I gave into temptation: Vive arriving tomorrow! (+ GearVR talk)

Hello World (first blog post)

Recently I have been tempted to jump into PC VR and you can bet your right butt cheek it's partly because of Rec Room. This will not be my first VR rodeo because I currently own the GearVR but I dislike it for a couple of reasons:

1. The GearVR shell and phone itself are annoying to get perfectly clean for VR use. Unlike the Oculus and Vive, it is not a sealed unit so getting dust on either side of the lenses can result in you having to take the phone off and clean it all over again.
2. If you think VR on PC is lacking content, try GearVR
3. Getting custom content onto the GearVR is a hassle, you have to transfer files to specific folders for some apps like Oculus Cinema to detect them. The worst is when you forget to transfer something or it doesn't work for some reason and then you have to take the GearVR off, remove your phone and troubleshoot
4. GearVR has noticeable judder, I think that is down to 60hz
5. No true head tracking and of course no room scale & hand mapping
6. Only a very small part of your view is sharp and in focus, anything out of the center looks blurry and no adjusting can change that

Wait that is more than a couple...

I don't mean to sh*t over the GearVR, you do get a very impressive sense of space with it. It blows away Google Cardboard and if you have a phone it works with it's a no brainer. The lenses (side blurring) and finicky nature of the shell/phone combo make it something I simply don't like using a lot.

I will be testing out the recently discovered supersampling which should clean up the Vive's image further. I'll be running it on the PC below (copy & pasted from PC forum) so I should have plenty of power to use on supersampling.

If anybody has any questions about the Vive I would be happy to answer them, I'll update this blog with the games/apps/experiences I test out.

First Games to Test

Onward

Rec Room

Day One: Room Scale, GearVR comparison

Room Scale

So I have just finished setting it up and having a small play session.

Firstly, let me talk about room scale.

I was under the minimum space requirements but I 'fooled' the Vive into thinking I'm over it by making my area seem bigger to the Vive, I did that by just putting my controllers over my sofa a little and my TV stand. I can only walk around 4 steps in one direction and 9 in another.

Luckily fooling the Vive like this hasn't had any negative effects so far, reaching over my TV stand and sofa doesn't make me bash into anything unless I put my hand right against the chaperone wall, I have a lot of space to flail my arms around.

All in all, having an oddly shaped play area like me (quite narrow) is working fine so far. I wish I had more but since we are moving house soon that will come in time.

Versus the GearVR

The most immediately noticeable thing compared to the GearVR is the clarity and FOV improvement. When I first put on the headset without the controllers, I noticed I can still see the pixels but they are much less bothersome because the rendering from a PC is simply better, on the GearVR it's hard to ignore the pixels but in the Vive I can do it easily. The Vive image is sharper and stays in focus a little more than the GearVR, even when the GearVR is at its best, it still looks a little blurry, but the Vive can actually look sharp.

What really sets apart the Vive is when you turn on the controllers, it was amazing to see my hands moving around with me. What blew my mind is that after I set the Vive down to have a break and some tea I found myself sitting at my desk feeling like I was still in VR, but I wasn't, I was looking at my regular hands. I'm not sure if that explains it well but it was surreal.

I've added supersampling and the Vive does look great, I need to try more games and I'll report back soon. Text is very easy to read when it's not too small, it looks much clearer and less pixelated than the GearVR.

Hats off to Valve/HTC too, the engineering on this thing is sublime. The base stations, headset, cabling, controllers and packaging feel extremely high quality.

Does it still include Job Simulator?

I didn't receive any bundled games yet but this is what they offer now.

I preferred the older bundle!

If you haven't done so already, you should really download the budget cuts demo. Still one of my favorite things for the vive.

Day Three: Onward, Room Scale (cont.), Project Cars, Rec Room

Onward

With more polish and content, this is going to be a killer app. Don't like teleportation to move around? Onward has room scale walking support but you'll mostly be using the nice and smooth touchpad on the Vive's controller to get around. It works fantastically, I'm surprised more games aren't using this!

The sense of immersion found in Onward should be a poster child for VR. I suck at aiming & keeping steady, is this how hard it is to aim in real life with a gun? I hope not!

There's a recently released Subway map which looks really nice, a big step up in quality over the other maps, for the asking price it's a pretty good deal as the online is populated and there's nothing like this game. Graphically it's good and runs very smooth even with supersampling up high.

Room Scale

As I have already mentioned, I am using the Vive with limited space. Around 7-9 steps horizontally and 4-5 vertically. I have to be careful because I cheated the setup by placing my play area over my sofa and TV stand, meaning, there's a chance I'll whack into them if I get too into it.

Vive's Camera to the rescue! Okay this is a fantastic find, I discovered you can make it so that when you approach the boundaries of the play area, the camera will fade in and show you a light overlay of what it sees meaning I can easily tell where I'm facing, what objects are around me and how many steps in each direction I have. No more bumping into my stand or sofa!

You can change the colour and opacity freely of the overlay, it's funky, reminds me of thermal vision a little.

Is it a little immersion breaking? I suppose so but I have it on low opacity, it doesn't bother me at all but of course having more space is always going to be good for the Vive.

The takeaway is that, yep, you can definitely make good use of a Vive even with low space. I'm below the minimum but having a blast. It's fortunate that my TV is low to the ground meaning there's never a risk of hitting it with my arms too.

Project Cars (brief impressions)

I'm a little less enthusiastic about this one, I can't run it on ultra at 90 fps even without supersampling. I didn't expect it to be so demanding. Currently in the process of optimising the settings and will report back soon. Everything else I have played has felt well optimised in their VR environments but this is falling a little short, still, I'll get it working.

