This might end up coming across as an advertisement, but I swear I'm just an excited nerd having fun with his new toy. I had a bunch of overtime pay come in and splurged on an HTC Vive, one of the two main VR gaming headsets out there. (along with the Oculus Rift. Honorable mention goes to the Samsung GearVR) It was a tough choice, the Rift is lighter, $200 cheaper, and many say that its image is a bit better because the lenses are better and the slightly smaller screen (?) gets better pixels per inch, or something. However, I went with the Vive because the Rift lacks two things at launch that I think were big mistakes: motion controllers and room-scale tracking. For now, Oculus games will be seated experiences with an Xbox controller. They plan to release some controllers with motion tracking at some point, but the Vive has its "Lighthouse" technology that tracks both the headset and the two hand contollers moving through a room with some pretty impressive accuracy. You can toss controllers from one hand to another while looking at only their virtual images, it's that responsive and accurate. You could probably juggle them... but I can't juggle in real life so I'm not about to try.
It's really hard to get across just how cool that makes things. So I recorded a video of me playing Space Pirate Trainer, one of the top-rated VR games at the moment.
Even this doesn't really get across the feeling, but it helps. Notice how I move around to dodge incoming attacks, a couple times hitting the deck (and a couple times falling on my ass!) Still getting the hang of the game, the gun sights don't seem to quite line up right with my eyes. (barrel angle is adjustable but I swear it's always too low from my perspective. maybe some of you gun nuts would be pros at this) Also, the actual gameplay is much smoother and sharper than the video: the headset runs at 90fps but this recording is only 30fps with lower resolution. All of these motions are accurate to what I was doing in the room. (the slow-mo is a game feature when you're shot at, which makes those Matrix dodges possible)
So anyone else VR gaming yet? Have any good recommendations? Space Pirate Trainer is definitely great. I've also heard great things about Audioshield and Hover Junkers, and I'm dying to try out Elite: Dangerous.
For anyone interested in the Vive, definitely do your research. It takes a fairly beefy graphics card: minimum recommended spec is an Nvidia GTX 970. The good news is that Nvidia is launching its 10xx line shortly which apparently has dramatically better VR capabilities, so adequate VR power may be found for even cheaper soon. I'm thinking the GTX 1060 will outdo the 970 in terms of VR performance and be comfortably priced. That said, it's always a good idea to check out benchmarks before buying a graphics card. (the GTX1060 isn't even announced yet, much less benchmarked)
Additionally, room-scale VR requires, well, a room. You don't need a ton of space, but a 6x6' area would be a minimum. Maximum size spec is 15x15'. And there's two sensors you need to be able to mount somewhere above your head in a stable location. (it comes with mounts you can screw into a wall, or some people just put them on top of sturdy bookshelves) Wobbly mounts are bad: the motors in the sensors spin pretty fast and vibration will mess with tracking accuracy. They need to be high enough that your head doesn't block line of sight between the two sensor stations, as that will screw with tracking.
I'm looking, I have a GTX960 though...
I thought vr had gone the way off the hula hoop. That's kind of cool.
I'm all the sudden thinking of architecture, engineering and even global travel. What can we see in vr that may not be available otherwise.
I was around for the first generation of vr. It was pretty cool but the graphics were lacking. They made a couple movies about it. (Lawnmower man was the coolest) than it disappeared for 27 years.Virtual surgeon training? Flight simulators? Some pretty amazing possibilities. Architecture is a good idea, you could walk around in a virtual building before a brick is ever laid. Or even design it in the virtual environment. I drew myself a house in Tilt Brush the other day. (it's a 3D painting program. Too bad I can't draw worth crap in 2D let alone 3D)
The tech just wasn't there before. Some people might remember Nintendo's "Virtual Boy" that came out in the 90's. It was disastrous. Gave people migraines and even risked eye damage from strain. Other attempts failed also, seeing a lot of issues with the same migraines, motion sickness, etc. Took a couple decades but people figured out you really, really need a few things for VR to work out:
1) True stereoscopic imaging, wherein two separate images are rendered with different viewpoints. Early attempts tried to shortcut this because it doubles the amount of work the graphics processing has to do. (you also have to render 3D objects rather than Virtual Boy's 2D objects presented in a kinda-stereoscopic manner)
2) High framerates. Unlike gaming on a flat monitor, VR needs to remain rock solid above 60FPS at a bare, bare minimum. 90 or more is ideal. Any drops below 60 start rapidly giving people problems with motion sickness and disorientation.
