Vr is still in its infancy,still no excuse for the piss poor visuals,I've tried vr on my mates now 5x,I can see the promise it hold for the future,but until they can supply units with resolutions that don't remind me of my game boy or Sinclair zx,I won't be spending what they want for it. The visuals are just to pathetic for the price in my opinion
RE.resolution it really depends what one is use too, it was to long ago that a PC output resolution was much less than the current VR units (mainly due to lack of cpu/gpu processing power) & of course graphics/visuals were (compared with today) truly terrible for me prior to using the rift DK2 I was running 3x27" high end monitors in 3d mode and I'm sensitive to latency -to reduce latency I ran my PC (which was always top spec) well within its limits which caused me to keep graphic details and run at a fairly low resolution (actually lower than the current headset) I sold the DK1 very quickly as it was downgrade on visuals but gave me an indication that VR paradise was on the way the DK2 was a gift from the tech gods for me, bear in mind I was use to lower resolutions the CV1 was an upgrade and the very best immersion experience I've ever had I laugh at the though of monitors now one needs to let go of expectations and the perception of the VR experience , once the penny drops its heaven forget high resolutions there is so much more out there I find people with lower spec PC's (they are also usually the ones that crank all graphic details to max as if they are entitled to ) don't get on with VR (although a few I know have changed their minds since and will not go back to monitors) race sim, flight sims seem as if they were always custom made for VR tech, the immersion / visuals low latency is top notch, I can also run with much higher graphic details due to the very direct ultra low latency of this VR tech essential for racing sims (at a cost of high resolution if that's what one is use too but that's a minor point)
Gaming monitors these days have basically 0 input lag and the refresh lag is also minimal due to 144 Hz, I don't know how VR would improve things further from that. Once the resolution improves to something like at least 1440p vertical, I will buy a new rig and a VR headset.
Direct mode (that Vive and Rift both have) renders directly to the HMD and bypasses Window's display management entirely. I'm fairly certain Windows adds 1 frame of lag with the traditional display techniques. It's why VR put such effort into bypassing it. When these measurement are taken, they're measuring how long it takes after the order is given. Not long how it takes WIndows to issue the order. There's also the matter of how screens are drawn. When lag measurements are taken (like with the bodnar device), the measurements vary depending on what part of the screen is being measured. If the screen is drawing top to bottom, obviously the top of the screen will update quicker. The process isn't binary with LCD (since they copied, for no real reason, the old method that CRT used). Here again, I'm fairly certain that Vive and Rift both update all pixels simultaneously. The new frame is updated, and they all instantly update. At near instantaneous speed thanks to OLED having much faster switching times.
Cheers Paul (I had typed enough in previous post lol) Low latency rocks !!!! Step down res even more I don't care ! (-:
I think with the current state of VR it comes down to the old debate of looks vs gameplay. Some people will always be excited as much by the visual graphics of gameplay while others love the feel and immersion and wish for the the visual aspects to enhance gameplay. I just recently picked up iL2-Sturmovich - Battle of Stalingrad (BOS) as the developers implemented native VR and for me it is a remarkable game. I owned il2-1946 & iL2- Cliffs of Dover and I have not put as much hours in those 2 games than I have in BOS just because the gameplay has opened up to something quite astonishingly immersive due to VR technology. Old school dogfighting in VR can be a pain in the neck (literally) but damn is it fun and rewarding. I was so impressed with the game I purchased Battle of Moscow & will hopefully at some stage pre-order Battle of Kuban just to support the developers as they have done a magnificent job. But back to point, here you really do take a kick in the graphical department to run the game at 45/90fps, and for me with a 980ti, I need to drop the graphics down to Low. However, I would not want to experience this game in any other way, as I've proven with my previous purchases of 1946 & COD with limited game time on both titles pre-VR.
Good point the Steam Usage thingy, there was a Poll over at the Sector3 Forums about what people used and here's the final(ish) results: *VR, nothing else 44 vote(s) 31.9% Tripple screen, that's good 40 vote(s) 29.0% Single screen 45 vote(s) 32.6% VR is planed 20 vote(s) 14.5% Tripple is planed 9 vote(s) 6.5% Quite clearly VR did well, more so than what the Steam Stats would suggest. So I did some digging on the stats and found that: "Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data about what kinds of computer hardware and software our customers are using. Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous." So if anything that tells us that it doesn't paint an overall picture of what absolutely everyone is using, but ignoring that for a moment in March both the Vive & CV1 saw a very slight increase HTC Vive 0.24% +0.01% Oculus Rift 0.13% +0.02% In conclusion, as stats go for absolutely anything in life you can read into them what you want, after all they're just stats
If the survey is manual (I originally thought it collected that data automatically), then those inactive Steam accounts will by default get ignored, so it should actually give a better picture. Also new hardware is pretty well represented, considering that GTX 970 is the most popular graphics card and even expensive cards like GTX 1070/1080 together have a 5% share. That tells to me lots of people have the hardware VR ready, but for some reason haven't bought into VR yet.
Just because someone has "VR Ready" hardware doesnt mean they have any intention of going to/getting VR
Maybe people with VR said single screen in the survey as they use that more than their headset, these things we don't know, I still use single screen for other games for example.
I don't know how far statistics will get us here. If you would ask steam statistics how many people have wheels you probably are in less then 1% range. Still everybody have wheels on this forum. If listening to stats is the best to do, the best advise for Studio 397 would be to do everything for keyboard and joystick users and maybe drop wheel support. BTW, I've used primary a gamepad when i've played GT5 on Playstation 3 because I tought I'm faster (I had a wheel borrowed from a friend). And Sony constantly was telling me by advertisment that GT5 is the most realistic driving simulator. Well, this was before my simracing days. I think that VR is, like wheels, a perfect fit for racing simulators (and flight simulators). I have an Oculus Rift, I don't use it much although this tech fascinates me a lot. I wait for rfactor2 support. Racing simulations are the main reason I bought Oculus Rift - and rfactor2 is because of its realism (physics, FFB and soon graphics) my much preferred racing simulator.
Thankfully, some Sim-developers don't rely solely on stats to make their business decisions; neither should the VR community and it's the same passion that motivates some to ignore the stats and invest in possibility and dreams. Looking beyond the numbers has it's benefits once in a while.
Thanks don't need VR, I have the poor man's version using the Trackhat Clip+ wireless head tracker. It's like VR but different! At least that's what I'm telling my self. ....
Out of 6 people I know with VR I'm the only one that uses steam (They are mainly iracing buffs & bought vr pretty much soley for that) Only one of them read the iracing forums so the 1000+ vr (iracing members) that ticked that "survey" is also flawed Think there's more vr users out there than stats suggest even at this early stage