Knurrunkulus

As happy as I am about Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 being added to the Vault, I'm once again bummed that they don't include the DLC's when they do this kind of thing. I never bought the DLC for Mass Effect 2 because Bioware Points are such a hassle on PC. Was thinking about replaying the entire trilogy on Xbone now with the DLC, but I'm hesitant to buy DLC for a game that I don't really "own"(!). First world problems, I know. But still...

@ghoti221: Thumper is intense in VR, I absolutely agree. But are the graphics crisp for you all the time? In level 2 for example, when green prompts are coming towards you and there are some of the tentacles behind them that you have to fly/jump over I sometimes had trouble seeing it early enough, because it all seemed a bit blurry in the distance. For me, the biggest "Wow"-moment was the first thing I played, which was the Ocean Descent demo from Playstation Worlds. Probably kinda normal that the very first thing you ever see in VR is the thing that blows you away the most. Since then, when I was still grinning like a dumbass and couldn't believe what I was seeing, I'm however realizing more and more the issues I'm having with blurriness and text that isn't smooth/crisp/clear or whatever you want to call it at all. Which is a bit of a shame.

How is it for you? When you take the headset of during a VR game and look at the social screen: Does it look worse or better than what you're seeing in VR, especially concerning the crispness of text and the graphics in general. Because from what I've heard it should(!) look worse than what you see in VR, but for me its' definitely the other way round, which is one of the big mysteries for me by now.

@shivoa: So regarding the demo disc text: I didn't put the disc in but I loaded up the demo from the store (should be the same). Do you mean the text that says something about copyright and who developed the thing and all that stuff at the bottom? Barely readable for me! Just a mess of jagged edges mixed with what I would still call blurriness. The text crispness is the thing I'm coming back to all the time and I cannot for the life of me understand why the text looks crisp on my TV but as soon as I put the headset on it's hard to read again. Isn't the social screen supposed to look worse than the thing the person that is playing in VR is experiencing? Well, not the case for me. In most cases it looks a bit better on the social screen than in VR, to be honest. In Allumette for example I of course know(!) that the wooden box is supposed to say "Fragile" on it, but in VR I can't see smooth letters while on the TV I can. And there are so many more examples of this that I found by now that I could continue writing for many minutes, but I'll spare you more details. By now I have probably spent over an hour trying to adjust the headset on my head over and over again and I'm close friends with the eye measurement setting by now. Nothing changes. I'm beginning to feel like I'm running out of options to change that. A bit depressing.

The Order is absolutely worth it. I still can't understand why everyone hated on it so much. Graphically it's one of the most impressive things I've seen over the past few years, there are some pretty neat weapons in it, the story is more than just okay and the gameplay is not nearly as QTE-heavy as many made it out to be. The ending is(!) underwhelming, but 8 dollars is still a steal. I say: Go for it!

@shivoa: Okay, I'll try that out once more.

@ every VR user around: But there's one more thing I'm a bit worried about: I just read the Polygon review of PS VR and in there it says about the social screen that "[...]the company has also pointed out that the streamed or captured video is a lower-quality version of what you see in the headset — indeed, you can tell the resolution is rather low, and small text can be a bit hard to read." If the image on my TV that others can see is really supposed to be worse(!) than what I'm seeing in the headset, something can't be right at all with my headset. I had a friend over last night, we tried several demos back to back and the difference between what you could see on the TV and in the headset was very recognizable. Of course: With the headset the immersion was the big plus, but just looking at the picture quality, the social screen looked recognizably better. That was especially clear when we tried the Driveclub VR demo. When my friend was just watching me play, he was of the opinion that the graphics looked at least okay and was a bit surprised why I was so shocked by the visual quality I experienced in the headset, but then he put it on to try it out himself and let out an audible gasp because of the difference. TLDR: Quality on my social screen is better than in the headset, not the other way round. Text on social screen is easily readable, text in the headset often not. Can that be right?

By the way: Sorry for bombarding you all with these questions, but I'm finding it helps. So thank you! :)

Still no idea why I can't find the sweet spot that everyone mentions. I don't even know how much time I've spent on the "Adjust the VR headset position" screen by now, but I just can't seem to get the text really smooth and clear as it wants me to. You can always see the edges of each letter clearly. I also tried the Batcave in Arkham again, where on the screen before you it says "Forensics" and other things. Should this be easily readable? In my case I can see enough to understand that it says "Forensics", but it's cleary not "smooth and clear", not by a long shot. And when I then go the batcomputer and look at the profiles of Robin and Nightwing on there, the blurriness of the text is really hurting my eyes. That can't(!) be normal, right? I mean: That's the game nearly everyone praises the most in the launch line-up.

