the honest truth right now is that the HTV vive is more important than the Oculus, it is reportedly better than the CV1, hugely better in display and res than the dk2, FOV bigger, pin sharp positional, 1000 devs working on content. Available in Nov. lets just take a reality check here... its Aug now.... Aug Sep Oct - Nov Dec - In just a few months we are going to be able to buy a proper HD VR headset. Steam will have limited content to download but we have to expect there are going to be a number of good demos and games or a surprised number of current good games enabled for the HTC vive? I think there is going to be a huge backlog of pre orders of the headset and we are going to be lucky in the UK to see any of us getting one. this side of 2015. I really want to try a "proper" commercial grade, high presence VR headset. I want to understand just how good it is. Steam will have a double win sword, they will sell several hundreds of thousands of HTV vive, and steam is going to sell lots of content. I really cant wait for the day when we can put on a HD commercial grade VR headset and say ok this is it, this is day 1 here is our first true VR benchmark this is as good as it gets now for this period of time, this is the best that we can do. One question I have about the HTC vive is how good is the positional audio, have they even got that (the same quality as oculus?)
Every report from people that have tried both the Vive and CV1/CB have said that they are very, VERY close in performance. Nigh-identical fill-factor, FoV, tracking response, etc. Even the controllers (Vive's 'wands' and Oculus Touch) have been described as differing mostly in feel rather than performance. They almost certainly are using exactly the same display panels (cut-down Note 3 panels with global updating). Both are undisputably better than DK2, but that's not exactly a big surprise. Do you have any source for that '1000 devs' figure? I'd be EXTREMELY surprised if there more more than maybe 100-200 Vive devkits in existence worldwide, and probably similar or even smaller numbers of CB prototypes. We also know there were nearly 120,000 DK2s in the wild mid-June. Even if only 1% of those are in the hands of developers rather than enthusiasts, that's still quite a few. SteamVR supports DK2 technically, but the performance is so bad it's not very usable for more than basic proof-of-concept tests. If you don't have a Vive at this point, it's unlikely you will have anything ready for release day. The situation with CV1 is a bit better, with DK2 still being a suitable development device as the SDK is regularly updated.
My biggest worry for VR is exclusive content for 1 device and exclusive content for another. Personally think if they split the user audience for VR it will fail pretty hard.
True, but it's way too early for the common featureset needed to make that viable. VR is far too dependant on minute low-level optimisations to tolerate adding an abstraction layer yet. And with the extreme optimisation requirements, it's a bad idea to rely on somebody else's API to drive your HMD acceptably. e.g. SteamVR currently has a DK2 implementation, but it's miles behind the official Oculus SDK in performance. But if somebody plays a game using SteamVR on an Oculus headset, and the performance is bad, the perception for most users is that the issue lies with Oculus' headset rather than SteamVR.
That will be a major problem for VR. The user base is not big enough for 2-3 separate VR solutions to succeed using different implementations. Or you could see one gain big traction the other basically be a sideshow for specific titles. Steam has the connections to make developers prioritise it over the other platforms.
There are a few different ways to implement SSAA in Elite. You can use the 'Oculus Quality' slider in Elite itself (changes the resolution the game is rendered at before warping), use DSR to change the resolution at which the game is rendered and warped (warp before downscale), or SSAA in the Elite settings (which SHOULD work the same as the Oculus Quality slider, but does not). Elite is not updated to the latest SDK (only recently upgrades to 0.5.x), and has only ever worked in bodged-on Extended mode rather than Direct Mode. Everything requires a lot of fiddling to get working.
Tried that in-game option and couldn't really see a difference. All options showed SDE, pixels etc. I prey that CV1 will be better and we will be able to easily read Elite Dangerous in-game text... One more thing. rainbowbridge sent me some demos for DK2 to watch. Two in particular - Technolust and Apollo experience. Technolust - looks really scary when I got close to those people in game - it was like looking at a stranger's face from 2cm close up Specially when this girl on Mars was watching me as well Unfortunately, I felt sick after 10 minutes of walking around in game.. However - Apollo experience - I will only say this: I literally cried watching this. It was sooo moving... Maybe I'm too sensitive and romantic for things like that, but I was so moved watching this - incredible experience! Thanks rainbowbridge
that's the future of VR Its meant to connect to your inner most important part, the humanity, the longing for knowledge, the passion for life, the sharing, the pursuit of good, fun and life. We all have a big step to get over with VR, its going to be a big change.
Amen to that! ..but seriously - I hope those Oculus numpties will make Elite text readable in CV1... I've just sold my DK2 and I'm ready for CV1 pre-order...
i've been actually looking forward to trying a proper VR (have only tried the cardboard thing with my phone), and this is what makes me fear VR will fail. getting enough content on one device, enough quality content that would make me think "that's £300 well spent" seems challenging enough (since pc gamers get fooked over with things like console ports, sli/crossfire not working properly and so on) but spread out over several devices is a recipe for a disaster. i guess the only thing i can do is wait and see how the whole thing plays out, reminds me of the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD war few years back...
Elite is currently a few SDK versions behind the current release. Particularly, in 0.6.x the new Compositor was unveiled, which allows for multiple resolutions to be layered before warp and display. The main upshot of this is you can render the game at one resolution, and supersaturate the UI at 4x or 8x the game resolution before warping, providing a much clearer view of text and icons. As for 'locked' content, it's rather a storm in a teacup at the moment. Some content is 'exclusive' to one platform because the owners of that platform are paying for the content to be created (i.e. Second Party development). Because VR requires such tight optimisation to a particular system, putting development time towards optimising for one system means less development time spent optimising for another. Remember also that the 'default' controllers for both are very different, so there is no common denominator there (requiring two different control schemes be targeted). I'm sure there will be plenty of games that will be released simultaneously for both VR headsets (because they're from some big-budget publisher who can afford to pay to work on both platforms at once, or they're a very simply experience that is so resource light it requires minimal optimisation), and plenty that will release first for one headset and then the other. It will simply take time.
Time is a luxury that VR does not have. It's all well and good thinking it will all eventually get released but it's far from certain. If Valve decides that there games will only work on there platform then VR is in trouble. Similar to OR and its exclusive deals. Both of them could really screw the other. Does remind me of blueray format wars. Which also delayed the initial uptake. The PS3 alone basically shoved blue ray into millions of homes. You can guarantee both consoles will have VR exclusive locked games that's the nature of the platform, PC is more open source platform and I'm not sure exclusive PC content locked to 1 VR is the way to go.
MS flight SIM x (FSX) for the next 20 hours on steam is at %20 price (£3.99) worth picking up due to http://flyinside-fsx.com/ VR rift enabler for FSX
Has anyone else managed to get the OVR service running on Windows 10 with an AMD card? I've tried setting it to Win 8 compatibility mode, but no dice.
Oculus aren't supporting Windows 10 yet, even for the 0.7.0 SDK version. Best to hold off on the Windows 10 upgrade until support is announced.
Haven't tried this MS flight sim, but is there a sim like old style Fighter Bomber game? So you pick a aircraft, arm it, get mission to destroy some land marks and get back to base kinda thing? IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey looks alright
