Be Excellent To Each Other

Yup I noticed prices had tanked. Might be something to do with what's going down in China.

25 is closer to zero, I'll give you that.

Thats not bad.

I will say when I switched on my PC for the first time with an SSD it was mind boggling how fast it was.

Next stop PCIe SSDs

You can bring a lot of kit 'back to life' as it were with a cheapy SSD. We've got an old laptop that the hard drive died in (a 2009 vintage Sony Vaio), I replaced it with a second hand 120GB SSD (an oldish SSD that wasn't top of the line even when it was new) and rebuilt Windows 7 onto it.

It's like using a brand new top of the line laptop, it absolutely flies, despite just having a Core Duo and 4GB RAM.

The hard drive is almost always the weakest link in a PC/laptop, especially laptops with their shit 5400rpm drives.

Barely makes any discernible difference, IMO. I got a stupid fast one and even a heatsink for it and it "felt" no different to the one it replaced. It's definitely not got that "Dial up to broadband" feel about it that going from a rust spinner to an SSD does.

So I didn't bother getting any more. If I wanted to rely on the NAS completely I could remove the spinners from my PC now. But I haven't, simply because I cba

Looks like the great graphics card price crash has started in earnest, which is excellent news as I'll be buying a whole new PC for Mrs Hearthly in the next 4-6 weeks for her wedding anniversary present (20 years!).

Word is that there are millions of unsold Nvidia GPUs out there in inventory, the crypto boom is all but over, and Nvidia are dragging their heels on the launch of their next line of GPUs as there is already so much stock out there, which retailers are having trouble shifting because a lot of folks are waiting for that next line of GPUs.

As such 1080s are back down to about £450+, and the 6GB 1060 can be had for under £250, which is excellent news.

She's going to have a better PC than me, grrrrr.

I don't find it very exciting when GPUs cost the same they cost at launch two years? ago. It's hardly something to celebrate really.

What is sorely missing from gaming now are huge graphical advances like we have seen in the past. It's kinda levelled off and gone "meh". I mean sure, there's all of this promise and talk about Ray Tracing, and Metro Exodus is going to have "some" but I would guess it will be quite severely limited by the fact that it needs to run on the consoles first. So whatever is added in that the consoles can't do needs to be added in at time/money. Plus unless you bought a Titan V you will be paying out for another GPU, given Pascal is useless. I dunno man, it doesn't get me reaching for my wallet to spend out another £700+ on a GPU.

That's the problem really, consoles. Same as it always was. They will and will continue to hold back PC gaming. I think there will reach a point of equilibrium once the consoles catch up, but that is a HUGE question... Will they? ever? because if they do the GPU could go the way of the dinosaurs. I seldom play many games now, but I am still playing FO4. And it is every bit as enjoyable at 4k on my Xbox. Any extra detail would simply be too far away for me to see it on the TV any way. Nvidia keep on dropping hints about their next gen (Volta, Ampere etc etc) but they are forgetting there is fuck all really worth having about it. I mean yeah, minor RT (because we are years away from fully RT games) but other than that? lol, I can get a nice framerate already with my XP in any game running at 4k. That is what Nvidia have forgotten. They have now caught up, and you only need a 1080Ti for 4k max with decent frame rates. What's the fuckin point in Volta? more FPS? haha, all three of the games I play are locked at 60, can be pushed to 70 but any more and they simply break and you can't play them any more.

I think it all depends on if VR takes off or not. Serious GPU grunt is needed right now at the low resolutions they run at, once they start pushing the resolution envelope in the displays and still need to hit 90fps twice over (for each eye), then GPU needs will rise significantly.

Is VR going to take off though? I'm not so sure, it has more penetration than at any point in the past, but it still feels like a bit of a fad to me.

Doc made an excellent point the other day which is that game development, for AAAs at least, is on a 2-3 year cycle. So we've probably not even seen a full cycle since VR has existed.

Good point, well presented.

edit: it'll be a relatively brave dev house who started a AAA VR project a couple of years ago though, so it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation...

Yes but it's nice when you have to buy a new PC and cards are at least back down to 'sort of reasonable' price levels as opposed to 'fucking extortionate'.

It's a fad. I bought a DK2 for about £100 ages ago and played with it for about a week. It was supposed to be the lead up to me buying a full blown headset but it was just as I suspected.. Basically 3Dvision on your head. I "ooed and ahhed" a few times, then put it out to pasture (it's literally sitting in a heap in the corner of my living room).

