VR Oculus Rift - No Pain, No Gain.

My experience with an Oculus Rift DK1 and Assetto Corsa.

OK so borrowed this off a friend of a friend. Remember, it's the DK1 which is now superseded by the DK2 so things have already got better but I'm reviewing what I had....and at times it was an exercise in frustration! But I will start with the positives.

The demonstration environment alone, where I find myself plonked in front of a virtual desk with a plant and tower of cards on a infinite plane instantly turns frustration to a grin and a laugh, despite being untextured and low res.

Spacial perception of the Assetto Corsa environment is magnified ten fold, which is very impressive and immersive.

Going from the Merc 190E Evo to the E30 I really feel the difference in the E30's compact cockpit space. Open wheelers are amazing and I felt like I actually need to keep my arms close to stay 'in' them. In the lotus 48 I had a sense of vulnerability being able to appreciate just how tiny but rather low sided and open the cockpit space is. Looking back over my should and seeing the huge rear wheels felt unreal. Then going to the 98T I felt alot more secure in the high sides, and felt like I could almost reach out and touch the side pods in the Tatuus. The KTM X-Box was awesome too, looking back at the headrests and over the front, a more than a sideways glance of the eyes at the speedo e.g. a full head turn and I would lose alot of focus on the road ahead, but because I was IN it the sideways glance didn't always give you the detail you needed.

The feeling of looking to my apex's came naturally and wasn't distracting. On tight corners like the Trento whatevero hill climb, being able to turn and look right through the corner exit was amazing and surely an advantage. Going through the shadows in the trees on Nordschliefe actually felt like being fully enveloped in shadow cast by the tress rather than just a dark flicker on a screen in front of me. Passing through the bridge/tunnel on Monza 66 was cool too, and the sense of size looking up at the roadside billboards was awesome.

So that's some of the good I gained, but here's what was painful and why although it's a fun experience, you simply can't have the complete game with it yet.

First and foremost it doesn't support any 2D menus or HUDs. So in Assetto Corsa that means no apps, no live lap timing, no position indicator, no tyre meter, not even a pause menu, let alone a garage menu to load or edit setups. To exit the sim back to the launcher you have to quit to desktop and close the window from the task bar or task manager. So for anything more than just a sample of the technology, all that is game breaking... from what I've read although the DK2 has alot of other improvements, over coming this hasn't been one of them. I guess development of some of this in on Kunos, and part of the dedicated display mode they have implemented for Oculus rift (from the dropdown for single or triple monitor display rendering).

Secondly there's the resolution. DK1 is 1280 x 800 and with your face so close to those pixels you can see each one giving a 'screen door' effect. This means that I only have definitive vision of shapes up to just a few car lengths away. Even the LCD dash in the 98T is almost impossible to read. Corners on the horizon are merely blocks of colour, particularly on straight sections of track where things in the distance and on the horizon sort of align with the gaps in the pixels and get lost in the 'screen door'. Getting a feel for braking distances in high speed vehicles and tracks is difficult, I could get around a circuit, but would never be competitive. There's also a bit of latency (both in screen refresh rate and head tracking it seemed) particularly when operating in duplicate display mode (apparently). This made drifting very difficult almost to the point of impossible as it's quite a lot more hectic, and critical your looking in the right place with the right info to continuously make the right input adjustments.

Then there's the inability to navigate your desktop or GUI with it, because it's optimised for stereoscopic display. You can try, but you simply can't see all of it (not without unscrewing lens pieces and peering into the headset sideways anyway). So you need to be running a monitor up until launching the sim (or other environment) and switching to the headset.... doesn't sound so bad, but here's where you start smashing things!

Setup of the Oculus as a second display is tedious and frustrating. Getting plugged in, the runtime downloaded and installed is easy... but what now? instructions are thin so it's trial and error with alot of error! Calibration didn't work but the demo environment seemed to be functioning fine so I eagerly moved on.

Extended desktop has to have the rift as the primary display with Assetto Corsa (otherwise you just get a stereoscopic view on your main monitor). So you can't see your task bar and most of your desktop (or GUI if you get that far) to easily launch the sim environment. You really need to be able to navigate your desktop easily as there's a bit of jumping in and out of this and that to get things right, and as I said above you can't exit the sim in the normal fashion. No biggie you say, that's what duplicate desktop is for right?! Except that duplicate desktop didn't work with the latest config tool... well it didn't, then it did for a time which when it didn't again was agonisingly frustrating because I was on the precipice of unlocking this new world. Also you're stuck with a monitor desktop resolution of 1280 x 800 with things in duplicate display mode - not too bad as long as your monitor supports it. Otherwise you're stuffed.

