I'm hoping we can see native support for the Oculus Rift, it's a new wide FOV head mounted display. they've just launched their kickstarter campaign for their developer kits, and have more than doubled their target goal in less than 12 hours. They've also got endorsements from John Carmack, Gabe Newell, Michael Abrash and Cliff Bleszinski who are some pretty big names in game developer circles. The device looks pretty impressive and seem like it would be ideally suited for racing sims.
The Oculus guys were showing off the prototype at Gamescon last week, this reporter from pcgamer was pretty impressed. I can't wait till we can use something like this in a sim.
+1 This is what i have waited for. 90° horizontal FOV! With hopefully increased resolution for consumer version and support for rfactor 1 & 2. That would be immersive.
I have supported the project in kickstarter, and I hope rFactor2 can be made compatible with it when it arrives.
Let's hope ISI ordered a developer kit while the campaign was going on, I suspect they're going to be harder to come by once they ship and development moves onto the consumer version. It would really be a shame if the device lives up to the hype, and ISI has to tell us "woops, we didn't know about it".
I will get one too in december (if they really can make ~7000 DevKits till then) I am fascinated and after reading almost all the discussions ( at http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=140 ), i believe that this (HMD with low weight, very high FOV > 90°, precise and fast 6 DOF headtracking) is really the holy grail for us simracers for maximum immersion regarding visualisation. The headtracker they have used until now is a Hillcrest Labs FSRK-USB-2 with 6DOF, firmware optimized for 240Hz, but without absolute tracking. AFAIK they actually use only 3DOF. i guess without 6DOF its easy to get a bit sick. So i will use my TrackIR 5 ( 6DOF, precise and fast with 200Hz) and IR camera above head for full yaw detection. And its already supported in rfactor2 The actual resolution 1280x800 > 640x800 per eye is limited, but should not be so important for good immersion. But there are already small 5-7" displays with 2.5k and 4k resolution announced for next year (respectively should be available already). I will try to get one of these. It would be great if ISI is going to support the Oculus Rift (headtracking, maybe pre-warping for lens correction ..). Support in Tridef/3Dvision would be great too.
phew, just saw this thread for the first time. This would be damn awesome! It would be cheaper than a tripple screen setup, while giving better immersion and allowing for better performance, since only less than HD resolution is needed. i want this!
More than any other piece of hardware for pc, this excites me the most. Can you imagine if Microsoft were to develop Windows to run on this thing...in addition to all the game manufacturers? Your monitor would become obsolete in seconds. If it has decent support for racing or flight sims at release, I'll get one. That's been the only thing keeping me on the fence.
With Plugins to bring up menus on screen and mouse clicks on the heads-up display, you won't need to. As to shifting, you never look at the stick during that...so that part is pretty much automatic. It could work.
I was thinking more of pit requests etc and the folks with F1 wheels with knobs and switches all over them.
Yeah, it wouldn't be very useful in any type game where you are using button/keyboard alot. It would be a cool experience, but in the end it just wouldn't suit a race or flight sim very well at all, I don't believe. Shooters and RPG games would be better suited to it. I could imagine using it in Skyrim or something like that.
I would guess that many of you wanting this for RFactor have never used Head Tracking. It really isn't all that good for Racing 'games' . Many of the visual cues you need for driving are lost when you move your head. I have used TrackIR for years and believe me it is very hard to drive smoothly when your view is moving. Trying to compensate for under/oversteer is very difficult if your view isn't fixed. Many will overcome this shortfall by using a profiler to provide a deadzone at centre but this brings its own problems. The view really needs to be a directly proportional to head movement or your brain gets confused. Anyone who has played a First Person Shooter will know that mouse acceleration is a big problem. The same applies to head tracking. In some cases it works very well, driving Richard Burns or Drifting works ok because looking sideways is a big advantage. Watch Youtube videos of people driving with head tracking. Most of them hardly move their head, it's just too confusing.
I'm a TrackIR user. I've used it in race sims since 2002 or so in Live for Speed with TIR1. In fact I lobbied to get it in race sims beginning with LFS. Used it in F1C, Test Drive Unlimited, rF and rF2. I feel lost without it. Actually, I won't buy a race sim/game that doesn't support it. It is that important to me. I've never had any trouble using it in race sims. To me it is perfectly natural. I find I look into corners in games just as I do when driving my real cars. LOL, I even lean my head too. I do use a small deadzone and very limited Up/Down/In/Out movements.
Head tracking on an oculus rift would be much different than head tracking on a monitor. On the OR, the movement would be 1:1 and completely natural. On a regular screen, the movement is not 1:1 (you move your head a little and the screen image moves more than you moved). This has to happen since the screen doesn't move with you where as with a OR, the "screen" moves with you.
I could never get used to TrackIR, but I can see Oculus Rift being different. Since your entire FOV is the screen, with no fixed distractions(anything in view just outside a typical screen), it would work much better. But not being able to see my wheel, shifter, or various buttons kills it for me, for sim racing use at least. I think watching IMAX films on this would be awesome!!
