Another first impressions post.

[Melhadf]

I'm going to focus on a different aspect than immersion and SDE which are already well documented.
Instead lets talk first time setting up and using the rift, aswell as the things that caught me out.

So my rig is pretty new (quad core i7 haswell 4700, Nvidia 740m, 16gb ram, 8.1, etc), and runs anything I throw at it with ease, I've just finished up Infinite on Ultra without any issues. I figured this would be fine for the rift, it is not nearly powerful enough to play with anything close high everything on AAA games in the rift.

Plugging everything in is simple and the rift is automatically detected as a clone display, which worked well on my initial test and didn't show any issues. Starting most of the tech demos or games built for the rift is as simple as click and play. Most run without a hitch but some require me to tone down the effects to maintain a decent framerate. Some of these demos have obtuse settings (VR Cinemas Movie.avi only), but most are obvious with a little bit of common sense.

Next up was retro-fitted support. ETS2 and HL2 specifically. ETS2 ran without issues, the framerate took a large drop until everything was scaled back significantly, except the resolution. A steering wheel borrowed from my daughter and it was incredible. Pulling into traffic was easy when you can turn your head to see properly. HL2 however was not to be without changing the display settings. After 30 minutes of turning VR mode on, then restarting, turning VR mode on and restarting, trying fullscreen, etc. I tried extended display and it worked. HL2 hates clones.

Moving on to games with no rift support I came across the hard decision, which driver to use? Tridef, Vorpx, Vireio. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages, some expensive some cheap. I settled on tridef as it had a free trial. It's setup was simple, install, wait, run. Only the Run wasn't so simple. Borderlands didn't display properly and was the standard image on the main screen not the rift. Huh?? Changing to either clone or setting the OR as primary (Windows + Shift + left and right arrows are your friend) did the trick. Pandora awaited. Only the SDE was quite pronounced, it had defaulted to 640x480, a little guesswork and it was at better resolution and Pandora awaited.

I thought I'd round out my test with something beautiful, Dead Island. Having played it fairly regular on consoles and PC I was itching to have a proper tour of Hanoi. Sadly, changing monitor settings around meant that it was not to be. Dead Island hates extended monitor displays, and just outright refused to show anything other than a black screen. I will go back to it at some point and figure it out.

Tridef and steam do seem to love each other very much too. If you disable tridef you need to completely restart steam or else tridef will take over even with no rift plugged in. The same needs to be done if you enable tridef. It's not a large thing, but it took a while to track down why it wasn't working right.

I also tried out my own engine, but it's only good for making you ill in the rift. So it's time to learn unity or UDK and repurpose what I can.

Finally, my daughter played along with me on some of the demos. Rift coaster was a particular favourite of hers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1QLfvH5LQc. And she wanted to just spend time between that, the cinema and minecrift.

[cybereality]

Awesome!