VR

Author
Discussion

Bullett

10,873 posts

183 months

Wednesday 19th June 2019
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No comparison in my opinion.
PC has better resolution, more graphical fidelity, better control and tracking.
I've been VR'ing since the earliest Rifts and had a PSVR when they came out I didn't keep it but I don't regret trying it.
Immersion is the killer though which you've already experienced so it won't be a giant leap to PC based VR but you are unlikely to want to go back.

Guvernator

13,105 posts

164 months

Wednesday 19th June 2019
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From my personal experience I also dipped a toe in with the PSVR. If you already have a PS4, it's more than good enough to let you try it out without the huge outlay. However despite having a decent spec PC, I haven't upgraded to a Vive or Oculus as I don't think the jump in price is worth it at the moment.

The PSVR is good enough to see me through for another year or so by which point I'm hoping VR will have matured a bit more. VR development seems to be picking up pace so I'm hoping by then we'll see something that's really worth the extra money. Personally for me the resolution and tracking of the top spec units is good enough but they really need to sort out the ergonomics, make them smaller, lighter and a lot less cables (I know the wireless modules help with this) so that they are comfortable to wear for longer stints and aren't such a faff to setup and put on.

On the motion sickness I've found that after a few sessions, sometimes you can get used to the motion sickness aspect. Just try some short stints and see if it improves.

kingston12

5,473 posts

156 months

Wednesday 19th June 2019
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framerateuk said:
So a question, for those who've bought a PSVR and then gone on to more expensive PC headsets, how does the experience compare? Is the improved tracking and resolution increase worth the huge price difference?
I’ve gone the other way - Oculus Rift to PSVR and now Oculus Quest.

Technically, Rift is unquestionably the best, but for me it is as much about the hassle factor as anything else.

I don’t play very often, so when I do I want to pick up and play as quickly as possible. With the Rift, there was ALWAYS a problem with one of the pieces of hardware not connecting to the PC or not being recognised, then there were constant updates and bugs.

I’d always be up and running after half an hour or less, but that was too long for me.

The PSVR is much better in that regard, with no connection problems. It has a great set of games as well. Resolution is nowhere near as good as the Rift, but resolution is a weak point of all of the headsets so far, especially when compared to gaming on a TV or maybe monitor at 1080p or higher.

Then onto the Quest, which is my personal favourite. No wires is a game changer in terms of ease of use and immersion. The quality of graphics is not quite up to the Rift, but not as far removed as I was expecting.

Tracking is internal to the headset, but seems to work nearly as well as ok the Rift.

The only real downsides are a two hour battery life, which doesn’t matter to me as I always play for less than that, and a more limited set of titles so far.

The PC-based headsets are the best for hardcore gamers, but effectively start at £1,400 unless you already own a PC capable of running them.

Guvernator

13,105 posts

164 months

Wednesday 19th June 2019
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The Occulus Quest is a big step in the right direction for me. As you state no wires is a real game changer. I'll wait till they refine it a bit more and then get something like that.

simo1863

1,866 posts

127 months

Wednesday 19th June 2019
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kingston12 said:
I’ve gone the other way - Oculus Rift to PSVR and now Oculus Quest.

Technically, Rift is unquestionably the best, but for me it is as much about the hassle factor as anything else.

I don’t play very often, so when I do I want to pick up and play as quickly as possible. With the Rift, there was ALWAYS a problem with one of the pieces of hardware not connecting to the PC or not being recognised, then there were constant updates and bugs.

I’d always be up and running after half an hour or less, but that was too long for me.

The PSVR is much better in that regard, with no connection problems. It has a great set of games as well. Resolution is nowhere near as good as the Rift, but resolution is a weak point of all of the headsets so far, especially when compared to gaming on a TV or maybe monitor at 1080p or higher.

Then onto the Quest, which is my personal favourite. No wires is a game changer in terms of ease of use and immersion. The quality of graphics is not quite up to the Rift, but not as far removed as I was expecting.

Tracking is internal to the headset, but seems to work nearly as well as ok the Rift.

The only real downsides are a two hour battery life, which doesn’t matter to me as I always play for less than that, and a more limited set of titles so far.

