My993C2

I cannot speak about the Oculus Rift CV1 directly since I do not own one. I own the HTC Vive. But the Rift and Vive have a lot of common performance characteristics. What's the deal? It's the immersion factor. You actually feel like you are in the car (minus the physical G-Force and hard braking effects of course). Sure the resolution while under the VR HMD hood is not ideal. But it's easy to look beyond the less than ideal resolution and embrace the ability to trick your brain into thinking you are in the actual vehicle and to be able to actually look to you apexes like you would in the real world on a hairpin turn is awesome. I can go on and on all day about it trying to describe it. But really you need to try it to know what I am talking about.

In regards to motion sickness, so far I have been really lucky as any sickness I have had has not even occurred while driving in my VR racing sim. Or if it had happened in the sim, it is minimal and lasts only a second or two. In otherwords the only time I ever experienced motion sickness in VR was one day when I was doing this VR tech demo where I am exploring this midevil castle and I was constantly teleporting from point A to point B to point C, etc, etc, etc with barely anytime between teleports. After many minutes of this constant jumping around all of a sudden the sickness hit me. Not a big deal. I took the HMD off, and spent about 10 or so minutes to recover before coming back and this time not jumping around the demo as fast as I was before. Then the few times in the racing sim I have had a hint of sickness was when I was traveling in the sim at a high rate of speed, F'ed up and ran into a wall coming to a sudden dead stop. In these cases I have experienced very very very minor sickness which only lasts a few seconds. Of course had this happened (coming to a sudden dead stop in the real world), it would have hurt a lot more than it did in VR.

I am still not sure if all the motion sickness being reported by the iRacing people is:

1) Just the luck of the draw for each person?
2) Is there a difference between the Rift and the Vive? iRacing does not support the Vive yet.
3) Are people experiencing the sickness not using high end GPUs like my 1080?
4) Is iRacing's VR implementation inferior to some of the other racing sims?

#4 should be answered in a few weeks when iRacing supports the Vive in the coming September 6th release.

Anyway, VR is the bomb. I highly recommend people try it for themselves. It is a game changer as far as my experiences are concerned and it will only get better in the years to come. The immersion factors of the present day 1st GEN VR HMDs make up for the less than ideal resolution.

User 52121

Justin and My993 both have excellent posts.

The Rift CV1 is a step up in clarity and resolution from the DK2. The DK2 seemed to be borderline, maybe a 50/50 split: some felt the clarity was "good enough", some didn't. When CV1 was released, a lot of people who complained about the DK2's clarity claimed that the CV1 was now "good enough" - maybe a 90/10 split now.

It's not 4K resolution. Don't expect it to be laser sharp like a nice big 120/144Hz monitor. If you squint, or if you want to be picky, you can stare at the screen hard enough and see the pixels. Far, far away distance is not as clear (because you run into limitations of the screen and how small the pixels are, relative to the detail it's trying to draw.)

That said - if you move your head even a little, your brain does an amazing job of picking up details as they're rendered and putting the picture together. If you go into it with the plan to just relax and drive, within a few minutes, you don't even notice that it's a little fuzzy. Your brain fills it in. To me, it's a little bit like being every so slightly nearsighted. Your brain compensates.

The screen is clear enough that, in the RUF, I can read the tire pressure #'s on the dash. I've used the Rift on tracks I know, and completely new tracks I've never driven before, and have been 100% fine. To me, I would not run it any other way.

I started off with the DK1, which by CV1 standards, was HORRIBLE resolution. After a week of playing with the DK1, I wanted to run an official race so I swapped back to my triples (1920x1080 BenQ screens) and the world seemed so FLAT. I took my triples down that afternoon and never put them back up.

The immersion. The 3D. The ability to use your DEPTH perception, the ability to check over your shoulder.... to ME, it FAR outweighs having a bigger 2D screen.

It's hard to describe unless you've experienced it. Without the Rift, when you are placed "in the car" in the sim, you see a picture on your screen of a RUF dashboard. With the Rift, you are IN the RUF.

User 52121

As for motion sickness... there are definitely reports of it out there.

The only time *I* have ever experienced it is when I spun the car and rolled backwards. Rolling backwards and turning instantly hits me. I don't know why. OH and when I tried using my DK1 on a SimXperience Stage 5 motion sim. Otherwise, I generally DO get motion sickness - I can't read while in the car, etc. But outside of the two instances above, NEVER had an issue.

