General VR Catch-All

Oculus straight up won't let you install if your CPU isn't supported as far as I know.

My AMD Phenom II X4 980 BE stuttered on a lot of games, some unplayable bad, if that's any help.

Well, poop. Now I have to decide if I want to go all in and upgrade my main HTPC to a 6700k build and get one awesome VR system going for now, or just push this off entirely until the fall/winter and do a whole house refresh.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/4pIUuOJ.png)

Eldon_of_Azure wrote:

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]

Excited until you get in game and look down to see your red shirt...

Facebook showed me some Vive sponsored content that led me to a great Virtual Realty news-ish site: Upload
The actual article though was for new Vive games releasing the week of June 5th. I personally like the looks of V ARRR as the below video reminds me of Budget Cuts.

The other game that caught my eye is Rexodus as a game based on a graphic novel (that I haven't read) leads me to think that this should should be a game with more directed story elements than a lot of the games I've seen around, to date. Video below, but the guy in the headset does a terrible job of showing the game off.

So do note Rifts seem to be catching up quicker then they estimated also. My estimated ship was early August (post the delays) however, it should be here Wednesday.

On other news if you enjoy platformers I would highly recommend Windlands. It takes a little bit to get use to and I do hear some have motion sickness issues but so far I am having a blast with it.

Fallout 4 for VR is coming (at some point in the future).

Rift is announcing a whole bunch of exclusives. I'm so glad I didn't buy one. Facebook is trying to buy a win by denying games to the broader VR community.

This kind of asshattery and lack of respect for personal data were one of the key decision factors for me buying the Vive.

NothingWitty wrote:

Fallout 4 for VR is coming (at some point in the future).

I'm really excited to see if they can figure out another locomotion solution. I'd be fine with teleporting I think though.

bandit0013 wrote:

Rift is announcing a whole bunch of exclusives. I'm so glad I didn't buy one. Facebook is trying to buy a win by denying games to the broader VR community.

This kind of asshattery and lack of respect for personal data were one of the key decision factors for me buying the Vive.

The one I'm most bummed about is Giant Cop, which used to be for the Vive but now has been bought by Oculus and made an exclusive. Some people already have paid for it for their vive via the Humble Bundle, so I don't know how that's going to work. Reddit is in an uproar about the whole thing.

My Vive was supposed to come today but supposedly the A in my address was left off and they tried to deliver to my neighbor. What are the odds my call to FedEx actually helped correct this for tomorrow?

So question: My main gaming computer is downstairs in my office. I have a huge open room upstairs that would work well for VR. Do I need a totally separate powerful PC up there or is there another way to use the upstairs room for VR?

karmajay wrote:

So question: My main gaming computer is downstairs in my office. I have a huge open room upstairs that would work well for VR. Do I need a totally separate powerful PC up there or is there another way to use the upstairs room for VR?

I'm in the same boat and from what I've read so far it's pretty tough. You basically need a way to extend the break-out box (USB and HDMI) in a way that doesn't introduce any loss to the input lag. I've seen some talk of a Thunderbolt dock with HDMI and USB built in and a long Thunderbolt cable but no one who actually did it yet.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Well, poop. Now I have to decide if I want to go all in and upgrade my main HTPC to a 6700k build and get one awesome VR system going for now, or just push this off entirely until the fall/winter and do a whole house refresh.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/4pIUuOJ.png)

you might want to see if you can overclock to above the min speed spec that oculus recommends.
I am running an i7 3770s at 3.10 ghz 32gig ram and a 970. I have been able to run everything so far.
there is a message in oculus home that my rig doesn't meet recommended specs but otherwise it's good to go.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

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.

He had some process that was running in the background that was killing performance. The next show he mentioned a bunch of ppl wrote in saying they were running with the same rig so he looked into it and found the problem.

Ah. That's right.

karmajay wrote:

So question: My main gaming computer is downstairs in my office. I have a huge open room upstairs that would work well for VR. Do I need a totally separate powerful PC up there or is there another way to use the upstairs room for VR?

I think you'll need a separate PC if you don't want to relocate. Even the solutions that I've seen where extending is possible (and with the Vive you need a power cord extension as well), I don't think they'd be long enough to go up a flight of stairs and into another room without latency. I haven't tried it myself, however.

If I have a separate computer then I'm gonna have to deal with moving my steam back and forth and blergh...

karmajay wrote:

If I have a separate computer then I'm gonna have to deal with moving my steam back and forth and blergh...

