• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

HTC Vive Launch Thread -- Computer, activate holodeck

Status
Not open for further replies.

Augustiner

Neo Member
Looking at EVE Valkyrie on steam. It looks like the game is designed around micro-transactions, is this true? The summary says it is "Skill-based character progression and ship upgrades". Does that refer to the micro-transaction requirements?
 

E-flux

Member
Looking at EVE Valkyrie on steam. It looks like the game is designed around micro-transactions, is this true? The summary says it is "Skill-based character progression and ship upgrades". Does that refer to the micro-transaction requirements?

How i understood it from other reviews is that the microtransaction stuff makes your progression faster by boosters and unlocking stuff you otherwise would have to get money for, haven't bought the game yet so i might be completely wrong.
 

Zalusithix

Member
Seoul is also flat as a tortilla. :(

Was quite disappointing after having checked out Hong Kong and Tokyo. Was thinking to myself, "Well, lets check out S.Korea now that I've done major cities in China and Japan." Arrived at Seoul and was greeted by pancake land. Might as well have been in N.Korea. ;P
 

Zalusithix

Member
I had the same experience going from Rome to Athens.

Yep, Athens was another letdown. A flat Parthenon isn't very impressive unfortunately.

On the bright side of things, the experience can only get better over time as more locations come to life in 3D. Stuff like this in VR makes me want to fast forward a couple of decades. Actually, now that I think about it... That's the ultimate goal for this sort of thing: time. Imagine being able to time shift any location through history. Going backwards would be impossible without human recreation, but going forward the process could be automated. Imagine a century's worth of photogrammetry data for major locations and being able to wind your way through it.
 
There's a lot of work to be done with Asian and African countries. I was really hoping Dubai would've been modeled to check out the Burj Khalifa, but it's flat. I didn't see a single city modeled on the entire continent of Africa.
 

Zalusithix

Member
It hasn't crashed on me, but stereoscopic screenshots are broken for any view that includes the sky. The left image comes through fine, but the right image's sky is always jet black. Kind of sucks as there's been a lot of cool shots that I just gave up on.
 

pj

Banned
I was checking out some low res 3d city last night and thinking, even at this n64 level of quality it would be an insane amount of data to model the entire world.

I never had any serious problems with Vive until now.
I previously had base stations on tripods on shelves. I finally installed them on walls on the included mounting-thingies. It worked at first, but then something weird happened. When I start SteamVR it tells me base stations are not detected - they are connected to power and the light on them is green - but they are do not "spin up", name of the channel is not detected. I power cycled them, I also power cycled my PC but it did not help (i also used "wake up all base stations").
Steam troubleshooting page was not helpful either. I did forget to power-cycle the breakout box, but other than that, what can I do? (I checked beta and non beta steamvr branch).


What happens when you press the channel button on the back of the basestations?

If you unplug one and then plug it back in right away, it doesn't spin up?

You might want to check the log files (theres a view log files button in steamvr settings). I think vrserver is the one that talks with the basestations.
 

DJ88

Member
Seoul is also flat as a tortilla. :(

Dubai too!

I was so ready to see how tall the burj khalifa was with 1:1 scale and stand at the very top of it :(

That's probably my favorite thing to do in Google Earth VR. Go down into human scale on top of the tallest buildings in major cities and just take in the amazing views.
 
It doesn't start. It puts up a box (outside of VR) saying only stereo headsets are supported.

Maybe Google is blocking more unsupported hardware like the Rift? If so, hopefully someone will come up with a workaround (the Rift one was done fairly quickly). It's weird that headphones of all things would cause problems.
 

Crispy75

Member
I think I prefer sitting on the floor while everything is model-sized. You can't see the imperfections of the photogrametry, and you get a great sense of how all the parts of the city join togther. Hong Kong is fantastic for this. The island especially, with all its pencil-thin towers and crazy winding roads up the slopes.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Kinda, Low wake happens when a ship goes to FTL without leaving the system it is in and High wake is when it jumps out of the system. With proper equipment you can scan these wakes and get some materials out of them and see exactly where they jumped if you want to follow. Mass disrupts your FTL drives and slows them down so remember that if you are escaping or being chased.
Whoaaa. Thanks for the tip!
 

SimplexPL

Member
In SteamVR settings turn blue tooth wake off. Turn camera off. Go to developer section and select options to remove all USB drivers. Unplug Vive from PC. Reboot. Plug it back in after starting Steam.

I was checking out some low res 3d city last night and thinking, even at this n64 level of quality it would be an insane amount of data to model the entire world.
What happens when you press the channel button on the back of the basestations?
If you unplug one and then plug it back in right away, it doesn't spin up?
You might want to check the log files (theres a view log files button in steamvr settings). I think vrserver is the one that talks with the basestations.

Thanks for the tips. I will try them out, but here's an update - So far I did not try anything new - I booted to win10 and everything works without touching anything. When I go back to win7, base stations are not detected (previously I had no problem in win7). So I'm wondering what could be the culprit?

EDIT: I assumed the problem is software. I tried uninstalling SteamVR but it did not work - I got the message "Uninstalling SteamVR" but when it disappeared, SteamVR was still there. So I just forcefully renamed the whole folder and restarted steam. Now it works.
Next time I have a problem like this, I will start from reinstalling SteamVR.
 

Zalusithix

Member
The new cable is lighter and doesn't suffer AS much from twisting.

Personally, I'd rather wait and upgrade to wireless as long as I can get it in Q1 2017.

Yeah, at this point I'm more playing wait and see with wireless instead. The cable will be a minor improvement for me at best. No point in wasting money on it if the wireless pans out well. On the flip side, no point in wasting money on beta testing the wireless units either. I'll wait for a consensus and then decide my course of action.
 

