Oculus Rift and DCS World Discussion

[ilikepie]

you maybe able to tweak the vof to simulate peripheral vision. same as a monitor. i wonder how they'll incorporate the need for keyboard access/vision. not to mention the knocking over of the beer scenario when you cant find it....

 

might have to use whiskey in the camelback instead of beer.......cant do beer through a straw...

[Robert1983NL]

No I don't, I have a HOTAS setup. I don't touch the keyboard.

LOL. What if you want to chat? Or enter stuff in your CDU? You need the keyboard, period.

 

No, the rift has a huge field of view; 90 degrees horizontal.

Would you seriously call that huge? I call that limited. You miss peripheral vision, and that's just a con. You'll have more peripheral vision with three monitors. Also, I've seen some vids with the Rift online. Doesn't seem to get anywhere near 90 degrees FOV.

 

I don't think you're right. When the only visual data your eyes are receiving is coming from the sim, you're entirely immersed. Coupled with proper depth perception, and high-Hz head tracking... there's nothing that can come close. Watch the videos on youtube of people freaking out, fearing for their physical bodies because they're so immersed in what they're seeing.

Well, there's also people freaking out in the cinema's while watching 3D movies. Those are pretty much idiots and I don't take them seriously. Ofcourse, the Rift will give more immersion than a single monitor, but I fear the cons outweigh the pro's.

[metalnwood]

It appears that the horz FOV is not perfectly defined and depends on a number of things, these things can be different for different people like inter pupil distance, eyecups worn, how close to the screen you have your rift set up, eyeglasses worn etc.

 

It seems that you will get at least 90 with other figures I have seen saying 115.

 

I dont think vert FOV can be underestimated at all, a triple monitor is like looking in to a small lit compared to the vert fov of the rift.

 

I think when people try it as seems to be the experience of most people who have, is that it is far more immersive than any lost peripheral vision of a third monitor sticking out the side that is perhaps 30cm tall.

[Mnemonic]

I have the Rift Devkit, and while it is good wide-FOV HMD to work with on different experiments, for building my home pit I'm looking into multiple monitors solution, which currently just seems much more practical.

 

For sure I'm looking forward to consumer version of the Rift, but they will not have as good resolution as you can get with multiple screens, and in DCS it is viable, hell Full-HD screen is not good enough sometimes! Current RIFT devkit rez is just too low for DCS, and if they improve it up too 1.5 times (in terms of pixel density) it will not help as much.

 

Stereoscopy is not so important in DCS, of course it's kinda nice but it is not supported by DCS from ground up, you can't click switches properly with your mouse, because your switches will be completely off in space with the cursor.

 

Also motion sickness, lower framerate you have - harder it hits you. With multiple screens having big enough FOV you will never experience motion sickness even with low framerate, becaue you always see physical space your eyes are refer to.

 

Indeed some demos for Rift now are impressive, as they imply on the feeling of motion (like Riftcoaster), or helocopter demo. But in DCS you actually work, you stare at gauges, you stare at MFCDs, you stare outside, searching for enemy, and I don't see this kind of working scenario currently will work in Rift. It is super immersive but it kinda makes you feel visually impaired.

 

Just my point of view as for now.

[Robert1983NL]

Makes a lot of sense Mnemonic. The Rift is just a cool gimmick, but I'm saving for the ultimate: three 27 inchers :)

[metalnwood]

I agree on you on a lot of points and I think my screens will be here for a long time. The rift concept is excellent but its got a bit more work to go before it would be my main screen for DCS.

 

Having said that, some people cant seem to imagine what this could be like when issues have been ironed out and resolutions are at a point that its practical.

 

It seems when we get there someone will probably talk about the peripheral vision they get from their 3x22" screens while not being able to tell what it is they are even seeing with that peripheral vision.

[metalnwood]

Makes a lot of sense Mnemonic. The Rift is just a cool gimmick, but I'm saving for the ultimate: three 27 inchers :)

 

 

3 27" is your ultimate? anyway, I think you miss the concept, the current execution is just current gen. That will change and the implementation will shine although the concept that you miss will be the same.

[Robert1983NL]

No, the ultimate is the real aircraft. Or a holodeck ofcourse.

Dude... 3x 27" is the ultimate currently available and affordable.

 

I'm not missing the concept. I just don't see it as a viable solution for flightsimming.

And you don't need to know what you see in your peripheral vision... As long as the peripheral vision is there.

[metalnwood]

 

I'm not missing the concept. I just don't see it as a viable solution for flightsimming.

