Be Excellent To Each Other

What if you were the first to have a go?

Yes, VR motion sickness can come on in seconds in my experience. One bad disconnect between brain and body is all it takes if you are susceptible.

I see. Well anyone who's that much of a lily liver is probably best avoiding rollercoasters anyway.

Temple Run VR has so far today made everyone that tried it report "That made me feel sick". I am wandering about the office making people feel nauseous.

So no change there then.

Just spending 5 seconds walking forwards in Alien: Isolation when my body knows that it's not actually walking forwards is enough to render me incapable of pretty much anything except sleeping and shitting for up to 12 hours.

I've found that getting older has made me a lot more sensitive to things like motion sickness, feelings of nausea, headaches from flashing lights, eye strain etc.

VR does sound quite exciting but I fear I may be too old by the time it gets good...

My thoughts exactly. I used to be able to play anything and be fine but the other week I tried the original Perfect Dark and that sent my head all wonky.

I daren't even look at Timesplitters.

I know what you mean about getting older. e.g. If I go on a swing now I pretty much instantly feel just like I'm having a whitey but then again I've used Google cardboard for quite long periods with no ill effects so I'm hopeful that I'd be ok with an even better VR thing.

I read that as "whitney" and got very confused!

Yeah, it's a few steps down from a full on whitney.

In my experience, things like Elite Dangerous, where you're supposed to be strapped into a chair in the game world, translated brilliantly into VR. It massively improved the playing experience. But anything like an FPS, where you move around in the game world but are obviously not moving in real life, made me feel as sick as a dog.

Swings do the same to me now too, which is a shame as I used to love swings as a kid. Roundabouts are the worst for me, I hate feeling dizzy - to think we used to lay down on them, looking up to the sky with our heads hanging over the edge

I'm feeling sick just thinking about that.

I watched a 360 video shot from the cockpit of a stunt jet last night. I almost snapped my neck trying to angle my head in line with the aircraft and then it went upside down.

I almost hurled.

Everyone is blathering about this Rift thing and VR but surely we should be chomping at the bit to get our mitts on the "omni-directional platform."

Just look at that thing. It looks totes the balls.

https://i.imgur.com/9Tw8dlR.gifv

I saw a version of this used at EGX 2 years back and whilst it was nowhere near as ergonomic as the one in that clip, it still looked like brilliant fun. I've always thought sitting on your sofa with VR looked daft as shit (and would probably hurt your neck after a while) but going for a literal run about in an open world would be the coolest thing ever.

Unless you're a big fatty, presumably.

At least it might cut down on some of that silly hopping around business in FPSeseses.

In a moment, I wondered why the 'video clip' seemed repetitive and then realised it was actually just looping. Then realised it was a GIF. Might be a slow day for me today.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddkenreck ... 4c51f811d3

So looks like get the HTC Vive if you want a high-end experience, and PS VR if you want something something more accessible and cheaper. Oculus might be squeezed out at both ends of the market.

What a poorly written article.

He seems to really like the HTC. Suspiciously so.

Could be it's really good. I've neither used the HTC or read the article

I've read quite a few articles on it and it does seem to be the bee's knees. I suspect it'll be significantly more expensive than the Rift though.

I read somewhere that as well as the headset (which is wireless) you need a load of sensor posts placed around the room so it can build a virtual map of the space you're in; I can't imagine all that's going to be cheap.

ETA: actually, it's not 'a load' of sensors; it's just two.

ETA2: and the headset won't actually be wireless at all. Man, I just made up a load of shit there didn't I?

It's not wireless from what I've read, it's got a cable running from the headset down the back that might cause issues for some people. Also it needs two lighthouse boxes, not loads.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... c-vive-pre

I've long been enthusiastic about VR but to me it still all looks like an "experience" rather than something you're truly going to spend significant amounts of time on at home.

Maybe I'm way wrong. Do people who already have an Oculus Rift really spend much time with it or do they set it up marvel at it for an bit here and there and then go back to playing some of those same games on a normal screen?

It was the main way I played Elite, just a shame Elite didn't have much game to play in the end...

I literally haven't touched Elite since I sold my technohat.

I expect I'll be all over it when I get a new one.

