So, did anyone else pre-order an Oculus Rift?


There is quite a bit of controversy regarding the amount of phoning home that Oculus does. It seems that by using it, people agree to have different information collected and sent to the facebook servers. Oculus said they weren’t sharing their information with facebook, but aren’t ruling out the possibility to use these stats in the future, for ad targeting.

It is a very facebook-y thing they do. I used to be interested in getting an OR, but now, honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever get one.

@Flavien I assume you have already tried out the whirligig player?
Their last update for the free player added the 1.3 SDK (which iirc is the one used for OR CV1).


Yes, but it doesn’t seem to work all the time. I dunno what’s going on with it.


I haven’t. It seems like a very expensive toy to me, and not the kind of toy I like. Plus I can’t have someone else watching at the same time.

I’m also expecting a pretty high failure rate.


What you see is actually mirrored on your regular screen on both rift and vive.


Allright, I got whirligig running. I didn’t change anything, it didn’t work yesterday but it works today. I also noticed many of the “old” demos that didn’t work yesterday started to work today. I probably missed a reboot along the way, so I guess you can disregard some of my comments about old apps not working. It’s still true to an extent ( you still need to have them being recompiled with the latest sdk ), but yesterday I had no apps outside Oculus Home running at all, while today at least external apps seem to be working.

Speaking of which, UE4’s ShowDown demo look absolutely amazing in VR. It’s mind blowing and I anticipate the days we’ll have RPGs and open world games looking like that in VR.

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Jesus Crust you so impress. I search one’s heart.
Your image and style are fully visible and recognisable at once.
Its VR Las Vegas Babby!!!


I’m a little concerned about the mention of the screen door effect still being visible. I. Would have thought that at the much higher resolution of the consumer product this would have been all but eliminated.

I guess not which has me a little worried as a purchaser of an HMD from that other vendor.

Regarding future games, I cannot wait for the day when a future open world RPG a la Skyrim allows me to wander across the worlds forests, deserts and mountains in true first person.

Great days are ahead I am sure of it.


…then I may as well skip the rift and use the main screen, no?


[quote=“Memnoch, post:59, topic:1540”]

The screen door effect is still visible, no matter what vendor/hardware you’ll choose. It’s not as bad as in the DK1 though, it’s more visible on bright backgrounds. On “dark” games ( horror, dark fantasy, spacey etc… ) it’s pretty much invisible; even on brighter games, your brain forgets it pretty quickly. I’d definitely love to see a 4K display in the future, but there’s no way our current generation computers can keep up with it ( not even with a 980 Ti or Titan ).


Hey Flavien, seeing you wear glasses, any problem using OR? Also you mentioned getting Valkyrie - how was that in VR?


It’s a bit tight with glasses, but it’s okay, you get used to it and it doesn’t hurt.

As for Eve: Valkyrie, I must say that game looks amazing in VR ( which is pretty funny because it looks pretty average on your screen due to low-res textures/geometry ). It runs really smoothly too despite me being under the minimum specs ( Radeon 7970 ) and I didn’t feel any motion sickness in the hour I played, but I might be a particular case since I’m used to playing 360° in space, hehe. The “maps” are pretty small and repetitive, they’re made of ships/structures, wreckage and asteroids with pretty planet backgrounds and nebulae, but it doesn’t feel like there’s much content. Solo seems very limited to tutorial missions ( which are nice but very short ), some free flight and surviving NPC waves. Not exactly very deep. The meat is in the multiplayer; I tried team deathmatch and had a blast, with some good action and fancy special effects. It looked a bit repetitive though, so I’m not sure the game is worth $60 on its own. Immersion in VR is impressive, one of the best and most comfortable experiences I’ve had.

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Flavien, has your experience with VR led you to reconsider it’s importance for Battlescape? The reviews I am seeing from VR in Elite are ecstatic, people will not go back to Elite without VR.

If this implementation is already blowing people away, then I can imagine VR becoming a major gaming demand in the next year. In that case, VR may shift from a “nice to have” for battlescape to something approaching a requirement.

Have you and the team discussed this?


And for some guys who have no girlfriend :joy:

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The reason we aren’t implementing VR right now isn’t because we don’t like it or don’t believe in it, but because we lack resources and have to make hard choices. Therefore no, this isn’t changing our stance on VR.


How long would it take to implement OpenVr into Battlescape in your estimation?
Is time/to few programmers or money the limiting factor? Because I am pretty sure this community could get reddit/r/oculus and reddit/r/vive to pledge at least 10k additional dollar towards a basic OpenVr integration stretchgoal. :stuck_out_tongue: I would at least put another 50$ on top of my current pledge. :smiley:
You mentioned some time ago that real vr support needs custom user interfaces, but I saw a lot of games that just displayed the ingame menus on a flat plane fixed to the cockpit location for example, is this very complicated to do?
Anyway, battlescape is an awesome game even in this early state, I am sure it will do really well without vr, its just that I want both haha.

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Quick Progress Reports - Engineering

I understood the original reason why not, I was wondering if the experience would lead to reprioritization. However, you sound like the answer is no and I completely respect that.

Better to have solid priorities than be constantly changing, IMO.


I backed FOVE on kickstarter, so I can’t really say I have anything physical yet, but they seem to be staying the course pretty well. Anyway, if there is no support in-game for VR, is it still possible to play with a headset? I imagine even if the game does not support it, there are probably some third party applications that could, and with the “leaked” specs for the GTX 1080Ti, I feel pretty confident that having one of those would obliterate any issues with rendering enough frames.

Basically, if you have a machine that can just brute force integration through third party software, is there any reason for VR to not be viable?

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Everyone needs to realize that with any 3D set of Glases: like Oculus Rift: You must have the bandwidth and the Horse power for min of 65-70 fps (frames per second)! If not, you’d better be a Fighter Jet Pilot with a stomach of STEEL. I would like to pickup the Oculus, or maybe one of the newer (smaller) glasses that are popping up, but due to my Inner Ear…well, lets just say I am hopeful…(?) :worried: