https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/first-look-at-the-rift-shipping-q1-2016/


The future of sim racing is VR. This is exciting news for us as Oculus plans on selling about 5 million models next year. LFS has been reviewed as one of the best driving sims at implementing VR so I'm sure we'll be seeing an influx of new users. This also provides an opportunity to push LFS to the forefront of sim racing. Maybe we'll see something in the coming year.


A question for current DK2 users. What kind of hardware are you running to achieve a playable FPS? It looks like Oculus is suggesting a current generation gaming computer to run most games.


Please keep this thread free of the usual negative comments.

Price is too high.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Price is too high.

While we were all were hoping it would be cheaper, it looks like they'll be selling them at a loss somewhere between $350 - $400, including an Xbox One controller.

The market for these at this point is serious gamers interested in leading edge tech, and I think the price point is justifiable for them. Casual gamers, myself included, will wait another year or two before hopping on the VR train.

Quote from bobloblaw :

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Price is too high.

While we were all were hoping it would be cheaper, it looks like they'll be selling them at a loss somewhere between $350 - $400, including an Xbox One controller.

The market for these at this point is serious gamers interested in leading edge tech, and I think the price point is justifiable for them. Casual gamers, myself included, will wait another year or two before hopping on the VR train.

Except they change their story. Inititally they wanted to make them cheaper so they were accessible to all! Then it seems they got in bed with Microsoft and jacked the price up.

Who cares about an Xboner controller, given nearly every PC gamer has at least 1 360 controller (and the Xbox One controller doesn't have any significant changes, contrast to the PS4 controller which did change significantly from PS3 => PS4).

In general, Oculus has been the definition of "Scumbag Steve". Gone back on nearly everything they've said in the past, and then ****ed it up even further.

Quote from bobloblaw :

Please keep this thread free of the usual negative comments.

It took about ten minutes...

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Except they change their story. Inititally they wanted to make them cheaper so they were accessible to all! Then it seems they got in bed with Microsoft and jacked the price up.

Who cares about an Xboner controller, given nearly every PC gamer has at least 1 360 controller (and the Xbox One controller doesn't have any significant changes, contrast to the PS4 controller which did change significantly from PS3 => PS4).

In general, Oculus has been the definition of "Scumbag Steve". Gone back on nearly everything they've said in the past, and then ****ed it up even further.

Agreed. I hope we start seeing some competition in this market. I guess the tech is too expensive as of now and we have two huge companies working together to control the market.

Quote from cargame.nl :

It took about ten minutes...

Was a valid point though, and not an attack against LFS.

I have tried the DK2 at a friends place and although it was very impressive the quality of image wasn't that good. In saying that it had that fly screen effect it was like looking at am old crt monitor up close.
Will the commercial product be better? We are so used to high res stuff now it looks like a backward step in that aspect. Because of this I have high hopes for the Vive but will it be any better. I'm on the VR band wagon and I wouldn't hesitate in getting a unit but I need to have the visual quality there.

I sold my DK2.

When you first try it, it is the greatest thing in the world. For about 10 minutes...

Any longer than that and the eye strain becomes too much.

You're basically looking at a phone right in front of your face, through two lenses.

FYI I had to get glasses shortly after getting my rift as well...

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Price is too high.

Funny to read that from an iPhone fan...

Quote from Eclipsed :

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Price is too high.

Funny to read that from an iPhone fan...

http://www.howtogeek.com/geeknote/android-is-hilariously-insecure-87-of-phones-are-vulnerable/

Yeah. I feel so bad paying a little bit more (about $100 when it comes to cost of standard on-contract phones here) for a phone that will be secure for its entire lifetime.

Quote from djfatrod :

I sold my DK2.

When you first try it, it is the greatest thing in the world. For about 10 minutes...

Any longer than that and the eye strain becomes too much.

You're basically looking at a phone right in front of your face, through two lenses.

FYI I had to get glasses shortly after getting my rift as well...

Maybe you had problems with your eyes before? But you are right. It can cause problems with eyesight. When i got a computer as i was about 13 or 14 years, my eyes went worse and worse and i needed glasses for viewing "far away" objects. I guess that was caused by staring at a screen that is pretty close to me, for half of the day...

I think i will try the rift. The price is ok for me. And maybe the resolution is higher. The flickering is caused by its ULMB mode i guess. Blurry images would be bad with such a device. I rather like it to flicker a bit.

No thanks.

Funny how it went from a crowd funded project with cross-platform, open-source SDK, to a proprietary, closed-source SDK, then to a closed-sourced, non-cross-platform Facebook product. And then they ask loads of money for it.

Quote from vitaly_m :

No thanks.

Funny how it went from a crowd funded project with cross-platform, open-source SDK, to a proprietary, closed-source SDK, then to a closed-sourced, non-cross-platform Facebook product. And then they ask loads of money for it.

You still can hope that Valves HMD will hit the market around the same time.

Quote from djfatrod :

I sold my DK2.

When you first try it, it is the greatest thing in the world. For about 10 minutes...

Any longer than that and the eye strain becomes too much.

You're basically looking at a phone right in front of your face, through two lenses.

FYI I had to get glasses shortly after getting my rift as well...

Did you set the correct Interpupillary distance (IPD), lense type and eye relief in the driver software?
It´s VERY important that these values matches reality. I myself for example let measure the IPD from an optician.
Anyway you are right, the screen of the DK2 is far from beeing perfect. It can only get better.

The consumer version will have a knob to physically change the distance between the screens and hopefully a sensor or something to check that distance in the driver.

