Virtual Reality Anyone...?

[mkollman74]

The family attended the Van Gogh Immersive Experience last weekend. Part of the price of admission was a virtual reality experience - my first time with VR. While using the VR, I started thinking about the first person shooter possibilities. I'm not really a gamer, but I can see the appeal of a FPS with VR. Anyone with experience with the required hardware? I've been looking at the Oculus. Any games that are worth the effort?

 

[Maggot]

First we need to determine "What is reality?"

Then we can move on the 'virtual' reality.

As the Moody Blues asked so poignantly, "What is reality and what is an illusion"?

Could we perhaps go so far, as did Wittgenstein, to say that:

1 The world is everything that is the case.*
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2 The world divides into facts.

 

[kcbird]

Son has an oculus, I've played it. The shooter game he has is called Onward. Its ok, the graphics are 2003ish I would say. Manipulating your weapons and gear take away from the realism of it, can be frustrating. You will try to re-holster something and it falls to the ground then you get shot in the head trying to pick it up.

Its funny when he was watching me play I was counting outload 6, 9, 16, 23. He said what are you doing? I said "I'm keeping a round count on my magazine. How do you do it dumbass"? He did learn something that day playing a fucking video game.

 

[HPIguy]

I'm not much into shooters, but I was really into sim racing for quite a while, and have had VR since the OG Oculus Rift. It mainly comes down to how much money you want to spend on hardware as VR is incredibly demanding of your PC. And thanks for crypto miners, you get to pay higher prices for a nice GPU.

 

[chevy_man]

my buddy is big into VR, and was looking into the Oculus, apparently you need a FB account to use the damn thing, and if you get banned from FB, you are locked out of using the Oculus.

apparently the HTC Vive is pretty decent though

This is the deal breaker for me. My kids wanted one but they get to stay with the Nintendo.


The PC hardware market is nuts. Pre-covid I built my sister a nice PC for about $1200. Ryzen 5, 1650 super, 470x board, 32gb ddr4, etc. That same build right now is $2500, mostly because just the used GPU on eBay is selling for $500+, and I paid $150 for the one I installed as a "it's good enough for now" solution with the intent of going to a 3000 series later.

 

[HPIguy]

my buddy is big into VR, and was looking into the Oculus, apparently you need a FB account to use the damn thing, and if you get banned from FB, you are locked out of using the Oculus.

apparently the HTC Vive is pretty decent though

This is true, and it's why I ditched Oculus and went to an HP Reverb headset.

 

[HPIguy]

Also, for anyone looking, I don't know if this still holds true, but at one time Nvidia cards greatly outperformed AMD. Not sure if that's still the case or not.

 

[earthquake]

Not a gamer, but an aviation enthusiast and have been reading up and watching a lot of videos on DCS. VR seems to be the best way to experience it.

Digital Combat Simulator | DCS World | Combat Simulator

Combat Flight Simulator. Realistic simulation of military aircraft, tanks, ground vehicles, navy ships, world war two vehicles, trains and ships. Free download includes the Caucasus region and Black Sea that encompasses much of Georgia. It Including a Russian Sukhoi Su-25T ground attack aircraft...

www.digitalcombatsimulator.com

 

[HPIguy]

Not a gamer, but an aviation enthusiast and have been reading up and watching a lot of videos on DCS. VR seems to be the best way to experience it.

Digital Combat Simulator | DCS World | Combat Simulator

Combat Flight Simulator. Realistic simulation of military aircraft, tanks, ground vehicles, navy ships, world war two vehicles, trains and ships. Free download includes the Caucasus region and Black Sea that encompasses much of Georgia. It Including a Russian Sukhoi Su-25T ground attack aircraft...

www.digitalcombatsimulator.com

If you want a super in-depth fighter-based flight sim, DCS is it. To the point that every single control in the real aircraft, take-off procedures, etc are all carried over. It was too in-depth for me, I just wanted to go fly around in VR. I spent some time in Elite Dangerous. It was fun, but the endless grind eventually got to me.

 

[Franko]

VR requires a high performance video card. Cryptocurrency mining also requires a high performance video card. Cryptocurrency mining demand has turned $600 video cards into $1800-3000 video cards. Unless you have lots of money to burn I'd sit tight and wait for the prices to come closer to MSRP.

P.S. I had to replace a 6 year old video card last year and paid $900 for a $500 video card. That card is now selling for $1300...

 

[Rerun7]

I tried an FPS VR game and got motion sick pretty quickly. Apparently it’s pretty common with certain types of games.

 

[HPIguy]

I've been lucky that I've never gotten any motion sickness, even in room-scale stuff like FPS. But yeah, a lot of people do. I will say room-scale games get your headset sweaty in a hurry, get some VR covers for sure.

It is pretty wild how much it fools your brain. Dirt Rally on the Finland track with the huge jumps, your stomach drops kind of like on a swingset. Standing on the edge of a skyscraper? I get the same vertigo I do in real life. It's a wild time to be alive.

 

[Rerun7]

Yeah, I do room scale boxing sometimes and it’s pretty cool. The ones where I walk around have been fine. It’s the ones where your hand controls move you through the environment without your feet moving that get me.

 

[mkollman74]

my buddy is big into VR, and was looking into the Oculus, apparently you need a FB account to use the damn thing, and if you get banned from FB, you are locked out of using the Oculus.

apparently the HTC Vive is pretty decent though

Deal breaker. I'll be looking at the alternatives.

 

[mkollman74]

Great info guys. I hadn't thought of the flight simulator possibilities. That would be pretty cool... I'll keep looking for oculus alternatives and waiting for component prices to come back to earth.

 

[LeftyJason]

Have a Quest 2. Wife got it for my birthday. I don't do anything else with FB at all in 4 years or so.

The Climb (rock climbing) isn't too bad. In Death Unchained (archery against medieval bad guys) is fun. You move locations through a arrow you shoot that you teleport to. Beat Saber is awesome. Synth Riders is pretty good too.

 

[Maser]

Anytime someone brings up VR, I'm always reminded of this vid:

 

[n2ishun]

I've got an older oculous from before faceplant bought them out.
It's been sitting in it's box for a few years.
I thought it kinda sucked.....well no, I still think it sucks.
If I want to game my laptop has an 8core 10875 cpu and a RTX2070 video card with nvme drives, it's a powerhouse made for gaming.
I don't really want to game :/

 

[Coyote-6]

I've been into VR for about 5 years and the previous comments are correct, you can easily spend $5-7k on equipment and peripherals. First person shooters really suck TBH. Movement is clunky and often nausea inducing, and holding a rifle where your hands are in an really fucked up position in real life is immersion killing. I have all of the big FPS games to try each to see if I like any, but I haven't played them for more than an hour total.

For me, the future of VR to the masses is in flight sims such as IL2 and DCS. The market within that community is growing at an alarming rate.

 

[sharpshot50]

VR is really cool for a little while. It didn't take long for it to become mostly stale for me, though. FPS is very janky unless there's a teleport mechanic, and then it still feels clunky. Games where you're able to look around without having to physically walk around are pretty easy to play. There are music/beat sync games that can be a lot of fun, and exercise routines are starting to crop up as well. Exercising seems like it would be scary if you're using a wired HMD, but should be fun enough with a wireless one.