I'm going to guess the USB extension is bottle-necking the Vive. You may need to purchase a faster data transferring USB extension
Here is a link for community tested extension cables known to work. https://reddit.com/r/Vive/wiki/cables
My spare room isn't cleared out yet and I don't even have my new video card, 1070 arriving tomorrow, so for now just the 750ti, but I wanted to get it set up anyway to check for dead pixels. Kind of tossed it together in my messy computer room and set it up for seated. First time it ran the portal intro thing with me at floor level, and I could even look under the floor, it was weird. Went through it again after doing setup a second time and it was fine.
Several things run shockingly fine on a 750ti. The tutorials, Vive Home (mostly, Museo room seems messed up), Poly Runner, and TiltBrush. No frame issues at all. Sometimes when pulling up the Steam overlay I get a weird black flickering at the top of my field of view though. And I didn't try anything that I was confident wouldn't work.
I can't really be fully invested yet because everything is still in the process of coming together. I got other responsibilities this weekend before I can clean the spare room (and the rest of the house so I can have people over), need to put up a curtain in that room too (just blinds now), decent low budget headphones with detachable audio cable still coming in a few days. VR is trickling in.
My spare room will be really good for it I think because it has a closet intended for hanging doors that slide, and they are taken off, so it's like this little side nook that I can put the computer in, maybe have a setup like this, perfect unobstructed square area:
My spare room isn't cleared out yet and I don't even have my new video card, 1070 arriving tomorrow, so for now just the 750ti, but I wanted to get it set up anyway to check for dead pixels. Kind of tossed it together in my messy computer room and set it up for seated. First time it ran the portal intro thing with me at floor level, and I could even look under the floor, it was weird. Went through it again after doing setup a second time and it was fine.
Several things run shockingly fine on a 750ti. The tutorials, Vive Home (mostly, Museo room seems messed up), Poly Runner, and TiltBrush. No frame issues at all. Sometimes when pulling up the Steam overlay I get a weird black flickering at the top of my field of view though. And I didn't try anything that I was confident wouldn't work.
I can't really be fully invested yet because everything is still in the process of coming together. I got other responsibilities this weekend before I can clean the spare room (and the rest of the house so I can have people over), need to put up a curtain in that room too (just blinds now), decent low budget headphones with detachable audio cable still coming in a few days. VR is trickling in.
I also have Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator so that should be cool...though somehow I have avoided ever owning a PC-compatible game pad, I guess I may need to finally buy a 360/One controller? I'd imagine it's hard to use a keyboard?
Looking into Vivecraft. Also tracked down the Ghibli scenes that I've seen some people recommending which had been C&D'd by lawyers.
Thinking about Elite Dangerous because I can already tell it's going to get tiring and I will want some long term seated experiences.
I also have Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator so that should be cool...though somehow I have avoided ever owning a PC-compatible game pad, I guess I may need to finally buy a 360/One controller? I'd imagine it's hard to use a keyboard?
Looking into Vivecraft. Also tracked down the Ghibli scenes that I've seen some people recommending which had been C&D'd by lawyers.
Thinking about Elite Dangerous because I can already tell it's going to get tiring and I will want some long term seated experiences.
I find E:D to be pretty immersive and relaxing. It's really hard to start because there is not much in the way of tutoring but PA has been really helpful. I just pop on iheartradio or my amazon station and experience space.
I've only recently starting loading things up with Spotify in the background (would be so much better if Windows 10's Cortana had more voice controls for it), but I need to try running Elite with some Benn Jordan space music in the background.
I've only recently starting loading things up with Spotify in the background (would be so much better if Windows 10's Cortana had more voice controls for it), but I need to try running Elite with some Benn Jordan space music in the background.
So, I should be getting my GTX 1080 tomorrow - with an 1440p, 144Mhz, G-Sync screen. Yes, I will put in some quality VR time, but I'm also looking forward to my new, 2D toy. :P
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I know this happens a lot, every time somebody gets into VR they gotta show up and be like ok what are the tips and tricks.
But what are the tips and tricks!
I got some stuff covered already...I figured out how best to attach it to my face (not resting on the nose) and about the adjustments you can do to lens distances and middle strap. Weirdly my Vive did not come with any film covering the lenses to take off, just cardboard warning. I guess some others have noted this too on more recently shipped Vives, people hoping it isn't an indication of refurbs.
I've looked into the settings some, found where to enable bluetooth for the base stations so they turn off automatically, I'll have to make sure that works as expected. Found where to turn on and mess with the chaperone camera.
