My VR Experiences

Solitude

Solitude

Mr. Nice Guy
Since I was young I was intrigued by virtual reality. I can't remember where it started but every time I read about VR I got excited. Then the Oculus Rift was announced and not only was it stupidly expensive, needed an ungodly machine to run but also wasn't available to buy if you happened to be a South African.

So beginning last year I bought a new gaming pc especially for VR. But we still couldn't order VR in South Africa. Months passed and eventually the Oculus Rift was available on Amazon and they were willing to ship it here. It was still crazy expensive however and with so few games out there I just couldn't justify buying it.

Then the day came and it was finally on special! $399 for the headset and the touch controllers! Even then I almost didn't buy it because of the lack of good games. But a couple of days later I couldn't take it anymore and on the 12th of July I bought it.

After waiting a couple of weeks I saw that I would only be getting it in September. I contacted Amazon support and they were magnificent. I had to cancel my existing order, order the new bundle and they would ship it to me for free. Rockstars!

So if all goes well I will be getting the Oculus Rift by the end of this week.

In this thread I will write about my experiences and all the games, programs and videos I try. Maybe it'll convince other people to get it... or maybe it will convince them not to get it at all.

This is the new bundled Oculus Rift that I will be getting:
 
Last edited:
I need a faster internet connection!

Wow. It's absolutely amazing.

Firstly, I'm glad to say that there were no defects and everything is working perfectly. When you go through the initial setup it gets to this tutorial with a little robot. It blew me away! Suddenly I was in this other world and it dawned on me how amazing this really is.

Unfortunately all the games and things I need to install are huge. So they are busy downloading as I speak. I'm starting with the ones that I got the with the Rift and some other free ones.

The only thing I bought so far is Virtual Desktop. It makes it so that you can use your desktop in VR. I bought the one on the Oculus Store but there's some videos here of what it can do: http://store.steampowered.com/app/382110/Virtual_Desktop/

Text is rather blurry when using Virtual Desktop and it's then that you can really notice the pixels. Something that they can improve on with future headsets. The resolution is noticeable when you want to focus on small text and such. When looking at normal 3D environments you don't notice it.

So with Virtual Desktop I watched a lot of 360 movies! Wow, it's just amazing. I look forward to trying out actual games tomorrow!
 
Solitude said:
I need a faster internet connection!

Wow. It's absolutely amazing.

Firstly, I'm glad to say that there were no defects and everything is working perfectly. When you go through the initial setup it gets to this tutorial with a little robot. It blew me away! Suddenly I was in this other world and it dawned on me how amazing this really is.

Unfortunately all the games and things I need to install are huge. So they are busy downloading as I speak. I'm starting with the ones that I got the with the Rift and some other free ones.

The only thing I bought so far is Virtual Desktop. It makes it so that you can use your desktop in VR. I bought the one on the Oculus Store but there's some videos here of what it can do: http://store.steampowered.com/app/382110/Virtual_Desktop/

Text is rather blurry when using Virtual Desktop and it's then that you can really notice the pixels. Something that they can improve on with future headsets. The resolution is noticeable when you want to focus on small text and such. When looking at normal 3D environments you don't notice it.

So with Virtual Desktop I watched a lot of 360 movies! Wow, it's just amazing. I look forward to trying out actual games tomorrow!
Click to expand...

I imagine Elite: Dangerous is the perfect game for VR, also perhaps Project Cars or similar. I'd definitely try Elite first though.
 
Blazzok said:
I imagine Elite: Dangerous is the perfect game for VR, also perhaps Project Cars or similar. I'd definitely try Elite first though.
Click to expand...

Apparently Elite is amazing on VR. It costs a fortune however and to complicate things even more.... I already own it on the XBox One. :)

There's a lot of free content on the Oculus Store plus the Rift came with 6 games and programs for free. So I installed a ton of stuff during the night. I've got a half day today so will then go try out everything.
 
