VR - Is it really going to be a success? Or, thanks Time for starting a discussion!

Games
747

Couple of days later…

Having a lot of fun with the Vive. Still trying out mostly casual/free games. I think the most entertaining thus far are Google Earth and the Budget Cuts demo. Budget Cuts had us sneaking on hands and knees, ducking around corners, crawling all over the floor. It offered perhaps the best sense of movement and space of everything I tried, despite the retro graphics. Also, it’s almost as entertaining to watch someone play as it is to play it yourself.

I am somewhat prone to motion sickness (i.e. in low FOV 1st person games), but I was pleased to not encounter any issues with the Vive. I felt a at-odds with reality after a long gaming session, but not motion sick.

I am trying to work out the proper fit. I’ve got a fair bit of blurriness outside of the sweet spot in the center, and I can’t sort out whether that is just the nature of the beast or if I should be getting a crisp view all the way across the display. There is lots of advice online about how to adjust it, foam or no foam, IPD, etc

I wear glasses, which complicates things (I am also TERRIFIED of scratching the Vive lenses with my glasses). I had a hard time actually sorting out what glasses to use. My progressive distance glasses seem to make things worse, and my readers are just too strong. I settled on an older pair of glasses that weren’t as strong. Even with that, though, I still can’t quite sort out if I am seeing what I should be seeing. For example, in the gray loading room if I open up he Steam menu, the word “Settings” in the bottom right corner is pretty blurry, unless I move my head (not just my eyes) to look directly at it.

I also have funny shaped head. I might be a worst case scenario.

Anyway, do any Vive owners here have any feedback on the display? I know there’s some inherent technology concessions with the fresnel lenses and the low resolution, but I just can’t sort out if I’m seeing things as I should. There needs to be some sort of in VR adjustment grid or something, like calibrating my old rear projection TV.

748

It’s just the nature of the Vive.

The Vive & the Rift are both very sensitive to vertical movement above and below your eyes. That’s basically how you focus, as you probably have noticed by now. The Vive has a much smaller sweet spot for focus though, while the Rift has a much larger spot. A game like Elite with it’s large dashboard puts them in stark contrast. I have to constantly move my head with the Vive to read anything whereas I have more leeway with the Rift.

The Rift does have much worse god rays though.

Once I am in the games though I just don’t notice either issue unless it’s a game with a massive dashboard like Elite.

749

Thanks. I’ll quit being so fussy about it then.

On an unrelated note, we also had a lot of fun with QuiVR this weekend. It’s an archery game (duh), of which there are several, but we found the mechanics of shooting to be pretty amazing, and the graphics have a decent level of polish. I’ll be buying the full version post·haste.

750

One thing to try, out of curiosity, is Google Earth with “comfort mode” turned off. It’s pretty striking how vertigo sets in when your peripheral vision senses movement. I can use it all day with comfort mode, but a few minutes of zooming around with it turned off it very disorienting.

751

Yeah, I actually tried it for a bit without comfort mode and seemed to be OK. Only for a minute or two, but I expected it to make me floopy right away.

More research required :)

752

My mother in law gave me a “VR headset” for Christmas, thinking she was getting me a tech gift. It’s just a piece of plastic you put your own phone into. No no software, no hardware, nothing. It generically says “download the app!” on it, with no link or named app or anything. I feel like it’s basically the “Asylum Films” of VR devices, a money grab to confuse end-consumers who are not familiar with the subject.

I feel like this has the possibility of putting people off VR. Lots of scam artists out there trying to make a quick buck are going to give a terrible impression of the state of VR.

This piece of crap is called “MVMT Virtual Reality Headset” by “iWave Sicura Media” out of New York, made in China, if anyone is interested in what to avoid.

753

Walmart has been selling a ton of similar cheapo VR phone attachments here. I went on the 23rd to walk around and the electronics department had a full pallet of these things. People were buying them.

754

Wow, it’s a mad gold rush to deceive and swindle people. Yay capitalism and free markets!

755

Even Viewmaster is in on it!

http://www.view-master.com/en-us

756

I mean, they’re basically all just google cardboards, right? I actually don’t know what the difference between Samsung gearVR and cardboard is. Does gearVR actually do anything other than provide lenses?

757

As @CLWheeljack said they are all copies of google cardboard, which was made by google to make VR very cheap to give people an idea of its potential without laying down much money (they’re usually 5-20$).

You should be able to search google cardboard on your mobile device or with google and hopefully get help on how to get it to function. I heard google cardboard is still fun, although you have to go in with proper expectations.

758

Yeah it’s funny hey, how it mildly messes with your perception of reality afterwards. I found that feeling went away after a bit of VR experience. It seems to reset if you take too long a break from VR though.

Same here, but the lack of peripheral annoyed me so I persevered with it off. Before too long the feeling went away, or became less noticeable, so it seems to be something you can overcome.