The PC-based headsets are the best for hardcore gamers, but effectively start at £1,400 unless you already own a PC capable of running them.
+1 for Quest. Think it's very much the cliche iphone moment for VR.
One of the main problems for VR is that Joe Public used a google cardboard back in the day and think they know all about it. The Quests portable nature means it's getting out there and whilst it isn't the perfect VR product, it's not far off and is mind blowing for someone who hasn't experienced anything VR for years.

I bring mine in into the office and have a VR session on Fridays. By just doing this, I've sold 3 of them for Oculus just on the intro tutorial and the only negative anyone has had for it is that they threw up playing Quake.

I can barely tell the difference in beat saber and Vader Immortal looks good. Robo Recall is a noticeable downgrade but I'd still describe it as decent (I only say it's noticeable because I've played it on a system that costs 4/5 times as much). The Pavlov Alpha runs surprisingly well.

At home, on longer play sessions you feel more of the negatives, namely comfort but I did the Vive Audio Strap mod that gets banded about online and that's made a big difference. I had one anyway but note sure I would have bought a new one for that purpose. People seem to suggest counter-weighting it with a battery pack but I'm not sure it's that simple.

I love showboating my wirelessness in Rec Room by just spinning around.

Also used it for watching a film on a flight, which was great, once you get over the self consciousness!

framerateuk

2,730 posts

183 months

Wednesday 19th June 2019
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Thanks for the replies guys, that's very interesting!

My gut was hold off on the PC headsets for a while as they seem to be constantly improving, and unless they're a huge upgrade over the PSVR, it's probably not worth it at the moment.

My most powerful PC is an i5 6500 and a 1060GTX so I'd have to shell out for a new graphics card which would no doubt cost several times the cost of the PSVR on its own!

I've been reading a bit about using the PSVR on the PC too, so I may head down this route just to try things out.

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 22nd June 2019
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framerateuk said:
Thanks for the replies guys, that's very interesting!

My gut was hold off on the PC headsets for a while as they seem to be constantly improving, and unless they're a huge upgrade over the PSVR, it's probably not worth it at the moment.

My most powerful PC is an i5 6500 and a 1060GTX so I'd have to shell out for a new graphics card which would no doubt cost several times the cost of the PSVR on its own!

I've been reading a bit about using the PSVR on the PC too, so I may head down this route just to try things out.
I run a rift on a gtx970 which is slower than your card, and all my games runway max settings with no problems. i7 on mine, but it's all about the gpu not the cpu

Spanna

3,732 posts

175 months

Saturday 22nd June 2019
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framerateuk said:
Thanks for the replies guys, that's very interesting!

My gut was hold off on the PC headsets for a while as they seem to be constantly improving, and unless they're a huge upgrade over the PSVR, it's probably not worth it at the moment.

My most powerful PC is an i5 6500 and a 1060GTX so I'd have to shell out for a new graphics card which would no doubt cost several times the cost of the PSVR on its own!

I've been reading a bit about using the PSVR on the PC too, so I may head down this route just to try things out.
My son has a rift running on 16gb RAM, 6GB 1060 and an i5. Runs fine.

I picked up a Lenovo Explorer after someone posted a Black Friday offer in here. It’s excellent for £150.

Jasandjules

69,825 posts

228 months

Saturday 22nd June 2019
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I had a very quick go on an Occulus (sp?) last week - seriously considering getting a gaming PC just for this. Fallout was just astonishing...

I have a PS4 Pro but not sure the PS4 VR will be good enough - doesn't have Fallout either as I understand it... Skyrim sure but Fallout no.. Or will it?

Speckle

3,448 posts

215 months

Saturday 10th August 2019
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A quick heads up for anyone who is interested - Dirt Rally 2 is (finally) playable in VR driving
Not tried it yet as I was very much in the 'no VR, no buy' camp but, I shall definitely pick it up now thumbup

PSVR unfortunately isn't supported.

Hilts

4,383 posts

281 months

Saturday 10th August 2019
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Speckle said:
A quick heads up for anyone who is interested - Dirt Rally 2 is (finally) playable in VR driving
Not tried it yet as I was very much in the 'no VR, no buy' camp but, I shall definitely pick it up now thumbup

PSVR unfortunately isn't supported.
Have a look on RaceDept first, the Steam version is not running well at all even with 2080s

Speckle

3,448 posts

215 months

Tuesday 13th August 2019
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Hilts said:
Have a look on RaceDept first, the Steam version is not running well at all even with 2080s
I had a quick go last night and it is far from optimised (I have a 1070ti which has managed to run every other driving game I've thrown at it). Having said that, with the graphics settings turned down, it seemed to run quite smoothly. Far from perfect but, perfectly playable.