AMD made a point about VR ages ago.. Something along the lines of "VR will be realistic when we hit 5k. Per eye". I must say I agree with them. And knowing just how long it took Nvidia to throw around 4k? yeah, I kinda lost hope at that point. I was going to buy a full blown VR headset, then found out that to play Fallout 4 I must mess around for hours setting up sensors and etc, all to have to stand up waving my arms around like a belm. Which kinda ruins the experience of long play, given I would be knackered within 30 mins. I waited for sit down support to come. And waited. And waited. And waited some more, then gave up on that too.

That last sentence kinda sums up VR for me.



I hate to sound like the total opposite of my old self, but, you don't have to buy it you know.

I thought VR was a fad until I played SUPERHOT. It’ll take a couple of generations to become better and more affordable but I hope to god it’s not going away because when it’s good it’s mindblowing.

Well it's not for me, it's for Mrs Hearthly, it's a present, and she's totally maxed out on her current PC.

When I specced it up and bought it for her it was basically just intended to be a sleek games machine, mini-ITX board in a small case, minimal storage (256GB SSD), quad core Intel CPU (whatever the i5 was of the time, 4690 I think?), and geared to playing WoW at 1080p with the potential for other games if required. (2GB GTX960.)

However, in the three or four years she's had it things have changed, she's got into games DVR, editing together and rendering videos, she runs a Minecraft server, plays other games and so on. (So she'll be running the Minecraft server which Jnr will be connected to, whilst she plays WoW, and has Chrome open with a million tabs whilst she's got a big project open in Movie Studio.)

I've seen the thing totally maxed out on CPU, out of RAM and paging like fuck, with her game jittering as she's trying to play it. She's constantly low on space on her SSD, and we've had to offload a lot of stuff to an external 1TB USB3 drive.

She's grown out of it, basically, and there's really very little room for upgrades or expansion in her current case.

So her next PC will be a full fat 'proper' PC, similar to mine basically, but using second gen Ryzen instead of first. Still not decided on graphics card, but there's not much in it between 1070 and 1080 price wise, so might just go 1080 although that would be overkill. (The other option would be a 6GB 1060.)

They've been coming in at about two grand on the configurators (a bit more with the 1080, more like £1800 with the 1060), but I'm prepared to wait a few weeks to see if RAM drops a bit, and I think GPUs have still got a way to go down in price. The anniversary isn't until September so there's no mega-rush.

Yeah I think a RAM price drop of some sort is inevitable. SSDs have taken a huge price cut recently.

What GPU did you get? a 1070? why not give that a clean and give her that and get yourself a 1080? at least then nothing will be going to waste under achieving its potential and you get an upgrade out of it.

There hasn't really been much said about "Ampere" or whatever the fuck Nvidia are calling it this week. There was a "leak"* back at the beginning of the year but I think Nvidia were all set to release it, then changed their mind and by all accounts made a whole jeffload of Pascal cards instead. I used to read everything Richard Swinburne had to say over at the Bit-tech forum and he had spoken to Asus who were worried they may get caught holding the baby so refused to mass produce Pascal cards. Seems their suspicions to be careful were correct, and now there are a whole load of 10 series cards that are going to be very hard to sell. Especially as Nvidia let the cat out of the bag back at the beginning of the year, then pissed in the hype train's steam engine putting it out. Of course OCUK and pals are doing us all a favour selling 10 series cards at retail prices again, but I think there are more price cuts to come. They have to clear the way for Ampere, and most who wanted one already owned one before mining went mental.

*everything these days is leaked. Or accidentally dropped because some one at Intel or Nvidia made a mistake and just so happened to release all of these slides. Yeah yeah, bullshit. They've obviously cottoned on to the fact that most people only want what they can't have so have learned to market to them. It's the same reason that for 5 miles or so people walk in the CYCLE PATH (clearly labelled as such and with a dividing line down it) rather than the PATH right next to it. In fact, I usually end up riding in the PATH because there's nae coont in it.



Depends on the game. If it's an EA game then yeah 2-3 years is about the norm. Something like a Skyrim or Fallout? five and up. The problem I have had with VR (and not taking the second, far more expensive step) is that all I am hearing seems to be people turning their backs on it, rather than stuff coming out for it. Like, all I seem to see in the news is things evaporating rather than what I can have should I decide to drop my wedge on an expensive unit.