And when I get my 1070 I know to go set rendertargetmultiplier to 1.4 or 1.5 or something? Anyone have advice on this? I'll be scrubbing all the nvidia drivers completely and downloading the latest too.
Got to play with my Rift again last night. I guess the center of view is the sweet spot, and it gets blurry towards the periphery, right?
Watched some of the demo videos - Invasion and The Rose and I. They were cute. I thought it was really effective how you could get up and peer around the side of the tiny moon.
Got through Esper 2, a puzzle game. Pretty fun. I wanted to go back and try aborting the rocket launch again but I guess there's no checkpoint there? Oh well. I'm really bad at aiming launched objects.
Played some more pinball, which is probably one of my favorite things on it so far. There's a submarine-themed table, and when you play the whole room is underwater with some sharks, jellyfish and minisubs floating around. How do pinball players ever read those display screens when there are balls in play?
Mythos of the World Axis. This was a kind of fiddly puzzler -- more of a tiny exploration game -- although I didn't find the instructions until after I'd beaten it. It would have gone even more quickly if I'd known you could set warp points. But it's pretty neat watching your tiny little guy wander around the map. Still, fiddly. The game would probably have benefited from simply not letting you walk off the edges that get you killed. Reminded me of an old DOS game, The Immortal (since it has a wizard with a staff stuck in a dungeon, I guess).
Spent the most time fiddling with Virtual Desktop. I used it to watch some YouTube videos, and blew up the screen size and moved it closer until it was filling my entire field of view; that was neat. Tried playing the new EDF game under Virtual Desktop, and it ran well enough, but predictably it started making me queasy. EDF had a fair amount of clipping and janky animations, I'm sure that didn't help. I wanted multiple virtual displays, but apparently you need a physical monitor for that; that seems like something Nvidia and AMD should fix. Or I could buy a $20 dongle that "sort of" works with the DisplayPort ports I'd be plugging it into. Meh. Also apparently there's a free product, BigScreen, that does most of the same things that Virtual Desktop does -- I think it doesn't do multiple virtual displays at all, yet, but you can sit down with friends in VR and watch a movie together. I'll have to try it out.
I tried some 360° VR videos on YouTube, too, and if I understand correctly, for these you have to download the whole file and then run it in a VR video player, right? That process wasn't really completely clear.
Will hopefully get around to Elite this weekend, and maybe Euro Trucking Simulator.
The first indicates the addition of support and documentation for a new ‘Enter’ button, to be found only on the left hand controller. This differs from any version yet seen in the wild and seems to indicate the finalisation for the design of Oculus’ optically tracked devices will be right down to the wire.
According to the accompanying documentation, the new ‘Enter’ button is equivalent in function to the XBox One Wireless Controller’s ‘Start’ button, keeping consistency with Oculus’ other standard input device for the Rift.
ovrButton_Enter Enter button on the left Touch controller. This is equivalent to the Start button on the Xbox controller.
The second highlighted feature is an additional haptic feedback method called “Buffered haptics”. According to the documentation the new method has been included to support a certain style of haptic feedback:
The SDK supports two types of haptics: buffered and non-buffered. Buffered haptics are designed to change rapidly (every 3.125ms) and work well for subtle effects. Non-buffered haptics are designed for simple effects that don’t change often (every 33ms).
Asymmetrical controllers :T
I guess that's obvious since the controllers themselves are asymmetrical in shape, but I hope occulus game devs are not as lazy as vive game devs in terms of left hand support.
Wow, HTC. Those were not drywall anchors. Why did you tell me they were drywall anchors in the instructions and then gloss over the whole thing in the video too? I guess I didn't look closely enough. From some googling people say they're for like, screwing into brick?
A 10 minute project became an hour journey to Walmart for what I actually needed.
Wow, HTC. Those were not drywall anchors. Why did you tell me they were drywall anchors in the instructions and then gloss over the whole thing in the video too? I guess I didn't look closely enough. From some googling people say they're for like, screwing into brick?
A 10 minute project became an hour journey to Walmart for what I actually needed.
If you want a ridiculously easy install you can buy the 16 pound "large picture hanging strip" command strips. They work fantastically well if you use two pairs on each lighthouse (I mount them to the ceiling mount, then put the strips on the ceiling mount so I can rotate the lighthouses if I need to), and I've been using them since May.
The second highlighted feature is an additional haptic feedback method called “Buffered haptics”. According to the documentation the new method has been included to support a certain style of haptic feedback:
The SDK supports two types of haptics: buffered and non-buffered. Buffered haptics are designed to change rapidly (every 3.125ms) and work well for subtle effects. Non-buffered haptics are designed for simple effects that don’t change often (every 33ms).