I'm pretty sure you can have your games installed all the time on multiple computers. You just have to sign back in on whatever one you are currently using.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:
karmajay wrote:

If I have a separate computer then I'm gonna have to deal with moving my steam back and forth and blergh...

I'm pretty sure you can have your games installed all the time on multiple computers. You just have to sign back in on whatever one you are currently using.

I use steam on multiple computers with few issues at all. You just can't be signed in on both at once.

Yep, and all you'd need on that one are the VR games.

Has anyone tried longer HDMI/USB Cables on Vive? I was actually thinking about this because it would be great to hang the Vive cable from the ceiling. I am not sure if the Vive can handle the extra 3 - 5 ft of Cable though I'd need to add.

escher77 wrote:

Has anyone tried longer HDMI/USB Cables on Vive? I was actually thinking about this because it would be great to hang the Vive cable from the ceiling. I am not sure if the Vive can handle the extra 3 - 5 ft of Cable though I'd need to add.

This guy did it.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:
escher77 wrote:

Has anyone tried longer HDMI/USB Cables on Vive? I was actually thinking about this because it would be great to hang the Vive cable from the ceiling. I am not sure if the Vive can handle the extra 3 - 5 ft of Cable though I'd need to add.

This guy did it.

Thank you. I am hoping to not need to re-route the USB but 5 ft is much different than 50ft.

bandit0013 wrote:

I use steam on multiple computers with few issues at all. You just can't be signed in on both at once.

Sure you can. You just can't run games concurrently or you'll get an error. I'm almost always signed into Steam on multiple computers.

LiquidMantis wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

I use steam on multiple computers with few issues at all. You just can't be signed in on both at once.

Sure you can. You just can't run games concurrently or you'll get an error. I'm almost always signed into Steam on multiple computers.

Has anyone here tried the streaming? Supposedly, you can use a light-weight device - a Surface, for example - to play any of the games installed on another device connected to the same network. Input/Output is streamed between the device in hand and the computing device. So I could play something on my Surface while all the processing is done on my heavy-duty gaming rig. Both devices need to be on (of course), connected to the same network, and logged into the same account in Steam. The game being played needs to be installed on the remote computer.

I have a Surface Pro 3 and a gaming computer. Both are signed into my account. Mostly the Surface is used for playing Binding of Isaac on its own hardware, so not streaming. In those cases, the Surface is signed in but in Offline mode. This way I can play anything I want while Isaac is playing, even my own copy of Isaac, though because of this the saves on both are no longer synched.

I get a better framerate most of the time streaming even something as simple as Isaac to the Surface Pro (on WiFi, I dont have ethernet connecting the two). I have also played many hours of The Witcher 3 using streaming, so even with the suboptimal connection its still good enough to enjoy.

Edit: and I dont see any of this working for VR on current technology.

Streaming works great for normal games but there's no way it could work for VR. Even the slightest hint of perceived latency will give you a headache and make you sick.

So, I kinda wanna pick up Elite Dangerous for my Vive, but never having played it before, and not owning a HOTAS, I'm concerned that it will be too overwhelming to get into and I'll get frustrated. So I guess I have a couple questions.

Is ED playable using a xbox one controller alone, or should I pick up a HOTAS? Are there any HOTAS worth owning that won't totally break the bank?

How approachable is it in VR? Will not being able to see my controller and keyboard present issues?

Should I play it in old fashioned 2d for a while to get a handle on it before switching to VR?

Serengeti wrote:

So, I kinda wanna pick up Elite Dangerous for my Vive, but never having played it before, and not owning a HOTAS, I'm concerned that it will be too overwhelming to get into and I'll get frustrated. So I guess I have a couple questions.

Is ED playable using a xbox one controller alone, or should I pick up a HOTAS? Are there any HOTAS worth owning that won't totally break the bank?

How approachable is it in VR? Will not being able to see my controller and keyboard present issues?

Should I play it in old fashioned 2d for a while to get a handle on it before switching to VR?

I haven't played it in VR (envious) but it's very playable with an Xbox one controller. You might miss out on some extra firing buttons or shortcuts, but the controller setup does a pretty good job of making that all available.

You're biggest issue would probably be that you're going to build up a bunch of muscle memory for how to do the thruster inputs and if you ever change setups you'll have to unlearn / relearn the new setup. Which really only matters for mid/higher level combat anyway.

