So guess what was delivered yesterday? (Well, actually, I decided to pick it up once it got to the local UPS distribution center since it's practically in my own backyard.)
The Oculus Rift!
Despite the simple, unsympathetic "August" estimated delivery date provided on the Oculus ordering page, I got an email a few days ago saying it was coming.
So now that I have it and I've set it up and played around with it I'm in VR heaven right? Well, not exactly...
This whole unbelievably expensive and difficult ordeal has left me feeling a little bit dismayed.
First, let's start with last weekend's monster build...
The MSI Armor OC GTX 1070 video card was delivered by FedEx last Friday morning around 11:45 am and just left by my front door! A box, clearly marked Newegg which I think even non-geeks know means it is a computer part, and likely valuable, was just dumped there in the scorching Florida sun!
Luckily I heard him drop it (I think he gave a quick "knock-knock") and was able to bring my baby in. "Sorry, evil neighbors, no top-of-the-line expensive as fuck video card for you today." (Actually, I have no reason to believe my neighbors are evil.)
Getting the old card out of Mildred was stressful since the power connectors and even its seating in the motherboard were so tight. (I don't know why that sounds like the opening of a dirty joke.) And putting the power connector into the slot on the new card was so difficult I resorted to using my crappy pair of pliers. In my fat-fingered, brutish haste, I accidentally stripped a millimeter or two of insulation from one of the wires! Fuck, I can only hope this will not cause any future problems!
The post install testing of the card proved it was a success, though. The benchmarks were off the chain! Skyrim, Assassins Creed 3, Elite: Dangerous and Fallout 4 looked phenomenal! And a game like Tomb Raider (2013) looked so awesome, I became immersed in it way more than when I originally got it.
But the Frankenputerization was just beginning! I still needed to swap out the CPU. I went to the local computer store, Refresh Computers, where I bought Mildred, and got a tube of thermal paste. (About $4.50 for a teeny tiny 1 ml? tube...they know how to do it, gouge folks on the little things!)
I setup the living room as the ersatz operating room: clearing the coffee table, draping a clean towel over it and setting up my screwdrivers, pliers, LED flashlight, can of air (which I didn't need because the inside of Mildred is clean as fuck...dust filters on the intake fans do a really good job!), turning on all the lights...you know, setting it up properly.
The swap out of the CPU went well. There was some question of whether the Intel CPU fan and heatsink was detached and reinstalled properly but my laptop was used to consult YouTube videos and I feel it was done right. But there was a problem...
When I booted Mildred up, the American Megatrends DOS-ish text came up telling me I needed to go to the bios to setup the new CPU. No problem. This is how it was back in the 90s too. Even American Megatrends was a comforting sight. I guess they are the bios writers for Asus, the motherboard manufacturers. Well they're certainly well known by me as most bioses I've ever worked on were done by them.
The bios acknowledged the new CPU and I saved and exited. The boot process continued but as the blue screen with the Windows 10 logo was "searching" (as indicated by the revolving circle of dots) it took a long time. Oh oh. Sure enough, the next screen instructed me to restart since the boot drive was inaccessible. What?! I couldn't figure out what was wrong and after some futile troubleshooting, decided to revert back to the i5 CPU since, I thought, the problem could be the i7 CPU. Well the same message came up after that swap and after consulting several sources with the laptop on YouTube and other sites, I found a solution and it worked so I went and took Mildred back to the operating table for the third time and reinstalled the i7 CPU. I again performed the recommended steps and the situation was resolved. Oh, and the saving video that gave me the solution to the issue sounded like it was made by a 12 year old.#DinosaurGraveyardHereICome
So I've been humming along for a week with the new Mildred and now I'm suddenly tasked with setting up the early-arrived Oculus Rift just yesterday.
And it seemed like my bad luck was continuing:
I adjusted the straps on the headset and even at maximum it's a VERY tight fit. I'm too big and my head is too fat. It goes on but awkwardly and fitting my glasses with it...well it just wants to contort the glasses frames and pushes the lenses up against my eyes so I actually have issues of my eyelids getting stuck to the lenses.
I'm using an older pair of wire-framed glasses as my Marc Ecko designer glasses are too large. But the prescription is less than current and this may be impacting my visual experience. Despite the screens within the viewer being only inches away from your eyes, I guess the field of vision and vocal depth are such that you really do need your visual aids as a nearsighted person since it's the same as looking across a large room, you need glasses to see clearly. I clearly will need to see an eye doctor and go back to contacts. The pressure on the bridge of my nose with glasses is too uncomfortable.
As I was going through the setup process, I was instructed to pull out the plastic tab on the remote which would allow the contacts within to engage with the lithium battery but the tab wouldn't pull out. I used more force and it broke. I tried to rescue the attempt by pulling on the remaining tab fragment with pliers and it broke off even more. So, no remote on the initial setup. (I eventually found a reddit thread where many users had the same issue and was instructed that the back of the remote slides off to allow access to the inside...would have been nice for Oculus to mention that.)
