Windows Star Citizen

none of us will be playing games with out oculus rift in 24 months, it will be defacto, the uptake will be along the lines of every home having a telephone or television.

Every school, collage and university will have one, doctors will be able to virtually view the veins of a patient with real time over lays, the possibility's are endless.



I wonder if the rift dk2 will actually ship in July, its only 30 days away.

Looking forward to getting it and giving a review with all the top games that support it, war thunder is going to be off the hook, like they are saying its a BIG step up in image quality, being in my spitfire is going to be great, I've spent a lot of gold in game to get quite high up in the English tiers of Plaines. the expanse of the sky is going to be LUSH.



Single screen with track ir
Triple screen, with track ir
Oculus Rift Dk1
Oculus Rift Dk2.
Oculus Rift Commercial.

that the best from top down

 

Again, you're ignoring the controls issue. OR is fine when you're dealing with a limited control set, but with complex controls (such as SC, where you'll have flight controls, FPS controls, communications etc) the fact you can't see where your hands are is a massive hindrance. How on earth are you going to transition from a HOTAS to a mouse+keyboard, back to the HOTAS etc. with no external vision? Add in the fact that a HOTAS has in excess of 20 buttons/toggles/switches and you need to see what you're doing.

You're also ignore the 10-20% of the population that can't use 3D in this way due to eyesight problems, and the unknown percentage who end up feeling sick.

Also, I'll give you a quick guarantee right now that OR won't be used in the medical setting. Google Glass, yes, OR no.

 

With OR you'd have to fallback on the tactile feel of a joystick or keyboard. Simple controls on my Thrustmaster T1600M should be straight forward whilst using an OR. For the FPS component I would hope something along the lines of a Razer Orbweaver would help a great deal. Actually be pretty decent to map thrust to the Orbweaver thumb stick come to think of it!

 

Yeah, the 'blind' beyond the pixels is the big issue for me. I'll still want one, but feels a bit like saying joypads are the future, they're far more convenient compared to KB&M. But while there are definitely examples of games where it works perfectly, theres plenty where it just doesnt work nice, and we see games now which are designed for the joypad, and the KB&M suffers, the game gets dumbed down for it.
Thats my concern, we end up with dumbed down games because they're designed to tap into as many markets as possible at the same time, while sacrificing proper game design and interfacing because cash is king.

I can still see OR type solutions being used in medical training in the future though, but i'd agree that the google glasses direction, where real world and digital overlays co-exist, is where things like that need to be going. Gaming doesnt need that though, but it does need to provide some means with which to be able to see the real world easily, without having to remove the whole thing.

 

Yeah, any kind of gaming keypad could help, although you'll still have issues if there are interface shortcuts like those i mentioned earlier, O for Objectives as an example. When theres 18 or so keys, i guess you can probably assign the vast majority of the important shortcuts to a key, but its still going to be a little tricky and far probably have the odd mistaken key-press, but its not a bad solution, as long as there isnt any real need for a full keyboard for text-chat, and VOIP is sufficient.

 

Well I for one won't be getting an oculus rift, as I am virtually blind in one eye, which somewhat defeats the point.

You seem to be living in some fantasy world where the rift is the answer to all, but it's not.
Yes its a cool, interesting piece of tech but at the end of the day its just some screens and accelerometers strapped to your head.

 

Tactile feedback is perfectly good for less complex control methods. Xbox gamepad? No problem. Basic joystick controls? Easy. Finding that toggle switch on the base of the HOTAS? Not so much. Seeing which of five profile lights is active on the HOTAS throttle, meaning which keybinds are active? Impossible. Changing between inputs on the fly is also going to be hard - so for SC, moving from flight controls (where you have one hand on the stick, the other on the throttle) to FPS controls (one hand on mouse, other on keyboard/gamepad) is going to involve flailing around by touch and feel.

Exactly. OR is saying that simple control inputs are the way forwards...and I don't want that at all. Gamepads for flight sims are too limited - you have to reach for the keyboard for all the actions that can't be bound to the pad.

As for medical training, as somebody undergoing that right now, don't be silly. OR doesn't provide any benefit, and removes the tactile experience. Google Glass/Augmented Reality is way more likely because, well, we deal with reality rather than a virtual environment. You can't train a surgeon in a virtual environment because half the skill is felt through the scalpel, and the resistance of the different tissues as you dissect them away. OR can't duplicate that. AR on the other hand would allow greater information to be presented - such as live monitoring of vital signs that are always in view, overlaid imagery taken from CT/MRI/XR scans etc.

Adding an external camera to OR is a possibility, but I can see a lot of vomiting. Imagine the game world being in front of your face, and then suddenly trying to force your brain to accept the camera input as well (picture-in-picture style). Even switching the entire display to the 'real world' is going to induce motion sickness as you transition from one to the other.


