, they're all based on cameras. And cameras continue to get better.

If you want to see your full body in the game, if you want to see your fingers and your fingernails ... not this generation, but, eventually, if you want to see all of that, that's going to be done with camera sensors. That's not going to be done with any other kind of sensor. That's an optical sensor, and that's the investment we're making.

Source.

Are they right, who knows?

Hell, maybe for second gen, both systems will be using camera/lighthouse hybrids.

Hopefully we start seeing retail demo units for both systems in the coming months, as that is probably going to be my only experience with either system for the time being, pink eye be damned!

I think a hybrid approach in the future is probably true. Neither approach is beyond first gen. Getting detailed tracking of things like your fingers without having to wear gloves will require cameras. But scaling to many tracked objects in the same space is going to be pretty hard to solve with one or two cameras.

But, taking a step back and considering the source of that comment. On the eve of launch, the CEO of the company selling the product thinks they made sound technical choices. Well, of course he does.

I still think the Lighthouse approach is superior for this gen and the next couple of years. It'll be fun to see where it all goes!

Orphu wrote:

But I have a few impressions so far:

Wow -- that's a ton of useful thoughts already.

I'm starting to feel like if I'm going to end up making an impulse early adopter buy, my choice is going to hinge largely on how willing I'm going to be to replace things sooner rather than later.

If I can make myself okay with the fact that I'm going to be buying completely new hardware within a year or two, I'll probably go with a Rift -- it will get me what I want in the short term (Elite in VR, plus the chance to screw around with everything else) for a bit lower investment, and it'll be that much easier to buy a new graphics card to make this stuff really sing next fall or whatever.

However, from everything I'm seeing and reading, the Vive feels a bit more likely to be feature complete and hold out a bit longer before the inevitable "holy crap, this first generation sh*t needs to be completely replaced" moment comes around.

(Also, the exclusive software factor seems to be pointing towards the Rift in the short term, although at the same time that concept kind of infuriates me and makes me want to protest vote against it.)

Man, it's a tough choice -- and one that I REALLY just need to wait a bit longer on making. But, you know, it would be pretty great to have one sooner than that.

So, Arizona Sunshine sounds pretty darn cool

Its still just fun demo territory, a circular map where you defend the middle, mostly motionless, against moving targets. We've seen it before... 20 years ago, but it'll still be fun. If it's good enough for Picard...

IMAGE(http://33.media.tumblr.com/f583da5c7e2e6f429149cd9f7c6c7617/tumblr_inline_neybaiBqmP1qapo7v.png)

I ended up with a Vive.. just feels like if I'm going to strap something on my head and play a game I might as well go all out and stand up and wave my arms around as well... still debating on the Sony VR but I don't play my Playstation that much so short of Bloodborne 2 VR I'm not sure I would get any value out of it.

Virtual Desktop is going to get to 1.0 for March/April. When I was playing with the Rift DK2, Virtual Desktop was one of the more interesting applications (if buggy). With it you can display your PC's desktop in a virtual environment. Some of the benefits are that you can move from application to application without taking off the headset, browse the web and basically run anything with a virtual 2d or curved screen

With the in-development Rift hardware, it was a little rough just because of the low resolution. You'd need to pump up the size of text on websites, for example, to comfortably view it. A huge selling point is that you can, for example, watch Netflix or Hulu or Amazon (or anything else) without waiting for them to make their eventual VR apps.

Having not tried the Rift launch kit I'm not sure yet if the same resolution applies. I know its higher but it might not be high enough to be comfortable yet.

Slides from Valve's fascinating GDC 2016 talk on advanced VR rendering techniques.

http://alex.vlachos.com/graphics/Ale...

Here's the 2015 talk as well:

http://media.steampowered.com/apps/v...

Frontier is releasing the Oculus 1.3 compat. version of Elite today.

Might have to book some time with that engineering sample again this weekend...

polypusher wrote:

Virtual Desktop is going to get to 1.0 for March/April. When I was playing with the Rift DK2, Virtual Desktop was one of the more interesting applications (if buggy). With it you can display your PC's desktop in a virtual environment. Some of the benefits are that you can move from application to application without taking off the headset, browse the web and basically run anything with a virtual 2d or curved screen

With the in-development Rift hardware, it was a little rough just because of the low resolution. You'd need to pump up the size of text on websites, for example, to comfortably view it. A huge selling point is that you can, for example, watch Netflix or Hulu or Amazon (or anything else) without waiting for them to make their eventual VR apps.