3) Head tracking with very high precision and very low response time. A disconnect between moving your head and how the image moves is not something the brain handles very well. If you turn your head, and the image doesn't move right along with it in about exactly the way the brain expects it, people can start getting motion sickness. Rift and Vive are in the 20-30ms range, and even that is on the edge for a lot of people. Some research shows under 10ms should be the target.
The above 3 were some challenging hurdles. It's a lot of pixels to render, and that rendering must be done very quickly and the image sent to the headset. They run 2160x1200 pixels rendered at 90 frames per second, and most PC gamers are sitting at 1920x1080 at 30-60 fps. On Xbox One, Battlefield 4 runs at 1280x720@60fps. This means VR headsets have to render 4-5 times as many pixels per second as a console or typical PC gamer's normal headset. That's why VR games have gone back several generations in terms of graphics quality.
The head tracking was a big technical hurdle for a long time also. Many of us have tried out Nintendo Wii/Playstation/Xbox consoles with varying versions of tracking, and they all leave something to be desired in terms of accuracy.
Vive's method is called Lighthouse, and it's pretty clever:
This Is How Valve’s Amazing Lighthouse Tracking Technology Works
The short version: it's some spinning IR lasers and some receivers on the headset and controllers. A strobe goes off, and the receivers wait for the spinning laser to sweep across them. After that, it's just a bunch of math to calculate relative position. Get position of several sensors on the same device, and you can figure out orientation.
I'll be grabbing a rift eventually. I'm waiting for some kind of triple-A VR titles to come out. The technology has appeared so fast it seems game devs are still trying to figure out what to do with it.
I was around for the first generation of vr. It was pretty cool but the graphics were lacking. They made a couple movies about it. (Lawnmower man was the coolest) than it disappeared for 27 years.
I was a little kid, I played a few vr games, they were neat, but the engines were so preoccupied developing the universe the games weren't much fun.LOL!!
I remember going to a few bars that had the VR boxing. You'd stand there with the helmet on your head punching at the air and everyone else laughed at you. I never tried it but I don't recall much in the way of rave reviews from it.
I'm really excited about VR. Though, it'll probably be a few years until I'll be able to get one. My laptop isn't nearly powerful enough, plus I ain't got $900 to drop on a Vive. I may get the PSVR if it's good enough. I hope it is.
I'm really, really crossing my fingers for the PSVR. Right now VR gaming is smack in the middle of "enthusiast nerd with too much disposable income" demographic. Developers are still figuring out what to do with it, or even whether to do anything at all. Elite: Dangerous is essentially the only AAA VR title right now, and even that's just an alternate viewing method for an already-established game. Most of what's out there is small tech demos and simple games, usually short because these are indy developers without the resources to make something bigger.
PSVR could change all of that. It's a platform with a huge userbase. Although I'm skeptical about that machine being able to keep up: a PS4's GPU is equivalent to the GTX 660 or 660ti or so, in terms of raw performance capability. It has an advantage of being a console, games can be developed to be highly optimized for the specific equipment they'll run on, but in the end it's a mid-tier graphics card from four years ago. They need more horsepower. Supposedly the PSVR will come with an external box with an additional processing unit, so an addon GPU in there maybe? But how the heck do you get that into a reasonable price range?
PSVR is already priced at $400, which isn't too bad. It's basically another console, but about half the price of the Vive, it's pretty reasonable. I'm also thinking that the box has to be some sort of GPU, because you can't have VR run at anything less than 1080p and 60FPS. You can't get by on 30fps anymore.
I'm looking, I have a GTX960 though...
Very nice
Ive been running a Radeon R9-390i Overclocked "Strix " video card
I wonder how it would handle VR?
This might end up coming across as an advertisement, but I swear I'm just an excited nerd having fun with his new toy. I had a bunch of overtime pay come in and splurged on an HTC Vive, one of the two main VR gaming headsets out there. (along with the Oculus Rift. Honorable mention goes to the Samsung GearVR) It was a tough choice, the Rift is lighter, $200 cheaper, and many
It exceeds the target spec for first gen VR (AMD 290/Nvidia 970) so I'm guessing it should work fine. I'm running 2x970s in SLI so can't readily compare. (My theoretical performance is better but SLI is dodgy in terms of actual performance scaling. Next build will definitely be single GPU!)
If I had the money i'd have a VR set right now. But its just too expensive atm.
I just bought Steam Vive for my son and it arrived yesterday. $800+ with tax, ouch! He says the other VR devices aren't up to snuff. His getting it comes with the stipulation that he author some quality games.
Author games as in make games or is he a youtuber?
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