Having primarily engaged in console gaming the past few years I thought it was about time we had a decent spec PC in the house again. I decided on a high end MSI laptop with a glowing keyboard and UHD screen to level up the house tech. The predlets have been enjoying it too, getting to use a mouse (A high end logitech gaming mouse) to engage with some different types of games has been good for them. The Mac’s and Minecraft are one thing but it seems the high end Windows 10 stuff seems to be more reliable than my previous windows experiences. The Upgraded 10 from 8 on my older laptop (which was a good spec a few years ago) was appalling and crashy. It did work a bit though for the early access Kickstarter for Elite Dangerous and my original Oculus headsets the 1 and the DK2 did work (with a bit of faffing). Watching these original headsets evolve into todays product has been fascinating

SO with a new PC in the house I took the plunge and got the Oculus Rift and also the Touch controllers. It was the latter that really elevates the Rift from its previous incarnations. Now, with two sensors, it can triangulate the position of the headset and the controllers in a much bigger space. In fact it is more space than we have free even in the relatively open kitchen area. You don’t have to have a big space, some things are designer to be seated to standing in one place, but being able to draw the boundaries of the space and be notified of them in the headset (with a virtual mesh wall that appears) takes this much further than my previous home experiences, even with the PSVR.
The screen display resolution and refresh rate as you turn and move is much more comfortable than the PSVR, reducing some of the the nausea inducing effects of VR.
But what about the content? Well… As an old hand at VR and virtual it is still great to be able to put a headset on and just laugh or gasp at the impact these things can have.

Robo Recall – Comes with the setup, bright city environments and sneaker robots running at you. Using the Touch controllers you grab pistols from your side or shotguns from your back and blast away. You can catch and deflect incoming bullets, and if the bad guys get to close, drop the guns nd grab the machines and pull their arms off. You play in a single place, but turn a lot (risky with the cable) and teleport, which takes some getting use to as you have to orientate. It sees you ducking an dodging firing two directions at a time or putting 2 guns together and blam! Its very good!

SuperHot VR – This is even better! The original console SuperHot with its stylised orange characters and minimalist whist building structures sees you only have time progress when you move. The same applied in VR but you have head and body movement combined with both hands to deal with the incoming attacks. If you want to feel like John Wick, play this. Dodging, punching, catching guns dropped by bad guys and turning and dispatching those behind you is just superb. You have to be very careful of the swinging punches and and the gaming area border. It’s great defence training for my martial art, just a pity I can’t kick too.

Facebook Spaces – I created my avatar, I have a table in a room, at a fixed location, I can take pictures with a selfie stick and video called the family from there. It was very exciting, in many ways a backwards step from Second Life experiences but with a honed physical experience due to the headset. Roll on getting the two principles fully working, free moving, construction in virtual space with social interaction. (Yes I know there are few trying it 🙂 ) I also have bot tried the Oculus Rooms.

Google Tilt Brush – This is a beautiful experience. Painting and splashing colours and effects around in a full 3d Space. My attempt is not going to win any prizes but it felt very good. The Dobok should be white but I had picked a blue like white but in a white lit environment I did not notice

The Climb – This was a favourite for Predlet 1.0, 2.0 had a go too but VR is not good under 13’s according to the blurb. Reaching up and across with the touch controllers is very physical.

Elite Dangerous – It is a lot better with the higher resolution, it was hard to read the screens on DK2 and with the early betas from kickstarts of the game. Now, Wow! Also the Xbox controller schema on a headset is a lot easier to deal with than when I had my fancy stick but couldn’t see all the buttons. Elite still stick in my memory from the early release in VR when my screen cracked and I was on reserve oxygen, and found myself regulating my breathing in real life. That is a gaming moment I will remember for ever and is an example of the impact this level of immersion can have.

Star Trek Bridge Crew – Well I have that on the PSVR, but I am tempted to get it for the Rift too as there is cross play and I can friend myself of PSVR and see if we can get a 2 player team going 🙂

There are more experiences and games to explore of course but this cross section is pretty cool. I need to clear some more space for SuperHot VR and I did destroy the kitchen notice board with a side fist, but I caught the bad guys wagon and turned and used it on those attacking from the other side, with destroying the fridge too. Another memorable gaming moment too 🙂

I had a few issues getting the Rift to play movies, I used the virtual desktop but Amazon and Netflix didn’t want to stream out to another HDMI device. All very old school copy protection, or a setting I missed.

What’s missing is fully body, lets just hook a Kinect up so we can see legs too ? The dynamics of physical gaming come back into play, but in a tethered and potentially dangerous way, despite the boundary protection. The solution is far from ideal, but if it was about practicality…

My biggest problem is having to pack away and set up again each time with both sensors, it’s a barrier to entry even in a house that has quite a lot of room. It would also be handy if my phone and sms alerts that appear on my apple watch popped up in the view too 🙂

The proper games though are fantastic. The “Experiences” are usually way too short though Spiderman (free) is way way better than the utterly appalling Martian one (Paid) from a few years ago. Onwards!

Last week the pre-order of the Sony PSVR arrived and the question many people may have is it in any good? The short answer is yes. There are a few things caveats but in general I like it.

