Anyone for Oculus?

That'd be a won bet.

I already own one since nov 2014.

 

Any company except Valve itself, that would be relying on Steam hardware surveys for any decisions would have to be downright insane: Valve does not publish any absolute numbers or any details of its sampling methodology or any confounding factors (dual boots, multiple machines in households, virtual machines, Wine).

Spoiler: anecdote about steam survey sampling reliability

Just just one personal anecdote, and I can assure there are quite many similar experiences -- if I do ' grep -i surveydate ~/.local/share/Steam/config/config.vdf ' I get "2015-12-11" as the result - that's roughly when I upgraded to Ubuntu 15.10.
The only "little" problem is that I don't recall having actually done the survey or cancelled it either -- the only time I've seen & done the Steam hw survey was somewhere in spring 2014, and the second time was when I downloaded game content with Windows Steam using Wine, for some FPS game that did not have Steam support for Linux but did actually have a native binary

There also has been some curious inconsistencies in the published results..

Neither does Valve publish any numbers that would be actually interesting and informative - for instance, actual games purchases per (general) platform, actual playtime per platform, actual hardware profile distribution per platform...no doubt it has these numbers, it just chooses to not publish them. It has every right to do whatever it likes with the information, the only consequence is that the current information published outside Valve can not really be trusted or used for anything, except perhaps satisfying idle curiosity.

There are quite many angles the choice of supporting an OS platform could be approached from, like role of the userbase as active co-developers and testers, not just mindless consumers; projected maturation points of new unifying technologies (like Vulkan); or just the good old general outlook and long-term reputation of the company - Sony's "let's go install rootkits to customers' computers" comes to mind first (I wonder why?) but it is perhaps an unfair comparison, Torvalds' "the finger" to NVIDIA is a better example, as it concerns OS platform support -- "and hey, NVIDIA does support Linux (sort of) so what r u still complaining about?"

Perhaps Oculus did consider such angles. Perhaps it did not. Frankly, I can't decide which is worse. Guess it does not matter anyway - I'm quite happy not providing a single dime to such a clueless company.

 

I'm "Bircko" if anyone wants to add me to their Oculus friends list.
Someone has already taken my name with the correct spelling

 

My hope is that the devs waste zero time on VR at the moment. Its nothing more than a toy or party-showpiece that a handful of players may have, its not suitable for prolonged periods of play (a lot of MMO players I know can play for extended periods on a regular basis), would certainly be useless on the overhead map and with the poor camera positioning inside cramped spaces and with SOTA framerates would cause some serious nausea when playing for most people. Even if general frame-rates improve there is always the chance for wrenching movement when running through a town as houses you stumble upon load up their content.

Add to this the fact that the only decent VR titles are built from the ground up to be that way and SOTA would need some serious recoding and I think its an area best left until the next (or one after) generation of VR at least. Can you honestly see the current combat and crafting systems working without a complete interface rewrite?

 

I've tried the Vive, and was happy with the resolution and presence. Was actually a bit better than I had expected. I can't say I've tried the CV-1, but have tried the Gear VR, DK 1 and 2, and wasn't that impressed with the resolution. It's not the same as the Rift though, and from some of the reviews and comparisons I've seen the Rift has a slight edge on crispness and clarity over the Vive. I'm waiting for the Rift to actually be in stock before I order one. Other than that, I don't use the pass through camera on the Vive, and the room scale type applications wouldn't work for my set up so the Rift is probably the one I'm holding out for.

Just wish both had adequate support in terms of software that support it. I agree SoTA would likely need an alternate scheme for the UI and controls to work well in a VR like setting. Still think it would be fun though.

 

I am JShepard on Oculus Network. Add me.

 

CV1 is considerably better than DK2 and a lot better than DK1. The screen door effect is almost gone, and resolution appears to be by a magnitude better. Overall, CV1 is a solid headset. I prefer it to HTC because of all kinds of extra cables and sensors you need for HTC. Also CV1 is very easy to setup, it's lighter and has a set of amazing headphones. They don't seem that way, but the sound and spatial technology simply beats anything out there, IMHO.
HTC has a set of headphones, but they are very bad quality. People who wear their own gaming phones with HTC headset, reported neck strain after long play sessions (1+ hours).

My problem with CV1, is that my eyes need some reset after a while, they get dry and strain is still noticeable. It would be a perfect thing for immersion, if both HTC and OR headsets had 2-3 times better resolution. I hope in 2-3 years, retina displays will have high enough resolution for oculus to release CV2.

Speaking of SOTA, and a bunch of recoding that someone mentioned for VR support, I believe it is not as complicated as it sounds. All they need to do, is create a detached camera, sort of a free-look, and have VR use that camera mostly. I don't mind actually having VR from a third person view. It's not as bad. I tried Lucky's Tale, and I kinda enjoyed the way camera is placed. You sort of obrpserving the little fox from above, while controlling it. Similar you could do in SOTA, observe your avatar from above, from the perspective of detached camera, same could be done with menus.

 

Right now, my friend with the Vive is having issues with the light house towers, and one died completely which is really causing an issue. Currently, you can't buy them separately. Customer support is also a joke right now. After a week of trying to get a hold of someone, he finally got through to live chat. Hopefully things will smooth out for them in time. Still waiting patiently for the CV1 ship dates to come in a little. Can't bring my self to pay for something months ahead of time.

