VR versus triple-screen for Assetto Corsa

[Billy Pilgrim]

I have a triple-screen setup. It's great.

I've never tried VR. I'd like to read opinions from those who have experienced both to understand how the two options compare.

The downside of VR, I understand, is the screendoor effect. That's about the extent of my knowledge. I'm thinking fps may be better in VR.

 

[Brandon Wright]

The Rift, at its base, is cheaper but does not have whole room tracking or touch controllers (though you can add these on if you choose).

This is incorrect. The Rift packages comes with the headset, two Touch controllers, and two sensors (as well as several free games/apps). All for only $399 USD.

If you will only be using it for racing/flight sims, then the Rift is the easy choice. The experience between the two is basically identical as far as I know, so you might as well just get the one that's a bit cheaper.

If you want to play other games, like shooters or whatever, the Vive might be a better option - at that point it comes down to the price difference for the Vive vs the full kit for Rift, and what exclusive games they offer.

For price, the Rift was nearly $1000CAD when I bought mine last March (or May? April? I forget now) but the Canadian price was always a ripoff, and the prices have come down since then I believe.

Why do people say the Rift can't do full room tracking or shooters? My Rift can track me anywhere in my room that my cords can reach (which is about 75% of the room) without any issue and all the shooters I've played work perfect. That question isn't directed at you specifically, I just see this comment a lot about the Rift not being good at these things yet it all works beautifully on my Rift. If I got HDMI and USB extender cables I have no doubt my Rift could track me across the entire room, especially if I added a third sensor.

 

[Cote Dazur]

@Billy Pilgrim short answer, VR, as someone said every day of the week and will add twice on Sunday.
I was a single screen player, tried 3 screen but went, at the time in favor of a 100 inch diagonal projected screen, sitting close to it to get 1/1 FOV and still see the cockpit etc....
VR is very different, suddenly you won’t have to pretend so much, you finally enter the car cockpit, the car is on the track, you start driving really seeing distance, thanks to outstanding 3D vision and you look at your apex, it is truly magic and a game changer. That is once you get use to a lower resolution and screen door effect, and you will.
SIM driving/racing and VR is a natural association. It takes a little time to adapt to but once you have made the switch, at least for me, driving a video game while looking at a screen is not an option anymore, because after VR that is what it feels like. For immersion and simulation VR is the only way.

 

[Flibbberflops]

When specifically talking about VR for AC, it should be pointed out that AC was not orginally made for VR.

Kunos has made a great effort to get VR working but there is a world of difference between standard settings VR in AC and how you can get it looking with a lot of tweaking. This was highlighted to me when recently I had to reinstall AC clean. I was shocked at the step visual step down. Its not just about quality either, even the colours seem really washed out in VR with standard AC. Luckly I had backed up my config and was able to quickly restore all my tweaks really quickly.I would probably cry if i lost them all.

I hate to swear but Pcars2 is a good example of a really good VR visual experience out the box. Therefore if you are trying VR or are a noob I would urge you to rate your VR racing visual experience on something like Pcars2 to see what it can look like. You can of course get AC much the same level but it requires some involved nurture... and it obviously helps to know what the best visual level can look like in the first place.

 

[Cote Dazur]

When specifically talking about VR for AC, it should be pointed out that AC was not orginally made for VR.

Kunos has made a great effort to get VR working but there is a world of difference between standard settings VR in AC and how you can get it looking with a lot of tweaking. This was highlighted to me when recently I had to reinstall AC clean. I was shocked at the step visual step down. Its not just about quality either, even the colours seem really washed out in VR with standard AC. Luckly I had backed up my config and was able to quickly restore all my tweaks really quickly.I would probably cry if i lost them all.

I hate to swear but Pcars2 is a good example of a really good VR visual experience out the box. Therefore if you are trying VR or are a noob I would urge you to rate your VR racing visual experience on something like Pcars2 to see what it can look like. You can of course get AC much the same level but it requires some involved nurture... and it obviously helps to know what the best visual level can look like in the first place.

PCars2 in VR, to me, is always blurry, when AC in VR, once set up properly, is very sharp.
Just saying.

 

[Flibbberflops]

Why do people say the Rift can't do full room tracking or shooters? .

Why do people even talk about room scale when talking in relation to sim racing?

For many years now I have seen many people ask advice about which is the best tripple screen setup for their racing rig, and in all that time I have never witnessed anyone give an answer which also kept in mind the benifits of triples for world of warcraft ? If someone was to ask about the best wheel for AC, no-one would start giving recommendations based on the added ability to play "My Summer Car"?

VR is a brilliant fit for the race simulator scene. Therefore would say that our advice would prehaps be better suited focusing on topic and not drifting into Fruit Ninja arena?

 

[Flibbberflops]

PCars2 in VR, to me, is always blurry, when AC in VR, once set up properly, is very sharp.
Just saying.

Indeed, and there are many other areas of Pcars2 that fall short of AC. However, I was just pointing out that out of the box the visual quality of Pcars is far superiour to AC out the box. Therefore there maybe people out there that have seen standard AC in VR and are making a judgement based on a much lower quality than they can achieve. Therefore the easy thing to do is reference Pcars2 to see the ball park your Sim Racing should be in.

 

[Gilles75]

I couldn't care less about the screen door effect, or the low resolution, what bothers me most about VR is the limited FOV that kills the sense of speed that you get from your peripheral vision. VR won't cut it for me until it lets you have full 180 peripheral vision.

 

[Ryno917]

This is incorrect. The Rift packages comes with the headset, two Touch controllers, and two sensors (as well as several free games/apps). All for only $399 USD.

View attachment 235508

The base package has changed, then. When I bought mine the touch controllers were an add-on, not part of the base package. To be honest, I preferred it that way, because I don't need them. This way you're forced to buy a device you don't need. Also, when I purchased my Rift it only came with one sensor.

Why do people say the Rift can't do full room tracking or shooters? My Rift can track me anywhere in my room that my cords can reach (which is about 75% of the room) without any issue and all the shooters I've played work perfect. That question isn't directed at you specifically, I just see this comment a lot about the Rift not being good at these things yet it all works beautifully on my Rift. If I got HDMI and USB extender cables I have no doubt my Rift could track me across the entire room, especially if I added a third sensor.

Because when the Rift launched it came with only one sensor, and they hadn't even built touch controllers, so it was purely for stationary gaming. When I bought mine you could buy additional sensors and the touch controllers, but they were not part of the standard package - as a result, the base package was not viable for whole-room gaming. It seems this is no longer the case, and now the base package allows for whole room gaming, similar to the Vive.

Why do people even talk about room scale when talking in relation to sim racing?

Because most people understand that most people don't only play racing sims? If you're going to buy hardware it's helpful to keep in mind the other uses for it, obviously.

 

[Ferenczy36]

I've had a Vive for about a year and half now. It is awesome. You are just playing a sim, you are IN the sim. The ability to look around the interior of the car, look through corners, and see traffic in your blind spots more easily makes VR unbeatable in my opinion. I just imagine the VR headset like a helmet that somewhat limits my peripheral vision. Then I have a cockpit with a couple of Buttkicker bass transducers on it running SimVibe and the immersion level is off the hook.

If you are on a bubble deciding on VR and the SDE is a concern, wait a couple more months until the Vive Pro comes out. It has increased resolution and is supposed to nearly eliminate the SDE altogether. I would think Oculus may have an upgraded resolution headset coming soon as well.

 

[Neilski]

Fruit Ninja

Oooh, yeah I wanna know - how good is Fruit Ninja in VR?

 

[Flibbberflops]

Because most people understand that most people don't only play racing sims? If you're going to buy hardware it's helpful to keep in mind the other uses for it, obviously.

I simply don't accept that in this context. For example the samsung odyssey is a higher resolution headset, doesn't require external devices for tracking and is argubly the best VR solution currently for sim racing. Yet this is almost universally ignored due in part to its none sim racing poorer controllers (and yes there are availibilty issues). Instead of talking about the various options availible for the orginal topic of this thread, to much emphasis is being raised regarding none racing uses. If the question was what is the best general use VR device (that can also be used in racing) then of course room scale would be of primary concern.

 

[Ryno917]

I simply don't accept that in this context. For example the samsung odyssey is a higher resolution headset, doesn't require external devices for tracking and is argubly the best VR solution currently for sim racing. Yet this is almost universally ignored due in part to its none sim racing poorer controllers (and yes there are availibilty issues). Instead of talking about the various options availible for the orginal topic of this thread, to much emphasis is being raised regarding none racing uses. If the question was what is the best general use VR device (that can also be used in racing) then of course room scale would be of primary concern.

I disagree about the Samsung device. AFAIK, any VR device that does not use external sensors uses an internal gyro, or similar, for tracking. These are just simply not reliable enough for prolonged use.

As far as general VR use, many people may purchase something specific and then wish it had functionality for other things, as well. I've seen many people who wish they had a whole-room VR solution and wish they had just taken that plunge in the beginning.

 

[Terry Rock]

My Rift package also included a wireless X-box controller, in addition to the sensors and controllers.
It was located in a hidden compartment at the center of the box.
I'm not kidding.

