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HTC Vive Owners Thread

Well, the cool thing is that third party developers can use the Vive sensors to make their own peripherals. So we could see Touch-like controllers for the Vive in the future.

I like the fact that they don't stick out like the Vive controllers do, but I don't like the thumbstick really. Much prefer the trackpad, it seems more versatile.
 
There's also the chance that in a roomscale configuration (opposing cameras), the touch controllers will be more prone to occlusion with their more compact and less protruding shape. I fairly regularly get into positions in my VR space where one or both of my vive controllers loses tracking and shoots off into the distance. Rift's cameras have a lower FOV so I reckon they'd have that problem at least as often if not more.

Though Oculus seems to be able to support > 2 cameras which would mitigate that problem with some extra cost and cables.
 
pj- said:
Though Oculus seems to be able to support > 2 cameras which would mitigate that problem with some extra cost and cables.
Click to expand...

I wonder if Vive will ever support 3+ Lighthouses...seeing as you can buy replacements individually.

My guess is, not without software changes since it's a sync/pair setup.
 
MavericK said:
I wonder if Vive will ever support 3+ Lighthouses...seeing as you can buy replacements individually.

My guess is, not without software changes since it's a sync/pair setup.
Click to expand...

May not be to hard, there is 3 channels to operate on, but then again I know nothing about the wireless technology behind it.
 
Aireoth said:
May not be to hard, there is 3 channels to operate on, but then again I know nothing about the wireless technology behind it.
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From my understanding it's either A and B or B and C, depending on if you're using optical or cable sync.

I think the issue comes from the synchronization of laser pulses since they have to be timed appropriately for the technology to work, and I'm not sure how/if it would work with an odd number of base stations.
 
As far as I know the lighthouses use some version of bluetooth for RF, plus the laser and LED IR light emmitters. I'm betting the limiting factor is making sure the IR light from the different stations don't step on each other. I'd have to go find the article on how they work but I thought only one lighthouse was sweeping the room with it's laser at a time. You might be able to get 3 at once but it would likely require a lot more care with the positioning and they would need to cover less than a 120 degree arc with the laser sweeps.
 
Only one lighthouse can be sweeping at a time, yes.

You don't want to have non-overlapped coverage from basestations because if your hands happen to occlude the only one your headset can see, you lose tracking. Redundancy is important.

There are 120 sweeps per second at the current basestation RPM. 2 basestations each doing 2 sweeps means you get a full position from each basestation 30 times per second. If both basestations are visible to the tracked object you will get 60 positions per second.

It doesn't seem realistic that more basestations will be supported with current hardware. 3 basestations would drop your "single basestation position rate" to 20 positions per second. That would likely increase tracking jitter non-trivially. The rotation speed of the basestation lasers could probably be increased, but that would cause more noise/vibration/power consumption, and would shorten the life of the motors. Plus it may not even been supported.

Without frequency division multiplexing (which the headset/controllers are confirmed to not support, but basestations do support), we may have to wait for gen 2 to get additional basestations.
 
Don't forget there's a menu that shows you your base station coverage.
 
Dayaks said:
Don't forget there's a menu that shows you your base station coverage.
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Is there? I found some sort of virtual base station skins that show it (crazy psychedelic madness BTW) but I haven't seen an official solution.
 
MavericK said:
Is there? I found some sort of virtual base station skins that show it (crazy psychedelic madness BTW) but I haven't seen an official solution.
Click to expand...

Its in the SteamVR settings menu. You find it under the developer menu. Under the section "room and tracking" there is something called "room overview". :)
 
New nVidia driver 373.06:

Fixes Improved the framerate consistency of the Release 370 drivers in VR games and applications. [1804037]
Click to expand...

Have to wait until Monday when I get my replacement 1080 to test.
 
MavericK said:
New nVidia driver 373.06:



Have to wait until Monday when I get my replacement 1080 to test.
Click to expand...
I have been using the non-WHQL build for a couple of days, 373.02, and I could not tell a difference in the data or the experience. Just as good as it always has been.
 
