I want to buy a VR headset

TheRealFluent

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And I know nothing about them. What should I get? I'd like to play Skyrim in VR, but can you play any game with it? Can I play Morrowind with for example? I'd rather play Morrowind in VR with graphics enhancements. Maybe Bard's Tale IV, or even Kingmaker and isometric RPGs if that's possible, just to try the isometrics and see what it's like. So what do I need to buy to get it done?
 
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Not really interested in VR but yes you can play Morrowind in VR.

Link - https://www.vorpx.com/


Morrowind can be played in VR using Vorpx but it takes some time to set up. To access any menus you have to leave VR mode and use "edge peaking" which is annoying.
Link - https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/4759/morrowrift-morrowind-vr-cv1-1-3-alpha-v-3-0-2

Morrowrift is the better option: the whole game can be played in near native VR, has head tracking separated from mouse movement and menus are displayed properly in vr. Downside is that the developer hasn't updated it in over a year so it could be dead in the water.
Remember both these programs use the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
 
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Thanks Couch. I might just mod Skyrim heavily and do another run with that game in VR. Can the VR version be modded? I'd like to add better textures and crank the graphics up, and possibly some content mods too if they're allowed in VR. Seems like it would be fun to try these games in VR.
 
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The Vive Pro is the better headset, with a significantly higher resolution, but it's extremely expensive. IMO, the resolution still needs to be much higher, and the experience of current headsets suffers from that limitation.

With regard to hacking non-VR games to become VR, using VorpX and the like, I've found the results to be pretty poor. The performance tends to be bad, because while a true VR game can use various techniques to avoid fully rendering twice, the hack solutions have to brute force it. Also, the controls (and the way the camera moves) in games not designed for VR can be very awkward. I've found most of them not to be very playable.
 
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The Vive Pro is the better headset, with a significantly higher resolution, but it's extremely expensive. IMO, the resolution still needs to be much higher, and the experience of current headsets suffers from that limitation.

That's the one I think I'm going to get, along with Skyrim VR (and maybe Fallout 4 VR, dunno on that one yet). I'm just interested in seeing a game like Skyrim in VR, modded up with nicer textures and graphical enhancements. I'm hoping it's a pretty stunning experience. :)
 
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Yes, Skyrim VR is pretty cool, and very moddable. Again, though, you won't get away with as much eye candy, as you need the framerate to stay above 90fps, and VR is also more demanding. You'll soon be lusting after graphics cards that don't exist yet.

It's a real boon to have proper VR versions of those games. Performance is vastly superior to the VorpX hacked version, and they solve the problem of "head looking". The main thing that kills games not designed for VR is that they have no concept of looking in a different direction than you're moving. That's crucial to the experience, and there's no way to hack it into existing games, unless they're open-source projects. The effect is that you end up moving towards the spot you're looking at, not the direction you're actually facing. It kills the experience, and has me reaching for the bucket. :p
 
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Make sure you get the controls, too. I've got an Oculus with just the little button thing and it doesn't work terribly well.

Isometric games are going to be rough unless the pointer is 3D. What I mean by that is the pointer goes to the depth of whatever you're clicking. Normally, the pointer sticks to the same depth as the GUI, which makes it extremely difficult to select items that are deeper (and weird to select ones that are closer to you).

3D Vision is still out there, too. It's less immersive as you're monitor essentially turns into a window into the world instead of you being IN the world but it is more compatible and has the advantage of being able to turn it on and off with a keystroke.

You'll soon be lusting after graphics cards that don't exist yet.
I've done that since video cards first showed up!
 
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Yes, Skyrim VR is pretty cool, and very moddable. Again, though, you won't get away with as much eye candy, as you need the framerate to stay above 90fps, and VR is also more demanding. You'll soon be lusting after graphics cards that don't exist yet.

It's a real boon to have proper VR versions of those games.

Yeah, that's what I figured too. So I'd basically be buying it for Skyrim VR for awhile and eventually whatever else comes (hopefully Bard's Tale IV!)

Do you think a 1080ti would be enough to mod Skyrim with a lot of eye candy and keep the framerate above 90? I'm mostly interested in higher res textures and maybe an ENB if there's one that's really a must-have.
 
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You should be OK with high-quality textures and lighter, VR-friendly ENBs. The trade off is that the way to compensate for the poor resolution of the VR headset, is to supersample the game at a higher resolution. To me, this makes the biggest quality difference. Once you start doing all that together, you can hit performance problems quite quickly.

I'm sure you'll have fun. After a while, my main response to the VR experience was, "Wow, this is pretty awesome - but I can see how it could get so much better."
 
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If the money to buy it is trivial for you and you just want to mess around with it, then I say go for it.


However, If you're spending money that could serve a purpose elsewhere, Then I say don't buy yet. Let the tech mature and see where it goes.

I bought my son an HTC Vive a year or more ago with the upgraded audio head strap thingy. He's probably played it for a total of 50 hours since.

the thought of VR is great but the execution currently is subpar imo. Once you get over the first few hours of looking around in amazement and it is amazing to just look around in. You start to notice that most games are just glorified demos, movement and controls are suboptimal at Best. Teleporting or free movement if you can stomach it is wonky. Gameplay is just very poor for the majority of games I've tried. Obviously that's subjective but of the few people I know that took the VR plunge the same thing happens. They play it a lot at first (the looking around phase as I call it) then they look around for decent content to play, find very little, waste some more money on games they hope are good but turn out not to be. Then they find themselves playing less and less until not at all.

