I'm sure I read that nvidia gameworks already supports using one GPU per eye. Hopefully that should provide from a much smoother experience that traditional AFR SLI. I guess there's still a matter of developers having to incorporate the technology.

My current 6GB 780s fail the 'VR ready' tests, but if each were only rendering 1080x1200 (about 60% of 'full HD') they should easily manage the required 90fps minimum.


Edit: It was this that I remember reading, although I didn't notice at the time that it was specific to OpenGL. I guess that'll be useful for all those people who can't wait to play Quake II in VR

Brun,

From what I've read it has been incorporated into the latest SDK for oculus.. But the dev has to activate it and so far no one has used it. Also, I'm curious if using the rift with other games, not included in the oculus store that previously supported sli..will still take advantage...not sure.

woke up did a little cisco ccna study, time to give DCS a try in the vive, im going to give it a good go like an hour I really want to instil how it is for us, dial readability, impression and quality of image and presence.

collected two suitable photographic mounts from work (only $10 a piece or so) amazon.

I am impressed the lighthouse units do not need to face directly to each other, I think they have motors in them to slightly track as I hear motor movement inside the lighthouses?








Back soon,

ok I just tested DCS the A10c, I could have gone for any air craft but I thought that would be the nice benchmark for us at SimHQ.

I took the chance and put my iphone 6 + close to the right lens and tried to take some images, settings as MED.


High settings in the vive caused tremendous judder, tracking left to right caused huge drop down to maybe 3fps, I did not get that in the rift at high / ultra.


these images do not in any way convey how it actually looks when you put the device on, but I think its interesting to see.



EDIT: The third image down kind of conveys my later point about the lower the area from straight ahead becoming poor quality,









gloves indicating not finshed yet dev team?














Honest thoughts.

God the vive is uncomfortable to wear, it is digging into my face on the lower left area, and I cant seem to position it correctly,

The Fresnel lens make it really difficult to look down and see the gauges, straight ahead and up and a little down is fine but you do have to tilt your whole head down to look down at stuff,


Now I am going to quickly pack this stuff up and jump back into the same game same cockpit and see how the impression is again.

The experience is night and day better in the Rift Cv1,

The headset fit, the image quality, the ability to navigate the cockpit with my eyes is there, its a complete picture of the cockpit addressable by my eyes. I took further pictures but its very much the case that the pictures don't convey how much more lush the image is in the rift unhindered and as you would want.
















thoughts about this,

The image quality is just so much better in the Rift, I can easily look downwards and see the cockpit parts and the image does not drop off to the extent its just a blur like with the vive.

The rift looks like a liquid fresh pool to look into with the vive your fighting to look through the horrible experiences actually that is these Fresnel lens, they are terrible actually. (Edit: I am kind of upset a little actually that steam/htc would think they lens would be suitable and acceptable, who are you kidding).

Why didn't steam produce lens of the same approach as Oculus, did it take so many hundreds of millions to go that route? because the complex optics of the rift really pay off, the vive's optics are not some thing I want to show as being the best of VR today, that position is clearly in the place of the rift which backs up its great visuals (which is important) with a fit that works and doesn't cut into my face, the left cheak below the eye was getting cut into by the headset.

The unit costs does not come into this, this is purely to do with effect or result but it is worth mentioning that the vive is costly, it cost me from memory �747 (includes uk vat). (rift being �500 includes uk vat) Seeing the lopsided device performance in visuals coupled with comfort issues means this is an easy sim purchasing choice,

The vive is not a seated VR solution it maybe in its next outing but today seated HQ VR is the Rift.


The vive has exceled in other areas that the rift has not, from a purely simulation perspective the choice is not even close remotely by any stretch of the imagination.

Very glad I am in the position to test both the headsets and pass this on to fellow simmers.



I am hoping to test project cars and see how eve valkyre handles a HOTAS set up if it can get close to elite in enjoyment stakes

Nice write up bud01. You have made me feel good about my decision to stick with the Rift. I have been very happy with it so far. I am investing in a set of VR prescription glasses for the Rift ( https://vr-lens-lab.com/ ). Wearing my regular glasses with the Rift is OK but it is much more comfortable without them.

Ever try contacts? I've been wearing them for 30+ years, I will never go back to glasses as long as I can tolerate contacts.

I tried contacts a couple of years ago but they didn't agree with me (I have a hard time getting over the fact that I am putting something in my eye that really shouldn't be there). It's an irrational thing though, so maybe I should try again.

On the glasses wearer thing - I wonder if prescription bonded lenses like they do for dive masks could be an option...

Of course if that was workable the downside would be the device would subsequently become useless to anyone other than yourself...

I too will someday have to come up with a solution for this issue. But by the time my "non early adopter" rear actually buys into VR maybe the solutions will be more clear cut.

The VR-Lens Lab solution allows you to easily remove the lenses if someone else is going to use the headset. It will be a couple of months before I receive the product. I'll report back once I have the lenses installed.

What if you're nearsighted? In theory you shouldn't need to wear glasses with VR on, right? Anyone know if this is true, in practice?

