cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Demoed the Vive Today (Impressions coming from DK2)

charlton_3393
Heroic Explorer
Found out a Harvey Norman store about 40 minutes drive up the coast has Vive demos, so my brother and I decided to head up and give it a crack :tongue:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10211069391001424&id=1555251146

My brother really enjoyed the experience and so did I... having hand presence was a nice step up from a controller, I first demoed The Lab which I have been using (with difficulty) on my DK2 with the Leap Motion addon, it was soooo much nicer having proper accuracy now with the wands, I then demoed Space Pirate Trainer which was my first time, really good but takes some getting used to haha, then Tilt Brush which I very much admired for its ability to alow u to create beautiful things (i made a dodgey christmas tree) the demos were only running on a 980 and didnt notice any stutter which was pretty cool.

 However, there were some things I did not expect...

1. God Rays are a thing (not annoying though)... and yes I AM talking about Vive.

I was originally under the impression that the Vive did not use Frenzel Lenses, turns out they do, and dont get me wrong they are fine, and I only noticed god rays when something very white like a light reflection was reflecting off a gun in Space Pirate Trainer over a starry night sky, so not an annoyance whatsoever I just wasnt expecting them 🙂

2. For the life of me I could not get an IPD setting that felt "real scale"

For the DK2 in the latest runtimes, the default IPD that the software sets for it is litterally perfect for me, ive tried adjusting it in the past using the debug tool and it always makes things too big or too small, for the vive I west down the the minimum setting (something like 52mm) all the way to the biggest (like 75mm i cant remember exactly) and everywhere in between and everything still felt too small, even at the largest setting i was starting to notice that it was getting better, then i hit the knob limit, it was a little frustrating since it stopped me from feeling any sort of presence in it.

3. No ability to adjust eye distance to lens like DK2, no top strap to adjust vertical placement of sidestraps like DK2.... blah blah blah... like DK2...

Maybe i didnt spend a good enough amount of time setting it up but as far as I know there is only one set distance that the eyes sit from the lenses, now obviously I know this is for people with glasses but im so used to having the DK2 soooo close that my eyelashes brush the lenses, maybe Im spoilt lol.... also headset comfortability is definitely not as good as the DK2, the Vive feels a bit more front heavy and the material they were using for sitting on your face was plastic-y and didnt feel snug (i know its used for demos and obviousy you can change this). Also by not being able to adjust any top head strap, having the Vive tight on my face would actually push the vive up and the bottom part of the face plate sat on my bottom eyelids, pulling the headset down doesnt help. So the headset had to sit looser which made me feel like if i suddenly looked up quickly it would fly off my face... I expect people have had different experiences but for me personally I could probably where it for a maximum of 30 minutes just due to the insecurity of its placement, although again i may have just had it set up wrong.

4. Resolution... better... but honestly not by much...FOV...actually worse than DK2

There's this thing called supersampling, when the DK2 was in its early days it either wasnt possible or wasnt implemented to render the scene at a higher than native resolution, now days it can really help the VR experience even on the DK2, BlazeRush for example I render at 3840x2160, double the native resolution of DK2 and it does wonders for the image quality and even slightly reduces percieved screendoor effect (which hardly ever bothered me anyway) the Vives higher res displays are pretty nice, I can percieve more detail, playing Archery in the Lab which i had played before allowed me to see greater detail, however I also noticed I could not see as far in my peripherals as I usually could, i tried pushing the headset more towards my face but there was litterally no more room for it to move, turning my head around i noticed that when things moved towards the edge of the lenses they would scew and warp as if there was no lens correction in software.

I do not have any bad things to say about the wands apart from maybe feeling a liiiiiitle bit heavy for my taste and having to hold onto them constantly (touch is more apealing from the relaxed sitting in your hands standpoint)

To sum up, im so glad i had the experience it was very fun! 🙂 my brother loved it aswell and he also had his own concerns about it compared to DK2. I would definitely do it again, hand presence somewhat made up for the sub-par visual experience and comfortablity and at no point did I ever feel presence, the only way i can describe it was looking through binoculars that have lenses meant to replicate what your eyes see but makes the world scale smaller, its a more circular field of view than DK2, but DK2 shows me more and felt more customizable to my eyes and is also more comfortable to wear.... now to start looking for Oculus Touch demos :smiley:

EDIT: Aparently somewhere on the headset there is a way to adjust lens distance from your eyes but i couldnt find it unfortunately, the demo guy didnt even know of a way go adjust it.

EDIT: We are back for another demo haha, we found knobs on the side to adjust distance from the lenses and that helped, although as soon as anything blocks the headset it loses tracking and flickers and takes a good 15 seconds to get back to where it was in soace, plus for some reason the horizon was completely off, kept feeling like i was looking down lol.

4o5sb6yavb2i.jpg
Specs: - Windows 10 Pro x64 OS - ASRock H87 Performance Motherboard - Intel Core I7 4770 @ 3.40GHz Haswell Processor - Reference Radeon RX 480 GPU - 32GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM
13 REPLIES 13

charlton_3393
Heroic Explorer
Funny thing is a few times the headset lost tracking completely and flew the virtual camera around in The Lab, it did it randomly onve or twice but also did it when i grabed the headset trying to get it to sit on my face better, also noticed that when it does lose tracking the image "pulsates" or "vibrates" at like 90hz for about 10 to 15 seconds as it slowly moves back into correct position, also for the majority of the demo the horizon was off, i kept feeling like i was looking downhill lol....

Other than that the tracking was pretty exceptional, the wands were amazing, and head movement and rotation didnt lag or judder at all and the distance i was moving and rotating around was in fact lining up perfectly scale wise, but that wasnt the problem, you have to try and understand it was the way i was "percieving" the world, the only other way i can explain it is that i was for example percieving the floor to be too close to me but when i would duck down to it it was fine, if i held out the vive wand in front of me i would be crossing my eyes (focusing) closer in the vive than the real wand in real life, everything was "percieved" to be smaller in scale than what it actually was and thats what was completely stopping me from believing that anything i was doing was even somewhat like reality.... i really dont know what other way to explain it 😞
Specs: - Windows 10 Pro x64 OS - ASRock H87 Performance Motherboard - Intel Core I7 4770 @ 3.40GHz Haswell Processor - Reference Radeon RX 480 GPU - 32GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM

charlton_3393
Heroic Explorer
Also on the subject of the focus sweet spot, i actually found it harder to find the sweet spot on the vive, i had to move the headset round a couple of times to find it, it didnt help having the headset wanting to pull itself up your face though. The one thing i kept thinking during the second demo when we came back, is that i just wish i could be closer to the lenses, but i couldnt... i had adjusted them all the way to my face and i couldnt get any closer, i felt distant from what i was looking at, like it was just... off... im sorry for being really nitpicky i tend to obsess over the little details, its just i had a pretty good expectation of clarity and experience and at the end it just felt a bit meh.... but for the good of VR i shall remain optimistic! 😛

Anyway i shouldnt really be complaining i mean i only spent 15 minutes in the damn thing, and its a solid product dont get me wrong, but is it worth the $1100 AUD? From what ive seen.... im starting to think not really
Specs: - Windows 10 Pro x64 OS - ASRock H87 Performance Motherboard - Intel Core I7 4770 @ 3.40GHz Haswell Processor - Reference Radeon RX 480 GPU - 32GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM

edmg
Trustee
One thing to remember is that Vive tracking really doesn't like reflections, which are probably quite common in a store. Also, if the controllers loose their connection to the computer (I think they use a version of Bluetooth to communicate via the headset or link box) then they'll go wandering off into the sunset.

Otherwise, the image is much more blurry around the edges in the Vive than it is in the Rift CV1. That's one of the tradeoffs made in the design: the CV1's more complex lenses give a much clearer view of the screen, but you get God Rays as a result.

charlton_3393
Heroic Explorer
Ah yeah, they did have black fabric around the 3 walls as you can see in the above photo, but most of the time i was facing the store behind the camera.

I think it will just be something i adjust to in time, i have to remember its a completely different design to DK2 and my brain may not realise that yet, its probably going "yep this is vr i shall adjust for VR and WAIT WHY ISNT IT WORKING HAALP"

I mean who knows I may put the CV1 on for the first time and instantly feel "yep im there thats real" or I may not... only time will tell, but I shall keep researching :tongue:
Specs: - Windows 10 Pro x64 OS - ASRock H87 Performance Motherboard - Intel Core I7 4770 @ 3.40GHz Haswell Processor - Reference Radeon RX 480 GPU - 32GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM