I think this is a the right combinations of tech at a reasonable price, though I still wonder about the larger viability of the VR market. It's also nice this is self-contained and doesn't require a PC.
I've owned a Vive for over two years and not having to devote a good chunk of my basement to it is another plus, along with not having to maintain a really beefy gaming PC.
I would much prefer to not deal with a PC; this isn't an anti-windows thing, I work on Win10 all day writing code. However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
VR is a lot of fun though, and for most of the past 2 years was worth the hassle. Lately though I don't have the energy to fight my gaming rig and I when I occasionally play now, I just ignore whatever issues crop up. I'm ready for a simpler solution at a good price.
I agree with your point that the current VR solution are a huge burden in space and setup, too many cables, too much room needed, too many tinkering ...
However I disagree with this:
> However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
I have no idea how that could happen to you, if you have super exotic hardware or if steam vr doesn't work.
I maintain 3 "gaming" computers, and they basically never have issues. The "everything need to auto update once a week" is getting boring pretty fast sure, but nothing gets broken; sound, video, gsync, keyboard/mouse, network ... It's actually quite impressive how reliable all of it is. Hell, ever since moving to networked laser printers even the scanning/printing chain doesn't fail randomly anymore.
Compared to even ten years ago in the late XP days, windows and the modern drivers available for it have become incredibly reliable.
The frequent updates are a minor annoyance if you use the gaming computer regularly, but if used infrequently they all happen at once. It makes booting into Windows to play games feel like a chore.
This has been exacerbated for me because initially I only allocated ~20GB for the Windows boot partition, which is plenty for Ubuntu but apparently nowhere near enough for Windows. Even at ~30GB, I have to do things to reduce the amount of space Windows uses (like disable hibernation, manually compact WinSxS, etc) so that those big named updates can complete.
In short: Windows is too high maintenance for infrequent use.
To be honest, I think that's just on you for allocating too little space. 20 GB is listed as the bare minimum for a windows 10 64 bit install [0], and only 10 GB extra for apps & updates isn't much.
For those of us in an area without good broadband, it doesn't matter if you have plenty of hard drive space. If I sit down to play videogames one night a month and I have to sit through hours of updates, it's infuriating.
The frequent updates are a minor annoyance if you use the gaming computer regularly, but if used infrequently they all happen at once. It makes booting into Windows to play games feel like a chore.
Yes! I have two machines I use for VR stuff, and I face this every time I come back to VR! I even have the full hard drive allocated, not just a 20GB partition.
Same here, for a while I just kept my machine in stand-by just so I don't have to deal with all the updates and things randomly breaking. Looking forward to a solution that just always works. VR is evening after-work entertainment for me, which happens at a point when I'm done solving problems after 10 hours doing just that.
> This has been exacerbated for me because initially I only allocated ~20GB for the Windows boot partition
Ouch! Watch out for the coming Win10 fall update (October). It might brick your setup, as it needs (supposedly) minimum 20 GB free space.
Note/disclaimer: Not sure how true this is, couldn't validate it personally. That said, I'll definitely ensure all of my Win10 system boot partitions have at least 30 GB free space.
Yea I boot to Windows maybe once a month and it seems like every time, it’s: “oh you weren’t planning on gaming tonight we’re you? You have 3 updates to apply, pal!”
I think part of this is the often dual use nature of these machines. Gaming consoles have updates every couple of months, which might be more often, but the systems are also left on or left in a low-power mode where they will still check for and download (and possibly apply?) updates, depending on how the power settings are set.
If you used a gaming console the same way you are using your main computer (booting it into a separate OS for most the time, until you all of a sudden wanted to play a game) you might also find that there's updates waiting to apply, and some games require the OS update before they'll play, etc.
I feel like I'm the only one that still shuts off the PS4 after I'm done. Why would I let my console run idle for days, consuming power that I don't need? If I want to game, I turn it on, make my dinner, go to play.
Put yourself on the semi-annual targetted channel (for business) + defer updates by a few months. Then the only updates you'll really be bothered with are the occasional critical patches, and any feature updates will have been tested in the field by millions of others way before you get them.
My gaming rig is an Alienware box, I don't have the model handy. I'm not running anything other than Steam/SteamVR on it. My buddy bought the same setup and has the exact same issues I have and often txts me to find out how I fixed it on my setup.
