Oculus Rift w/touch - £350 - Is now the time to buy?

Andrew_McP · 30 Nov 2017 at 21:06

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/69nc6b/psa_oculus_adjustment_guide_how_to_increase_focus/

This headset adjustment guide is well worth checking. Won't make a huge difference, but every little helps and it helped me get a slightly better view.

Daftbrown · 30 Nov 2017 at 21:42

Andrew_McP said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/69nc6b/psa_oculus_adjustment_guide_how_to_increase_focus/

This headset adjustment guide is well worth checking. Won't make a huge difference, but every little helps and it helped me get a slightly better view.

Cheers. I've enjoyed reading about your experience. Hoping to have mine delivered by the weekend.

Andrew_McP · 30 Nov 2017 at 22:24

Daftbrown said:
Cheers. I've enjoyed reading about your experience. Hoping to have mine delivered by the weekend.

I've tried to write the kind of stuff I'd have wanted to read before I decided to buy. I just hope you enjoy your entry into VR (or exit from reality!) as much as I've done so far.

I can see how the novelty might easily wear off a lot of this, just as the novelty wears off all new tech and experiences. But it's certainly fun exploring the possibilities. This evening I started up DCS again and for once ended up in a cockpit facing the right way. Landscape detail or no landscape detail, actually sitting in a cockpit rather than in front of a monitor makes a world of difference. All those years of trying to keep sight of other aircraft using the hat on a joystick or keys or a TrackIR seem laughable now. I think dogfights in IL2 are going to be rather good fun when I find my joystick.

Of course my pilot skills are as shocking as ever, so I soon lost my ride and ended up exploring the other aircraft in the scenario. While I was perched just above a Mig-29 it took a direct hit. The AI pilot ejected and his doomed aircraft spiraled into the ground with me strapped to the mast like Ulysses. Of course I could have quit, or switched view, but the roller coaster ride down to impact was... what was it? Scary? Dizzy? I don't know. It was an experience and half though! I might have been spiraling down to a flat bitmap of a village, but it still felt like I was heading for extremely solid ground.

I find myself wanting to try a virtual sailing experience. I wonder if it's possible to get double seasickness?

Nasher · 1 Dec 2017 at 08:28

I feel the motion sickness way more playing FPS games than anything else, even Elite Dangerous wasn't bad. It's cause by the brain getting conflicted information I suspect (you think your walking around, but your actually sitting still). That's why FPSs made specifically for VR have you standing still.

lurkio · 1 Dec 2017 at 19:33

Tried the rift for a while did not like it , res too low
the 3d effect is awesome, next gen will be great , waiting for now

Nasher · 1 Dec 2017 at 22:54

It's not the res, it looks grainy (screen door effect)because your looking through a lens. It will be a long time before they move on enough to eliminate it completely.

But when it does eventually look as clear as a monitor, VR will be amazing. It will pretty much make high end gaming monitors obsolete

It has brought one new thing to gaming though, you need to be physically fit and agile to play some of the games well lol. Ones like Robo Recall. There's no key press for things like duck or lean etc, you need to do it IRL.

Boycey0211 · 2 Dec 2017 at 02:10

lurkio said:
Tried the rift for a while did not like it , res too low
the 3d effect is awesome, next gen will be great , waiting for now

Surprised you didnt like it with DCS mate, I can't got back to normal flight simming anymore since trying it. I'd love it to be picture perfect but right now its still better than having to use trackIR IMO.

lokiss · 2 Dec 2017 at 06:42

Nasher said:
It's not the res, it looks grainy (screen door effect)because your looking through a lens. It will be a long time before they move on enough to eliminate it completely.

But when it does eventually look as clear as a monitor, VR will be amazing. It will pretty much make high end gaming monitors obsolete

It has brought one new thing to gaming though, you need to be physically fit and agile to play some of the games well lol. Ones like Robo Recall. There's no key press for things like duck or lean etc, you need to do it IRL.

No offence, but your entire post is a little bit misleading. Reports from those that have already played with the next step in hmds (pimax8k) have said the screen door effect is virtually gone. Any comparison at all your making VR between and standard monitor play, is just wrong. Sure improved res (pimax again) needs to happen, but comparing roomscale VR gamming to flatscreen monitor play when there's a night and day difference between the two, is entirely wrong.

And I'm sorry, there's absolutely no need to be 'physically fit' to play 95% of the VR titles out there.

Nasher · 2 Dec 2017 at 11:58

8k VR won't be available for ages. Current GPUs are barely able to run 4k smoothly and you need to be getting 60+ fps for VR to be bearable.

lurkio · 2 Dec 2017 at 13:17

Boycey0211 said:
Surprised you didnt like it with DCS mate, I can't got back to normal flight simming anymore since trying it. I'd love it to be picture perfect but right now its still better than having to use trackIR IMO.

3440 x 1440 with G-Sync has spoiled me mate, when DCS fps drops , I do not notice it
Rift and FPS drop , it totally screws things up, plus impossibly hard to spot air or ground targets well cos of low res

I tried it, I did not think it is ready yet

NZXT30 · 2 Dec 2017 at 13:20

i don't get it either. I couldn't go back to dcs world non VR even if you gave me an 8k curved monitor.

