Anybody considering picking up an Oculus Rift..?


Fusion_Power said:
And does the PS4 VR thingy struggle? I thought Sonys VR project goes well and is already more advanced than the Occulus project?
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Everyone serious about VR has been saying for a long time that a hardware like the PS4 which already struggle to display 60 fps on any modern game in fullHD will have serious trouble to do 60fps in a good resolution enough for VR on 2 eyes. Carmack was saying the same thing even before he was working officially for Oculus.
 
Only if you want the same standard of visuals you would expect from 'normal' single-screen play. What Carmack and others associated with Oculus were saying vis-a-vis PS4, is that they had no interest themselves in working towards getting VR right on a fixed-spec console of today, when they were thinking of the future - on a constantly evolving platform that would inevitably deliver what they needed for perfect 'presence'. They never categorically said VR wasn't possible on consoles.

The Morpheus headsets being demoed at the moment also offload the pre-distortion (which Oculus claim is quite a hit on resources) to a box that sits between it and the PS4, further reducing the load on the console. Should be good enough for entry-level (so to speak) VR, even if the graphic fidelity takes a bit of a hit!

Wired liked the Crescent Bay:

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/oculus-crescent-bay-prototype/

the experience was vastly improved over anything I’d seen for the DK2, and even The Room itself. The so-called “screen door” effect, in which the spaces between individual pixels are visible, was completely gone. The 360-degree tracking was nearly flawless; try as I might, spinning this way and that, I could only break presence in two of the 13 demos. The 90Hz refresh rate made everything appear incredibly smooth and lifelike, from a hugely magnified microbe to a friendly alien. The display was, frankly, astounding, though whether that was due to improved resolution or a diffusion layer that blurs out the screen door effect I’m still not sure. (At this time, Oculus is refusing to discuss display specifications, leading to conjecture that Crescent Bay might utilize a new 21:9 panel that Samsung patented earlier this year.)
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bib - that, and the new lenses would account for the improved FOV - now, if such a screen was also curved...
 
Any advice on a monster PC build for use with a Rift?

I've been given a budget of €2000 (approx £1488 / $2267). It'll be purely for VR, so essentially a gaming rig.

I'm a bit out of touch, last PC build I did was in 2009, so I'm bewildered by all the cpu and ram variants.

A rough selection I made of the core bits -

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/C8jRyc

Will want: Gigabyte 970 windforce Graphics card. I don't think the 980 is worth the extra at this stage. Beyond that I've always favoured Gigabyte motherboards, but open to ideas - the one I selected above is a 'gaming' variant.

Won't want: water cooling, overclocking madness. Just brute power at stock settings.

The cpu and ram are giving me a headache - what's the current thinking? I opted for the 'entry' level i7, the 4770, above - for no particular reason. Went for Crucial memory because it's served me well before, and only the 'sport' variant because it comes in 16gb pack.

Any thoughts on cpu/ram in particular welcome. It will be a Wintel thing.

I have a DK2 sitting in a box staring at me.....
 
I run a windforce 770 and can achieve 60-80 fps in 1080p with most everything I run in all it's glorious details, not quite the 90+ fps @ 1080-1440 you would need for flawless OR experience. I for the rest of my build I decided on an i5 4670k vs the i7 mostly due to price and being fine without the 4 logical cores and only having the 4 physical ones. Nothing in games, and probably not VR applications will be taxing enough to show any kind of remarkable difference. For memory I did 8GB g.skill with cas latency of 8. At the time z87 was the latest and greatest mobo chipset, (I think latest and greatest is z97 like the one you got spec'd out), I would go with that and the fastest speed ram that is supported by the manufacturer. Threw in some SSD's and a power supply that could feed the rig and called it a day.

All in all, for my build I spent about $1000 USD in 2013, extremely happy with it.