I use an Alienware 15 R3 as my main Windows gaming machine (since I game a lot at various locations) and I don't have any of the issues you describe. Sounds like you got a lemon. Their warranty support is excellent, so you should probably ask them about it.
Just wondering, are you running steamVR and/or Vive? My hunch is it's a SteamVR thing as my other PC gaming friends have all said the same thing (aka never have any of these issues).
Well then alienware must have had major loss of quality in their component choice in the last few years, because gaming series laptop (asus rog, msi g series, alienware, ...) are usually very well supported and all pretty much include the same components.
Anyway, I maintain that this part of your experience is anecdotal and not representative of the general experience.
No. This is wrong. I have built a handful of "gaming" rigs for Windows 10 over the last couple of years, and every single one of them had egregious, stupid problems with the hardware. I hate this bullshit "Nothing is wrong with Windows" thing when there are clearly an increasingly substantial number of people hitting catastrophic issues with brand new versions of Windows and regular, everyday hardware. I have been building computers for a quarter of a century, and I know what I'm talking about. Windows 10 has problems with mundane hardware. Onboard ethernet NIC, sound, wireless adapter, and of course the GPUs. Windows 10 has had problems with all of it. Even when Windows is "working correctly" it's hosing people's setups. Or are you going to deny that MS pushed forcible updates that bricked customer machines, too?
This. I haven't got the vive because I don't want to get a gaming rig. It's too expensive, and then it comes with a lot of issues. Instead I got an occulus Go and the all-in-one experience is awesome. It just works. Coincidentally, I also bought a switch and I got the same feeling. It just works.
The Vive and Go aren't in the same market, though. It's like comparing a Tesla to Leaf. It's not that the Leaf is a bad car, it's that it can't hold a candle to the Model S.
That's the point though: imagine if you can just drive a Leaf off the lot and really enjoy it maintenance free from day 1 onwards, but you need to assemble the Tesla and do a bunch of minor maintenance every time you want to drive it.
I'll take the Leaf, or better yet, do what I've done with VR so far: wait.
The nice inbetween is grabing an eGPU and a laptop (since most are going to own at least one laptop anyway). That's how I've got my Vive rig set up. Plug the laptop in and go to town in VR; finish the session and it all breaks down and packs away easy.
Yeah, just getting it working is ...unbelievably difficult. Then again I think git is unbelievably difficult and people keep having to explain to me that it's really simple, lol.
So you turn on your computer, wait half a minute to half an hour for Steam to update, then try to launch anything (like a game) and it too has to update, so now you're just standing in the middle of your room, controller in hand, waiting for another 20 minute download. ...god, is steam downloading something else now? Okay, take off the helmet, fix steam and the three things that crashed while you were in purgatory, put the helmet back on, restart ...everything use the fraction of a percent of the UI that HTC devoted to selecting something from your library, and then your gtg.
I think I've got a good mental model of it. It seems like every action you need to do is a whole new thing to type into the command line. Maybe you could say it's like learning Chinese in that each word gets its own glyph as opposed to english where you build up words with characters (which are atomic). I have most day to day commands memorized but beyond that I have to google and possibly even do a full fledged search to get the command. That wouldn't happen if you could guess what the command might be or maybe if commands were grouped hierarchically or even better if I never have to think about version control at all, lol.
Compare that to my experience: I was working from home and it was my lunch hour, vive box came in the mail, opened it up, plugged in three cables, downloaded a steamVR update (a minute or two and then possibly a 5 minute restart for the drivers IIRC), Zip tied the lighthouses to my wall, ran the setup, put on the goggles and went "oh wow VR is actually way cooler than I ever thought"
Agree, I've used the Vive quite a bit and setting up my PC etc, is definitely a huge barrier to entry. IMO standalone VR is the way to go because it's more readily available, and the lower fidelity graphics forces designers to focus on usable UX that's simple instead of pushing the best absolute graphics.
6dof was a major holdout for these standalone units: VR without 6dof is an entirely different experience - I don't think the "VR" moniker is at all appropriate (you don't experience "presence"). This is a much needed jump and should do well for showing people what "real VR" feels like.
The only gripe I have with this is that, I assume, the controllers would stop working outside of camera FOV. It sounds like minor gripe, but it typically becomes frustrating for someone who is used to full-fidelity room-scale.