 

[dud]

The $399 rift package I got from Amazon a short time ago had two sensors and two hand controller.

 

[Brandon Wright]

I hate to swear but Pcars2 is a good example of a really good VR visual experience out the box. Therefore if you are trying VR or are a noob I would urge you to rate your VR racing visual experience on something like Pcars2 to see what it can look like. You can of course get AC much the same level but it requires some involved nurture... and it obviously helps to know what the best visual level can look like in the first place.

Not at all on my system, PCars2 is the worst looking of the bunch. Everything's blurry, screen door effect is huge, plus the random flashing white screen that happens every lap or two. I also have to run the graphics settings and SS pretty low where on AC and iRacing I can pretty much max them out and get wonderful picture quality. YMMV of course.

I simply don't accept that in this context. For example the samsung odyssey is a higher resolution headset, doesn't require external devices for tracking and is argubly the best VR solution currently for sim racing. Yet this is almost universally ignored due in part to its none sim racing poorer controllers (and yes there are availibilty issues). Instead of talking about the various options availible for the orginal topic of this thread, to much emphasis is being raised regarding none racing uses. If the question was what is the best general use VR device (that can also be used in racing) then of course room scale would be of primary concern.

Because it goes hand in hand with talking about VR. Before VR I had only been playing racing games for about 10 years, had no interest in shooters or platformers or RPGs. Then I tried RoboRecall in VR and holy cow it totally changed things. Shooting homicidal robots in VR while spinning around my game room was just an incredible experience. Then I did some space flying in Elite Dangerous, I took a little fox for a journey of coin collecting and box smashing, I played some VR table tennis, visited some foreign countries in Google Earth...suddenly my gaming library has far more non-racing games than racing games.

To me that's a very important part of discussing VR because it literally changes gaming and can make someone like me who had no interest in other games into a gaming nerd. This is way I always recommend the Rift because it gets you access to the huge library of wonderful Oculus games. If you're only using VR for racing you're missing out on half the experience and an incredible world of virtual reality. If you're going to spend money on VR you might as well get the whole package and not just limit it to one kind of game IMO, the Samsung Odyssey would get you a fraction of the experience for the same price as the Rift and for me a slightly higher pixel count would not make up for the loss of Oculus Home or the Oculus game library.

 

[Giando Fraschini]

VR, and never going back.
You need time to: A) set your system and configs properly; B) get used to it.
Once you've done it... it's an amazing experience. It's a gamechanger.
And my hardware - at the moment - doesn't even exploit my Oculus Rift's maximum potential.
I can only imagine in a few years when we will have 4K VR... it will be mindblowing, for sure!

 

[Flibbberflops]

I disagree about the Samsung device. AFAIK, any VR device that does not use external sensors uses an internal gyro, or similar, for tracking. These are just simply not reliable enough for prolonged use.
.

This is only because you are basing your answers on a lack of knowledge on the subject. The Samsung has the same tracking as all WMR VR headsets. They use inside out tracking (which are camera's built into the headset). Headset tracking is almost as perfect as the vive and rift . The Samsung is currently the highest resolution commercially available headset with proper headset tracking.

 

[Mascot]

Higher resolution VR would be nice, but I think of far greater importance for sim racing is field of view. I'm used to the scuba-mask FoV of the Rift (I keep telling myself I'm wearing a racing helmet) but being able to sense other cars in my peripheral vision would be amazing. That's why I'm praying that the Pimax delivers on its promise and provides a stable and reliable headset with good build quality that performs as intended. The 200 degree horizontal FoV would be amazing for sim racing, and that's ignoring the much higher pixel density. It all remains to be seen though.

 

[bigbawmcgraw]

Higher resolution VR would be nice, but I think of far greater importance for sim racing is field of view. I'm used to the scuba-mask FoV of the Rift (I keep telling myself I'm wearing a racing helmet) but being able to sense other cars in my peripheral vision would be amazing. That's why I'm praying that the Pimax delivers on its promise and provides a stable and reliable headset with good build quality that performs as intended. The 200 degree horizontal FoV would be amazing for sim racing, and that's ignoring the much higher pixel density. It all remains to be seen though.

Testers have reported that Pimax will only run at 60Hz.
Considering Oculus put so much effort into increasing from 75 to 90, I'm wary of blurry images.

 

[Flibbberflops]

To my knowledge, up until very recently the Pimax "8K" (which I believe is what Mascot is refering too) is currently working at around 82hz. However, the device is still in developement. The target for consumer release is 90hz.

Are you perhaps referring to the legacy Pimax "4K" product which has been out for a year or so? That product runs at 60hz?