VR Megathread: Valve's VR Has Entered The Game

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > VR Megathread: Valve's VR Has Entered The Game

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Same guy did a big multipart write-up (with followup here) on how the DK2 handles tracking, and I don't imagine it's changed significantly with the CV1 outside of some hardware differences (camera on the CV1 is higher-res and uses a global rather than rolling shutter, for one). Interesting stuff.

Helter Skelter fucked around with this message at 17:44 on May 25, 2016

# ¿ May 25, 2016 17:40

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 06:19

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

House of the Dying Sun (the game formerly known as Enemy Starfighter) goes into early access on Steam tomorrow and I highly recommend checking it out if you are at all interested in shooting spaceships.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2016 17:47

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

I wonder how much community goodwill Oculus would buy back if they just said gently caress it and implemented their own ReVive-like wrapper to let Vive users play games from the Oculus store.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 16:24

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

El Grillo posted:

There was a quote from someone at Oculus making implications about HTC/Valve not wanting to do the necessary things to get Vive to work with Oculus Home. Might have been a Palmer post on reddit or something. Anyone remember/got a link to that?

Yeah, it was Palmer. The gist of the argument was that they wanted to support the Vive directly rather than going through a wrapper (as SteamVR does for Rift support). Doing this would have supposedly required some low-level hardware information from HTC/Valve that they (understandably) didn't feel like giving out, and their response was basically "yo, just go through SteamVR".

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 18:02

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

KakerMix posted:

Yeah but is Palmer's word worth anything or not? I get confused on if what he says actually relates to Oculus in anyway. Depending on context you get different answers, it's all v. confusing.

It's probably worth whatever you think the opinion of someone who is clearly very enthusiastic but has no influence on major policy decisions at Oculus is worth.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 18:50

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

ShadowMoo posted:

I can see there being a lot of business applications for VR like construction, design, or job training. That market is just in the planning stages right now. It would be cool to have a VR walkthrough of a building that is being drafted.

Yeah, that sort of thing has been toyed with since the early DK1 days even, it just doesn't grab a lot of headlines outside of the occasional mention of an institution like NASA using VR/AR to help design probes/rovers/whatever. Tons of potential all over the place, though. One of my favorite VR experiences that I've had so far was the Foo Show, which is isn't a game at all and only lightly interactive, but still just a super neat format that I hope takes off.

..btt posted:

I personally find stellar objects seem too small - orbiting close to a planet or star feels like they're a couple of meters in diameter and only a couple of feet away. Also, not spherical enough. Not sure what exactly causes this.

Doubtless there's some render trickery going on, but I think that's more a matter of humans being kind of bad at judging scale at those kinds of distances/speeds. If you have Horizons and actually get down closer to a planet's surface, I find that things suddenly feel a lot bigger.

Also most planets in reality aren't quite spherical. Even the Earth. Weird details like that are one of the things Elite actually tends to be pretty good about.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2016 14:24

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Cojawfee posted:

Though that second option doesn't seem too bad now that we're seeing what OSVR is bringing to the table next month. That is, something that spec wise is on par with the Vive and Rift for only 400 dollars. I don't know how good the quality will be, but if it's good enough and it works on SteamVR, it could be a really good deal.

I'm curious how their optics and displays stand up. Interestingly, their own specs list a pixel density of 441ppi which is lower than both the Rift (456ppi) and Vive (447ppi).

# ¿ Jun 15, 2016 18:30

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

NRVNQSR posted:

Tested have a hands-on video with the new Razer HDK2.

I hadn't realised that they're using an RGB display, which is a pretty big deal; that gives it a much higher subpixel density than any of the other three headsets. If the lenses aren't terrible it might turn out to have surprisingly competitive visuals.

If the optics are inferior that may not be an advantage at all, however. Still, one or two interesting features, though their cable arrangement has me skeptical (along with the fact that I don't exactly associate Razer with the phrase "quality product").

Sounds like it's dropping rather soon, though, so I look forward to seeing more in-depth coverage on it even if it ends up not being great.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 13:27

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Michaellaneous posted:

Going to buy a 970 right now.