This makes me think of Dishonored: imagine holding the Heart in your hand and actually feeling it beating.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I just finished the Time Machine VR storyline, and while I'd still absolutely recommend the game as a VR showcase, the story comes to an extremely abrupt end. Perhaps there'll be DLC or a sequel - the hints are there - and there's definitely potential for missions involving land-based animals (though the water offers natural boundaries to the environments you can explore), but the ending was rather unsatisfactory.
Also, I briefly tried out Ethan Carter, and I can definitely see how I wouldn't play this in normal mode for hours. For shortish bouts, though, normal mode is fine, as I'm not a big fan of comfort mode. Is it just me, though, or does the game not really translate your head movement into the game 1:1? Looking around works just fine, but I don't seem to be able to lean in and look at things more closely, or at least not to the degree that I move in real space, which immediately reduces the sense of presence.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
How would a 9'x11' room, with 8' ceilings, free of all clutter, furniture, etc. (save for the PC itself) work for room scale with the Vive? Is that enough space for most games?
Tried out a bunch of stuff, still have a lot more to look at. In general it seems like a lot of experiences are really short and at least a little bit janky in some way, but then a lot of those are free as well. I think I'm naturally/unintentionally gravitating toward stuff that I expect to be quicker to get through so I can try something else. :P
I can't believe that "The Rose and I" once cost $5! It had nice visual and sound design but it felt like an end-of-TV-show studio bumper spread out to 5 minutes. Still cool to see, along with ABE VR and Colosse, worthwhile experiments. ABE is really cliche and seeing "yourself" is weird, Colosse has a neat style and sense of scale.
Audioshield is super jank. I mean, once you're in a song and playing it it's pretty cool, but it feels like it has 3 minute load times on every song. First time I thought something went wrong and it crashed, but just had to keep waiting. If I go to C: to navigate to my own music the whole thing becomes unresponsive, can't pick folders, can't go back. Have to force quit. I guess I'll need to put stuff in My Music, see if that works better.
The Cubicle is a really neat experience for being free. I had trouble getting it to run a couple times, both the first two times I exited out and it didn't actually quit so I kept hearing office sounds while in Vive Home. One time the controller/file sorter was completely unresponsive. But once it worked it actually gave one of the better senses of motion of all the stuff I tried. Actually, same comments for Poly Runner, minus any difficulties. Good retro look and fun to try out.
Trials on Tatooine is too brief, but hey what would you expect for a free product from Disney, just trying to deliver anything at all Star Wars-related as quickly as possible, get a lightsaber into peoples' hands and generate some buzz. Millenium Falcon landing over you is great stuff. I had a big problem though, when I needed to hit some buttons they were past the wall of my room! Couldn't reach them. For some reason they were positioned past the edge of the chaperone border, and even then some, just an inch too far. Not sure how I should adjust things to fix it.
Realities takes up far too much space for what it offers right now (I'm sure it's justified, I just have limited SSD space!). Some of the locations were interesting, the castle had some bad geometry and texturing issues though, probably due to long range drone-captured images. The Alcatraz cell and the cave were my favorite locations.
NVIDIA VR Funhouse was fun, though I'm not a big fan of the circus aesthetic in general. It got better the longer it went, shooting with dual pistols at glass stuff being fired out of a cannon is AWESOME. Great destructible physics shown off in general, definitely spend a long time blasting out all the wood slats in the shooting gallery. I'd make similar comments about Waltz of the Wizard which feels in kind of the same category, actually I think it's better than Funhouse, some really cool stuff there. Good demo material.
Didn't spend much time with Tabletop Simulator but it had a great sense of the table and its contents being real. I wish it had as natural an object manipulation system as some other demos, and the skybox-with-no-floor thing is really weird, but I also get that VR has been retrofitted on. I would love real rooms though, it'd complete the experience.
On the subject of retrofitted games, Euro Truck Simulator 2 looked pretty bad and had a lot of hitches (judder? dropped frames?), and I made the mistake of pressing 2 to get the outside-of-truck view which made my head swim real quick. Only thing that's done that so far. I might give it another try, might need to set rendertargetmultiplier back to 1.0 from the 1.5 I had it at for everything...
Meanwhile, Vivecraft is incredible. Maybe the best thing I've tried so far, maybe because I've already spent so much time in that world that it's like coming home for real. Interaction is so well-polished and natural, had it figured out quickly, I could play the game like that for a long time if not for being tired of standing up! UI on one hand, interact with the other, easy to teleport around...blocks so huge. Caves 2spooky.