Because of my fat cheeks, the bottom of the viewer near the nose gap allows light through and I can see the outside world. Usually this isn't a big problem while in a game, it's easily ignored. But it's yet another issue they haven't thoroughly worked out yet it would seem.
Finally, the experience: Maybe I'm a bit jaded because as a longtime enthusiast of 3-D theme park rides and venues, I've become accustomed to VR on a grand scale. There are so many great 3-D rides at Universal, Disney and even Sea World that I've experienced the VR world, with full motion and dynamic effects and world-class quality that a home use system can't even hope to compare with.
Knowing that I'm not sitting in a multi-million dollar simulator designed by Disney Imagineers, I realize I'm sitting at home at my computer desk with a hot, pinching, corded and bulky set of goggles displaying a screen-door pixilated low-res, effect-distorted image in faux 3-D with tiny, ill-fitting earpads pumping out low-volume, underwhelming audio that's unable to mask the sounds of the environment in my bedroom like the nearby tower fan. Immersion is poor since I'm continually given visual and audio clues that I'm just sitting at my computer straining to focus on some fuzzy, smudgy things "around me" (as long as I move my head around to look).
I know this sounds bad. But it really can be better with some simple modifications. Contacts instead of glasses (and at the proper prescription), better and higher quality applications (the free games and apps available in the Oculus store are mostly crap IMHO to be honest.) and frankly, lowered expectations. This is the first generation of this. I guess I was expecting miracles.
To be honest, I had a terrific time flying my ASP around in Elite:Dangerous. I love the sense of volume and space. How appropriate for a space game. But that resolution and the SDE though! And trying to get used to flying with a controller after learning keyboard/mouse controls like a boss...ugh!
Lucky's Tale was another nice experience. It's very cute and it's like your playing on a big miniature train set type of landscape. Nice.
I even cried a little when watching a VR video done by a New York artist featuring really nice aerial shots over Manhattan.
Maybe I'll discover that the resolution issue is due to my ever-constantly warned sub par specs by the Oculus interface? Maybe it's the apps I'm using? In any event, this is the one aspect they've gotta work on. Sense of space, scale, field of vision, 360 degree environment...that's on the right track. Now work hard on the resolution and the distortion like the "god-rays" and blur caused by the Fresnel lenses. Universal uses these lenses in their newest googles on the rides there and I never had a problem with them. Talk to the theme parks, Oculus! And not some rinky-dinky theme parks...the Big Kahunas...here in Orlando!
Make me beam the childlike goofy grin I do when I'm on one of their rides....and then I'll say you nailed it.
The Oculus Rift!
Despite the simple, unsympathetic "August" estimated delivery date provided on the Oculus ordering page, I got an email a few days ago saying it was coming.
So now that I have it and I've set it up and played around with it I'm in VR heaven right? Well, not exactly...
This whole unbelievably expensive and difficult ordeal has left me feeling a little bit dismayed.
First, let's start with last weekend's monster build...
The MSI Armor OC GTX 1070 video card was delivered by FedEx last Friday morning around 11:45 am and just left by my front door! A box, clearly marked Newegg which I think even non-geeks know means it is a computer part, and likely valuable, was just dumped there in the scorching Florida sun!
Luckily I heard him drop it (I think he gave a quick "knock-knock") and was able to bring my baby in. "Sorry, evil neighbors, no top-of-the-line expensive as fuck video card for you today." (Actually, I have no reason to believe my neighbors are evil.)
Getting the old card out of Mildred was stressful since the power connectors and even its seating in the motherboard were so tight. (I don't know why that sounds like the opening of a dirty joke.) And putting the power connector into the slot on the new card was so difficult I resorted to using my crappy pair of pliers. In my fat-fingered, brutish haste, I accidentally stripped a millimeter or two of insulation from one of the wires! Fuck, I can only hope this will not cause any future problems!
The post install testing of the card proved it was a success, though. The benchmarks were off the chain! Skyrim, Assassins Creed 3, Elite: Dangerous and Fallout 4 looked phenomenal! And a game like Tomb Raider (2013) looked so awesome, I became immersed in it way more than when I originally got it.
But the Frankenputerization was just beginning! I still needed to swap out the CPU. I went to the local computer store, Refresh Computers, where I bought Mildred, and got a tube of thermal paste. (About $4.50 for a teeny tiny 1 ml? tube...they know how to do it, gouge folks on the little things!)
I setup the living room as the ersatz operating room: clearing the coffee table, draping a clean towel over it and setting up my screwdrivers, pliers, LED flashlight, can of air (which I didn't need because the inside of Mildred is clean as fuck...dust filters on the intake fans do a really good job!), turning on all the lights...you know, setting it up properly.
The swap out of the CPU went well. There was some question of whether the Intel CPU fan and heatsink was detached and reinstalled properly but my laptop was used to consult YouTube videos and I feel it was done right. But there was a problem...
