What KSP could look like... in VR! Apollo11 Demo!!!

[Cricro76]

Hey Community! First of all, I'm very glad to present myself: I'm a buddy italian KSP player, 40 years old, very passionate about astronomy, astro-physics, and anything space related. I'm playing KSP since september last year, and I find it soooo cool!

Today I just found this video on youtube, and I thought it's a great example to share with you of how much exciting KSP could be if played on VR and with the level of details we can see in this demo. I actually think that there's a lot of mods aroud that can come pretty close to this result, but the real problem I see to really get a realistic and immersive feeling is the framerate.

Oculus Rift DK2 and Apollo 11 VR

This is actually the Apollo 11 VR Demo which has achieved one of the Vision Summit awards this february. More details can be found here: http://visionsummit2016.com/awards

Looking forward to play on KSP 1.1!!!

Cheers,

Cris

Edited March 15, 2016 by Cricro76

[FyunchClick]

Hey there welcome aboard!

Pretty cool looking demo, I can see why you would think that would work well with KPS.

I'm actually a bit in two minds about VR hw at this time. I loved the idea since I first heard about the oculus rift and was all geared up to get it once it was out, but the hardware seems to have turned out prohibitively expensive (not just the headsets but the required PC overhaul as well). I may just sit out the first generation just to see where it goes.

[Scotius]

Very cool Though, it just begs for some sort of gloves or motion sensors so user could interact with the program - imagine being able to flip all those buttons! And yeah - the pricetag. It's prohibitively high for many people - especially young players. Maybe in couple of years anyone will be able to afford VR set

[nli2work]

There's Razor OSVR devkits ~300$, what Oculus originally was set out to be. you'd probably have to do some hacking of your own to get it to work with KSP.

[bncrock]

TBH more features need to be added to cockpit view before VR would be truely immersive (like a map, more interactables, and more active info). I could see the vive, with its controllable appendages, being extremely fun.

[DoctorDavinci]

I have a Samsung 3D TV and have played KSP using it's artificial 3D mode (it will take any regular video stream and turn it into 3D) which works quite well, however in the VAB or SPH it plays with my eyes and starts to give me a headache. Also after an hour or two I have to stop playing in 3D since the same thing happens.

I mention this because I think that is one of the drawbacks of playing games in VR, that after a couple hours you would have to stop playing since continuing to play could very easily cause vision problems and quite possibly permanent damage

For example, have you ever gone to a 3D movie at the theater and come out after and your eyes are all bugged out or your balance is off, I think this will be a major issue with VR gaming in the coming years

 

 

 

 

[Renegrade]

1 hour ago, DoctorDavinci said:

I mention this because I think that is one of the drawbacks of playing games in VR, that after a couple hours you would have to stop playing since continuing to play could very easily cause vision problems and quite possibly permanent damage

There's nothing QUITE like having someone called 'Doctor' tell you about permanent visual damage to make you unenthusiastic about something, heh.

Granted, I've been leery of anything '3D' since the reports of headaches and nausea came out in the early days...

[*Aqua*]

6 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

I mention this because I think that is one of the drawbacks of playing games in VR, that after a couple hours you would have to stop playing since continuing to play could very easily cause vision problems and quite possibly permanent damage

For example, have you ever gone to a 3D movie at the theater and come out after and your eyes are all bugged out or your balance is off, I think this will be a major issue with VR gaming in the coming years

This is "just" simulator sickness. What your eyes see and what your body tells you are contradicting. Most people will feel sick because of that.
Actually you can train your brain to tolerate the information mismatch up to some point.

But there won't be any damage. You might feel a bit disoriented but that just happens because your brain is in the process of adjusting back from "faked" to "real" vision.

Btw simulator sickness is related to motion sickness. Also it is closely tied to the problems wearer of glasses have when they get new glasses. Last time I got new ones I needed two weeks to adjust to them. During the first days I wasn't able to guess distances. It was funny to miss door handles all the times. ^^

Edited March 15, 2016 by *Aqua*

[T.A.P.O.R.]

All I know is VR has a high chance of outputting my breakfast.

[luizopiloto]

To use VR we need improved IVAs

[DoctorDavinci]

1 hour ago, *Aqua* said:

This is "just" simulator sickness. What your eyes see and what your body tells you are contradicting. Most people will feel sick because of that.
Actually you can train your brain to tolerate the information mismatch up to some point.

