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After a fun, yet at times frustrating, evening I can give my first impressions of the Oculus Rift.
Probably the best thing about it is it really is a plug 'n' play device so you can be up and running in no time.
My first stop was a vrcinema3D app/demo. It puts you in a virtual cinema..and that's it. It really does put you in a virtual cinema, it was an incredible feeling. Because your entire FOV is taken up in the experience, you are there. The sense of scale on the cinema screen was no different to me being at our local VUE. It's one of those things that's hard to explain without seeing it. You read about various headsets give you an impression of a 90" screen at 10ft or whatever but this doesn't do that. I was looking at a 50ft screen. Naturally the resolution isn't favourable but I'm not interested in that, I knew the res was low and that screen door effect is there but it's easy to forget that once you're in.
Being a movie fan with a dedicated room and projector setup, I already know I will happily watch a movie like this in my room (obviously preferably on the consumer unit with better res) but it was that impressionable.
Next up was the rollercoaster demo that's been doing the rounds for ages..and it's great. I didn't seem to react like some of the youtube vids show but the first time I did the long drop I felt an uneasy sense of being there  The demo is short and just loops so it's not something you'd do more than a couple of times.
My main interest was racers so I spent the rest of the evening trying to get Dirt 3 up and running. It wasn't an easy job. Using the virieo drivers and a razr hydra I planned to get up and running with 6dof head and positional tracking. I had limited success but know where to start when I get back on it tonight.
Issues - trying to work out the best solution for using Oculus in my rig was hard enough. I ended up having to unplug all but one of the screens and then plug in the Rift as windows and CCC didn't like me trying to duplicate onto the Rift. That was frustrating and took at least an hour to sort.
Next up was getting the virieo drivers to run...that was more of a pain, I couldn't find instructions on how to do it, just various settings from people. Lots of trial and error and a good 2 hours just to get it to running.
Next was headtracking using Rift and hydra...that took 2 minutes..and was amazing Once I got in a car I felt like I was sitting in a car. I turned my head and saw my co-driver it was really cool. I used the Dirt2 FOV changer and set to a FOV of 88 I felt great. I really felt like I was looking at my steering wheel and arms, it was very surreal yet felt so natural after just a few seconds.
BUT - the driving was awful. The controller input seemed to lag so it was pretty much unplayable for me, but again I think I know where I need to make changes tonight. Also I couldn't get the in game res to change to 1280x800 (which you need for Rift) so my screen was too big and didn't help at all.
I gave up at around 3am...but raring to go again tonight
First impressions...it's amazing BUT...if you do get a dev kit you simply must be prepared for the low res and even moreso for the amount of tweaking and frustrations if you want to get current games working with drivers.
There's lots of demos which are really more experiences than playable demos so they will be fairly short lived.
I'm excited about the VorpX drivers now as that should be more of a plug n play solution and also any official support from our fav racer developers
From 6pm to 3am, in and out of various bits and not once did I get any ill feelings. I was pleased about that. |
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Author: museumsteve
2-12-2019 05:29:50
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