The Lab is the other best thing, as expected. I haven't even done most of it yet. The shooting game where you're standing in the cylinder, weaving your hand around in this bullet hell...that's just nuts, and a brilliant idea, works so well. Oh wait, I remember why I stopped though...I was trying to start up the robot repair center and kept getting booted back to nothing like the game was crashing (same as these people). But I think it may have been a Windows firewall thing that was popped up on the computer afterward.
But yeah like I said initially, lots of software weirdness. Even outside of games. Had several problems already getting everything recognized and base stations woken up. Never the same problem twice, it gets pretty frustrating. I guess I just can't change Vive's USB port on the computer without reinstalling everything, tried another port and everything freaked out, "driver could not be installed," so whatever.
Anyway now I'm looking into how to play Elite Dangerous, watching tutorial videos because I've heard it's impenetrable. I assume I need to learn to play outside of VR first anyway. But there's plenty of other stuff I should try too...
Mostly at this point I'm worried that I'm going to get robbed and not even realize it's happening. People lookin' in the windows like
Tried out a bunch of stuff, still have a lot more to look at. In general it seems like a lot of experiences are really short and at least a little bit janky in some way, but then a lot of those are free as well. I think I'm naturally/unintentionally gravitating toward stuff that I expect to be quicker to get through so I can try something else. :P
I can't believe that "The Rose and I" once cost $5! It had nice visual and sound design but it felt like an end-of-TV-show studio bumper spread out to 5 minutes. Still cool to see, along with ABE VR and Colosse, worthwhile experiments. ABE is really cliche and seeing "yourself" is weird, Colosse has a neat style and sense of scale.
Audioshield is super jank. I mean, once you're in a song and playing it it's pretty cool, but it feels like it has 3 minute load times on every song. First time I thought something went wrong and it crashed, but just had to keep waiting. If I go to C: to navigate to my own music the whole thing becomes unresponsive, can't pick folders, can't go back. Have to force quit. I guess I'll need to put stuff in My Music, see if that works better.
The Cubicle is a really neat experience for being free. I had trouble getting it to run a couple times, both the first two times I exited out and it didn't actually quit so I kept hearing office sounds while in Vive Home. One time the controller/file sorter was completely unresponsive. But once it worked it actually gave one of the better senses of motion of all the stuff I tried. Actually, same comments for Poly Runner, minus any difficulties. Good retro look and fun to try out.
Trials on Tatooine is too brief, but hey what would you expect for a free product from Disney, just trying to deliver anything at all Star Wars-related as quickly as possible, get a lightsaber into peoples' hands and generate some buzz. Millenium Falcon landing over you is great stuff. I had a big problem though, when I needed to hit some buttons they were past the wall of my room! Couldn't reach them. For some reason they were positioned past the edge of the chaperone border, and even then some, just an inch too far. Not sure how I should adjust things to fix it.
Realities takes up far too much space for what it offers right now (I'm sure it's justified, I just have limited SSD space!). Some of the locations were interesting, the castle had some bad geometry and texturing issues though, probably due to long range drone-captured images. The Alcatraz cell and the cave were my favorite locations.
NVIDIA VR Funhouse was fun, though I'm not a big fan of the circus aesthetic in general. It got better the longer it went, shooting with dual pistols at glass stuff being fired out of a cannon is AWESOME. Great destructible physics shown off in general, definitely spend a long time blasting out all the wood slats in the shooting gallery. I'd make similar comments about Waltz of the Wizard which feels in kind of the same category, actually I think it's better than Funhouse, some really cool stuff there. Good demo material.
Didn't spend much time with Tabletop Simulator but it had a great sense of the table and its contents being real. I wish it had as natural an object manipulation system as some other demos, and the skybox-with-no-floor thing is really weird, but I also get that VR has been retrofitted on. I would love real rooms though, it'd complete the experience.
On the subject of retrofitted games, Euro Truck Simulator 2 looked pretty bad and had a lot of hitches (judder? dropped frames?), and I made the mistake of pressing 2 to get the outside-of-truck view which made my head swim real quick. Only thing that's done that so far. I might give it another try, might need to set rendertargetmultiplier back to 1.0 from the 1.5 I had it at for everything...
Meanwhile, Vivecraft is incredible. Maybe the best thing I've tried so far, maybe because I've already spent so much time in that world that it's like coming home for real. Interaction is so well-polished and natural, had it figured out quickly, I could play the game like that for a long time if not for being tired of standing up! UI on one hand, interact with the other, easy to teleport around...blocks so huge. Caves 2spooky.
