General VR discussion thread

[Kaido]

I'm going to try some of these games out over the weekend. Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I'm telling family to not bother me this weekend as I'll be doing some serious research

Honestly, I'm more than happy with where the hardware is at, having started out with a Google Cardboard VR system. Roomscale & VR controllers are a huge step up, not to mention the extra graphical processing power of a PC with a gaming GPU. I don't see much being added in the future other than an increase in screen resolution, and maybe some extra controllers (like different grip styles for various weapons or controls in games). The biggest thing lacking right now is full-length, replayable games. Stuff like Holopoint & AudioShield work great because they're music & wave-increase based, so you can hop right in anytime, but it's kind of like playing checkers or perhaps Candy Crush...fun but repetitive.

Raw Data holds a lot of promise, as does Budget Cuts. Trickster VR is pretty fun but is only one "level" (defend the portal), although there will be an upcoming adventure mode in the future. What VR really needs is a title like Half-Life 3: VR because then people will go NUTS & VR will really take off. Oh, and they need to solve movement. I like teleportation in some games (works great in Battle Dome), but not in all games (hate it in Starseed). But I also don't want to spend $800 on a Virtuix Omni treadmill (and have it suck up my room space), especially since there's a ring & seatbelt system preventing you from doing a full squat & jumping around for dodges in VR. I don't know what the answer is or if there even is a good answer for it, but it's going to be kind of limiting for a lot of stuff like non-rails-based & non-stationary FPS games, for example. So I'm anxious to see what happens in the future.

It's funny watching a game on your HMD & then checking it out on your monitor, because most games just look like average whatever video games, but in VR, they look absolutely incredible!

 

[Linux23]

Honestly, I'm more than happy with where the hardware is at, having started out with a Google Cardboard VR system. Roomscale & VR controllers are a huge step up, not to mention the extra graphical processing power of a PC with a gaming GPU. I don't see much being added in the future other than an increase in screen resolution, and maybe some extra controllers (like different grip styles for various weapons or controls in games). The biggest thing lacking right now is full-length, replayable games. Stuff like Holopoint & AudioShield work great because they're music & wave-increase based, so you can hop right in anytime, but it's kind of like playing checkers or perhaps Candy Crush...fun but repetitive.

Raw Data holds a lot of promise, as does Budget Cuts. Trickster VR is pretty fun but is only one "level" (defend the portal), although there will be an upcoming adventure mode in the future. What VR really needs is a title like Half-Life 3: VR because then people will go NUTS & VR will really take off. Oh, and they need to solve movement. I like teleportation in some games (works great in Battle Dome), but not in all games (hate it in Starseed). But I also don't want to spend $800 on a Virtuix Omni treadmill (and have it suck up my room space), especially since there's a ring & seatbelt system preventing you from doing a full squat & jumping around for dodges in VR. I don't know what the answer is or if there even is a good answer for it, but it's going to be kind of limiting for a lot of stuff like non-rails-based & non-stationary FPS games, for example. So I'm anxious to see what happens in the future.

It's funny watching a game on your HMD & then checking it out on your monitor, because most games just look like average whatever video games, but in VR, they look absolutely incredible!

Kaido, what are your rig specs? I'm thinking about upgrading my gtx 970 and i5-2500k CPU/System to something more beefier than what I got. It runs VR just fine but I could use that extra grunt.

And for some reason Elite Dangerous keeps shutting down my monitors and the VR HMD after a few minutes of playtime. PC is up and running and I can hear the audio going on, but the screens go into sleep mode. Anyone ever heard of that? Same with Spacerift Demo. My GPU doesn't go over 74C and I have a upgraded/downgraded Nvidia's drivers and can't seem to figure out why playing these games in VR cause my video card to stop outputting video.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Kaido]

Kaido, what are your rig specs? I'm thinking about upgrading my gtx 970 and i5-2500k CPU/System to something more beefier than what I got. It runs VR just fine but I could use that extra grunt.

And for some reason Elite Dangerous keeps shutting down my monitors and the VR HMD after a few minutes of playtime. PC is up and running and I can hear the audio going on, but the screens go into sleep mode. Anyone ever heard of that? Same with Spacerift Demo. My GPU doesn't go over 74C and I have a upgraded/downgraded Nvidia's drivers and can't seem to figure out why playing these games in VR cause my video card to stop outputting video.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

I am currently borrowing a buddy's gaming rig (he's traveling, woot woot!). It has an older i7, 24 gigs of RAM, 240gb SSD boot drive (which I actually just upgraded to 500gb because I ran out of space with all of the VR games), and a GTX980 Ti (iirc it's a 6-gig card). I plan on getting one of the newly-announced GTX-enabled laptops around Christmas (torn between a thinner 1060/1070 or a beefier but far heavier 1080/1080-SLI portable), which is when I swap out the desktop rig, so I've got some time to save up. Anyway, I have the desktop PC paired with some crap old small Dell DVI monitor, just enough to setup Steam & whatnot since that's really all I'm using it for.

