Oculus Rift Catch-All

Thanks, I'll try the stick rotation and see how that works. I didn't even know that was an option.

MisterStatic wrote:

Boudreaux- Lone Echo is $29.99 for the best gaming experience you will ever have? Yes, I am a filthy enabler. But if you have a Rift, you must experience this whole game.

Wanted to chime in after several hours playing Lone Echo and just say:

WOW. Seriously, this game is amazing. As far as actual gameplay it's solid, nothing groundbreaking. The VR element takes it to 11. I have a whole new area of gaming to pay attention to now.

Beginning CPR on this thread....hmm..ok....anyone buy anything during the anniversary sale? I picked up The Climb. It’s good.

I didnt grab anything, I have a pretty rich library at this point and its felt like the really interesting releases have slowed down considerably. It probably corresponds to Oculus slowing down their funding as they focus on the upcoming Go.

I can second The Climb though. Very fun game, especially now with Touch controls.

I still have $15 of credit from the day the Rift service went down, but I haven't seen anything that has really enticed me lately. I'm moderately interested in The Mage's Tale but I haven't seen it less than $25-$30. Mostly I'm playing VR flight sims like DCS, that's 99% of my Oculus use. Actually that's most of my gaming, period.

I'm trying really hard not to order Touch controllers so I can play Skyrim. I suspect that all the first generation Oculus gear will be obsolete soon. After spending a grand on a 980Ti shortly before the GTX 10 series came out, I guess I'm a bit sensitive.

I picked up From Other Suns when it was on sale and I had a $15 credit a few weeks ago. Though before I even had a chance to try it Skyrim VR came out and took over all my playing time.

Jarpy wrote:

I'm trying really hard not to order Touch controllers so I can play Skyrim. I suspect that all the first generation Oculus gear will be obsolete soon. After spending a grand on a 980Ti shortly before the GTX 10 series came out, I guess I'm a bit sensitive.

Oculus has 1 non-prototype product coming out this year, the Oculus Go which is basically just a GearVR with no phone requirement. It's not a Rift 2.0

They also have the Santa Cruz Prototype which is a whole other beast. Its likely if they turn that into a product they're something like 2 years away. Its fully wireless and uses no external sensors, so perfecting it is going to take a while.

If they're noodling around with a Rift 2.0 they havent talked about it at all, and if they dropped one by surprise it would probably be more like Rift 1.5 (like the Vive -> Vive Pro) and your old hardware would stay relevant.

I think you'd be safe getting the Touch controllers, and it's such a huge upgrade over playing without them. Most developers (myself included) assume Rift owners have Touch, and don't build anything for those without.

Rift friends,

I love the Rift but almost every play session I get various blue screens of death. I Rarely have that issue when playing steam games or basic computing. The messages are often different so I hit analysis paralysis and almost don’t want to play VR. I’ve done the memory test diagnostic with windows 10. Check disk. Any other general advice?
Soooo frustrating.
Thank you for any tips

Sincerely,
Chad

I would say a good bet is blaming the USB setup you have, and its potentially a cheap fix if it is. The Rift has some pretty serious power requirements from USB. The easiest thing to try is to shuffle them around, if you dont have a USB expansion PCI card, try getting one and using that. If you have an external USB hub, make sure it's a powered one and try eliminating it from the setup to see if anything changes.

polypusher wrote:
Jarpy wrote:

I'm trying really hard not to order Touch controllers so I can play Skyrim. I suspect that all the first generation Oculus gear will be obsolete soon. After spending a grand on a 980Ti shortly before the GTX 10 series came out, I guess I'm a bit sensitive.

Oculus has 1 non-prototype product coming out this year, the Oculus Go which is basically just a GearVR with no phone requirement. It's not a Rift 2.0

They also have the Santa Cruz Prototype which is a whole other beast. Its likely if they turn that into a product they're something like 2 years away. Its fully wireless and uses no external sensors, so perfecting it is going to take a while.

If they're noodling around with a Rift 2.0 they havent talked about it at all, and if they dropped one by surprise it would probably be more like Rift 1.5 (like the Vive -> Vive Pro) and your old hardware would stay relevant.

I think you'd be safe getting the Touch controllers, and it's such a huge upgrade over playing without them. Most developers (myself included) assume Rift owners have Touch, and don't build anything for those without.

Maybe Santa Cruz comes out late this year, but I agree that it is much more likely to be a 2019 release.

The big unknown is foveated rendering and eye tracking.

With the Vive Pro pushing the min spec for new software to 1070+ level graphic cards coupled with the continued craziness of the GPU market in general, video cards will be the bottleneck for further VR resolution and field of view in both the short and long term, without the aforementioned technologies. Facebook (and Valve/Google/Apple) have all been buying up small hardware computer vision companies for a reason.