For this if you can afford it I would either do the 970, or sli 770's the "x70" series vs the x80 or x90 series I found to historically be the best blend of bleeding edge without the bleeding edge cost. Gigabyte is an excellent brand, running mobo and gpu currently without any issues, and windforce specifically is excellent in thermals and virtually no noise pollution.

When the OR finally makes it to market I'm just going to upgrade the GPU in my rig to the current x70 series or equivalent. General processing won't be the bottleneck, it's going to be overwhelmingly GPU in my opinion. 90+ fps at 1440 is quite the bear number to hit so I'm holding out as long as possible.

EDIT:

this is my cpu cooler, not done any research on the one you're looking at, but this was easy to install and excellent and I OC like a madman http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099 able to hit 4.7-4.8ghz on just air and never once seen the temp run past 50c

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099
 
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HTC and Valve teaming up?

gsmarena_001.jpg


http://blog.gsmarena.com/htc-jumps-vr-game-vive-headset-partners-valve-games/

Also, Sammy's update?

gsmarena_001.jpg


http://blog.gsmarena.com/samsung-unveils-refined-galaxy-vr-innovator-edition-galaxy-s6-galaxy-s6-edge/
 
It is accomplished.

Apologies for prehistoric camera phone images.

Opted for throwing more of the budget at the GPU rather than going X99/DDR4, so it's:

CPU: i7 4790k

Cooler: Noctua D15

Mobo: Gigabyte Z97X Gaming GT

GPU: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980

PSU: Corsair 850i

Case: Coolermaster CM Storm Trooper

Samsung 850 pro SSD and a bunch of WD 7200rpm HDs

Win 7 64bit

Asmo_Rig01.jpg

Asmo_Rig02.jpg

The Rift? Still have issues with a few demos* but got the essentials going. Maybe I'll fire up the Miku snogging simulator and let Strigoi know how that goes....!

The basic calibration utility has a test scene, you are seated at a desk on a circular plinth surrounded by an infinite Tron-like grid stretching into the distance. There's a lamp, a pyramid of playing cards and a drink can on the desk, and different plants to either side. It's astonishingly responsive, you crane over and look through the cards, or look up into the lamp and you can examine the bulb inside! I must have spent 15 minutes standing, sitting, craning about in that alone.

*The 'Tuscany' (aka Unity) demo that's bundled with the latest runtime, launches in the Rift but then keyboard input is disabled so it can't be started (it says press any key to begin). I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del, then Cancel - and this has the effect of starting it. Still can't exit it properly though, so I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del again, and stop the program in the Task Manager manually. I'm sure there's a simple answer, just haven't had the time to probe the Oculus forum for help yet.
 
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Asmo said:
It is accomplished.
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Did you reach your expecting FPS in your demos/games? Any O/R based benchmarks you could give? Possibly something high end or rather demanding graphically.

Those 980's are beasts, but haven't found any dedicated VR related benchmarks regarding one.

Anyway, congrats on the sweet sweet build.
 
Haven't done any benchmarking yet - is there a specific tool suggested?

Everything I've thrown at it so far has run smooth as butter at high settings. Everything. The responsiveness to your motion is as good as flawless, no jitter or lag whatsoever for me, it feels completely natural as you look around or tilt and lean.

I've just grabbed the DK2 updated 'Senza Peso' demo which is probably up there with the most demanding, so that'll be a real test of it. The publishers, Kite & Lightning, have switched to using a registration & launcher based download system (blech..) for their stuff, but someone on reddit posted a direct download link (scroll down to 'Tris' post with SenzaPeso-2.1.0-win64.zip link)

which works. Joy!

Also got to give this a spin later: 'New Retro Arcade'

http://digitalcybercherries.com/
 
Yea, I don't know anything specific. I was just more or less curious about one of the worst case, and anything lighter should be good. Something unity based I suppose and graphically impressive. If it's the tuscany demo or something better like some high end FPS. I wouldn't go out of your way, I was just curious if you are able to hit that magical "90fps" @ 1080 or hopefully better so that 1440 would be around the same number.