The Lab is the other best thing, as expected. I haven't even done most of it yet. The shooting game where you're standing in the cylinder, weaving your hand around in this bullet hell...that's just nuts, and a brilliant idea, works so well. Oh wait, I remember why I stopped though...I was trying to start up the robot repair center and kept getting booted back to nothing like the game was crashing (same as these people). But I think it may have been a Windows firewall thing that was popped up on the computer afterward.
But yeah like I said initially, lots of software weirdness. Even outside of games. Had several problems already getting everything recognized and base stations woken up. Never the same problem twice, it gets pretty frustrating. I guess I just can't change Vive's USB port on the computer without reinstalling everything, tried another port and everything freaked out, "driver could not be installed," so whatever.
Anyway now I'm looking into how to play Elite Dangerous, watching tutorial videos because I've heard it's impenetrable. I assume I need to learn to play outside of VR first anyway. But there's plenty of other stuff I should try too...
Mostly at this point I'm worried that I'm going to get robbed and not even realize it's happening. People lookin' in the windows like
Bah it's not imprenetrable. PA thread helped me a lot and I really enjoy the VR immersion!
I started configuring Voice Attack this weekend so I can use it with Elite Dangerous. I'm very much looking forward to playing it in VR, with the Thrustmaster HOTAS.X. In combination with Voice Attack, I get the impression I'm set for keyboard-less playing.
UncleSporky: Does Realities work with roomscale, i.e. can you walk around freely? They've updated it so that on Oculus Rift you can walk around with the left stick on the gamepad, but it's flawed: you neither move nor turn smoothly but in small jerks. My favourite location in it is that derelict sanatorium in Beelitz, Germany - at first I thought it was just one room, but you can check out various other rooms by selecting the doorways.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
UncleSporky: Does Realities work with roomscale, i.e. can you walk around freely? They've updated it so that on Oculus Rift you can walk around with the left stick on the gamepad, but it's flawed: you neither move nor turn smoothly but in small jerks. My favourite location in it is that derelict sanatorium in Beelitz, Germany - at first I thought it was just one room, but you can check out various other rooms by selecting the doorways.
Y'know, I don't remember really trying to walk around, but it's not like I got whiplash or anything within 1-2 steps, head being kept still in VR despite moving around a bit, nothing like that. Sounds like from some impressions online that it is roomscale.
I've really come to rely on warping around a lot. The Gallery is the best at that, letting you turn your point of view too.
So, I've been going back to Chronos lately, and... I just got to that part in the second Pan temple with that certain super-creepy enemy.
Holy shit. It's one of Doctor Who's Weeping Angels. Only moves when it's not in your field of view. Look away, and you'll hear a grinding noise from its direction, and if you look back over at it, it has moved.
This is the scariest enemy I've ever encountered in any game ever.
BigScreen
It seems to do pretty much the same thing as Virtual Desktop, which is cool. It doesn't support multiple desktops yet, but on the other hand I gather it has multi-user sharing with mannequin heads so you can all watch a movie together. Plus it's free. Doesn't have Steam Workshop support, though.
InCell VR
A fairly straightforward futuristic racing-on-a-tube thing. Unremarkable in and of itself, but I was thinking that the new System Shock's VR should feel like this, racing at high speed on a twisting path with bright neon constructs everywhere.
Lost
Colosse
More animated shorts, they were fine.
Abe VR
Well, that was dark.
Lucky's Tale
Looked nice, but platformers are really not my thing at all.
Chronos
This was pretty fun, although I didn't play for very long. I was kind of put off when my first death was thinking there was a path and then falling off a ledge, and now I'm a year older. I started with the sword, but I'm thinking I should have gone axe since I'm inept at these games and kept evading in the wrong direction, usually backwards right into whatever I was trying to avoid.
New Retro Arcade: Neon
The FPS controls made me queasy almost right away. Urgh.
Elite: Dangerous
I ended up only spending about an hour on this, and nearly half of that was trying to figure out how to read my comms. I guess since the comms HUD is right on your windshield it doesn't come into focus when you look at it, unlike the two side panels. And by default I think it's not mapped to anything -- most people just use the mouse, I guess?
I don't like that the in game links for the tutorial videos send you to YouTube, especially since they doesn't play on the Rift. I didn't watch any of them, but I played the tutorial missions for launching, traveling, docking and shooting canisters, plus the intro to VR one. I think I'm going to have to spring for a HOTAS eventually -- not having lateral thrust controls on the pad was pretty annoying, plus having a bunch of controls bound to D-pad + some button wasn't great either.
What's a quick way to reorient yourself if you come down on the landing pad facing the opposite direction? The slow yaw made this agonizing. I tried to fly up and roll myself into position but I think I slammed into the standing lights or something and I couldn't move and had to start the tutorial over.
