They don’t come out and say it, and no details, but we should know soon!
HTC to Announce Upgraded Resolution?
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Thanks for posting Zed... I look forward to what they say!
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I wonder how long until they release this? And how much it will cost? And what the impact will be on framerates in FS 2?
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I wonder how long until they release this? And how much it will cost? And what the impact will be on framerates in FS 2?
We'll find out soon. There are a whole lot of possibilities and it could be anything. The VR press pointed out HTC previously said no Gen 2 until they could do it justice. Maybe they can do it justice now or maybe they can’t, but I think we can have some confidence in a lower limit on specs. Valve announced new custom lenses that give up to 120 degrees FoV depending on the display format. With WMR now with higher resolution, it’s probably safe to assume the new Vive will have at least that resolution.
After that it’s anyone's guess. If they do upscaling in silicon then effective resolution could go way up without really affecting frame rates on current hardware. Odds are good ergonomics will be even better, maybe it will have Lighthouse 2.0, maybe the knuckles controllers, even lighter, and so on.
There is also the motivation to wonder about. The Rifts have been priced low for a while and Vive has been slipping in market share. A refresh or a gen 2 makes sense but you’d also think they would shoot for something more than just equaling the WMR headsets in resolution unless it somehow was trivial to do whatever this is. Without upscaling, any extra FoV and resolution does carry a compute penalty. That has to have factored into this somehow, either as not a significant issue or they are mitigating it somehow. Eye tracking and foveated rendering are maybe too extreme, but who knows?
It’s all very curious. The only thing we know for sure is they are teasing it as a New Years "Resolution". For me at least, this is huge. Reading dials and gauges is the biggest issue for me in VR and any increase in resolution is welcome as long as it’s not just a trivial increase.
Going to be a long weekend...
Oh, on the release, the speculation I’ve seen is that if it’s just a refresh of the current Vive, very soon. This is probably tanking their sales short term. If it’s a whole new headset, much harder to say but probably still soon.
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- Official Post
One thing to consider here is the equal trade off. Most users have hardware that can accommodate higher Render Scale Factor to increase the 'resolution'. If the headsets had higher resolution then there wouldn't be much need anymore for the Render Scale Factor. RSF will have more of an impact on performance than pure higher resolution due to the software reprojection factor, so higher resolution on the headset and eliminating RSW should theoretically be better on performance in Aerofly and yield a crisper image.
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- Official Post
It's only a matter of time anyway Zed.
Five years from now between headset and GPU improvements we will have to take off our VR headset to LEAVE reality
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Assuming such an update is actually coming, I wonder what the response from Oculus will be......
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We can’t say much for certain with such a cryptic tease, but it does sound like something is coming with better resolution and with the date on the tease being Monday, we should know soon just what is up. Since they tease "resolution", it’s going to be more than just ergonomics or a lens update (last October Valve announced special lenses available to manufacturers using SteamVR). To increase resolution (without narrowing field of view) means new displays. I’ve been seeing discussions of even switching away from OLED to LCD but it’s all speculation and people guessing all sorts of panels. Samsung apparently has a new OLED panel that’s exactly the same physical size as the current Vive panel but 2k by 2k. I don’t see how they could use that without upscaling though. There are many possibilities.
But no idea what Oculus will do. I can’t believe they’ve gone all this time without working on their own second generation headset. The questions will be how close they are to a ready product and where they were aiming on features/specs compared to whatever HTC announces. They may breathe a sigh of relief on Monday or go back to the drawing board.
The first generation headsets came out with the exact same pixel counts though different panels. This second generation may be where we start to see diverging and it’s going to be interesting to see where they land, who is on top, and when they actually ship. We may even be looking at a leapfrog thing now since Oculus had said no new headset until 2019 but it will be hard to stick to that if they suddenly find themselves the lowest resolution headset on the market. Maybe they don’t release any upgrade until then but it’s a killer one, then a year or two after that, HTC or someone else blows that away.
