Won a Vive Pre and access to the SteamVR Showcase a few weeks ago.

The Vive showed up a few days ago.

For those wondering anything about it, just ask!

Do you enjoy using it?
What's the longest continuous session you have had and were there any adverse effects?
What's your setup like? Computer, room, anything else...

That's awesome I hope you enjoy.

Congrats duder! I guess my only question is if a game supports it, are you going to use it by default? Is it the 'new' way to play, or is it a cool novelty that fits only certain experiences?

Enjoy!

@dweezilx: I played about 3 hours straight of Tilt Brush and about 2 of Elite Dangerous continuously.

Every single game that I've played works almost perfectly, despite being in beta.

The only adverse effects have been from Elite Dangerous, The Secret Shop Demo, and Cloudlands: VR Minigolf; they just weren't hitting the framerate.

Elite Dangerous looks fixed at 60fps instead of the Vive's 90 for some reason right now, so there's a bit of ghosting. the other two are kind of just jittery, inconsistent.

I'm using a i7 5820k, 16GB DDR4, and a 980 Ti. Most of the developers are using 980's to develop, and are designing for computers with 970's. It doesn't get anywhere close to maxing out the system.

One of the other guys says he's running perfect on a 970m GPU laptop! Didn't think that would be possible. I have access to a few less powerful pc's that I want to throw the 980 in to test too.

My room is 10' X 10'. I was making the room into a home theatre, now it's doubling as a Vive room.

And I loooove it. My wife hasn't tried it much, and I've only had a few people try it out so far. It's so awesome.

@dkraytsberg: That's really hard to answer. It's a new way to play things, and I don't really see current games adapting to it well.

Elite Dangerous, flight sims, racing might adapt well. They are pretty cool looking around the cockpit too see everything.

I don't see it as a novelty though, it way better than a novelty. I tried using a triple monitor setup for Drift and TF2 a few years back, and that was a total novelty.

I tried the Rift, and without tracking controllers, that felt like a novelty to me and I wasn't willing to bite on vr. Moving around freely with tracking is just no natural that I don't feel like I'm being tricked into something. It works like it should.

Arizona Sunshine, a wave based Zombie shooter, I haven't gotten access to on my account. That one felt like it needed a lot of work to feel replayable, but Hover Junkers is multiplayer, and probably has a decent amount of life to it.

It's definitely a new way to play, and for now it kind of makes the thumbsticks feel ancient.

How's your experience with using your phone while in-game via the headset? Does it feel good to tell your friend "I really need to dock this spaceship call me later"?

Is tilt brush as incredible as it looks like it could be in videos?

Oh, and have you had any issues with losing tracking for the controllers while moving around? Also, is Euro Truck Sim and American Truck Sim supported out of the box? Because ETS is by far the coolest thing I've done with an oculus.

@amafi: Tilt brush is truly incredible.

I can spend hours in Tilt Brush and never feel like I want to quit. While painting, I just get a new idea for how to combine brushes for effects... It makes you feel like you're more creative and talented than you really are. I drew a bumble bee last night with the dotted line around the air like a pencil drawing and laughed, it was so goofy and cool. Then using the bristles green, drawing grass and facial hair on a snowman.

It isn't really designed to be the Photoshop of vr, with complete granularity of control, but it's an amazing and fulfilling showpiece to spend months in.

I didn't have any tracking issues as all. The only weird tracking issue was related to Elite Dangerous. When the game launches, it makes your headset position the center of the cockpit, and I had it on my couch, so I was wondering wtf I was doing outside the top of the ship when I sat in my seat a few feet away. ETS could be just as awesome, I'm tempted to check :D

@treetrunk: Are you talking about the calling feature announced in the final version of the Vive? If so, it isn't available to us yet, maybe not at all for the Pre owners. That might be an HTC tack-on.

I hasn't gotten in the way of real life issues though, if that's what you meant. I used to play Dota a LOT. That was a relationship powderkeg. I can't pay attention to you right now, I just started this match and I'll get reported if I quit. Lol wtf was I doing.

I'm not too deep into ED yet, if it gets like that, I won't be able to do that, lol.

Have you had any issues with space while using it? I know I've heard the GB crew talking about the size of a room being to small for most VR systems being made...so I was just curious.

@naoiko: Nope, the demos from Valve that aren't made to be games, Secret Shop, Aperture Robot repair have you hit the trackpad(I think) to make your controller extend out in front of you if the designed room is larger than the real room.

But the real games feel like there is tons of room. Tilt brush at my size room is an enormous canvas. Budget Cuts teleports you in a Portal-esque way that while I *could walk more, I only ended up doing it involuntarily to dodge around corners.

In short, I wanted to take every piece of furniture out of my room to make it as close to 15'x15' as possible before it arrived out of the same feelings.

I ended up mounting the tracking base stations yesterday where they were, because I don't feel like I'm missing anything without the extra 5'x5'.

I honestly don't get why they fixate so much on the roomscale stuff, like it doesn't do seated games perfectly fine. It's an added feature that the others don't have, and it's constantly being talked about as if it's a negative, it's fucking weird.

@amafi: That's actually what i was going to ask. It can do seated VR as well right? The way people talk about the 15' room makes it sound like a requirement.

Yeah I meant the calling feature that was mentioned in the pricing article that Austin recently uploaded on this site.

I also had the impression that this device absolutely required you to have a dedicated room, good to know you can use it fine seated.

Oh and also have you played other games on there that are not first-person? Such as point-and-clicks or third-person shooter etc, if so, is the experience of those games much better than playing on a typical screen?

@amafi: I think its a public perception problem.

Valve conceived of and designed the Vive from the ground up to scale for every normal use scenario; sitting, standing, and walking all around a space the size of a room.

They pretty much demo only room-scale experiences because it's perfect at it. That's HTC's pitch every time, so that's what people know. When you sit someone down with an Oculus and a Vive with an Xinput controller to play the same game, there probably isn't much difference. But the ability to move freely with tracked controllers itself is worth more than $200 to me.

If the VR stuff would suddenly disappear from your house, would you pay $799 to get it all back? (And no, I am not planning gearnapping, just interested if value is there after initial rush.)

@charlie_victor_bravo: I would, or an alternate question, would I sell it for $800 or more. Nope.

Would I replace my GearVR? Nope

@frodofeet: Do you have Windlands? I love games with good swinging mechanics, and it looks fantastic, but I'm kinda wondering how it works out with motion sickness with the way it handles locomotion.