Rift / Vive / VR General

[Doktor Best]

A wireless option would be cool. I bet they are already working on it.

So Zenith seems to be an enormous success. Steam topseller candidate with broken login servers and all the usual pancake mmo launch week bells and whistles.

Ill hold off for now but i will observe how players judge the longtime motivation.

I bought Transcendence for a fiver and Maskmaker for 10 bucks. Didnt know it is made by the Fishermans Tale dev team and when i found out i instantly bought it. Fishermans Tale is one of my favorite puzzlers (albeit very short) in VR.

Then i bought Song in the Smoke. Its a pretty polished survival game. My wife loves those games, shes already far ahead of me. I wouldnt recommend it to vr newbies since you can only save at your fireplace which means when motion sickness kicks in youre pressed to keep playing until you can save, which is a very bad idea.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

VRchads... we can't stop winning...
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2022/0...illinois-holocaust-museum-concentration-camp/

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-elite-vr-bundle-2

SOME ACTULLY SEEM WORTH PLAYING

I OWN PAPER BEEST ALREADY

I BOUGHT ZERO CALIBER AND IM TO DRUNK TO REMEMBER WHAT ELSE

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS ALSO I TRIED QUEST TOO WIRELESS

PERFORMANCE WAS SHIT BUT WHO KNOWS WHAT THE FUTURE BRINGS

 

[Mortmal]

BROS

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-elite-vr-bundle-2

SOME ACTULLY SEEM WORTH PLAYING

I OWN PAPER BEEST ALREADY

I BOUGHT ZERO CALIBER AND IM TO DRUNK TO REMEMBER WHAT ELSE

Got those two as well,i think they are the best in the list raw data is ok shooter but quite simple. I advise you to wait for a sale and get pavlov on discount, its very good and the modding community is very active. I was really surprised at how good the DDAY map was . Really great experience, feels like the movie , trying to shoot guys in a bunker with WW2 weapons isn't easy.

 

[Perkel]

BROS ALSO I TRIED QUEST TOO WIRELESS

PERFORMANCE WAS SHIT BUT WHO KNOWS WHAT THE FUTURE BRINGS

You need Wifi6 class router connected to your pc via ethernet cable.
wireless VR is shit via wifi5 class router (a/b/g/n)

 

[ADL]

BROS

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-elite-vr-bundle-2

SOME ACTULLY SEEM WORTH PLAYING

I OWN PAPER BEEST ALREADY

I BOUGHT ZERO CALIBER AND IM TO DRUNK TO REMEMBER WHAT ELSE

Zero Caliber is supposed to be good for an arcade-y shooter but like Mortmal says I would recommend Pavlov. I consider it the Garry's Mod of VR until S&box comes out.
I've always wanted to play Battlewake but it's averaging 2 players on Steam and I'm pretty sure they're playing singleplayer missions.

 

[Chinese Jetpilot]

BROS ALSO I TRIED QUEST TOO WIRELESS

PERFORMANCE WAS SHIT BUT WHO KNOWS WHAT THE FUTURE BRINGS

You need Wifi6 class router connected to your pc via ethernet cable.
wireless VR is shit via wifi5 class router (a/b/g/n)

It is possible without WiFi 6. I've had very good success with a WiFi 5 TP-Link AC1750; router connected via ethernet to my PC, LOS of headset within 15ft, and having the Quest the only device connected wirelessly to the router (5GHz).

 

[Mortmal]

Same works good with wifi 5 and a simple sfr box 7 connected to the pc via ethernet , the only device connected to it is the quest 2 as well. I am even using windows 11 without trouble...

 

[Dexter]

wireless VR is shit

 

[Dexter]

Also some Transformers game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xCCy4Bb6tM

 

[Venser]

If you have Oculus I recommend watching the new Meta documentary about Alex Honnold. There are two 30 minute episodes, saw the first one yesterday and liked it. I don't think 3D video has enough depth to really showcase the scale and the height and do it justice. Still it's very much worth watching, seeing the texture of the wall and the tinny little crannies he uses to hold himself and hang on is really cool and the sense of danger is more highlighted in VR. It's much better than overhyped Space Walk video.

 

[Dexter]

Btw. you can still play some of the SteamFest Demos, I tried these:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1265800/Hubris/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574510/Kartoffl/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/398990/The_Last_Taxi/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1501820/Ziggys_Cosmic_Adventures/

HUBRIS: Nice graphics and landscapes, but still a bunch of bugs. It's a mix between a climbing game, Shooter and Adventure.

Kartoffl: Seemed the most "finished" of the bunch. Think Lemmings in 3D with more simplistic levels and less tools.

The Last Taxi: Also still has some issues. Might need to "Reset Seated Position" in SteamVR. It's a "seated" experience where you're either behind a work desk or sitting in a Taxi. You are the "Last Taxi" driver in a fully automatized world with robots. Story and world-building seemed interesting and engaging enough. You can read News items on the tablet and accept missions to drive Quests around a futuristic industrialized city. Although you don't actually drive the taxi, that happens automatically. You have different tasks like having a conversation with your passengers to keep them happy and get a bigger tip, or you can record and report them if they say anything anti-regime for a bounty. And every now and then depending on the situation you have to hammer a button to honk, use a lever to windshield wipe, throw a shield at your windshield to protect against falling debris any similar. The tactility of the various controls felt nice enough.

Ziggy's Cosmic Adventure: Inherently a Spaceship flight Sim where you have to manage energy load and balance. It's nice to play around in the cockpit with interactable elements, but otherwise it's kinda shit. Neither flying the spaceship, nor shooting down other spaceships is very fun. Its "gimmick" is a green creature that you can clone/create and then microwave for energy and yeet into space when poisonous gas comes out. Not very compelling. Seemed more like a proof of concept than an actual game demo with thought through mechanics.

 

[Venser]

Moss Book II releasing on March 31 on PSVR

 

[Chinese Jetpilot]

Oculus Blogpost

 

[Perkel]

Looks like fovated is arriving very soon.

PSVR2 will provide fovated rendering. Devs claims it increases performance by around 3.6 times. So it should not only remove VR mallus to performance for effectively rendering two frames at once which is usually halves performance but also increase performance above native performance as if you would play without VR.

This tech should start first with VR but eventually with some good cameras should arrive in PCs too.

https://uploadvr.com/psvr-2-eye-tracking-foveated-rendering-gdc/

Running the VR Alchemy Lab demo with dynamic lighting and shadows on PSVR 2, frame time reportedly dropped from 33.2ms to 14.3ms. In another demo — a 4K spaceship demo — CPU thread performance was 32% faster and GPU frame time went down from 14.3ms to 12.5ms.

 

[Venser]

Trying out Quake 3 in VR. It's such a surreal feeling to walk through the halls of the maps I've been playing on for so many years...
I got rekt so hard in the first few couple of matches. It feels like I'm learning to play the game all over again. Can't even strafe jump yet using the Quest motion controllers.

How to install:
1. Download https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bK0-nYYBdZloj-lHJVIFNXC2JAaB-ATa/view?usp=sharing

2. Open the Sidequest desktop app and click on the download icon in the upper right corner (Box with arrow pointing down).
3. Navigate to the location to where you downloaded the Q3Q APK file and click "open" to install. Second Part
4. On your headset go to "Unknown Sources" and start "ioquake3" two times in a row - the app will not open the first time (it's creating the folders needed) but will start just fine the second time. The official id software demo is included. Meaning you can play the first tier on SP bot tournament and even join some maps on our VR servers for online play.

How to install the full version of Quake 3: Optional, but recommended. Install Quake 3 on your PC, copy all PK3 files from baseq3 folder on your PC and transfer them to baseq3 folder on the Quest.

How to change your nickname:
As of now you will need to edit the q3config.cfg. it's located in ioquake3quest/baseq3. Copy it to your computer, open it with notepad editor and search for "seta name". Delete the preset name "vr_player" and change as you like.

 

[A horse of course]

Trying out Quake 3 in VR. It's such a surreal feeling to walk through the halls of the maps I've been playing on for so many years...
I got rekt so hard in the first few couple of matches. It feels like I'm learning to play the game all over again. Can't even strafe jump yet using the Quest motion controllers.

How to install:
1. Download https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bK0-nYYBdZloj-lHJVIFNXC2JAaB-ATa/view?usp=sharing

2. Open the Sidequest desktop app and click on the download icon in the upper right corner (Box with arrow pointing down).
3. Navigate to the location to where you downloaded the Q3Q APK file and click "open" to install. Second Part
4. On your headset go to "Unknown Sources" and start "ioquake3" two times in a row - the app will not open the first time (it's creating the folders needed) but will start just fine the second time. The official id software demo is included. Meaning you can play the first tier on SP bot tournament and even join some maps on our VR servers for online play.

How to install the full version of Quake 3: Optional, but recommended. Install Quake 3 on your PC, copy all PK3 files from baseq3 folder on your PC and transfer them to baseq3 folder on the Quest.

How to change your nickname:
As of now you will need to edit the q3config.cfg. it's located in ioquake3quest/baseq3. Copy it to your computer, open it with notepad editor and search for "seta name". Delete the preset name "vr_player" and change as you like.