Anyone planning to pick up the PlayStation VR? I myself don't see much use of the platform, which looks to have inferior tracking, except for some exclusive titles. It's good for those that don't have VR yet though.
 
At one point I was considering the PSVR but after reading the requirements it was a no go. Their room scale is just impossible for me to use due to the 2 feet it needs as dead space in front of the camera. That pretty much cemented my purchase of the Vive. :) There was probably no way I'd have passed up buying a Vive, but if PSVR could do it in the space I had I would have seriously considered it if even one good PSVR exclusive game came out for it because I only need the Headset and the Camera since I have a complete PS3 Move setup already.
 
LurkerLito said:
At one point I was considering the PSVR but after reading the requirements it was a no go. Their room scale is just impossible for me to use due to the 2 feet it needs as dead space in front of the camera. That pretty much cemented my purchase of the Vive. :) There was probably no way I'd have passed up buying a Vive, but if PSVR could do it in the space I had I would have seriously considered it if even one good PSVR exclusive game came out for it because I only need the Headset and the Camera since I have a complete PS3 Move setup already.
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You will be glad you did.
 
At this point I'd probably hold off and wait for reviews of Touch. If it is able to do roomscale on par with vive in the size space you have, then it would be worth considering. The headset is better in some aspects and the controllers appear to be better in every way. Facebook isn't any more evil than Valve (consumable sprays in CS:GO, come on) and that jackass Palmer has already got 95% of the money he will ever earn, so I don't see a reason to favor one billion dollar corporation over the other. Yeah, the exclusives are shitty. Most of them are only timed exclusive though and a lot of those games wouldn't exist at all without the $250 million facebook has handed out to developers.

Valve makes a ton of money from hats but they are still a relatively puny company and I don't know how they will be able to overcome the R&D gap in the next few years. Unless they land a partner with hugely deep pockets I fear they will be left in the dust. MS spent $100 million developing the Xbone controller. Facebook is going to be able to throw that kind of cash at future VR hw iterations. What's valve gonna do? Partner with another dying phone company?

I'd wager that the budget for touch controllers alone is in the ballpark of what valve and htc spent combined bringing vive to market. Touch controllers look way more ergonomic, have more advanced buttons (capacitive), have more buttons, are much lighter, are much smaller, and have 20 hours of battery life from a single AA. That kind of refinement isn't cheap.

I don't regret my vive purchase since it has allowed me to have real VR experiences 6 months before rift owners. The first gen hardware is similar enough to not make a huge difference, but I am starting to think the second generation won't be so close.
 
pj- said:
The headset is better in some aspects and the controllers appear to be better in every way.
Click to expand...
How are the controllers better? I have not used those, so I do not know. The Vive motion controllers are damn near perfect ergonomically for me. Especially for shooters.
 
I haven't used them personally either, but from every picture and impression I've seen, they are going to be a real winner.

They are smaller and lighter. Every impression from demos has been they are more natural to hold than the vive wands. The smaller size allows you to do stuff with your hands closer together without clunking the controllers together as I sometimes do with vive. It remains to be seen if the small size makes them more prone to occlusion in the real world, which may be the case since they recommend 3 cameras for room scale. If I went oculus I would probably have 3-4 cameras, which is an option that vive doesn't currently and probably won't ever support on gen 1 hw.

Better battery life. 20 hrs with a single AA battery vs 6-8 on a vive wand. I have a bunch of rechargable AA's so my downtime would be much lower with touch than waiting for my vive controllers to juice up.

The buttons are capactiive and there is a capacitive thumb resting pad. These allow for much more detailed hand gestures. It can distinguish finger resting on button vs. pressing button vs. lifted off button. They claim this allows "hand presence", which is something I haven't experienced with vive.

More buttons. This hasn't been a problem much, but there are games where it seems like another easily accessible button or two would make things easier. The menu button on vive wands is in a bad spot for frequent use.

