Got My Oculus CV1 - Some Thoughts

[Roger Wilco Jr]

After my loss of faith in the Razer HDK2, with Amazon seemingly refusing to ship it, and learning late that it only had a 30 day warranty, I decided to go with the Oculus.

My first impression was how little it weighs. The thing is crazy light. I didn't really give a damn about the box it came in.

Installing the software and setting it up was easy and straight forward. My only gripe is they ask for your standing height, but if you are going to use Oculus Home sitting down, then you are looking below the interface, so you are better off entering a sitting height. This can easily be changed in settings, so it's not a big deal. I still wish they had a "center view" in Home.

When fitting the unit, the foam felt a little stiff, but after a couple hours I barely noticed it and I did not have a ring on my face. With the straps properly adjusted, the unit did not feel heavy on my face at all. There is definitely a sweet spot on the lenses, and it is going to take a while to get used to adjusting the height and angle for the sharpest view.

The demos, my first experience with VR, were awesome. The dinosaur was probably best, and I couldn't help ducking when he (she?) stepped over me.

Oculus home was a little bit of a let down. I'm still using bone stock settings, so I'm assuming I can improve the experience, but blurriness around the edges was really noticeable. So far, the only screen door effect I've really noticed is looking at the carpet. I wish the fireplace used a real flame effect instead of the cubes.


And now onto Elite Dangerous:

I'm coming from a 2560x1400 monitor with 1.5 super sampling, where everything looks just stunning. I've never even played at 1920x1080 for comparison. So when I start up ED in the CV1, I'm in the hanger with an SRV in front of me and an Eagle off to the right, and I had two conflicting thoughts: how aliased and low res everything looked, and how huge and awesome everything looked. After about 2 hours of playing training missions, flying around stations, landing on planets, driving the SRV, stepping outside the SRV, and touring the Python cockpit, I hardly cared about the image quality anymore. Sure, it's lower res, blurry around the edges, and there are god rays, but 3D trumps it all. At the end of the session, I landed my Python at a station and then got up and stepped behind the pilot and copilot seats. I was looking around the deck, then looked back past the seats and out the canopy to the station beyond, and I was there - then I started giggling.

One little problem: on my first training mission (and in the hangar), I could not get the HMD view to reset. So I was flying around in a Sidewinder with my head sticking out the top. It gave an amazing view of the nose of the Sidewinder and just how fricking wide that thing is. It was also a cool view of the guns. After setting "reset HMD" to F12 in the right column, instead of the left column, it started working.


Some additional thoughts on Room Scale:

I think a large Room Scale is going to be totally overrated for most people. With the CV1, I was able to step out of the SRV and walk around a ship cockpit. I thought I had a pretty open playing area, and I was able to step about 5 feet to my right before I started crashing into things, and about 5 feet behind me before the same. I mean, that is a pretty large area to walk around in and still be tracked. I thought the CV1 was supposed to be a sit down experience only. I'm pretty sure most people won't have the Vive's available room space, or that you'd even want it.

A large room space isn't going to help when it comes to running down a hallway either. I've also seen an omni-directional treadmill type contraption that I don't think is going anywhere. I think a compromise where you can take a step and poke your head around a corner, or if you press a button and take a step or lean, you start moving in that direction - the larger the step or lean, the faster you go. And you can still duck an hop, which you can't do with the treadmill thing (unless you used buttons). This would not require a huge space to implement.

Of course, only the Vive has hand controllers now, which are useful for the stand up and room scale experience. I really wanted to reach out and touch something when I stood up. Hopefully Oculus will release their Touch controllers soon, with an additional sensor for a larger, more reliable, tracking area.


Next I'll try to improve the visuals with super sampling with the debug tool kit, or whatever it's called, to just make the experience that much better.

[CMDR Abil Midena]

Rules mandate that in 3 months time, you repost here on your thoughts of ED in VR at that time.

This is the honeymoon time, I'm interested to know what the opinions are when the honeymoon is over.

Thanks in advance.

[GlobusDiablo]

Agree with Abil. Report back when the shine wears off...

Thanks for sharing though. I can't make my mind up either way, pros and cons, and I still think both HMDs are too expensive... Silly me.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

I'll probably report back in a few days after I hopefully improve the visuals.
But I'll try to report back in a few months too.


