First Time VR User: Here are my Oculus Rift impressions.

[Oscar Meyer]

So a little bit of background. I have never used VR before. I didn't even know the company Oculus existed until a month ago (don't ask me how I procured a Rift). I was just youtubing upcoming games one day and came across a video of Eve Valkyrie. And I thought to myself...Holy Ph@ck. So then I spent a month watching videos on Rift and Vive and everything VR. So now flash forward to the first time I actually put a Rift on my head and loaded up Oculus Home App:

..a little underwhelmed. A little underwhelmed because at that instant i realized I have been setting expectations way too high. After watching so many youtube videos of Rift in 1080p fidelity, that was how I thought the Rift would look. Let me say this right now, IT WILL NOT LOOK LIKE THAT. It will not look as crisp and clear as the youtube vids. It will not look as if you just stepped into the MATRIX training room. The best I can describe it is if all those youtube examples of Rift are "Blueray" fidelity, when you actually put on the Rift you will be seeing DVD or SD quality.

The reason is despite the fact that the Rift is higher resolution than 1080p, you will be putting this high res screen one inch from your eye. And those available pixels have to fill your ENTIRE field of vision.This is a fact I neglected to take into consideration in my month of hyping for VR. Take an iphone 6 screen and stick it right next too your eye. That's right, you WILL see imperfections and "pieces" of a jigsaw puzzle. In fact I think in order to produce images where the resolution will not be a distraction, the Tech might need a 4k screen in each eye (that is double 4k resolution), and that might not even be enough. As well, the screen door effect is present. It is very subtle almost unnoticeable, but it is there and it is something that stands between you and the virtual world. It's like a film between you and the image you see. It is there but it is also very easy to forget if the content is engaging.

So now that is out of the way and you take the Rift for what it is: a First Gen VR product,...the Experience that the Rift is capable of producing is in a word, AMAZING. Yes, the experience is bad ass, out of this world (because you are in another world). The Rift is fully capable of producing images that make you feel fully immersed in the virtual scene. In fact, I would argue that it is capable of producing feelings that are even better than real life. Where in real life can you "feel" a T-Rex spitting on you, or a six foot alien right in your face. Or perhaps a 300 feet tall Robot brushing some trees out of the way and then stare you down??? You can't get that anywhere in real life. One of the best Rift experiences that I had was taking a tour of a blood vessel. I was microscopic and floated down a blood vessel, while thousands of red blood cells bigger than me pumped across my view. What's that giant thing in the distance? It's Mitochondria...LOL I even entered the nucleus of a cell on the journey, and it was nothing sort of AWE.

And this is where the Rift shines....that is in its ability to evoke emotions and feelings you can only get by actually "being" in the scene, in the moment. One caveat though is that the "moments" are still very few because there is not much content. However, if what I have experienced is just a tiny taste of what will come and what is possible in the "virtual" world, I am very excited for the future.

 

[Vega]

I agree. I just got my Vive and the screen door effect and low resolution completely kills it for me.

 

[funks]

Man, I just bought all kinds of stuff to get ready for the RIFT.. You guys tried playing Project Cars?

 

[Oscar Meyer]

Man, I just bought all kinds of stuff to get ready for the RIFT.. You guys tried playing Project Cars?

Not yet, but I will. Just be aware...motion sickness is very REAL. VR is so real that you will feel simulated motion sickness. Just imagine your first time in the wingman seat of an F-16. And the pilot does hair turning steers and barrels rolls right out of the gate. Unless the Force is with you, you will pay a price.

 

[Inu]

This is why imho that VR will only thrive on consoles.

Console gamers already put up with 30fps regularly and had 480p gaming for years.

It appeals to the the more peasently type of gamer to start with, and this provides
developers with a larger market with a closed system to optimize for.

EDIT: And yea i'll probably get the PS4.5 version.

 

[zamardii12]

I have been on r/Oculus for weeks now and we literally just had this discussion. Here is a explanation after my experience with Gear VR (with my Galaxy Note 5) and asking people why it looked so blurry/screen-doory...


"I'm speculating, but I think your main issue is that you expect a 1440p panel to deliver an experience like a 1440p monitor. In reality, Gear VR apps use a default internal render target of 1024x1024 per eye, for performance reasons, and those pixels are stretched across a 90 degree field of view. The result is about 10 pixels per degree, comparable to a low-res 640x480 monitor. You'll see aliasing and pixel size comparable to such a monitor.

The Rift's displays are 1080x1200 per eye, and so they also deliver an experience like a 640x480 monitor, regardless of GPU power. You should expect this on all devices in gen 1. A 1280x1440 panel per eye would be better, and a 1920x2160 panel better still, but these will probably only show up in gen 2."

And here is someone answering my question about when we will get "Retina" level VR displays and what resolution they have to be at to not see the pixels/blurriness anymore.


"Typical estimates I hear are somewhere around 16K. It depends how much you want to take into account subtle effects like hyperacuity. A good rule of thumb is "divide the combined horizontal resolution of both screens by 3, and pixel density will be similar to a monitor with that horizontal resolution". So 4K will give you pixel density similar to a 720p monitor, 8K will be similar to a 1440p monitor, and 16K similar to a 5K monitor. On a 5K monitor, visible pixels are quite difficult to see and only show up in cases of subtle misalignment."



To sum up, if you want VR to justify your purchase don't look at it as screen clarity/display... look at it for the experience you will get. Being immersed in an environment. I can at least vouch that with Gear VR the immersion during Land's End and during some of the content was quite compelling for someone like myself who's only experience in VR was just that.

 

[Armenius]

I have been on r/Oculus for weeks now and we literally just had this discussion. Here is a explanation after my experience with Gear VR (with my Galaxy Note 5) and asking people why it looked so blurry/screen-doory...


"I'm speculating, but I think your main issue is that you expect a 1440p panel to deliver an experience like a 1440p monitor. In reality, Gear VR apps use a default internal render target of 1024x1024 per eye, for performance reasons, and those pixels are stretched across a 90 degree field of view. The result is about 10 pixels per degree, comparable to a low-res 640x480 monitor. You'll see aliasing and pixel size comparable to such a monitor.

The Rift's displays are 1080x1200 per eye, and so they also deliver an experience like a 640x480 monitor, regardless of GPU power. You should expect this on all devices in gen 1. A 1280x1440 panel per eye would be better, and a 1920x2160 panel better still, but these will probably only show up in gen 2."

And here is someone answering my question about when we will get "Retina" level VR displays and what resolution they have to be at to not see the pixels/blurriness anymore.


"Typical estimates I hear are somewhere around 16K. It depends how much you want to take into account subtle effects like hyperacuity. A good rule of thumb is "divide the combined horizontal resolution of both screens by 3, and pixel density will be similar to a monitor with that horizontal resolution". So 4K will give you pixel density similar to a 720p monitor, 8K will be similar to a 1440p monitor, and 16K similar to a 5K monitor. On a 5K monitor, visible pixels are quite difficult to see and only show up in cases of subtle misalignment."



To sum up, if you want VR to justify your purchase don't look at it as screen clarity/display... look at it for the experience you will get. Being immersed in an environment. I can at least vouch that with Gear VR the immersion during Land's End and during some of the content was quite compelling for someone like myself who's only experience in VR was just that.

Sums it up nicely. Normally looking at a monitor we're only using around 20 degrees out of the approximate 200 degrees of our field of vision. And rightfully so as this is where a typical person's clarity of shapes and colors is at its highest. That is effectively around 100-150 pixels per degree of vision depending on the resolution of the monitor (1920x1080 or 2560x1440). So now you're taking the same screen displaying the same resolution in front of your eyes and you get what is described in your post.

 

[Dawill]

Man, I just bought all kinds of stuff to get ready for the RIFT.. You guys tried playing Project Cars?

So far it has been the shining point of my 3hr rift experience last night: Here is my review from another forum. I'm pretty damn wordy for only having 3hrs with it .


Got my rift last night. Had about 3hrs fiddling with it. Here are my first impressions.

First hour or so I was HIGHLY disappointed with it. I was cycling through all the demo material and it was garbage. The god rays are horrific with high contrast scenes. All the VR videos looked completely unrealistic. I could see subpixels if I tried (20/15 vision). I thought this was 3d tv all over again. Not to mention I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach, but not really sickness. I've never gotten motion sickness.

In the second hour I said F this baby stuff and jumped into project cars. I first tried with the xbox controller wasn't too impressed. I then spent about 30min getting my wheel+pedals setup. I've never used them on the pc before, just my ps4. So I had to get through driver headaches and the like. Once I got it detected and calibrated inside project cars this was a whole new game. I started having a blast and was having trouble keeping a grin off my face. One thing I noticed though is the fidelity of the track was a little low and I was having trouble with some corners. I also noticed the body/head positioning was a little off with the driver. So I spent a good 5-10min to get my wheel in the perfect place in where the rift camera thinks I should be seated. Instantly the track became more clear and driving was even more realistic. I have a feeling I'm going to have to mess with my wheel stand every time I play to get it just right, but next time it should be under 5min. Anyhow, project cars is freaking awesome w/ VR. Runs smooth as butter on my system (details below). Also I had no real uneasiness in this game.

