First Day Thoughts

[Brodie]

My Oculus RIft arrived yesterday and of course the minute i got home from work i was straight onto my computer getting it set up.
The set up was somewhat difficult, not anything to do with Oculus I hasten to add, more to do with my 4 screen set up, But I manged eventually to get it working.

I immediately fired up one of the demos I'd been eagerly looking forward to whilst waiting for my Rift to arrive, the first one was Riftcoaster, I must say that whilst i thought it was pretty cool, I was pretty underwhelmed, particularly by the huge black borders on the left and the right, now maybe I need to tweak something to get rid of that that i've overlooked, and if that is the case I would dearly love for someone to let me know what i need to do to get rid of them.

The next demo was the Tuscany demo, again somewhat under impressed, again could be the set up, but i found everything very blocky, blurry and annoyingly bright, this last point was easily fixed however. Am i missing some sort of calibration here? I ran through the PDI calibration software and even double checked with a ruler.

With a growing sense of disappointment i loaded up Blue Marble, this was much better, a much smother experience, tons prettier too, and for the first time I got a sense of "being in the world".

The next game blew me away however, it was Vr Tanks, its a simple retro tank demo where you control the turret with your head, wow This game made me forget the world and sucked me right in.

I've currently got Lunar Lander, F1 2013 and Warthog downloading, all of which support the Oculus, i'm looking forward to giving them a bash tonight.

Its just a shame about the Riftcoaster, I must be doing something wrong, any ideas?

[sneakypoo]

"wundram" wrote:
I tried the riftcoaster demo, and while it looked good, the pitch of the viewpoint didn't change as the coaster car pitch up and down. When the car went upside down on the tracks, I could see it above me, rather than seeing the world upside down. This really kept me from feeling any kind of vertigo. Is there a setting to fix this?

Wait.. you go upside down in the RiftCoaster? In my version it's all right side up.

[wundram]

"sneakypoo" wrote:

Wait.. you go upside down in the RiftCoaster? In my version it's all right side up.

Maybe not all the way upside down, but it definitely rolls past 90 degrees at one point.

[Dexter111]

"wundram" wrote:

"sneakypoo" wrote:

Wait.. you go upside down in the RiftCoaster? In my version it's all right side up.

Maybe not all the way upside down, but it definitely rolls past 90 degrees at one point.

Afaik that has to do with the implementation of the Oculus Rift in the UDK at the moment and it isn't possible to change it until they have fixed the UDK implementation from the developers side (upon which it should work almost automatically), read more about it here: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=17157&start=200

You can also try the ParrotCoaster for a change though: viewtopic.php?t=1763&p=21754

[Anonymous]

Discovered that the problems I was having were related to frame rate and resolution - made some tweaks and my god, what an experience. Absolutely incredible. Titans of Space was humbling. Can't wait to start creating content. No important thoughts that haven't already been covered by others, yet...thanks for your help wundram and kwx 🙂

[artofthetaco]

My first day thoughts were "uh oh, found a downside"

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/535902_10201939310826546_934269208_n.jpg

I guess I need to get used to drinking right out of the bottle.

[JoshNYC]

Hey guys also wanted to share my first day experience after receiving my dev kit. Sorry for the length.

Impressed with the case! Liked the letter and manual. Setup was easy (using Mac OS 10.7 at first). Started with B lenses since I read that those are generally less disorienting. Ran calibration. First experience with the setup scene was "holy...". My wife said "this is one of those moments where you know you're seeing the beginning of something huge". The calibration scene was initially a bit dizzying and made me concerned slightly about nausea but I was overwhelmed by the potential and decided to jump right in.

First up I tried the Tuscany demo which, for some reason, initially didn't work correctly (images were stereo but not "adjusted" for the Rift). After double checking the resolution I got it working: wow. Standing on the balcony was really like being there. The only dizzying bit was initial movement and then going down the stairs quickly. Holy smokes! I was hooked. Began downloading every single demo I could find for Mac. Started off with Proton Pulse and quickly moved to Awesome, Titans of Space, a bunch of rollercoaster variations. Before I knew it, my concern over nausea or dizziness was history. I felt like I could tolerate/enjoy the sensation and I'd spent about 2+ hours trying all the demos.

As it got late I started to notice a little bit of queasiness when using the space combat app (I forget the name). While amazingly fun, doing rolls was starting to get to me... and I have a pilot's license...

Went to bed a bit queazy realizing that I overdid it. Next day I felt a bit out of it/tired/disoriented but not really queasy. So I decided to play some more that evening. I started off with the human scans (I was booted into Windows) and flying around those got me feeling a bit dizzy. I took a break and tried again with Outerra but the horrible lag and general unpredictability/jumpiness of popping in/out of trucks/planes started to make me feel a bit more queasy... though I really did love "flying" around without any ships.

Last thing I tried that evening before I had to call it quits was War Thunder but flying in-cockpit was just too much. Pitching and then looking left right was way too much It sent me spinning and I had to pretty quickly stop as I was in full on sweat/nausea. Part of the reason could have been that I didn't calibrate on the PC but my IPD was only .2 off of standard value.

So, for most of the day today I've been feeling pretty crappy, just kind of sick to my stomach and a bit out of it/clumsy. My old (40+) brain is probably trying to acclimate to the experience or my subconscious it going "wtf just happened"?! Anyhow, I think I'm going to give it a few days (starting to feel better this evening finally) and then only do some lighter experiences. It's just so hard to resist the more adventurous stuff!

But what do you guys think? Are we beta testing with our brains here? Do you guys share my experience?

I find it so weird that the queasiness lingers. When I was working on my pilot's license I might feel some queasiness during training and shortly after (sometimes it'd actually be worse after) but it never lasted so long. What's the best way to get over this? I feel like maybe if I'd taken it slower I'd have no problems but that now somehow I've trained my brain to equate the Rift with feeling sick and it's spoiled forever...

[Dysheekie]

"JoshNYC" wrote:

I find it so weird that the queasiness lingers. When I was working on my pilot's license I might feel some queasiness during training and shortly after (sometimes it'd actually be worse after) but it never lasted so long. What's the best way to get over this? I feel like maybe if I'd taken it slower I'd have no problems but that now somehow I've trained my brain to equate the Rift with feeling sick and it's spoiled forever...

I had pretty much the same experience. Got my Rift about 3 days ago - the first day I played for about an hour. Only felt queasy when moving in the Tuscany demo. Went to bed and felt fine the next day. Played for another hour -- this time with some space sims and when I was done I felt really crappy. It lasted for the rest of the day and I still feel "off" today.

When you say your brain equates the Rift with the feeling of sickness...I'm afraid I'm right there with you. Just thinking about trying it right now is making me queasy. I'm hoping I can just give it another day and fight through this feeling.

I'm also hoping that the enhancements of the consumer Rift will do a lot to alleviate these feelings.

[JoshNYC]

Well it least misery has company 😉 I am encouraged by the fact that when I was doing my pilot training I had some similar feelings (after some training sessions, especially under "the hood") when I would think about the training I'd feel the same queasiness come back. But a few days later I was fine and was able to tolerate more on the next session. Eventually it didn't bother me at all. I'm hoping this is the same given that it's a new frontier.

[thatdude90210]

All the warnings I've seen have told us to ease into it... to get our "VR legs" as they say. It might take weeks. And also to stay away from HL2. I've had it for 3 days and have not put in more than an hour a day. I've also taken ginger as a precaution, and so far even though I'm prone to motion sickness I've been ok except for a couple of short moments in some demos. And no after-effects.

I'm dying to try HL2 because people say it's amazing with the Rift, but I don't think I'll touch it until much later.

[jkflipflop]

"CoIin" wrote:
My one arrived last night. I didn't have my Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter with me, so I tried it with my Xbox (Halo Anniversary Edition, stereoscopic) and with ESPN 3D. Unfortunately, neither of those do side by side stereo. Halo seemed not to do stereoscopic at all, and ESPN were top and bottom halves. I'll try again with movies, those are usually side by side.

At work this morning we had our weekly Google Hangout with teams in other countries. At these meeting somebody usually presents something on technology or software, and so today I showed the Rift. Here's a picture from a tweet:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BT-HWO6IIAEDu0p.jpg:large

You can't be actually serious. You honestly - really - expect your developer kit to work on an xbox?