All that aside, the game looks amazing. Riding the ship elevator up to the launch floor, coming out of the mail slot to see the planet right there, making a jump and -- BAM SUN!, coming out of supercruise next to a space station, looking around and seeing your ship, the way the side displays pop up when you look in their direction. It's all great stuff. I'll have to download and read through the manual when time permits. For some reason Eve Valkryie made me ill but this didn't.
Posts
Here is a link for community tested extension cables known to work.
https://reddit.com/r/Vive/wiki/cables
My spare room isn't cleared out yet and I don't even have my new video card, 1070 arriving tomorrow, so for now just the 750ti, but I wanted to get it set up anyway to check for dead pixels. Kind of tossed it together in my messy computer room and set it up for seated. First time it ran the portal intro thing with me at floor level, and I could even look under the floor, it was weird. Went through it again after doing setup a second time and it was fine.
Several things run shockingly fine on a 750ti. The tutorials, Vive Home (mostly, Museo room seems messed up), Poly Runner, and TiltBrush. No frame issues at all. Sometimes when pulling up the Steam overlay I get a weird black flickering at the top of my field of view though. And I didn't try anything that I was confident wouldn't work.
I can't really be fully invested yet because everything is still in the process of coming together. I got other responsibilities this weekend before I can clean the spare room (and the rest of the house so I can have people over), need to put up a curtain in that room too (just blinds now), decent low budget headphones with detachable audio cable still coming in a few days. VR is trickling in.
My spare room will be really good for it I think because it has a closet intended for hanging doors that slide, and they are taken off, so it's like this little side nook that I can put the computer in, maybe have a setup like this, perfect unobstructed square area:
Congratulations and welcome to the party!
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Shhhhhh!
Sh!
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
I also have Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator so that should be cool...though somehow I have avoided ever owning a PC-compatible game pad, I guess I may need to finally buy a 360/One controller? I'd imagine it's hard to use a keyboard?
Looking into Vivecraft. Also tracked down the Ghibli scenes that I've seen some people recommending which had been C&D'd by lawyers.
Thinking about Elite Dangerous because I can already tell it's going to get tiring and I will want some long term seated experiences.
I find E:D to be pretty immersive and relaxing. It's really hard to start because there is not much in the way of tutoring but PA has been really helpful. I just pop on iheartradio or my amazon station and experience space.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
I sometimes run EVE music or Homeworld music!
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
two hours later
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
But what are the tips and tricks!
I got some stuff covered already...I figured out how best to attach it to my face (not resting on the nose) and about the adjustments you can do to lens distances and middle strap. Weirdly my Vive did not come with any film covering the lenses to take off, just cardboard warning. I guess some others have noted this too on more recently shipped Vives, people hoping it isn't an indication of refurbs.
I've looked into the settings some, found where to enable bluetooth for the base stations so they turn off automatically, I'll have to make sure that works as expected. Found where to turn on and mess with the chaperone camera.
And when I get my 1070 I know to go set rendertargetmultiplier to 1.4 or 1.5 or something? Anyone have advice on this? I'll be scrubbing all the nvidia drivers completely and downloading the latest too.
Watched some of the demo videos - Invasion and The Rose and I. They were cute. I thought it was really effective how you could get up and peer around the side of the tiny moon.
Got through Esper 2, a puzzle game. Pretty fun. I wanted to go back and try aborting the rocket launch again but I guess there's no checkpoint there? Oh well. I'm really bad at aiming launched objects.
Played some more pinball, which is probably one of my favorite things on it so far. There's a submarine-themed table, and when you play the whole room is underwater with some sharks, jellyfish and minisubs floating around. How do pinball players ever read those display screens when there are balls in play?
Mythos of the World Axis. This was a kind of fiddly puzzler -- more of a tiny exploration game -- although I didn't find the instructions until after I'd beaten it. It would have gone even more quickly if I'd known you could set warp points. But it's pretty neat watching your tiny little guy wander around the map. Still, fiddly. The game would probably have benefited from simply not letting you walk off the edges that get you killed. Reminded me of an old DOS game, The Immortal (since it has a wizard with a staff stuck in a dungeon, I guess).
Spent the most time fiddling with Virtual Desktop. I used it to watch some YouTube videos, and blew up the screen size and moved it closer until it was filling my entire field of view; that was neat. Tried playing the new EDF game under Virtual Desktop, and it ran well enough, but predictably it started making me queasy. EDF had a fair amount of clipping and janky animations, I'm sure that didn't help. I wanted multiple virtual displays, but apparently you need a physical monitor for that; that seems like something Nvidia and AMD should fix. Or I could buy a $20 dongle that "sort of" works with the DisplayPort ports I'd be plugging it into. Meh. Also apparently there's a free product, BigScreen, that does most of the same things that Virtual Desktop does -- I think it doesn't do multiple virtual displays at all, yet, but you can sit down with friends in VR and watch a movie together. I'll have to try it out.
I tried some 360° VR videos on YouTube, too, and if I understand correctly, for these you have to download the whole file and then run it in a VR video player, right? That process wasn't really completely clear.
Will hopefully get around to Elite this weekend, and maybe Euro Trucking Simulator.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
New Oculus Touch Features Detailed in Latest Oculus PC SDK 1.6 Release
http://www.roadtovr.com/new-oculus-touch-enter-button-detailed-in-latest-oculus-pc-sdk-1-6-release/
I guess that's obvious since the controllers themselves are asymmetrical in shape, but I hope occulus game devs are not as lazy as vive game devs in terms of left hand support.
A 10 minute project became an hour journey to Walmart for what I actually needed.
If you want a ridiculously easy install you can buy the 16 pound "large picture hanging strip" command strips. They work fantastically well if you use two pairs on each lighthouse (I mount them to the ceiling mount, then put the strips on the ceiling mount so I can rotate the lighthouses if I need to), and I've been using them since May.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Also, I briefly tried out Ethan Carter, and I can definitely see how I wouldn't play this in normal mode for hours. For shortish bouts, though, normal mode is fine, as I'm not a big fan of comfort mode. Is it just me, though, or does the game not really translate your head movement into the game 1:1? Looking around works just fine, but I don't seem to be able to lean in and look at things more closely, or at least not to the degree that I move in real space, which immediately reduces the sense of presence.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
How would a 9'x11' room, with 8' ceilings, free of all clutter, furniture, etc. (save for the PC itself) work for room scale with the Vive? Is that enough space for most games?
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
She was grinning ear to ear the whole time and couldn't stop talking about it after.
Sooooo, I imagine she'll be talking about her own Rift in the near future.
I can't believe that "The Rose and I" once cost $5! It had nice visual and sound design but it felt like an end-of-TV-show studio bumper spread out to 5 minutes. Still cool to see, along with ABE VR and Colosse, worthwhile experiments. ABE is really cliche and seeing "yourself" is weird, Colosse has a neat style and sense of scale.
Audioshield is super jank. I mean, once you're in a song and playing it it's pretty cool, but it feels like it has 3 minute load times on every song. First time I thought something went wrong and it crashed, but just had to keep waiting. If I go to C: to navigate to my own music the whole thing becomes unresponsive, can't pick folders, can't go back. Have to force quit. I guess I'll need to put stuff in My Music, see if that works better.
The Cubicle is a really neat experience for being free. I had trouble getting it to run a couple times, both the first two times I exited out and it didn't actually quit so I kept hearing office sounds while in Vive Home. One time the controller/file sorter was completely unresponsive. But once it worked it actually gave one of the better senses of motion of all the stuff I tried. Actually, same comments for Poly Runner, minus any difficulties. Good retro look and fun to try out.
Trials on Tatooine is too brief, but hey what would you expect for a free product from Disney, just trying to deliver anything at all Star Wars-related as quickly as possible, get a lightsaber into peoples' hands and generate some buzz.
Realities takes up far too much space for what it offers right now (I'm sure it's justified, I just have limited SSD space!). Some of the locations were interesting, the castle had some bad geometry and texturing issues though, probably due to long range drone-captured images. The Alcatraz cell and the cave were my favorite locations.
NVIDIA VR Funhouse was fun, though I'm not a big fan of the circus aesthetic in general. It got better the longer it went, shooting with dual pistols at glass stuff being fired out of a cannon is AWESOME. Great destructible physics shown off in general, definitely spend a long time blasting out all the wood slats in the shooting gallery. I'd make similar comments about Waltz of the Wizard which feels in kind of the same category, actually I think it's better than Funhouse, some really cool stuff there. Good demo material.
Didn't spend much time with Tabletop Simulator but it had a great sense of the table and its contents being real. I wish it had as natural an object manipulation system as some other demos, and the skybox-with-no-floor thing is really weird, but I also get that VR has been retrofitted on. I would love real rooms though, it'd complete the experience.
On the subject of retrofitted games, Euro Truck Simulator 2 looked pretty bad and had a lot of hitches (judder? dropped frames?), and I made the mistake of pressing 2 to get the outside-of-truck view which made my head swim real quick. Only thing that's done that so far. I might give it another try, might need to set rendertargetmultiplier back to 1.0 from the 1.5 I had it at for everything...