After project cars I figured I would give eve a shot. Fired it up and wow the graphics are amazing.. You can see the godrays real bad during loading screens and the menu but they dissappear during the game play. Or at least I never noticed them during the 5min I attempted to play. Once I was launched out the tube I tried my best to fly the thing. I couldn't for the life of me get it stable. It looks like my xbone controller was offcenter for this game only. It was definitely on the left stick. I think the right stick was centered. I tried digging into the menus to find recalibration, but there was none. So I said F it and jumped out of the game. Wasn't worth further frustration. Game is pretty sick looking but there are no control options to be found. Project cars has a lot more in this regard. I might avoid this game all together and just play ED. I have a full ch hotas set with rudder pedals that gives better immersion, but I have no idea how I could configure that with eve.

After my complete disappointment with EVE I figured I would try some other things. I fired up virtual desktop. OMG god rays everywhere... However the default background was to blame as it's space and there is bright white text/icons everywhere. I would consider this nearly unusable as is but I didn't try to change the background to something more neutral. There are a bunch of options and I only played with screen size and curved vs flat. I opened my browser and went to netflix, threw up some daredevil. It was way too large in my face. So I flipped the screen to flat and reduced the size to something more usable. It was very watchable. It doesn't compete with my 1080p 120" projection setup in my media room, but for most it will probably be an interesting way to watch a movie. Picture quality is above DVD but below 720p. I suspect the resolution is equivalent to SD, but you won't see any compression artifacts so it trumps dvd in that regard. I continued to watch for another 5min and figured I would stick to my home theater and regular 3440x1440 monitor for stuff like this in the future. First gen just doesn't cut it in the resolution or more important god ray department.

It was getting late so the last thing I figured I would try farlands. I think I was in this game for 2min before I was like nope.. not for me. Graphics were good but this game screams for touch controls. Using the remote just felt so ridiculous. I exited this immediately.

I thought I was going to be in farlands for longer so I gave a demo one more shot. I'm glad I did. I fired up the inside your body demo (forget the exact name). Anyways you travel down the blood stream and into a cell. At first I wasn't too convinced of the experience it felt a little hollow but after I made my way down the blood vessel and into a cell it was way more convincing. You are completely surrounded by interior structures of the cell and it goes over how everything works. I had a little bit of nerdgasm flash back to biology and chemistry and all that from highschool. I didn't finish this demo as my eyes were starting to get very tired. VR definitely makes this effect more noticeable for me. Like I was really struggling to keep my eyes open. Additionally this demo made my stomach a little uneasy, but nothing severe. As far as I could tell I think it had to do with being a glass floor on whatever vessel you are in. Anything where you are "floaty" makes my stomach a little uneasy. Nothing serious and nothing that lasted after I took the headset off, but I think it's going to take a little getting used to before becoming 100% comfortable.

A few things I forgot to mention are using oculus video for streaming videos. Just don't do it. The streaming videos are so low quality you are just watching huge blocky pixels in your face. It's like taking a 240p video and full screening it. Additionally they can be choppy which was starting to make me feel uneasy very quickly. I closed that crap down real quick.

Wow, I've written a lot. Overall I'm pretty happy with the rift. It might be unclear of why I came to that conclusion from all the complaining I did above, but the project cars experience shows me what this is capable of. Also the graphics in eve are very good and I'm excited to give ED a shot. I'm really psyched for cockpit games in this. However I foresee a lot of gimmicky games in the future with just a few stand outs. This is first gen though, so I'm setting my expectations according to that. I was originally excited for 360 videos and VR captures of real life scenes but everything I saw of that looked like 3d tv. It just didn't look or feel real. Hopefully that will change as the tech matures. The high graphics fidelity games look absolutely amazing. The god rays are extremely distracting, but I have yet to notice them in gameplay, so I'm willing to cope with them during menus and other high contrast scenes.

My experience with games might be a little different than others, but my system specs are top of the line (for now): 4790k, 32gb ram, titan-x . So I tried to max out any graphics settings I could find. I can't say for certain if AWS ever kicked in, I didn't notice any framerate issues, but I wasn't expecting any.