759

This actually made me excited to order one from Amazon to try it. Then I remembered my wife dropped her iPhone 6+ about three times so the screen is all cracked. That probably affects the VR experience.

760

Sorry in advance for not reading through the 750 posts so far but as a wearer of glasses and a tech lover, should I be looking at the rift or vive if I’m going to get into VR?

761

My understanding is that the Rift, the Vive, and the PSVR all work well with glasses. My glasses-wearing buddy spent 30 min in the Vive the other day and never mentioned anything about his eyewear being a problem.

762

Of the three, the Rift caused me the most trouble with glasses – not a major issue when it was on but taking the headset off took my glasses with it.

763

I’m leaning towards the vive, is now a good time to buy as I think there are rumors of the Vive 2 just around the corner.

764

From what I’ve heard (including input from helpful folks up-thread), the Vive is a bit more comfortable than the Rift with glasses, and the PSVR is the best of any of them.

The Rift supposedly tends to squish the glasses to your face, while the Vive might be a better fit for glasses depending on your frames. I have big-ish head and relatively large glasses, and it’s pretty uncomfortable with the Vive. I could try some smaller frames, but after seeing a bunch of horror stories online I am terrified of scratching the Vive lenses. I’ve got a kit on order that someone put together for lens inserts (Reddit thread), and I am going to give that a try. For now, I’m just now using glasses in the Vive, and putting up with the extra blur.

One piece of good news is that if you are a bit near-sighted, you may not actually need your glasses. The focal distance is apparently at about the length of an outstretched arm.

Later is always better with technology, but I think the Vive 2 rumors have been debunked a bit (they aren’t showing a Vive 2 at CES despite the rumors), and I personally don’t think we’ll see a Vive 2 in 2017.

765

Personally, the only one I would not wait on is the PSVR. It is what it is and will be supported with the PS4 platform. I think the PC-driven VR devices (mainly Vive and Rift) are going to get cheaper and better pretty soon. They’re a lot of fun to try and to play with for a little while. I wouldn’t call them novelty devices, but they’re pretty clearly Gen 1 devices.

I remember my mother receiving a Gen 1 iPad from my Dad for Xmas about 6 yrs ago. At the time, there weren’t really any good tablet specific apps, the hardware was shaky, and there were no clear use cases for it. The iPad 2 came along and established Apple’s tablet line and did so at the expense of the original iPad. Today, the iPad 2 still can be a useful device (depending on what you’re doing) but the original iPad is all but forgotten.

I sort of think of the Vive and the Rift as the original iPad equivalents.

766

Some out-of-order tips addressing HTC Vive concerns I read earlier in this thread (source: I’ve been playing mine tons and some of these worked for me):

On hitting the “Sweet Spot” for pupil positioning (make sure you get the IPD right too, check your Vive manual): An easy trick is to use the horizontal and vertical laser grid lines of the chaperone boundaries. Carefully walk your visor right in front of the lines, align the vertical, strap in the side straps, align the horizontal, strap in the top strap. This is a useful tip to instruct guests or demo fit the helmet onto people.

If you are having position tracking issues or concerns, there is a “skin” for the Base Stations on the Steam Workshop (accessible under the SteamVR options under “Customize”) that gives them huge guiding lines showing their alignment and field of view, which makes orientating them or confirming their orientation and angling a snap and works quite well.

On “glasses make me nervous / I don’t want to touch the lens”: You may already know this, but you can adjust the distance of the lenses (and the whole display). On the “ears” of the Vive where the side straps attach are grey rubber rings. These pull out and rotate, and then you can rotate them towards the front as dials (there is also a distance indicator visible under the visor once it moves). If you wear glasses or somehow feel like the interior of the headset is claustrophobic or too close to your eyes, you might be happy setting this a notch or two forward.

On the opposite end (which covers me), if you are of the “I want more Field of View” and are good at hitting the sweet spot, you can actually take off just the bottom parts of the foam and sort of move them down to straddle your cheekbones instead of the normal position, as described here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4ev8sh/how_to_get_vive_fov_bigger/ . This simple trick lets you get your eyeballs quite close to the lens, if that’s your bag.

Side note: I’m at least moderately nearsighted and because of the short focal distance of the Vive, I have no need for glasses for subjects at any “virtual distance”.

And as a random game recommendation which might be pertinent to QT3, if you love shooters, don’t miss out on the Doom 3 BFG mod or the Serious Sam First Encounter VR remastering. They are both intense (especially Doom 3, which takes some setting up but then when you have it working it is quite the hardcore experience – simultaneously it works as a horror game as well as a challenging shooter, it’s like the dream of what it tried to originally accomplish actually works in VR…), and both awesome. For a free experience, don’t miss Rec Room, and Rec Room Paintball.