Can't overstate enough how important 6DOF headset and hands are to VR. When I got my Rift setup the 3D depth effect is cool but really what makes VR is being able to pick up and hold an object and directly interact with objects using your hands.
For anyone interested check out videos of people using Oculus Medium, something as insanely complicated and fiddly as 3D sculpting becomes instantly natural when you interact with both hands in 3D instead of a mouse or pen in 2D.
Chiming in to say no problems here on my Windows PCs. I do see where you might bump into these troubles, though.
Installing Nvidia drivers will usually set the default sound device to HDMI for your main display instead of restoring the previous default. So, it's possible to end up juggling 3-5 audio outputs after a driver update - on board, on board headphones, Vive USB, Vive HDMI, and main monitor HDMI.
I run a little Powershell script after those updates that returns everything to my settings and disable all the telemetry services/tasks, but there are a bunch of free utilities that makes audio device switching easy - Ear Trumpet, Audio Switcher, and a few others.
Also, for whatever reason, sometimes Steam just needs to be relaunched for SteamVR to work properly after a Stream client update. Very rarely I'll need to reboot for things to work properly (if the base stations don't wake up).
Finally, I strongly recommend uninstalling the advanced open VR program that's often recommended in old tips and tricks sites (it's very outdated and known to cause problems now) and run a round of "verify game integrity" on SteamVR and all Valve VR entries (from inside Stream library, right click menu).
Oh, and finally, finally, laptops/pre-built PCs will usually have some driver updater/maintenance utility adding a layer of annoyances on top of all this.
I love my Vive, but I have to admit that there can be some annoyances. OTOH, I had just as many issues with the GearVR (an Oculus product) and solutions basically boiled down to hoping it would be addressed in an update or allowing 7 constantly running background processes.
This is not meant as negative towards you at all. But I think your post demonstrates the gulf in perception between the savvy PC gamer and others. You say you have no problems, then go on to list a whole bunch of problems.
You're in a nice groove where this stuff is pretty easy to manage, but to a lot of people this stuff is an exasperating pain in the butt.
Oh, I totally agree and that was my point (besides offering up some advice for others with these issues). These are all annoyances that can be dealt with easily once you know the solutions, but you have to know how to arrive at those solutions. Most PC users would have trouble, and I would even argue many savvy users would have trouble nailing down some of the causes.
Realistically, though, most of these aren't VR problems as much as they're general PC gaming problems with Nvidia and Steam. I accept that price for the flexibility I get in return.
Contrast that to having no control over the various background processes and apps always loaded in memory when using a GearVR, though. Like most consumer-friendly tech, it just works until it doesn't. Then there are only three solutions possible: reboot phone, uninstall updates and reinstall them, and hope the bug is addressed in the next update, whenever that will be. (I'm assuming Oculus with lock down the OS similar to what Samsung does with Android, which means major compromises if you want to try rooting it.)
I do realize I'm in the minority that spends a few hours fixing or working around a problem, rather than shelve the unit and play update roulette in random short increments. But, with VR still in its infancy, are we/they really ready for those types of consumers? I mean, there is a severe lack of standards across the board, making handholding really difficult. Everyone threw up their hands at tablet UIs and decided to just make them bigger phones and I'd hate to see VR suffer the same fate of being dragged down by the lowest common denominator.
It reminded me of the old days when I had a big library of AUTOEXEC.BAT files, one for each game, to set things up exactly the way they needed to be set up for that game. That was great for me, but it was a sign of just how unapproachable PC gaming could be for the average person back then.
> This is not meant as negative towards you at all. But I think your post demonstrates the gulf in perception between the savvy PC gamer and others. You say you have no problems, then go on to list a whole bunch of problems.
These are issues that occur rarely. I have less troubles using my PC than some friends do with their consoles.
It helps that Steam truly does update things in the background, and that it is possible to bandwidth throttle updates.
In comparison, a rarely played console will want to potentially spent hours on updates.
A PC has advantages because it is most likely used daily, so the updates have already happened in the background.
Honestly, both consoles and PCs are about an equal pain to keep running now days. PCs have gotten better over the years, and consoles got worse, and they have kind of met in the middle.
I've got no VR and no problems. Game infrequently, computer off for weeks at a time. Yes, Steam or Battle.NET will need to install updates but that's just like any console.