And I'm always coming back to the short film Invasion that's free to download from the PSN store (and quite nice, despite my problems with it). Shivoa mentioned that the rabbit is easy to see in the distance at the beginning. Well, I tried again, for me it isn't. It's a mix of blurriness and jagged edges and when he starts sprinting in my direction there are even one or two frames where one of his pointy ears cannot be seen fully, like if some part of it was erased. Same with the eagle that's swooping in shortly afterwards, for one or two frames he was missing nearly his entire right wing. I hope I'm making myself clear enough, because English is not my mother tongue and when it comes to tech talk that often shows. I'm just really unsure what to do by now, because there is no frame of reference/easy way to compare with others. Is it supposed to be like this? Is my eyesight bad and I'm just now, in VR, realising that I need new glasses? My wife is going to try Invasion out later today. If she's having the same problems I'm thinking it's safe to assume that something is wrong with my headset, or what's your take on this?

[edit] Tried measuring eye-to-eye distance several times, recalibrated camera, recalibrated headset tracking, no protective layer on my lenses anymore. I've been through it all, I think.

[edit 2] Here I am, talking about no easy way to compare with others, and then I find a gameplay video of Invasion on YouTube a minute later that comes very(!) close to the picture quality I am experiencing. Is this the quality it's supposed to be? Am I the only one being really put of by that? Shivoa, is that the quality you experienced on VR as well? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0ldI0tQVvM

I just tried the demo for Headmaster via the PS VR demo collection that can be downloaded from the store. I could barely get a shot in the goal, because the tracking somehow didn't work at all. When I wanted to get the ball to the right it shot to the left, when I wanted to do a low shot it would do a high one - either I'm massively untalented or my tracking somehow goes bonkers (but only in that game) or... could the demo be busted and it's fixed in the full version?

I'm very intrigued by this game and would love to buy and enjoy it, but not like this. So... any experiences with the full game? Anyone? :)

I just went back to try to find my "sweet spot" one more time, but... well... I'm still having issues, especially when it comes to looking at things that are far away in virtual reality. In the short film "Invasion", for example, I could barely see the rabbit when it first appeared at the back of the scene. As soon as it came near me, the picture quality was perfect. Same with Allumette. Things far away from where I was sitting were very blurry and pixellated, but things right next to my face looked very nice and easily recognizable. At this point I'm questioning myself and am wondering if my glasses could be the issue and if I might need new ones. But then again: Why don't I realize this in real life, but in virtual reality? That somehow would make no sense to me. I LOVE what I experienced in VR today, but I really need to come to grips with the graphics quality and figure out if it's supposed to be like this or not.

In some forum I read that someone said that the image quality inside the headset is somehow comparable to what the image looked like when you played PS3 games on a TV other than an HD TV. Would you say that that is an apt comparison? Because if memory serves me right, that is kind of the quality that I am experiencing in most of the games (again, especially when looking at things in the distance).

@frostyryan: What are the instances where you see pixellation the most? The same that I outlined?

@shivoa: I tried the IPD configuration already, but don't seem to get any results from it. The most obvious issue with the blur is when you just look at text, for example in the main menu of the PS4. I tried to shop two games from the store with the headset on and my eyes were hurting because everything seemed so blurry. On the contrary, I had absolutely no issues with blurry vision in the demos of Tumble VR and Wayward Sky. I however had some issues with it in Batman VR (as already detailed above), Driveclub VR (which generally looked terrible) and in the demo for Here They Lie, where everything seemed pixelated and blurry way too much. This all leaves me really confused. I tried repositioning the headset a lot already, but I can't seem to get rid of the blur completely. I actually don't know if anything changes or if I'm just getting used to it. So yeah... not sure what to do at this point. Maybe I'm just very sensitive to this? Or maybe something's wrong? Or maybe I yet have to find the sweet spot? (but how difficult can it be?) It definitely dampens my excitement right now. I'm fascinated by what Playstation VR can do, but when people in here are talking about "no visible pixellation" and stuff like that, I can't help but think that I must be missing out on sth. And not knowing why is... not cool. But enough tinkering for today. Here in Europe it's 2 am by now. :)