1st impression of Vive from a long time DK1 and DK2 user

[hansangb]

while I'm waiting for CV1, I also ordered the Vive. So here are my first impressions.

 

Initially, I was annoyed at the set up process. Looking for places to place the sensor was annoying. Not a whole lot of WAF there!

 

But the install/setup was easy enough. What I didn't get a chance to do was setup the IPD (there is a physical switch for it), nor did I get a chance to activate the forward looking camera. But it turns out the Vive has the same "gap" on the nose bridge to look down. For me, this is important because I want to use physical switch boxes.

 

The controller. HOLY CRAP is it accurate. I'm doing a 180 here. The controller used by the right game is a, well, game changer. I can now see why people are able to flip the controller in the VR world and catch in the physical world. Rift better have a killer tracking for their controller because Vive's tracking of the controller is beyond awesome. Who knew it could be so fun blowing up balloons! I'm just not sure how the controller can play a role in Vive. *maybe* it can latch on to collective and people can pull it up? So in the game, when you get the controller near the collective, the game collective gets "attached" the controller and you can twist it for the throttle and lift it up to raise the collective. But you couldn't use it as the joystick because it lacks feedback.

 

Clarity. It's better than DK2 but not light years better. It is noticeably better, though. And here's the odd thing. As others reported, if you press the HMD closer to your eyes, it gets much more clear. I can see why people are shaving off the foam to get a noticeably better view.

 

The HMD is not as comfortable as DK2. The primary reason, I believe, is the cable. It's much thicker and stiffer (no jokes please....) than DK2's cable. Again, I don't have the CV1 yet so I can't compare it. But according to the reviews, others are finding that CV1 is more comfortable. What I may end up doing is getting a clip like those that are on phone/headsets. This way, the strain can be taken off from the HMD.

 

I kind of like the use of the USB/HDMI switch box. It seems to me that you can easily extend the HDMI cable from the switchbox to the PC.

 

Power for the receiver cubes. It's annoying. I know there's no other way to power them, but you have to mount the cubes somewhat higher, which means you can't just hang it off the monitor and call it a day. So the down side to killer controller tracking is finding a place to mount the cubes. With power cables that's hard to hide. Again...WAF is an issue.

 

So far, I've been able to achieve 45FPS and it was not too bad. In Rift, I would have gotten sick pretty quickly. Again, all of this is w/o any tweaking. I tried HIGH (too jittery) Medium (enough jitter) and Low (very flyable). I'll tweak the resolution, settings and I'm sure I can achieve better FPS. For example, I didn't bother setting the screen on the monitor to full size.

 

I didn't have to do anything other than start DCS. So DCS immediately recognized the Vive and I was able to fly right away. I did have to hit NUMPAD-5 to center the view. Other than that, everything was smooth sailing.

 

I'll update this after I get my CV1 - apparently end of the month/1st week of June.

[hansangb]

Sure..

Order Date: March 7, 2016

 

Received it on May 3rd or April 26h. I can't remember which Tuesday it was.