It's still cheaper than a good 3 monitor setup, so probably well worth it. Money is not an issue, the big question is if it will work or not, since these are the first generation of VR devices.

you mean first generation of another generation of VR devices? (I mean, somewhere around 2000+-5, can't even recall it... it was really horrible tech... but they were there, actually consumer versions on market, I still wonder what the buyers were thinking)

But yeah, this time it looks like first time it will work to some extent.

Quote from NitroNitrous :

It's still cheaper than a good 3 monitor setup, so probably well worth it. Money is not an issue, the big question is if it will work or not

Everyone with such a device up to now is slower concerning racing compared to an old fashioned monitor. Until proven otherwise it doesn't work and it cannot replace a monitor or multi monitor setup. Probably funny to cruise around but thats about it.

I have an i5 coupled with a GTX660 - in LFS that's good for about 250fps on BL1. It'll drop to 100 on Westhill, but that's understandable. It's never fallen under the 75hz (DK2 refresh) mark. I might think about upgrading to a 970 next year, but a lot will depend on game developers and the direction they decide to take.

I've been racing using a DK2 for about a year now, and believe me, once you get used to it, going back to a screen is really very difficult. VR makes driving so much more intuitive, and it's been a massive help to me in improving my drifting. Having the ability to look in the direction of a drift, no matter where your steering is pointing, makes a huge difference.

I'm a little bit disappointed that LFS is still the only racing sim (that I've played so far) that has fully implemented VR - and I'm taking about menus and everything here, not just the driving. On the plus-side, it keeps me coming back to LFS...

Quote from cargame.nl :

Everyone with such a device up to now is slower concerning racing compared to an old fashioned monitor. Until proven otherwise it doesn't work and it cannot replace a monitor or multi monitor setup.

I'm not sure I'd be willing to diss all VR headsets as slower than regular monitors only based on data from couple early devkit products.

DK1 was pretty useless for driving since you couldn't see clearly further than 20 meters, but DK2 was already good enough to race consistently. I can only imagine 1440p and 4K VR displays to level out the playing field even further.

If driving with a Rift means I'll be 3rd instead of 1st at the finish line then so be it, because I get much more enjoyment out of driving in VR compared to a monitor.

It's the same reason I rather go with a 3-turn lock to lock steering wheel setup and a shifter/clutch setup, even if that means not being as fast as people on mice or arcadey steering wheels. It's so much more enjoyable and satisfying to me.

Also nothing stops people on VR headsets only racing against each other. As time goes on and VR sets become a common item for any serious gamer/sim enthusiast, it shouldn't be a problem to find other VR users to race against.

Quote from Matrixi :

Quote from cargame.nl :

Everyone with such a device up to now is slower concerning racing compared to an old fashioned monitor. Until proven otherwise it doesn't work and it cannot replace a monitor or multi monitor setup.

I'm not sure I'd be willing to diss all VR headsets as slower than regular monitors only based on data from couple early devkit products.

DK1 was pretty useless for driving since you couldn't see clearly further than 20 meters, but DK2 was already good enough to race consistently. I can only imagine 1440p and 4K VR displays to level out the playing field even further.

If driving with a Rift means I'll be 3rd instead of 1st at the finish line then so be it, because I get much more enjoyment out of driving in VR compared to a monitor.

It's the same reason I rather go with a 3-turn lock to lock steering wheel setup and a shifter/clutch setup, even if that means not being as fast as people on mice or arcadey steering wheels. It's so much more enjoyable and satisfying to me.

Also nothing stops people on VR headsets only racing against each other. As time goes on and VR sets become a common item for any serious gamer/sim enthusiast, it shouldn't be a problem to find other VR users to race against.

Bold strategy cotton. I remember the last time that someone tried to suggest to Dave that enjoyment was more important than speed...

Quote from cargame.nl :

Everyone with such a device up to now is slower concerning racing compared to an old fashioned monitor. Until proven otherwise it doesn't work and it cannot replace a monitor or multi monitor setup. Probably funny to cruise around but thats about it.

Going by my own personal experience, I don't think that's true at all. My demo FBM pb was set on a monitor pre-VR, granted, but although I haven't beaten it yet, my ab is climbing steadily and I get 12s more and more regularly.

You might have noticed a marked improvement in my performance on your S2 servers (or you may not have, I won't take offense ), and that is mostly to do with being able to see trouble coming and staying away from it.

Also, as I said before, VR makes sim-car control more intuitive, in a similar way to force-feedback. Better control = faster laps.

I should add that I am somewhat of a freak - I rarely suffer from any kind of motion-sickness or discomfort at all, unless you count the condensation droplets that gather in the bottom of the housing and then drip on your upper lip when you're least expecting it. I'm quite comfortable in there for hours. Unless I need to type. Anything. At all.

Okay, so touch-typing would be a good thing to learn, but yeah... the non-awareness of reality is really my only problem with it.

Quote from cargame.nl :

Everyone with such a device up to now is slower concerning racing compared to an old fashioned monitor. Until proven otherwise it doesn't work and it cannot replace a monitor or multi monitor setup. Probably funny to cruise around but thats about it.

A while ago, a friend lent me his DK2 for a few days.

I didn't play enough LFS to be sure, but with RBR I could feel I had less control over the car, probably because of a slight input lag that my CRT doesn't have.

It was obvious in a really fast section of a tarmac stage, where I had to avoid houses going 180kph.


I really really hope the finished VR kits will have less input lag...

Quote from vitaly_m :

No thanks.

Funny how it went from a crowd funded project with cross-platform, open-source SDK, to a proprietary, closed-source SDK, then to a closed-sourced, non-cross-platform Facebook product. And then they ask loads of money for it.

Let's not forget they also recommend shelling out about #1200 for a PC that can actually run triple A games at 75 fps. VR is the future of gaming, but I'll wait for the Playstation VR and buy a PS4, at least then I'll know console can actually run the games in VR.