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RaceRoom Racing Oculus DK2 and Simracing

Discussion in 'Virtual Racing League' started by carloscasas, Oct 30, 2014.

  1. SilentChill

    SilentChill Problem Maker

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    I'm lucky I don't get any kind of motion sickness, but I do get scared sick playing Alien Isolation , does that count ?
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  2. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    You are in good company @SilentChill, fear is a very natural response to playing Alien Isolation with the Rift.
  3. ericRacer

    ericRacer You get old because you stop playing ! Gold Contributor

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    Is the effect of "tunnel vision" is disturbing ?o_O with no peripheral view
  4. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    The rift does have a field of view that is still short of your natural vision. In practice I find it more akin to having a racing helmet on, it does not really break immersion for me.

    I suspect that FOV, higher screen resolution and eventually integrated eye tracking will all be important virtual reality R&D areas. VR is still
    in its infancy.
  5. Pit

    Pit - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Gold Contributor

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    Interesting article about AC and oculus rift:

    " The biggest complaint I have about playing Assetto Corsa on the Oculus Rift DK2 is nothing whatsoever to do with the software itself, but the limitation of the DK2′s panel. In racing, you’re constantly hunting the horizon for information on upcoming corners or distant cars. Even though Oculus’ 2nd generation development kit headset is vastly improved in terms of resolution compared to its predecessor, it just doesn’t pack enough pixels to make gazing into the distance anything other than a jumble of dots. That’s not to say Assetto Corsa is unplayable on the Rift, far from it. It merely serves as a reminder that we’ll have to wait until the first consumer edition of the Rift to alleviate the issue."

    http://www.roadtovr.com/assetto-corsa-oculus-rift-dk2-virtual-reality-preview/

    First I was going to to order one unit but I will wait for the final release.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  6. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    Yes I have commented before that resolution limitations have more implications for racing than flight Sims. That said the DK2 is an awesome experience just the same. But it is a good idea to wait for anyone who has consumer expectations. Even then there will be some advantages and disadvatages to using the rift.
    • Informative Informative x 1
  7. raidho36

    raidho36 Member

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    @noorbeast I would have to disagree with the statement that sharp vision is more important for racing than [combat] flight. Usually people use very subtle braking and turning markers such as cracks on the road, but you can alternatively use bigger markers that are found in plentiful amounts on any track and are clearly visible in the Rift. I have no issue with this since I have started car simming with VR so I never used subtle markers in the first place, so I have no issue with re-learning all of that. With flight sims however that's not possible because there can't be "bigger markers" for landmarks in the distance which are already the only markers, and small airplanes with barely distinguishable silouettes let alone tiny militray markings on them, because there's simply nothing else in the sky. I'm in no big disadvantage markers-wise when driving in the Rift (I'm in a huge advantage FOV and headtracking-wise), but flight sims are pretty much impossible to play competitively. Still fun to just aimlessly fly around though, especially if you're going to quit the game without landing.

    It has to be noted that by comparison to HD triples (or even single HD panel), even CV1 with its UHD screen will still be heavily lacking of picture clarity and while you may be able to see some of the small markers, subtle markers will still be invisible until they get right up your nose, and the same thing with landmarks and enemy airplanes. If you want hard numbers, typical PPD (angular resolution - direct measurement of picture clarity) of an HD monitor is 50-80PPD depending on how large is the monitor and how far is it set, whereas DK2 is slightly above 15PPD, and CV1 is supposedly slightly under 25PPD assuming it's going to use that 21:9 UHD Samsung panel.
  8. SilentChill

    SilentChill Problem Maker

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    I have not tried a combat sim but for Prepared the dk2 works perfectly. It is by far superior to any kind of monitor setup however that is only my opinion.
  9. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    World War II combat simulation takes a good deal of both knowledge and skill. Two of the most crucial are:

    Air recognition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_recognition

    Combat tactics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_combat_manoeuvring

    Even the DK1 Rift can be successfully used for competitive World War II combat simulation. The key is making the most of graphics manipulation for any given resolution, tailored to spotting, which involves far more than just resolution. Non Rift using competitive World War II combat simulation players have long used graphics tweaks to improve spotting.

    My highly tweaked Tridef and graphics pipeline for the DK1 for War Thunder has slightly less cockpit sharpness than the native War Thunder DK2 graphics implementation, but is superior in all longer distances. You can of course tweak graphics for the DK2 and take advantage of the higher resolution. You can use both in-game settings and external tools like SweetFX to get the most out of the graphics pipeline. Then go watch some real World War II combat on Youtube so you realise how useless marker recognition is and instead go practice silhouette spotting, which is what real combat pilots do.

    Next, spend time refining your control settings and joystick set up. Do consider mods such as joystick extensions, which give more realistic and finer control.

    Last, understand and practice combat tactics.

    Do be realistic, if you are using a Rift, joystick and in-cockpit view you will never be competitive in something like Arcade mode for games like War Thunder, but you should consistently be mid field if you are any good. On a level playing field, such as the Simulator mode in War Thunder, you can consistently finish in the top spots with the Rift. The little a well set up Rift gives away in resolution it more than makes up for in natural situational awareness.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  10. raidho36

    raidho36 Member

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    @noorbeast Thanks, that's a very good points. However, tweaks are just tweaks ultimately, and you're supposed to use your real vision, not special tricks.
    >Do be realistic, if you are using a Rift, joystick and in-cockpit view you will never be competitive in something like Arcade mode for games like War Thunder
    Arcade mode is specifically designed with mouse control and casual player in mind, and it takes it to such a far extent that using cockpit view and a joystick makes you handicapped against mouse users with nose camera view. With DCS or IL-2 that's not the case because the game is only designed to work with joystick and support for other input methods is rudimentary.
  11. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    The same applies to DCS, you can squeeze a lot out of the Rift by using the in game and external graphics available via SweetFX. Again the situational awareness is great with the likes of the P51 or Dora. Jets have other on board indicators. IL2 BOS does not have Rift yet and COD is not supported via the likes of Tridef, mores the pity.
  12. John Hien Nguyen

    John Hien Nguyen Member

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    Hi guys, I had some time this morning and modified the Oculus SDK 0.4.3 to compensate for the DK2 headtracking via shared memory (well, windows file mapping). Going to do further testing in the coming weeks, but it fixes Noorbeast's jerkiness when the camera is fixed on the platform. There's hope yet! Here's how I did it:
    1. I send the position of my pots via serial from my microcontroller to my Motion Simulator program via serial-over-usb.
    2. I added an extra thread in my program which receives these values, transforms them into roll/pitch and finally into a quaternion. This value is stored in shared memory.
    3. The Oculus SDK retrieves this quaternion and uses it to calculate the pose sent to the game.

    Was pretty simple, will probably wait until the Oculus SDK settles down and then I'll share these findings with the SimTools devs.
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  13. raidho36

    raidho36 Member

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    @John Hien Nguyen That's excellent! Although it would be better if there would be some convention about it, so best to share as soon as possible. If more sim software developers will pick it up, Oculus may eventually officially support that.
    • Agree Agree x 1
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  14. SilentChill

    SilentChill Problem Maker

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    Wow thats awesome !! If you need me to do any testing for you I can do no matter what state it is I would like to be some kind of help :)

    Wish I had the knowledge to work stuff like this out, I just know how to follow instructions and use a bit of initiative and good with DIY :)
  15. nclabs

    nclabs Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Wow, that's exactly what I thinked to solve the problem by software, but It can work perfectly only in a very "high definition" motion sim, because every delay will be a problem to the right position calculation. Do you have some video that's show this thing?
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  16. raidho36

    raidho36 Member

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    @nclabs Since he reads data from pots and immediately sends it back to PC, I beleive the latency wouldn't depend much on rig type, more on how the messaging pipeline is organized.
  17. nclabs

    nclabs Active Member Gold Contributor

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    I was referring to the real simulator delay, I mean the frame where we sit on. But even with some slow and swingy simulators it can be a good solution, because even if we can't solve the issue, with a little bit of tuning we should be able to reduce it a lot. So, GO @John Hien Nguyen !
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  18. raidho36

    raidho36 Member

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    @nclabs Yes I see what you're saying, but pots are reading immediately relevant data since they are directly connected to the rig. The only latency there could be if the assembly is very loose and jerks around terribly, but it's not like even latency, more like tracking mismatch. Other than that, it's a latency imposed by pipeline processing design.
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  19. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    Any further update @John Hien Nguyen?

    It would be great if you could share what you have done, as motion simulation with the Rift is just one of those natural fits and it would be good to see some ongoing use, integration and refinement with Simtool rigs.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  20. Chumet1

    Chumet1 Member

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    Probe They produced one like me dizzy