(Un)Real Life
DAVID HOLLINGWORTH slips a Rift over his head and takes his first steps into living with virtual reality
The T-Rex sequence actually had me stepping back and ducking from the spray of spit when the beast roared into my face
Ireally don’t know if VR is here to stay, but the technology – now in its second or third coming depending on how many arguments you want to start – is certainly making its best case for itself yet. With a range of hardware, from Google Cardboard up to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, it’s even catering to all budgets. And with this rush of hardware comes a rush of software designed for it. There are documentaries, simple ‘almost being there’ experiences, and of course a raft of games, both dedicated and with added VT support.
But what is it like not just to review the experience, but to live with it?
VR isn’t really all that new, but the reason we’re coming to this only now is that it’s been… challenging to actually get hold of the hardware for review purposes. The hardware we did review was the personal property of our reviews editor, and getting one for the office – well, the home office – to facilitate more regular and real-world reviewing was a long haul. But it was eventually fruitful.
Oculus was kind enough to eventually send us its full review kit, which was a pretty solid box of hardware, including the Rift itself and an Alienware PC to run it all. It was a pretty much all-in-one solution… but it wasn’t quite what we wanted to write about.
Rather, we wondered… how does the Rift fit into an existing PC setup, and into the life of a longterm gamer? Which is where I come in, now looking like all VR adopters do – like a reject from a cyberpunk film from the 90s, staring about like an idiot to a degree that makes my flatmate giggle uncontrollably.
Getting to that point, however, was rather instructional, shall we say.
SETUP ALMOST EASY…
My home PC is a little old, so the first step was an upgrade to the video card – my trusty GTX 680 just wasn’t going to cut it. 3DMark’s Firestrike benchmark features a cut-off point for VR performance that was well above what my system could manage, but a shiny new GTX 1070 changed all that. It’s not a cheap upgrade, but given that was the only upgrade my system REALLY needed, I was impressed. Otherwise, it’s all cutting edge hardware from about four years ago, and still managing just fine.
That said, installation – because of that age – was not as smooth as it could have been, and as I’ve heard colleagues talk about. For one, technically speaking, at least, my PC should NOT be able to run the Rift. The Oculus Rift Compatibility Tool told me that I lacked the USB 3 ports, which seemed weird, because I have enough to plug in the headset and tracker. Or at least I thought, until I actually installed the hardware, and found out that only one of my USB 3 ports would work at a time.
It seems that there’s an issue with some older USB controllers, which means that the Rift only reads them as USB 2. Some folks even report that plugging in the tracker too slowly can be an issue, but no matter how speedy we were, we simply couldn’t get it to show up as installed. Oculus says that it can work through USB 2, but that tracking data will be limited. How limited, I wondered?
Well, as it turns out, not nearly as much as I thought. The Oculus software insists that my PC cannot handle the hardware – and reminds me in floating ten-point text whenever it can – but so far I’ve not noticed any issues.
Nonetheless, if you’re planning on getting a Rift – or a Vive, I would imagine – be aware that a PC with more modern components will make things much easier. That said, by simply ignoring the warnings of doom in the step-by-step process I got everything plugged in and working.
And then I got spat on by a T-Rex and scared the flatmate with an alien.
THOSE FIRST MOMENTS
Because you’re unlikely to have any games to begin with that are VR compatible, the Rift has three short sequences to show you what VR is all about, and they do a great job of… well, kind of scaring you. The T-Rex sequence in particular actually had me stepping nervously back from the charging beast, and ducking from the spray of spit when it roared into my face.
Then it walked over me, giving a rather personal look at where its cloaca should have been.
Even that brief exercise taught me a few things. The most important is that having someone talking next to you, when you cannot see them in the VR world, is deeply… weird. They’re voice is literally coming from a floating point to your side (or wherever), but they’re not there. They’re invisible.
The other is that vertigo is a definite thing to watch out for, as so far a lot of experiences I’ve experimented with really enjoy playing with depths and heights. Leaning forward to look over an edge is so immersive that it’s easy to actually get a little bit of fear, and I would imagine it would be an absolute game-breaker for someone actually scared of heights.
In fact, when I started playing through Fated (see review, P.69), that whole thing about phobias really came home to me. Let’s just say I don’t like spiders and SCREW YOU FATED FOR MAKING ME SCREAM LIKE A CHILD. Ahem. But I have to say… I am slowly becoming not just a convert, but possibly one of those annoying people who will insist all visitors from now on must give the experience a go. Between the Oculus store and Steam, there’s already a heap of games and apps to choose from, and those I have played are infinitely more engaging because of the virtual experience.
Watch this (virtual) space.