Solitude said:
Apparently Elite is amazing on VR. It costs a fortune however and to complicate things even more.... I already own it on the XBox One. :)

There's a lot of free content on the Oculus Store plus the Rift came with 6 games and programs for free. So I installed a ton of stuff during the night. I've got a half day today so will then go try out everything.
Click to expand...

I told you I would give you my account(s) on PC.


Wake up man!
 
I wanted to post in this thread every day but work has taken over my life.

Firstly... WOW! When they release the next version of the Oculus Rift, I will get it. I'm disappointed that I waited so long to get it.

Lets get the negatives out of the way:
1. The technology is still in its early days. In the next version I hope they can up the resolution and get rid of the cable. When you are immersed in a game you don't notice the resolution but you do when you actually want to inspect things closely or want to read small text. And the cable... well it will be nice to not have one. Oh and white on black text is when you can really notice the god rays. I hope they can fix that in the future too.
2. There are a lot of games and experiences out there but many of them are either very short or very indie. For instance Killing Floor: Incursion was just released and it looks great but it costs a lot and only has 4 hours of gameplay. There are some real gems out there but AAA developers have mostly stayed away for now because the market is too small.
3. All the standing! My legs are sore. Hehe many games and experiences don't require you to stand but many do. I've been playing Robo Recall and it's such good exercise! It's not something you can do for hours on end though.

Positives.
1. The immersion. Wow. You don't know what it's like until you've tried it. You are there. You aren't looking at a screen. You are in this virtual world and you look around. If you stand on a ledge then you get that same feeling of vertigo that you do in real life. In games you often get these big enemies and you are used to them by now. In VR they are huge! When you actually look up at this enemy that's as big as an elephant, it just changes everything.
2. I'm getting exercise while gaming.
3. Everything feels new. I played a platformer called Lucky's Tale and it changes the way a platformer is played. Suddenly you can look around the environment and see things that are hidden away or how big the level is. Or you have a volcano that's erupting over the whole level that you can look at at any time. Things that you can't do in a non-VR game. It's difficult to explain.
4. The community is great. Everyone's so excited and happy with their toys. The Oculus Reddit is one of the friendliest places on Reddit I've ever seen.
5. You can see how things are evolving. Developers are learning what works and what doesn't. There's a lot of experimenting going on and I feel honoured to be part of it.

Will write more about specific games and experiences later in the week!
 
I've been a harsh critic of VR in the past, but dammit if I'm not super jealous of you. Sounds like you're having an absolute blast with it.

How much space does the total setup take?
 
DieGrootHammer said:
I've been a harsh critic of VR in the past, but dammit if I'm not super jealous of you. Sounds like you're having an absolute blast with it.

How much space does the total setup take?
Click to expand...

You've got different options. First you can set it up so that you just remain seated in front of your pc with the sensors next to your screen. Then you can set it up so that you've got some space to play with standing up, at least a meter and half in both directions and it'll be happy enough. Then you can also do proper room scale but then you need an extra sensor.

I went with the second option since space is limited. I just make the second option and it's perfect since you basically just have to stand still and do some movement depending on the game. In Robo Recall you can dodge bullets. Some people do that a bit too realistically and I've seen all kinds of things that people broke. Including screens! You can grab the robots and throw them and you do it force.

You set up this guardian system to prevent this though. Basically when you set everything up you show Oculus exactly where you are allowed to go and it creates this blue polygon on the ground that lights up when you get to the edges. If you set it up at its highest level then it will actually show a transparent wall of sorts that comes up when you get to the boundary.

Example that I found on the internet:
cjepcjr.jpg

Space used:
vive-and-oculus-roomscale-comparison-metric.jpg

This is about all you need 1.5x1.5m. The square that the guy is standing on. Mine is right in front of my desk. I move my chair and my wife's chair (her desk is behind mine) out of the way when I want to do standing stuff on the VR. Lots of games give the option to sit though.
oculusrift.jpg
 
Really interesting. I think the less space is actually better, as most people don't have access to that amount of space available in their homes.

