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HTC Vive Launch Thread -- Computer, activate holodeck

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Zalusithix

Member
That's what I was doing at first, but I'm not a fan of the cleanup (and how often it needed it). Plus I'm paranoid about removing the foam too many times after the Velcro on the headset started pulling off in places.

I can understand the paranoia if that happened to you. Was this with the default foam interfaces? I didn't think they had remotely enough grip to the headset's Velcro to overcome its adhesion to the headset. If anything, I assumed the sheering force from the headset's weight while wearing it would affect the adhesive more.
 
Ok, went and got Superhot running on my Vive and.......it's fucking awesome.

I'm not a fan of having to use the side buttons to hold onto objects though. I know it makes sense but those aren't the most comfortable things to access especially in a game like this where it essentially requires you to press them at all times.
 
Thanks guys. I'll look into some of these options. I will say that the ski mask thing definitely got a chuckle out of me.

Why? I've bought two and cut the lower half off so it ends right under the HMD, it works quite well, you can wash it and it's less sweaty as you have an additional layer of fabric under the foam, keeps the headset clean. It also blocks the light from the nose area (depending on the form of the nose I guess) so theres no light bleeding into the hmd.

Admittedly you look pretty dumb with only the mask on, but that's a rather small negative :)
 
Plus I'm paranoid about removing the foam too many times after the Velcro on the headset started pulling off in places.

This is happening to me to and I'm really not sure what to do about it. I need to remove the foam to get the VR Lens Lab inserts in and out when guests come.

I'm not a fan of having to use the side buttons to hold onto objects though. I know it makes sense but those aren't the most comfortable things to access especially in a game like this where it essentially requires you to press them at all times.

That's the downside of playing a game designed for Touch with a Vive. The grip buttons on touch are much easier to press/hold.
 
Yeah, I'm not sure what they were thinking with the grip buttons at all. They're not ergonomically comfortable to use even sparingly. I'm glad the prototype controllers seem to be trying to fix that in an even more natural way than the Touch controllers.

On that controller rant, I think they placed the system and menu buttons backwards. It should be harder to hit the system menu in game than it should the menu one which can actually be used for gameplay.
 

Zalusithix

Member
Yeah, I'm not sure what they were thinking with the grip buttons at all. They're not ergonomically comfortable to use even sparingly. I'm glad the prototype controllers seem to be trying to fix that in an even more natural way than the Touch controllers.

On that controller rant, I think they placed the system and menu buttons backwards. It should be harder to hit the system menu in game than it should the menu one which can actually be used for gameplay.

There's a number of less than ideal things about the Vive's controllers. The grip buttons are restricted by the ambidextrous design. You couldn't make them a trigger because of that, and you couldn't make them easier to press or you'd risk activating them by just holding the controller. The buttons are both less than ideal: flush mounted and out of alignment with where your thumb naturally rests. Then there's controller itself where the big tracking head sticks out and makes hitting things that much easier.

Thankfully pretty much all of the issues with the first gen controllers seem to be addressed in the Valve's prototype. We gain a second usable button, both are raised, moved to the sides of the (now concave) trackpad, and made analog to boot. The system button is recessed below the pad. Meanwhile the grip "button" is made a virtual capacitive one, and the controller stays in hand even when released. All this and it should still technically be ambidextrous to reduce manufacturing costs (just make it so the hand strap can attach in either direction). Oh, and no big protrusion for tracking. =)
 
So the primary user of our new Vive has been my 12 year old son. He loves it, and plays a lot of the games that has him jumping around getting some 'exercise', which is great. However, the sweat. Dear lord, the sweat. The last time he played I literally blotted moisture out of the foam with paper towels. Surely I can't be the only one dealing with this. What are you guys doing to keep this a clean situation?

I got a water proof VR cover. When I got my Vive I was more out of shape and the temperatures were a lot higher, so sweat was a huge issue for me back then. It still gets uncomfortable after a while, but now it's hours instead of minutes, and I can usually take just a few minutes break to let the headset air out a bit and wipe down the cover (or replace it since it came with a set of two) to keep going.
 
It's amazing. As long as you have a good GPU go for it. (If you have someone to play it in coop with go for it twice!)

6700k still considered good enough?

Just want to make sure. It's around the upper reaches of what I've spent on VR games to date so I want to make sure I'm all set here.

Still runnin the ol' 1080FTW so I assume the GPU is good2go. lol
 
D

Deleted member 59090

Unconfirmed Member
6700k still considered good enough?

I'm playing it on a Phenom 965 so you're definitely good. As for the game itself you can get it cheaper in the BST thread from people that bought it during the pricing error.
 

Durante

Member
6700k still considered good enough?

Just want to make sure. It's around the upper reaches of what I've spent on VR games to date so I want to make sure I'm all set here.

Still runnin the ol' 1080FTW so I assume the GPU is good2go. lol
Sure, that's more than enough. It's just GPU heavy to get good IQ without constant reprojection, not particularly hard on the CPU.
 

FuturusX

Member
Picked up a Vive on Christmas eve. Pretty much an impulse buy after after trying The Lab at the MS store in a mall.

So far I absolutely adore the Budget Cuts Demo, can't wait for a full game.

The sense of immersion and tracking is insane you can't really put it into words, I'm loving the tech..but I'm concerned about the depth of gaming experiences. I really want inspired developers to get a hold of the technology and push some really interesting experiences.

Anyway...I know this has been asked ad nauseam but what are the deepest experiences available so far in your humble opinions.

I'm thinking about picking up Elite Dangerous as my main polished experience - but I want games / experiences that use Room scale well ( cleared a big space in my living room :) )
 
Picked up a Vive on Christmas eve. Pretty much an impulse buy after after trying The Lab at the MS store in a mall.

So far I absolutely adore the Budget Cuts Demo, can't wait for a full game.

The sense of immersion and tracking is insane you can't really put it into words, I'm loving the tech..but I'm concerned about the depth of gaming experiences. I really want inspired developers to get a hold of the technology and push some really interesting experiences.

Anyway...I know this has been asked ad nauseam but what are the deepest experiences available so far in your humble opinions.

I'm thinking about picking up Elite Dangerous as my main polished experience - but I want games / experiences that use Room scale well ( cleared a big space in my living room :) )

Vanishing Realms is a good one for if you have a lot of space, it also feels more like a traditional game than most of the shorter experiences. Rec Room, Tilt Brush, Raw Data are my favorite for room scale stuff so far. I've played very few games compared to a lot of people in this thread though.
 

Ferrio

Banned
Picked up a Vive on Christmas eve. Pretty much an impulse buy after after trying The Lab at the MS store in a mall.

So far I absolutely adore the Budget Cuts Demo, can't wait for a full game.

The sense of immersion and tracking is insane you can't really put it into words, I'm loving the tech..but I'm concerned about the depth of gaming experiences. I really want inspired developers to get a hold of the technology and push some really interesting experiences.

Anyway...I know this has been asked ad nauseam but what are the deepest experiences available so far in your humble opinions.

I'm thinking about picking up Elite Dangerous as my main polished experience - but I want games / experiences that use Room scale well ( cleared a big space in my living room :) )

SuperHot via Revive. It's short but easily the best VR gaming experience I've had.
 
Man, I Expect You to Die is pretty damn awesome. Really funny and the puzzles are varied and inventive. It's a little awkward with Revive since you use the "joystick" for relatively fine control sometimes, but it totally works. Hopefully they bring it to Steam soon.
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
I played about a few hours of my Vive. First time in a long time I've actually used it in awhile, and surprisingly, I used it for awhile. I've never done that. I'd do it more often if I didn't have to set it up every time (high rise apartment) and it was more comfortable. Had it since launch and haven't touched it in literally months.

I swapped out my headphones this time. I used to use big ones but switched to Apple earbuds. It made it more comfortable. I'm willing to sacrifice quality for comfort. It makes a huge difference in playing the thing. I usually couldn't stand it, like I was fighting with the device to play games. Any other advice on comfort?

I bought the full version of Brookhaven, thanks to the Steam sale. It's quite enjoyable.
 

Durante

Member
Anyway...I know this has been asked ad nauseam but what are the deepest experiences available so far in your humble opinions.
That's rather difficult to answer because people mean different things when they say a game is "deep".

Some mean that there is a lot of content, in which case many of the best candidates at this point in time are games that were not developed exclusively for VR but retrofitted for it. Two of my favourites in that category are The Solus Project and Serious Sam: The First Encounter. Both have large campaigns, Solus is mostly exploration-based and Serious Sam features very fast action and active traversal of large maps. Arizona Sunshine is a VR-only game with a campaign of ~5 hours, and it's fun, but I don't think it's particularly deep.

In another case you might mean deep as in the complexity the mechanics allow for. In that case, you need to look at something like Anyland, which basically allows you to build anything and attach scripts to it to make it do mostly anything. Of course, there's a discussion to be had about whether something without a win condition or explicit goal is still a game.

Finally -- and this is what I mostly mean when I say "depth" -- you can consider to what extent and in how many ways a game allows you to improve your skills in it in order to get better at playing it (this can range from things like reflexes to learning strategies for specific situations). In this category I personally think that Raw Data stands a notch above most other games at this point.
I really just play one character (and each of them has very different gameplay you need to learn individually), but even so there is a whole lot of ways in which I feel I have improved since starting the game (and can improve further!):
  • How to perform basic attacks. As in, for example, how to physically throw my sword to hit distant enemies, or precisely throw it at the right angle and speed to inflict a large amount of damage to a group of enemies in front of me.
  • Understanding the attack patterns of each enemy, and knowing which of them are most dangerous and should be taken care of first in different situations.
  • How and when to use special skills (which are on timeouts) most effectively.
  • Mixing in fast traversal without "overheating" and with minimal interruption to whatever else I'm doing.
  • Learning the individual map layouts and which enemies spawn where and when.
  • Strategic decisions like which towers to build (and repair) where and at what point in time in each level.
And what I find particularly nice about Raw Data is that it doesn't just offer these options to get more deeply into it -- it actually has a difficulty curve that, on normal, requires you to at least make some progress in each of these areas to proceed through the later levels.
 

kinggroin

Banned
I played about a few hours of my Vive. First time in a long time I've actually used it in awhile, and surprisingly, I used it for awhile. I've never done that. I'd do it more often if I didn't have to set it up every time (high rise apartment) and it was more comfortable. Had it since launch and haven't touched it in literally months.

I swapped out my headphones this time. I used to use big ones but switched to Apple earbuds. It made it more comfortable. I'm willing to sacrifice quality for comfort. It makes a huge difference in playing the thing. I usually couldn't stand it, like I was fighting with the device to play games. Any other advice on comfort?

I bought the full version of Brookhaven, thanks to the Steam sale. It's quite enjoyable.

SuperHOT is the closest thing to Mario 64 of VR
 

Rygar 8 Bit

Jaguar 64-bit
Picked up a Vive on Christmas eve. Pretty much an impulse buy after after trying The Lab at the MS store in a mall.

So far I absolutely adore the Budget Cuts Demo, can't wait for a full game.

The sense of immersion and tracking is insane you can't really put it into words, I'm loving the tech..but I'm concerned about the depth of gaming experiences. I really want inspired developers to get a hold of the technology and push some really interesting experiences.

Anyway...I know this has been asked ad nauseam but what are the deepest experiences available so far in your humble opinions.

I'm thinking about picking up Elite Dangerous as my main polished experience - but I want games / experiences that use Room scale well ( cleared a big space in my living room :) )

the best of the full room scale experiences imo

climbey
raw data
arizona sunshine
serious sam first encounter
sairento
space pirate trainer
hover junkers
vanishing realms
onward
art of fight
 

DatAhmedz

Member
So I got my Vive today and I've been super impressed by it. Took a while to setup, but man was it worth it.

Only thing I'm scratching my head over is that I thought the Vive comes with 3 bundled games. Were those only for pre-orders/launch or supposedly all Vives in the market?
 

Rygar 8 Bit

Jaguar 64-bit
So I got my Vive today and I've been super impressed by it. Took a while to setup, but man was it worth it.

Only thing I'm scratching my head over is that I thought the Vive comes with 3 bundled games. Were those only for pre-orders/launch or supposedly all Vives in the market?

i think they were from preordering
 

Sanic

Member
So I got my Vive today and I've been super impressed by it. Took a while to setup, but man was it worth it.

Only thing I'm scratching my head over is that I thought the Vive comes with 3 bundled games. Were those only for pre-orders/launch or supposedly all Vives in the market?

As someone that just bought a Vive and also had to look this up, when/how you get your codes depends on the retailer. Some will print them on your receipt, others may email them to you.

I bought my Vive from a Microsoft Store and my codes were emailed to me 5 or 6 days after purchase. Keep in mind that Tilt Brush is no longer included.
 

DatAhmedz

Member
As someone that just bought a Vive and also had to look this up, when/how you get your codes depends on the retailer. Some will print them on your receipt, others may email them to you.

I bought my Vive from a Microsoft Store and my codes were emailed to me 5 or 6 days after purchase. Keep in mind that Tilt Brush is no longer included.

Yeah I dunno if the retailer I got it from (Geekay Games, which is based in the UAE) offers the games via code/email, and I forgot to ask before I went ahead and ordered one from them.

I've heard people were able to contact Support and managed to get a code after giving their Vive's serial number. So I'll probably try that once their offices are open again.
 
So just yesterday I've been running into a problem. I'll be in Steam VR and then after about 10 minutes or so it decides to close by itself and then it closes Steam as well. I don't even have to be in a game for this to happen. I can be at the home menu and it'll shut down.

Anyone else experienced this or know how to resolve it? I've turned off my camera, disabled Bluetooth, unplugged my USB cables and plugged them back in, etc.....I've tried everything I could think of outside of doing a full reinstall. Any help would be appreciated.
 

FuturusX

Member
Thanks to everybody for the suggestions. This is why GAF is the finest gaming community :)

That's rather difficult to answer because people mean different things when they say a game is "deep".

Some mean that there is a lot of content, in which case many of the best candidates at this point in time are games that were not developed exclusively for VR but retrofitted for it. Two of my favourites in that category are The Solus Project and Serious Sam: The First Encounter. Both have large campaigns, Solus is mostly exploration-based and Serious Sam features very fast action and active traversal of large maps. Arizona Sunshine is a VR-only game with a campaign of ~5 hours, and it's fun, but I don't think it's particularly deep.

In another case you might mean deep as in the complexity the mechanics allow for. In that case, you need to look at something like Anyland, which basically allows you to build anything and attach scripts to it to make it do mostly anything. Of course, there's a discussion to be had about whether something without a win condition or explicit goal is still a game.

Finally -- and this is what I mostly mean when I say "depth" -- you can consider to what extent and in how many ways a game allows you to improve your skills in it in order to get better at playing it (this can range from things like reflexes to learning strategies for specific situations). In this category I personally think that Raw Data stands a notch above most other games at this point.
I really just play one character (and each of them has very different gameplay you need to learn individually), but even so there is a whole lot of ways in which I feel I have improved since starting the game (and can improve further!):
  • How to perform basic attacks. As in, for example, how to physically throw my sword to hit distant enemies, or precisely throw it at the right angle and speed to inflict a large amount of damage to a group of enemies in front of me.
  • Understanding the attack patterns of each enemy, and knowing which of them are most dangerous and should be taken care of first in different situations.
  • How and when to use special skills (which are on timeouts) most effectively.
  • Mixing in fast traversal without "overheating" and with minimal interruption to whatever else I'm doing.
  • Learning the individual map layouts and which enemies spawn where and when.
  • Strategic decisions like which towers to build (and repair) where and at what point in time in each level.
And what I find particularly nice about Raw Data is that it doesn't just offer these options to get more deeply into it -- it actually has a difficulty curve that, on normal, requires you to at least make some progress in each of these areas to proceed through the later levels.

Durante, thanks for the deep response! The latter in your summary is really what I'm getting at. I'm off to try Raw Data asap! Thanks!
 
Got the new 3-in-1 cable today and it's better in a couple of small, but significant ways that I don't recall people mentioning. Firstly, the hdmi/usb cables are *much* thicker at the termination on the headset. Considering how the cable connects to the headset, with the cablegoing up through the plastic cover that connects to the headband, this made the original 3-in-1's hdmi/usb cable prone to damage (happened to me).

Secondly, the position where the cables split is closer to termination. With the original cable, the split happened much closer to the slit in the headband where the cables pass through and would constantly get caught on the velcro tab of the top head adjustment strap. Annoyed the shit out of me.
 

kinggroin

Banned
I'll wait until the inevitable Vive release, unless that's never.

There's no time frame for it or even if it's happening at all. Using Revive couldn't be easier nowadays. It even auto updates itself.

Don't deny yourself the software you didn't know your paid over $800 for. It validates the purchase by itself and it's worth putting up with the Oculus store for.
 

Zalusithix

Member
Don't deny yourself the software you didn't know your paid over $800 for. It validates the purchase by itself and it's worth putting up with the Oculus store for.

Personally I've already gotten my $800 worth out of the headset, and I have enough of a backlog that I'm not sweating the lack of a single game. If and when it lands on Steam with native support I'll pick it up, but I'm not touching Oculus Home - at least not any time soon. Oculus earned a minimum one year penalty time from me for the shit they pulled in 2016.
 
"Personally I've already gotten my $800 worth out of the headset, and I have enough of a backlog that I'm not sweating the lack of a single game. If and when it lands on Steam with native support I'll pick it up, but I'm not touching Oculus Home - at least not any time soon. Oculus earned a minimum one year penalty time from me for the shit they pulled in 2016."

I'm not giving Oculus a dime, indefinitely.
 

Zalusithix

Member
I'm not giving Oculus a dime, indefinitely.

I'm hesitant to make claims that I can't be guaranteed to keep. A lot can change over long periods of time. Reasonable minimums are easier to hold to, while at the same time leaving the door open to extensions.

I'm hardly waiting with baited breath for the time when I can start giving Oculus money. I merely set a time at which point I can consider them for parole so to speak. Heck, my current self imposed ban time doesn't even factor in the later Luckey shenanigans; it's based solely on the stuff leading up to and including the hardware DRM fiasco. All of their actions after that will be judged in about 6 months (~1 year from reversal of said DRM). That gives them plenty of time to rectify their mistakes, or as it often seems, fuck up some more.
 
"I'm hesitant to make claims that I can't be guaranteed to keep. A lot can change over long periods of time. Reasonable minimums are easier to hold to, while at the same time leaving the door open to extensions. "


Indefinitely doesn't mean never.
 

Trojan

Member
Async time warp and the recent performance patches have helped Raw Data a lot, but yeah it's still one of the more demanding VR games.

I've been really happy with the recent performance updates Valve has done. Async alone is a game-changing tech. Not sure if these are locked to the SteamVR beta branch but people should make sure they're using that so they get the newest upgrades.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
I picked up Sound Stage, Vanishing Realms, and Sportsbar VR before the Steam sale is over. Vanishing Realms is really good. Sound Stage is going to require some time but has a lot of potential. I haven't had a chance to boot up Sportsbar VR yet. I go back to work on Tuesday so all my fun time exploring these games goes out the window. I'm hoping to delve through and get some thoughts written up on all the games I picked up.

Also, if anyone is interested in joining our Gaf VR group on Steam, please me PM your Steam info and preferably a link to your profile so I know I am adding the right folks.
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
I'm not alone in not buying Super Hot!
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
bboy if you ever get tired of taking your vive out of teh closet or want to switch platforms ill be the first to make an offer for yours
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
bboy if you ever get tired of taking your vive out of teh closet or want to switch platforms ill be the first to make an offer for yours

You don't really want it. Better to find a way to use it without owning one. It's like a light gun game. Tons of fun in the arcade and you think, man, I wish I had one of these. Then you buy all the stuff for House of the Dead and then don't use it after the first week.

We still need some time for games to come out for it to be really cool. I wish I had a friend into gaming as I am. I'd have split the cost of one for shared ownership -- that'd be ideal.
 
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