Meanwhile, Vivecraft is incredible. Maybe the best thing I've tried so far, maybe because I've already spent so much time in that world that it's like coming home for real. Interaction is so well-polished and natural, had it figured out quickly, I could play the game like that for a long time if not for being tired of standing up! UI on one hand, interact with the other, easy to teleport around...blocks so huge. Caves 2spooky.
The Lab is the other best thing, as expected. I haven't even done most of it yet. The shooting game where you're standing in the cylinder, weaving your hand around in this bullet hell...that's just nuts, and a brilliant idea, works so well. Oh wait, I remember why I stopped though...I was trying to start up the robot repair center and kept getting booted back to nothing like the game was crashing (same as these people). But I think it may have been a Windows firewall thing that was popped up on the computer afterward.
But yeah like I said initially, lots of software weirdness. Even outside of games. Had several problems already getting everything recognized and base stations woken up. Never the same problem twice, it gets pretty frustrating. I guess I just can't change Vive's USB port on the computer without reinstalling everything, tried another port and everything freaked out, "driver could not be installed," so whatever.
Anyway now I'm looking into how to play Elite Dangerous, watching tutorial videos because I've heard it's impenetrable. I assume I need to learn to play outside of VR first anyway. But there's plenty of other stuff I should try too...
Mostly at this point I'm worried that I'm going to get robbed and not even realize it's happening. People lookin' in the windows like
Bah it's not imprenetrable. PA thread helped me a lot and I really enjoy the VR immersion!
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
UncleSporky: Does Realities work with roomscale, i.e. can you walk around freely? They've updated it so that on Oculus Rift you can walk around with the left stick on the gamepad, but it's flawed: you neither move nor turn smoothly but in small jerks. My favourite location in it is that derelict sanatorium in Beelitz, Germany - at first I thought it was just one room, but you can check out various other rooms by selecting the doorways.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Y'know, I don't remember really trying to walk around, but it's not like I got whiplash or anything within 1-2 steps, head being kept still in VR despite moving around a bit, nothing like that. Sounds like from some impressions online that it is roomscale.
I've really come to rely on warping around a lot. The Gallery is the best at that, letting you turn your point of view too.
This is the scariest enemy I've ever encountered in any game ever.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
BigScreen
It seems to do pretty much the same thing as Virtual Desktop, which is cool. It doesn't support multiple desktops yet, but on the other hand I gather it has multi-user sharing with mannequin heads so you can all watch a movie together. Plus it's free. Doesn't have Steam Workshop support, though.
InCell VR
A fairly straightforward futuristic racing-on-a-tube thing. Unremarkable in and of itself, but I was thinking that the new System Shock's VR should feel like this, racing at high speed on a twisting path with bright neon constructs everywhere.
Lost
Colosse
More animated shorts, they were fine.
Abe VR
Well, that was dark.
Lucky's Tale
Looked nice, but platformers are really not my thing at all.
Chronos
This was pretty fun, although I didn't play for very long. I was kind of put off when my first death was thinking there was a path and then falling off a ledge, and now I'm a year older. I started with the sword, but I'm thinking I should have gone axe since I'm inept at these games and kept evading in the wrong direction, usually backwards right into whatever I was trying to avoid.
New Retro Arcade: Neon
The FPS controls made me queasy almost right away. Urgh.
Elite: Dangerous
I ended up only spending about an hour on this, and nearly half of that was trying to figure out how to read my comms. I guess since the comms HUD is right on your windshield it doesn't come into focus when you look at it, unlike the two side panels. And by default I think it's not mapped to anything -- most people just use the mouse, I guess?
I don't like that the in game links for the tutorial videos send you to YouTube, especially since they doesn't play on the Rift. I didn't watch any of them, but I played the tutorial missions for launching, traveling, docking and shooting canisters, plus the intro to VR one. I think I'm going to have to spring for a HOTAS eventually -- not having lateral thrust controls on the pad was pretty annoying, plus having a bunch of controls bound to D-pad + some button wasn't great either.
What's a quick way to reorient yourself if you come down on the landing pad facing the opposite direction? The slow yaw made this agonizing. I tried to fly up and roll myself into position but I think I slammed into the standing lights or something and I couldn't move and had to start the tutorial over.
All that aside, the game looks amazing. Riding the ship elevator up to the launch floor, coming out of the mail slot to see the planet right there, making a jump and -- BAM SUN!, coming out of supercruise next to a space station, looking around and seeing your ship, the way the side displays pop up when you look in their direction. It's all great stuff. I'll have to download and read through the manual when time permits. For some reason Eve Valkryie made me ill but this didn't.