I assume that they are all in a race to see who can bring a true 2.0 product that is wireless and features foveated rendering/eye tracking to market but I would be shocked if we see Oculus or anyone else get there before 2020.

polypusher wrote:

I would say a good bet is blaming the USB setup you have, and its potentially a cheap fix if it is. The Rift has some pretty serious power requirements from USB. The easiest thing to try is to shuffle them around, if you dont have a USB expansion PCI card, try getting one and using that. If you have an external USB hub, make sure it's a powered one and try eliminating it from the setup to see if anything changes.

Thank you. Great easy-to-try approach.

Thanks guys. It's nice to get an informed opinion. I must admit that I don't stay up to date on VR tech anymore. I was a backer of the original Rift Kickstarter so I had a few years of obsessively reading all the news. I got burned out and now I just play DCS on my "free" CV1.

All that aside, Skyrim looks like the first thing that really makes Touch meaningful to me, so, with your excellent input, I may just pull the trigger buttons.

I have a good chance to get an Occulus Rift. I have a reasonable room to play it in and Beat Hazard looks like the greatest game ever. Is it still the "in" thing? Is it gimmicky and you played it a lot at first and now you don't?

I guess I'm trying to justify a $400 purchase. Is there a lot of games that are quality and not gimmicky? Has this stuck as a great purchase or was it set aside after a couple weeks?

So far for me the Rift has been worth it. I bought it last Summer with the price drop. I've been in a gaming funk of late so VR has been pretty much the only "gaming" I've been doing. Most of what I use it for are the games like Beat Saber and BoxVR as I'm trying to lose some weight and these help me stay off the couch.

I'd say 60% of my VR time has been that stuff and the other 40% has been multiplayer games with a friend. Lots of Rec Room and Eleven Table tennis. Playing multiplayer is where VR really shines for me so far. Single player experiences are either really short and kind of pricey or shooting galleries for the most part.

Worth it. I only play occasionally but the sense of presence in VR is so amazing.
I don’t play traditional games on VR like Skyrim or Fallout but more the bite size experiences and there are some really good ones.
Be a part of gaming evolution.

I got the Oculus Rift, I LOVE IT! The one issue I'm having is that I cannot seem to get the lenses clean. I used the cloth that came with it and did the circular motion like they said, I even bought a "lens pen" which is supposed to work well. Nothing seems to get them unstreaky. What is the trick?

It's not that noticeable in some games but when it's a black background and there's white on the screen (Oculus logo), it's pretty bad. I downloaded a game where you get to walk around the ISS which I really want to try but it's a bit much with the streaks.

If you're talking about white light streaking but otherwise everything is clear, that's an effect of the lenses they chose. On Vive there's concentric rings of light in such instances instead.

Hopefully, knowing nothing is wrong with your Rift will help you ignore it, because it's not going anywhere

Are you sure the streaks are actually streaks and not the lenses themselves? They are fresnel lenses, so there is a bit of glare that just happens because of that, and there's nothing you can do about it. This page has some good info about it, and shows comparisons between the different headsets.

Yeah, it's super annoying too and you're right, with a black background with one bright thing in your view it's really noticeable.

Edit: polypusher beat me to it with the same answer! I put a nice link in my post though

Thanks guys, that kind of helps. There's a Best Buy right down the road, I am going to head there at lunch and talk to the Oculus rep and try out the demo they have there again. I still feel like they are dirtier than they should be, it's not a consistent ring like the article talks about.

Game devs are aware of the problem and they make choices that mitigate it too. More games are overall a bit brighter, with less very high contrast elements, so like you'll never notice this in Job Simulator or even Arizona Sunshine, at least during gameplay.

Edit: If your Rift is normal, you should basically see this (from the helpful link
IMAGE(http://media.bestofmicro.com/W/F/575295/original/Rift_Simulated_GlareTest.jpg)

DeThroned wrote:

I have a good chance to get an Occulus Rift. I have a reasonable room to play it in and Beat Hazard looks like the greatest game ever. Is it still the "in" thing? Is it gimmicky and you played it a lot at first and now you don't?

I guess I'm trying to justify a $400 purchase. Is there a lot of games that are quality and not gimmicky? Has this stuck as a great purchase or was it set aside after a couple weeks?

You probably meant Beat SABER, not Beat Hazard.

I'm 2 months into VR ownership (Vive Pro), and I'm digging it. Probably 50% ish of my gaming time is spent under the helmet, largely because of Skyrim VR. Which is amazing. If you have any love for Bethesda games, being immersed in one is the sh*t.

