I've just tried Assetto in HTC Vive. Good heavens. Getting out of the car to wander round the grid, examining the frankly astonishing attention to detail in the car models is an amazing experience. My missus caught me crouching down marvelling at the chrome side pipe of my Cobra, then the field screamed past / through me (I was too busy mooching about and missed the start). What a thrill The low-res and fuzzy Vive image in the middle to long distance kinda spoils it a bit, but up close Assetto looks truly staggering. And racing in VR is an absolute hoot, once you get over the limitations of the technology. PCars in Vive is, on the other hand, a stuttering mess, but Assetto is so good I don't care
I would like to try these goggles on AC and/or RR, but i will not buy such an expensive thing without having made sure I like it and that my glasses and these google get along nicely. --- Kunos announced the next DLC, calling it Red Pack and claiming it is "in arrival". It will include the latest modernised version of the Red Bull Ring, and first confirmed car is a historical legend, a Maserati 250F. Considering the thin tyres and known low grip of the car, I would expect this thing to drive very difficult. Until here, the track absolutely is my thing, the car not so much. I have no info on other cars. But since they named it "Red Pack", Ferraris might be a safe bet. Yesterday rediscovered a vcar in aC that for unknown reaosn fell off my radar, the Glickenhaus 3000. Heck, what a ride! Like flying a space interceptor in extrenely low orbit, smooth, stable, fast, superb brakes, and I like the exterior sound tremendously (don't know whether it is realistic, but I absolutely like it). Reminded me a very lot of the - in comparison - relative user-friendliness of Raceroom's driving model.
yes, it's a big risk but there's just no sensible accessible way to try them. Even if I could go somewhere for a demo, there's so much variation in the way they're set up, the way the game's configured, etc etc. So I took a (big and very expensive) chance with it. For racing it's not as good as I hoped. I need to spend more time tweaking and experimenting (hence the limited value of short demos) but if I can't get better anti-aliasing and better long-distance clarity then it'll take a lot of getting used to. It's not terrible but it's just not *quite* good enough at the moment. Perhaps my brain will adapt. Looking to apex, checking blind spots and feeling like you're in the car is spot-on, but that long distance image of the track 100+ metres ahead is still very pixely and noisy - my brain is struggling to make sense of it. I'll keep tweaking though, it's not terrible but it definitely needs to be a bit better. For other stuff when you're focusing on objects up to 20 or 30 metres away is great, and for objects less than 10 metres away it truly is an entirely new and amazing experience. The room-scale stuff looks great and might end up being the most rewarding use of the tech for me. Assetto really does stand out but last night the temptation to get out of the car and wander about sight-seeing was just too great. Never realised assetto's 3D models were so detailed
^ Well, that is all just more reasons for me to not buy these goggles blindly (pardon the pun ), but to try them out first. If they do not manage to get info stands set up in the town centres, or licenses shop events, they will not get people like me. Maybe 15 years ago - but with age comes self-control.
Have you felt at all sick after driving with the VR googles on for a while? Some users have reported this with some, but not all, other games.
no sickness at all, but then I did keep stopping the car to get out and do stupid stuff like sit cross legged on the racing line or lie down and look at the dirt on the splitter. I was "in vr" for most of the evening and had no ill effects. Having said that, if I'd been in PCars VR for more than 30 seconds I'd probably still be having a seizure - it was *that* bad
Noooo, like I said, I don't need to know who's leading or how many laps are left because I'm sat on the racing line at the top of Packdock Hill bend eating crisps watching the other cars drive over the top of me. Having Crew Chief shout at me for being shit wouldn't add much to the experience
Time to shift the topic. After the huge disappointment the Japanese pack was for me, I stayed away from AC, but yesterday and today I put a few hours into it. My experience was just horrible. First I tried to tackle the Ford GT, my old nemesis. After some trial and error and some tuning, I was actually able to drive this thing at a fairly conservative pace. My conclusion was: the default setup is horrible! Just damn horrible. It's impossible to be even slightly fast with it. They updated the tires and physics but never thought of updating the setups? Next up was an AI trial. I stayed way from the weird stuff and stuck with what I know - the Ferrari 312T. I have put a crapload of laps with this on Monza and Imola with my friends online back in the olden days of early access, so I felt at least competent. And I sort of was. Had it not been for the AI, I would even finish the race with probably a decent posiotion. But no! Seriously, when you are going down a straight, full throttle and someone divebombs you from behind (I wasn't even on the optimal racing line FFS) is a whole new level of bad. I was told that they made the AI better in recent versions. How is that better? My race-over was when some bot bumped another bot in their behind, the guy went flying through the air and I hit another AI idiot in the side, not being able to avoid the pile-up. They can add all the Porsches they want and even a flying drift saucer for all I care, but unless Kunos writes their own Crew Chief App for the AI to constantly remind them, that racing is primarily about not hitting any other car on the track, I am not touching Assetto Corsa again. PS Crew Chief is awesome in Raceroom. PS2 I am sticking with the ease of driving in Raceroom, like the filthy casual I am.
I mainly drive a 2016 mustang and I'm impressed how accurate the emulation is in AC. The way I can force the over steer or under steer, push the ass end out and snap it back in with a little heel toe in the real world and in the game. I've never driven a Ferrari or Lambo or GT3 but I can trust that Kunos is giving me the best representations of those cars that they can based on the Mustang I have. Mr. belowski I down loaded some sound files for the AC spotter app that are from crewchief. I hope they where done with your permission. It is nice to have that friendly voice in AC as well.
