I've been thinking of giving this another go after a long absence...Anyone tried the Oculus Rift with IR?
I have a devkit. It's a very good implementation already, but the widely-discussed problems are very real. The resolution is simply too low right now. It's
playable, but you have to recalibrate your brain to gauge braking points in a very different way. Impossible to rely on the distance marker boards at this resolution. And due to the way it renders quite a 'square' image for both eyes, a lot of the screen is 'wasted' showing the cockpit. It's all correct in terms of FOV, but the actual 'useful' section of the screen showing the road ahead at any given time is always made up of a very small number of pixels.
The devkit's screen is 1280x800, which is low enough already for a single monitor, but consider that it's halved for each eye, and is squared off and distorted for the lenses, with a much higher FOV than you would normal use on a single monitor, and then plastered an inch from your eyeballs so you can see individual pixels very clearly. It's closer to playing the game at PlayStation 1 resolution or lower. If you played the game on a normal display at this kind of resolution it would be a horrible experience - it's only the incredible head tracking, 3D separation and realistic FOV that makes it even remotely playable.
On top of this, there is some drifting in the calibration, meaning that it can end up off-centre in the middle of a race, which can be very disorientating. A re-centre button is essential, much like TrackIR I guess. Then there is the motion sickness... not so bad in iRacing compared to an FPS - I've found that basically any game with a cockpit reduces motion sickness considerably, as you're able to look down and feel fairly grounded - but it's still very much there. You get used to it after a while but it's something they need to improve through responsiveness, positional tracking, etc.
Despite the flaws, what I've seen so far has convinced me that VR headsets are the future of sim racing. Triple screens simply can't compete with this. For now, they have a massive resolution advantage. But eventually this will be overcome, and VR will become a totally superior experience to triple screen. The sensation of being 'in' the virtual environment can't be replicated in any other way. Until we all have bionic eyes that is. Or The Matrix happens.
Surely you'd get more benefit from going triple screens than having redonkulous FPS?
I'm not sure I agree - to be competitive in iRacing you need to combat input lag. Lower FPS means greater lag, and greater lag is the equivalent to giving your car more inertia. With such an unforgiving tyre model (particularly in the cars that have yet to receive the v5 update), inertia is the killer, and slides become impossible to save very quickly. If there is lag between your inputs and what you see on screen, you're just making slides harder to save.
I'm usually a very calm and collected person but yeah I've had some massive rage quits in iracing! I was doing really well at the start of the season (was up to 4.25sr at one point with decent results) but I always seem to be in the wrong place and the wrong time at the moment. Maybe I need to take a little break from it.
