Review: Oculus Rift and iRacing

[Anthony Levene]

Bram Hengeveld submitted a new blog post:

Review: Oculus Rift and iRacing

About a month ago I received my Oculus Rift developer kit and thought I’d share my initial impressions.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Oculus Rift it is a next gen Virtual Reality headset developed by 20 year old whizz kid Palmer Luckey, who started a Kickstarter fund aiming for $250,000 and raised close to two and a half million dollars! The headset is only available as a developer kit for now (priced at $300) but the consumer version is expected to be released in 2014, and...

Continue reading the Original Blog Post

 

[Rasmus Tali]

"If they can get enough screen resolution in the consumer version I predict the Oculus Rift will be the biggest thing to happen in sim racing."
Havin tried Oculus with iRacing I have to say that I agree 100%.

 

[Stelios]

Thanks for that mini review, i also cant wait for the consumer product. Why will it have smaller lcd screens though?

 

[Alexander Boroday]

Also tried this thing, but not in racing sims. I've tested Team Fortres by Valve (as i know it's most adapted game to Oculus). And this is really amazing. The future of gaming definitely connected with Oculus. I agree that resolution is very low and the picture is pretty bad. But immersion is brilliant !!!

 

[Anthony Levene]

Thanks for that mini review, i also cant wait for the consumer product. Why will it have smaller lcd screens though?

Smaller screens will mean a smaller headset. The key factor is resolution not screen size and a smaller screen will have more tightly packed pixels and less of the 'screen door effect' - which is where you can see the black between pixels.

 

[Krisztián Tóth]

Thanks for that mini review, i also cant wait for the consumer product. Why will it have smaller lcd screens though?

Smaller screens will mean a smaller headset. The key factor is resolution not screen size and a smaller screen will have more tightly packed pixels and less of the 'screen door effect' - which is where you can see the black between pixels.

if they use smaller screen that means the angle of view will decrease?

 

[Anthony Levene]

I think 5.5 inch would be plenty. If you hold your phone right up to your face it will give you an idea...mine is 5 inch and almost completely fills my field of view.

 

[Anthony Levene]

that's my phone I'm talking about

 

[ML2166]

that's my phone I'm talking about

Well added after thought.

 

[Rob Gray]

It's definitely awesome. I too reviewed iRacing and the Rift earlier in month

 

[Qazdar Karim]

the futuristic faceplam

:FACEDEVKIT

 

[erniedaoage]

I think 5.5 inch would be plenty. If you hold your phone right up to your face it will give you an idea...mine is 5 inch and almost completely fills my field of view.

hahaha! iam already seeing people mounting their smartphones on basecaps with a freeriftapp like for freetrack ^^

 

[Harry Platt]

There should be a special "motorsports" edition rift that is integrated into a helmet with built in headphones/speakers for an authentic racing experience...

I imagine that wouldn't be hard to do...?

 

[FerrariMan96]

I was just wondering, did you feel that you had any issues whilst racing with the fact that you can't see the real world at all - in particular relating to the keyboard, because without a button box you need to be able to press keys on a keyboard reasonably quickly (or frankly, even with a button box, because in a real car you can see where your hands are going).

 

[Peter]

There should be a special "motorsports" edition rift that is integrated into a helmet with built in headphones/speakers for an authentic racing experience...

I imagine that wouldn't be hard to do...?

And a separate camera for keyboard / button box.

 

[Rhys Gardiner]

I was just wondering, did you feel that you had any issues whilst racing with the fact that you can't see the real world at all - in particular relating to the keyboard, because without a button box you need to be able to press keys on a keyboard reasonably quickly (or frankly, even with a button box, because in a real car you can see where your hands are going).

I've been thinking about this for a while... I thought about something like a VR glove, with sensors all over, hooked up to a motion-tracking device... applied in such a way that your hand/arm movements could be translated to a 3D arm model in-game. Thoughts?

 

[Anthony Levene]

I think they are planning to add a camera to the consumer version. How that would be implemented in practice I'm not sure.
Most of the cars I drive don't seem to require too many buttons but it is quite easy to find the buttons on the CSW wheel with a bit of practice, same with the shifter.
There are all kinds of tracking devices on the horizon too which could be used with the Rift.
I like the idea of the integrated helmet...just flick up the visor to get back in the real world...pull it down again to race...that would be perfect

 

[FerrariMan96]

I've been thinking about this for a while... I thought about something like a VR glove, with sensors all over, hooked up to a motion-tracking device... applied in such a way that your hand/arm movements could be translated to a 3D arm model in-game. Thoughts?

I guess what I'm getting at is that (normally) you can see where your hand is going in your peripheral vision, and when going to press a button on the keyboard (say 'H' for toggling headlights, for example) you would look where to press. I can touch type, so normally I could find an H with my eyes closed, however when sitting in the racing seat, in my setup I have to reach over my wheel or onto a little ledge next to me to press keys on the keyboard (depending on where I put it), so my hands start out of position. I could probably still find it, by running my finger along the rows of keys, but that's too slow whilst you're trying to race.

Your VR glove idea could work, but the problem is that it could only really work if you had a cockpit set up in the exact same way as the car you were driving, so that you would be reaching for exactly the same place. But even if you could do that, you would only be limited to driving one car, because obviously the places you have to reach to adjust brake bias are very different between a V8 Supercar and a F1 car.

 

[RichardHessels]

I'm afraid that just a HD resolution divided by 2 is still not good enough for proper simracing.
960x1080 for each eye is still very low res compared to my triple HD screens.
When they are coming to 4k resolution we start to really get a perfect view.
Luckely iRacing is very kind on the graphics system, zo won't be a problem running it at medium settings at those resolutions.

 

[Richard Pittam]

I love using this in iRacing but only in practice. It's no good at all for me in a race.