A few more things:

The headphones sounded and felt great.

The built-in mic, which I didn't even know it had until a couple days ago, worked great with Voice Attack. I think I'll try recording a video, even if it doesn't get the whole view, just to see what it sounds like in-game.

I did not get sweaty at all, although it may be a good idea to have a light fan blowing on you (probably good for avoiding motion sickness too).

The FOV seems very narrow, but you don't really notice it in-game.

I did not need to wear my glasses. That was a major concern, but I guess they are only required if you need them for distance vision. If you can watch TV or drive a car w/o glasses, then you don't need them for VR.

And I did not feel motion sickness, except for just a second or two in the hangar in debug camera mode, when I tried walking toward the ship but the camera forced me sideways.


If I thought I could get generation 2 VR in less than a year for a big discount, then I would probably recommend waiting. But I'm not so sure there will be improvement in performance or a reduction in cost anytime soon. I'm sure they will always cost at least as much, or more, as a top-of-the-line phone (they are bigger and more difficult to build than a phone, plus more stuff like sensors and lenses). And adding hand controllers is just more expense.

[damienvaldes]

I've been using mine every day since May. I could never go back to a monitor. Setting in the cockpit never gets old.

Rules mandate that in 3 months time, you repost here on your thoughts of ED in VR at that time.

This is the honeymoon time, I'm interested to know what the opinions are when the honeymoon is over.

Thanks in advance.

[AJH]

I use my Vive almost every day as well. I do play a little more now without it, but that's simply because I've taken to playing multiple games simultaneously while mission stacking and it isn't worth shutting down the program and restarting in VR mode every time I actually fly from point A to point B. Still only play with VR when actually primarily flying (and not having my 2 year old on my lap, he loves "spaceship" time). I've been using my Vive extensively with Elite since I started playing in mid to late June I think it was.

If anything, the experience has improved. I've gotten used to dealing with the limitations (such as having to lift the headset or peak out to use eddb) and have gotten fairly dependent on a lot of the extra control it provides. It actually feels pretty weird trying to dock, or particularly smuggle, at a station without the ability to use my menus by looking and look to the side to see how I'm doing on my approach around the perimeter of the station. I've actually been known to restart the game for just a single hop in VR if I'm going to be doing smuggling missions, even when primarily playing WoW while rank mission stacking in non-vr.

[TorTorden]

There is no going back to ED on a screen for me after VR.

What has lost some luster is room play but honestly seated only vr that rift provide is pretty much vr light.
Problem is you need considerable room to make use of it, at least more than the 2x2m I sometimes manage to calibrate for.

[thebs]

... It actually feels pretty weird trying to dock, or particularly smuggle, at a station without the ability to use my menus by looking and look to the side to see how I'm doing on my approach around the perimeter of the station ...

Head trackers also give you this ability. But it's not quite the same immersion.
I.e., head trackers are merely "suggestive," whereas VR feels like you are actually "looking around" your cockpit.

I've been using mine every day since May. I could never go back to a monitor. Setting in the cockpit never gets old.

^ This -- you feel like you have a portal into another world, even if it doesn't have the fidelity of the real world.

I did not get sweaty at all, although it may be a good idea to have a light fan blowing on you (probably good for avoiding motion sickness too).

It's night'n day if you wear glasses v. contacts. Wearing contacts, I don't have fogging issues, although the air is definitely way too static, non-moving. If they would just vent it better to allow airflow, which would be the result of facial thermals, it would remove 90% of issues.

The FOV seems very narrow, but you don't really notice it in-game.

It's exactly like wearing goggles, peripheral vision-wise. You can turn your head, just like goggles, so see to your left, right, up and down, but your peripheral vision is taken away. Best way I can describe it.

I did not need to wear my glasses. That was a major concern, but I guess they are only required if you need them for distance vision. If you can watch TV or drive a car w/o glasses, then you don't need them for VR.

Yep, only those of us who are nearsighted have to worry.
And being over 40, I also have some presbyopia (age-related farsightedness), but it's not an issue at all, so no issues wearing glasses (other than fogging)

And I did not feel motion sickness, except for just a second or two in the hangar in debug camera mode, when I tried walking toward the ship but the camera forced me sideways.