EDIT:
Another way to get round not being able to see what the controller is doing is to have 1:1 mapping of controllers inside the 3D space, provided by tracking similar to Kinect. You'd have to setup your controllers exactly the same as inside the game though, but it would enable you to look 'down' at your hands, see them represented inside the game, and as you move them to manipulate controls in the real world they move inside the game as well. Probably only possible in accurate replicas of the game cockpits though.

 

yeah, thats a fair point about medical uses. I was thinking more along the lines of entry level stuff, but i guess when you consider everything else which would be required on top of the OR to provide the right feedback and immersion beyond having freedom to look around, there has to be basic medical training gear which has been used for decades which provides a more realistic training method.

I suspect there will all sorts of professions which will buy OR type devices, including medicine, but i bet that a lot of those come to nothing in the end, at least nothing that'll bring things forwards leaps. I bet there could be medical benefits, but more within medical studies, university sort of stuff, rather than training tools or for detecting stuff. The more futuristic tool for professional use seems like it'd have the same end result the google glasses has, just done in a different manner. GG fits more with the Minority Report styled future. OR more for gaming, anything where your environmental surroundings arent important.

 

I can type with my eyes closed, so should be fine with OR (where we can actually see whats appearing on screen. Outside of that, HOTAS should have me covered for actually playing, I never look at the controls in any other games. I really only mentioned it because I know Phinix is as pumped for OR as I am, so in his case, dropping $$$ on a monitor setup might not make sense.

 

Parge, yes, most of us can use a keyboard without looking...for typing at least. Can you reliably hit the ] key without looking? Or * on the numpad? Complex flight sims, such as SC, are going to have a dizzying number of keybinds that extend well beyond your basic typing letters.

Try using your HOTAS, closing your eyes and moving your hands to the keyboard and mouse. I guarantee you'll be fumbling around trying to find the home row, maybe smacking your mouse around a bit. Then try moving back to the HOTAS without flailing around, trying to find it. Then, try to use your HOTAS without looking at any of the buttons. Any of them, including those ones on the throttle base that are used for things like putting down landing gear. It's simply not a reliable way of doing things.

SC is going to mandate switching controllers mid-game for most of us (exception being those using keyboard and mouse for everything). Despite what you're saying, finding objects in physical space without looking is going to be tricky.

 

Yeah, I defo anticipate some issues with switching controllers, especially for the FPS parts, where OR and HOTAS isn't really suited, apart from that though, the tracking and immersion will hopefully outweigh the negatives. Elite Dangerous with DK1, was a jaw dropping experience, so I'll be keen to get my hands on the DFM and DK2!

Anyway, we could debate this all night.... did everyone see the new Merchantman shots....

 

Thats the kind of setup I'd prefer over landscape as it just seems nicer to me, although the way they're not level is making my OCD go nuts!

 

isnt that essentially a 4k monitor sliced in 3 though?

3240 x 1920, right?
btw, theres a config file where you can force a resolution, i had to use it the other day, though im sure it worked first time i tried a while back.

here: https://forums.robertsspaceindustri...tom-user-cfg-currently-being-revised-for-11-2

edit - just figured i'd look at my config file and see if its still looking for full res, cos i loaded it up out of eyefinity mode so it ended up setting with 2560x1080, and the cfg file says 7680x1080 as hoped.
Anyway, reason im editing is because that link doesnt really tell you where the file is.
[installed folder]\CitizenClient\Data\game.cfg
r_width = 1920
r_height = 1080
etc. I had to add it to the file btw.

 

Super-sampling, is like a superior anti-aliasing. Having been playing Elite, I think the way to go vis-á-vis controls will be keyboard and stick. I'm thinking of getting a stick now, but displays are off the menu, me gusta have a 120hz.

 

Well corky this been a mmo I'd expect extensive key bind options. So you would not have to look for the wierd keys. In the end of the day we are still talking about a game that won't see a final release pre 2016 at this rate. Glad I ain't gone overkill on setup as some of you seem to be heading.

1 4 k screen would suffice for me, tri screen nice if you have the space but the problems I have always had with it is the bezel, distracts from the experience for me.

OR will not be the saviour of the world that some think but its a nice bit of kit but it's still as long away as this game is in terms of a commercial launch. And with Facebook owning it you just never know what they will do.

 

As Cei & Bloody Pete already know, I've increased the size of our little flotilla by one Hornet Tracker.

 

Mentioning 32" BenQ monitor I meant a one screen setup, not 3.
Anyone was considering that screen? I guess having 32" 2560x1440 res screen would be better than 27".

 

It's currently 05:25 in LA. By 10:00 their time we can hope for this:-

 

Best bit of that?

Surgeon?
*Smoking away* Go!


http://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/273ifo/if_we_get_a_go_it_will_likely_be_35_hours_until/
The delay from go to launch is 3-5 hours. This means if we get a go today, the earliest it's likely to be seen is 13:00 in LA, or 21:00 UK time, but more likely to be 22:00 or 23:00.