I've seen quotes of people with 8xx series hitting 100+fps in some of the vr demos at medium settings @ 1080 The problem there is that's good for your average game, but it's only 1080p, and it might be more of an average, which is really good but not as useful as a worst case.

Agian, don't go out of your way, but if you have a demo that allows you to see an onscreen fps counter...
 
I haven't had the chance to play with it intensively yet, still ironing out the odd little problems I keep encountering as I get the time (have no controls to see fps in Unity demos, though I think I know what the issue there is, will fix soon!) but the Titans of Space demo ( http://www.crunchywood.com/) has an onscreen fps counter by default - runs beautifully and says average fps I'm getting in that is 452! Doesn't dip below 420.
 
I finally ironed out a few more issues and got the infamous 'Senza Peso' demo going (among others) - Runs perfectly at max settings (1080p, all the bells) although there are tiny stutters sometimes when a lot is going on and you turn suddenly. They are very brief though, not bad at all. Definitely hits the limit of what a single 980 is going to do though. Anyone I've showed it to didn't notice these brief stutters in motion at all. The finale as you pass through the volcanic fiery chamber is very special indeed, and none happen there - they seem to happen specifically where video is integrated.

'Landscape Mountains' is the first to give me any vertigo or dizziness, it's a hang gliding 'sim' with snowy mountains and forest to glide over, basic but really convincing 'presence'. The only thing killing an absolutely convincing sense of height is the visible screen pixel structure, once that's gone you'll need a sickbag.

I see Sony have a new refined Morpheus prototype (slimmer, OLED now) and have put their cards on the table with a Q1 2016 release:

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/03/03/gdc-2015-project-morpheus-update/

EDIT: I left installing 'New Retro Arcade' until last, I thought it would give me the most challenge to get it working based on my experience thus far - but I only just installed it and it worked first time flawlessly! It's freaking amazing. The visual style (80s Arcade with neon & blacklight decor) masks the visible pixel structure very well, the deep black level of OLED really comes into play too. Just need to put some Mame Roms in now to bring the cabs to life, and put one of those 'arcade ambience' mp3s in the ghetto blaster...
 
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This last couple of days I've built a custom VR headset for the princely sum of five pounds. It's awesome, has headtracking built-in and runs really well.

I use an app to stream a window to my tablet (Nexus 7 2nd Gen), which is in turn lodged inside a cardboard box with two lenses (45mm focal depth) positioned in front of it. Telemetry from the N7s sensors is streamed the other way and interpreted as mouse movements for head tracking.

Played Elite: Dangerous with it and it was fantastic. Not on a par with the O.R. but still very playable and very smooth. This is with a 2007 AMD dual core with 4GB RAM and a budget GFX card, running at Ultra detail.

Google cardboard is also good fun :)

D.
 
If you want to protect your lenses, this lot do screen protectors intended for watches that fit 40mm lenses (ie those in the Oculus at least) and others, for a pittance (I got a pack of 6 for €3.37 inc p&P -

http://www.protectionfilms24.com/

The set I got were"Savvies SU75 UltraClear Screen Protector for watches (circular, Diameter:40mm)"

Ideal if you have grubby mates.
 
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I just started playing through Doom and Hexen using GZ3Doom -

http://rotatingpenguin.com/gz3doom/

It's impossible to do justice in words to how well these old games translate to VR! The sense of scale, the vertigo with all those sheer drops and narrow walkways.. and the 2D enemies enhances the 3D, as they are so sharply contrasted with the surroundings. Wandering around familiar Hexen locations is intoxicating.

On the downside, that 'bobbing' walk in Doom I think has a nauseating effect over time, it's necessary to take a break periodically. It doesn't seem so bad in Hexen.

That the old Doom engine games work so well has whetted my appetite for trying

Duke Nukem next -

http://www.malcolm-s.net/dukevr/
 
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