Yeah, I’d liked to have picked up the Samsung, but alas, not on sale.
And yeah, when it arrives you should definitely play Elite. Check out IL-2 and AerofFly FS2 as well, if you like the airplane stuff.
All these mixed reality headsets support two levels of system requirements - minimum supports 60fps and a limited set of content while “Ultra” is the usual 90fps and all content from oculus/vive
Has anyone actually tried this with the minimum requirements? My 2017 Surface Pro allegedly supports it but I’m curious to know what the subjective experience is.
Tech Report try out some eye tracking and foveated rendering stuff. Hope at least one of the headset manufacturers adopts it…
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.
You can almost guarantee they’ve been working on it. Oculus’ Michael Abrash has said in the past how essential it is, and I think Apple bought some eye tracking company not too long ago.
I have been trying to get some sort of enjoyment from my new acer mixed reality headset. It has been a complete fail. Most games don’t work as advertised, the interface (especially trying to get it to work with steam) is frustrating, the overall experience is lame at its best and just one aggravation after another.
Basic stuff like them saying ‘Use Windows Key + Y to switch the mouse between controlling your PC’s desktop and the Windows Mixed Reality home’ and me finding that it doesn’t work at all. Hell, they don’t even have an obvious way for you to exit or shut down the VR program.
I don’t believe that I should buy a product and then have to spend most of my time googling to find work-arounds.
I have literally spent a total of 10 minutes within games and 4 hours trouble-shooting and trying to get them started.
This is good :) Welcome aboard! Glad you are enjoying it!
Did you switch to the VR build and use the -openvr launch instruction? I’m not sure the former is still necessary, but you’ll definitely have to do the latter.
Arg. Sounds painful. Good luck. Do they have some kind of user forum?
Not that I can find, I’m remembering the few times I’ve been an early adapter and I’m revisiting that feeling of buyer’s remorse. I would have thought that this stuff would have been heavily tested to ensure ease of use and lack of frustration. Getting set up was easy, everything after that has been terrible.
Even the market place is woeful, a grand total of 60 games on offer with most of them sounding like they have of the depth of mobile puzzle games.
Do the Windows mixed reality sets not all use the same environment?
I did, yes. I may try American Truck Simulator, instead. When there is a sale or something. Really want a racing or driving game to play, but no rush. Figure it will take me a while to get a handle on Elite which I haven’t really played since before it was officially released.
There is a Windows environment/launcher; I’ve launched Minecraft from there, and fiddle with other stuff. Personally, I find it useful to get Desktop access, but otherwise I just stick it out in SteamVR since that’s where my actual games live. I certainly never would have touched this stuff without SteamVR support. I would be curious to hear more about Peter’s experience.
Can’t you just use SteamVR with the WMR headsets? That’s what my plan was. (Haven’t had time to set mine up yet.)
Yes. (FYI, I have the Dell.) SteamVR will launch the windows mixed-reality experience application in the background, though. It’ll do the calibration step there when get going and then you can use SteamVR. I do have the microsoft vr app thing in Steam installed, though. Not sure - you might need it installed for the SteamVR support? I imagine there’s still a chance of certain games not working quite right versus an actual Vive, since I assume the controllers are different. At least, I couldn’t figure out how to move around in Obduction.
Could try
There is a free version of Brass Tactics coming out on the 15th called Brass Tactics Arena, and Brass Tactics is currently on sale pre-order for $24.99, which is $15 off the release price according to:
It looks like with pre-order you get immediate access to Arena. They seem to have done a better job with controls than Petroglyph did with Base Blitz.
Unlike other RTS-ish games in VR, this week’s Brass Tactics is the first full-blown take on the genre to see a retail release. It’s not perfect—indeed, it has a couple of glaring issues ahead of its Thursday launch—but Brass Tactics is clearly a few steps above “just good enough.” It functions as a pure, solid RTS, while it also comes packed with nice VR touches. Best of all, thanks to a free, unlimited, works-online demo version, every single VR owner out there (even outside the Oculus ecosystem) can try it for themselves—and try it they should.
Also, done by Hidden Path (Defense Grid) folks…
On discord it sounds like things have been improving with the mp issues, but still working on it.
So it has a proper full-on single player campaign, & AI skirmish modes? Or is the typical VR thing of relying on the multiplayer crutch to provide longevity?