Despite being a bit more negative towards VR, compared to AR, it is hard not to feel a rush of amazement as a VR scene fills your field of view. The unit is easy to set up, some numbered cables get you installing an HDMI pass through box from the PS4 to the headset. This serves a dual purpose, one it lets others see what you are seeing on the main TV screen (if you want them too, albeit at the lower resolution the lenses use) or it lets you not turn the headset on and use the PS4 without any faffing around. The headset has a sliding front mechanism to allow you to easily install your face plus prescription glasses it, and then a sprung and adjustable back to keep it in place. The on switch is on the cable right next door to the volume controls, which is a little awkward if you press the wrong one. A set of in ear headphones plugs into the the same block, though we swapped that for some noise cancelling over ears.
@elemming and the predlets all had a go, and it is unfortunate that the unit says you have be 12 and over to use it. I am not quite sure what that is, though there are a lot of weird things that happen to your eyes and brain once inside a VR rig.
The headset has distinct blue lights on the from, sides and back that enable the camera to track it in space, which means you can stand and move a little, more on that in a moment. I dug up the PS3 Move controllers and after a lot of trying to charge, hitting the reset pin etc they seem to now be back to capacity and working. They are not essential, but they do enhance a few of the experiences (note I didn’t use the word game)

I used the supplied demo disc first, it created a wide and bright area to present the game selection menus. I picked Battlezone, for old times sake. Cockpits always work well in VR. If you are sat down with a controller indoor hand the cockpit feels right as you are already sort of in one. The demo gradually lit up the cockpit and you definitely feel a buzz. The lower resolution that a normal HD screen is noticeable in some moire patterns on textures but only if you look hard. I was soon whooshing the tank around reliving the early battle zone which was vector graphics and a two handle tank level control in amusement arcades, where you looked through a scope to see what was happening. So it fits with the upgrade to PSVR. Interestingly the demos all had an in view buy button, though no clever VR payment system here, it just goes back to the flat shop only delivered in VR.
Next I tried the paid for set of demos that is PSVR Worlds. The intro to this starts very dark, but you are aware you are in a hall of heroes, a flaming ball gradually illuminates whilst the sound crescendos. As menus go its pretty impressive. An important thing this does is let you see your controller in the VR view. It even lights up the right buttons as you press it. The tracking and view of the controller adds a lot to the experience even just as a menu. If you have put the controller down you can look around to find it, rather than pat around with your hands as if your eyes are shut with ones that don’t track the controller. This experience got richer playing gate London Heist experience. I enabled the two move controllers and holdings the game started they morphed into a pair of hands, pressing the trigger clenched them to a fist. The tutorial has you opening a draw, throwing a can into a bin and the most interesting is picking up a handgun. Because you are holding a controller already the grasping with the trigger does feel oddly like picking something up, which them moves around as you hand does. With the other hand you reach for a clip of bullets and push them into the gun in the other hand. The trigger then acts as, well, a trigger. It is very cool. The vignette of story gets you into a few shoot outs, though it is very short, yet the experience is impactful. Another option is to hit the shooting ranges. Sometimes with two uzi’s. You can reload these buy slamming the gun on the magazines stored vertically on the table, then go all John Wick on the targets point forwards with each gun in turn or taking multiple targets.
I stuck with the move to become Batman in Arkham VR. This is pretty stunning too, though once again very short. Some of the AR style features in VR assembling things are very convincing, again because of the Move controller. The freaky psychological elements of batman game recently where you turn around and a room has changed work very well in VR too. Reaching to you utility belt to grab the batarang or the grappler and hooking things back on there again is great. You play better stood up, though you can’t walk anywhere, you have to blip teleport to defined locations. It is a pity that all the batmobile and batwing interaction is not there you do no driving just grapple to the batwing, a quick loading pause and you are at a new venue. None the less I will remember this for a long while. It is one of those experiences, like the t-rex in tomb raider.
Back on PS VR Worlds the undersea adventure is an interesting one. It puts you in a dive cage and then you descend, it mention sharks in the title, so yes, there is a shark. You have no controls, you are in a cage and you feel utterly powerless. The rest of the family all experience the fear in different ways, but again it wont be forgotten in a hurry.
Then it was Driveclub VR. This one suffers the most from the resolution drop but when you are hurtling around and glancing across as you overtake you soon forget that. It is fast and can be quite nausea inducing. On my first race I pushed replay and watched again sat in my car, I chose to stand up and see what happened. I was standing up and turning around in a car doing 120mph around a corner. I nearly fell over, and certainly had to sit down and take a bit of a VR rest. It was pretty intense 🙂
Other things we have tried is the VR playroom, Predlet 1.0 was inside the headset playing the main character, I was able to join in on the TV with a normal view, seeing her avatar and the thing she controlled move around and working with her was cool.
The other collaborative experience is Keep Talking and no-one explodes. The headset view is of a bomb, with lots of different components, the external view for the other player(s) is of an instruction manual of text and pictures. Through descriptions and finding a common language like “the squiggle button with a dash on the top” you work together to stop the bomb. It is a fantastic party game and if you are disarming the bomb you feel a sense of powerlessness not seeing the manual, and vice versa for the manual readers.
Finally Eve:Valkyrie. Well this is pretty intense but my favourite full game. The cockpit and the combat are stunning. It has a feel of the BSG reboot, a quietness to the space and the ship turn very quickly unlike maybe in Elite Dangerous, where there is more momentum. As a fan of flight games and dogfights, probably are than the fps shooters on the ground I feel in my element. Targeting with missiles uses the headset and the extra glass in you canopy to be able to get a visual lock which certainly makes you look around. The frantic firing and explosions and space debris has you ducking and weaving. It is wonderful once you get over space sickness.
So yes the PSVR is great. I like it a lot. We just need more full content done well, like any new tech.