Wow, yeah this is pretty awesome. Some trouble keeping 75fps especially on the wooden coasters, but medium-ish detail was mostly ok on my 770. The sense of vertigo and speed is quite good, the rumbling controller is a well done idea. One problem I always have with Rift games is not knowing the key mapping, and then having to feel around on my keyboard for say the F7 key or whatever. At least this game has a 4-page help screen (but doesn't list the controller buttons). Most games I try to memorize at least the Rift reset button and whatever brings up the fps counter. I think the consumer Rift is planning to add a pass-through camera system for flipping on the real world, this is a must have, glad they are thinking about that.
Visually it's great, the track and cars look great. Scenery is ok, I like that you can have a whole "park" loaded and see other coasters running next to the one you're on. I thought the sound was lacking a bit, but that could have been some issue with OpenAL, I know that has good HRTF support and I wonder if that wasn't working properly for me. I would expect to really feel the sound of the lifts, steel/wood roar/clatter, air brakes, etc. The sound of a coaster lift loudly clicking away the seconds until your impending doom is definitely key to the experience for me anyway. :)
And yeah, be careful about motion sickness. Didn't take me long to feel a little queasy. I sometimes get that way on real coasters too. I think part of the problem is that you just can't simulate the rumbling, shaking, knee-bashing, whip-lash of a real coaster (so your brain gets confused about the kind of motion it's seeing). At least the physics are legit and gravity works right, there's no impossible turns or drops at the wrong speed. It's like being on an ultra-smooth mag-lev train or something. Your brain really wants to give you the feeling of free-fall but kinda only half-asses it because it can't be fooled about the lack of G-forces. I doubt this can ever be solved without expensive chair tech, and is going to be a constant issue for coaster-type experiences.
A lot of people have commented on how shitty you feel when you get even slightly motion sick from the Rift. It takes a long time to wear off and you feel surprisingly terrible. I worry a bit about the general public and this issue. Good news is for me this only happens on coaster games and games that let you move the camera with a controller at the same time as head movements. So this probably isn't the game to show VR off to your grandmother or something. Coaster demos might seem like an obvious first thing you want to try, but it's not the best first impression. Super cool, but you have to expect it will almost certainly make you a bit sick, so take frequent breaks.
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