Can you spawn a static Hunter and look at her ass?

 

[Doktor Best]

This looks pretty slick for a mod

 

[Perkel]

Looks like Project Cambria aka Oculus Quest 2 Pro went into mass production according to leaks from multiple sites.

Cambria will be high priced product mostly for business (though it will support everything quest 2 does) packed with every new feature Oculus had in design for past years but were not able to bring at low price.

It is rumored to be "new line of products" rather than just Quest 2 Pro. So its name could be something else than Quest 2 Pro.

Rumored features:
- super compact size - (looks more like huge bulky glasses than typical headset)
- super light
- eye tracking
- face tracking
- HDR support
- upgraded Quest 2 chip.
- similar battery life. Worse battery life for controllers though.
- FOV rendering - using eye tracking to lower amount of pixel to render based on where your eyes look.
- pancake lenses - light coming from display is bounced off several times inside lenses to increase both FOV and reduce needed distance from screen to eyes allowing for size reduction of whole headset.
- ~110 FOV - Quest 2 has like 90.
- Micro-LED display - They experimented with mini leds but decided to go with micro leds.
- 2kx2k per eye - slight upgrade over quest 2 1800x1900 res.
- T-rex for display - Apparently it is some magic wizadry tech for VR that causes your brain to perceive actual resolution of 3D image being much higher than actually is just by shaking it in the right way. Oculus bought startup which presented this tech 3 years ago.
- high quality cameras outside for mixed VR - Quest 2 has shitty ones mostly for positional tracking.
- camera for each controller so that they can't lose tracking behind user body.

It is expected to be announced in 2-4 weeks and go into stores between Q2 and Q3 which is pretty soon.

Facebook expects for it to sell 2mln in first year. It will be heavily advertised for companies due to high price.

Rumored ~1000-1500$

unoficial renders:

 

[Perkel]

The bad rumor on other hand is that the Quest 3 apparently will not be announced this year. Design team want to hit the same price as Quest 2 and apparently they slipped up and couldn't reduce costs down to that level. They decided to take extra time to get new tech to reasonable price point.

Rumored Quest 3:

- HDR support
- mini-leds (aka still LCD but with a lot of backlighting points instead of single one like in Quest 2)
- eye tracking and face tracking
- fovated rendering.
- normal Fresnel lenses - pancake lenses are still to expensive and is one of reasons for delay.
- same resolution as Quest 2
- same cameras on outside.
- improved chip (no specifics). - Apparently Oculus is thinking about their own chip)
- better battery life.

 

[Perkel]

More on TREx

Stands for Transparent Resolution Expander (x)

 

[Ezekiel]

Is there no way to make VR videos play flat? Those damn Japanese.

 

[ADL]

 

[Perkel]

For anyone wondering trying to get into VR looking for best headset for codexian needs i prepared little comparison and i created some suggestions. Recently Varjo Aero showed up on stage and essentially gave us first glimpse of GEN3. I don't think that just resolution bump will count as GEN3 because dynamic fovated rendering is around the corner which seriously will stir shit up.

Comparison between most of mainstream headsets with some stats:

GEN1.0: Oculus Rift - $599 - OLED - 1080 × 1200 per eye - 90Hz - FOV H86°/V104°
GEN1.0: HTC VIVE - $799 - OLED - 1080×1200 per eye - 90Hz - FOV H102°/V122°
GEN2.0: Oculus Quest 2 - $299 - LCD - 1832×1920 per eye - 120hz - FOV H88°/V108°
GEN2.0: VIVE Index - $999 - LCD - 1440×1600 per eye - 144hz - FOV H104°/V114°
GEN2.0: HP Reverb G2 - $600 - OLED - 2160 x 2160 per eye - 90Hz - FOV H80°/V94°
GEN2.5: Varjo Aero - $2000 - miniLED - 2880 x 2720 per eye - 90Hz - FOV H90°/V82°

Quality of displayed image comparison sorted from <best to worst>.*

*Pictures are "through the lens" aka recorded with camera through the lens of headset. Which means that stuff like chromatic aberration, smudging, brightness or color scheme should be ignored. Moreover the more to the sides of image the less clear image tends to be due to lens. This image comparison also doesn't account for FOV. For an example Index has higher FOV which is more "fun" experience as you can see more of game you play at one time.

Value champion:
Quest 2>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>ReverbG2>>Index>>>Varjo
Picture quality:
Varjo>>>>>>ReverbG2>>Quest2>>>>Index
Field of View:
Index>>>>>>>Quest2>ReverbG2>>>Varjo