But there won't be any damage. You might feel a bit disoriented but that just happens because your brain is in the process of adjusting back from "faked" to "real" vision.

Btw simulator sickness is related to motion sickness. Also it is closely tied to the problems wearer of glasses have when they get new glasses. Last time I got new ones I needed two weeks to adjust to them. During the first days I wasn't able to guess distances. It was funny to miss door handles all the times. ^^

That dog don't hunt ... there is empirical proof that permanent damage to your vision can occur due to reading a book in dim light or sitting close to a television while watching or even wearing the wrong prescription glasses so chalking up the concern of damaging your eyesight by using VR headsets to 'simulator sickness' is really just fooling yourself

 

 

[T.A.P.O.R.]

@DoctorDavinci

Yessir. Focussing for extended periods frequently over a handful of years is enough for for eyes to change shape.

This might not be considered damage exactly, but years of being an indoor kid accelerated my need for ocular augmentation.

When you work at a compute and play at a compute, your physiology does some self editing and usually not for the betterment of one with such habits.

[DoctorDavinci]

31 minutes ago, T.A.P.O.R. said:

@DoctorDavinci

Yessir. Focussing for extended periods frequently over a handful of years is enough for for eyes to change shape.

This might not be considered damage exactly, but years of being an indoor kid accelerated my need for ocular augmentation.

When you work at a compute and play at a compute, your physiology does some self editing and usually not for the betterment of one with such habits.

Exactly ... and unfortunately we don't have the option to edit our persistence files IRL

[rkman]

18 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

I have a Samsung 3D TV and have played KSP using it's artificial 3D mode (it will take any regular video stream and turn it into 3D) which works quite well, however in the VAB or SPH it plays with my eyes and starts to give me a headache. Also after an hour or two I have to stop playing in 3D since the same thing happens.

I mention this because I think that is one of the drawbacks of playing games in VR

There is a huge difference between how various 3D projection techniques mess with your eyes/brain. VR goggles with high refresh rate is a whole different beast (much more natural) than "artificial 3D mode".  
Which does not mean that VR goggles don't have issues, but just the fact that various different techniques are all called "VR" does not mean much.

[FyunchClick]

22 hours ago, nli2work said:

There's Razor OSVR devkits ~300$, what Oculus originally was set out to be. you'd probably have to do some hacking of your own to get it to work with KSP.

Three or four years back I looked into getting a 3d monitor, and I think NVidia had some drivers (lagging behind a few version numbers) that would give you a stereo image you could use. Apparently, not much more is needed for it to work well, unless the game is mixing in 2 elements without setting them with a propper Z value, as those would appear at the wrong distance (either too close or too far). I'm not sure if those are still available, or even if it's since become standard for graphics drivers to support this, as I never followed up on it.

[Renegrade]

8 hours ago, rkman said:

There is a huge difference between how various 3D projection techniques mess with your eyes/brain. VR goggles with high refresh rate is a whole different beast (much more natural) than "artificial 3D mode".  
Which does not mean that VR goggles don't have issues, but just the fact that various different techniques are all called "VR" does not mean much.

One thing here: From the technical descriptions I've read, there's almost no difference between a VR goggle's image parameters and... *drumroll* a CRT monitor.

CRT monitors were epic and awesome and vastly superior to this LCD garbage in every meaningful* way -- except one.  Eye strain. That flashing-an-image-at-you tends to be a bit wearing on the eyes.

* - even though I've always somehow ended up with a tiny crappy computer desk, I never had trouble fitting a CRT on it, so I consider the 'size' thing to be a problem at the same level as "it doesn't match my purse".

[T.A.P.O.R.]

12 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Exactly ... and unfortunately we don't have the option to edit our persistence files IRL

Oh man, if only!

For starters I'd get my wisdom teeth out much earlier.

49 minutes ago, Renegrade said:

One thing here: From the technical descriptions I've read, there's almost no difference between a VR goggle's image parameters and... *drumroll* a CRT monitor.

CRT monitors were epic and awesome and vastly superior to this LCD garbage in every meaningful* way -- except one.  Eye strain. That flashing-an-image-at-you tends to be a bit wearing on the eyes.

