GSCE and VR

Hi guys,

I'm sure you are all aware of the massive strides made on the virtual reality front and that we can expect the Oculus Rift "consumer version" to be released early 2016 in the US.

Official pricing however has not been confirmed, but it's speculated to range between 300 and 400 USD. The fact that Facebook bought this VR gaming startup for $2 billion - might arguably push those price up even more. I think we might be looking at about R5500+ at the end here in RSA. (So that's R1500 more than another 2x 24" Samsung LED's )

With that in mind and missing out on this TGN Racing Simulators event - > https://www.facebook.com/tgnza at Cape Gate, I thought it might be a good idea to do some research and see if I could simulate the VR experience (even with lag) and see if I would actually enjoy the cockpit free look experience, before trying to sell my kidney on the black market to fund an Oculus Rift...

The popular google cardboard looked like the cheapest available VR experience and I ordered one for R99 yesterday from itoys.co.za:



Being an iPhone user, I immediately became quite annoyed by the fact that most of the top streaming apps from pc to device are only for Andriod devices and that the iphone apps = Lag lag and more lag! ( http://www.instructables.com/id/Stream-PC-Desktop-to-Phone-for-Virtual-Reality-Now/ )

Eventually I ended up installing about three apps, but the one that stood out was KinoConsole - kinoconsole.kinoni.com/ - updated about a week ago for the iOS and also available for Android and Windows mobile devices.

You first need to install the server software on your PC, then select the game you would like to stream and then run the game from the app on your phone.

I was immediately impressed with the fact that one can not just control the mouse pointer on your pc, but that it's actually quite responsive with minimum input lag!

I fired up GSCE, jumped into cockpit mode, but the movement tracking had no effect at all

All I needed was a free look via mouse input in the cockpit and we would be there!

20 Mins of googling - Nothing.

Never thought the Delete button would bring me so much joy! In the GSCE control settings, we can enable the free look option with Del key!

It worked

Initial tests proved to be quite impressive with an almost instant input response! I would say even better response than this -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R5swCafrOs

I will keep you guys updated on the experience once I received my cardboard. This will hopefully give me a better feel for what the Oculus Rift experience will eventually have to offer and then schedule my surgery

Please share any VR news \ info \ experiments that you might have tried?

Cheerz,
Tim

lol Timo