Poly - YES! Ok good, it's not just me then.

Jonman - Beat Saber, yes.

I went down to Best Buy on my lunch break today and tried out the one there again. While it's less noticeable, they don't have any light stuff on dark backgrounds. In games it's definitely not as noticed.

I'll mention that the fresnel glare got less noticeable after a few weeks of use getting accustomed to it.

Beat Saber is great and I'm still only using the stock songs, haven't bothered with modding in the user created one yet as I would prefer to wait for the in game process for that.

I will say, as far as workouts go, BoxVR leaves me absolutely drenched and my sport swatch tracks it as a much more intense workout than what Beat Saber gives me.

Has anyone purchased Moss for the Rift/Vive? I've heard great things but Lone Echo is the only game I've paid 30+ for and right now I'm inclined to wait for a sale.

Badferret wrote:

Has anyone purchased Moss for the Rift/Vive? I've heard great things but Lone Echo is the only game I've paid 30+ for and right now I'm inclined to wait for a sale.

I picked it up immediately based on my time with the PSVR demo.

I've only tried it on Vive Pro so far with the Vive controllers, and I have to say the controls are quite bad. It's way too easy to send the mouse running off of a ledge to her doom. Even navigating the menus is tricky and frustrating. PSVR version had much better controls. Surely they will patch this.

I've not yet tried it on Oculus controllers to see if it's any better. I don't think they support game pad.

Orphu wrote:
Badferret wrote:

Has anyone purchased Moss for the Rift/Vive? I've heard great things but Lone Echo is the only game I've paid 30+ for and right now I'm inclined to wait for a sale.

I picked it up immediately based on my time with the PSVR demo.

I've only tried it on Vive Pro so far with the Vive controllers, and I have to say the controls are quite bad. It's way too easy to send the mouse running off of a ledge to her doom. Even navigating the menus is tricky and frustrating. PSVR version had much better controls. Surely they will patch this.

I've not yet tried it on Oculus controllers to see if it's any better. I don't think they support game pad.

Oculus touch is much better than the Vive for this kind of thing. Played well for me today.

Badferret wrote:

Beat Saber is great and I'm still only using the stock songs, haven't bothered with modding in the user created one yet as I would prefer to wait for the in game process for that.

I've had a lot of fun playing Beat Saber. There are a large number of custom songs out there, but separating the good from the bad is onerous. Even a site like https://beatsaver.com/ that shows high numbers for the times a song has been downloaded and played doesn't guarantee that it's a fun custom level to play. Even the "star" ratings they offer can be hit or miss. Even so, the game's a blast!

I'm tinkering with a couple custom levels of my own, but it's time consuming. If I ever finish one and upload it I'll post a link back here. I'd be interested in feedback from this fine community of non-trolls.

Badferret wrote:

Has anyone purchased Moss for the Rift/Vive? I've heard great things but Lone Echo is the only game I've paid 30+ for and right now I'm inclined to wait for a sale.

I bought it when it became available for PC (based on high praise from the DLC guys' review of the PSVR version) but only recently got around to playing it. If you like puzzle/platformers you'll enjoy Moss. In a few hours of playing the game I've had several moments of wonder and awe, solved puzzles that stumped me for just the right amount of time, and grinned and laughed a number of times.

That said, since its initial release was on PSVR a while back, there's no rush. Put it on your wish list and when that sale hits buy it. I plan on finishing the game, but with what I've seen and done already I feel like I've gotten solid value for my $30.

MisterStatic wrote:

Oculus touch is much better than the Vive for this kind of thing. Played well for me today.

I agree. A friend has a Vive and I have a Rift. Anything that relies on the Rift joysticks for locomotion doesn't translate well to the Vive touch pads.

Going to say that Moss is amazing. I've only been able to put an hour or so into it but it's really cool on the Rift. One of the better games I've played so far.

gorilla wrote:

I've had a lot of fun playing Beat Saber. There are a large number of custom songs out there, but separating the good from the bad is onerous. Even a site like https://beatsaver.com/ that shows high numbers for the times a song has been downloaded and played doesn't guarantee that it's a fun custom level to play. Even the "star" ratings they offer can be hit or miss. Even so, the game's a blast!

I'm tinkering with a couple custom levels of my own, but it's time consuming. If I ever finish one and upload it I'll post a link back here. I'd be interested in feedback from this fine community of non-trolls.

I've had pretty good luck with the curated songs on https://bsaber.com. Anything over a 4.5 or so seems to be pretty solid.

Do follow up if you ever finish your own levels. I'd love to see what you come up with.