Well it's finally happening, my Rift arrives tomorrow. Since life hates me I am going on vacation on Thursday till Sunday, so I get one night with the damn thing  I am scared, years and years of waiting, my dream of VR finally here. What if I don't like it? What if I get sick? What if all games suck?

I bought Chronos and Elite Dangerous and I have luckys tale, Eve Valkarye and a bunch of games that can be ported to VR. Let's hope this blows me away. It does suck that I won't have motion controls for months, so it's gimped VR.

So I will post everything of my experience here.

I knew you would be our pioneer.

It's been nice knowing you Vade, enjoy the porn.

Its late so no big impressions till tomorrow. I felt true fear once when I random start up demo put me in a muesuem and a T-Rex walked right up to me. I was shaking. So yeah it can make you feel things like its real life. That said most everything else felt like I was watching something through a headset. The sense of scale is amazing but nothing really made me feel it was a new reality. Part of that is the lack of touch controllers, its a huge negative. Every instinct is to reach out and touch stuff and when you cant you lose a lot. The 3rd party camera games are amazing, that maybe the way to go. Still have a lot to try out.

Dvader said:

Its late so no big impressions till tomorrow. I felt true fear once when I random start up demo put me in a muesuem and a T-Rex walked right up to me. I was shaking. So yeah it can make you feel things like its real life. That said most everything else felt like I was watching something through a headset. The sense of scale is amazing but nothing really made me feel it was a new reality. Part of that is the lack of touch controllers, its a huge negative. Every instinct is to reach out and touch stuff and when you cant you lose a lot. The 3rd party camera games are amazing, that maybe the way to go. Still have a lot to try out.

Should have got a Vive

Seriously though, yeah I can see how that would be a conflict, where your eyes are telling you this is real, but your hands are saying "you're holding a controller, this is a game".

Well I played my rift for a whole night and came away with mixed impressions. Let's start at the beginning, i got the rift and learned that I need to put both my monitor and the rift into slots on the graphics card which only has one HDMI slot. So I had to run to Best Buy to buy a dvi adapter. After that hiccup everything went smoothly. Setting up the rift is super easy, you hook up the rift and camera, follow on screen instructions and boom you are in.

The rift itself feels great. It's super light, feels like a cap and just as easy to put on and take off. It has easy to adjust straps and a quick easy way to make sure you have the best quality with a calibration screen. Then the first demo started.

The rift opens up with some random clips from the oculus dreams program, it has little to no interaction you just look around while standing. You can walk around a two foot radius and lean and turn anyway you want. I did notice the cord, it's coming off the left side on the back and sort of sits on your shoulder. It's not terrible but when walking you notice it. Actually it allowed me to keep oriented in the real world  while in the virtual world as I knew which direction was front by how the cord was pulling.

The headset does not have a great FOV but it's good enough. It's not like a tunnel, it just feels like you have a helmet on, pretend you are a fighter pilot or something, it never really bothered me. The screen door effect is noticeable, you can see some lines and pixels, it's kind of like putting your face in front of your TV. Again it's something that didn't bother me once I got into a game.

So the demos started and the first thing I see is this cartoon world with animals. The sound is so incredible, true 3D sound, it's as impressive as looking all around you. Next came a demo with an alien standing right in front of you, this one was interesting because it felt like he was in my personal space. It's nothing like seeing something on a TV. This thing is in front of you, is your height and talking to you as if another person is there. I wanted to interact with it but it's just a demo.  

The next demo was a skyscraper and you are standing on the roof looking down. This one disappointed me, I felt nothing. No vertigo, no sense of danger. I knew it was fake, my body did not get fooled. I started to get worried if I was VR proof.

Next demo started and I was in a dinosaur museum, cool. BOOM BOOM BOOM, at the very end of a giant hallway a trex shows up. I was like no no no, don't do this to me, oh come on. It stomped its way right at me, this time I felt it. My heart rate jumped, I started to get nervous as it roared at me and then moved its head right next to me, i was just waiting for it to take a bite. But it walked over me and I looked up as it passed by, the sense of scale is hard to describe. So that one showed me the power of VR, I was totally emotionally invested.

The oculus main menu is super slick, it's like a virtual home with all your programs floating in front of you. Your eyes are the cursor and you can use the small remote or Xbox controller to enter. Next I tried some VR short film, Henry. This asks you to sit down and you are taken to this cartoon hedgehogs home and it's his birthday but he has no friends. It's like a poor man’s Pixar short, things fall around you and it's neat but I don't see it being that impressive.