We just don’t know but looks we'll start to hear things Monday. And no matter how things turn out, at least we are seeing movement. Hopefully significant but possibly minor. Two years with no real updates has been a long time. We’ve been needing a shakeup.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comment…eless_adapters/
Not a step change in increase if this is true:
Those looking for a completely new model may be disappointed - but the Vive Pro offers a welcome update - the original HTC Vive remains in the program. The Vive Pro has two OLED displays with a common resolution of 2880 x 1600 pixels, which makes it similar to the Vive Focus from the same company. Overall, the new headset has thus increased by 78 percent resolution and should achieve a much sharper and clearer presentation. For comparison: The "normal" HTC Vive offers 2160 x 1200 pixels.
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I guess we will have to try it to see if it really makes a difference.
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So, what's the advice then for someone getting into VR for the first time (in about two months)... Vive or Oculus? Will be used for AFS2, and FSX/pd3 (with Flyinside).
- Kenneth
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oculus seems to be the accepted winner for simming.........
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By the way: https://blog.vive.com/us/2018/01/08/…s-vive-adaptor/
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KJKsimmer, I found the Price -vs- performance balance for Oculus Rift to be a good starting unit for me in AFS2.
My Oculus is comfortable, for the most part, and though not nearly as crisp as my 4K 2D big screen, it does still immerse me in the experience, albeit in a different way. I accept some screen door filtering and difficult to read gauges as part of the 'ways things are for now', so instead I focus on other more fabulous things to fixate on like the thrill of cresting a mountain precipice!
With the upgrade to the Vive's resolution announced we are moving ahead nicely and it is nice to see. I am unlikely to buy anything else however (maybe for another year or so until things settle a bit). My 1060 gpu would likely need an upgrade to handle VR in higher resolution and keep Aerofly smooth as butter at ULTRA......then again, there is always room for a new toy in the toy box
ps. If you are going to use this with FlyInside and FSX/P3D, not just Aerofly, you may be best off sticking with current hardware and not jumping too soon to cutting edge tech. Higher resolution comes at significant cost to system resouces. I myself would be concerned about any impact of a high resolution headset on the ubiquitous stuttering/scenery popping/blurries issues of ESP based sims. In VR, I find those problems noticeably more apparent and difficult to tolerate.
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Thank you gentlemen.
The vote seems to still be the Rift, but I wonder if it will be that way in a year. I have waited this long to think about a new system, I wonder if I should hold off and see what the next generation Rift will bring? I do get tired of my limited FPS, and I am curious about VR, but would hate to spend $3000 now, only to feel my new whizz-bang system was out of date a year from now.
- Kenneth
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- Official Post
Kenneth,
PC's will always outdate themselves no matter when you buy one, much like cellphones but, you can get an MSI Aegis with a GTX 1080 ti and VR ready for around $1,700 now and the Oculus CV1 is very reasonably priced as well.
I usually stay out of these types of conversations on the forums but if you are sticking with Aerofly, even with the systems I mentioned above, you can't go wrong.
You will get solid 90 FPS with everything set to ultra in VR, you can even crank up the RSF and even check out that 'Insane' shadow setting.
If you do get the Oculus Rift, be sure to pick up the Touch controllers as we will be releasing the VR Hands update soon
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Zed has really got me thinking.....
So... Straight question to the forum... How important is the concept of VR Hands to you as opposed to the visual dynamics of better resolution?
I hear people saying VR hands will be incredible, but to be honest, I will never fly with my hands twirling around in the air instead of having the hands-on experience of a yoke or joystick. Same with throttles. I have built several home cockpits in the past just to get hands-on with knobs, buttons, etc. So, is VR hands a gimmick better suited to kids games than it is to a serious aviation simulation experience? Is not the real benefit of a VR headset the experience of visual immersion?
Vive-pro with higher definition? Or Rift with VR hands? If you are entering the VR arena for the first time, and currently own neither manufacturer's products, which is the choice for serious sim-pilots?
If you now own a Rift, would you swap it for a Vive pro in order to get the better visuals?
If you now own a Vive, would you swap it for a Rift to get the experience of VR hands?
I am about to spend a lot of money building a new computer, and moving into VR, just for serious flight simulation. So, these are important considerations.
- Kenneth