Having not tried the Rift launch kit I'm not sure yet if the same resolution applies. I know its higher but it might not be high enough to be comfortable yet.

I use Virtual Desktop when playing Elite in the DK2. I thought it worked well. It lets me alt-tab out and look up things on eddb or the forums without having to take the headset off.

Got an email this morning from Amazon saying they have more of the PS VR bundles up for sale at 2 PST. Seems like they are being careful about not overselling supply which is good. I'm waiting for the base version pre-order next week.

Congrats all of you rich bastards who ordered!

Want to try VR for cheap? You are in luck! (If you already have a beastly machine, Google Cardboard and a phone.) Stream Oculus games to your phone with VRidge.

You run the games on your PC, and your phone + Cardboard will act as a HMD.

Caveats:

  • It's in Beta and heavily in development
  • Only works with Windows 10
  • Currently doesn't work with Nexus 5X
  • I tried it, it works, but it made me feel awful (headache and queasy stomach) on my old Motorola G2

Cheers,

NothingWitty

Hi all. I've been a console gamer for my whole life - never really had a great gaming PC. But I can't resist VR. I am in the first round of pre-orders for Oculus, and now I'm realizing that I'm going to need to deal with my lack of PC fast or I'm going to be staring at a rift with nothing to plug it into.

First question - what is the true cost difference between building and buying a VR ready rig? I have a couple of young kids, and a very demanding job, so while I'd like to save some $$ and it would be fun to build my own rig, if I'm only saving a few hundred dollars in not sure if the cost benefit ratio is there.

I do have the carcass of what I'm told was a great gaming PC that a friend gave me that he built back about 2009-2010 - so I'm sure that the processor/graphics aren't great but maybe I could repurpose the case, power supply etc? But I just don't know if I want to take the risk of things not working right and not having warranty...

On the buying ready-made side, what do you guys recommend? I've really only ever bought macs for home use, so know nothing about buying PCs. Alienware? Always looked cool to me but not sure if that's just hype. Also if you buy something like an Alienware desktop, does that somehow limit your flexibility to tinker and upgrade in the future? Do they lock you in somehow with design or warranty so that it's harder to upgrade graphics etc?

Finally, a question about graphics cards... Do you think that we are on the cusp of better (possibly cheaper) graphics cards optimized for VR? If so, is it smarter to get a "medium" awesomeness card for now just so I can have the rush in being an early adopter, but knowing that I'll want a better one for VR that doesn't exist yet sometime soon? Or does the resale value of a medium card drop so quick it would be better to get top of the line now even if I'll flip it in 6-12 months when there are better VR Cards?

I know these questions are pretty basic, appreciate your patience. I'm not sure this is the smartest move I'm making, especially knowing that we are so early and things will change quickly. Also because I could just get a PS VR headset for 400. But I just can't help feeling this is the beginning of something revolutionary and I want to jump in.

With the caveat that you can get better and more thorough advice in the stickied building a rig thread over on the GWJ tech board, I'll give my best shot at an answer.

You can definitely save money (at least 200-300 hundred, maybe more) by building yourself, and really pretty easily if you are even just OK at following directions. There are any number of great YouTube guides that take you step by step through process, so it is pretty simple to have a detailed guide on a tablet next to you while you build.

You might be able to repurpose some of your old components, but honestly, cases have come so far when it comes to ease of use, I would suggest buying a new case and power supply while your at it.

New Nvidia cards are schedule to come out this year, maybe in May but nothing is officially announced yet. If you are getting a Rift next week, I would suggest a 970 with 4 gigs or ram, you would be able to pretty easily be able to resale it should you opt for one of the new cards when they come out.

Alienware belongs to Dell now, and I think their rep is OK but again not great bang for the buck.

If money was no object and I didn't want to build my own I would look into one of the gaming boutique dealers such as DogHouse or Origin Systems. They are much more pricey, but the components will be the appropriate ones for gaming/VR.

Got an email from HTC. Vive order in process!

Ars Technica has a pretty great article on building a VR ready rig. They figure the cheapest is about $900.

They point out that it might make sense to wait until later in the year for the improved GPUs, either to buy one then or to let it push down the price of the current gen, as those 970s are still not cheap, making up about a 3rd of the price of the rig.