Genuinely curious about a bit more elaboration on this from someone in the know... that perhaps isnt a complete VR fanboy that fluffs over the issues of VR. Is what you are describing a problem known as the screen door effect? Where the resolution is too little for how close the screen is to your eye? Giving you a distorted impression and pixely appearance when you focus on something? Or are you just saying the visuals that are in the distance are simply not crisp. I havent tried VR so Im really not sure what it would actually look like, compared to a computer monitor.
I am curious, what are the problems with VR in pCars? Is their implementation buggy? Current hardware (GPU?) not capable enough? I am specifically planning to get into VR in pCars, so this disappointing/discouraging to hear...
I'm still trying to track it down. I don't think the performance I'm seeing is normal for a box like mine - other pcars vr players aren't struggling like i am
The screen-door effect / low resolution of the Vive is a weird one. I've been gaming using a 720p projector for ages. I have the screen nearly 3 metres wide and sit only 2 metres from the screen. So I'm no stranger to screen-door effect and aliasing - I'm quite used to seeing individual pixels and it doesn't really bother me. The vive is a little different. The image is brighter and sharper than the projector image, making the individual pixels and the boundaries between them more obvious despite them being about the same relative size as the pixels I'm used to seeing. The main issue, however, appears to be the way they move in your field of view. Looking at the projector screen my brain quickly filters out the black lines between pixels. With the vive these black lines similar size but sharper. However, the main difference is the black lines' position within the image changes. I turn my head slightly in the vive and the image remains stationary (i.e. the thing I'm looking at moves across my vision), but the black lines in the image move *with* my vision. So my brain sees a stationary image overlaid by a grid of constantly moving black lines. When you're focused on something in the distance, if you keep your head very still your brain filters out the black lines and it looks great. As soon as you move your head (even a tiny bit), the relative position of the black lines in the image changes, and it's this constant changing that makes the distant image so hard to interpret. This is entirely different to the stationary lines in the projector image. The vanishing point in the distance is only small. If you're looking into the distance at a point perhaps 15 or 20 pixels wide, a substantial proportion of that area consists of moving black lines. This is why I perceive it as unclear. All this makes it sound terrible - it isn't, and with good anti-aliasing it makes it much better, but it never goes away. I had a longer session last night with Assetto and I think I am starting to adapt. Elite Dangerous doesn't have this problem - it's specific to racing games I think, where you're focused on a small part of the image which is bright and the objects within this area are small.
Thanks for the detailed reply here. Interesting to hear how VR is without having tried it. Many people I have read comments frompraise VR as the best thing since [insert something amazing here], without actually having a good critical eye describe some of the flaws or other limitations. VR is obviously still in its infancy and will improve in time with better hardware that will probably remedy these sorts of issues with resolution and what you are describing. However, I think there will be one big hurdle that somehow needs to be overcome to really see this catch on as something more than a complete gimmick like 3D TV is. Wearing a device on your head with cords dangling down. I have zero interest in wearing something on my head covering my entire field of vision and not being able to see anything Im doing. Without the ability to see your hands, you will also miss out on being able to do very much beyond just holding your steering wheel for instance. Immersion of a better visual experience aside, I think that will be a massive hurdle to overcome.
From my limited (2 evenings spent tweaking and faffing) the limitations of the technology are only really apparent for racing games. The smaller scale (<10 metres away) stuff really is astonishing. Gawping at Assetto's car models is also amazing - looking at stuff close up has none of the pixel / screen door issues and you really don't see these artefacts *at all* in this context. It's only looking at complex bright distant objects where it breaks down (hence the issues being so specific to racing games). Regarding missing hands, some of the Assetto car models are almost perfect WRT the driver's arms and hands on the wheel. Close enough to convince my brain that the arms and hands I'm seeing are my own and the on-screen wheel really is the one I'm holding. The illusion is only broken when I take my hands off the wheel (even then, I often find I'm changing hand positions for large steering lock in the same way as the on-screen driver does). Wearing the device isn't a problem. It's not the best fit in the world and requires a lot of fiddling to get right and occasionally needs tweaking in-play, but this doesn't affect me too much. Although I'm accustomed to wearing mountain-bike helmets with heavy lighting setups on them, so maybe I'm at an advantage here. In some respects the kit is clearly in its infancy and not really 'ready', but in other respects it's really carefully thought through and exciting. It's a trade off I guess - using it is exciting, fun, immersive and satisfying but the drawbacks do make you realise just how much potential there is for better headsets.
Since last friday I'm the proud owner of a Oculus Rift CV1 . I preorderd the rift on 22nd of january, the delivery should be between 18th and 28th of july, but I got it one month earlier last friday on 23rd of june. The first impression is great, but of course there are the known issues with the optics and the little bit too low resolution. After some testing and tweaking, the rift now works very well with AC, although it's an early beta implementation at the moment. The performance is very good with constant 90 FPS. I still can use almost all graphics options at maximum. I only deactivated AA and PP-filters for a crisper image and reduced the reflections to medium. And to reduce the CPU load, I only use 14 opponents at the moment. The most important thing is, to set the value "PIXEL_PER_DISPLAY=1.5" in "oculus.ini" in the folder "user/documents/assetto corsa/cfg" for a much sharper and crisper image. You can find the best tweaks for AC at the page of RIFTRACER. http://www.riftracer.co.uk/guides/assetto-corsa-oculus-rift-setup/ I hope, that we can also play Raceroom someday in VR. That would be really great. But that will only work, if they use a new graphics engine for Raceroom in the future.
Kunos dropped another bomb and announced that the Ferrari SF15-T will be part of the Red Pack. That is the F1 car from last year. Their advert video shows the car on Red Bull Ring. Both car and track look awesome, brilliant. They are really pushing their track making's cosmetics for improvements. Also confirmed now is the Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce. We also have an official release date now: July 14th.