Next I tried Lucky’s Tale, now this was awesome. Third person on the rift might be the way to go until they get better inputs. It's hard to describe how cool it is to be inside the game world and to see your character jumping around in front of you while you are the camera. You can lean out and in, you can look right at lucky and he will notice you and wave. As you look around you reveal hidden coins and gems to collect, these stay transparent so you need to concentrate to see them, it just works great with the way you are the camera. It was something as simple as looking left that blew me away, look left and you can see the level stretch out, such a simple concept that you never really got in platformers. The game controls fine, seems like a super simple platformer, I would kill for a mario like this. The one issue I had was I felt I was too close to the action, I keep wanting to pull back but I am limited in my space.

I tried out this game called Farlands, it's a game where you use the remote to explore an alien world and scan and collect alien stuff. You move by looking at a spot and pressing a button on the remote and it blinks you there. I kept wanting to use the remote to point at stuff but obviously it didn't work. The whole thing didn't work without touch I felt, I was bored quick.

Then I tried out Eve Valkyrie, sense of scale wow. You shoot out into space and see space before you, all of it in every direction it's so damn cool. I didn't hook up my sticks yet so I played with the controller and it was fine. Eve is a simple fighter game, I was in battles quick. Tracking ships with your eyes feels so great. When they zoom past you you can just look back and see where they are going. Info is all in the cockpit which you see by looking down. It feels great and the sense of scale is so good.

I can compare that to elite dangerous which I tried after, elite is so much better. Eve is like rogue squadron, elite is tie fighter. There are a ton of commands. Looking at different sections of the cockpit brings up all sorts of menus with a stats and meters. This one needed the stick as there was a lot going on. I got the basics of movement and shooting but still felt I was missing a lot. Again the sense of scale is what is most impressive, flying around and seeing a massive capital ship in front of you is a woah moment. And dogfighting around objects is so much better than on a screen, you have a feel for the ship and where it is in the world that is far better than anything you feel on a screen. I will be putting lots of time into this one.

Finally I got to chronos, I was hoping this would be my favorite, third person action adventure game with puzzles, sign me up. Oh man it is so damn cool. It has preset camera angles like in RE but being able to look around the room and environment even while fixed is amazing. You are usually placed in a spot so you see the hero in front of you, you can lean in look to the sides and inspect the rooms he can enter. Each new room brings a new perspective to explore just by looking. The game seems very simple but I loved finding letters and keys hidden around and having to backtrack a bit. I was super impressed by the whole presentation, being made just for oculus makes a huge difference. It looks great too which is something I can't say for most games.

here is the big issue, the resolution sucks. We have gotten so used to beautiful HD that this feels like going back to progressive scan. The two oculus games feel Tailor made so they look fine but the adapted games like elite, oh man, it's just not visually impressive. I also tried to watch some 360 videos, unless you download like a super HD 10 Gig video forget about it, it looks like the first years of streaming video. This thing will need 4K resolution before really taking off and we are still far away from that.

I tried some steam stuff as well. Most of the free stuff is a ton of junk. There was some body VR thing that takes you through blood vessels, the educational potential is great but it looked like some old 90s PC game. One of the more impressive things were 360 photos, there are photos all over the world and it feels like you are there.

I still need to get FPS working on this, until I play some games I love in VR I don't think I will see the full potential. I hope I don't sick. Nothing made me sick yesterday, I felt great the whole time. Clearly this is still very early on and VR is still not ready for the masses, especially when it's asking to go back on things we have gotten used to like beautiful resolution. Still the potential is there for stuff that can make you feel in ways no other thing outside real life can. Also this thing needs touch controllers now.

gamingeek said:

I read this on the toilet on my phone earlier.

Seeing the pixels sounds bad. I recentely drove a Ford Focus and the front windshield had wires in it to clear mist and it was like driving with a fishing net in front of me.

What's this about the FOV? I thought the whole point was that it immersed you completely like a holodeck?

The resolution does sound sucky.c

Thanks for reading I probably should have done a cliff notes version.

There is no real peripheral vision, so you do see black borders on the side, again like I said it kind of feels like you put on a helmet. Not ideal but not horrible either. It does hurt the immersion factor a bit. My think is I never lost myself in the world except for that trex demo. There are too many things that still tie you to the real world. I rarely felt presence, I feel touch is needed for that.

Here is the short version of that post for you guys:

• Easy to put on and feels great.
• screendoor effect is noticeable but I forget about it in game.
• I felt presence only once when a trex came right up to my face and I was nervous.
• Third person games look really cool, I love the way your head is the camera.
• sense of scale is so impressive like when you fly out into space and see it fill your whole view.
• resolution sucks, things look ugly far away, clearly tech isn’t ready for this to look pretty yet.