13 replies to this topic

[regis mk5]

hey guys you want us to BE the mechwarrior well what better way than with the oculus Rift. What i would like to know is will you be adding support for this in the future? alot of the major game devs are now stating they will support this device when it becomes available, will you ?

http://www.oculusvr.com/

Edited by regis mk5, 01 December 2012 - 09:03 AM.

[Socket7]

First it has to be more then vaporware on kickstarter.

If it makes it to market, I think you'll find some significant problems with using it, the primary problem being that if you try and tie head movement to the torso, you are trying to aim your crosshairs with your head. That will not end well.

cockpit freelook doesn't gain you much of anything in mechwarrior online either, like it would in say, a flight simulator. It doesn't really increase your situational awareness. In an A-10 it is advantageous to be able to look over your shoulder. In a mech, all you see is the back of your mech's cockpit and maybe it's arm.

Since I'm kind of irritated about the hype around oculus, I'm going to take it one step further.

All current FPS games use a mouselook mechanic for aiming. It is literally impossible to decouple look from aim in just about every FPS game made in the past... 15 years? This means you are aiming with your head again, and that means you're going to have a bad day. Furthermore, with the mouselook mechanic in place in an FPS, you would seriously hamper your ability to move, since your head cannot swivel in circles infinitely, it always has to return to center. There are things you can do to mitigate this problem, but it doesn't fix it.

The oculus looks like it would really shine for driving games, and simpler flight simulators. In complex flight simulators like DCS, people will find they will want to look at their controls from time to time, and are unable to, because they're wearing blacked out ski goggles.

I'm also skeptical about being able to fit a 720 or 1080 resolution display inside of a headset like that.

With all of the things still needing to be added and fixed with MWO, making it a high priority to support a device that is not even for sale, and might never be for sale, seems to be a poor choice.

I wish them well, but the oculus is going to have serious limitations that I don't think a lot of people have really thought about yet.

[dF0X]

Until it can be purchased, PGI shouldn't even consider it. It will probably never really make inroads into the market anyway.

Even assuming that you could buy it, I'm not sure how useful it would be or what percentage of the player base would have it.

Short answer - probably not.

[Kremator1968]

I would like the Rift supported, but as said above only when it comes out!

[Hobietime]

They have stated that there will be support for trackIR. That is similar to the rift and has been on the market for quite some time.

[Shismar]

I expect we will see how other games handle aiming after the first units are delivered end of March. http://www.gamespot....delayed-6400694
http://www.kickstart...p-into-the-game

It may be possible to use the tracker to move the torso since it does not circle around like a tanks turret would. The movement would be very difficult though because a mech torso can twist much further than our heads so very small head movement translates into very large torso turns.

I have played with VR-headsets back in the late 90s and can say that it is not for weak stomachs.

[Socket7]

I've got a TrackIR. It is designed to allow slopes that let you get a large amount of input from slight head movement. That isn't what makes head tracking unspectacular for mech piloting. The problem is that the entire aiming mechanic is tied to torso movement. The targeting pipper stays in the center of the screen and you move your torso to line up your shot. If you map head tracking to torso movement, you will always be trying to aim with your head movement. This is a bad situation from what I've learned trying to use TrackIR in FPS games (which have the same mechanic for aiming as mechs do. Center the target in the screen and pull the switch) It just doesn't work well.

What trackIR would be good for, is allowing you to look around the cockpit as you fight. You could look down at your bobble head, or at your banners, or out the sides of your cockpit as you use keyboard and mouse to control torso (aim) and legs. This adds greatly to immersion, but that's really all it does. You don't need to look out your side windows during combat as you have the minimap telling you where enemies are (and a module allowing for 360 degree tracking of enemies on the minimap), and the HUD provides directional data for where you are being shot from.

It'd be great for flavor, and seeing as they already have head movement modeled into the game, it should be easy for them to use the TrackIR SDK to integrate with head movement, but because head tracking has such low market penetration it doesn't make sense to spend any time on putting it in until more pressing bugs are fixed.

TL;DR head tracking will probably be included at some point once more pressing matters in the game are sorted out, but you wouldn't want to use it to aim your weapons or control your torso, even though you theoretically could.

[Secundus]

Socket7, on 01 December 2012 - 09:09 AM, said:

All current FPS games use a mouselook mechanic for aiming. It is literally impossible to decouple look from aim in just about every FPS game made in the past... 15 years?

Arma, Arma II, and now DayZ have decoupled to great success.

[Ritter Cuda]

if they use TrackIR it should be linked to the free look function we have now. then just like when I'm in IL2 you can track your target ahead of your turn.

[Socket7]

That looks awesome, Sec! I'm glad to see that games are finally starting to do that. I've never played Arma or Dayz (they just aren't my kind of game) and haven't seen that video before.

Like you said though, It requires the game to support decoupling looking from aiming, something games historically have not done.

I hope this starts a trend. I sure would like to be able to do something like this in say Skyrim or Fallout.

[Squid von Torgar]

Occulus Rift looks really exciting, but its very early days yet. Track IR though would integrate perfectly into MWO.

How it should work is that it shouldn't allow you to aim, just simply scan around the cockpit. Some mechs have side windows and being able to scan around them would be beneficial. Not to mention it would add spades of immersion.

[Secundus]

Socket7, on 01 December 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

That looks awesome, Sec! I'm glad to see that games are finally starting to do that. I've never played Arma or Dayz (they just aren't my kind of game) and haven't seen that video before.

Like you said though, It requires the game to support decoupling looking from aiming, something games historically have not done.

I hope this starts a trend. I sure would like to be able to do something like this in say Skyrim or Fallout.

I still don't have a track IR, I was going to try the Track NO IR (uses a webcam to track your face kind of like Xbox Kinect), but the support for that seems really really limited. Unfortunately Track IR is a little pricey and usually has to be ordered from afar. I play a lot of flight sims so I could get value out of it.

[Socket7]

I tried Track Noir before I went trackIR. I got DCS and didn't want to punk down the money for a TrackIR4, and definitely not a TrackIR5

It may have been the webcam I used or where my setup is located, but it was like being drunk. My camera was constantly wobbling around and it was just no fun. To even make it work, I had to shine a bright light directly at my face. No fun. Like you said, limited support too.

The jump to TrackIR was night and day. So much better. A word of advice. Unless your computer is in an area of bright sunlight, or you have a mirror behind you, you do not need the TrackClip Pro. The hat clip reflector works just fine.

Also, the Track Clip Pro is extremely flimsy. The joints on it were simply not made to handle very much abuse at all. If you get one, keep a copy of your invoice. If it breaks, take a photo of it and send Naturalpoint the photo and your invoice. They were more then happy to send me an entire replacement clip, and didn't ask for the old one back. I ended up hot gluing the broken one back together, and the replacement is sitting in my closet for the day when I can no longer repair the old one with tape and glue.

TrackIR is a Godsend in DCS. It's precisely the kind of game you want head tracking in. You can look down into your cockpit to flick buttons or check monitors, and you can look up and over your shoulder to watch for enemy fire. Being able to look out the side and visually spot targets is great too. You will not regret TrackIR for any flight sim that supports it.

[Secundus]

Sweet Socket7. I have DCS's A10 and Blackshark, Xplane9, MS Flight (sad that tanked so soon), FSX, Wings of Prey, IL-2 1946, and Arma2, and the coolie hat on my flightstick just doesn't cut it!