Rec Room

This is every bit as crazy and every bit as fun as the VRodeo makes it seem. In fact, I would say the Paintball is much better to play than it is to watch, I thought it looked very finicky and like a gimmick, but I find myself playing it a hell of a lot. It's seriously great fun and being able to duck & fire your gun around corners is much more exhilarating in VR than it ever will be in Gears of War.

Also I'm not sure what wizardry Against Gravity (the devs) are casting but Rec Room looks brilliant graphically, I can easily ignore the pixels of the Vive/Rift screen while playing this game, it just looks clean and that goes a very long way with our headsets.

Lastly, encountering an unexpected but welcomed mix of genders and ages inside Rec Room.

Downloaded, will check it out tomorrow, thanks!

Day Five: Xortex

I haven't got too much to add yet as I have been sticking to Rec Room (paintball is so much fun) but since earlier today I have been messing around in The Lab and I found this gem.

This is a bullet hell shooter where you pick up a spaceship and fly it around using your hand as it automatically shoots. It's incredible, I never expected a bullet hell to catch my interest but this is something fresh and stunning.

It's very fluid and natural to play but what sets it apart is its visuals. The explosions, laser beams and enemy attacks look amazing, when it's all coming towards your face it gets to you and makes you want to move out the damn way.

I can admit, I wasn't getting sucked into VR like I expected but recently I have started to feel like I am indeed in another reality. It's amazing and I'll be there day one for the next headset from HTC/Valve. A 4k HMD is going to make it even better than what we've got now.

Any updates on this? Is the Budget Cuts demo as great as it looks?

I'll update soon! Been a little busy around here but I have tried a couple more games and will dive into Budget Cuts today or tomorrow.

@jasoncooke: Alright, cool. Sorry to bother, thanks for the quick response.

Day Thirteen: Budget Cuts, Destinations, Job Simulator, Vivecraft

Budget Cuts

This is currently only available as a short demo on the Steam store. It's interesting playing a stealth game in virtual reality, I wasn't necessarily sold on the game but I am definitely going to check it out when it's released fully.

My chief complaint with this game and many other games is the use of teleportation. I have never felt sick or woozy in VR even when moving around using the controller trackpads (like using an analog stick). So... I would appreciate it if developers took people like me into account because moving around freely without teleportation is so much better for me, give us better control options! Teleportation is anti-climactic and results in slow paced games.

Destinations

Mind. Blown.

In case you haven't heard about this, it came out shortly after GiantBomb finished their Vive launch coverage. It's made by Valve and by default it gives you around 8 locations to visit, such as Mars, a humble British cemetery and a small tourist spot in Barcelona. The cool thing is, it has Steam Workshop support so people can create their own (and have been).

So firstly, what is so special about this? Well, they created these environments using Photogrammetry. This means they took lots of different photos at different positions and angles then mapped them onto a 3D mesh/model. It gives the illusion of reality and sense of space, with photorealistic graphics.

While looking around the British cemetery environment, there are boxes that explain how they went about taking the photos. For the cemetery, a DSLR with two lenses was used. I expected a big expensive 3D camera rig and lots of assistants.

It looks stunning. Here is a write-up about the process from Valve's developer site.

The Barcelona destination surprised me the most as it was created by a Valve employee while on vacation, so this inspired me to create my own which I'm researching now. More on that later.

The potential VR has for documentaries, developer commentary and historical uses is enormous.

Job Simulator

I think most people know the deal with this game by now. It's really well made and hilarious but definitely not worth the asking price, I refunded mine right before I hit two hours on Steam. It's an amazing title to show off VR and looks great in the headset, but at around $40 at the time of writing it isn't a great value.

Vivecraft

Vivecraft is a Minecraft modification to play the game in VR. It looks much better than the official version of Minecraft for GearVR and even works with the Vive's controllers! It's really impressive and it has support for both teleportation as well as traditional movement using the Vive's trackpads. I wish all games gave us these options.

All I can say after playing it is, boy...Minecraft blocks are big. I'm gonna make a home and chill out inside VR later this week.

I think this thread talked me out of buying a Gear VR.

But as someone who has kind of ruled out a PC for the time being, I'm a bit lost on how to jump into VR, which I desperately want to do. Mobile-first options seem like the way to popularise this stuff, but only the Gear VR is currently out there; the early word on Playstation VR is really disheartening; and whatever form VR-ready Scorpio takes won't arrive until the end of next year - earliest.

I've no doubt this will be taken care of over time - and I suspect the tech will improve rapidly, with costs coming down - but for anyone with an itchy trigger finger like me, any non-PC option seems just flawed enough to make you think twice.

And I really do want to try Minecraft in VR.

In any case, thanks for the thread duder. It's been informative, even if it doesn't solve my particular quandry. Will be interested to hear how things progress for you.

Oh no don't let me discourage you. If you already have a Samsung phone that is compatible or are due an upgrade and are interested in Samsung, it's a no brainer to buy the Gear. It's not bad but it might get expensive by scratching your itch to buy into PC VR like it did for me. ..

There's a couple of good games to try on the GearVR, just make sure you have a bluetooth gamepad as you will need it for quite a few of them.

Thanks a lot! Will probably update again later this week.

Be sure to check out Audioshield, BLARP!, Holopoint, Out of Ammo, and Raw Data. Might cost you a few bucks, but other than the ones you mentioned, those are my current standouts.