Be Excellent To Each Other

So the minimum specs seems to have been confirmed as being 8GB RAM, i5 CPU and either a NVIDIA GTX 970 or an AMD 290.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/24/ocul ... ss-than-1/

Oh shit http://www.polygon.com/2016/1/4/1070819 ... -wednesday

Yeah, no price though.

At this point I am pretty much prepared to pay the going rate. And buy a new PC.

Shit.

Yeah, I've got a reminder set for 3.55pm on the 6th. If it's less than £400 it's mine. Less than £500 and it's probably still mine.

Here's a full list of Oculus games released at launch or near launch nicked off Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/wiki/compatible_games

Yeah, iRacing is a big draw for me. From my experience of Elite Dangerous, I'd say cockpit-style games are going to be the best/least likely to cause motion sickness.

Unfortunately, Frontier have announced that a GTX 980 will be the minimum required for the Oculus Rift in Elite: Dangerous, so I don't think I'm getting one in the foreseeable future.

I have a pair of 970s, which should hopefully be enough.

Elite was fine for motion sickness, I could play for a couple of hours, however project cars I could only play for 10 minutes at a time before needing to lie down or throw up.

I think it was something to do with elite having no fixed horizon so no brain fuckedness as there were no expectations.

There's not much difference in performance between a 970 and a 980 (around 10-20% depending on what they're doing, and you can close the gap somewhat quite easily with 'overclocking' which either card will do automatically if you keep the temperatures in check, my 970 boosts up to over 1200MHz if I set it to an aggressive fan profile).

They're the same GPU (GM204), the 970 just has a couple of chunks of it disabled.

In simple terms, you can get a 970 to deliver 90%+ of the performance of a 980 just by giving it the temperature headroom to boost fully, so I'd be amazed if Frontier runs OK on a 980, but conks out on a 970. (And even without that it's generally no more than 20% off the pace.)

The key point here of course is that the 970 is a hell of a lot cheaper than the 980, and delivers the vast majority of the performance of the far more expensive card.

At Overclockers for example the cheapest 970 is currently £250, the cheapest 980 is £390.

I already have a GTX 970, so that would certainly be nice. I thought the difference was greater between the cards, to be honest. Not sure how I am supposed to control the temperature, though.

Install MSI Afterburner (it works for all cards, not just MSI's), and set a manual fan profile similar to that shown below. The GPU will then auto-boost its arse off and only start to throttle once it hits 80C.

(The default fan profiles on 970s tend to favour limiting noise as opposed to high boosting, so they hit 80C at lower clock speeds whilst remaining fairly quiet. Do be aware that if you do the boost/noise inversion, depending on the cooler your card has, it could get quite noisy.)

What 970 do you have? They come with different manufacturer settings so yours may be set to different default clocks. Mine was the cheapest going when I bought it and has what is clearly a repurposed cooler from the 6xx generation of Nvidia cards, but it still cheerfully boosts up over 1200MHz with the fan ramped right up. (Noisy likes, but with a headset on playing Battlefield with the chaps, that's not a problem)

When you have a hot flush, just drink a cold glass of milk.

MSI. I also have an MSI mainboard. I have been wondering if I should push that OC Genie button, but I don't really need an overclocked CPU. Does it affect the graphics card?

Brain freeze!

£499 not including shipping.

Ouch.

Criminy. So that's £1400~ for me.

No, but depending on your CPU etc it may affect the memory. The last time I had a board with the OC Genie button was my MSI Big Bang Xpower 2, and when you pressed it it increased the strap and the multiplier, meaning my memory got it too.

Personally I would try and find the MSI app that allows you to overclock in Windows. Then simply increase the multi and voltage. Using the strap and all of the immensely complicated options never usually achieves any higher clockspeed wise than you can get with simple multi/voltage adjustments.

Yup. Did you get one?

I was reading something interesting on rllmuk the other day. A few people have gotten hold of the Samsung Gear VR (which is only £85 if you already have a compatible Samsung phone, by the way). Because that's a standalone headset that isn't tethered to anything, you can sit in a swivel chair and turn 360 degrees -- which means you no longer need the right stick to turn your FOV. Which, in turn, apparently reduces motion sickness, significantly for some people, compared to tethered VR headsets. It seems the disconnect between right stick camera control and your head movements are a major pain point in VR-induced nausea.

This is also interesting: http://www.polygon.com/2016/1/6/1071946 ... sick-in-vr

https://shop.oculus.com/en-us/cart/

$599 dollary-doos.

Oh, apparently if you enter a UK address it's £499.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 ... pre-orders

Um... Thanks, Sat.

From what little I'd read the price could have been literally anything prior to pre-orders opening. But apparently it was exactly what Gazchap said.

So yeah. Like. Whatevs. Just thought I'd help out, init.

I ain't getting one, by the way. I'm getting that PlayStation VR thing. Or maybe I'm getting nothing. MAYBE I WONT TELL YOU.

Ok, I will. I ain't getting nuffin yet, though.

OH AND ITS THIRTY QUID SHIPPING TOO. More info from me. In caps. Fuck a caps lock. Bam.

Ummmm thanks Sat

Hope you've all got four USB ports free (three USB 3.0)

I've not bought one at that price, and won't until Frontier confirm Elite compatibility with SDK 1.0.

I couldn't justify £530 for one game. Not even Fallout 4. At least when I paid the same for my 4k monitor I got to play a whole variety of games at that resolution.

It's a bit of a shame really. Something like this could really catch on but sadly it's expensive and you need a expensive PC to power it.

That seems rather expensive, but I am sure they will make a killing! Whoever buys a pair will just have to put up with me sleeping on their couch.

Wait, the Oculus hardware is only compatible with one game? Well, shit.

No sorry dude I was replying to Gaz as it sounded like he was basing the decision on one game.

Pretty reasonable response from Palmer Luckey
https://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comment ... of_oculus/

I think I'll leave it two or three years and then get one that costs a third of the price and is five times better.

In other amusing reddit oculus news.

The oculus sub put together a consolidated list of questions to put to Palmer in the AMA.
They posted that list in one message, so as to not flood the AMA with the same questions over and over.
Palmer did a massive post in response, answering all those questions in detail (which is the response I linked to).
Reddit mods deleted the question thread, and Palmer's long detailed response as it "broke their rules for their sub"
Cue shitstorm.

The AMA mods are fucking idiots.

That seems to be pretty much what people are saying on most of the forums I visit. And it's very sensible, given there is more than one headset being launched etc.

I jumped on 4k too early and I've paid the price for it dearly. Not only did £1400 worth of graphics cards quickly become rendered door stoppers but I also bought a Gsync panel thinking I would forever be with Nvidia. Then they did the 970 thing and a Fury X came up £100 less than new so now I'm stuck without active sync and it sucks. I've considered buying another monitor but the one I would need is £430 (1440p too). Now AMD have released Freesync so every time I look at PC stuff I'm reminded that I made a mistake. A very costly mistake...

So I've just gotta stick now for the moment. I have ordered a second Fury X to beef up my games a little bit but I think I will leave VR until it's completely and totally settled. If it doesn't become a household standard (like every one is saying it will be) then I will have dodged a bullet. If it does? I will make sure I go to PC World or whatever and give it a good testing to make sure I don't hurl before handing over any money.

That said I am enjoying reading about it

I do hope people buy it in droves, have a brilliant time and it's a massive success. I just don't have that kind of spare cash floating around.

I'm going to see which is the best one and then buy it at a later date when they're readily available. At least I've sorted out my PC hardware now in anticipation.

If you're not going to use your PC for anything else wouldn't it be more sensible to buy it later on?

I've been thinking about it for a while anyway. I mean using my MacBook has been *ok* for the last year, but now I have an office it makes more sense to have a dedicated machine.

We've come full circle and the hipsters are now using Windows again, apparently. It's 1996 all over again (when I was still using DOS and resisting people telling me to install Windows.)

Don't worry I'll still have an iPad Pro for my hipster needs. *sips ethically-sourced acacia berry frappelattecino*

I hope it dies on its arse. But then I don't want VR, or other stupid gimmicks. I just want good games

What about good games that could only exist by using VR?

I don't know if I would be that harsh quite yet but the more I read the more I become cynical. Expensive PC - check. Expensive device - check. Hardly any games made specifically for it - check.

I wouldn't compare it to 3D in a technical sense but right now it's just sounding all too familar. For 3D you needed a honkingly expensive 120hz screen, then the "Not very cheap at all" Nvidia 3Dvision kit and then a Herculean pair of graphics cards to run it properly with the settings at maximum. And then support for it was scant and there were only ever a very small handful of titles that worked in it properly and gave the necessary experience. And that's why I do have a very small amount of hope for VR because when 3D was firing on all cylinders and working properly it definitely added something extra to games. Chucking a pipe bomb in L4D for example was just epic. All you had to do was chuck it in, stand as close as you dare and then dodge the arms and legs as they flew out There were some golden moments like that in 3D that really did add to the experience. Things like floating dust particles were also very impressive, as were driving games where the dash was implemented very well and looked like you could reach in and adjust the dials.

But through all of the expense and frustration there truly were moments that made me stop and go "wow".

I have no doubt that VR at some point should also be able to do the same thing, yet I think the PC is actually a bad platform for it, if it's going to work. There are so many extra problems thrown into PC gaming (driver support, SLI support, CrossfireX support and so on) that just make it all sound so tricky.

Then there's the issue that things like this really need to be able to make it into every home for them to truly catch on. Ironically 3D has ended up in a whole load of homes, yet no one actually uses it. I have two 3D capable sets in my house and neither have ever been used in 3D. The glasses for them are still in the packing and have never been opened.

This is why right now I am strongly leaning toward Sony and the PS4 for VR. I understand that done properly this thing could be absolutely mind blowing, I just think it's better done on a format that is solid and doesn't change like the wind (unlike PC stuff which seems to me mashed out every six months or so now).

When I went to 4k I knew that it was going to be expensive. Two Titan Black for example (so that I had enough high bandwidth GDDR) and the monitor cost me two grand. Then I was hit with issues. SLI issues, Gsync issues with SLI (something that apparently still has not been properly fixed) and so on. Drop down to one GPU and just watch the thing crawl. So I replaced those with an AMD Fury X and every time AMD change the drivers some games work better and others suck. Fallout 4 has been like a whore's drawers in terms of performance. One minute it's all nice and smooth, next minute Bethesda release a forced patch and it runs like treacle.

But again like 3D when 4k is all working properly it really does enhance the gaming experience.

TL;DR.