I had gotten as far as getting into the sim environment and even driving a few corners of Nordschlief a couple of times but it was washed out white in alot of places and impossible to see where you were going most of the time. It took me a while of trying gamma and brightness adjustments to realise that the duplicate display on the TV was also washed out.... so I figured the rift driver didn't support High Dymanic Range lighting etc.

Turning off post processing effects did the trick and it still looked decent, but now a new problem had arisen... everytime I loaded the sim the view yaw was offset so when I was facing straight ahead in my real body, the virtual body was facing out the left window. So I restarted everything, and from then on could not get the rift display driver to function in duplicate desktop mode again.... hours would pass before I would get anywhere with this. I tried everything....until I finally tried rolling back a version of the rift run-time display driver (fortunately all older versions can be readily downloaded from the oculus website).

So yay back on duplicate displays it was manageable to get things going again. But every time I loaded the sim environment the view yaw was still off, when I was facing forwards in my chair, the virtual view would be out the side window or something, but it wasn't consistent! There is a hot key (CTRL-SPACE) that is meant to re-centre the view, but this just corrected drift head positioning not yaw. I figured out that going back into the demo environment and centring the view there fixed it, but this meant a bit of jumping in and out of AC. Even then, a few laps or some enthusiastic head movements (turning to see the rear wing etc) would see the view drifting out to one side again to the point where it became un-drivable and I'd have to quit and re-run the demo.

Apparently this is where calibrating the magnetic position sensors is meant to help, in preventing drift. However after 30 odd attempts I couldn't get it to calibrate getting errors of either "not enough magnetic variance or movement" or "too much...", WTF?!. Reading the forums alot of other people seem to be getting this too, particularly on the DK1, so I am going to try and older runtime but if I can be bothered getting around to it (this means installing the old, restarting, installing the new, re-setting display config resolution etc etc.. stuff I have already been through too many times for today!)

As I said above, the head-tracking in terms of yaw (looking left and right) to see to the apex and through bends felt nice and natural. But there was little in the way of vertical or horizontal plane tracking. Meaning for instance if I leaned forward or stood up out of my seat it felt like the cockpit came with me rather than being able to look out over the bonnet or down the side of an open cockpit more. I understand though that head tracking has been improved in the DK2 and some of the vids I've seen certainly look better in this regard than what I experienced.

This is amazing technology and the immersion potential is enormous, BUT it certainly isn't poised to be an alternative to monitors (single or triple, or upside down!) for sim racing just yet so hold onto your pennies until you can test a consumer version of this or the HTC Valve would be my advice.

So I have wasted most of a day in hours of frustration and pain to gain a glimpse into the world of Assetto Corsa through the Oculus rift. Was it worth it?

For the compromises and limitations of what the DK1 offers not really. I won't be holding onto it for long now I've tried it out, and if it was mine it would just be brought out on occasion as a novelty for a dabbling in "show and tell". For a DK2? maybe it would have been...... but still would be short lived bursts of use having to revert to the monitor for any serious racing, toggling alot of settings along the way.

BUT In terms of trying something completely new, understanding the immersion "wow" potential, and fuelling an interest for the consumer version it's definitely been worth a try.

Couple of other things - I didn't get around to trying a race with other cars on the track. I think while they are in close proximity this would be awesome, particularly in open wheelers. But then in terms of actual racing the limitations of the DK1 in terms of your ability to view the cars ahead will become a problem. I'll save this for another day/weekend at this stage I think!

Sharp elevation or pitch changes are weird, just weird! Most tracks are fine, but going off track and over the embankment at Monza 66 I had a moment of "get it off just get it off!", which I did to stop feeling dizzy. That's just because brain tells your body to expect a weight shift that never actually happens I guess.

Nice find from Ryzza.

I have to say I gave the DK1 another run recently with a mate and already having worked out the finicky details, which driver to use etc. it was much much easier to setup again.

Did some races around vallelunga club in the KTM X-bow with a full grid, deliberately picking a small track / slower car combo to mitigate the limited view distance of the DK1. Had to turn the AI down a bit from the default 98%, and then it was really fun.

It was almost overwhelming racing up behind another car under brakes and finding your view consumed with their rear end. Size feels exaggerated compared to gaming on a screen. The sensation and ability to look right over your shoulder to find other cars in close proximity was cool.

So looking forward to trying a consumer version!

Nice look forward to it. Certainly hope it was cheap as the consumer version is almost upon us and word was that was worth holding out for.. as Ryzza said the HTC Valve VR also looks very promising too.

Cool Troy, yea I reckon you'll have some great fun with it but won't be good for any serious racing.