I have not tried Elite Dangerous yet; that's an odd issue to be having. Are the control panel settings set to any kind of sleep mode after a period of time? I wonder if the VR is bypassing the system & enabling them to sleep somehow.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm using something fairly similar as my VR PC is an i7-4770k with a 980 Ti, and I haven't had any issues. Although, I haven't played Elite Dangerous either. Not sure if I'd be into it, and I'm not sure if I want to pay $60 to find out.

I did get my VR Cover in, but I haven't really had a chance to try it. Overall, I think it took about 3 weeks to get to me. Now, I need to figure out if I want to buy a VR Lens or not as wearing glasses with the Vive is not fun. ...well... if you have a big head like me! (My IPD is something around 73!)

 

[Kaido]

I'm using something fairly similar as my VR PC is an i7-4770k with a 980 Ti, and I haven't had any issues. Although, I haven't played Elite Dangerous either. Not sure if I'd be into it, and I'm not sure if I want to pay $60 to find out.

I did get my VR Cover in, but I haven't really had a chance to try it. Overall, I think it took about 3 weeks to get to me. Now, I need to figure out if I want to buy a VR Lens or not as wearing glasses with the Vive is not fun. ...well... if you have a big head like me! (My IPD is something around 73!)

Same, I think the last two things I'm considering for my VR setup are a micro-DAC & VR lenses. Those, and a GTX laptop down the road. And maybe a couple of portable Lighthouses for travel

 

[blurredvision]

Purchased the Apollo 11 VR Experience today and sat through it in its entirety. Was about 45 minutes from start to finish. It was pretty awesome, I think worth the ~$10. I'd really like to see more like this, history lessons that put you into the event.

 

[Kaido]

Three more games:

1. Racket NX: (free demo) Basically tennis in 360. Pretty fun. I like this better than Holoball & Cyberpong.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/428080/

2. QuiVR: (free demo) Another keep-defense archery game, similar to Longbow from The Lab, but with different bad guys & teleportation. Edit: Try multi-player!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/489380/

3. Grapply: (free demo) Basically Spiderman mechanics, you shoot glowing spiderwebs from each hand to pull yourself forward. Very basic graphics (for now) & you race against AI bots. Fun gameplay!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/516830/

I'm thinking about getting a HOTAS setup for stuff like Elite Dangerous, and maybe a wheel & pedals combo at some point. It's been ages since I've done any kind of digital gaming!

 

[adtrance]

Three more games:

1. Racket NX: (free demo) Basically tennis in 360. Pretty fun. I like this better than Holoball & Cyberpong.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/428080/

So far this has been my favorite.

Simple but flashy visuals - very smooth, even with SS at 2.0. I would consider it more like cyber-racquetball played solo. Gets the heart rate up, great game to play 10-15 minutes in the morning.

Looking forward to the full version.

 

[Linux23]

I'm enjoying the hell out of Final Approach. Awesome game. And yes, I admit, I just setup room scale today in a 6x6 room and it is awesome. I can see the VR shaperone come on as soon as i near a wall. Now i'm thinking of setting a play area down in my basement. My family may never see me again.

I was this close to sending the Vive back because I hated the standing only option compared to the Rift, the blurred vision on the outside of the lens area, the heavy headset and thick cabling.

But now that I gave it a full crack, and setup room scale, the Rift is going back.

Plus I got my MS code for the free games so I have a lot of playing to do.

 

[Linux23]

Kaido, i'm downloading your suggested games now. Thanks man. You kept me in it and I don't regret the money I spent on the Vive.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Kaido, i'm downloading your suggested games now. Thanks man. You kept me in it and I don't regret the money I spent on the Vive.

He has a tendency to do that. Thanks to him I don't regret my Instant Pot or my Hackintosh build.

 

[ImpulsE69]

So my Rift issue ended up being a RAM issue that happened to start that day and got worse over the last week or so. All fixed now and everything is working great. Would have affected the Vive as well, I just never tried it.