Serengeti wrote:

So, I kinda wanna pick up Elite Dangerous for my Vive, but never having played it before, and not owning a HOTAS, I'm concerned that it will be too overwhelming to get into and I'll get frustrated. So I guess I have a couple questions.

Is ED playable using a xbox one controller alone, or should I pick up a HOTAS? Are there any HOTAS worth owning that won't totally break the bank?

How approachable is it in VR? Will not being able to see my controller and keyboard present issues?

Should I play it in old fashioned 2d for a while to get a handle on it before switching to VR?

I played it for the first time in VR with an Xbox controller and had no problem. You can have a context menu pop up when you hold each button that reminds you what most of the buttons do, and the only thing I couldn't do without the keyboard is type in the names of systems if I wanted to search the map for them (this rarely happens to me, though).

One thing you should know is that the game still looks pretty jaggy on the Vive unless your GPU is powerful enough to play with at least 1.5 super sampling. This supposedly is different from the Rift and Frontier is apparently aware and working on it. I can't confirm it actually looks better on the Rift (I imagine it wouldn't if the rumor that the Rift's "God Rays" are worse than the Vive) because I still haven't opened my Rift up yet.

E:D looks fantastic on the Rift, I don't get any rays or artifacting, or anything else.
For control questions, I recommend you hop over to the Elite Dangerous thread, we talk about control options all the time.

Serengeti wrote:

So, I kinda wanna pick up Elite Dangerous for my Vive, but never having played it before, and not owning a HOTAS, I'm concerned that it will be too overwhelming to get into and I'll get frustrated. So I guess I have a couple questions.

Is ED playable using a xbox one controller alone, or should I pick up a HOTAS? Are there any HOTAS worth owning that won't totally break the bank?

How approachable is it in VR? Will not being able to see my controller and keyboard present issues?

Should I play it in old fashioned 2d for a while to get a handle on it before switching to VR?

I f*cking love Elite -- I've been playing it almost non-stop for about two years now, and it's definitely in the top 3 of games I've spent the most time playing, period.

Normally, it's incredibly hard to give a recommendation. It's fabulous, but it's temperamental, unforgiving, and obtuse. But it's also just flat out f*cking amazing in a ton of ways, and if you happen to fall into one of the categories of people who it appeals to AND who either aren't bothered by or can ignore its oddities, then you will suddenly find yourself playing nothing else.

However, for someone with a VR setup, it's incredibly easy to recommend. Even if you end up confused, frustrated, or otherwise turned off by it as a game, it's going to be an absolute marvel of an experience showing just how amazing even a seated VR experience can be. I don't even have an HMD yet, but I do have a silly 34" ultra wide monitor and head tracking, and even that just blows my mind constantly, even two years in.

To your specific questions:

If money is no object, get a HOTAS. One of the many things the game does VERY right is the moment to moment immersive feel of controlling your ship, and the closer you can get to "realistic" controls, the more pronounced that will be. However, I'm told it also has good controller support (there is an Xbox One version of the game, after all), and there are plenty of people who even just swear by keyboard and mouse.

I know a number of people swear by the Thrustmaster HOTAS that can be bought for under $100. Thrustmaster will also be releasing a newer, improved budget HOTAS in the next few months which should also still cost close to $100, I believe. My personal setup cost me $150, but is probably closer to $200 since the throttle is a tad more expensive now (due to increased demand), but it includes essentially the same stick that will be part of the new Thrustmaster kit, and a more expensive throttle from a boutique manufacturer -- more details can be found linked in the main post of the Elite thread.

Others can speak better to approachability while wearing an HMD. For myself, I have all the commands I use in game mapped to the throttle and stick, although I do use the mouse to navigate the map, so I imagine I'd be pretty okay. However, milage there will certainly vary greatly depending on how you set things up for yourself.

Finally, while it might increase the already steep learning curve, I think I'd personally jump in the deep in and just play with the HMD from the beginning (well, after setting up my controls, I suppose) to get the most out of the wow factor. The galaxy of Elite is cruel, uncaring, and, well, dangerous, especially when you are new -- BUT, you can start over in a free ship as many times as you like, so the risk is pretty minimal at first so you can experiment to your heart's content without worrying about big consequences. Once you get going, the stakes increase quite a bit -- crash your big, expensive ship a few too many times and you can quickly burn through your hard earned cash reserves and be in danger of losing a lot more -- but in the beginning you can be as care free (or careless) as you like without worries.