Holy crap! I have never experienced ANYTHING like that. Even updating my AMD video drivers is a painless experience.
Occasionally I've kept Firefox tabs open four 3 weeks or something "feels a little off" so I restart more than the once a month necessary to install Windows updates, but other than that, I feel confident that I can hit the VR button on steam and have the dashboard in the helmet ready to boot a game by the time I've put the strap on.
My absolute worst experience was a game crashing VR over and over in one spot and a restart fixing it
I feel you with all of the same struggles except my situation is a bit trickier. I like playing with my GF so that means allowing her to watch and hear as I play too. So now, not only am I running cables to another room, I am also connecting steam link to stream the VR instance as well. Getting sound to come through is a hassle sometimes since SteamVR audio settings seems to reset my split audio feeds.
I am looking forward to this but also a much more streamlined future iteration that will still let me take advantage of my PC power.
This is interesting. My PC is in a little office; if I want to play things sprawled out, I've got a Steamlink (after they went on sale for $5) attached to my TV in the other room. If I wanted to use VR, I'd need to move the PC into the TV room and clear some space.
... or, I could run some long cables. Out of interest, how long are the cables in your setup, and how well does it work?
I'm running 25ft cables along the trim. I have some sticky cable tie mount pads + zip ties that I use to keep them in place. Not very sightly but it works quite well. Apparently you need some pretty specific HDMI and USB cables that can handle the signal.
> I could run some long cables. Out of interest, how long are the cables in your setup, and how well does it work?
I don't use my setup for VR, but I've got my gaming rig in the office extended to the living room TV.
USB and HDMI over 30 meters, with one active USB hub/HDMI extender connecting two 15 meter cables in the middle. The HDMI extender needed some fine-tuning, but after that everything just works as it should. Just need to remember to turn the hub/extender off when not in use or else it's quite a pointless electricity drain.
Tho I'm not sure how well a setup like that would work for VR, with latency being such an important issue and the VR setup introducing even more cable length to it all.
Yeah, it's the VR part that throws me for a twist. I had a 30m HDMI cable once; my video card/TV were only capable of 720p@30Hz over it, which obviously isn't a good match for VR. Apparently active cables are the way to go.
I don't use VR. However, I do have a scratch-built gaming PC, and other than having to buy a new part every couple years or so, I haven't had any maintenance issues with it.
I agree with less hassle generally being better, but the PC gamer in me just can't transition to "mobile" like that because that what it would feel like to me.
The hardware in the OC Quest is probably some kind of Nvidia Tegra style SoC, at least that's what I'd expect in terms of performance out of it. Ideally, I'd want the future of VR to be in eye candy popping UHD with super high refresh rates, tho I doubt mobile computing will be up for that task in the next decade.
I was hoping for them to announce a higher dpi, wider fov unit for use with Elite Dangerous and DCS World. Alas, I shall keep on waiting. 95hz 3440x1440 34" 21:9 curved monitor with TrackIR is pretty good meanwhile.
Key point is that my monitor has a far better DPI much thanks to having to only render a much smaller viewport. TrackIR works great with that, until VR display tech hits that next gen level.
I don't really see how this frees up much space in the basement compared to a Vive. Room scale VR will still require a large empty space to operate in, as I imagine the technology to make the user phase through solid matter is still at few years out.
If your plan with this is sitting or standing VR, well, the HTC Vive already supports that configuration as well.
> Lately though I don't have the energy to fight my gaming rig and I when I occasionally play now, I just ignore whatever issues crop up. I'm ready for a simpler solution at a good price.
you sound like you should be a console gamer. Cheap(er) and simple is what they do/market. And PS4 has PSVR too.
On the other hand, I want the most realistic graphics, no noticeable lag, superb quality first. Convenience second, after vr immersion feels real. Premature optimization is the root of all evil!
I've owned a Vive for over two years and not having to devote a good chunk of my basement to it is another plus, along with not having to maintain a really beefy gaming PC.
I would much prefer to not deal with a PC; this isn't an anti-windows thing, I work on Win10 all day writing code. However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
VR is a lot of fun though, and for most of the past 2 years was worth the hassle. Lately though I don't have the energy to fight my gaming rig and I when I occasionally play now, I just ignore whatever issues crop up. I'm ready for a simpler solution at a good price.