I am a bit put off by the latest from the Oculus camp stating that they still don't think room scale is all that and they don't have many plans to move in that direction....I want to say it's because they are a bit stubborn and don't like choice...hence many of their decisions in the last 6 months.

I also STILL cannot get Trials of Tatooing to work. Dev's are working with me now to figure it out so that's cool.

 

[Kaido]

So far this has been my favorite.

Simple but flashy visuals - very smooth, even with SS at 2.0. I would consider it more like cyber-racquetball played solo. Gets the heart rate up, great game to play 10-15 minutes in the morning.

Looking forward to the full version.

Yes, definitely more like racquetball. Spent many hours playing at the fire station near my house growing up, brings back memories! Multi-player is gonna rock!

 

[Kaido]

Kaido, i'm downloading your suggested games now. Thanks man. You kept me in it and I don't regret the money I spent on the Vive.

Man I'm tired. I read that as downvoting my suggested games

 

[Kaido]

So my Rift issue ended up being a RAM issue that happened to start that day and got worse over the last week or so. All fixed now and everything is working great. Would have affected the Vive as well, I just never tried it.

I am a bit put off by the latest from the Oculus camp stating that they still don't think room scale is all that and they don't have many plans to move in that direction....I want to say it's because they are a bit stubborn and don't like choice...hence many of their decisions in the last 6 months.

I also STILL cannot get Trials of Tatooing to work. Dev's are working with me now to figure it out so that's cool.

Ahhh that stinks! I've had RAM issues like that in the past with the most random issues ever.

I'm curious to see how Rift's version of Roomscale works. I really enjoy the Vive. It's basically a Rift + Wiimotes + being able to walk around your room. There are just so many games you couldn't play well without Roomscale!

 

[Kaido]

He has a tendency to do that. Thanks to him I don't regret my Instant Pot or my Hackintosh build.

We've been neffing together for far too long Secretly my mission in life is to get everyone to save money on computers while getting fit through VR jazzercise & IIFYIP (if it fits your Instant Pot).

It's funny, my last remaining Hackintosh build is circa 2011, my wife's i5. All we've done is upgrade to larger drives as time has gone on, and keep updated with the latest OSX builds via Tonymac's tools - and it's more stable than ever! Once Tonymac packaged everything up, that was kind of the end of guides because it's gotten so dang easy now, which is exactly where we wanted to get it in the first place. After that, my interest in computer stuff has been pretty mellow...smartwatches etc. didn't really do it for me. VR is the first nerdy thing I've gotten really psyched about in a looooooong time. And the bonus is that it actually makes it FUN to exercise, which I was hoping for with my Virzoom bike, but definitely wasn't expecting with games like Holopoint & Audioshield.

 

[Kaido]

Purchased the Apollo 11 VR Experience today and sat through it in its entirety. Was about 45 minutes from start to finish. It was pretty awesome, I think worth the ~$10. I'd really like to see more like this, history lessons that put you into the event.

Thanks, I was wondering if it was any good.

Also, I misread that initially as "purchased the Adr1ft VR Experience today...history lessons...etc." and was like did I not pay attention in history class?? rofl

 

[Kaido]

Kaido, i'm downloading your suggested games now. Thanks man. You kept me in it and I don't regret the money I spent on the Vive.

Also, I think it's only going to get better with time. I've enjoyed my GearVR for the past 8 months or so, but getting Vive with the VR controllers & Roomscale setup and then playing the Budget Cuts demo really opened my eyes to how much fun VR games are going to be once we see some AAA titles. That & Raw Data were just so awesome to play through the first time. And then there's cool games like multi-player QuiVR, Final Approach, Racket NX, etc.

 

[Kaido]

So far this has been my favorite.

Simple but flashy visuals - very smooth, even with SS at 2.0. I would consider it more like cyber-racquetball played solo. Gets the heart rate up, great game to play 10-15 minutes in the morning.

Looking forward to the full version.

SS 2.0 is amazing. I played a level of QuiVR with it & it murdered my GTX980 Ti, but it looked sooooo good!

 

[Kaido]

...Final Approach. Awesome game. And yes, I admit, I just setup room scale today in a 6x6 room and it is awesome. I can see the VR shaperone come on as soon as i near a wall. Now i'm thinking of setting a play area down in my basement. My family may never see me again.

I was this close to sending the Vive back because I hated the standing only option compared to the Rift, the blurred vision on the outside of the lens area, the heavy headset and thick cabling.

But now that I gave it a full crack, and setup room scale, the Rift is going back.