Boycey0211 · 2 Dec 2017 at 13:22

lurkio said:
3440 x 1440 with G-Sync has spoiled me mate, when DCS fps drops , I do not notice it
Rift and FPS drop , it totally screws things up, plus impossibly hard to spot air or ground targets well cos of low res

I tried it, I did not think it is ready yet

To be fair I mainly just join the virtual aerobatics servers, you're right that its too difficult to spot targets with it from range unless youve got labels switched on.

However the cockpit freedom and immersion feel for me is so good, I think when we get better res headsets flatscreen simming will be dead.

lurkio · 2 Dec 2017 at 13:24

Boycey0211 said:
To be fair I mainly just join the virtual aerobatics servers, you're right that its too difficult to spot targets with it from range unless youve got labels switched on.

However the cockpit freedom and immersion feel for me is so good, I think when we get better res headsets flatscreen simming will be dead.

dude first time flying at 30m off deck and in a heli I did a hard bank and almost hurled
the 3D is amazing, (learned to turn head into the turn to stop quesy feeling)

Nasher · 2 Dec 2017 at 13:25

lurkio said:
3440 x 1440 with G-Sync has spoiled me mate, when DCS fps drops , I do not notice it
Rift and FPS drop , it totally screws things up, plus impossibly hard to spot air or ground targets well cos of low res

I tried it, I did not think it is ready yet

On a game that's actually designed for VR and has native support, you don't notice the bad points so much. It's when you start modding old games that you start to see issues.

The 3D effect and immersion out-weighs the bad points though IMO. After a few minutes you stop noticing that it's not quite as clear as real-life

BS Dave · 2 Dec 2017 at 15:03

If Skyrim and FO4 get released for the rift i’m all over it. April/May next year I reckon

Andrew_McP · 2 Dec 2017 at 16:33

Nasher said:
The 3D effect and immersion out-weighs the bad points though IMO. After a few minutes you stop noticing that it's not quite as clear as real-life

I'm not going to waste time researching it (this is the internet, after all, why spoil the fun!) but I seem to remember reading something about the way different people perceive the world around them. Maybe it was something about the 'autistic spectrum' (ie being human) or some such... or maybe I'm making it up as I go along. Either way, it seems to make sense that someone with... let's call it an engineer's eye for detail, could put on a current gen headset and be repulsed by the lack of sharpness. They might never get past that. Whereas someone with a more 'impressionist' view of the world could put on a headset and see an artistic impression of reality which is much less jarring.

Or maybe some of us are suckers who are easily impressed! Whichever it is, after a lifetime of being a glass half empty kind of bloke it's nice to be on the Pollyanna side for a change. It won't last, I'm sure, but for the time being I can see rainbows everywhere... though this may be a side effect of having just put up enough coloured LED lights to blind Jodrell Bank, nine miles away.

(Yes, I know it's a radio telescope, but these cheap Xmas light power supplies must generate more RF noise than a nuclear test in a lightning storm).

Nasher · 2 Dec 2017 at 19:26

BS Dave said:
If Skyrim and FO4 get released for the rift i’m all over it. April/May next year I reckon

Fallout VR is out this month. It will support both as it's using OpenVR which is an open platform, even if they don't list it. It's only Oculus who have a closed platform and exclusivity rights on some games (so it's Vive etc users who can't play Rift games), but that will slowly die off most likely because developers don't want to be cutting out half of their player base.

Bethesda is owned by Zenimax, who are currently in a argument with facebook over VR stuff. So they want to discourage people from buying a Rift. ID is also Zemimax and Doom VFR (it's crap, don't buy it) works on the Rift.

Andrew_McP · 3 Dec 2017 at 00:03

Well, it seems the BBC Home/Space Station scenario is both amazing and nauseating. I finally found something that has me reaching for the barf bag.

Having said that, I did do two laps of Laguna Seca in an open cockpit car straight after. The corkscrew may have been the icing on the cake.

Mmm... cake... makes me want to... er.... 'scuse me...

[HB]Rugrat · 3 Dec 2017 at 09:51

Had a "quick" play with mine yesterday (the Mrs is buying it me for Christmas but I obviously had to make sure it worked... for 9 hours).

I've used the GearVR with my phone before and I was little disappointed that the display isn't much sharper (though as noted above, it's effect of looking through a couple of lenses so it's always going to be compromised) but any disappointment vanished immediately upon using the little test demo where the robot hands you disks to insert into a 3d printer... even simple things like picking up a toy truck, turning it over in your hand, spinning the wheels with your other hand is a level of immersion that I've not experienced before and had me grinning like an idiot.

I was going to try out alien isolation but it got dark and I was on my own

I tried out robo recall instead and again was blown away. Can't wait for Fallout 4 VR.

Nasher · 3 Dec 2017 at 17:03

Andrew_McP said:
Well, it seems the BBC Home/Space Station scenario is both amazing and nauseating. I finally found something that has me reaching for the barf bag.

Having said that, I did do two laps of Laguna Seca in an open cockpit car straight after. The corkscrew may have been the icing on the cake.

Mmm... cake... makes me want to... er.... 'scuse me...

For me, I get "VR sickness" when freely walking around in an FPS game in VR (rather than using the teleport mechanic most have). I had to lay down after about 15 minutes of Alien Isolation

Flying and driving doesn't seem to effect me so much.

But yea, Robo Recall is amazing. It's a shame it's not longer