VR - disorienting?

[Nick Hill]

So, I finally tried out VR tonight (Rift, based on sim racing specific advice)...highly unoriginal comment incoming in 5, 4, 3, 2...

It was even better than I expected!

And, pleased to report I didn't experience any nausea, eye strain, etc. Not to say that couldn't happen in a longer play session, but it felt very comfortable and natural (albeit it a little "trippy" like we used to say in HS) right off the bat.

That said, I'm still not ready to pull the trigger - I would be getting this exclusively for sim racing, but there is something I still can't get through my thick skull about how well this really works for sim racing. Full disclosure, this is far from the first time I've asked this, but I've never gotten an answer that "clicks" for me (probably because it's hard to put into words).

So, the part that troubles me. We are all well aware that, for the 99.999% of us without motion rigs, we are playing these sims without the vital seat of the pants G forces...so we have to rely on our other senses to compensate - namely, sound, feel (FFB), and sight.

Obviously, VR is going to seriously change the "sight" sense for you. It is readily apparent to me that VR is going to increase immersion ten fold, as I'm going to feel as though I'm totally ensconced in the vehicles cockpit instead of sitting in my basement with my cat!

But it's of course more than just immersion...I feel as though I've trained my eyeballs to interpret what the road is doing relative to the car (and vice versa). I feel as though a big part of this is based on my car interior and the edges of my monitor being static with each other. If I perceive the road is getting a little crooked relative to the fixed reference points of my monitor edges/car interior details...well, I must be sliding a bit, right?

Tell me, VR wizards - how does this work in VR? I feel like my instinct is with a VR helmet on, I can move my head with total freedom - left, right, up, down, tilt, rotate, etc. Have I now not completely lost my ability to visually perceive the attitude of the track relative to the car? Is this line of thinking totally nuts? I realize VR is in a totally different ballpark than TrackIR, but if I dusted off my TrackIR, would I at least get an inkling of what the VR experience would be?

 

[FeltHat]

hopefully it will reach more folks:
AMS wont have vr support
u can stop waiting, i hear it in every vr thread, reiza18 sure, but ams wont

 

[PicoBp]

Anyone has deeper experience with VorpX? Does it worth the price (generally, not just for older sims)?

 

[FeltHat]

if u are into thing then yea sure, check their website, theres list of supported titles and what u get if game is NOT supported, to be honest id skip it and wait for proper support while playing games with support

 

[Furnace Inferno]

hopefully it will reach more folks:
AMS wont have vr support
u can stop waiting, i hear it in every vr thread, reiza18 sure, but ams wont

They didn't say they definitely wouldn't, just that they didn't have any programmers capable of doing it and that also extends to their new title.

 

[FeltHat]

They didn't say they definitely wouldn't, just that they didn't have any programmers capable of doing it and that also extends to their new title.

last ams update gonna hit soon, it means end of ams development and theres no vr in sight+they offered refund for anyone from backers who backed bacause of vr promise

 

[Insert Coin]

Anyone has deeper experience with VorpX? Does it worth the price (generally, not just for older sims)?

I bought it. My advice: skip it. You can keep tinkering with it, but it never works as you want it to work. Some examples: shadows only rendering for the left eye, not both; the world is turning in the opposite direction when you turn your head; those kind of troubles. It's a workaround to get a non-VR game into a VR-ish experience, but most of the time you will think "something's not right".

 

[Furnace Inferno]

last ams update gonna hit soon, it means end of ams development and theres no vr in sight+they offered refund for anyone from backers who backed bacause of vr promise

Sure but if the get a VR programmer in, there is no reason it couldn't be added to AMS as a proof of concept.

The main reason they didn't try themselves was after Oculus stopped supporting DX9 they thought it couldn't be done but RRRE got around that fine with OpenVR and I dare say AMS would probably have one of the best VR experiences of any sim because it has such low hardware requirements like iRacing allowing everything to be put towards improving image clarity.

It would be great for sales of the next game if they could get it in. I don't expect it to but I hope it does as I struggle to race in 2D now and I've barely played AMS and don't feel like I'd get as much out of it now.

 

[FeltHat]

Sure but if the get a VR programmer in, there is no reason it couldn't be added to AMS as a proof of concept.

theres one reason: waste of already low resources, theres no vr programmer and ams is at the end of development cycle. What proof of concept you are talking about?
Oculus dropping dx9 is old news, games like lfs have vr for a long time no problemo

 

[Furnace Inferno]

theres one reason: waste of already low resources, theres no vr programmer and ams is at the end of development cycle. What proof of concept you are talking about?
Oculus dropping dx9 is old news, games like lfs have vr for a long time no problemo

As in to help the studio know what works and doesn't work in VR to help improve it for the 2018 game with better engine specific optimisations.

 

[FeltHat]

As in to help the studio know what works and doesn't work in VR to help improve it for the 2018 game with better engine specific optimisations.

but they know what work and doesnt from other titles and if you are talking about their tech then its gonna be totally different for reiza18. Lets say they use ue4, then we are talking about forcing old isi to support vr VS having native vr support. Different renderer, different dx. I simply want them to finish ams as fast as possible so they can develop reiza18 with 100% resources, partially because i know that it will support vr while ams wont. If u want vr in reiza title, u wait for reiza18

 

[Furnace Inferno]

but they know what work and doesnt from other titles and if you are talking about their tech then its gonna be totally different for reiza18. Lets say they use ue4, then we are talking about forcing old isi to support vr VS having native vr support. Different renderer, different dx. I simply want them to finish ams as fast as possible so they can develop reiza18 with 100% resources, partially because i know that it will support vr while ams wont. If u want vr in reiza title, u wait for reiza18

But again if they are looking to hire a programmer specifically for VR that doesn't take away resources from the main game and they haven't completely written off the idea either based on the last update.