 

I have been using a CV1 for a few months now. I personally never want to go back to a non-VR game again. I can play Chronos for hours with no problems. First person games have some motion sickness issues which are still being addressed but progress has been made and some of them are not that bad now. Additionally, after using the CV1 for a while now I don't get motion sickness as much anymore. In any case, I am willing to put up with the motion sickness because VR is so awesome. I personally hope the SoA devlopers do put some time into VR even if it's not a lot of time. From my point of view the CV1 is like going from a 2D game to a 3D game or from radio to TV. It's nothing short of revolutionary.

 

I have to agree. I had a lapse of time when I simply couldn't play anything without VR headset. It just immerses you so much that your perspective on games change. I did get out of that lapse somehow, but I have to agree that even with quality of CV1, which is not 100% perfect yet but close, it already is good enough to keep you going for hours. I do take it off every hour or so because of the face burn along the edges where headset sits on your face. Even though the material on face plate pad is pretty soft, they shouldn't have left sharp edges, they should have made edges round, otherwise it drills into your skin with those sharp edges after a while. Maybe I'll get a pair of scissors and round the edges myself...

The longest I played so far is Mass Effect 3, just replaying it for some VR experience through VORPX. Tried far cry primal, but I end up using "peeking" mode more often. Regular 3D reconstruction is a bit too close even with maxed FOV in ME3. Also, gonna try dues ex human revolution, never finished it. We definitely need more VR games that have natural support for VR headsets. VorpX is ok, but it's not as good as if game has natural VR support.

 

I just saw that the last stretch goal was

"$2.5 Million: Full VR Treatment (unmet)
Virtual Reality: We will support the all the great new VR technologies that are coming of age now. Key example is the Occulus Rift HMD goggles."

What a shame. I think they made a big mistake putting this last. I realized that at the time it was not as clear how successful VR would be but nevertheless it should be reevaluated.

I have not gotten tired of VR yet. I have not had any problems with the Oculus rift on my face. I have had some problems with motion sickness but it's not as bad as it used to be. The emotional value added with VR for example in the game Dreadhalls is amazing. I have never had anything like that from a non-VR game. Dreadhalls is the best real-time rouge like (Dungeon Master, Ultime Underworld) experience I have tried. At least in the sense of immersion.

 

Last stretch goal for SOTA? It would be great, if they evaluated. Since it is a niche game and there will only be a small number of people playing (10K-15K), it would be nice, if devs could find some time for 'field experiments'. I bet at least a few of the devs got their VR either Oculus or HTC. If they could volunteer their headset to get SOTA VR support, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

And when would SotA be able to achieve the required 90 fps locked? They're just now getting to 30fps consistently and hopefully 60 fps upon launch. But 90 fps?

Anything less will cause nausea inducing judders and jitters. Asynchronous time warp might help but that's yet another tech they'd need to implement.

 

Yeah... when.. Maybe they can work on future episode with VR in mind... but most likely not current episode.

 

I don't think the 90fps is so important to worry about. I created a VR demo for a client from a complicated CAD file and I used a particle system with many particles. The frame rate dropped below 30 in several places. There was lots of judder and jitter as you say. But after upgrading the oculus runtime which implemented Asynchronous Timewarp (https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-timewarp-examined/) almost all of it went away. An in any case GPU hardware keeps advancing.

VR is easy to enable in Unity for the Rift (you have to copy some files because and click an option). It would probably be very little work to do this for SotA.

I think the main problem is the interface. You have to do it differently with VR. This would require a lot of work for SotA.

A better solution would probably to make something independent like Ultima Underworld but based on the SotA universe with VR in mind from the start . If enough Unity assets were provide some SotA fans could try this. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/available-unity-assets-packs.54035/

 

Raxhelm, speaking of interface, is it possible to add a few additional layers and make interface 3D? Or convert/duplicate existing interface assets, switch to Unity 3D, do some adjustments and get it to support 3D ? I obviously have 0 Unity knowledge, but you seem to know a lot, thats why I am asking .

 

I have about 3 months of experience with Unity. Unity is incredibly easy to learn and has great tutorials. I have not implemented a interface yet. I have not used Unity for a few months but I will be using it full time from Sept 1 until the end of the year. One of the objectives is to implement a interface to report important numbers. I need to report things like temperature and radiation. I hear using a overlap is not a good idea for VR. Actually, I do have a 2D overlay for these numbers but it only shows up without the headset so Unity apparently disables them with VR because they say it's a bad idea. One demo I had shows a Geiger counter in the "players" hand. Maybe I will do something like that. Don't know if you have noticed but most VR games don't show a health bar. I'm not sure why the 2D overlays are a bad idea. I have not given it much thought yet but I will look into later this year.

 

Yeah, that's why I was thinking, since you mentioned earlier that to get Unity game to 3D is as simple as copying some files over, and since the main problem would be 2D interface, I was hoping that maybe they can convert existing interface assets to 3D format to make interface VR compatible.

 

Maybe they could release it as a unsupported, undocumented feature that's only discovered in a config file. I think Aliens vs. Predator did this. So one of us users sees an option in a config file "enable_VR = false" and changes it to true and VR works! But the interface sucks and the framerate is bad in big cities. Somebody mentions it in the forums and the devs stay silent or say that it was a "debugging" feature they tested and forgot about.

 

Haha, that's funny. Yeah, if they do that I won't mind . But yeah, a lot in this game happens through interfaces. If we can at least toggle interface off that would be a start if such hidden VR option was there.