mhe

Interesting, thanks for the info! Would perhaps work if your virtual arms worked that way, but in the real world I'd like to be able to hold the stick without my middle finger sticking into the air (which would probably interfere with the touchscreen when going nose down). Is there any finger tracking solution besides Leap in the pipeline right now?

I know, I actually helped a bit with the Virtualizer development and know the guys personally. Spent some time in it and did some soldering and sensor development for the prototypes. Damn exciting thing, if you have the opportunity, try it, you won't be disappointed!

I had a private talk with those folks some time ago and their tech is simply very impressive. They also added small handheld controllers to their systems as an upgrade from their first Kickstarter attempt, so the system will be usable in small rooms even if you don't have an omnidirectional treadmill. The only thing I'm not quite sure about yet is how you will use your fingers, which will be of major importance when trying to click cockpit switches. Perhaps we can use this in conjunction with a Myo band or an Emotiv Epoc or Insight.

I sometimes use glasses with my DK1. Just set the distance screw a bit more to the max side and you're golden. You could make custom lenses so you don't need glasses (they are interchangeable) and I think the consumer version will offer this as well, perhaps you can order the lenses along with it and input your glasses prescription into the shop!

I hope the F16 ones come earlier than summer - can't wait to get them! How wide are the pedals on the smallest config?

Here are all the talks from the recent Steam Developer Days at Valve, most interesting for us is the talk of . Very excited for the things to come!

Thanks blksolo and Chiclidfan! The deeplink to the tweet is this one: Also got lots of replies obviously, among them this link to reddit:

True, there are demos that don't make you as sick as others and even ones that mitigate the low res problem somewhat. Think of Blue Marble demo or Titans of Space, where the background is dark and you don't see the screendoor effect. The first time I tried HL2 was on a prototype treadmill and I broke out in laughter because it was so ridiculously cool to have a lifesized Combine running towards me. Size does incredibly important things for immersion. My stomach turned after a few minutes but it was an experience to behold. And please please try to remember the link, I'd love to read about the better Rift prototype! Brendan Iribe said a few weeks ago that he is really prone to getting headaches in VR and that they have an internal prototype that he can use for hours without problems. Also, Carmack said that 4k will blow away people once they see it, so I assume they have prototypes with this reasolution internally already...

I'd rather have lower detail and higher resolution than vice versa. And low persistence. The motion blur and low res give me quite the headache in my DK1.

He was talking about CastAR, an Augmented Reality HMD that only displays game content where you place some special surfaces in reality. Much like a projection setup would work, but with the projectors actually worn on your face. Therefore, only the outside content would have to be rendered, the real pit would be perfectly usable and you could still see your hands and all.

That myo looks interesting. And I think I don't want to sacrifice detail at this point. Perhaps EDGE will make it possible to run high details at better framerates, but so far we are fairly CPU limited. So I won't hold my breath. As long as there are 60fps, I am happy. And that is possible already in fullscreen (only with Window mode and Helios, FPS drops).

Since DCS is mostly CPU limited in many cases and modern graphics cards cannot unleash their power because the rendering engine is really dated and does not utilize a lot of the more modern optimization methods, I expect this problem to be remedied when a) when the engine itself becomes more threaded to utilize modern CPUs better (which is a ridiculous amount of coding work to achieve), b) they get proper Multi-GPU support (which should also come with the new renderer I suppose, but won't solve being CPU-limited, only shift some workload from CPU to GPU) c) they include Mantle support (which is also a lot of work and only helps with AMD GPUs) VR is a highly demanding area, so you need beefy hardware to get a decent experience. Not supporting VR because many people lack the hardware to have it running perfectly is not an option and waiting for the hardware to run it properly on everybody's machine is also not an option. Something's gotta give here.

Perhaps EDGE will come with Oculus support already working from day 1? One can dream... And perhaps it even does away with a lot of the graphics performance problems. After all, I recall Wags himself saying that the renderer is as advanced if not even more so than the one used in Outerra.

Excuse me while I wipe the drool of my keyboard...

Wien ;)

You can use anything in DCS that is recognized by Windows as a game controller. So if it is a input device that can be used with DirectX, it can be used with DCS.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll pick it up when I can. I'm a documentary nut.

Also, de-lidding is a matter of minutes once you get the hang of it. I did it to my 4770K a few days ago and it peaks at 45° average core temp under full load with HT enabled at stock clocks. Overclocking will commence soon, but with that kind of reserves I expect to go high...

Of course the first implementation of VR will not be all that the technology can be in the future. But good for us that ED is on the forefront of optimizing DCS for VR so we can have the best virtual flight experience possible at all times. They won't stop improving after the first implementation, especially not when they see a very likely large spike in sales once they have VR working and the first consumer Rifts are in the stores. And no, 4K is not the answer. 8K would be it - at that resolution you become limited by the eye and not by the display panel. But we are some time away from building an affordable 8K panel in such a small form factor, let alone transfer content to the device at decent framerates or even having an affordable PC that can render pretty content at desirable framerates at these resolutions. I expect the first Rift to be 1440p or 1600p and the second iteration to come in 4k (once HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort are as common as DVI and HDMI 1.4 are now). The only question is when.

This makes me so happy - my favourite sim by far being developed to be a prime example of what the most promising tech of the near future can bring. Cheers Wags, you made my day! :)

This low persistence they are talking about is in fact a big deal for motion blur. And it is not like you're going to notice any flickering. There is an Asus gaming monitor out there that does the same thing, Asus calls this feature LightBoost. And it really helps to alleviate motion blur. Combining this with the awesomely fast switching time of OLED displays is the way to go I think. You might perhaps even get faster switching times with DLP projection, but DLP is prone to the rainbow effects for some people (which would induce really heavy headaches in VR I think). The Avegant Glyph uses DLP projection directly to the eye, we'll see how they do.

True, but it is a common misconception. Look at the term "sensor bar" from the Wiimote system. The actual cameras (sensors) were in the Wiimotes themselves, the sensor bar was just a bar with 2 IR LEDs a specific distance apart. You could even replace the bar with 2 candles and the system worked flawlessly, but the term sensor bar remains to this day. Sad but true.

Ich würde ebenfalls zuerst den Headtracker nehmen. Pedale sind am Boden zwar sehr nützlich, aber im Flug (wo man deutlich mehr Zeit verbringt, zumindest wenn man weiß was man tut), dann ist der Headtracker deutlich mehr in Verwebdung und daher meiner Meinung nach auch sinnvoller.

Yep, getting there. I'd love to see some direct panel shots of the Crystal Cove Rift, but nothing so far. http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/7/5284258/oculus-unveils-rift-prototype-with-positional-tracking-and-mysterious

Very interesting concept, but in the end that tech would have to be integrated into VR HMDs like the Rift. But it is definitely a step forward from using a mouse or keyboard, no question about that. Thanks for the video, haven't seen that before for gaming as a working system! :)