woah on 16/4/2021 at 16:40
Just been dabbling with a variety of VR games lately. There are other games I could play but it's too easy to get lost in HLA mods, some of them are better than the vast majority of VR content out there. Valve would be insane not to release a Source 2 SDK (though I hear the engine still needs a lot of work).
Other than that, Cosmodread is the recent stand out--a roguelike horror game that's easy to jump into--but damn I really wish it had coop (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1256060/Cosmodread/) . VR Skater is an interesting one I'm looking forward to with an imminent release (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1285920/VR_Skater/)
But by far the most interesting recent development for me has been this:
hip direction relative joystick locomotion. Basically, you put a VR tracker on your waist (or on a swiveling stool) and using a special SteamVR driver you can make joystick locomotion relative to your hip/stool orientation instead of your head or hand. And IMO it's just better in every way--head and hand relative now feel clunky in retrospect. It makes multitasking easier (e.g. you can interact with something in your hands--for example reload--while continuously moving around and looking around in arbitrary directions simultaneously), takes your mind off of input conflicts (which also reduces intermittent immersion breaks), makes VR movement more comfortable (fewer unexpected movements), and overall it's just a whole lot more seamless.
This is something that's been talked about for years so I don't know why it took so long for the first implementation to pop up. Only problem is that the current implementation is kind of high friction due to the pre-game-session setup (
https://github.com/ju1ce/Simple-OpenVR-Bridge-Driver/tree/hip-locomotion) . However, there is a company providing something called "Decamove" that does the same thing and they've stated that they will make their software compatible with other kinds of trackers, e.g. SteamVR trackers (and it will be presumably more seamless). However these camera and IMU based systems suffer from orientational drift over time (I'm using a vive tracker which doesn't have this problem)
Weasel on 17/4/2021 at 15:27
I don't like head-based or hand-based movement either. In my own project, I have another option that attempts to guess what direction your body is facing and uses that as the forward direction. It's not perfect, but it also doesn't need to be perfect for the arm-swing locomotion I have.
Thirith on 18/4/2021 at 08:20
I'm curious about that Decamove device, but I bought a similar one, KAT VR, and that one suffered from shit software. It might be better by now, mind you, but when I tried it out about a year ago it was decidedly worse than just using Natural Locomotion. I wish that NatLoc had been able to include the sensor data from KAT VR, because their software worked so much better.
woah on 18/4/2021 at 14:57
Quote Posted by Thirith
I'm curious about that Decamove device, but I bought a similar one, KAT VR, and that one suffered from shit software. It might be better by now, mind you, but when I tried it out about a year ago it was decidedly worse than just using Natural Locomotion. I wish that NatLoc had been able to include the sensor data from KAT VR, because their software worked so much better.
I've heard the name before but reading up on Kat Loco it looks like a "walk in place" VR locomotion solution. I'm personally not a fan of that kind of thing (or VR treadmills in general), but does it support hip directed joystick locomotion as well? (ala this SteamVR add-on or Decamove?) If not I would hope they'd implement it as I think such a feature will have much wider appeal.
I contacted the Nat Loco guys in the past about hip directed joystick locomotion but they also had no interest in such a feature--they only support the waddle in place thing. Super confusing to me as it's such a trivial thing and I suspect they're just leaving money on the table.
Thirith on 18/4/2021 at 15:59
The Kat Loco combines the sensor-swinging of Natural Locomotion with hip-directed movement. I never tried it out for longer than an hour or so, because it felt so damn awkward. I have to say that at least with Skyrim walking in place with Natural Locomotion works fantastically well for me.
Renault on 23/4/2021 at 23:10
Here's the "Spring Into VR" Humble Bundle, good for another 4 days or so. Games include:
Detached
Star Trek Bridge Crew
Surgeon Simulator
Swords of Gurrah
Espire 1
Job Simulator
Sairento VR
Borderlands 2 VR
(
https://www.humblebundle.com/games/spring-into-vr-bundle?)
Thirith on 28/4/2021 at 12:16
Oculus' new Air Link feature for Quest 2 seems to be a very good option for wireless PCVR play - if you can get it to work. Most seem to be able to, though it depends on how fast and stable their wifi network is. For me, it worked flawlessly once, but since it's always crashed after half a minute or so. I've found a handful of other people with the same problem, but no solutions yet. Which isn't a biggie, since wireless play via Virtual Desktop works well - and I've not got all that much time for VR play anyway at the moment.
In any case, I think that this will be a watershed moment leading to wireless PCVR play across the board - ideally not just for those who have an ideal setup (5GHz wifi network, PC connected via Ethernet cable). For those who mostly play stationary VR games, sims and the like, there can always be a cable option (as there is with Quest 2), but once it's been shown that wireless PCVR play is feasible, I think it'll quickly become the standard, except perhaps for the headsets with the highest resolution and FOV.
Renault on 28/4/2021 at 16:16
I've been testing Oculus Air for a few days now, and it works great for me (for the record, I do have a 5G/ethernet setup). I haven't had it crash once. The primary game I've been testing it on is Alyx, which runs mostly super smooth with an occasional jitter here and there, nothing that would deter you from playing. I've also tested it on Saint & Sinners and that worked equally well.
What I thought was interesting though was that when I played Alyx using Virtual Desktop, I got drastically worse performance. The game was playable, but only by the lowest definition. Tons of delay and stuttering and just not smooth. I would never play the game this way in the long term, I'd switch to my Link cable instead. I thought this might be worth mentioning, in case people thought having Virtual Desktop was enough. I plan to test out a few other demanding games soon, but I'm guessing the performance will be similar.
Thirith on 29/4/2021 at 07:40
Yeah, the one time that Air Link worked for me, it also felt a fair bit more smooth than Virtual Desktop. the frame-rate smoothing techniques implemented by Oculus. As far as I know, they don't work, or not fully, via Virtual Desktop. From what I've read around the web, fast-paced, latency-critical games such as rhythm games will definitely feel/play better on a wired connection (or, whenever possible, on the native Quest 2 version), but anything that isn't as twitchy seems to work very well on Air Link.
I suspect that my crashes are due to some conflict with other software, but without having access to some sort of crash report it's difficult to pinpoint what it is. Since I've not found many people with the same problem, I suspect that I'm in a relatively small minority here, because otherwise you'd get way more complaints.