Only in the SRV when it's getting bounced around for 5+ seconds, does it finally hit me. The fix is really simple too ... exit the game for a few minutes, come back to it later if one still needs to drive the SRV a bit more.

If I thought I could get generation 2 VR in less than a year for a big discount, then I would probably recommend waiting. But I'm not so sure there will be improvement in performance or a reduction in cost anytime soon.

The main problem is finding a GPU that can drive 4K. It's clear HMD could really use 4K, but it's already pushing the GPU pretty heavily.

If I could emphasize one thing ... it's that everything is "bigger/clearer" in a HMD, which means ... 1080p feels like 720p. Your view expects more fidelity as everything seems bigger, closer, more "there," yet it's less, because the resolution is unchanged.

E.g., the 3D sensor display is 10x better and more clear, yet you feel it has less fidelity, just because of the shift in expectation, as it's more "there," right in front of you.

Oh ... and there's no way to describe the galaxy and system views. You just have to experience them. The biggest issue I have with both is that the mouse becomes far less useful. They really need to improve the selection with the mouse in these modes. I use the hats and rockers on the HOTAS, but it's not nearly as fast to move around.

Floating above/around the Milky Way Galaxy is worth the game price alone, in HMD. Sometimes I just sit in a station, and look around the galaxy.

[AJH]

The biggest issue I have with both is that the mouse becomes far less useful.

That's a very polite way of saying "completely and totally useless". Ok, that's a slight exaggeration. I still use it for moving my viewpoint around, but selection via the mouse is impossible unless you have somehow cracked the magical secret of enlightenment.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Rules mandate that in 3 months time, you repost here on your thoughts of ED in VR at that time.

This is the honeymoon time, I'm interested to know what the opinions are when the honeymoon is over.

Thanks in advance.

Well, I've had this thing seven nights, so the honeymoon is over.


TL;DR - there is no going back!


I may be repeating myself, but this is my experience so far. I started with the default Ultra settings, and I kept those settings for three nights, hoping that would let me better appreciate any improvements. My first impressions in ED were that it looked pretty bad. It was blurry, shimmery, and aliased up the wazoo - but the 3D was awesome. Over those 3 nights, it got better each day. Partly this was me getting used to the look, but I was also learning to better use the HMD. I adjusted the straps each night, and went through the calibration procedure, until I knew I had it set up right.

Then, on the fourth night, I started playing with supersampling. With a setting of 1.5x, it made a huge improvement in the visual experience. I've been playing with settings ever since, and have used the Oculus debug tool to reduce supersampling to a 1.3x setting, along with High graphics settings. This is working well, but I'm still making adjustments.

Overall, the visuals can be stunning at times. The cockpit and canopy are clean and crisp - and 3D! Nearby objects are also rendered very nicely. Seriously, after coming from 2560x1440, I am very impressed with the resolution. Sure, it is still blurry around edges, and the text is legible, if not sharp, but I've learned to live with that and hardly notice it anymore. And when driving around in your SRV and looking at your own parked ship, it looks nice and high res.

I don't think I can adequately describe the feeling of being there. If you're willing to believe, you can actually feel that you are there. I thought head tracking on a monitor was nice, but now I realize how much I was sacrificing to reality. I had to restrict my head movements, and it was very easy to lose track of where I was looking, with my head tilted back and my eyes tilted down. But now I just look. My brain knows exactly where I'm looking in relation to my body an my ship. You can instantly look from a ship I am tracking, back to my HUD & sensors, and back to the ship. This was very hard to do with head tracking because of the exaggerated head movements.

And then there is the overall feeling of scale that you just can't get with a monitor. You need to experience sitting in your chair and looking at your canopy glass and knowing just how far away it is. And then you look to the hangar floor and you can feel how high you are. And then you look to the railings, or the door on the wall, and you can feel just how far away they are. And in combat, when I used to think I was too close or in danger of crashing into another ship, I can now see and feel how far away they really are. I can now get so much closer, and with the 1:1 head tracking, it is so much easier to keep them in range. I the past week, I have not experienced an NPC flying away, flipping 180 degrees, and then lining me up and pounding me.

