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

[Dio]

Getting the Quest working with SteamVR first time took a while, but that was because A. some of the Quest prompts were a bit obscure but mostly B. my USB3 cable was lying to me. Once I switched cables I was up in a couple of minutes.

I reinstalled the PC a week later (put an NVME drive in, because the loading times on Alyx were annoying me, and took the opportunity to put a fresh Windows 10 on) and even including the time it took to install Windows and Alyx it was probably only about 30 minutes, of which about 5 were 'busy time' at the keyboard. It took me literally 30 seconds to get the Quest linked up after downloading and logging into both Oculus and Steam (using keyboard / monitor) once I knew what I was doing.

No funny drivers are required.

I played Alyx in a space about 1m x 1.5m. I did bang my hands on the shelves a few times, mostly while throwing things.

[Harlequin]

I found that using a Quest with a PC was almost plug-and-play if connecting via USB. It might not be suitable for much walking around but the (Anker PowerLine) cable I have is ten feet long.

[ElfQrin]

I played Alyx in a space about 1m x 1.5m. I did bang my hands on the shelves a few times, mostly while throwing things.

It's less or more the space I'm using. It could be a little more, but being the room with a flat screen TV and a cupboard with glass door, I tend to be a bit conservative.

[MattyP]

Out of interest what GPUs are people using on their PC setups for VR? Noticed my GTX 970 isn't the best at times just wondering what to change it to? Although thinking of waiting until the new batch of consoles comes out and get something that has parity with the GPUs in those machines.

My processor is currently a Ryzen 5 (1st gen) 16GB RAM. So guessing this will suffice. Any thoughts for people more upto date on current PC tech than me?!

[Whiteball]

I've got a spare Geforce GTX 980ti here.
Not sure if it's good enough for modern VR, but if you are interested make me an offer...

[p-saurus]

I'm running a factory overclocked 980ti here, and I thoroughly enjoyed Alyx, although there were a few times when the framerate dropped briefly.. I don't know if there is much out there that's much more demanding than that. I think you might have trouble on a 970, but I could be wrong.

[ThetaReactor]

Been enjoying Alyx on a Radeon 5700 XT, paired with an R5 3600. No problems. It defaults to High settings across the board, and I haven't been inclined to mess with it. Playing on an OG Vive, though, dunno if a more hi-res HMD would affect it much.

[gilesgoat]

Out of interest what GPUs are people using on their PC setups for VR? Noticed my GTX 970 isn't the best at times just wondering what to change it to? Although thinking of waiting until the new batch of consoles comes out and get something that has parity with the GPUs in those machines.

My processor is currently a Ryzen 5 (1st gen) 16GB RAM. So guessing this will suffice. Any thoughts for people more upto date on current PC tech than me?!

I the CPU is fine and the ram too .. but GTX970 I'd say "just about" .. here a GTX1070 does the job .. "mostly" .. if we could, we can't now, I'd be going for a 1080 .. let's say 1070 "does most jobs" UNLESS you TRY to go "full details 4K" .. then it's a bit "inadequate".

But yes .. "a bit more than a 970" would be better.

VR is like "high end hifi", surely there's a "baseline more than adequate" but "the sky is the limit", the more power you can put in, the better, "there's no limit to the power one could use"

Now "as a developer" a word about "consoles" .. well consoles always seems to have "that magic thing" that even if they have a GPU 1/2 powerful of a PC .. they still manage someway to get twice as much performance .. or sorta

Seriously there's still "that thing" I never quite understood where PCs still "don't have overall all that grunt" but I am guessing a lot is down to "OS doing too many things/sharing too much HW with too much SW" and "different memory architecture/etc."

Anyway basically "for super smooth gaming" "spend all the money you have on GPUs", CPUs/ram generally "are ok"

[MattyP]

Out of interest what GPUs are people using on their PC setups for VR? Noticed my GTX 970 isn't the best at times just wondering what to change it to? Although thinking of waiting until the new batch of consoles comes out and get something that has parity with the GPUs in those machines.

My processor is currently a Ryzen 5 (1st gen) 16GB RAM. So guessing this will suffice. Any thoughts for people more upto date on current PC tech than me?!

I the CPU is fine and the ram too .. but GTX970 I'd say "just about" .. here a GTX1070 does the job .. "mostly" .. if we could, we can't now, I'd be going for a 1080 .. let's say 1070 "does most jobs" UNLESS you TRY to go "full details 4K" .. then it's a bit "inadequate".

But yes .. "a bit more than a 970" would be better.