And I still don't think it is good enough graphically yet to be real reality. Sure, stuff like Superhot and other techy sorta demos with N64 style graphics work very well, but they are quite a ways from reality. That means upping the resolution ante quite severely, which exposes GPUs and their lack of power to be up to it.

I hope that VR doesn't totally die out before we reach that stage (because we can, given that 4k gaming is well achievable if we have the graphical grunt) but arms length is good for me until that happens.

VR may only be 'realistic' when we hit really high resolutions, but luckily that doesn't matter worth a fuck given that we're talking about playing computer games here; which currently don't look all that realistic in the vast, vast majority of cases and that isn't a barrier to enjoyment. Also, Fallout 4 is a pointless test case because it's an existing game ported badly to VR rather than something designed for the platform.

I mean I'm not saying it won't die a death, but your reasons for why it's a fad are basically nonsense.

VR isn't going to die a death.

How so?. If I think about myself and my personal gaming preferences FO4 VR would be the game I want to play. It's all but the only game I play. VR works in a similar fashion to 3DVision, meaning it was always going to port well. Both Fallout 3 and FONV were quite superb in 3Dvision, all barring the crosshair which you could fix yourself.

Given the incredibly low amount of games on VR one title can make it or break it. Plus it has to have appeal to every one, not just those who happen to like a particular game on it. Like me, yeah, I am not a fan of ED at all. Yet all you hear is people raving on about how brilliant it is and how wonderful it is in VR. Sure, if that is what floats your boat then fair play but I would rather play FO4.

OK look, let me put it this way. I have not bought a Vive or Oculus CV because the only game I have seen that I would want to play is Fallout 4 VR. But as you say, they have managed it badly and controller support never came (even though they promised it in January) and thus I have not bought one. I just can't see me pulling a 13 hour session stood up waving my arms around. Other than that? there really isn't anything else on VR I must have. And that is a problem. And usually when that is a problem the item in question is a fad.

We'll see I guess.

VR adaptations of existing games exist, but they're an afterthought and VR doesn't work well in that context. Games specifically designed for VR like Superhot and Star Trek are breathtaking

Also everything on PSVR works pretty much perfectly sat down.

If you're going to answer your own question then probably not worth asking it.

Also games in 3D != games in VR so it's a totally pointless comparison. Also (also) your entire argument is "I only like one game and it's not very good on platform X thus the platform is a fad." Do I really need to point out how batshit mental that argument is? Not least when you yourself make this specific point about a different game:



You're basically making incredibly wild generalisations based on your own weirdly specific preferences and presumably without any real experience of what's available e.g. the games people here have raved about like Wipeout VR, I Expect You To Die, Star Trek Bridge Commander, Space Pirate Trainer, Resident Evil 7, SuperHot, iRacing, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, etc.

There's a lot more to a good VR game than just the 3D vision.

To me, there seems little point in investing in a VR setup, buying Fallout 4 VR, only to then play it with a standard controller.

The point of VR is to be immersive, and that's never going to happen with a standard controller.

If that doesn't float your boat, fair enough. Doesn't mean it's a fad. The Wii's success can widely be attributed to the fact that a lot of the games were built designed for the platform - WiiSports, for example, would have been barely worth mentioning if you used a standard controller.

And I say this as someone that has barely used my Rift in the last 6 months or so.

You can point out whatever you want fella. At the end of the day I don't own what you could call a serious VR headset and that is because of the games I want to play, or total lack of them. So yeah, continue on 'til you're blue in the face if you really want to 'cause it isn't going to change anything, man.

I think you are missing what I consider to be the big picture for VR (pardon the pun). At the end of the day it needs to appeal to every one, and thus make every one want it, to succeed. If it only has limited scope? it's bound to fail.

In all honesty when it comes to VR all I hear is bad. Certain company have ditched it this week, Bethesda are suing people, etc etc. All nails in the proverbial coffin, IMO. Remember, I am allow my opinion. Whether it can get through all of that? I doubt it, given it doesn't have what I would consider to be a killer app and the way things are headed with it it won't get one either.

I do agree that for there to be a serious VR game it needs to be devved from the ground up for VR. And that won't happen, because you then have a product useless for anything else. See also - PC gaming. No one will dev a PC game from the ground up (like Crysis, for example) because it won't run on a Xbone and PS4 etc. So they dev them for those, THEN add in some PC stuff if they can even be arsed (and lately they haven't).

