Fool me, this is real good shit ! [the VR thread]

[Kamineko]

Is it compatible with Immercenary??

[Mqark]

Finally got mine set up and I am sitting here downloading demos and playing with it now. Amazing how immersive it really is. Put on headphones and the Rift and it really feels like you are elsewhere, to the extent that it's actually quite jarring when you hit Esc and drop back out to the real world. Amazing potential in it. Just spent half an hour in a spacesuit flying round the ISS and gazing down at the earth rotating below. Lovely. And it's still really early days yet but boy this is a zillion times better than the VR I tried back in the 90s and it's amazing to think I've got it right here for a couple of hundred quid.

Does make me realise I need a new PC though, my old horse is >5 years old now and it shows, for VR you really need everything to be silky smooth.

Good job I've got a new machine ordered then .

Right, where else can I go...

I'm in a similar (although still tethered to the dock) boat in that my mackbook bootcamped with windows 8 can't even see the rift as a USB HID. In OSX it can, but I get no video passing to the rift...
(headtracking is working and I can at least see rift DK recognised as an external display)

I was going to upgrade to a new computer anyway - but just for a perverse sense of fun I was wondering if it could even work on the apparently clunky old laptop. Simple answer - no!

[Yak]

Got my new PC (and holy hell it's quick) so took the Oculus for a spin again. First stop Lunar Flight, now running at 60fps instead of one frame per Sunday, much nicer and I actually managed to fly the LEM and land it a couple of times not in a blazing fireball. Tricky, fun, nicely immersive.

Then it was off to City 17. OK it's low rez but bloody hell HL2 in the Oculus is just amazing. Being able to look around naturally adds so much to the game. You really feel like you're there and you're peering around as you crawl through the interstices of the city looking for trouble. I found myself just walking around peering at people and things in a way that I wouldn't have done when just using my mouse to change the view on a flat screen. Perfectly playable so far, in fact I was finding it easier to headshot Combine than I ever did playing normally. I eventually got a bit simsick after an hour and a half, in that bit where you have to put bricks on a board to balance it so you can jump up a wall - I think it was all the back and forth in a smallish area that did it, necessitating a lot of turns with the mouse rather than more naturally by turning your head, so after I got past that bit I came out, but I'll certainly be back for more.

Many outstanding moments so far - from the first moments of being in the train, to emerging outside and looking up at the Citadel and seeing just how big it really is; seeing people in the flats looking out the window and going over to look down myself, seeing Combine arrive below and stream into the building; vertiginous moments walking across narrow planks while fleeing over the rooftops, standing in the teleporter and gawping all around as it freaks out and you get momentarily transported to various odd places... amazing stuff, and with such a different feel to just seeing it on your monitor. You feel much more directly involved, like one layer of abstraction has been removed from the game.

Really, really impressed now. Can't wait to see what it's like when the HD version of Oculus is ready.

[Mqark]

Tried the rift again on a laptop of a friend, unreal rollercoaster is great, but the bit that makes me feel like i'm on a coaster isn't the big drop, but the bit where the track twists through the tunnel. I think it's the lack of g force or a simulated physical effect that you would get in a flight simulator that trips this bit up.

My rift is SD, it's fine, but having tried the HD rift at Gamescom, it's definately worth waiting for the upgrade. I still think the fidelity of the display technology could be improved further, but i'm not complaining, this thing really works and it will be a gamechanger.

[Baggypants]

Oculus Lols

[Mat]

Jeff, am I remembering correctly that stereoscopic 3D doesn't work well for you because of an eye problem?
If so, how are you finding 3D on the Rift?
I'm curious, as my right eye is incredibly blurry thanks to having suffered a detached retina. Left eye's fine, but my stereo vision does have a bit of the old sixties Batman wonky camera angle thing going on.

[Yak]

I don't have stereoscopic vision so i don't see stereo in the Rift either. However I can use my eyes exactly the same as I do in the real world, and just like IRL I get my depth cues from parallax and how stuff moves when I turn my head. With the Rift filling my entire FOV and headtracking it provides me with an excellent sense of presence in the gameworld. In fact headtracking VR stuff is the only kind of 3D that works at all for me - the purely stereoscopic stuff does nothing for me and is just a nuisance if I have to use it (if a film is only available in 3D for example).

[Mat]

Cheers, handy to know. Going to have to get hands on soon I reckon.

I've also found Richard Eisenbeis over at Kotaku quite informative for the Rift.

His Five Hours Straight article's great, as are his Movies on the Rift and One-eyed Rift articles.

Good, objective reporting.

[Yak]

yeah his comments seem pretty much in line with my own experiences (although I had no problems playing Proton Pulse myself; perhaps as that's how I normally see things I am more used to gauging distance through the relative motion and size of the ball). HL2 is an amazing experience but I found playing much more than an hour and a half I start to get a little simsick. Fine in smaller chunks though, and yes I too found it easier to shoot stuff in the Rift than outside. And yeah the frozen backgrounds during loading parts are disconcerting, sudden cessation of tracking is something all VR games will have to watch out for.

[gravy]

Played Quake on it. Felt ill for 2 hours after.

But I didn't care, it was awesome!

Our Tech Director had a go at that solar system thing and raqe quite in disgust. Nothing wrong with the OR but he's an astrophysics graduate and relative planet sizes being utterly wrong riled him up

[Firefox]

Our Tech Director had a go at that solar system thing and raqe quite in disgust. Nothing wrong with the OR but he's an astrophysics graduate and relative planet sizes being utterly wrong riled him up

[Jonesey]

[youtube]OQig04Xgy28#t=172[/youtube]

Out in November - a snip at £1300.

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Doesn't matter how sexy looking they make the tech - You still look like a wanker wearing it on a commute.

And who the fuck takes a £1300 piece of kit that blindfolds you on a commute anyway?

[Misfit]

Doesn't matter how sexy looking they make the tech - You still look like a wanker wearing it on a commute.

And who the fuck takes a £1300 piece of kit that blindfolds you on a commute anyway?

Indeed.

I also very much doubt that this is the VR headset that they are announcing for the PS4.

[noodles]

Even with jaw-droppingly good 3D, if you have to stop after an hour or puke it seems like it's heading for the same dead-end it had gone to before.
Or is it manageable in small doses ?