Frusheen

No rush. Oculus rift arriving first week in April. Any time before then is just fine by me.

Id imagine pilots strapped into ejection seats have a much harder time turning to look behind them. Could the answer be to jink the aircraft to give the extra 10~20 degrees needed to see what's behind you.

Well Elite Dangerous was announced as an official Oculus store title today. Having not worked with any of the latest runtimes since 0.6 and with relative silence from the devs for months it has now been announced that its Oculus VR version will release on March 28th ( standalone version will also get an update). The devs had been under NDA. This makes me wonder if Eagle Dynamics may also be announced as an Oculus partner. Wags has been very quiet regarding VR updates. Could that be as result of a NDA as well?

No. The tracking is 1:1. If it wasn't it would likely cause nausea.

Ideally we'll get hand tracking with haptic feedback. Something like this: http://www.gloveonevr.com

Well Oculus have the technology since they purchased pebbles last year. Having it implemented in the oculus SDK should make it easier for devs to integrate into DCS as opposed to leap which by all accounts isn't as good as the promo videos would have us believe. We may have to wait for CV2 but it's something we will see in the future.

... And completely break immersion in the process. It's a good solution for some but ultimately I won't be happy until I have proper hand tracking with some basic haptic feedback for switches in the 3D cockpit. Hopefully Oculus can give us some VR gloves at some stage.

Ten hours left until my rift DK2 is sold on eBay and I'm suddenly having thoughts of canceling the auction. What's the chances of me longing for another helicopter to fly in VR for two years only for it to release as I sell the headset!!! Still I think the consumer rift will be a fitting upgrade to view Polychop Sims stunning work.

I look forward to your findings. I never thought that camera was anything more than a gimmick to stop insurance claims from 'room scale' trips and falls. It'll be interesting to learn if it's actually practical to use or just completely immersion breaking.

Palmer at Oculus has hinted several times that other peripherals are coming for Rift. I'm waiting for an oculus solution which I think we'll see in the not too distant future.

Screen door is all but eliminated on the consumer versions according to many reports. How can you discount resolution? Is there some other magic way to increase the PPI? The more accurate number which needs to be measured is pixels per degree. This accounts for the lenses and the FOV of each headset. PPI is only part of the equation. Of course you'll have an easier time spotting targets on a triple monitor setup. i never suggested anything different.

Better resolution is a kind of chicken and egg thing at the moment. I think both Oculus and HTC could have gone with higher res but chose not too. There's no point having the resolution without having the horse power to drive it. That's why I think GearVR and Google cardboard etc are a fantastic addition to the market. In order for red and green to give us improved rendering performance and things like gameworksVR and liquidVR we need mass market adoption this time around. GearVR and its like can provide that. If it was just a small bunch of PC gamers with dev kits that were pushing vr we would never have reached the point where we are now. There are other things on the way such as eye tracking and foveated rendering which will lower the bar for 4K vr a bit as well. The problem DCS developers face is the game was never designed with vr in mind. The performance threshold will be higher in DCS than it is for games designed for vr from the outset. I'm unsure how good the res of the consumer headsets will be in DCS. Just a few more weeks until I find out though. :)

Here's a basic example of where we are going: I don't think it will be the leap motion controller but it will be similar.

I think a lot of us who have tried VR and been converted tend to overlook the drawbacks. I'm a convert since I first got my DK1 many years ago but I agree there are huge disadvantages to using a keyboard in VR. The key is to find ways not to have to use it. That's the next logical step after the hmd. Bringing our hands into VR and providing haptic feedback for switches and buttons in the 3D cockpit.

Derek those numbers are interesting. I've found in NTTR I required about 200fps average at 1080p to maintain 75fps in the rift. There is undoubtedly object optimization required. The delta should not need to be so large between the two. The latest updates have also reduced my performance in the NTTR even on minimum settings. Still lots of work needed in the alpha. I could no longer fly over Vegas. One thing I read in another thread was to set the gauges to update every frame. It's said to reduce stuttering which seems to be occurring even at high frame rates. Worth a try for the rift also. My dk2 is boxed up awaiting the end of an eBay auction. I'll be grounded for a few more weeks until cv1 arrives.

Agreed. I got in a few weeks back. I wasn't impressed with it at all. It may be in part due to the dk2 resolution. It should be much better in CV1. DCS looks much more impressive though.

:thumbup: nothing wrong with that.

It is really amazing. That's the point. I appreciate what your saying about button boxes and key combos etc. of course that will present challenges. It boils down to what you want to get out of the experience I guess. If you find it rewarding and get satisfaction from doing the correct workflow at the correct time and completing the objective then that's great too. There's nothing wrong with that and your success will probably suffer if trying to do that in VR. Putting on the headset and looking around the confined space of the cockpit in proper scale and 3D is just more rewarding for some of us. I'm willing to sacrifice the ability for quick cockpit interaction with some functions for the sheer awe of flying in VR and limiting interaction to the methods I've mentioned. It's early days in VR and things will only improve. When resolution improves and we get haptic gloves in DCS then I think even the most doubting flight simmers will be converted :-)

I use a trackball in clickable cockpits. Voice attack with Vaicom for Comms and the buttons on my controls. I never have to touch the keyboard for the modules I fly. Who wants to fly a flight sim on a keyboard! It's the reason people build switch boxes in the first place i.e to increase immersion. What's more immersive than being inside the virtual cockpit? I much prefer to be flying in VR than using a button simulator. EDIT: to the op. You are correct that for a new module you will probably want to run through the various routines, procedures and workflows a bit on a monitor so you can refer to a manual. Once you know the systems things become easier.

Best wishes Andre. Family comes first.

Correct

First I've heard! Have you a source for this?

SteamVR must be installed from steam but it currently runs titles stored locally. You do not need to run a game from your steam library to have steamVR hook to it.

I was getting 200fps in Nevada on minimum settings a few weeks ago (1080p monitor). This when used with the rift managed to maintain the required 75fps in the hmd. Now I'm averaging 140fps still on minimum settings and the rift is unusable for me. I've shadows, HDR, blur, dof etc all off. My GPU, cpu and ram are only being utilized at about 40%. Something in the software over the past few updates is having a very detrimental effect on performance.

Same issue here as others are reporting. I'm having much poorer performance in 1.5.3 and the alpha. Can't use the rift anymore as it can't hold 75hz.