henke on 14/2/2019 at 14:46
Pffft, get outta here grandpa!
Pyrian on 14/2/2019 at 17:03
My eldest daughter is 6. I don't want to hear the term "grandpa" for twenty years or so.
Thirith on 23/2/2019 at 09:52
Has anyone here ever tried one of thos TP Cast thingies that makes the Vive or Oculus Rift wireless? A Swiss online retailer currently sells the one for the Rift at a relatively big discount, but I hear very mixed things about TP Cast, so I'd be interested in first-hand experiences.
catbarf on 24/2/2019 at 17:13
I guess the Pimax backer rewards are being delivered, because a Pimax 8K just showed up completely unannounced on my doorstep last night. I need to get some cable extensions to use it in my new house, but I'll report back once I give it a try.
Thirith on 25/2/2019 at 07:44
Definitely curious to hear more about the Pimax headset. I've heard mixed things about the 5K+, in particular in terms of performance, but apparently the 8K has some tricks up its sleeves.
Thirith on 25/2/2019 at 12:50
Also, a quick shout-out to Red Matter: it's a pretty standard escape room game in terms of what you do, but it's eminently well crafted. It makes the usual teleport locomotion and integrates it in a smart way; it uses Unreal Engine 4 to do great things with light, reflections and transparencies; it makes interacting with levers, winches and the like feel surprisingly tactile. I also like how you have multi-purpose tools on your arms and one of those tools is a scanner/translation device. All in all, it's a nifty, atmospheric piece of VR entertainment that gets immersion just right.
Talking of immersion: I still find it remarkable just how much of a difference scale makes in VR. I had this moment in Skyrim; I started walking from Whiterun towards the Eldergleam Sanctuary just after sunset, and at some point I realised that a Highland Cow was walking towards me... and then I noticed that next to it were two legs, so I looked up and saw that there was a giant only a couple of metres away from me. The same moment in regular Skyrim would've just been a flick of the mouse to take in the giant, but having to look up to see exactly what had ended up dangerously close to me? Well, it'd been a while since I last ran as fast (thanks to Natural Locomotion) as I did there and then. There's a huge difference for me in how it feels to look up at something or someone by moving the mouse upwards versus looking up by, well, looking up.
On a different note: thanks to the recent Eurogamer article I downloaded the companion mod, Vilja. The voice acting isn't very good, but there is a cheerful earnestness to it, added to which it's the first time I'm actually taking along a companion, and it very much changes how Skyrim feels. I suspect that I'd grow tired of Vilja more quickly in the regular game, but in VR it's kinda nice just to have someone standing next to you.
Thirith on 4/3/2019 at 15:04
Am I the only one who still plays in VR on a regular basis... or am I the only one who made it out alive?!
O_o
Anyway: I finished Red Matter over the weekend. Definitely one of the VR games I'd recommend to anyone who's into puzzlers/adventure games that are heavy on atmosphere. The puzzles were just the right difficulty for me and the environment is moody and well done, added to which the game makes the various buttons, winches, valves and the like feel tactile in smart, subtle ways. It's cool how in VR you can override one sense by means of another to some extent: there are moments in Red Matter where you grab a lever and pull it, and the game makes it look as if the lever resists for a few seconds before you can pull it. You'd think that the dissonance between your hand movement (which doesn't really meet with any resistance, as you're not really pulling anything) and what you see (the lever not moving at all at first, then it moves slowly, until it's in the position where your actual hand is, more or less) would be odd or even uncomfortable, but my experience is that your brain puts together a sort of composite between the movement you've made and what your eyes show you, assisted by subtle force feedback nudges.
Has anyone here played Obduction by the makers of Myst? It's also playable in VR, and I'm curious whether it works as well as Red Matter does. VR is well suited to this kind of slow-paced adventure game, but doing it well so you actually feel like you're in the virtual world and interacting with it? That's an entirely different thing.
henke on 4/3/2019 at 16:21
I haven't played that much VR so far this year, just a few sessions of American Truck Simulator and Elite Dangerous, as well as a bit of Derail Valley and Beat Saber.
But yeah, Red Matter was good, and I agree about the great object interaction.
Thirith on 6/3/2019 at 10:39
Apparently Beat Saber will deliver new songs around 14/3 - some as a regular update, others as DLC. Not that this is altogether necessary for those using the user-made levels, but I'm happy to support the developers and they've generally done a very good job of mapping the tracks. Also, the campaign mode that the PS4 version has had for a while (AFAIK) should also be coming to PC as part of the update.
henke on 9/3/2019 at 14:04
Yup, looking forward to that campaign mode! Audica also apparently just got released, but instead of that I ended up picking up Counter Fight, which is on sale on Oculus for a couple bucks. It's pretty fun (and hectic).
[video=youtube;m87CpzpK4Ms]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m87CpzpK4Ms[/video]