Tried out the Dell-visor-mixed-reality-vr thing yesterday evening! There’s over 1800 posts in this thread, so we may as well have another opinion on the experience:
The Microsoft Mixed-Reality setup/cliff-house stuff went smoothly. I only set up for the standing/sitting environment and not the room environment, though. A big selling point for me was the inside-out tracking, since for now and at least for the next few months, I’m not in a space where I can play and move around, really, and mounting crap on the walls or whatever seems lame.
First game I hopped into was the Windows Store version of Minecraft (I’m not sure if the normal Java version has VR support?) where I punched a few trees, and walked off a cliff. And experimented with various locomotion settings to give myself that authentic VR induced motion sickness feeling, haha. It was neat, but didn’t really sell me on the idea that I should only be playing Minecraft in VR or anything, but it does seem like it would be fun to hop into the world and experience it like that now and then, when I feel like being a tourist among my shoddy creations.
SteamVR mostly went smoothly. Centering was a big problem for me and it took me a while to realize I was centered 90 degrees to the right of where I should have been. I’m guessing, but it doesn’t seem SteamVR is getting the positioning data correctly/directly after setting it up with the Microsoft software in seated-mode. Then there is the issue of launching games and having them appear centered on wherever you happened to be looking at some point in the launch cycle. I found that if I go to the detail screen, hit the recenter button, and launch the game from there, that I have better luck than launching directly from that SteamVR living-room-thing. But it’s a process that took longer to work out than I would like to admit. Got stuck at the Subnautica title screen for a few minutes before realizing the menu was somewhere below floor level for some reason. Then there was the time I launched SteamVR and it had me 180 degrees off center. Did not realize centering was going to be as big an issue as it has been, but there we go.
Also, Subnautica was the neatest thing I’ve experienced so far. Playing with the gamepad, the only thing that irked me was I couldn’t change pitch when swimming by moving the right stick up and down - it doesn’t do anything. Had to move my head up and down in a way that is in no way reasonable for really playing the game because there is a weird helmet thing on my head. I can understand disabling the pitch on land when walking, but it doesn’t seem necessary in water. A nit-pick, maybe. It was, regardless, the most enjoyable movement outside of a cockpit view.
Tried some other games I happened to have: Project Cars was fun but looked just awful for some reason. Apparently the sequel fairs better in VR, but I don’t have it. Did the first training mission in Elite a few times, but need to change my input to minimize accidental rolling (I was using the mouse), because, wow, that makes my stomach churn pretty quickly. I tried getting Euro Truck Simulator 2 running in VR, but all I got was my vision filled with a tiny corner of the loading animation. Checked out Obduction, too, which I finished not long ago. Might be worth another visit to see if I can give myself vertigo on the cliff paths.
I’m using a GTX 980. I guess that’s over a couple years old, now, and I didn’t have any performance issues, lucky me.
My feeling at the moment is that cockpit games are going to be my thing, with some virtual tourism in the survival/crafting genre. At least until I get the space to take better advantage of the VR controller-enabled games. I tried that Blade Runner apartment/axe-body-spray simulator, but I dropped the revolver that starts the game and since I was sitting down it fell below where my actual floor was. No way to get to it without punching a hole into the basement, heh. But bopping balloons in the SteamVR introduction was strangely satisfying, so I’m pretty certain I’m missing out on a chunk of VR-unique stuff without having some room to wiggle around.
No big complaints about the hardware. The visor was comfortable enough. Took some experimenting to get the tightness and placement more or less right. Easy to get on and off, and the hinge is nice to have, too. The weight didn’t bother me. The controllers were easy to use, and I didn’t have any tracking issues. Didn’t get too hot or sweaty, but I was literally just loafing on the couch with a cat in my lap the whole time which has always been the best way to experience the technology of the future.
Still trying to figure out how to get better clarity around the edges of the screens. I have some blur and the tightness of the visor impacted that a lot more than I expected (tighter the better, but don’t want the top of my head to pop off), so I think I still need to work that out a little more. I also need to get my pupil distance setting correct, I guess. Tried this online measurement tool a dozen times and think I’ve got a good value to use next session. I’ll ask my optometrist what my actual measurement is in my next exam in a few weeks.
I’ve read that fiddling with the super-sampling can improve the overall visual quality, but haven’t done too much with that, yet, other than crank it up to maximum that one time, which didn’t go all that well, predictably. There are a few other settings in SteamVR that basically have no comprehensible description that I need to look up and see what they do.
I also have an issue with light bleed around elements on the screen (usually bright white HUD elements placed along the edges). Really noticeable in Subnautica. Overall, the brightness seems a little high, and the contrast a little low. Really noticed it in Race the Sun. Race the Soup. Another setting to check for in-game, I guess.
I’m also left somewhat curious how the visual quality improves given the seemingly small increments to resolution that are around right now. I guess if the screen is basically mounted on your eye-ball adding an extra 160 lines must be noticeable? Or is it? That is what the Samsung visor has over the Dell, I think. Anyway, no big buyers remorse, yet. Way happy that I spent $225 instead of $450, though. I can just about justify it to myself at this price.