Also, how comfortable are the motion controllers, and do they feel accurate? When I tried the Vive out, the controllers were uncannily accurate. But seeing a digital representation of your hands made me feel like I developed late stage Parkinsons, they were so shaky.
 
How do thy compensate for motion sickness? Are you able to play without getting nauseous? or do you need to take breaks.
 
DieGrootHammer said:
Really interesting. I think the less space is actually better, as most people don't have access to that amount of space available in their homes.

Also, how comfortable are the motion controllers, and do they feel accurate? When I tried the Vive out, the controllers were uncannily accurate. But seeing a digital representation of your hands made me feel like I developed late stage Parkinsons, they were so shaky.
Click to expand...

Oculus really nailed it with the controllers. No shakiness and they fit perfectly in your hands. They are also kind of based on the XBox One controllers in a way so for instance Lucky's tale you can play with either the Oculus Touch controllers or with an XBox One controller.

mottamort said:
How do thy compensate for motion sickness? Are you able to play without getting nauseous? or do you need to take breaks.
Click to expand...

Motion sickness depends on the games and experiences. In the Oculus store you can actually filter according to comfort level. That way if you are affected by motion sickness then you can pick things that are rated comfortable.

There are lots of different locomotion methods that developers use now. The one that's the most comfortable is teleportation. Robo Recall really has that spot on. You point to a place and teleport there. You can even quickly set the direction. Then there are all kinds of variants up until full motion like you are used to in normal first person games. A lot of people can't handle that. So many games only allow you to move in set amount of degrees. Like 30 degrees or so. The Paranormal Activity vr game has lots of different locomotion settings so you can set it up to how much you can handle. They will be implementing full turning too so that it's exactly like an fps game.

I'm glad to say that none of the locomotion methods have given me motion sickness. I look forward to seeing the full turning because if that doesn't affect me then it will be like playing a first person game like normal but with the ability to look around and pick up objects with your hands.

There's only one thing that has made me feel bad afterwards and it was a video. It was all pixelly and poorly done and the camera moved in ways that you didn't expect.

There are many people who feel sick when there's any kind of motion though. So it looks like most games will offer teleportation as a way of moving around.

Here's some more information on all the locomotion methods:
http://www.vrglossary.org/glossary/locomotion/
 
Solitude said:
Oculus really nailed it with the controllers. No shakiness and they fit perfectly in your hands. They are also kind of based on the XBox One controllers in a way so for instance Lucky's tale you can play with either the Oculus Touch controllers or with an XBox One controller.



Motion sickness depends on the games and experiences. In the Oculus store you can actually filter according to comfort level. That way if you are affected by motion sickness then you can pick things that are rated comfortable.

There are lots of different locomotion methods that developers use now. The one that's the most comfortable is teleportation. Robo Recall really has that spot on. You point to a place and teleport there. You can even quickly set the direction. Then there are all kinds of variants up until full motion like you are used to in normal first person games. A lot of people can't handle that. So many games only allow you to move in set amount of degrees. Like 30 degrees or so. The Paranormal Activity vr game has lots of different locomotion settings so you can set it up to how much you can handle. They will be implementing full turning too so that it's exactly like an fps game.

I'm glad to say that none of the locomotion methods have given me motion sickness. I look forward to seeing the full turning because if that doesn't affect me then it will be like playing a first person game like normal but with the ability to look around and pick up objects with your hands.

There's only one thing that has made me feel bad afterwards and it was a video. It was all pixelly and poorly done and the camera moved in ways that you didn't expect.

There are many people who feel sick when there's any kind of motion though. So it looks like most games will offer teleportation as a way of moving around.

Here's some more information on all the locomotion methods:
http://www.vrglossary.org/glossary/locomotion/
Click to expand...

Oh cool, thanks for the detailed feedback :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top