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VR driving

lamer of fortune

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Hi all,

if it seems to you that I am not very chatty in race atm it is bacause of the fact that I have bought me an early X-mas present and moved to VR.
I am a curious kid by nature and I just dont have enough space for a triple screen setup.
I was playing with this thought for 2 years now and had been held back by the issues and limitations reported for the earlier generations of gear.
It did read differently for the valve index and so i bought one.
To sum it up in short - I am blown away! This not a game on the computer anymore, I am there and I dont want to leave anymore.
OK it is no as crisp in resolution as what we are used to from hi res monitors ( i was on a 34" before) but this is in my case fully compensated by the immersion effect and higher frames per second. The valve index can display up to 144 .However this would need another upgrade on the graphics card which might trigger another upgrade on the CP'U and so on . I will wait a little. My system is a I5 6500 and a GTX 1080. I consider this sufficient to get going, some compromises to be made.
One of the biggest pros for the valve index apparently is the tracking system which is supefast and smoth. I had been experimenting with headtracking devices before and this is no comparison.

The only thing i miss for now is being able to chat in between in a convenient way as this requires to take off the goggles breaking the flow. I can manage to type in Hi when aiming trough a tiny hola at the nose buts tats about it. So please dont be offended if my communication for the time being is limited to this.

So if the expense feels justifyable to you, get out and get one.

I do not see much use for other stuff than driving. I was trying Alyx but that is too scary for me.
Other than RF2 i tried also Dirt 2 with it and it is a blast. It the first game i tested but then i did not have the comfy VR mode on i felt like having to vomit after 10 seconds. It is all fine now.

Who else is driving VR? It would be cool to hear from your experience.


Best

Tobias
 

Dan Bayford

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Feb 14, 2014
Hi all,

if it seems to you that I am not very chatty in race atm it is bacause of the fact that I have bought me an early X-mas present and moved to VR.
I am a curious kid by nature and I just dont have enough space for a triple screen setup.
I was playing with this thought for 2 years now and had been held back by the issues and limitations reported for the earlier generations of gear.
It did read differently for the valve index and so i bought one.
To sum it up in short - I am blown away! This not a game on the computer anymore, I am there and I dont want to leave anymore.
OK it is no as crisp in resolution as what we are used to from hi res monitors ( i was on a 34" before) but this is in my case fully compensated by the immersion effect and higher frames per second. The valve index can display up to 144 .However this would need another upgrade on the graphics card which might trigger another upgrade on the CP'U and so on . I will wait a little. My system is a I5 6500 and a GTX 1080. I consider this sufficient to get going, some compromises to be made.
One of the biggest pros for the valve index apparently is the tracking system which is supefast and smoth. I had been experimenting with headtracking devices before and this is no comparison.

The only thing i miss for now is being able to chat in between in a convenient way as this requires to take off the goggles breaking the flow. I can manage to type in Hi when aiming trough a tiny hola at the nose buts tats about it. So please dont be offended if my communication for the time being is limited to this.

So if the expense feels justifyable to you, get out and get one.

I do not see much use for other stuff than driving. I was trying Alyx but that is too scary for me.
Other than RF2 i tried also Dirt 2 with it and it is a blast. It the first game i tested but then i did not have the comfy VR mode on i felt like having to vomit after 10 seconds. It is all fine now.

Who else is driving VR? It would be cool to hear from your experience.


Best

Tobias
Hi Tobias i have the vive pro and like you i love it. It blows me away how real it feels i have the same thoughts about not being able to type while driving i have been looking and coming soon is a VR keyboard that can be seen through the headset i will let you now if it really does work asap good luck man
 

Bruce

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Been in VR for a few years now; Rift. Same issue you had not enough room for triple monitors. In fact my room is so small I can touch the limits of the VR area while seated; not a problem so long as I keep my arms in the car though. I to am unable to text chat. Not that I did much before a it was not easy to text and chat but in VR it is virtually (see that) impossible to do so. I do most of my "driving" in iRacing that has a voice chat option that needs a button mapped. I am still running a G25 (somewhat modded) which has 2 wheel buttons one which is mapped to iRacing chat and the other for Crew Chief. I also use Discord on an open mic in iRacing Leagues or when I am chatting while using iRacing but not to all in there. I use the same wheel buttons to mute discord so as not to get an echo when talking in iRacing or to give away my pit strategy. There was a group of us that used to chat in SR6L but since we dropped team speak no one seems to chat on discord. I have only had a couple of chats on there while in SR4L one I think was with Stuart and the other one was with Ryan who runs the iRacing League I race in.
 

Stuartd1233

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Mar 30, 2020
I have a HTC Vive but I don't use it for simracing that much. I will try it every so often. Is it not really blurry for anyone else? I can't see down the end of a short straight. I nearly did the karting race in VR but I'm just not as speedy as I am with a monitor
 

lamer of fortune

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There is some voice control functionality in crew chief but I have not been able to figure out how to get that to work. Any experience with this available here?
 

Edvvc

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Like Stuart, I occasionally try driving in VR but prefer to race using monitors. I find my Rift doesn't have enough field of view and I can't use mirrors as effectively - not entirely sure why but there have been incidents wher I haven't seen cars in my mirror in VR where I would have seen them with monitors. However, the immersion is wonderful and really addictive and I drive in VR every so often to feel the atmosphere in certain cars and tracks.

Unfortunately I can't get rfactor2 to work with my rift as of late. Perhaps it's because I stubbornly stick with Windows 8.1 (Windows 10 is a privacy disaster).
 

Bruce

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I use Crew chief with my VR. I mostly use iRacing but have used it in RF2. I can't get the voice commands to work well though. I used a separate sound system/amp for sounds and use headphones/rift for voice/crew chief. When my rift went back to oculus for replacement I was using my old SoundBlaster gaming headset for voice and Crew Chief and crew chief seemed to understand what i was saying. When I got my VR back it was back to having to repeat or shout to get understood, or lift so there was no engine sound. This led me to the conclusion that the old sound blaster (Actually from an Xbox 360) had a far better mic. It was not really practical to use it with the Rift; wat too hot in summer and having to do away with the Rift headphones. Recently I have been experimenting with using only the Rift head phones; but the jury is still out on that.
 

lamer of fortune

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Thanks Bruce for sharing your crew chief experience. I will devote some time to try to get it to work but this might still take some time.
Yesterday I received my custom lenses from VRoptician.com (I am not an affiliate) which totally improved my experience as my real life glasses were too big to fit into the VR goggles and i was using old broken Glasses with only one sidepiece and long since expired corrections. If you are wearing glasses absolutely worth the expense.
 

Dan Bayford

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Feb 14, 2014
Thanks Bruce for sharing your crew chief experience. I will devote some time to try to get it to work but this might still take some time.
Yesterday I received my custom lenses from VRoptician.com (I am not an affiliate) which totally improved my experience as my real life glasses were too big to fit into the VR goggles and i was using old broken Glasses with only one sidepiece and long since expired corrections. If you are wearing glasses absolutely worth the expense.
Hi Tobias how much were the lenses please
 

Bruce

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Sep 15, 2016
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Still trying with all sound on the rift headset. Getting there, plus it has the advantage of not having engine sounds playing through discord, and the big plus of not having to reset the sound settings for each game/sim. The downside is trying to balance all the different sound levels (Discord, Crew Chief, Spotter, chat, engine, opponents engines, tyres, etc.) so they all work together. Before with just voices from the headphones is was just turn up/down the headphones or speakers). Crew chief does seem to understand a little better though.
 
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