If you are near sighted you will need to wear glasses. The focal point of the images in the headset are projected out in front of you. I have a very mild prescription, but I do notice the difference in the Rift if I choose not to wear my glasses. This is especially true with DCS World as the cockpit instrumentation has fine detail.

But then there's the "air gap" - but maybe I'm over-analyzing it. I know you know telescopes. When I view my friends and family's telescopes through glasses (if the monocular or binocular itself can't adjust far enough - I have BAD vision) it introduces an additional layer of "shake" (but again, maybe this kind of precision doesn't apply to VR).

Usually the device itself has enough correction range to let me remove the glasses and "go raw" (and people with telescopes always realize and say "Wow, I never realized how bad your eyesight is!")

On a subnote I am of course talking of purely optical telescopes.....

So what I wonder about is if there's a hard mount scheme for these VR-Lens things that eliminates any "shake" while you turn your head around or up and down....

I will definitely be looking for any comments from you on that.

Zamzow, you are right, observing through a telescope is harder if you have to wear glasses to achieve sharp focus through the eyepiece. In fact I think it is a real pain and detracts from the experience greatly.


Regarding the Rift and Vive solution that VR-Lens Lab has come up with, your prescription lenses become part of the headset. So there should be no shake or wobble.

Here is the latest design VR-Lens Labs has come up with for the Rift.



Once the lenses are fitted, they can stay installed until someone else is going to use the headset, at which point they are easy to remove.

Seems that the ShadowBrain (Wags?) has a different opinion of how the Vive works with DCS.

I'd like to see more people comment.

Oops, forgot the link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/47o5xs/dcs_world_steam_store_page_confirms_vive_support/

Just a small follow up since I took some time this afternoon to get into DCS.



I am running Vjoy and UJR to merge my brake and accelerator, the routine to do this is documented online quite a bit but basicly you use a tool called Vjoy to create a virtual joystick, then that gets overlapped with a tool called UJR which picks up the axis move of your movements, and through UUJR you can merge brake and accelerator into the rudder control. The final part is detailed below.


RUDDER bind.. to vjoy

Trick is to hit slider, else the return to middle point of rudder does not work.
Also found the in game DCS axis merge did not work very well with the right axis seeming higher value so failing to return to middle point.



OK so todays lesion about the rift, I learnt that it is even better than I first thought with my original impression being top marks.


Note the angle of the beam


The rift pivots on its facial mount point, what does this do? well it brings the rift to its correct face covering to enable the lens to really shine, I mean the sweet spot has increased some 30 to 40%?


Note the angle of the beam, this improves fit greatly and improves lens angle in front of your eyes a lot



Completed the ILS learning lesion with just small over shoot of the run way :-), full air brakes not enough it would seem for Batumi (need to bind the wheel brakes!)









Other thoughts and feelings.

The audio in the Rift is totally amazing, the rumble of the A10C is certainly not a weak point here, coming down to land and taking an external view of the A10C, moving around her the audio changed from a familiar A10c tone, to the rear of the bird with the deeper sound presented. Cockpit audio is excellent. Sensation of flight is off the charts, hugely impressive experience, it would be great if more of the younger generation got to take to the skys in these birds and understood the beautiful impression (science, Engineering) of modern air craft.

The heads up display is just with in range (green HUD text), it maybe there will be slight tweaks to DCS with the Oculus Rift in the future like over sampling? sweet fx? I am still learning here.


Boy what a ride, greatest representation of flight I have seen, very close accurate realistic difficult to question presentation.


The Rift is for all its faults about launch issues, god rays, maybe its slightly smaller FOV / dk2/ vive? It is one heck of a VR HUD worth every penny of south of $800, device should be accepted by majority of seasoned Simmers "more than acceptable and thanks Oculus" in the coming months.


Misc points:
Rift runs warm when not in use, top is warm.

Just got home from my Rift demo at Best Buy.

I am impressed. I went in thinking of how I should do certain things to judge image quality, FOV etc. but I just got so wrapped up in the scenes before me that I forgot all of that. I guess that in itself is indicative of what I saw.

One demo scene had me standing on the top of a skyscraper, I eased to the edge and looked over and my palms got sweaty and my knees a little weak. Even knowing it wasn't real I didn't work up the nerve to "step over the edge" before the end of that scene.

Another scene had me in what appeared to be a museum. There is a long hallway in front of me and a T-Rex comes around the corner at the other end. He walks slowly toward me until he is towering over me, then he begins to bellow blowing spittle in my direction and I instinctively dodged it. It was real enough that I felt a bit anxious about what he would do next. Then he just stepped over me and walked on down the hall.

The last scene placed me on the side of a cliff, rock climbing. I look down and I am a long way up, standing on a platform maybe 2 feet by 2 feet. I am supposed to climb by manipulating the XBox controller that has been handed to me but I have zero XBox experience and I never did figure out how to climb, falling to my death twice. That left me weak in the knees and with sweaty palms as well.

Yeah, I'll be getting one of these.

Pretty amazing isn't it?

Wait until you try flying DCS World with the Rift.

Something I forgot to mention is just how comfortable the OR is. Very lightweight, not cumbersome at all. Of course I didn't wear it long but I forgot I had something strapped to my head as soon as the demo started.