VR (Virtual Reality) Games on PC - Is it Possible

[Mayank Shah]

I would like to learn how to setup the PC to play VR games. I understand that we need a decent to well built PC. What other compatible gears / equipment do we need and how to setup. Cheers!

 

[kray]

PC VR is most advanced version of VR, so you may require a fairly advanced PC for the same. Would advise you to check two products - Oculus Rift, HTC Vive.

Oculus maybe the more pocket friendly version. So you can check their product page and they provide all kind of info on what PC hardware you need at minimum to use the Oculus VR with PC.

I own a PS VR and I can tell you that VR is absolutely phenomenal - its difficult to go back to normal 2d viewing/gaming after using VR.

 

[tek]

There are plenty of VR games and experiences for PC on both Oculus and Steam stores. Oculus is the cheaper out of the two as it offers limited body tracking, but is easier to set up in a home environment. Vive offers much more detailed body tracking, but you will need to set up two camera base stations at opposite ends, which will require mounting, and also an open and unobstructed space of at least 5-6 sq meters to be able to walk around freely without causing injury.

I have and use both as I am a VR content developer - my personal preference is for the Vive as it is more useful in my line of work, however, the Oculus is better for home use.

 

[reignofchaos]

There are plenty of VR games and experiences for PC on both Oculus and Steam stores. Oculus is the cheaper out of the two as it offers limited body tracking, but is easier to set up in a home environment. Vive offers much more detailed body tracking, but you will need to set up two camera base stations at opposite ends, which will require mounting, and also an open and unobstructed space of at least 5-6 sq meters to be able to walk around freely without causing injury.

I have and use both as I am a VR content developer - my personal preference is for the Vive as it is more useful in my line of work, however, the Oculus is better for home use.

Actually it is not body tracking. It is only 6DOF positional tracking. You only get two quantities out of current headsets - i) A quaternion corresponding to the rotation of the head and ii) A vector corresponding the world position.

The Rift also gives the position of the controllers present in your hand relative to the position of the HMD.

 

[hifitoaster]

As part of my master studies, I worked with a both Oculus and HTC Vive and me along with my colleagues had a unforseenproblem - DIzzyness after using it for an hour. I used to feel damn sleepy after working with it continously for 45 mins. We had some tests for over 30 subjects playing the same video and sound for almost 45 mins each. Everyone felt the same. the headset used for the test was HTC vive. you need a hi end PC to run any games on it.

 

[tek]

Actually it is not body tracking. It is only 6DOF positional tracking. You only get two quantities out of current headsets - i) A quaternion corresponding to the rotation of the head and ii) A vector corresponding the world position.

The Rift also gives the position of the controllers present in your hand relative to the position of the HMD.

My mistake! Thanks for the clarification.

 

[reignofchaos]

As part of my master studies, I worked with a both Oculus and HTC Vive and me along with my colleagues had a unforseenproblem - DIzzyness after using it for an hour. I used to feel damn sleepy after working with it continously for 45 mins. We had some tests for over 30 subjects playing the same video and sound for almost 45 mins each. Everyone felt the same. the headset used for the test was HTC vive. you need a hi end PC to run any games on it.

You might have been using an older headset firmware/sdk or you had a very poor pc. The other thing to remember is that Vive has slightly higher latency than the rift. The latter feels much smoother to me.

If the frame rate drops due to a poor PC and the display doesn't refresh fast enough, you'll feel dizzy. There are two things at play here:

-> Motion to Photon Latency - this *has* to be maintained below 20ms. Basically what this means is that when you move your head, there should be an update in the display within 20ms to reflect the same motion.
-> Frame rate: This has to be at least the refresh rate of the displays in the HMD. When the GPU is not fast enough to render frames at this rate, there is something called Asynchronous Timewarp performed. This basically preempts the render thread and launches a new thread that rotates the previous frame to match your current viewpoint.
-> Newer builds of Oculus SDK also have something called space warp which basically uses the video encoder/decoder unit to predict per pixel motion which is then used to interpolate in a better manner.

PS: VR research and algorithm development is my bread and butter and I work for a rather large company in this area that provides infrastructure to the above headset manufacturers.

 

[hifitoaster]

The PC was: Intel Core i7-6700K/ 32GB RAM / Nvidia GTX1080. This is my university property, but for almost 6months it was reserved for me and my colleagues. I worked on a Binaural audio related project where the Vive was our device to track the position, I am not a graphics guy, I just used the vive to get the headposition so that I could map the corresponding BRIR with a python program. I dont have any experience other than the state of the art vive in 2017. I have not included the model number in my reports as it wasnt important for us. So cannot recall the model.

 

[reignofchaos]

Oops! Didn't realize you were using it for an hour each time. Obviously you'll feel dizzy. We never use it for over 20 minutes. It does become nauseating afterwards. Please take a break in between. VR tech is still not at a state where you can wear it for long durations. For that you'd ideally need 4k per eye, 240 fps, M2P latency of 10ms or better.

That ain't happening at least for a while.

 

[Amarendra]

I had demoed the VR piece with great interest on a PS4 for a racing game. The nausea/ dizziness set in for me within 10 minutes. Also it was my belief that the PS4 would render excellent graphics but unfortunately these things have a long way to go. Finally I just invested in an ultrawide monitor

 

[kray]

I had demoed the VR piece with great interest on a PS4 for a racing game. The nausea/ dizziness set in for me within 10 minutes. Also it was my belief that the PS4 would render excellent graphics but unfortunately these things have a long way to go. Finally I just invested in an ultrawide monitor

Thats true. But you probably chose the worst possible game for a demo. For a beginner, it is important to develop "VR legs" over time with limited motion games. Otherwise it will cause motion sickness which is specifically amplified for racing/fast moving games. You are right that this is just first edition of VR, but would suggest anyone willing to give it a try to check out Astro bot, Batman, Playstation VR worlds or Resident Evil as a demo. Graphical fidelity and Immersion in some of these will blow your mind.

 

[Mayank Shah]

Thanks to all for the inputs and sorry for the delayed reply. I have built an all AMD system with Oculus Rift. Its an insanely amazing experience and we all love it.

 

[mibnold]

I'm not really a gamer but when I play, I enjoy it more on my mobile phones. I seldom play on my PC and I must agree that Virtual games on PC is also enjoyable. It's nice to know that you have set up your gaming activity the way you love it. Enjoy playing! Keep us posted about your experience!

 

[Mayank Shah]

The Oculus VR package I bought was the Marvel Edition with free Marvel games. Other free games on offer by Oculus are also very good and the kids are really enjoying it. It was an amazing experience for me too. Oculus is going to release newer updated wireless version of their VR products soon. I have always been a PC gamer and my first game was Age of Empires which I enjoy even today. I have installed Windows 98 on an old laptop, so I can play all the older games. Nowadays, I am also hooked on to the 'Assassins Creed" line up.