This, on the other hand, is very much a poor decision with all the new cards dropping now and in the very near future, unless you're getting a hell of a discount.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 14:32

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Michaellaneous posted:

It's only like 200 bucks.

Fair enough.

E: 1070 will be closer to $400 for a while.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 15:25

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Michaellaneous posted:

One more thing since I can't really find any info:
How far away does the basebox need to be from the playing field?

Depending on your room and how you angle it, not very.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2016 16:13

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

El Grillo posted:

e: I still don't get why they don't allow the ships to rotate in Hover Junkers. Seems like it limits gameplay possibilities a bit. Maybe their tech makes it complicated to implement (though I'm guessing it must be a deliberate design decision).

Could be a few things. They're a small team, maybe they just haven't prioritized figuring out a way to do it that feels good and won't be accidentally triggered at an inopportune moment. Or maybe the rotational movement made people puke and they ditched it.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2016 14:14

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Making sure I've closed out of Oculus Home after using it fixed that for me. You can also unplug the USB cable, if it's easily accessible.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2016 18:49

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Bhodi posted:

So the two games worth buying that aren't avail on steam that have been recommended in this thread are darknet and chronos?

I can't speak for Chronos, but Darknet is good if you're into puzzle games at all. I certainly don't regret paying :10bux:

for it.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 04:52

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Yeah, if it's the kind of game that'll grab you, it's probably one of the better values out there right now in terms of time for money.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 09:52

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

I believe that any Vive games using motion controls will automatically work with the Rift's Touch controllers right now, though minor things like control prompts will likely be wrong and the angle you hold the guns in something like Space Pirate Trainer or Hover Junkers may be off.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 16:13

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Yeah, that's super good news. Maybe one of these days they'll even add some sort of official Vive support (I wouldn't hold my breath on that at this point, but one can hope).

E: Looks like they've made the same statement to other publications as well, which is encouraging.

Helter Skelter fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jun 24, 2016

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 17:30

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

When you cancel your order, there should be an option when it asks you why to indicate that it's because you got one at retail. Using that should keep your place in line for Touch and give you a key for Eve Valkyrie if you were eligible for that.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2016 15:44

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

You could probably find the save file and delete it, but failing a hack doesn't actually matter in the long run.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2016 06:03

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Even on a SSD (and a pretty beefy machine otherwise), Subnautica does not run particularly well. It starts off okay, but once you actually start doing stuff and building a base it starts chugging pretty hard in places. I haven't even tried it in VR yet since my 2d framerates are often sub-30. Even ATW can't save that. I still really like the game, it's just in dire need of some significant optimizations.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2016 14:24

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Mister Bup posted:

Has anybody tried the OSVR yet? The price is tempting but I'm always wary of getting what I paid for and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of reviews out yet.

Based on the bit of E3 coverage of it that I saw, I'd pass. If you're adamant on getting in to VR right now (and let's be honest, you probably shouldn't be), both HTC and Oculus seem to have more or less caught up with preorders.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2016 08:32

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Well, VR in a broader sense is legit as hell. I feel that treating it as being anywhere near the same level as the Wii or Kinect is, to put it mildly, a very ignorant position to take.

That said, it's all first-gen consumer hardware right now. The hardware that's out there, as impressive as it is, has a lot of room for improvement (resolution/image quality being the big obvious one). On top of that, nobody's come out with a killer app yet because it's a new medium with new challenges and nobody really knows how to use it to its full potential yet. So yeah, while there are some genuinely cool things to do, there are also a lot of silly gimmick games that we'll all look back on one day and laugh at.

Still, it's one of those things where you try it out for the first time and come out saying "holy poo poo, this is the future". It's just too much money and not enough good stuff right now for me to be able to recommend it to most people just yet. It'll get there, though.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2016 12:14

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Lemming posted:

They explicitly say "We�re on track to launch Touch and introduce true hand presence along with an amazing lineup of games and experiences later this year. We�ll have lots more to share about Touch and the 30+ launch titles at OC3." though

Insomniac states a November release date for The Unspoken (that wizard fight club thing). So presumably, no later than that. Based off of that, I'd guess that Touch preorders go live not long after OC3 (which runs October 5-7). I kind of hope they try to get a head start on shipping orders ahead of the actual software launch given the debacle that was the CV1 launch, but I'm not gonna hold my breath on that. Hopefully they'll also announce the price ahead of orders going live this time, too.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2016 12:35

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Hey, I got mine on March 31st. Never mind that I was one of like 3 people who got an order in the first minute before the servers caught fire.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2016 15:52

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Supposedly RMA pricing on the sensors is 119 Euros, or probably ~$99 US once you account for VAT being included in that price.