 

gliders, microlights, IL2, cliffs of dover, small GA, flaming cliffs or any jet lite simulator. None need anymore than a hotas and they are all flight simming experiences.

 

you have a very narrow view of what flight simulation is. The hardcore that need a CDU and keyboard because they cant put enough on the hotas is a minority.

 

to get the feeling of running all the avionics, your setup might be better. To get the feeling of FLIGHT, I bet the rift will be hard to beat.

[Robert1983NL]

Yeah, well I have a different view of flightsims then. In your words, you can use the Rift for flying games. You can not use the Rift for flightsims. I only like flight sims. I love realism.

[metalnwood]

Flight simulation is fairly broad, you like aircraft simulation and complex aircraft at that which will not be very good for the rift when you want to use the CDU.

 

Thats not really flight simulation defined.

 

In fact I think it has huge potential to reinvigorate a stagnant flight sim market with new people. Something as simple as flying a glider with a big glass canopy in the alps in multiplayer. It would hardly ever happen in todays sims but the actual feeling of flight you would get with the immersion.

 

Flying is something we all want to do and this will get you much closer to that feeling.

Edited May 20, 2013 by metalnwood

[Robert1983NL]

The ultimate would be a Rift system with more peripheral vision, at least full HD, and controlling the cockpit with your brains. I actually don't think this would be impossible in the near future.

The lack of being unable to use the keyboard is too big to buy the Rift eventually, unfortunately.

[mhe]

Well, the Rift is one of the most promising concepts for the future of flight simulation - even the hardcore crowd. Not being able to fathom an alternative for simple things like chatting (ever tried Teamspeak with TARS?) and bashing on the Rift as an unnecessary gimmick is not what I like to think of as a decent discussion. If you don't like it, don't buy it, ever. Unless you try it, you won't ever know what you are missing out on anyway.

 

Earlier in this thread we even had videos of concepts of motion control usable for clicking switches in a 3D pit without ever needing a keyboard. Also you could use mice, trackballs, Leap Motion controllers for clicking and typing. You could even hack a Razer Hydra apart or do something really crazy with an Arduino or similar microcontroller you hook sensors up to.

 

Oh and let me tell you something about the praised 3-screen setup with TrackIR: I had it up and running with 3x27" but after a while I disassembled it and went back to a really large single screen. Why? Well, if you want to fly at a framerate you can live with, you will have to define a large single main viewport instead of using the 3-cam setup. So when you start rotating your head with TrackIR, you will end up looking at one of the side screens.

 

So far so, good, but once you realize that due to the single cam setup necessary, the correct center remains on the center screen, resulting in a pretty distorted view on the side screens. Alternatively you could keep looking at the center screen with your TrackIR while rotating your head, but that would somewhat defeat the purpose then, wouldn't it?

 

Visual immersion could perhaps somehow be quantified by how much visual real estate a display takes up. And you cannot compete with a Wide-FOV HMD in that area, it is basically like strapping an IMAX to your face.

 

Sorry, but I couldn't help myself after reading all these aggressive posts.

Edited May 20, 2013 by mhe

[Mnemonic]

Sorry, but I couldn't help myself after reading all these aggressive posts.

Sorry, where did you saw aggressive posts?

[metalnwood]

Not You Mnemonic I am sure, you see the issues with the current state rift and thats fair enough, it has to make progress to be a better alternative than some options we have now.

 

I am guessing he was talking about Robert who cant seem to grasp the benefit if the rift had a perfect implementation.

[mhe]

Metalnwood guessed right... ;)

[Robert1983NL]

Life must be hard if you see aggressiveness all around you lol.

Don't you guys agree that, even though Oculus Rift is a great piece of equipment, it's not nearly good enough to even be considered useful for DCS right now, and probably the next couple of years?

[mhe]

Of course it isn't quite there yet, which is why the current model is labeled a developer kit, you have to start somewhere, right? ;)

 

The only "problem" with the concept so far is not being able to see a keyboard (which there are several very nice workarounds available for right now) and people concerned by knocking over their beer. Taking this as reasons not to acknowlegde the potential of such a solution seems a bit ignorant to me, hence the perceived aggressiveness.