* - even though I've always somehow ended up with a tiny crappy computer desk, I never had trouble fitting a CRT on it, so I consider the 'size' thing to be a problem at the same level as "it doesn't match my purse".

I dunno, were CRT monitors available in larger that 4:3 19"?

I had one and it was big front to back (heavy too). Also very expensive in 2000. Very very expensive.

[Renegrade]

1 hour ago, T.A.P.O.R. said:

I dunno, were CRT monitors available in larger that 4:3 19"?

I had one and it was big front to back (heavy too). Also very expensive in 2000. Very very expensive.

Yeah, although they tended to favor the 4:3 aspect ratio though all sizes (or something close to 4:3 anyways - 5:4 was popular in the later days).  I seem to recall some scary high end units being in the 25+ inch range - those would eat a "thirty inch" LCD for breakfast as the LCD is probably only about two thirds of the vertical space.  I had a 15 and 17 inch - still do in fact - the 17s every bit as tall as my 23-inch LCDs... and has zero input lag...and doesn't choke if you throw a non-native mode at it...and can actually display a full sixteen million colors...with reasonable non-lie contrast ratio....with a sub-millisecond grey to grey.

Typical TN LCDs have a 8+ millisecond G2G, and those have nasty bad viewing angles and are not 24-bit capable.  Plus, they're often heavily overdriven to reach those speeds, which creates artifacts during motion scenes.  Great for finding cloaked/invisible players, not so great during movies.   IPS screens have wider viewing angles and can kinda approximate true color, but live in the oh-hey-a-video-frame-arrived-yesterday-let's-render-it-now world of 40+ ms G2G, regardless of whatever lies and BS the marketing department puked up for the screen's stats -- keeping in mind that a 60hz update rate corresponds to a redraw every 16 and 2/3 milliseconds.

Note that computer monitors tend to move AWAY from wide aspect ratios (note how 16:10 monitors are sneaking in to replace the 16:9s) as being excessive in either dimension is wasteful.  Great, you have a 2.3:1 monitor that's two desks wide?  let's give you a long document to read in closed-source software that doesn't support zooming, rotating, or multi-page viewing.

I wouldn't worry about the expense - that was 2000.   A terabyte of hard drive back then would have cost more than a low-end car.

Anyhow, the only real motivation I ever had to upgrade was eye strain.   The strobey nature of CRTs is quite rough on the eyes for long sessions.  If that hadn't been a problem, I'm sure I'd have some 24-inch super deluxe 3200x2560 CRT monitor today, running down at like 1280x1024 so I can enjoy games at a vsync'd 300 hz.

[Mulbin]

You can also fly a Mercury Capsule in Vr...Free Alpha version here -  http://kck.st/1pygkt4
 

 

[Val]

Moved to The Lounge as the Topic is VR, not KSP

[Pixel of Life]

On 3/15/2016 at 0:44 AM, DoctorDavinci said:

That dog don't hunt ... there is empirical proof that permanent damage to your vision can occur due to reading a book in dim light or sitting close to a television while watching or even wearing the wrong prescription glasses so chalking up the concern of damaging your eyesight by using VR headsets to 'simulator sickness' is really just fooling yourself

 

 

Except that sitting right in front of a TV and using a VR headset aren't the same. Unlike a TV, a VR headset has lenses that make it possible for your eyes to be completely relaxed, i.e. focused to infinity, as if you were looking at a distant object. In terms of eye strain, using a VR headset isn't any more harmful than looking at ships way out in the ocean or stars in the night sky. I'm not denying the possibility of eye damage, but it would happen for completely different reasons.

[DoctorDavinci]

It's not just a matter of relaxed eyes, having LED's in such close vicinity to your eyeball increases the likelihood that the receptor cells at the back of your eye will be overstimulated causing impaired vision

Ever watch TV in a dark room and then walk into a room with light? ... If you have then you have seen the imprint left by the lack of peripheral light in the dark room you were watching TV in

Also everyone will need different focusing lenses based on their eye shape ... Do you really think these VR headsets are going to come with multiple lenses? ... and if they do, how much more is that going to cost and what about a person using the wrong set of lenses in their headset?

Looks to me like there are a whole set of issues with VR where your eyes are concerned

Edited March 26, 2016 by DoctorDavinci