That's a bit more expensive than I was expecting.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 18:29

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Also lighthouse in its current manifestation is actually incapable of supporting more than 2 base stations.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 18:33

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Rez does sound awesome but being an early adopoter of console VR seems like an even stupider idea than being an early adopter of PC VR.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 10:42

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

I'm well aware of the potential advantages of a console ecosystem, and I hope it sells well because more headsets out there means more games means more reasons to buy a headset and so on. I just have my doubts about the current generation of hardware being able to deliver what people hope it will.

Even if PSVR was a platform I was personally interested in buying into (and it might have been, if I owned a PS4), I sure as hell wouldn't be buying it on day one. If anyone else is on the fence about it, I'd suggest waiting until there are some reviews out there and if they aren't amazing, maybe wait and see what Sony has to say about Neo before jumping in.

I say basically the same thing to friends who are interested in buying a Rift or Vive: "VR is rad as hell and you can have a ton of fun with it, but the barrier to entry is still far too high for what you're getting. Check back in six months."

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 11:40

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

SimonChris posted:

Yeah, I was really sad that they shut down Oculus Share. I miss all the old amateur demos with wobbly production values but cool ideas. Everything is so professional now.

You can still find a bunch of that sort of stuff at places like itch.io.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 04:43

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Rated PG-34 posted:

I imagine the rift is better at dealing with mirrors. My vive still goes a bit funky if I turn towards a mirror.

If you have a Rift camera facing a mirror I imagine it would probably not be great, but aside from that yeah. For best performance in general you'll probably want to cover anything reflective while using either headset.

FormatAmerica posted:

So I got access to the V alpha today and it's pretty neat.

It's an injector that adds a web browser window into any VR game (currently only oculus games launched from the store, openVR & vive soon). Also adds a persistent clock and fps counter (you have to look way up) while a window is open, reported >90 fps the entire time and performance - outside of clipping in and out of the game's geometry - was good.

I can see myself using it for looking up bits of game walkthroughs if I ever get stuck, watching tv/movies, and maybe even popping into chat clients instead of trying to peek out the bottom or taking the headset off.

That's neat, if only because it shows that overlays in titles using the Oculus SDK is possible. This already exists and is very cool, but it doesn't work in certain games like Elite since it's currently SteamVR-only and there's no way to force the use of SteamVR in Elite (see also: War Thunder).

# ¿ Aug 4, 2016 05:58

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Cojawfee posted:

While accessories for the rift aren't technically up for sale, people have been putting in tickets to get replacements and have prices for various things. The camera costs 99 dollars, cable is 59 dollars, headphones are 45 dollars, facial interfaces are 20 dollars. No one really knows how much Oculus paid for the xbone controllers and I don't know if there has been a price listed for the remote yet. That puts the price for just the headset around 350 dollars which technically is in the ballpark everyone latched onto.

Interesting that the Vive base station costs 34 dollars more than the Rift camera. Everyone was blabbering on about the camera being so expensive compared to what they thought were simple, cheap parts. Though 99 dollars for the rift camera, and vive controllers being 130 dollars each, touch is probably going to be closer to 300 dollars rather than the 200 everyone hoped for. Though the camera is definitely not that 200 dollar webcam that one guy claimed it was because they had the same cylindrical shape.

Those are the prices for someone to buy them, not how much they cost to make. Presumably there's some margin built into those prices. At minimum, the cable most certainly does not cost anywhere near $59 to manufacture, even with the proprietary connector on the headset end. The camera I'm sure costs a few bucks to make, largely because high-res/frame rate image sensors with a global shutter are not exactly super common, but again, I'm sure there's some margin built in there.