Joystick. While I don't think joysticks are better than touchpads conceptually, the vive implementation is imperfect and limits its usefulness. I still can't easily select the weapon I want in SPT. In a lot of games it's basically only used as a giant button.
 
Onward is the only game I have had issues hitting the controllers together and it is usually because I was doing something "wrong."

The Vive controllers batteries charge up hella quick. Ran one down for the first time during testing yesterday.

Hmm, hand presence, gotta look into that.

Agreed on the buttons, I would like to have more.

I will likely buy another system when I get the controllers for Oculus.
 
Ok I'm in! HTC Vive arrives Wednesday. GTX 1070 and 16GB RAM refresher for my old long time neglected gaming PC (w/ good enough 2500k). Room preparations underway and a big space refactor scheduled for this weekend.

3.2m x 2.5m initial space. Can grow to 3.2m x 3.6m sans couch, 3.6m x 3.6m full purge with wall mounted monitor.

I've had occasional experiences with VR since GDC 2015 but some recent extended plays and the chance to do some quick dev work convinced me I need to be doing this now, both playing and developing. And my wife liked it. Always helps ;)
 
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As far as Oculus and the Touch controllers... personally I found them much better than the Vive wands (which are still great). Hand presence is on another level as they basically mould to and represent your natural hand shape and motions, plus the finger "sensing" in addition to just button clicks. I didn't get a chance to check tracking accuracy and latency but I also didn't notice any issues.

However even with the Touch Controller kit, taking an Oculus system to Vive cost, you still don't get full room scale. For true 360 room size tracking you need a THIRD sensor for $79 plus need to figure out placement and "room scale cabling" (they aren't wireless like the Lighthouses) and make sure you have enough free USB ports (what is that, 5 needed by that point?). Just the fact that the Touch kit doesn't include the third sensor means room scale won't be on the radar of many Oculus devs as it's not the typical platform.

This also means that the focus for the common Oculus user will also not be room scale so devs won't put as much into building specifically for room scale experiences.

And in the end it's room scale that really sells me on VR so it's the Vive for me. Then let's see what gen 2 brings...
 
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I love my Vive and having a blast with it.

Touch controllers look sweet though. In island 359 in tense situations shooting guns, ive accidentally teleported. Touch woukd alleviate that. Also sounds like headset has less SDE, which is my biggest gripe.

Cant wait to see gen 2, but no regrets. I also cant wait to play the hell out of my vive this weekend.
 
Huacanacha said:
As far as Oculus and the Touch controllers... personally I found them much better than the Vive wands (which are still great). Hand presence is on another level as they basically mould to and represent your natural hand shape and motions, plus the finger "sensing" in addition to just button clicks. I didn't get a chance to check tracking accuracy and latency but I also didn't notice any issues.

However even with the Touch Controller kit, taking an Oculus system to Vive cost, you still don't get full room scale. For true 360 room size tracking you need a THIRD sensor for $79 plus need to figure out placement and "room scale cabling" (they aren't wireless like the Lighthouses) and make sure you have enough free USB ports (what is that, 5 needed by that point?). Just the fact that the Touch kit doesn't include the third sensor means room scale won't be on the radar of many Oculus devs as it's not the typical platform.

This also means that the focus for the common Oculus user will also not be room scale so devs won't put as much into building specifically for room scale experiences.

And in the end it's room scale that really sells me on VR so it's the Vive for me. Then let's see what gen 2 brings...
Click to expand...

It's 4 usb ports if you exclude the one for the xbox controller adapter, which you presumably won't need with Touch games.

An extra camera is $80.

There are lots of things holding rooomscale back.
Many people don't have their PC near a spot where there's enough free space.
Many don't want to deal with the hassle of permanently mounting ugly boxes on their walls (or deal with the hassle/ugliness/expense of more temporary solutions).
The vast majority of vive users have a VR space close to the minimum (check the steam stats).

Making a roomscale only game is pretty risky considering how much you are limiting your audience. There is also a big expense in making it work well in a variety of room sizes, like Job Simulator does.