 

It is all about the potential and vision, not about the best option for current DCS flying. But it would be nice to get DCS prepared for this technology so it is ready once the better hardware comes out. Preparation and planning... ;)

[npole]

Technically it will actually help to NOT use the keyboard. I rarely use my keyb to be honest, first I have my hotas and second I really like to use the real switch with my mouse into the cockpit (for me DCS is only about sim, no-DCS cockpits are not my affair.. so I fly the A10C), being able to point at them immediately (without the contortionism you need with the trackIR with switches on your side) would give a incredible help, from there you can just click em, you don't need any "glove" or any other futuristic device, it's a matter of see them > point them > click ... no keys to rembers on your keyboard or 75 keys combos (lol) to input a command. :)

 

I can play the devil advocate, but I don't really see any single reason of why they shouldn't implement the OR today. If it was a matter of months I would agree: there's other much import things to finish; but we're talking about a very minimal coding (for a basic implementation) that would give a tremendous boost to this product (if not, on the PR side). Again: adding the Oculus Rift support is no-brainer... we should have it already!

[Frusheen]

I hope they do implement it early. For me the main drawback I foresee based on what I've read so far about OR isn't how to interact with the sim (who wants to keep using a keyboard in a simulator even without OR!) but how the resolution will effect reading gauges and MFDs etc.

 

Hopefully the planned higher resolution for the product release will improve things. According to most reviews 640x400 per eye in the dev kit makes reading text nearly impossible. I hope 1080p will improve things.

[mhe]

I suspect that this or next year, we will have either 1080p or perhaps even 1600p, and then we will see 4k and 8k from there within a few years, my guesstimate is about 2015 for 4k and 2017 for 8k in a 7 inch display.

 

Perhaps once panels get small enough, they might even put 2 separate display panels in there and do the screen fusion in the display driver, just like surround and eyefinity do today.

 

The most important aspect is getting software support out there in order to have a huge variety of supported applications for the device so the industry has an incentive to go up in resolution and pixel density even beyond what is needed or does even make a difference in the smartphone market. It is essential that during the timeframe the Rift can share display panels with the smartphone market, it gains enough momentum and market presence to have display panels catered specifically to it once it outgrows smartphones and small tablets - a 4k screen in a device with a 7 inch or even smaller screen doesn't really make much difference to 8k, the dpis are simply so high once you reach that, that the Rift might be the only application where such extreme pixel densities are needed.

[Mnemonic]

So guys, to all who is curious about current Rift devkit, I just made a simple test. Just for the test purposes I made side-by-side output of the same image editing monitor setup lua. This image is not suitable by viewing in Rift in terms of stereo or even for 2D viewing (one need to apply offset to images to actually converge in the device, and apply barrel distortion).

 

But, I wanted to show you just how resolution (in one eyepiece) looks like on Rift devkit with 1280x800 panel (640x800 per eye), and how it affects gameplay.

 

Important - I set up in-game FOV to match Rift's FOV (or at least close to it). So - no zoom applied, as zoom is not suitable for RIFT (whole your vision zooms). Images are clickable, you can check original resolution.

 

So here are the photos made from actual Rift devkit. First I show you two steps, as I move my camera closer to lens - more of actual FOV you see (same for the eyes).

 

 

 

And here is how A-10C cockpit looks like (true FOV)

 

 

Now, if I position my camera as close as possible to MFCD, this is how it looks like:

 

 

Here is an input image of a HUD, what goes to Rift:

 

 

And the same image how it looks like in Rift (I moved my camera as close as I can to Rift lens, if you move your eyeball closer you will see a bit more around):

 

 

And CDU (moved position as close as I can in simulator with default camera limiters)

 

 

In Rift:

 

 

And here is Su-27 HUD from FC3 (actually readable)

 

 

These images are from current Rift devkit with 1280 x 800 panel, and they do look actually good for consumer-priced HMD. Now, if the panel will be 1920 x 1080, instead of 2 pixels we will see 3, will it be much better for DCS simming? I personally doubt. I would love to try UH-1H anyway, as it seems not that bad.

 

But it needs to become 4k rez in order to just start to be actually useful and beneficial. And there are not so many videocards out there currently suitable to render 4k, even more, do it in two viewports for stereo with 60 frames per second.

 

For sure we will get there, but I think it can take some more time.

[Robert1983NL]

Thanks for the clarification!

 

Like I thought, nice technology, but not suitable now and in the near future.

 

Maybe for DCS 3.0.0

[leonpo]

Thanks for the overview. I am waiting for my kit too. Did you try actually fly Huey? how is when you need to look outside and into the cockpit?

 

Leon

[Mnemonic]

Hi Leon, you are welcome. I didn't tried to actually fly, because this image is not converging when you look into Rift with both eyes (you would need to move center of both images closer to each other in order for it to work, because Rift doesn't have 100% overlap for left and right eye). But I hope to try Huey with proper stereoscopy, maybe using upcoming VorpX driver, if it will work with DCS.