I checked recently, and it appears I've spent more than a 1000 hours in Elite: Dangerous! And I only even started dipping into joining up with other players recently, which has opened up a whole new aspect. Last I logged in, I chatted with a guy with whom I'd previously had fun chasing (real player) pirates out of a community goal system. It turned out he was in a neighbouring system, so we spent a fun couple of hours practising PVP against each other. There is plenty of game there, but you have to be a part of making it happen.

How much are you betting that EA/Ubisoft charge extra for Occulus/PS VR/HTC thingy DLC, citing the extra work it takes to set up the game for VR...

Oculus are offering Rift bundles which include all the Rift kit and a pre-built PC that meets/exceeds their minimum spec from Asus, Alienware and Dell. Possibly of use to someone here is the fact that if you're already pre-ordered a Rift kit you can contact them to get one of the PCs and they'll make sure you still get the discount you would've got had you ordered one of these bundles. With the caveats that they haven't actually confirmed if the programme will be run in the UK and I've no idea if the bundles are actually a good deal or not. What little details are available can be seen here:

https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/pre-o ... bruary-16/

$1500USD

Holy shit eve....

Not Eve Online, Eve Valkyrie.

Vive is $200 more...

Bit spenny.

I'm the same, we have a couple of Rifts at work, they are used for looking a molecules, there has also been a lot of gaming and other none work stuff done on them as well

Can't use them from very long before I feel sick.

I found that the first time in VR (aside from a very quick try with Gazchaps rift) made me very headachey. But it got easier and now causes no problems.

They're both a bit spenny, but this seems better value considering you get the controllers and room sensors bundled. I'm just waiting on game support (iRacing in particular).

Seems that theres a bit of a difference in that the rift is more designed for desk use, while vive requires a room.

That requirement reminds me a bit of kinect, although with that you could at least see the table you were about to smack into.

The Vive has a front-facing camera. I suspect you'll be able to use it to see where your table is.

You'll be able to with the Vive as well apparently. They sensors will map the walls and objects in the room and they'll show up somehow in the game world so you don't walk into stuff. Apparently.

I think the Vive has the potential for more interesting experiences if you've got the room for it and the games are made well; but those are both iffy prospects for a lot of people. The Rift will suit most people better and probably require less revolutionary development idea be implemented so my gut feel is it'll be better supported. I have no concrete basis for any of this of course.

I'd probably go with the Rift, mainly because they've done far more research into what makes for a good (and crucially, non vomit-inducing) VR experience, and their SDK is supposedly more advanced because of it.

Don't forget that the Vive is being developed with Steam integration in mind though, so that's a big plus.

What exactly do you mean by Steam integration? Any PC game released on Steam is technically integrated with it (which pretty much all Rift games will be) so what extra functionality are we talking about here?

Half-Life 3 Vive exclusive confirmed.

It's being developed in conjunction with Valve, so I'd just expect it to work better because of it. I mean obviously I don't have any concrete proof that it's the case, but it would make sense.

Only on SteamOS!

I'm still not sure what you mean here. Steam's essentially just a delivery platform so there's no 'working better' with it; your game either downloads, installs and runs or it doesn't, surely?

I dunno. I guess I'll find out when I press the Steam VR button in the client...

Not true, it has game-facing APIs like SteamCloud save syncing and Steam Controller support. Admittedly these are thin right now but you could see Vive support being baked into Steam. For example, I get one place inside Big Picture to do the (complex) configuration and calibration of my Vive, and then all games can just read the config from there instead of requiring me to go through it all again.

As you say with the cloud and contorller support though those are APIs so the amount of 'integration' a game brings depends on the developer implementing it, or not, at the software layer. Someone could still happily knock out a Vive game and not use any of that at all. The same as someone can write a non-Vive game that uses it to the hilt. The Vive hardware itself has nothing to do with it so I still don't see that as a bullet point in it's favour versus the Rift.

ETA: I take your point about the Vive config itself, though I had assumed the headset itself would come with some kind of config mechanism that could then be read by all the games even without a central broker like Steam. That could well just be naivety/ignorance on my part though.

But this way you get the best possible Vive experience for all the hundreds of millions of happy SteamOS user— fuck it couldn't deadpan that one.