I won't be super surprised if Touch ends up being more than $200, but I feel like $300 is probably pushing it a bit.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 06:17

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Tokyo Sexwhale posted:

Touch is going to include a second camera to help deal with occlusion, so if each handthingy is 60 bucks (ballpark for wireless controllers today), and the camera is 99, youre looking at $220, not including taxes and or any shipping fees.

And those wireless controllers don't cost $60 to make either. A 360 controller cost ~$11 to make in 2006, for example. Obviously there's a little more going on with Touch/the Vive wands, but still.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 06:43

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Tokyo Sexwhale posted:

I didnt say they were 60 to make. Noone who is manufacturing anything will sell the end user a product at cost.

Except for the situations where this has been provably untrue (see: Xbox 360 and PS3 at launch).

But yeah, of course they want to make money off of it, or at the very least not lose money. I'm just saying that basing the package price of a bundle of items (touch controller + camera, or Rift headset + camera + cable + controller) off of the retail prices of the components included is silly. Buying replacement Touch controllers plus another camera as separate parts will almost invariably be more expensive than buying them as a package deal.

Of course we're all making assumptions and wild guesses here as to the final retail cost of Touch, and nobody outside of Oculus actually knows the exact manufacturing cost for any of this poo poo, so it's kind of a pointless mental exercise at this point.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 07:31

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Ciaphas posted:

gently caress, I totally forgot about War Thunder. I've got to imagine it's rough to play in the arcade dogfight mode in VR, though?

If you intend on doing well, yeah. The last time I tried it, it was super easy to lose your mouse cursor, and there was some weirdness with the camera (particularly in vertical maneuvers) that was probably better for nausea than situational awareness. Still fun, though I'd recommend playing with a stick (separate throttle not needed) and sticking to realistic or simulator mode and first person.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 02:14

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Lemming posted:

720p is also probably the highest resolution you want to deal with, according to Lord Carmack you get severely diminishing returns afterwards

I'm not saying he's wrong or anything, but when Carmack is talking about anything to do with VR, I would keep in mind that he's usually talking about GearVR first and foremost.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 16:06

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Rated PG-34 posted:

Anyone know how to reset the head position in war thunder?

I think it's C by default. Whatever the camera free look button is when playing on a monitor.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 06:49

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

El Grillo posted:

Anyone got advice on which of the basic model (post-founders'-edition) GTX 1080's to go for? Obviously I only really care about warranty and cooling. It's inordinately difficult to find a basic comparison of these things (as opposed to the $1000 extra-sperge-tastic variants).

I don't think there's really anyone beating EVGA's lifetime warranty, so any of their non-FE models (like this one) would probably be a good choice. Assuming you can find one in stock, of course, as 1080 cards in general still seem to be in short supply.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 17:47

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

w00tazn posted:

EVGA stopped doing lifetime warranty's awhile ago. They still have one of the longest warranties you can get though.

Oh dang, you're right. Still, 3 years is still solid as hell.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 02:52

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Hadlock posted:

Now that I think about it, occulus' delay on the hand tracking might even be a retooling of their product to support lighthouse technology? Just because they shipped their developers camera based tracking doesn't mean they can't change the hardware. After all the developers just use an API; the hardware is way abstracted away.

It's not. Like, I have no idea how anyone might draw that conclusion.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 02:40

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 06:19

Helter Skelter: Feb 10, 2004; BEARD OF HAVOC

Aphex- posted:

Have you used Touch yet? I'm curious as to how good they are and how they differ from the Vive wands.

The most obvious difference of course is that Touch uses analog sticks (with a capacitive surface) while the wands have the touchpad. Both can do essentially the same things, but one may feel better than the other for a given task. Less obvious from just looking at them is that the grip button on Touch is in a far more intuitive position, and all the buttons as well as the top of the sticks have capacitive surfaces. This opens up a lot of options for social interactions because you can derive basic hand positions based off of what buttons you're touching which lets you do things like point your finger at something and have that reflected in VR. Since these touch states are visible to developers, there's also potential for their use beyond simple social interaction.

My prediction is that the Vive wands and Touch will be largely comparable in many aspects but will each excel in slightly different ways. I don't necessarily think that either will be flat-out better than the other, but I do think Touch will end up being a bit more flexible overall thanks to the hand-pose stuff.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 10:26

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