VR is like "high end hifi", surely there's a "baseline more than adequate" but "the sky is the limit", the more power you can put in, the better, "there's no limit to the power one could use"

Now "as a developer" a word about "consoles" .. well consoles always seems to have "that magic thing" that even if they have a GPU 1/2 powerful of a PC .. they still manage someway to get twice as much performance .. or sorta

Seriously there's still "that thing" I never quite understood where PCs still "don't have overall all that grunt" but I am guessing a lot is down to "OS doing too many things/sharing too much HW with too much SW" and "different memory architecture/etc."

Anyway basically "for super smooth gaming" "spend all the money you have on GPUs", CPUs/ram generally "are ok"

Thanks for this Giles!

Thanks to Whiteball I now have a GTX 980 TI installed in my PC and everything that had issues before seams to work fine now! Yay!

Essentially it was the way the video memory is partitioned in the 970 - 3.5GB is partitioned as fast memory and has a 224 bit bus and the last 512MB is slow memory with only a 32 bit bus! The problem seems to occur when the 3.5GB of memory fills up and it starts using the slow memory. It is then reading from both fast and slow memory hence the fairly significant performance drop. This is my understanding anyway from what I've read. There was a lawsuit in the US about the whole thing.

Anyhow the 980 Ti has a 6GB VRAM and a 336 bit bus across all the memory. Hence a performance increase especially for VR.

Upshot. Don't use a GTX-970 for VR or just don't have huge expectations! Polybius worked fine on it though! But thinking about it not a huge amount of textures in there hence why it was fine. As well as been well optimised....

[MattyP]

Seems to be my lucky month so far!

Steam currently have a great sale on VR games with an additional £5 off if you spend over £30.

Half Life Alyx is in that sale (£35) as is Battlezone Gold (£7.50)

Two games I've wanted to play in for ages now! Played the demo of Battlezone Gold on PSVR and it was great. A steal at £7.50!

In other news just had a job offer pending security clearance! Yay. My year is getting better!

[Whiteball]

Nice, hope things keep going well.

Also tempted by HL Alyx at the sale price. How long is the game?

[p-saurus]

Nice, hope things keep going well.

Also tempted by HL Alyx at the sale price. How long is the game?

My first playthrough took about 12 hours. My second was about 10.
Do it. It's the best thing on VR.

[MattyP]

Nice, hope things keep going well.

Thank you! Think I'm at a turning point now. Not been a great past six months if I'm honest. Decided to have a feck it moment in the steam sale enjoy some quality gaming before I'm back in the thick of work again.

Do it. It's the best thing on VR.

That's what I have heard too! The definitive VR experience! Heard so many good things about it. The current offer means it's £15 off which was too tempting to let pass!

[Cloudane]

I was looking for some demos of games to try so searched 'demo' and ended up finding "Offscreen Colonies"

.... it never occurred to me that someone would take the demoscene and VR and combine them (and yet it makes 2000% sense). Takes me back a bit! Reminded me a lot of the ones I had on the Amiga. And only 64KB, too, in fine demoscene tradition!

Man, when it comes to VR... I was stunned as it was... but I just imagine having the ability to reach through time and drag my 9 year old self forward from 1991. Okay we're not on a spaceship like I'd hoped, but I think he'd be floored at how amazing VR is (And that we can finally have a voice conversation with a computer, come to that)

Heck, back then "talking to someone on the other side of the world" was something that ham radio enthusiasts like my parents occasionally did when they got together in a shed once every few months. The future and the ability to stand in a virtual room with a representation of someone in America must have been unimaginable outside of Star Trek. But I digress (significantly)...

[Jamesac]

I was looking for some demos of games to try so searched 'demo' and ended up finding "Offscreen Colonies"

.... it never occurred to me that someone would take the demoscene and VR and combine them (and yet it makes 2000% sense). Takes me back a bit! Reminded me a lot of the ones I had on the Amiga. And only 64KB, too, in fine demoscene tradition!

Man, when it comes to VR... I was stunned as it was... but I just imagine having the ability to reach through time and drag my 9 year old self forward from 1991. Okay we're not on a spaceship like I'd hoped, but I think he'd be floored at how amazing VR is (And that we can finally have a voice conversation with a computer, come to that)

Heck, back then "talking to someone on the other side of the world" was something that ham radio enthusiasts like my parents occasionally did when they got together in a shed once every few months. The future and the ability to stand in a virtual room with a representation of someone in America must have been unimaginable outside of Star Trek. But I digress (significantly)...

I looked at it but I don't know, 600kb per Steam downloader seems a lot of space to risk...