Don't even get me started on the amount of room or cable management required to make it actually work well.

Anyway, my opinion. It's cool to mess around with for a bit if you have the money to burn but it has no staying power. I'd hold on to your money until the tech improves or spend it on something else.
 
Well honestly, the money isn't really a thing right now, it's more about the fascination with VR and especially Elder Scrolls style games in it. I see the library of good games is limited, but I'm due for another run of Skyrim with Requiem soon anyway, and I haven't played a ton of Fallout 4 yet, so that in VR could be a blast too. I just really want to see how blown away I am by it, and also play Skyrim again in that mode. There's a lot of mod content and stuff I haven't seen yet nor have I done a full Requiem playthrough, so I will actually play it and not just gawk at it. Same with F4. So I think I'm going to dive in with the HTC Vive Pro headset and give it a go. Might as well, it's freaking virtual reality. :wideeyed:
 
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Well honestly, the money isn't really a thing right now, it's more about the fascination with VR and especially Elder Scrolls style games in it. I see the library of good games is limited, but I'm due for another run of Skyrim with Requiem soon anyway, and I haven't played a ton of Fallout 4 yet, so that in VR could be a blast too. I just really want to see how blown away I am by it, and also play Skyrim again in that mode. There's a lot of mod content and stuff I haven't seen yet nor have I done a full Requiem playthrough, so I will actually play it and not just gawk at it. Same with F4. So I think I'm going to dive in with the HTC Vive Pro headset and give it a go. Might as well, it's freaking virtual reality. :wideeyed:

In that case, I hope you enjoy. As I said it really is amazing to see. That first time I turned around and looked up It was like I was in another world. For immersion VR has no equal.

As for the Vive headset I can't say anything bad about it it's worked flawlessly since we got it. So it seems to be good hardware but I haven't tried the oculus so I can't compare them. I did try the PS4 VR and I'd say the Vive was superior to that.

He has a titan x (Maxwell) which I believe is a tad slower than the 1080ti so I don't think you'll have any problems running games. modding however can tank frames per second pretty quick so just be selective.
 
In that case, I hope you enjoy. As I said it really is amazing to see. That first time I turned around and looked up It was like I was in another world. For immersion VR has no equal.

As for the Vive headset I can't say anything bad about it it's worked flawlessly since we got it. So it seems to be good hardware but I haven't tried the oculus so I can't compare them. I did try the PS4 VR and I'd say the Vive was superior to that.

He has a titan x (Maxwell) which I believe is a tad slower than the 1080ti so I don't think you'll have any problems running games. modding however can tank frames per second pretty quick so just be selective.

Thanks saki. I'm curious how turning around works. I want to use it seated if possible, I don't have a lot of room to be flailing about. If I want to see what's behind me, do I physically have to turn around in my chair? o_O
 
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Thanks saki. I'm curious how turning around works. I want to use it seated if possible, I don't have a lot of room to be flailing about. If I want to see what's behind me, do I physically have to turn around in my chair? o_O

The games I played you are in the world just like the real world. So if you want to see behind you you need to turn around or a least twist your body around far enough that you can turn your head to see behind you. Where you look is where you see. Also some games had stuff behind me like a table I?d have to turn around to grab stuff off of or enemies I?d have to turn around and shoot.

It really is designed to be played with room to move. I?ve accidentally hit walls or knocked stuff over because you will instinctively dodge when something is coming at you. I built my son a computer room in the basement and bought some wires on Amazon that allows you to have the wire?s above you on a pulley so they?re out of the way. Obviously you don?t need to go that far to use it but the more room the better.

One of the main advantages of the pc vr headsets is the ability to move around in a small space. The ps4 headset for instance only has one camera so you can only play it seated or stationary. If you move too far it can?t sense you.

When I say I hit walls it was just me getting to in to it. You can set boundaries on the computer of the room and it will show you warnings and outlines of the walls but of course I thought I might have just enough room to do something and boom, hit a wall. Lol.
 
When you play something like Skyrim VR, you can sit in a chair and use the controller to move, and to turn the direction your body is facing. This can be quite disconcerting at first, but many of us get used to it after a while. Some find that special controllers, like foot pedals, make it feel more natural and comfortable. I adapted to it quite quickly. For me, as long as my view moves independently with my head, using a controller to orient and move my "body" feels OK. I guess years of gaming have trained my brain to accept that this is perfectly normal.
 
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When you play something like Skyrim VR, you can sit in a chair and use the controller to move, and to turn the direction your body is facing. This can be quite disconcerting at first, but many of us get used to it after a while. Some find that special controllers, like foot pedals, make it feel more natural and comfortable. I adapted to it quite quickly. For me, as long as my view moves independently with my head, using a controller to orient and move my "body" feels OK. I guess years of gaming have trained my brain to accept that this is perfectly normal.

Awesome, that's just what I wanted to hear. I will make room to stand if I have to (I'll try that way out too) but I'd prefer seated use. Also, what's with foot pedals? Can you link me to those and explain how they would add to the experience?

Edit - I found the VR Rudder thing on Amazon for $100. So do you turn left and right with your feet, then, as well as walk and run? That sounds like a must-have if so.
 
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