I'm using a nice HOTAS setup, and have most controls bound, and I'm using Voice Attack, which really helps, but I still use the keyboard for some things. So far I haven't had any issues with the keyboard, but I haven't tried text chatting yet either - I haven't seen another commander in forever. The internal mic on the Rift also works great with Voice Attack.

The CV1 is incredibly light weight and I can wear it for hours w/o a thought. I do have a small fan blowing a gentle breeze at me, and I think that helps avoid fogging issues and may help calm queasiness. It also helps cool the top of the CV1, which gets quite warm when you start pushing the performance up, not that you feel it on your forehead.


There are still problems. Like I said, it is blurry around the edges. You can't just flick your eyes to look at things. Well, you can, but what you see will be blurry. But that's OK sometimes - I can still see my PIPs when they are blurry. However, you generally need to look directly at what you are looking at if you want it to be in focus. This is a similar trade-off to other tracking systems like Track IR and Tobii EyeX.

And there is no getting away from how crappy things can look when they are really far away. Like approaching a station, especially at "night", it just looks like shimmering, blurry, ball of crap. Once you get closer it looks a lot better, so you live with it. Inside stations can also be a little shimmery, but once you get close to your own landing pad and control tower, it looks a lot better. And ships in space don't look that great until you get up close and personal, but that's how I like to fight. If you like to hang back 1.5km with lasers, it won't look nearly as good as being one hundred meters away.

I also have a problem with the SRV HUD. It's projected several meters in front of you, and as you are driving around in hilly terrain, it can drop below or into the next mound, and I find myself going cross-eyed as I try to focus on the surface and the HUD at the same time . And if you I don't sacrifice some visual quality for a higher FPS, I can start to feel a little queasy if I'm flinging the SRV around. The in-game controls to fight this actually make it worse, especially if I'm attempting a back flip out of a crater. The solution is to just drive normally scanning for your materials, and look into the turns, where you want to be, and don't just stare straight ahead. Btw, I'm pretty sure that I can't ride a roller coaster anymore w/o feeling a little queasy.

And then there is the "screen door" effect. I think this has two meanings. Yes, you can see the pixels - especially of you are looking for them - but generally, I don't notice then. I think another meaning refers to the Moiré interference patterns. I think this may be what causes things to look bad at a distance, but I haven't noticed anything obvious up close.

I'm also not having much fun with the galaxy map. I'm using the HOTAS, but I just don't think I have it set up properly. But I really haven't given it much time yet, so I expect it will get much better with practice.

Finally, the FOV leaves a lot to be desired. This is the feeling you are looking through a scuba mask. It really feels closer to 80 degrees than the advertised 110 degrees. But it's so easy to move your head around, which you need to do anyway if you want things in focus, that you just ignore it after a while.


So to sum up, while there are issues with the current generation VR, the overall experience is mind-blowingly amazing. The feeling of being there, looking around and instantly judging distances and the scale of things, knowing exactly where you are looking in relation to your body - these are all things you just can't experience any other way. If you can afford it, you just need to get into VR now - you won't regret it (although, some apparently do). Compared to the cost of a new big monitor & head tracking, it's not really that expensive, and it's the biggest monitor and best head tracking experiences you can have.

I'm not much of a gamer, but this experience has me looking forward to new VR games, and I'm also looking forward to the Oculus Touch controllers, because I constantly want to reach out and touch something. I don't know if they can do much about the blurry edges - maybe curved or cupped panels? - but unless they get SLI/Crossfire working with VR, I really think it will take many years to get graphics cards the performance needed to push pixels with higher resolution displays. So overall, I'd expect it go actually get more expensive in the future, although it will be cheaper to experience the current generation VR, especially if you can get your hands on some used hardware.

I really don't expect my views to change in three months, other than for things to get even better (I'll hopefully have Touch controllers and 360 degree body tracking by then).


***edit***
Oh yeah, apparently there are Godrays - the flares coming off of bright objects in high contrast situations. Honestly, I don't notice them anymore. They don't really appear much where you are looking, but are more of a peripheral vision issue, so you might see some coming off of ship icons on the sensor panel if you glance with your eyes instead of tilting your head down. If they just got rid of all white on black, it would significantly reduce any problems. I generally only notice the Godrays during loading screens with the black backgrounds.