There are many games developed from the ground up for VR.

I think it's worth pointing out that the amount of VR headsets that have been shifted already make it a success. PSVR alone sold 2 million in a year.

It won't change anything for you, no. But you didn't say, "I'm not interested in VR personally," you claimed the whole thing was a fad. And at the risk of blowing your mind, 'what JohnCoffey wants' simply isn't the yardstick by which the entire success of anything hinges upon. You personally don't have to like a think before that thing can succeed. I'm not sure what part of that you're arguing with?



Are you sure? I mean I know loads of people that don't own any gaming consoles or equipment and I'm pretty sure that industry is doing very well for itself. I personally don't own a car, yet that continues to not sound the death knell of the entire automotive industry. Bizarre!

Every single thing everywhere has 'limited scope' to some degree because not everything is popular with everyone in the world. Based on the other stuff you keep repeating here I suspect that when you say "it needs to appeal to every one" you really mean "it needs to appeal to JohnCoffey" because the idea that something gaming related could pass you by and still be successful appears to be impossible for you to imagine.



You are indeed. But remember it has to not be ill-informed nonsense for it to be taken at all seriously.



You keep demonstrating that you don't know anything about the state of the platform or anything about any of the games that are around so it's a bit difficult to take seriously what you consider about the way things are headed. And I don't say that intended to be an insult, it's just a statement based on your own posts here.



Um, there are already loads of games that have been developed exclusively for VR. Seriously dude, it's this kind of genuine ignorance of the current state of play that makes you impossible to take seriously here.

Sums up VR perfectly.

The Dreamcast sold 10 million in 3 years.

No it doesn't.

Sure, but it was the Best Console Ever (TM)

You misspelled "sums up JC perfectly."

Mircosoft’s Zune sold several million.

Sick fucking burn.

Pretty much everything you've said has been pointed out to be wrong or meaningless.

Glad I read to the end of the thread as my post was going to be 'The Dreamcast would like a word'.

But now I've made it anyway. Ha!

I don't think VR will achieve critical mass this generation, WARNING ANECDOTES I know of many PSVRs that are in the back of cupboards already, PC VR headsets gathering dust etc - and that's from the small subset of people that actually bought them in the first place.

In fairness I know of a few folks who are REALLY into their PC VR for simulation racing games and racing games alone, but then again you're into a niche within a niche within a niche so will they make the entire thing viable? No.

VR's day might come when the tech is right, but we're a way off yet.

Then you're clearly listening to only one side of the argument.

The BBC have broadcast pitch-side VR views of all of the World Cup games they've covered this tournament. That to me says that VR is anything but a fad. It doesn't need to be a fully immersive interactive experience for it to work well in VR and to appeal to people (although it helps, obviously)

Well I guess that's how the news is all over then (bad, usually).

We'll see. If it can get some killer A+ quality titles on it I may upgrade. If I can play seated.

No, in your opinion it is. I'm entitled my own opinion, right? or did we reach "nanny state" status and I missed it?

I could spend all day making those sorts of points but of course it would just be dismissed out of hand. Funny thing is I have been on the end of pretty much every fad there ever was (3DVision, 1080p, 4k, stupid game controllers, £150 keyboards etc etc) and as you have pointed out you put yourself in the 1%. Then you do something else, and before you know it you are in the 1% of 1% club. And then you find out the fucking hard way you were duped. Let's use wide screen gaming as a topic for this. I bought 3 monitors, strapped them to the wall, loaded up Nvidia's software and played Dirt 3 over all three screens. It was incredible, amazing ! then all I found was games that did not support it properly and looked like ass. So that was another huge waste of money and time.

VR needs something huge. Something like Mario VR. Mostly because that is all it is really capable of right now. As soon as you start to get ultra realistic you start asking questions of the GPU and there ain't one out there to run it at high enough resolution to make it viable being truly real.

I played Super Hot on launch and it was not a VR game. If it was a true ground up VR game it wouldn't have come out first as a FPS sorta deal where you pause time etc. The game was amazing, but it only went so far before IMO it became repetitive. This is not grounds to dump £400 on a VR headset.

As I've said a few times now, we will see what happens. Even a proper decent platform romp (some sorta rip off of Mario) would be nice, and something that actually feels like a game rather than a tech demo (like Lucky's Tale).

Well, I mean, if it was ever up to me personally I might not allow you an opinion because they're so demonstrably awful; but given that the government isn't involved in this discussion at all I'm not sure why you'd even mention a 'nanny state'.

I'd like a PSVR. The £200 price point is very tempting now.

That point was based on a fact (a fact which - bonus - is correct), which makes it somewhat different to anything you've said.

Ever.

OK, let's ignore SuperHot VR for a second (although saying "it's not a true ground up VR game" just because it came out on a non-VR platform first is mindboggling)

• Onward
• Pavlov
• Hotdogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades
• Space Pirate Trainer
• BeatSaber
• Thumper
• Wilson's Heart
• I Expect You To Die
• Star Trek: Bridge Crew
• Robo Recall
• Audioshield
• Eleven: Table Tennis VR
• Subnautica
• Echo Arena
• Lone Echo

All of those are absolutely fantastic games and experiences, most of the time precisely because they are VR-based.

Also:
One of VR's greatest strengths IMO is that you don't *need* to get ultra realistic. Just the intro sequence of Robo Recall made me physically scared at one point, and let's not even get into the experience that many people have had playing Alien: Isolation in VR.

Being immersed in the experience means that you can look past cartoonish or slightly dodgy graphics. But eventually, they will come.

I fucking wish Robo Recall was on PSVR. It looks mad dope.

I thought that through for many hours too. I was all set to buy a PS4 Pro. Then I did some research and it is very low res, and thus incredibly limited.

If you want I can loan you my DK2. You will get about the same experience out of it. There's at least a day's worth of fun to be had with it.

I'd have used it more, but the "THIS HEADSET IS NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED" and the fact it would not calibrate after they updated the software meant it was a tad limited. Mind you, things like Dear Angelica are worth experiencing at least twice



It just all felt incredibly basic to me. Sure, the effect was nice, but that is about where it ended.

I clearly recall being on this forum a good couple of years back asking if VR was any more than the bat and ball type games of the 80s. I was told yes, it is, basically.

I then buy a DK2 about a year ago (might be 18 months now tbh) and I was treated to basically exactly what I expected. I bought a few games, but they were terribly disappointing. Dirt Rally was one, IIRC that was fine in the car (the cockpit was fairly hi res) but the outside looked like dog mess and made me want to hurl. It was just so low res and fuzzy AF.

Are you basing all of your comments on experiencing these things on a DK2?

It is.

Nope. That was the baby step. I then saw no good, fit reason to spend £499 (at the time I bought it). It was exactly what I suspected it was. Fun for a few hours, but that is about it.

That said I did load up FO4 VR and even though it was a little grainy it was very impressive. Sadly I needed to spend £499 on a headset with controllers to play it, and then I would need to play it basically blindfolded whilst smashed out of my nut on anti psychotics and anti anxiety meds known for making me faint.

I may set it up again at some point and try out VorPX and try and get it running that way (Fallout 4 that is, about the only thing I could spend more than an hour playing in VR).

Oh yeah, the Oculus store was incredibly empty too. It wasn't hiding shit because I didn't have a CV it just wasn't there. About the best game in the Oculus store I could find was the eagle flying one.

Oh yeah again (edit). I also found out that the CV1 does not come with the lenses and thus I would need to spend £X to get it working with my glasses. At least the DK2 allows me to take my glasses off and use it clearly.

Oh, ok then.

Maybe my bog standard PS4 got upgraded by pixies.

I don't know what you've been reading, but it sounds like the biggest load of utter shash ever.

Firstly, VorPX is no substitute for a proper port. FO4 VR might have its problems, but it'd be a damn sight better than running VorPX. A good VR experience is not just about having the stereoscopic vision.

Secondly, the Oculus store isn't what I'd call empty - nearly everything in my list above is on the Oculus store, and you have the SteamVR store as well.

Thirdly, of course CV1 doesn't come with prescription lenses - how would that ever work? On the other hand, it works fine with glasses - unless you wear particularly wide frames, in which case you might have a little trouble with it - but my glasses are fine and have no problems with comfort.

You're not doing yourself any favours here, dude. VR without motion controllers is only barely VR, really, and as Touch doesn't work with DK2 I can only assume that you've never actually tried it. I mean, Christ, even the fiddliness of getting the DK2 to actually switch on and get the game appearing in it is light years behind the ease of use of CV1/Vive.