Roomscale VR is the only real VR to me, but I don't expect a lot of games with the budgets like the ones oculus showed yesterday.
 
I am hoping for Touch-like controllers for the Vive. With the open(ish) sensor standard there's no reason we couldn't see third party Vive controllers that are more compact and have different button layouts.
 
3D printed some vive controller wall holders
 

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Why do you guys think that the Rift needs 3 sensors for "full" room scale when the Vive only needs 2? That's a lot of wires going back to the PC (through your play space)from 3 sensors.

My thought is the Rift sensors cannot sense the HMD and the controllers at the same time. Therefore you need one sensor for the controllers from the front, one for the controllers from the back view, and a 3rd sensor for the HMD which can sense 360 due to the HMD sensor configuration.
 
Swolern said:
Why do you guys think that the Rift needs 3 sensors for "full" room scale when the Vive only needs 2? That's a lot of wires going back to the PC (through your play space)from 3 sensors.

My thought is the Rift sensors cannot sense the HMD and the controllers at the same time. Therefore you need one sensor for the controllers from the front, one for the controllers from the back view, and a 3rd sensor for the HMD which can sense 360 due to the HMD sensor configuration.
Click to expand...

No, one camera can easily track a headset and 2 controllers within its FOV.

Oculus cameras have a slightly lower FOV and don't work to the same distance as vive basestations. Two oculus cameras is probably enough for standing 360 and very small "roomscale", three would be for what vive owners consider roomscale.
 
pj- said:
No, one camera can easily track a headset and 2 controllers within its FOV.

Oculus cameras have a slightly lower FOV and don't work to the same distance as vive basestations. Two oculus cameras is probably enough for standing 360 and very small "roomscale", three would be for what vive owners consider roomscale.
Click to expand...
Ah so it's a FOV issue. Oculus has not explained the 3 sensor dilemma. Makes sense though with their 3 sensors set up in a triangle pattern.
 
I never had problems with tracking (once I blocked sunlight) and my cameras aren't even across from each other. Just saying. :)

It is funny that most of us do actually play in the dark now and a basement would be ideal...
 
Dayaks said:
I never had problems with tracking (once I blocked sunlight) and my cameras aren't even across from each other. Just saying. :)

It is funny that most of us do actually play in the dark now and a basement would be ideal...
Click to expand...
Games like "Chair in a Room" played alone in a dark basement would be completely horrifying!

On that note has anyone tried Richie's Plank? It's a simple short game, but the most I have felt my life was in danger in VR to date! It's a must you use a wooden board(2x4 or whatever you got) as a prop. The game has you walk out on a wooden plank high up on a skyscraper. My heart felt like it was about to jump out my chest. The feeling of you walking on a raised board + the Vive stimulates your mind to believe you at 500+ feet above a cement street! My wife was hilarious, it took her 10 minutes just to step one foot out on the plank, her face was in sheer terror, it was great. LOL.
 
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Has anyone purchased a separate set of sensors? I'm thinking about a set and another breakout box for my desktop PC when playing, sitting vr games. Current VR is setup is in the living room with all the wires nice and hidden. Weird how the accessory breakout box does not come with a power adapter.
 
If you do that, try buying just 1 at first. For seated VR it may be sufficient if you place it correctly. Edit: Or just temporarily move one of your living room basestations into the PC area and see how it works.

My headset tracks pretty well when I'm sitting at my desk. In that spot, I'm out of view of one basestation and the other one is about 14' away at the 8 o'clock position relative to my body. It only loses tracking basically when I look directly away from it for several seconds.
 
Yeah, from what I hear you really only need one for seated.

I've thought about it but I'm not sure how much seated gaming I'll be doing on it overall.
 
Cockpit games are about the only games I play seated. I won't touch any seated Xbox controller VR games when I'm much more engaged with motion controllers and room-scale.
 
Thanks guys will give that a shot (testing) before I buy a whole set
 
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