When I booted Mildred up, the American Megatrends DOS-ish text came up telling me I needed to go to the bios to setup the new CPU. No problem. This is how it was back in the 90s too. Even American Megatrends was a comforting sight. I guess they are the bios writers for Asus, the motherboard manufacturers. Well they're certainly well known by me as most bioses I've ever worked on were done by them.
The bios acknowledged the new CPU and I saved and exited. The boot process continued but as the blue screen with the Windows 10 logo was "searching" (as indicated by the revolving circle of dots) it took a long time. Oh oh. Sure enough, the next screen instructed me to restart since the boot drive was inaccessible. What?! I couldn't figure out what was wrong and after some futile troubleshooting, decided to revert back to the i5 CPU since, I thought, the problem could be the i7 CPU. Well the same message came up after that swap and after consulting several sources with the laptop on YouTube and other sites, I found a solution and it worked so I went and took Mildred back to the operating table for the third time and reinstalled the i7 CPU. I again performed the recommended steps and the situation was resolved. Oh, and the saving video that gave me the solution to the issue sounded like it was made by a 12 year old.#DinosaurGraveyardHereICome
So I've been humming along for a week with the new Mildred and now I'm suddenly tasked with setting up the early-arrived Oculus Rift just yesterday.
And it seemed like my bad luck was continuing:
I adjusted the straps on the headset and even at maximum it's a VERY tight fit. I'm too big and my head is too fat. It goes on but awkwardly and fitting my glasses with it...well it just wants to contort the glasses frames and pushes the lenses up against my eyes so I actually have issues of my eyelids getting stuck to the lenses.
I'm using an older pair of wire-framed glasses as my Marc Ecko designer glasses are too large. But the prescription is less than current and this may be impacting my visual experience. Despite the screens within the viewer being only inches away from your eyes, I guess the field of vision and vocal depth are such that you really do need your visual aids as a nearsighted person since it's the same as looking across a large room, you need glasses to see clearly. I clearly will need to see an eye doctor and go back to contacts. The pressure on the bridge of my nose with glasses is too uncomfortable.
As I was going through the setup process, I was instructed to pull out the plastic tab on the remote which would allow the contacts within to engage with the lithium battery but the tab wouldn't pull out. I used more force and it broke. I tried to rescue the attempt by pulling on the remaining tab fragment with pliers and it broke off even more. So, no remote on the initial setup. (I eventually found a reddit thread where many users had the same issue and was instructed that the back of the remote slides off to allow access to the inside...would have been nice for Oculus to mention that.)
Because of my fat cheeks, the bottom of the viewer near the nose gap allows light through and I can see the outside world. Usually this isn't a big problem while in a game, it's easily ignored. But it's yet another issue they haven't thoroughly worked out yet it would seem.
Finally, the experience: Maybe I'm a bit jaded because as a longtime enthusiast of 3-D theme park rides and venues, I've become accustomed to VR on a grand scale. There are so many great 3-D rides at Universal, Disney and even Sea World that I've experienced the VR world, with full motion and dynamic effects and world-class quality that a home use system can't even hope to compare with.
Knowing that I'm not sitting in a multi-million dollar simulator designed by Disney Imagineers, I realize I'm sitting at home at my computer desk with a hot, pinching, corded and bulky set of goggles displaying a screen-door pixilated low-res, effect-distorted image in faux 3-D with tiny, ill-fitting earpads pumping out low-volume, underwhelming audio that's unable to mask the sounds of the environment in my bedroom like the nearby tower fan. Immersion is poor since I'm continually given visual and audio clues that I'm just sitting at my computer straining to focus on some fuzzy, smudgy things "around me" (as long as I move my head around to look).
I know this sounds bad. But it really can be better with some simple modifications. Contacts instead of glasses (and at the proper prescription), better and higher quality applications (the free games and apps available in the Oculus store are mostly crap IMHO to be honest.) and frankly, lowered expectations. This is the first generation of this. I guess I was expecting miracles.
To be honest, I had a terrific time flying my ASP around in Elite:Dangerous. I love the sense of volume and space. How appropriate for a space game. But that resolution and the SDE though! And trying to get used to flying with a controller after learning keyboard/mouse controls like a boss...ugh!
Lucky's Tale was another nice experience. It's very cute and it's like your playing on a big miniature train set type of landscape. Nice.
I even cried a little when watching a VR video done by a New York artist featuring really nice aerial shots over Manhattan.
Maybe I'll discover that the resolution issue is due to my ever-constantly warned sub par specs by the Oculus interface? Maybe it's the apps I'm using? In any event, this is the one aspect they've gotta work on. Sense of space, scale, field of vision, 360 degree environment...that's on the right track. Now work hard on the resolution and the distortion like the "god-rays" and blur caused by the Fresnel lenses. Universal uses these lenses in their newest googles on the rides there and I never had a problem with them. Talk to the theme parks, Oculus! And not some rinky-dinky theme parks...the Big Kahunas...here in Orlando!
Make me beam the childlike goofy grin I do when I'm on one of their rides....and then I'll say you nailed it.