I've witnessed a few friends experience motion sickness. In those cases, I'm fairly positive it's because the lense adjustments were not correct - I have a wide head, they had a narrow head, and we did not go through the setup to adjust for their eyes. Seems MOST of the complaints out there about motion sickness also seem to relate to people not properly setting up their IPD.

MarcD147

I have been looking at this for a while but I guess I haven't looked hard enough...

what does the complete shopping list look like for an VR (eg rift) setup look like?
can it be done for 1k? 2k?

Marc

My993C2

Are you starting from scratch with your computer and sim racing controllers or can you piece together a VR capable rig based on some existing hardware you may already have? If you are starting new, it won't be cheap and you will definitely need a high end video card. Not necessarily the 1080 GPU, but don't skimp on the video card. Without it, there is no point in jumping into VR because a system that performs poorly might turn you off of VR not because VR is bad but because your system cannot handle it.

Keep in mind I am posting dollar amounts here using our funny Canadian money which has tanked in the last few years. But I recently put together a new dedicated sim racing rig and here is what it cost me:

- i7 6700 CPU with 16 GB RAM and nVidia 1080 GPU - $2300 CDN.
- HTC Vive VR HMD system - $1200 CDN.
- RSeat N1 racing rig - a little over $2500 CDN.
- Fanatec V2 Wheel Hub, V3 pedals, Shifter, Porsche Wheel and F1 Wheel - a little over $3000 CDN.

Plus numerous other small items like an audio headset, a license for voice recognition software (which makes controlling the system while you are under the VR hood easier), tripods for my VR lighthouses, etc, etc, etc. This all added more to the final total. So I am a bit over $9k (in Canadian monopoly money) for my new VR sim racing rig. I should have gone with an 80/20 rig instead of the RSeat N1 rig. The N1 is not bad, but 80/20 would have been better. Plus my Fanatec wheel, pedal and shifter controllers are only mid-range sim racing controllers. I could have spent a lot more had I bought high end Direct Drive wheels and high end pedals. But I did not skimp on the computer or the GPU and it is all worth every penny that I spent for VR.

Until you try VR you don't really know how immersive it can be.

User 52121

My993's costs are about right once you convert back to USD.

I have a similar PC, but I'm using a nVidia 1070 GPU (a step down from the 1080) and it handles iRacing in VR without breaking a sweat... so you can save a few bucks there.

Also note that, if your only intent for VR is sim racing - the Vive *is* more expensive. I believe the Vive sells for ~$900 USD, and the Oculus sells for $600. The difference is that the Vive comes with VR hand controllers, and the Rift does not (yet... when released the Rift's hand controllers will be +$300).

So if you're just going to be iRacing, the Rift is cheaper. The Rift also includes a mic and speakers... and the speakers actually DO sound REALLY good. Enough that I use them over my 5.1 audio system.

Lumbergs Lackey....MmmmKay

Anyone in the CT area want to take a spin in the GT3 rig to help me refine the prototype?

http://www.isrtv.com/motion-simulato...he-motion-rig/

coryf

Wow! It would be worth the trip up there to spend some time on that.

Looks a lot like the one GPX labs in Miami uses.

hf1

Oh my...!

ProCoach

As usual, answers quickly escalate in value and complexity, here on RL!

You could put something together for a little over $2K, but not $1K, from scratch. Most of the gear below blows through that budget, though.

You'll need a 970 (or R9 480) or better GPU for Rift (and I'm only speaking of Rift because I only have experience with both Development Kits and have a Rift now), so at minimum, https://www3.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/

For instance here: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/clp/ocul...at748301736879 plus a Logitech wheel and pedals could get you in at right around $2K.

Of course, I went nuts on the PC side because the more capability of the hardware, the better the detail will scale and the less the latency. But it's good to start, even on a single screen setup, just to begin to learn the sims.

Frank 993 C4S

I'll be right over!!

Lumbergs Lackey....MmmmKay

I'm setting up testing times. Would love to have more opinions. :]

ProCoach

Will have to make a detour for this! Sweet work.

93 FireHawk 968

Wow, that's a simulator.

Lumbergs Lackey....MmmmKay

Thanks guys.

I've gotten a couple of PMs, would love to have a day were several individuals could come by and put the simulator through its paces. It's still a prototype and as such still has bugs but hoping with help from pro and novice drivers I can make it better.

Please PM me if you're in the CT Fairfield county area so we can put it through it paces and I can further develop.

I'll update this post from time to time as I'm working with Kunos to make it better.

Also, while not as pretty or finished as gpxs simulator, I have a few differentiating factors that make my simulator stand out. A couple I can't speak about yet.

Thanks