ETA: Had a bit more time last night and I was expecting to have way more performance issues having read some of the forums. Frame rate seemed decent. I was running it on high settings with a few of the less important details turned down.

A bit of footage here - please excuse the driving, turns out I'm a bit rusty hehe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IProBd4vK8Q

I think I need to turn on screen mirroring as the perspective on the footage is very odd.


Edited by Speckle on Wednesday 14th August 09:46

geeks

9,121 posts

138 months

Thursday 15th August 2019
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Codies have apparently confirmed that F1 2019 will be getting the VR update like Dirt 2.0, irritating that it isn't available on release but I am really looking forward to testing it out!

Bullett

10,873 posts

183 months

Thursday 15th August 2019
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No Mans Sky has been VR'd.

Downloading now, anyone tried it?

Ian974

2,927 posts

198 months

Friday 16th August 2019
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Bullett said:
No Mans Sky has been VR'd.

Downloading now, anyone tried it?
I had a bash on wednesday evening, but most of the time just getting used to playing it again, I'm not really "back into it" yet.
Some very nice touches and i think i'm really going to like it once I'm properly into it again.
Though while using the move controllers to use the spaceship throttle and joystick seems very cool it is a bit hectic, I ended up stuck doing a load of backflips while trying to launch into space! hehe

Jonesy23

4,650 posts

135 months

Saturday 5th October 2019
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Have got a Varjo VR-1 to play around with.

Upsides
- amazing how convincing VR can be with the right source material when you can see it at the limit of your eyes with no pixels at all. Nothing competes with the resolution/PPD.
- auto setup of IPD and the display alignment guide helps a lot compared to manual fiddling of the headset like on a Vive Pro.

Downsides
- mega cost. (And business sales only)
- limited FOV - a bit like wearing a scuba mask with a hole cut in the VR screendoor mesh for the middle of the display.
- only works with stuff specifically made compatible.
- Needs some serious hardware to really run well as it's doing twice the displays, especially if your source material is properly HD.
- Still a work in progress so hardware works well but software less so.

Resolution wise it makes everything else seem like a toy and difficult to go back to. Not that this is a huge benefit for a lot of cases but with a detailed environment and the right textures and shaders it looks properly real. Just viewed through a scuba mask with blurry edges...

Get one if it's someone else paying for it and you can find a use for it. Otherwise it's just a glimpse of what VR could be with the right hardware.

snuffy

9,661 posts

283 months

Saturday 5th October 2019
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€6000 + €1000 for a "Customer Success License" (whatever that is) + VAT.

Good luck selling those !

Jonesy23

4,650 posts

135 months

Monday 7th October 2019
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And that's just the headset, no controllers and minus the recommended 4 lighthouses.

There is a lot of money embedded in it though, the headset cable is 10 metres of a custom assembled twin USB C/Thunderbolt optical so that's going to be £500 at least - for the cable.

But there is a market and I expect to buy more as (right now) it offers visuals nothing else can do. The really spendy bit is the workstation to drive it...

Guvernator

13,105 posts

164 months

Monday 7th October 2019
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It's been sold as a commercial grade product not a home consumer one so the price will be pretty much irrelevant.

What it does do is point the way a bit for the future of where VR is headed, I expect something of this spec to be available to consumers within 5 years at a much more palatable price tag.

My big bugbear is still the headsets though, they are just too big and bulky, any idea why they need to be so damn big considering you get 4k displays on smartphones now which are a lot smaller and weight a whole lot less. What's actually taking up all that bulk?

MattyB_

2,008 posts

256 months

Monday 7th October 2019
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Lenses, tracking sensors and LCD screens, plus adjustable IPD, room for glasses etc. It just all adds up.

It's not the bulk for me, its the wires. Realistically we're looking at better resolution, wider FOV, foveated rendering, eye tracking and wireless before headsets become more viable/usable IMO.....and there are numerous hurdles to overcome before we really get there, namely PC power and wireless bandwidth.

Or just skip it all and project direct to the retina.