Plus I got my MS code for the free games so I have a lot of playing to do.

Final Approach is strange, it's one of those games that I don't go out of my way to play (I usually start out with a round or two of Audioshield to get warmed up from bouncing around), but it's just amazing every time you play it. It always blows my mind when you lean down to see the planes & the little people at eye level. Have you played the UFO level with the aircraft carriers in the ocean yet? Hilariously fun!

Which games did your bundle come with? I believe all of them come with TiltBrush; if you like to doodle even a little bit, this app is completely mesmerizing. I can't wait for them to bring in stuff like Google Sketchup, Revit, AutoCAD etc. to do project layouts. It would be amazing to be able to lay out a house design, or build a DIY subwoofer, or even download CAD drawings of say computer parts & virtually build your custom gaming PC before it arrives from Newegg!

I haven't had a chance to play with a Rift so I can't compare, but as I've been paying attention to the lensing, I definitely see what you mean about the blurred vision, especially when you're at the waiting level while loading where you only see the two Lighthouses - the circular rings are really visible. I think I've just gotten used to looking straight forward through the sweet spot & then turning my head rather than my eyes around in 360-degree games. It doesn't bother me at all after a few weeks of ownership. And surprisingly, the cable hasn't been an issue, either - it's pretty natural to just step over it & untangle yourself. I'm still looking forward to a wireless upgrade with 4K screens, but I think Vive did a pretty good job overall with their freshman offering & I definitely think it was worth the extra money to get the VR controllers & Lighthouses.

 

[Kaido]

We should form some play groups for stuff like Battle Dome & QuiVR. It's actually pretty fun talking to people on the Vive, the audio is remarkably clear without having to do any effort on tweaking the input levels or anything.

 

[Kaido]

One thing that is interesting with the archery games is how many different ways there are to hold a bow & aim an arrow in VR. Every single one is different, not to mention the variations in gameplay, despite all of them having the same basic gameplay mechanics as far as weaponry is concerned. Archery is definitely one of my favorite thing to do in VR. Top bow & arrow games right now:

1. QuiVR: (free, demo for now) Castle defense game similar to LOTR, wicked fun with multi-player. Pretty chill game overall & fun when the music picks up & all kinds of goons show up!
2. Longbow: (free, part of "The Lab") Cartoony castle defense, plus there are TNT barrels, hot oil, and balloons! I initially wrote this off as just another mini-game in The Lab, but I play it at least once or twice a week. Always cracks me up when the little paper dudes do ninja somersaults when you try to shoot them haha!
3. HoloPoint: ($15) Hologram targets, wave-based gameplay. Note that it does save points every five levels (shoot above the start menu at the numbered boxes to resume). Also note that you can tweak the quiver & arrow mechanics in the settings.
4. Trickster VR: ($10, early access) Archery, along with short-range weaponry (sword or throwing knives). Fun spin on the archery concept with waves of increasingly talented orcs that arrive on floating islands that dock to yours. Future gameplay will feature adventure mode!

I would definitely build up your time with archery games because the motions can cause some initial pain. QuiVR has actually made me hurt the most, both my shoulder & my wrist especially, but that was after playing for like two hours straight lol. You don't realize how much arm stamina you don't have until you play archery or another arm-based game like Audioshield & feel the weakness kick in so quickly, haha. I use my 3-pound wrist weights in Holopoint for some added exercise, as well as my Training Mask. I'll probably use the weights in Trickster too because your shooting can really ramp up at times.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I couldn't play ADR1FT for more than 5-10 minutes...ugh,

Tried RecRoom (played paintball) and Altspace for a bit. Both were cool, chatting etc with people from all over.

 

[Kaido]

I couldn't play ADR1FT for more than 5-10 minutes...ugh,

Tried RecRoom (played paintball) and Altspace for a bit. Both were cool, chatting etc with people from all over.

Yeah, even though Adr1ft has Vive support, I don't feel like it's fully optimized for the controls or POV tracking. It's one of the few Vive games that has given me a degree of sim-sickness. iirc it was the sideways somersaults that kicked in the queasiness.

I'm hoping that The Climb to get full Vive support at some point in the future because I think it'd be awesome to play that with the VR controllers. Everest VR was released earlier this month but has pretty dismal reviews, so for $25 I think I'm going to skip it.

 

[Linux23]

That Grapply Demo almost made me fall because it made me dizzy. Not sure why they would develop a game like that when you're supposed to be moving, yet you're stationary and your brain is trying to figure out if you're moving or not.

Not my cup of tea.