The last ten hours have been a pretty crazy ride and a mixed bag.
Initial Thoughts:
- The screen is pretty damn clear. Even clearer than I remember it being at my Best Buy test drive over a month ago. People talk about there being a mild "screen door" effect but I'll be damned if I can notice it. When I hear that term, I imagine putting my nose against a real screen door and each square being about a millimeter in size. If there is any screen door with PSVR it's like 1/50th of a millimeter or something... a complete non-issue.
- The headset is comfortable and easy to adjust. Pro tip: To focus the screen you move the headset up and down ever so slightly. Focus has nothing to do with extending or retracting the scope. It's about pulling the headband down or up on the back of your head. Just the slightest amount of move can dial in the focus. It's not hard to do.
- It was hot in my apartment last night and my glasses fogged up immediately. This happened two more times until my AC finally cooled the room down. Please note: this was NOT an issue with the headset design. My forehead was drenching with sweat. Thankfully the headband cushions are rubber and not actual fabric so I just wiped them off. Thirty minutes to an hour later my AC had cooled the room down and the fogging went away completely. Mark that up as user error.
- I have small, thin glasses and they fit just fine. No pressure or anything. You do have to learn how to take the headset off without taking your glasses with it but it's simple and I can do it every time now.
- Cinematic Mode tracks VER& well despite not even using the camera at all. In fact, I'm kinda perplexed by this as tracking was an issue last night (I'll go into that in a moment) and yet the non-camera tracked cinema mode was rock solid, maybe even a bit more than games.
Tracking
- Okay, let's get this out of the way: Yes, my setup had poor tracking... at least initially. Like really, really poor. I got bad swimming on the headset even in Battlezone (which hadn't happened at Best Buy). In Tumble VR, my DS4 was buzzing red constantly as if was out of range and wiggling wildly even when I pointed the ligh bar directly at the camera. The controller was also swimming much, much worse than the headset. I could definitely tell that the headset tracking was better than the DS4 but, man, the DS4 was almost unusable (and was completely useable in Tumble VR). The mild swimming of the headset just seemed like a minor annoyance and frustration. I wasn't feeling sick but at the same time, I could tell it wasn't right.
- Holding down the Options button to recenter things doesn't always work. It does sometimes but not always which was frustrating
- During this period of poor tracking, the center of the screen kept drifting to my left. At one point I had to face about 45 degrees left to be looking forward.
Here is what my initial camera setup looked like:
I figured putting the camera on top of the TV would give it the widest available view that was unobstructed. In hindsight, it was probably too high up in the air and made tracking the DS4 neigh impossible and kept the headset from being tracked properly. It was also hard to get my face to appear in the square well in this configuration. We actually tried moving the camera down, turning off lights, moving forward and back and not much seemed to make a difference so we put it back atop the TV.
The next two hours...
So, regardless of the swimming and controller problems, I just kept playing for the next two hours in this configuration with my friend helping me. Even with the issues, this stuff was compelling and I tried a bunch of demos. Things like Thumper, Battlezone, DriveClub all were playable even with the mild drift. Thumper in particular was the title that wanted to veer left. For Job Simulator, it wants you to stand and since my setup was made for sitting this only made the tracking worse. This was like being on a boat at rough sea... which sucked because Job Simulator has probably the most compelling sense of "presence" of any demo. Like, it totally fools you. But with the whole world rocking around and my moves flickering about, it was both exciting and frustrating.
After the end of the two hours, I could tell I was feeling a bit "off". Not like pukey but more "fatigued". Maybe a tiny, tiny twinge in my stomach. The fact that I didn't feel worse with this initial configuration is surprising in hindsight.
A fix to the tracking?
After my friend left, I was about to go to bed (~2 a.m.) but I still was energized and wanted to see if there was something more I could do to fix the tracking or if this was just how it was going to perform. I saw in this thread that there was a
Advanced Calibration in the PS4's Device settings and tried this. Also, I moved the camera down to below my TV where it closer to eye level, sat a good foot or two closer and both of these allowed my face to be more in the calibration square.
This was my new configuration:
I turned on the headset and things were MUCH better!
First of all, the swimming on the headset had almost completely gone away. To be fair, I don't want to say it was perfect but I played some Battlezone and it was WAY better and more like my previous Best Buy demo experience. I booted up Tumble VR and I could actually play it! The DS4, while still a slight bit floaty, was dramatically more precise and stable and wasn't stuck in a state of constant "out of bounds" like before. I was able to get Gold medals on all four demo puzzles. The Move controllers were even more precise.
I played the little of that stop-motion movie on the demo disc and was able to get very close to the characters without it being jittery. Overall, everything was working MUCH better. I'd probably say tracking had gone from a 70% to 90% accuracy. The only outlier was still Job Simulator. It STILL has issues with the headset swimming and world appearing to rock around if at sea and I'm not sure why.
At this point I was feeling pretty tired, it was 4:00 a.m. and I needed to stop. I could feel just a tiny bit of unease in my stomach and went to sleep.
Games
- PlayRoom VR is amazing and maybe the killer app of PSVR. Not only does it look fantastic (by far the smoothest edges in any of the games) but it's downright fun and an impressive example of the tech in every way.
- Battlezone is fun and immersive (more so after I improved my tracking situation). I like the idea and it's comfortable.
- Thumper is pretty awesome both in gameplay, sound and visuals but it's honestly probably too difficult a game for me.
- Job Simulator is hilarious and fun but I'm still experiencing major problems with tracking on that one so I'm kinda let down
- Driveclub didn't make me nauseous and had a real good feeling of depth but it looked lower resolution than other games. Cars in the distance appeared kinda PS2-PS3ish in how low res they were. Not a deal breaker but surprising. I can imagine PS4 Pro fixing it.
- Tumble VR was great, at least after I got improved tracking. It's a simple concept that works well in VR. I want to own this one.
- Rez Infinite was awesome looking and sounding. I'm not sure if I'm sold on the gameplay but it was clearly a polished title. I'm actually surprised it did't induce any kind of motion sickness with how much and how fast you move around. Instead it felt completely comfortable. I only played this after my calibration improvements, btw.
This morning
As I was waking up this morning, I could still feel that uneasiness in my stomach. When I go up, I actually felt the need to cough and wanted to puke a little but it wasn't enough for anything to happen. I was surprised because that was five hours ago and I figured I would have slept it off. At this point, I'm feeling much better but I can't tell if that wake up sickness feeling was due hours of bad initial calibration or maybe I was more sensitive than I figured.
Final Thoughts and Tips
- I'm looking forward to trying more tonight after work to see if my headset is still working as good as it did when I stopped last night or if it goes back to the initial wonkiness
- Being roughly five feet from the camera seems to be important. I need to try a standing configuration.
- Having the camera high up probably makes it worse, not better.
- Sitting in total darkness has no effect on accuracy.
- Run through the detailed calibration stuff where you have to hold the headset in front of the camera so it "learns" what the tracking lights look like. That might have made the biggest difference even though I'm not 100% certain.
Lastly, I'll mention that I'm using the new round PlayStation camera not that I'm certain that makes any difference. I'm looking forward hearing how my friend's situation goes when he gets his headset this afternoon.