None of the sims have been built as VR titles and just had it added on top which is why they are the most demanding games out there so I can't imagine it takes a huge amount of resources provided you have someone who knows how to do it (which unfortunately they don't).

I'm not sure why you see it as such a huge issue to have it added for people to play AMS VR in the meantime while they wait for the new game. It's one of the great things about PC devs, that they add new features to old/current games rather than making you buy a new one every year or two if you want them.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

But again if they are looking to hire a programmer specifically for VR that doesn't take away resources from the main game and they haven't completely written off the idea either based on the last update.

None of the sims have been built as VR titles and just had it added on top which is why they are the most demanding games out there so I can't imagine it takes a huge amount of resources provided you have someone who knows how to do it (which unfortunately they don't).

I'm not sure why you see it as such a huge issue to have it added for people to play AMS VR in the meantime while they wait for the new game. It's one of the great things about PC devs, that they add new features to old/current games rather than making you buy a new one every year or two if you want them.

There are a number of games which have been modded to add VR. To name a few that come to mind: Doom BFG, Alien Isolation, Half-Life, Dying Light... Optimising performance is different matter altogether.

Adding VR to games isn't technically difficult, but that can also vary on the state of the underlying code. I used to work as a mobile software QA and Project Manager, something on the surface may look fine in use but can be poorly coded where small changes screw up many other parts of the program.

Whether it's worth Reiza spending time adding and polishing VR is different question when the game is unlikely to pick up many new sales. You still need to pay your developers so resource must be used optimally.

Between the Vive and Rift, it's around 1 million headsets sold. Then dilute that number to who play racing games, and even further down to sim racers and the numbers get pretty small. Then look at the sale numbers of AMS and which are going to be modest. Even Codemasters who are a major player in racing titles have abandoned VR. Their only attempt of VR in Dirt Rally was only half completed.

So the question right now is, does VR help 'sell' racing games. Not yet at least. I wouldn't be harsh on Reiza, it's probably not worth them retroactively adding VR to AMS when there's no money to be made. Baking VR into their next racing sim will be worth it, and for me at least will be a factor on whether to buy or not.

 

[Furnace Inferno]

There are a number of games which have been modded to add VR. To name a few that come to mind: Doom BFG, Alien Isolation, Half-Life, Dying Light... Optimising performance is different matter altogether.

Adding VR to games isn't technically difficult, but that can also vary on the state of the underlying code. I used to work as a mobile software QA and Project Manager, something on the surface may look fine in use but can be poorly coded where small changes screw up many other parts of the program.

Whether it's worth Reiza spending time adding and polishing VR is different question when the game is unlikely to pick up many new sales. You still need to pay your developers so resource must be used optimally.

Between the Vive and Rift, it's around 1 million headsets sold. Then dilute that number to who play racing games, and even further down to sim racers and the numbers get pretty small. Then look at the sale numbers of AMS and which are going to be modest. Even Codemasters who are a major player in racing titles have abandoned VR. Their only attempt of VR in Dirt Rally was only half completed.

So the question right now is, does VR help 'sell' racing games. Not yet at least. I wouldn't be harsh on Reiza, it's probably not worth them retroactively adding VR to AMS when there's no money to be made. Baking VR into their next racing sim will be worth it, and for me at least will be a factor on whether to buy or not.

Don't get me wrong I'm not having ago at the them or expecting it to be added just because all the other sims have. It's more just annoying that I have it with the season pass but have only played 5hrs or so as I've been going through my game backlog to focus on sim racing for the last 2 years (80 games down to about 10 now!) but got sucked into VR and find it extremely hard to drive without depth perception anymore.

I remember when I first got into racing games I'd always play in chase cam to be able to see/judge the track better but then I switched to bonnet and then cockpit view as my brain adjusted to 2D. Initially with VR I had to readjust to corners and found them much tighter than they appear on a TV, getting used to it didn't take long but now going back to 2D is difficult as it's so different. You're working much more on visual cues and memory than just reacting to what's happening around you.

Codemasters are one of the console devs though who release a game annually or bi-annually, patch a few bugs but don't release any new features. Dirt Rally is an outlier because it was early access PC only initially and they actually listened to what the community wanted with ongoing development and it ended up being their most successful racing game in a long time, had it been funded by Codemasters there is no way it would have got VR support.

I'm still not sure why they didn't use their VR code though in the next titles but I'm assuming it's because Dirt Rally used the old gen EGO engine from GRID Autosport whilst F1 2016/17 and Dirt 4 use the new gen version from 2015 with deferred rendering and it takes more effort than they are willing to make to move it across. However let's not forget they also removed cockpit view from Autosport because their data showed only 5% of gamers used it so I wouldn't be looking to them for a reason not to include something!

Anyway perhaps I should just try it with Nvidia 3DTV Play as I remember GT5 was better with it from what little I tried.

 

[FeltHat]

But again if they are looking to hire a programmer specifically for VR that doesn't take away resources from the main game

whats the main game? ams or reiza18? if latter then it would take away resources.
If they hire vr guy just let him work on the next title, not the one at almost finished development, it would make sense few months ago or even more
This and basically what Jeremy said
With limited reiza manpower and money we have to stay realistic, its painful for me, i wanted vr in ams as much as you