Current VR users?

[MADe]

Peeps,

Has a consenus been arrived at, for the best VR rig to use with AH3?

 

[Gman]

Not sure if this place is capable of having a consensus about anything, but the vast majority of sim pilots I see posting here and other games prefer the Rift.  For cockpit/sim games, the Rift is just more mature IMO, the Vive has potential as it's not a bad unit by any stretch, it's just not "there" yet so much as the Rift is.

[Skuzzy]

The Rift has the best software support, by far and away.  It is not just maturity either.  The technology behind their software is leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

[FLS]

The Rift software forces power management on regardless of your settings on whatever USB hub the Rift is plugged into. You may want to keep your game controllers on a different hub.

[tunnelrat]

Can't speak for the Rift other than to say the Vive's room-scale features/techonology and front-facing camera are a league apart from it, that's not an opinion, that's just comparing the two devices spec to spec.

The Vive is made for clearing out a space and having a holodeck style experience... ducking under blades swinging out at you, crouching behind cover to avoid being shot, spinning around to fire a bow at someone behind you...

For sitting in a chair, the Rift is probably better as that is all it was designed to do at the outset... it's lighter, and has been around longer.

I stick with TrackIR for Sims... you can't see your controls/maps/beer with a VR head-set on.  For Aces, because it's got a much more prominent social/tactical text component than any of the other modern sims I have flown (War Thunder, IL-2 BoS/CLoD)... and VR isn't good for reading that type of text, especially out of your main line of sight.

One thing to ask yourself is whether your computer is man enough to handle any individual game in VR... you're rendering twice, once for each OLED in your headset... I have a hoss laptop with GTX 970Ms in SLI, a fat proc, and 32 GB of RAM... since they don't yet take advantage of using one GPU for each eye, I have trouble running things like Hover Junkers (even though it's an amazing experience, it chugs butt)

[FLS]

You can stand, crouch, and spin around with the Rift but why would you get out of your chair when the headset is attached to your PC by cables you can't see?

[tunnelrat]

I dunno man, probably the same reason the Holodeck on STNG is so awesome, I guess?  I didn't really "get it" either until I tried it... I tell you what though, it wears my butt out and I sweat like there is no tomorrow.

Guess you have to experience it to understand.  The cables quickly become an afterthought as real immersion kicks in... and my wife rigged ours both up to a spring system... it was a minor annoyance before, until you got used to it, now it's just not an issue.

This is a little demo vid she made of Holopoint... (both to show off the Vive/game and to work on her video editing skills)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2qcOjuFqiU

It's before she did the hanging mod, so you can see her step over the cable now and then...

I guess the easiest way to attempt to explain it is that it's the difference between sitting in chair to fly a sim and sitting in one of those gyroscopic seats... but honestly the motion under your own power is immersive beyond explanation. 

Doesn't really lend itself to flight sims, though there are so more superman-like flying games that are pretty cool if you don't get motion sick.

Here's another thing that kind of does a more succinct job at conveying it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TckqNdrdbgk

[Gman]

The Rift has the best software support, by far and away.  It is not just maturity either.  The technology behind their software is leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

That was the statement HT made regarding the 2 a couple months back I was hunting for and couldn't find again for this thread.  I wonder if HTC's(Vive, not AH HTC) horrid phone service is related to their software support team, as it's beyond ridiculous trying to deal with them.  I have personal experience, trying to return my first Vive which out of the blue started functioning again, their phone reps were all in South America and could barely speak English, and after not calling me back as promised many times, I told them "I bet I won't see that RMA for 2 weeks".  It showed up last week, over 2 months later, and now they credited my credit card for an item I haven't even SHIPPED back to them.  This is all without contacting me in 8 weeks +.  Thanks HTC(Vive, not AH3).  Morons.  The Reddit thread regarding similar stories is quite hilarious.  No idea if the Rift is the same deal, I've had zero issues with it.

There IS a couple of games where room scale/standing is great with the Vive, check out Onward on Steam, it just went beta a few weeks back, and it's were FPS are going in VR in the future, and so far, it's fantastic for twenty bucks.  I would buy a Vive just for that game, but would rather have a room scale Rift - and that tech does exist, AckAck has posted here before about the Rift supporting multiple sensors and room scale now.  If that comes to easy fruition, adios Vive for me.  Same thing with the OpenSource unit coming, if it is indeed truly OS and will work with various games (all the sims the Rift works for) and is just as good, then adios Vive AND Rift for me.

[MADe]

ja I be read'in where rift better for sit down play. cockpit fits that.
new rig should eat rift code fine.