Nice review here of the powerful combo of Elite+Rift.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/27/elite-4-oculus-rift/
VR still has a way to go, but it seems we're getting there albeit at times slowly!
Great article from a guy that sees both the possibilities and the limitations in both hardware and software.
Very good presented.
Keep in mind that TrackIr is supported in ED and might give you some of the same feeling. Targetting and the menues is responding the same way as with the Rift.
ED with Oculus rift was demoed at E3 last month. The tester said it was awesome but OR seems to have been in development for years and even v2 out recently is intended for developers only. I think they've lost their intended purpose which I thought was VR for all.
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Don't know if anyone here has already got a DK2 to play Elite: Dangerous with, but i've tried it on a friend's machine (he was in both the Elite alpha, and one of the first folks to get a DK2) and already outlined my thoughts on other forums. My thoughts largely boiled down to:
1) Resolution -
The screen is only 1080p. That sounds fine when you compare it to a 1080p monitor, but said monitor is normally a good 2-3 feet away and is surrounded by the 'real world'. If you take a flat plae around your head and divide it into 360 degrees the 1080p monitor only occupies 30-50 degrees or so, so you get a 'pixels-per-degree' (PPD) density of ~40-60. Stick a screen of the same res but much smaller 3-4 inches from your eyes, occupying about 150 degrees of vision, and suddenly the PPD is only about 13 or so. We haven't had a PPD of 13 on monitors since people were gaming at 640x480, and it shows. Even though the game is 1080p it looks horrendously low res. Now personally, my friend says he only ever plays Elite on the Rift now and loves it, but I couldn't get past having to lean right in to be able to read the text in the comms panel, the amount of jaggies and pixel colour scattering on what should have been fine precise detail like orbit trajectories etc. And the CV1 is expected to be 1440p, which still isn't going to improve matters all that much. Even a *4k* screen would only be a PPD of ~25-30, and i'm almost certainly not going to be shelling out for my own Rift until they can provide at least that sort of resolution.
2) System requirements -
OK, the screen is only 1080p. But you're rendering a scene twice, then warping it, and if my understanding is correct it's being rendered at more like 1440p then scaled back to 1080p rather than just being rendered raw at 1080p. All that adds up. I know that the Rift is not fully optimised yet. I know that Elite: Dangerous is not fully optimised yet. But I can get a solid 60fps (vsync on) nearly everywhere on a 1920x1200 panel with all other settings turned right up. I've got an Ivy Bridge Core i5, 8GB RAM and a GTX 670. It occasionally drops to around 45fps when I look at planetary rings or certain light sources, which i'm putting down to optimisation needed in the game. Conversely, my friend with the Rift can barely maintain 45fps on a brand new Haswell i7 with 16GB RAM and 2x GTX 770s (admittedly he only used 1 in Elite as it seems to have SLI issues at the mo). He gets all sorts of juddering as he looks around, which both messes with your head and just pulls you out of the immersion. And whereas I get smooth gameplay at 60fps he'd need 75fps on the Rift for smooth viewing, and it's expected to be 90fps on CV1. I dread to think of what sort of systems will be required to run these setups...
3) Head tracking/3D -
To be honest the 3D wasn't actually the *major* seller for me. Sure, it was quite cool and I noticed it to start with, but then, much as with a well done 3D movie, it just faded into being 'normal' and me not really noticing it. I didn't feel like it gave me any particular advantage, and it wasn't the amazing leap over 3D views on a 2D screen that I was expecting. By far and away the most amazing thing was the head tracking. Being able to look up and around and follow targets when they were no longer fully in my main field of view when i'd got large windows above/below and to the sides was absolutely amazing and a great boon in combat. As a result of playing with the Rift's head tracking i'd love to try TrackIR, but I just don't think it will be the same because you're not looking 'naturally', you have to turn your head one way then look out the corner of your eye in the opposite direction at the screen, which has remained static. It's a nice idea, but not one i'm willing to drop £150 on just to see if I like it. The Rift, on the other hand, was absolutely mindblowing.
4) Motion sickness -
This is the biggie. The other 2 issues I have can be fixed with sufficient application of technology (higher res screens, and graphics hardware capable of driving them at high framerates). This, not so much. I was fine in Elite, because the cockpit remains static as you look around, with respect to the game world. Likewise racing games where you were inside the car were fine. The Rift demos of rollercoasters and that one that spins you round and then hurls you across the city was also fine (surprisingly).
Then I loaded up Half Life 2 in Rift mode. Oh God what a mistake. I'd been looking forward to playing FPS games on the Rift since I first heard about it, and here I was feeling like I was going to throw up within a few minutes of loading in. There's nothing around you that is static with respect to the game world, see. So there's nothing your brain can use as a constant frame of reference. This was absolutely fine when I was looking around, and walking very slowly around the place. But as soon as I tried to move even remotely fast it all went downhill. The reason being, you can't *purely* use head tracking on the Rift to control direction in an FPS game. Say you want to turn 180 degrees and shoot someone behind you - if you spin around on your chair you're no longer facing the keyboard/mouse, the Rift camera can't see the LEDs on the headset, and you're tangled in the cables. So you have to use the mouse beyond the bounds of the 'free-targetting' area to move the view. That action, where the view shifts suddenly and rapidly with no equivalent motion from my own head that my brain detected, is what made me feel so sick. If the game had something that my brain could use as a static frame of reference, some sort of mech suit for example with a very open cockpit, i'd probably be fine. Then I could headlook around without the mech suit moving, and moving the mouse rotates the mech suit. My brain always has something it can see to make it think it is still within the mech structure when all other senses are telling it the same thing.
This doesn't affect all people. I had another friend who had a DK1. 4 people tried it playing Half Life 2. 2 felt sick within minutes, and ended up feeling like that for the rest of the day. 2 loved it (I never got a chance to go over before he sold it on). Both myself and my friend who owns the DK2 couldn't deal with it, but my wife had no issues (Grrr argh etc). And the problem is I can't think of a technological fix for this issue. Maybe if the enclosing surrounds of the Rift were removed I would lose some of the immersion, but because I could also see a bit of the real world I wouldn't feel sick? I'm not about to go dismantling someone else's expensive hardware to test that though...
The brother in law's work got a dk2 delivered... We had a chance to play with it last week and you hit the nail on the head
I agree it is mind blowing when you jump into it but all too soon you start to feel the motion sickness kicking in. The resolution levels we managed to get feel about the same as playing a game in the Wii. I could see individual pixels as you are so close to the screens.
Its a fantastic piece of kit, every one who tried it gave it a "Wow this is fantastic" but its a long way off from being used for general gaming
Trying to use it standing up was fun but i don't recommend it without people to catch you
Quote from: JonnyAppleSeed;387623Trying to use it standing up was fun but i don't recommend it without people to catch you
Depends on how much you've been drinking I guess?
I remember when the graphics card makers started adding 3D support to their products so I thought I'd put my 3D specs on and try CoD MW3. Talk about headache, the effects were nice but spacial awareness was low and it was difficult to focus on anything. I personally don't really like having headphones on all the time, just hot and uncomfortable so adding eye goggles would be like a worst nightmare for anything longer than a few minutes at a time. I'd still like to have a go thought if anyone brings 'em to the LAN.
Cheers, Bert