Samaritan

Member
So those of you that have used the new 3-in-1, has is made a difference? I might pick one up, but $40 is a bit much.

I'm very happy with it. One of my biggest gripes with the Vive was just how aware of the cable I'd be, regardless of how much time I had spent in VR. The new cable is much smaller and moves around with you better, making it a lot easier to forget about. It also doesn't pull on you as much as the original cable. You won't entirely forget you're tethered, of course, but it's a noticeable and welcome improvement.

I think $40 was a fair price, but of course everyone has a different definition of value.
 

pj

Banned
I just ordered the cable. It's been a while since anyone on reddit has posted about getting the old one.

I'm not expecting a major improvement but the original one is a big pile of cumbersome when it's wadded up behind my pc.
 

Hzoltan69

Member
Are the 3D buildings in Google Earth fully modelled? I tried it for a few minutes earlier today, but all I got was the blocky, ugly auto-generated 3D. According to the pictures I find on the web, that's not what I should be seeing. Is there a setting I missed?
 

Crispy75

Member
Are the 3D buildings in Google Earth fully modelled? I tried it for a few minutes earlier today, but all I got was the blocky, ugly auto-generated 3D. According to the pictures I find on the web, that's not what I should be seeing. Is there a setting I missed?

No, that's all you get. Some places have better quality than others.
 

Zalusithix

Member
Are the 3D buildings in Google Earth fully modelled? I tried it for a few minutes earlier today, but all I got was the blocky, ugly auto-generated 3D. According to the pictures I find on the web, that's not what I should be seeing. Is there a setting I missed?

The pictures you're looking at online are likely taken from a distance where small detail is lost. Everything is photogrammetry based, so yes it's blocky and warped at close distances. It'd take ungodly amounts of money and manpower to manually model everything.
 

pj

Banned
The pictures you're looking at online are likely taken from a distance where small detail is lost. Everything is photogrammetry based, so yes it's blocky and warped at close distances. It'd take ungodly amounts of money and manpower to manually model everything.

The photogrammetry will get better if they can switch to very low flying drones instead of the low flying planes that I believe they use now.

Maybe in a few years people will be able to contribute using their own drones.
 

Zalusithix

Member
The photogrammetry will get better if they can switch to very low flying drones instead of the low flying planes that I believe they use now.

Maybe in a few years people will be able to contribute using their own drones.

Oh, it'll definitely improve over time. I imagine they'll eventually get to the point where they can start analyzing pictures on the net to refine street level detail and possibly even map interiors. All those useless selfies in the cloud will finally have a purpose! ;P
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Any of you guys see this Devlog for Breach It posted a couple days ago? Basically Rainbow 6: Siege for VR. Attackers and Defenders. Fully destructible/reinforceable walls and doors. I know I ranted a bit about devs making so many multiplayer games lately, but this looks like it could be really cool.

Also some good footage of Arizona Sunshine. Watching that makes the price seem a lot more accurate now.
these both look pretty darn good
 

DJ88

Member
Wow.

So I had no idea Tilt Brush had been updated with so many cool things. I seriously just got lost in it for 3 hours. Ended up lying on the floor, in this giant space, with all kinds of brushes tied to music flashing on the ceiling and around my face. What a fucking incredible UI too, just a sublime experience.


untitled_2_049esnb.gif
 

Samaritan

Member
So I'm reaching that point with my Vive where I want to dip my toe into supersampling, but I also don't want to have to worry too-too much about fiddling with settings to get a game at a playable framerate. So what is the current best method of adjusting render scale, as well as determining how hard you can push some of these games? It's not like I can just turn on an in-headset framerate counter... right?

For reference, here are my specs:

CPU: i5 6600K @ 4.3GHz
GPU: 980Ti G1 +108MHz GPU Clock/+300MHz Memory Clock
RAM: 16GB DDR4 @ 3000MHz
Storage: 850 EVO SSD
Monitor: Acer XB240H 1080p @ 144Hz
 

Durante

Member
Ok haven't used my Vive since May due to a move. What's the coolest game on it right now?
You're probably going to get a different answer from everyone who replies, but for me, at this moment:
- The best overall action game is Raw Data
- The most amusing short experience is Accounting
- The most awe-inspiring "app" is Google Earth
 

Scapegoat

Member
Ok haven't used my Vive since May due to a move. What's the coolest game on it right now?
I concur with Durante.

Some other recent games/experiences worth checking out (IMO):

- Abode, well polished escape the room game. Not to easy, not to hard. ~20-40 mins to solve.
- Lethal VR, arcadey style 360 shooting range game. VR police trainer. Excellent fun.
- Project Cars and/or Dirt Rally + steering wheel. These have been out for a while (Dirt still requires Revive) but the addition of asynchronous timewarp means less than steller performance is far less of a (sickness inducing) issue. Jumping into a good cockpit game like these still puts an instant shit-eating grin on my face.
- Allumette, free stopmotion VR short film. Immersive. Clever. Touching.
 

Scapegoat

Member
Ah, one more thing for the list above:
- The most immersive "full large-scale game" is The Solus Project.
I've had the game in my library for a while but had always heard from the grapevine that it was a weak implementation of the Vive remotes. Will give it a go right now!!!!
 

Durante

Member
I've had the game in my library for a while but had always heard from the grapevine that it was a weak implementation of the Vive remotes. Will give it a go right now!!!!
It's not as immediately intuitive as most VR-first games, but after half an hour or so you get used to the design and figure out that it actually works quite well. At least that's how it went for me (I initially found it off-putting).

I'd be suggesting The Solus Project even more vehemently if it weren't for the fact that you really need a high-end system to run it well, and even then the IQ leaves something to be desired. (It's the UE4 deferred renderer)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom