Only 2 days left ❤️ I think most of the screenshots below are from September 5, but I didn't notice them before today - click to enlarge a screenshot:
Btw - mix of very fast NVMe and SSD (SATA) drives, results from October 2020 (WD 12TB representing one of the currently fastest conventional HDDs):
This does look nice:
- unfortunately such differences may mean little in games, for example:
Just found the above results - and Tech Report seems to confirm what I found like 20 years ago - that many games need a fast cpu to achive very fast load times - while choice of hard drive can be of lesser importance - sometimes:
"Why don’t games benefit all that much from faster SSDs? Well, it seems clear that raw storage performance is not the main bottleneck for loading today’s games. Pretty much all games released up to this point are designed to be run off hard drives, which are very slow; after all, the previous generation of consoles with the PS4 and Xbox One both used slow mechanical drives to store games.
This does look nice:
- unfortunately such differences may mean little in games, for example:
Just found the above results - and Tech Report seems to confirm what I found like 20 years ago - that many games need a fast cpu to achive very fast load times - while choice of hard drive can be of lesser importance - sometimes:
"Why don’t games benefit all that much from faster SSDs? Well, it seems clear that raw storage performance is not the main bottleneck for loading today’s games. Pretty much all games released up to this point are designed to be run off hard drives, which are very slow; after all, the previous generation of consoles with the PS4 and Xbox One both used slow mechanical drives to store games.
Today’s game engines simply aren’t built to make full use of fast storage, and so far there’s been little incentive to optimize for PCIe SSDs. Instead, the main limitation seems to be things like how quickly the CPU can decompress assets, and how quickly it can process a level before it’s ready for action, rather than how fast it can read data off storage."
https://www.techspot.com/review/2116-storage-speed-game-loading/
I continued playing Asgard's Wrath this evening - and it was beyond awesome. There's nothing like it, if normal great VR games are rated 5/5, then this is 7/5 or 8/5. I do love the puzzles - I've been stuck a few times and refuse to get help 🙂
Being able to use ss 2.5 with the Rift CV1 in 90 fps is a dream come true. Remember that ss 2.5 is 27 mill pixels per frame or close to 8k res (8k res is 32 mill pixels per frame or 4 times higher than 4k res). I took a few shots to show the image quality:
The game will constantly make you look up and feel small 🙂
Note the extreme details on this gnome/troll or whatever that thing is...
More than 2 years after the game's launch, for facial details Asgard's Wrath only bows to Lone Echo 2
The ladies look quite good 🙂
The sword looks awesome - and see how sharp the background is with ss 2.5
Some say the game looks fine with lcd - but it really does not - you need oled for this game, or the dark crypts and dungeons simply won't look right and will become way too bright
Note the very fine surface markings - it looks even better in-game
Thor has some nice markings on his helmet - never noticed them before
The fun goblins - they look awesome too!
It's nice to get out and enjoy nature once in a while, even if it's virtual, not sure my brain always notices the difference 🙂
Asgard's Wrath is a must-play for those who care about VR. Those who never played Asgard's Wrath (and let's include Alyx too) will be clueless about what truly can be achieved in VR. I'm in depth to Oculus for having made a game like Asgard's Wrath possible.
Kinda feels like this game is slowly ... changing me ... 🤔 Am I becoming ... a dog person? 🤔 You know - like these dudes 😁
- but I can't help doing this many times 😁
Not sure the AI is completely at dog level, but my pet* *dry cough!* warrior companions in Asgard's Wrath quickly follow my orders and never really complain, and I feed them with energy increasing stuff when they need it. Love that I can just physically throw them a healing potion and they'll grab it and drink it.
And you can use (very simple) sign language to ask if they're ok - like Egil here responding with a thumbs up:
Also don't underestimate the power of happy companions by giving a thumbs up or high 5. Happy companions will find loot for you, and the higher level of your companion the better the loot. So these are important aspects:
Happiness of your warrior companions
Followers happiness affects their ability to forage for items. To boost happiness:
- High Five/Fist Bump Follower after defeating enemies or finding an item
- Feed follower
- Make use of their "favorite food"
Followers lose happiness when:
- Ignored trying to high five/fist bump
- Keeping them at low health
- Deaths
There're guides to your companions/followers here - but beware that these guides may contain spoilers if you don't want to know all companions before you get them:
Maybe one problem for many is thinking that Asgard's Wrath will be all about fighting and that the game otherwise is easy to complete. It is not. Although the puzzles generally are easy, there are many of them and they don't all follow a similar pattern (like in Alyx), and some puzzles may be hard - very hard indeed, possibly because you've overlooked a small thing. And frustrating puzzles may stop some from playing the game. If a puzzle gets too frustrating, there're some walkthroughs on YouTube which may help.
I've taken a break for about a year, and if I ever knew that you can control some projectiles in the air after these have been firred, I had now forgot about that. Unfortunately that stopped me from playing for some time - but I did seek help yesterday. I really don't think I'd ever have thought of needing a specific weapon to solve a puzzle. Did spend too much time trying to solve that riddle - so do get help when needed 🙂
Saw some dude playing the game with the Index and gave it another shot. Asgard's Wrath has integrated temporal antialiasing, thus it cannot be disabled unless you select "Low" details - and Low looks really bad.
Did try the game using Epic setting and Index res 300% - that actually worked well with the RTX 3090, close to solid 90 fps with some dips below. Unfortunately the game still was a lot more blurry than using Rift CV1 ss 2.5. Then I went for Index res 400% - and that did the trick, or very close - Asgard's Wrath really looked awesomely sharp. Res 400% is like 35 mill pixels per frame, and that lunch is anything but free, lol. I was getting 45 fps, but motion smoothing worked wonders - really felt like 90 fps. I would be able to play like this just fine, but the blacks still weren't good. Also in the far distance, some objects still had a tint of blur added - but really not much.
This is Index res 400% - image quality no longer looks blurry, and there's no aliasing - this really great image quality
Went back to Rift CV1 ss 2.5, and maybe some think I'm totally insane, but this still beats Index res 400% to me. Rift CV1 has optimal black levels and there's simply no blur using ss 2.5 (27 mill pixels per frame). I even like the SDE covering up some low-res textures, while Index res 400% hides no low-res textures at all. So you really don't want total clarity in Asgard's Wrath, where the game will start to look a bit dated, and feinschmeckers will want to play Asgard's Wrath "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" - and that's using the Rift CV1. That also goes for the sound - the game was made for the Rift CV1 headphones.
Asgard's Wrath never was made for lcd panels, and it totally shows looking at black levels and textures. Rift CV1 SDE creates the illusion of higher textures res. CV1 ss 2.5 also is "in the flow" - that is, when you move and the SDE goes away. When moving in the game I notice no SDE, and my perceived sharpness and overall image quality is better with Rift CV1 than Index res 400%. That's not to say Index res 400% is bad - if you don't know what you're missing, you might think Asgard's Wrath looks really sharp and play beyond perfectly with Index res 400%, lol.
Btw - this is Index res 400% vs. Rift CV1 ss 2.5:
Rift CV1 ss 2.5
Index res 400% (Revive)
- I really can't see much difference in the screenshots, but through the lenses will be different, and of course Index has much bigger fov. The above images have been reduced in res, but cutting out a piece of each image - thus showing the full and unrestricted screenshot res - I found this potentially interesting difference here:
CV1 ss 2.5 full res
Index res 400% - full res
The Index image is bigger, because res 400% results in a larger image (=1820x1820 screenshot) than CV1 ss 2.5 (=1536x1536 screenshot). Looks like the CV1 is a lot sharper here - could be caused by some restrictions with Revive?
Also took a few shots of my friends 🤗
Note the fine skin imperfections on the nose
The arm texture look really great
Weapons also look impressive:
Btw, for those with arachnophobia, you can get some sensitivity training in the game - found a big blue one:
It moves in the game - and the fur looks amazing and is hard to show in a 2D image
Some vegetation - this is using EPIC settings, and even the RTX 3090 with CV1 ss 2.5 cannot do 90 fps here, but about 45 fps:
- and I could go on about the ground textures, but let's stop with this last image:
Some ground textures do look photo-realistic, but not all
