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HTC Vive Launch Thread -- Computer, activate holodeck

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ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Kinda want... but all these add-ons are a bit pricey and I wonder if it wouldn't be better to release a new version of the HMD with wireless and eyetracking integrated instead of Megadrive stacking everything onto the thing. Maybe too expensive still, I don't know.

I believe price is an issue which prevent them from releasing a version 2 now. The wireless add-on is coming Q3 this year, so a Vive 2 with integration of these add-ons wouldn't be in the near future.
 

Paganmoon

Member
Just the in-game Eye-tracking alone! :)

Though it's going to be yet another thing to split the hardware baseline, so for eye-tracking in-game, might not get much support from many devs.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
YES !

Just imagine the slack in the gfx power need that foveat will give us !!

Just the in-game Eye-tracking alone! :)

Though it's going to be yet another thing to split the hardware baseline, so for eye-tracking in-game, might not get much support from many devs.

$220 add-on for the equivalent of roughly 10x faster GPU... I could see it having better luck than VR SLI.
 

Durante

Member
I'm still confused how foveated rendering can even work with 90Hz displays. I was under the impression that saccadic eye movements are so fast that you need ~200Hz to make foveated rendering work without artifacts.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
I'm still confused how foveated rendering can even work with 90Hz displays. I was under the impression that saccadic eye movements are so fast that you need ~200Hz to make foveated rendering work without artifacts.

Yeah, I wondered about that too. I think the workaround for that is having a bigger focus region, so you get something on the order of 5-10x instead of 50x.
Could do something like taking an initial eye position for the low detail render, then checking position again right before starting on the detail region, but there's only so much that could help.

I wouldn't be surprised if it just gets shrugged off as an early access "known issue" where things take a frame to come into focus for big eye movements until we get faster displays.
 
I'm still confused how foveated rendering can even work with 90Hz displays. I was under the impression that saccadic eye movements are so fast that you need ~200Hz to make foveated rendering work without artifacts.

It may not be quite as efficient as true foveated rendering. Imagine splitting the screen into quadrants, and then shifting the high resolution area depending on which you're looking at.

That's probably far more simple than what they're doing, but I can see them utilizing the general idea of foveated rendering but working around the limitations of a 90hz display.
 

RurouniZel

Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
Anyone here using a 1080ti w/ Vive? I am using a 980ti but the numbers for the 1080ti look amazing for prospective super sampling in Elite Dangerous or Raw Data.
 

Zalusithix

Member
I'm still confused how foveated rendering can even work with 90Hz displays. I was under the impression that saccadic eye movements are so fast that you need ~200Hz to make foveated rendering work without artifacts.

With a full resolution render area slightly larger than what the eye can actually use, you'd gain some slack with smaller movements. In the case of larger movements, I'm not sure how long our visual system takes to start actually piecing together the finer details of what we see after a saccade. It's not like our brain consciously processes the images mid-saccade.
 
Where the freaking heck is Budget Cuts?

If they're just taking their time to make sure everything is the best it can be, that's great! But I'm starting to worry that it could end up being vaporware.
 

Rygar 8 Bit

Jaguar 64-bit
Where the freaking heck is Budget Cuts?

If they're just taking their time to make sure everything is the best it can be, that's great! But I'm starting to worry that it could end up being vaporware.

taken from the budget cuts forum

"We're intentionally staying quiet during development, so, please don't take our communication level as an indicator of how much we're working on the game :)
We're 5 people working full time every day, in case you're curious!"
 
taken from the budget cuts forum

"We're intentionally staying quiet during development, so, please don't take our communication level as an indicator of how much we're working on the game :)
We're 5 people working full time every day, in case you're curious!"

Well, it definitely hasn't been consistently full time, since they said on Reddit that they took a development break last summer.

That said, I get it! They're a small team, communication takes resources, and they don't want to end up spoiling the final product. It's just kind of worrying when they were also initially targeting a 2016 release. Tons of games get delayed, but I hope NeatCorp has an actual timeline and a defined scope.

Edit: Just looked through the forum and saw one of the devs has actually been posting a fair amount. Doesn't really mean anything but makes me feel a lot better.
 

CariusD

Member
I'm still confused how foveated rendering can even work with 90Hz displays. I was under the impression that saccadic eye movements are so fast that you need ~200Hz to make foveated rendering work without artifacts.

The fastest degree/second measurement I can find is 900 (Wikipedia) so wouldn't they just need to cover 10 degrees radius from the gaze point at 90 FPS? Maybe a little large though the Road To VR article says the demo had noticeable regions.
 
Anybody check out this Runes demo? They have a Kickstarter going on right now and it looks alright. Basically supposed to be similar to something like The Gallery.

They're using an interesting form of locomotion that I've seen versions of before. Basically you press a button that spawns a ghost of yourself, then you control the ghost with the trackpad and press the button again to teleport to it. Normally I'd think it's just novel, but in the demo they do some interesting stuff with it where you get a higher perspective of the area you're in while you're using the ghost, allowing you to see hints for the puzzles that you normally wouldn't be able to see. The demo is pretty short and definitely just a proof of concept, but worth a look.
 

Durante

Member
The fastest degree/second measurement I can find is 900 (Wikipedia) so wouldn't they just need to cover 10 degrees radius from the gaze point at 90 FPS? Maybe a little large though the Road To VR article says the demo had noticeable regions.
Given that the best-case full cycle response time with the eye tracking factored in should be ~15ms, you'd sit at a 15° movement even if everything aligns perfectly. Then the question is how large (in degrees) the "sweet spot" of our vision is. As far as I can find it seems to be defined as around 10° from the center point. So that would mean ýou need 25° in all directions to be artifact-free, which would be a 50° FoV. On current devices that is not really the massive savings people hope for with foveated rendering.
 

Paganmoon

Member
For those hold-outs that refuse to install Oculus Home (me being one of them), Superhot VR is coming to Vive "Soon"

And regarding eye-tracking addon, I'm personally really looking forward to games using the info. Imagine games were queues, and dialog happen depending on were you're looking. Or hell, eye-tracking in Multiplayer games (Rec room!), will really enhance player to player interactions I think.

Of course requires good adoption for devs to feel they should implement I suppose, so I'm hoping all these addons will be in the Vive 2.0 whenever it gets released.
 
End regarding eye-tracking addon, I'm personally really looking forward to games using the info. Imagine games were queues, and dialog happen depending on were you're looking. Or hell, eye-tracking in Multiplayer games (Rec room!), will really enhance player to player interactions I think.

I don't know, I feel like you'd need a pretty advanced AI for them to react (say different things) based on whether you're looking directly at them or not. As-is, I can't think of any NPC that says different things when you're facing them as opposed to when you're looking away, in or out of VR. I mean I'm sure it has been done, it's just not common.
 

Paganmoon

Member
I don't know, I feel like you'd need a pretty advanced AI for them to react (say different things) based on whether you're looking directly at them or not. As-is, I can't think of any NPC that says different things when you're facing them as opposed to when you're looking away, in or out of VR. I mean I'm sure it has been done, it's just not common.

There are lots of things that haven't been done, or are uncommon that you can do in VR though. VR really shouldn't be constrained by traditional gaming mechanics.

But yes, it'd take quite good AI, but I don't see it as impossible.
 
I don't know, I feel like you'd need a pretty advanced AI for them to react (say different things) based on whether you're looking directly at them or not. As-is, I can't think of any NPC that says different things when you're facing them as opposed to when you're looking away, in or out of VR. I mean I'm sure it has been done, it's just not common.
I think that would be relatively easy to do, it's just that most games don't have a real reason to implement it. Off hand, I'm pretty sure Metal Gear has been doing something similar since Solid on PS1. I can think of a few Japanese games where if you try to look up a skirt, the character comments on it (from what I hear! lol).
 
There are lots of things that haven't been done, or are uncommon that you can do in VR though. VR really shouldn't be constrained by traditional gaming mechanics.

But yes, it'd take quite good AI, but I don't see it as impossible.

I think that would be relatively easy to do, it's just that most games don't have a real reason to implement it. Off hand, I'm pretty sure Metal Gear has been doing something similar since Solid on PS1. I can think of a few Japanese games where if you try to look up a skirt, the character comments on it (from what I hear! lol).

The point I was trying to make was, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Developers already have the ability to make NPC's that react when you look at them, and I would genuinely like to see more games that make use of this. But I don't think adding the additional nuance of eye tracking is going to change much. One step at a time.

********

Finally got around to trying Robo Recall last night, and I love it. It's exactly the type of generic shooter I normally wouldn't play, but it's incredibly immersive in VR.

My one complaint is the way that the hand tracking lags slightly while you're holding heavier objects. They're trying to make stuff feel weighty, but it doesn't work for me at all. Wish someone would make a mod to get rid of that.

It's funny—I feel like in VR games, graphical fidelity matters much more than it normally does. I find that I have a much better sense of presence when graphics are well done.
 

Moondrop

Banned
My Vive arrived last week, but my computer is still a five-year-old potato. So all I've done is hold a controller- smaller and more ergonomic than they appear on video, thankfully.

It's funny—I feel like in VR games, graphical fidelity matters much more than it normally does. I find that I have a much better sense of presence when graphics are well done.
I'm very interested in this principle. More specifically, I'm wondering if you go completely to the other side of the uncanny valley, to the side of abstraction and non-human representations, can you achieve a different kind of immersion and "presence"?
 

Paganmoon

Member
Depends on what you mean by graphic fidelity. If it means, high quality AA and the like I'm with you. If it means, "life like" or "triple A" quality graphics, I can't agree at all.

I mean, The Lab's Longbow is in no way a high graphic quality title, but god damn is it immersive. So for me, it can be cardboard cutouts, just as long as it's high quality AA (and doesn't display any glitches), I'm immersed.

I actually have a harder time being immersed in games that try to emulate "triple A" quality graphics, because they tend to have more problems with aliasing and such.
I still remember starting up Raw Data for the first time and thinking "what the fuck is this shit?" due to the default settings being low res, low quality AA. Fixable ofcourse as soon as I found the graphics settings, but just saying, AA is more important than pretty much anything else graphic wise.

Which is a bit funny, as I'm really not that adverse to aliasing when gaming on a screen, but any type of aliasing or shimmering in VR is just a instant immersion breaker for me.
 
Depends on what you mean by graphic fidelity. If it means, high quality AA and the like I'm with you. If it means, "life like" or "triple A" quality graphics, I can't agree at all.

I mean, The Lab's Longbow is in no way a high graphic quality title, but god damn is it immersive. So for me, it can be cardboard cutouts, just as long as it's high quality AA (and doesn't display any glitches), I'm immersed.

I actually have a harder time being immersed in games that try to emulate "triple A" quality graphics, because they tend to have more problems with aliasing and such.
I still remember starting up Raw Data for the first time and thinking "what the fuck is this shit?" due to the default settings being low res, low quality AA. Fixable ofcourse as soon as I found the graphics settings, but just saying, AA is more important than pretty much anything else graphic wise.

Graphical fidelity might not have been the best term. Curious: what games have you found give the greatest sense of "presence" on first impression? Ignore gameplay, interactivity, and locomotion—when you first start up a game and while you're still getting your bearings in a brand new world, which ones felt the most real?

My personal top three are:
1) Robo Recall
2) Budget Cuts
3) The Lab

IMO, the common thread in these three games is that the graphics are very polished and refined, but I couldn't tell you what that actually means. It definitely doesn't mean "realism" as that would exclude Budget Cuts. And it doesn't just mean "IQ" because then a lot of super-simple Unity games that can be supersampled a crapton would be much more immersive than they are.
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
Dang. Alright. Back to VR. Came down the with the flu like 3 days after I got my Vive and haven't played it since then. I got a dirt rally key for 3 bucks and I haven't finished superhot yet.
 

Tain

Member
Graphical fidelity might not have been the best term. Curious: what games have you found give the greatest sense of "presence" on first impression? Ignore gameplay, interactivity, and locomotion—when you first start up a game and while you're still getting your bearings in a brand new world, which ones felt the most real?

My personal top three are:
1) Robo Recall
2) Budget Cuts
3) The Lab

IMO, the common thread in these three games is that the graphics are very polished and refined, but I couldn't tell you what that actually means. It definitely doesn't mean "realism" as that would exclude Budget Cuts. And it doesn't just mean "IQ" because then a lot of super-simple Unity games that can be supersampled a crapton would be much more immersive than they are.

Maybe it's because all three of these games combine high IQ with a realistic (even if static) lighting model.
 
First gameplay trailer for The Wizards. HAve had my eye on this one a while and it looks pretty solid.

OfficialBlackAlaskanhusky.gif


Couple details:
  • Gameplay is mostly a mix of tower defense and horde but it does have some "dungeon crawler-like" levels.
  • Locomotion is teleportation between nodes. Some gameplay will be tied to that (eg traps going off at certain times at different nodes).
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
Kinda running out of steam playing Raw Data alone. Failed Mission 3 on round 5 and was pretty crushed, sick of that level. So far I haven't been able to find an online match. Been in a few lobbies but no multiplayer so far. :\ Not for lack of trying.
 
How can I score myself a Deluxe Audio Strap preorder tomorrow? I've apparently missed the boat everywhere else.

Do we know what time preorders go live?
 
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Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
Wowowowow, just finished superhot. What a stellar game!
The endless mode seems awesome too, such a sublime game.
 
I experienced the second time now where I was a dummy regarding The Solus Project, the first time I blame myself. The second time I kinda blame the game a little bit, but maybe I should pay attention more and am not an experienced cave explorer enough to think about such things.

Spoiler:

First time was using the teleporter to get through the one cave openening with the debris blocking it.

Second time now was a toxic cave area I didn't know how to get through, I was always getting dangerous environmental hazard warnings and died seconds later with a huge bang. I thought the bang was simply one of the games soundeffects and not related to the cause of death, make the moment you die more impactful by having a loud soundeffect accompanying it. I ran in there 3 times always dying the same way, so I looked it up... turns out it was actually the sound of an explosion caused by the torch I used to see in the dark environment lol.
So not using a torch should get me through there, will try it after work, hopefully that was it.
 

Paganmoon

Member
Graphical fidelity might not have been the best term. Curious: what games have you found give the greatest sense of "presence" on first impression? Ignore gameplay, interactivity, and locomotion—when you first start up a game and while you're still getting your bearings in a brand new world, which ones felt the most real?

My personal top three are:
1) Robo Recall
2) Budget Cuts
3) The Lab

IMO, the common thread in these three games is that the graphics are very polished and refined, but I couldn't tell you what that actually means. It definitely doesn't mean "realism" as that would exclude Budget Cuts. And it doesn't just mean "IQ" because then a lot of super-simple Unity games that can be supersampled a crapton would be much more immersive than they are.

Ahh yes, lighting is very very important as well. My personal tops would probably be, in no particular order and off the top of my head.

The Lab (specially longbow).
The Blu
Universe Sandbox 2
 

SimplexPL

Member
I finally started playing Raw Data, it's predictably awesome.
I have questions regarding IQ and performance - I want to crank up supersampling as much as possible (this game is very aliased/jaggy) but I would also like to avoid reprojection.
I have 6700K @ 4.5GHz and 1080 @ 2GHz. What graphical and SS setting should I use?
Should I use SteamVRs supersampling, or in game resolution scaling slider, or both?


Kinda running out of steam playing Raw Data alone. Failed Mission 3 on round 5 and was pretty crushed, sick of that level. So far I haven't been able to find an online match. Been in a few lobbies but no multiplayer so far. :\ Not for lack of trying.

I never used it myself, but maybe that page would be helpful?
http://vrlfg.net/
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Just a reminder that the Deluxe Audio Strap supposedly goes on sale today.

Here's the Amazon link, which is not for sale yet.

It'll be on sale over Vive web site right?

Edit: here's the official announcement!
https://blog.vive.com/us/2017/05/02/vive-deluxe-audio-strap-available-june-6/

The wait is almost over. Starting June 6, VIVE customers can purchase the new Vive Deluxe Audio Strap for $99.99 (€119.99, £99.99, ¥799.00) at Vive.com and Vive retailers.
The Deluxe Audio Strap is great for multi-user environments and adds comfort features that make everyday use more enjoyable. A quick sizing dial makes it easy to switch between users or to get in and out of the headset quickly. Hard-sided construction with interior padding also provides better ergonomics and weight balance, enabling you to play longer and remain comfortable during extended use.
Plus, with integrated audio, searching for your headphones will be a thing of the past. The Deluxe Audio Strap's integrated on-ear earphones offer both height and angle adjustments to best fit your ears and are quick and easy to raise and lower when someone wants your attention outside of VR.
For developers and businesses, the Vive Business Edition (Vive BE) bundles every new purchase with the Deluxe Audio Strap. For those that have ordered the BE since Feb 27, orders will begin shipping later in June.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
I discovered the blog announcement (which I added to that post) right after I asked.

It says we can purchase it on vive.com and vive retailers.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Calling it a "strap" doesn't really convey what this thing is.
yKjoGSe.png


"Rigid padded headgear for Vive with quick-adjust dial and integrated headphones" is a bit of a mouthful though.

Definitely looks promising and I'll pick one up. I wonder how comfortable it will be compared to PSVR.

You know, looking closer at the design, are they packing the new 3 in 1 cable in with the strap? Because the old ribbon cable sure as hell isn't going to route through that thing properly.

Looks like it would have plenty of room based on this picture.

Yeah, it looks like the taller-than-necessary clip on the right is designed to work with the wide cable too. More angles here:
from https://www.vive.com/ca/vive-deluxe-audio-strap/
 
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Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
I've been waiting for the Amazon notification, there was a tweet from Vive this morning that made it sound it like it would just go on sale on the June 6th with no preorder.
 
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