General VR Catch-All

Has anyone tried The Solus Project on the Vive?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/31...

My next purchase is Vanishing Realms, but I read some good things about Solus and it seems to have more meat (longer game).

Propagandalf wrote:

Has anyone tried The Solus Project on the Vive?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/31...

My next purchase is Vanishing Realms, but I read some good things about Solus and it seems to have more meat (longer game).

I tried it. It has locomotion rather than teleporting which makes many people including me nauseous, unless I missed an option somehow. I also wasn't a fan of the look of what I saw visuals-wise. I requested a refund for it, but I've heard a lot of good things about it as well so maybe it was just me.

Played some iRacing tonight in the Rift. It was a trip. Handling those fast cars takes a lot of concentration. I probably sweated more than in The Climb. Just being able to get fully immersed in that though. I did some laps at Lime Rock Park in the Skip Barber car. This is a car and track combo I am very familiar with. I felt like I had better mastery over the car than I ever did. Being able to really see how my wheel was biting into the track, detect the slightest skid in a high speed turn helped me do the minute things I needed to do to stay fast. I shaved a full second off my all time best lap (which I'm sure wasn't great, but it felt great!)

I'm going to have to start racing here for real again. It was a great experience.

Propagandalf wrote:

Has anyone tried The Solus Project on the Vive?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/31...

My next purchase is Vanishing Realms, but I read some good things about Solus and it seems to have more meat (longer game).

I picked it up today. The inventory and movement isn't good. The developer is working on it (they responded on reddit). I think it will be worthwhile once they get the movement fixed up. Locomotion didn't make me ill though, so that's a plus.

I did pick up House of the Dying Sun. It's arcade space combat. Not quite Tie Fighter, but in that mode. It's a lot of fun, looking forward to that one being finished. I had picked up Elite Dangerous and I hated the game (too steep learning curve, not fun just cruising around). HotDS gave me the "get in, blow some spaceships up, get out" feel I was looking for.

polypusher wrote:

Played some iRacing tonight in the Rift. It was a trip. Handling those fast cars takes a lot of concentration. I probably sweated more than in The Climb. Just being able to get fully immersed in that though. I did some laps at Lime Rock Park in the Skip Barber car. This is a car and track combo I am very familiar with. I felt like I had better mastery over the car than I ever did. Being able to really see how my wheel was biting into the track, detect the slightest skid in a high speed turn helped me do the minute things I needed to do to stay fast. I shaved a full second off my all time best lap (which I'm sure wasn't great, but it felt great!)

I'm going to have to start racing here for real again. It was a great experience.

Now that's great feedback!

I'm hoping that racing sims are going to be one of my compelling experiences in VR. I drive my car on race tracks IRL, so anything that can make the sim experience more life-like can only add to the training experience. During a track day, I only get 80 - 100 minutes of track time. Being able to spend hours in a virtual environment to learn the track (and car) is a great skill multiplier.

How easy is it to "re-center" the HMD? I'd like to keep my wheel and pedals off to one side and not have to move them in front of my screen to play. I'm hoping that the HMD will let me do that easily.

You can recenter any time with the ; button. You can remap that to the wheel I think but I haven't found where that setting lives.

Cosmic Trip looks pretty neat. Comes out later today apparently.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/42...

Also House of the Dying Sun is boatloads of fun. Cant wait till it's finished.

Edge of Nowhere is really creepy and it set off my nausea nearly immediately. If there was any issue with Lucky's Tale then you'll have a similar time here. I was able to continue in Lucky's by simply backing up (physically) and putting some more distance to the action. After that I had no issue. Tried a similar thing here and the game basically just stops and tells you to recenter your camera.

I know they're driving towards immersion with that decision but it just slays me. I think for me it's less about the camera moving with the character and more about how they let it somewhat float to a stop when you stop moving.

Did you look for any comfort settings they might have put in? There may be an option to disable that floaty cushioned stop.

I was actually shocked that Lucky's Tale doesn't bother me at all. It's the only moving camera game I've tried that I'm okay with.

I really want to try Edge of Nowhere but I'm having...reservations about Oculus at the moment.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I really want to try Edge of Nowhere but I'm having...reservations about Oculus at the moment.

I'm working on getting it running on the Vive. I'll report back shortly.

[Edit:] Ok, got Edge of Nowhere working in the Vive! It involves rolling back the Oculus runtime and blocking the incoming Oculus processes in your firewall but overall quite painless.

It was much easier for me actually. I just ran it on the Rift.

lancejt wrote:

It was much easier for me actually. I just ran it on the Rift.

Let me know when you can run Vanishing Realms

Sounds like the Rift touch controllers are pretty sweet so you may have access to all the Vive games soon.

TrashiDawa wrote:
lancejt wrote:

It was much easier for me actually. I just ran it on the Rift.

Let me know when you can run Vanishing Realms

Sounds like the Rift touch controllers are pretty sweet so you may have access to all the Vive games soon.

Well who knows about that, but I'm at least hoping for a touch announcement soon.

I just tried Brookhaven Experiment it startled the sh*t out of me... more than once. Awesome stuff. I hear there's a horror game for the Vive and I don't think I have the cojones for it.

TrashiDawa wrote:
Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I really want to try Edge of Nowhere but I'm having...reservations about Oculus at the moment.

I'm working on getting it running on the Vive. I'll report back shortly.

[Edit:] Ok, got Edge of Nowhere working in the Vive! It involves rolling back the Oculus runtime and blocking the incoming Oculus processes in your firewall but overall quite painless.

I don't have a dog in the *fight* but I personally think Oculus is getting too much grief for having exclusives. Insomniac has said there would be no Edge of Nowhere if Oculus hadn't footed the bill and I can at least understand their rationale in thinking that if they paid for it, they should use it to help drive sales.

I also completely understand Vive owners wanting to play Oculus Home exclusives.

I think Rift owners will be happy with Touch:

Also, for Rift owners with beastly rigs, you probably want to read this guide on improving image quality.

Serengeti wrote:
Serengeti wrote:

Well, tried a bunch more things this morning, no help. I haven't done a clean OS install on my PC in many years, and there are probably remnants from old hardware drivers and old Windows versions on my system drive, so I'm gonna just use this as an excuse to finally get around to doing a clean install. I'll ber back later, hopefully :-)

Clean install didn't help. Guess it's time to open a support ticket with Valve. Grr...

Ran out and picked up a 1000w PSU today, just to give it a shot. Waddaya know, problem solved. Guess my old 750w either just didn't push enough power or was going bad.

Well, I got a nice surprise when I got home today. I got a notification from PayPal and Oculus stating that I have officially paid for my Rift, and I should be getting a shipping notification soon. I'm getting excited about VR again.

A few questions for Rift owners...

If I'm going to sit at my desk and play some experiences with keyboard and mouse, how far away does the sensor camera really need to be, because I'm guessing it will be pretty close with my setup? Is the camera stuff pretty decent, or does it tend to go janky very often?

If I am already using a wired XBOX One controller with my PC, will that work too?

Aside from the pack-in's, what games or experiences would you recommend I try first? I'm leaning toward Edge of Nowhere and that third person sword game I can't remember the name of at the moment, Kronos?

I also have some Rift compatible games and apps ready through Steam, and I know there's an option I need to enable in the Oculus software first.

What was that horror game out for the DK units where you explored different locations like a hospital and other places?

Are there other cool experiences elsewhere, that may have been compatible with the DK units I should try? Is there another good site for finding more non-game VR apps and experiences? I'm game for anything like virtual tours, educational stuff, etc. When I saw the DK2 last year, I remember seeing this villa VR demo that was pretty cool. Things like this are great for showing non-gamers VR.

OK, I'll stop now...

* Camera Setup: Close seems to be fine. Mine is about 3 feet away from my face. It doesnt have to be directly in front of you, it could be off to the side if you have some troubles with it being too close.
* Wired Controller: Yours will work just fine
* Games to try: I always recommend BlazeRush. Its cheap, its unexpectedly fun and stays that way for hours. I keep coming back to that. The Climb is fantastic, if a little pricy. The game you're talking about is Chronos, yes. Try out AltspaceVR and BigScreen. Altspace is a kind of social experience, some interesting stuff in there. BigScreen gives you a virtual office, virtual theater, and lets you share the screen with others in a VR space, pretty darn interesting. Altspace and BigScreen are both free.
* To play 3rd party games (steam) you just need to enable the setting in Oculus Home (the launcher, not in VR) called 'Unknown Sources' in General.

Not sure about your other questions. Enjoy!

Thanks for the Oculus help. One more quick question about the camera.

Does it count as centered when you're looking right at the camera, or is it just generally tracking your head movement in space? Like if I had the camera off to the side a little, I would need to turn a little to the side for it to work properly?

The Vive lets you reset your seated orientation to wherever you're facing. I would assume the Rift us the same.

Yep. Set the camera where you want, as long as it can see you well and look forward to wherever you want to be looking when you calibrate it. If you move the camera or you decide a different default direction is more comfortable, re-run calibration.

Yep, if you didn't run the initial calibration when the camera was to the side then it will make you centered while looking at the camera. You have to reset your zero position through the calibration after you've moved the camera.

The boasting about Vive shipping times earlier in the week turned out to be true. My Vive shipped less than 48 hours after placing the order and should arrive Monday (perfectly timed for the start of a 2 week vacation at home). Im looking forward to some TiltBrushing! I see you can export your creations to fbx. I wonder if the models are crazy high-poly and unoptimized, because since I learned that, all I want to do is make sculpts in TiltBrush and import them into a game Im working on.

The first game for PSVR that has me extremely excited (because I'm a huge Star Trek nerd): Star Trek: Bridge Crew
I'm incredibly interested in Ubisoft's E3 presentation now .
[Also releasing on Vive & Rift]

I hope this comes to PC and that it utilizes the extra horse power. Could be extra awesome.

PSA: after putting I don't know how many hours into The Lab, I've learned that there is a "hidden" Valve room in the post card experiment. And it's very...meta. Definitely worth checking out.

Can anyone comment on general CPU requirements and how they translate to older generation CPUs? I maintain three gaming PCs for my two sons and me and haven't bothered to upgrade CPUs in some time as there hasn't been a need. Also I've been holding off on GPU upgrades for the 1000 series but now that they're out I'll be doing the usual trickle down upgrade process and hoping that GPUs are all we need.

I've got a Rift on order, slated for mid-July, but I'm thinking about grabbing a Vive now so that I can get both worlds, and I can definitely see us wanting three VR setups as the ecosystem takes off. I'm hoping there's plenty of crossover so that we can mix Vive and Rift for multiplayer.

Anyway, here are my system specs:

My gaming system:
i7-950
18 GB RAM
2x GTX 670 4GB (SLI) - replacing with 1080 (currently triple-head 5760x1080)

Main HTPC:
i7-920
8 GB RAM
GTX 970 - replacing with 1070 (driving 1080p TV)

Secondary HTPC:
i7-920
8 GB RAM
GTX 770 - replacing with 970 from Main HTPC (also to 1080p TV)

I'm considering clearing out space in my basement and making it the "holodeck" for easy room VR, in which case "Main HTPC" could get a full rebuild to be the flagship VR system. Both HTPCs are in the basement already, with USB and HDMI cables routed to the two living areas.

I don't think any of those CPUs will work. I remember Jeff Gerstman at Giant Bomb tried running a rift on his rig at home and saying it had huge problems. I believe he was using the generation after those, Sandy Bridge, but I'm not sure if it was the i5 or the i7. Upgrading the CPU fixed it.

My Main HTPC easily passed the Steam VR test. I'm doing some Google hunting now and so far it appears it either works great or fails miserably. At least the Internet is consistent. :\