Here's the 'cheap' rig: (You can save $130-155 if you don't need to get yourself a monitor, keyboard, etc)
PNY Geforce GTX 970 4GB: $309.99 (plus $40 MIR)
AMD FX-4350: $89.99
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3: $50 (plus $10 MIR)
G.Skill Ripjaws 2x4GB DDR3 1600 RAM: $40
ZOTAC 120GB SATA III SSD: $50
hec HP485D 485W ATX12V power supply: $29.99
Xigmatek Spirit M EN6213 MicroATX mini tower: $34.99
Acer 24" G246HLAbd 1080p monitor: $129.99
Logitech K400 keyboard: $25.99
Windows 10 Home 64-bit = $99.99
Total: $860.93 ($810.93 after rebates)
This build might require a $27.99 USB 3.0 controller for Oculus compatibility, which would bring the cost to $888.92 ($838.92 after rebates)

There are a flood of Rift reviews coming in. Technically it's their launch day and the review embargo is off, however few customers will have them in hand. They're shipping out to backers of the original Kickstarter first, which is a classy move, with first-few-hours pre-orders going out this week.

I'll try to temporarily house a slew of reviews in the OP but here's one for the device itself from Engadget.

Oculus Rift Angry Review

Giant Bomb has been streaming Oculus stuff all morning. I have it on so I can listen in the background at work. To be honest, it seems fine, but I haven't heard anything about the games that makes me excited to try it. VR really does seem to need a killer app. I'm still planning on getting PS VR (The Amazon preorder is tomorrow morning), and I hope a great game can get made by then. I'm not particularly interested in all the tech-demos and mediocre video games shoehorned into VR.

Adrift has me interested, but I haven't seen anyone rave about it. Anyone actually excited for a particular game?

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Adrift has me interested, but I haven't seen anyone rave about it. Anyone actually excited for a particular game?

I haven't tried any of them yet, but the games that have me most excited are using hand tracking - e.g., Fantastic Contraptions, Hover Junkers, Modbox and Space Pirate Trainer.

Some Upload VR game reviews:

Chronos
Lucky's Tale
Farlands (Surprise free pack-in game/experience/demo)
EVE: Valkyrie
Adr1ft
AirMech Commander

And a pretty cool test of the room-scale tracking ability of the Rift with just 1 tracking camera. The Touch controllers will come with a 2nd camera to boost the tracking width/depth but it looks like it can do a large area already with good fidelity.

A guy blogging about his experiments with hand tracking and virtual objects (well, things going boom, mostly).

This is his first entry, but it goes on for a few weeks and improves as he goes along.

l love what he does from an interaction and simulation standpoint - I don't know if it would make a fun game, but for military sim fansit should be a dream come true.

Been playing with a pre-release Rift and 1.3 over the weekend.

Sadly, as hard as I've tried, I've not been able to get it to work with Elite. Hopefully it's a bug on Frontier's end that will get ironed out soon.

Other experiences have been pretty good. I've had a few issues with the hardware itself, but I'll refrain going into the details since technically this isn't the final shipping hardware and it's entirely likely these things were ironed out.

The one thing that sorta bothers me, is this "enable unknown sources" switch in Home. They basically took the exact opposite approach as Steam, and instead of allowing you to launch 3rd party games from Home, you have to disable the thing that kills games not purchased and launched on Home and try to use the Oculus runtime. I even went through a period where this option was hidden, and I could not turn it off. Seems a bit consumer hostile, and not a good approach for such a fledgling market.

Orphu wrote:

The one thing that sorta bothers me, is this "enable unknown sources" switch in Home. They basically took the exact opposite approach as Steam, and instead of allowing you to launch 3rd party games from Home, you have to disable the thing that kills games not purchased and launched on Home and try to use the Oculus runtime. I even went through a period where this option was hidden, and I could not turn it off. Seems a bit consumer hostile, and not a good approach for such a fledgling market.

While I can imagine that it was a pain when the option wasn't there, I can't bring myself to outraged levels over a default toggle option, especially as they are allowing dev's to freely include Oculus Home codes for games bought via Steam or other stores.

For those living their VR lives vicariously through others, I found this video interesting as it shows the software setup process for the Rift, just be prepared to skip ahead when they starting trying to work out their audio capture issues.