Ah c’mon, what could go wrong? :p
It will certainly lead to some interesting criminally negligent manslaughter cases.
BBC Earth, the producer behind the groundbreaking footage, has announced a new partnership with Oculus to launch three new VR experiences, which will be available for the Rift and Samsung’s Gear VR headsets in the coming weeks.
Is this saying Vive owners are completely left out of this experience?
Subject to Re-Vive, sounds like it. Gear uses the Oculus storefront, so it sounds like that’s how they’re distributing it.
That’s what Facebook money can do for you.
That bites. I almost want to buy a Vive as a way to protest.
Tim Sweeney drops some numbers.
http://www.glixel.com/interviews/epics-tim-sweeney-on-vr-and-the-future-of-civilization-w459561
[quote]
Have you been disappointed by the sales of VR so far?
It’s pretty much what we expected – a little more than half a million PC units; I don’t know the PSVR numbers; several million smartphone VR units. That’s a good number to start with.[/quote]
HTC outselling Oculus 2-to-1.
PC VR at around half a million total sales
We have a new generation of monopolists developing. That’s kind of scary. Already, Facebook and Twitter want to censor certain types of news from certain websites, because we claim they’re fake. But what we really mean is we don’t agree with them.
That’s an interesting take on the situation. The rest was interesting, but that soured it a bit.
it’s right up there with disagree with the business model but taking the money anyway because its, well money.
Job Simulator apparently had total sales of $3M so far (i.e. about 100k copies): http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-01-06-job-simulator-tops-usd3-million-in-sales
One important caveat is that some people put the number of VR headsets in the hands of the press or developers at about 200k, and those are included in the 500k number, so the sell through to clients might be smaller.
I just wanted to say a huge thank you to @Nut for this post. THANK YOU!
I’ve had the Vive since May and, while I’ve always loved it, I wasn’t ever too impressed with the FOV and overall sharpness or resolution that was possible. Well, I had never bothered to actually measure my IPD or adjust the horizontal/vertical positioning like you describe.
But after seeing your post, I finally made those adjustments yesterday, plus I removed the foam and inverted it so it rests lower on my face and closer to my eyes… and the overall improvement in clarity and field of view is amazing!
So here’s what I do with my Vive that doesn’t get enough word of mouth around here. Virtual Desktop!
It’s the closest thing to a killer app I’ve found for gaming. If you’re only enjoying VR-enabled games and applications with your VR goggles then you are seriously missing out.
It’s true that most AAA games don’t work smoothly in Virtual Desktop. Frame rate stutter and screen flicker will ruin games like Dark Souls III or Watch Dogs 2. But depending on the capabilities of your CPU/video card, you can enjoy some astonishing results with less-demanding indie fare. Anything that can tolerate being rendered twice across two monitors.
By default, all Steam games will launch into a Game Theater in Virtual Desktop. This is a hopelessly lame screen setup with very limited, barebones settings. So the first thing you need to do with any game you want to try in Virtual Desktop is go to your Game Properties and uncheck the box marked “Use Desktop Game Theatre while Steam VR is active.” Now when you launch your game in Virtual Desktop, it’ll stay in Virtual Desktop.
The beauty of Virtual Desktop is that you can adjust the Screen Size and Distance sliders from an IMAX-sized screen smack up against your nose to a little TV screen floating way off in the distance… or anything in between.
So your screen can be flat and huge and maybe that floats your boat, but check that little box next to Curved and the magic really starts happening. Now you can wrap the giant screen around your field of vision. My favorite setting for loads of titles is to have the Distance slider almost as far out as possible while the Size setting makes the edges of the screen just out of sight at the top/bottom of the image and the left/right wraps around your natural field of vision.
Try American Truck Simulator where you have to swivel your head naturally to the left to look out your driver’s side window and to your right to look out the passenger side window. And the open road fills your entire windshield. Stunning!
I recently played through Inside in its entirety (GAWD, such a great game!) in this giant-curved-screen format and it was amazing. And now that Nut helped me improve the overall resolution and sharpness of the entire image, I want to play through it again.
Hyper Light Drifter, The Flame in the Flood, Steamworld Heist, No Man’s Sky, Owlboy, Abzu, The Witness (WOW!), Salt & Sanctuary, these games are given a whole new sense of scale and visual presentation and giant-screen immersiveness. It even works with a handful of AAA games like Doom.
Also worth trying, check the box that says Floating so the screen gets off the horizontal plane. Recline back in your gaming chair and rest your head and let the huge game float above you at a 45 degree angle. Lie down in a beanbag chair and play I Am Setsuna as if it’s projected on the ceiling.
In conclusion, THANK YOU, NUT! And also, if you’re only playing VR games with your VR goggles, then do yourself a favor and start indie-gaming in Virtual Desktop pronto!
But doesn’t this game have proper VR support though? Euro Truck 2 does, at least in-game.
I don’t believe that’s been added yet but I only dabble with the game now and then. Any time I can’t decide if I want to listen to music or play a game, I hop in the big rig and do both at the same time.
It definitely has Oculus support, and it’s great (frame rate issues aside, but if you have a Pascal card you should be fine). You have to use the -oculus launch parameter. Don’t know about Vive, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
On Virtual Desktop, have you (or anyone else) figured out how to do PiP with it? I’d love to have my second monitor displayed in the corner of my headset while playing ED or ATS. I’ve read some things online suggesting Virtual Desktop could do that, but I haven’t worked out how.
I don’t know, but I wish it could make a virtual display without having to use the physical monitor setup.
Much as I love the increased sharpness and field of vision that comes with removing the foam, I do not love the scratchy velcro on my cheeks or heavy goggles weighing down on my sinuses. So I found this vid and ordered a pair of the 6mm foam replacement covers. I’ll let y’all know if they’re worth a damn.
I’d actually ordered a set of the VRCovers already. They FEEL better than the stock ones, but they are a bit thicker. I stopped using them, unfortunately, because they were too big to fit my glasses into.
Diego
Sounds like you probably went for the cushier 14mm option? I’m lucky I don’t wear glasses so I ordered the 6mm varietal.
Hopefully we’ll get a good replacement for the head straps too. I finally detached the cable cover last night and unplugged the audio cable I wasn’t using. So funny that there’s a little USB port in there.
Someday we’re gonna look back at these geeky, clunky contraptions and laugh.
A productive VR weekend…
Got my 3d printed inserts installed into my Vive with prescription lenses. It’s nice being able to see without the discomfort of wearing glasses (or the fear of scratching the Vive lenses).
Also moved my Vive playscape to the other side of the family room, after being struck by the epiphany that I didn’t need to be near the TV (and in fact realizing I don’t want to be near the TV, 'cause that’s an expensive accident waiting to happen).
In so doing, I expanded my placspace from about 2.5m square to 3.5m square. It made me feel like this:
https://media.giphy.com/media/ceLygpJHjm3te/giphy.gif
Had a fair bit of fun with Diner Duo.This basic concept is pretty cool as a way make VR involve friends/family via local coop (one person on the screen with an Xbox controller taking orders – the other in the Vive cooking burgers). Is there anything else similar?