VR worth it?

[Stenleh44]

I am slightly curious about VR. I was thing about maybe getting into VR. The only PC games i play that would be goo for VR is ATS/ETS and maybe Ms flight simulator.

I run a Amd 5700x 32gb , nvme drives and an rtx 3070. So I think my setup could handle it. Although I know nothing about VR.

I like the fact that the oculus has a lot of self contained content but not a fan of the Facebook thing. I would also have to get prescription lenses as I wear glasses.

So between the device, cables, and lenses I think I’d be $500 or so into it.

Ive been so curious how ATS would be with VR and have seen videos but I can’t get a feel for it. Just not sure if worth it.

I know you can’t answer for me but what are your opinions. Any other setups I should look into?

Thanks for your input

[Antares]

If you can afford spending the money, do it. Playing ETS2/ATS in vr is definitely worth it!
But be aware that some features of the game do not work in vr, like you know it (for example: screenshots, some menus), because it is still a beta and the graphics resolution is far away from a 4k desktop monitor. But the immersion is great.

If your desicion goes for vr:
For your prescription lenses you can try this optician https://vroptiker.de/. The price is quite reasonable and i've got my lenses within 8 days.

To install the vr-beta, right click on the game -> properties -> betas -> choose 'oculus - Oculus+OpenVR - 1.44 - (SDK 1.4.0)'. The download will start immediately.

IMPORTANT: After installation you should right click on the game -> properties -> general and enter -oculus as the start option (for Oculus device or -openvr for any other device). The game will now start in vr-mode and SteamVR should start first.

If you get stuck in vr (black or frozen screen or just the sand glass in your hmd), F11 key might help. It switches between desktop and vr mode (desktop mode only works with menus). I touch F11 from time to time accidently while groping for another key on the keyboard and wonder why the game stopped working. :-(

And by the way, there are many other games to have fun with in vr.

Have fun!!!

[Stenleh44]

Originally posted by Jay:

Oh well... while I can't talk about VR, I can assure you if you don't want waste so much money and still have an amazing experience, just get trackir. I've been using TIR5 since the release in every game possible and there is no way I can play without it.

Thanks for your reply. I already use trackIR. Game changer for ATS.

[Stenleh44]

Originally posted by Antares:

If you can afford spending the money, do it. Playing ETS2/ATS in vr is definitely worth it!
But be aware that some features of the game do not work in vr, like you know it (for example: screenshots, some menus), because it is still a beta and the graphics resolution is far away from a 4k desktop monitor. But the immersion is great.

If your desicion goes for vr:
For your prescription lenses you can try this optician https://vroptiker.de/. The price is quite reasonable and i've got my lenses within 8 days.

To install the vr-beta, right click on the game -> properties -> betas -> choose 'oculus - Oculus+OpenVR - 1.44 - (SDK 1.4.0)'. The download will start immediately.

IMPORTANT: After installation you should right click on the game -> properties -> general and enter -oculus as the start option (for Oculus device or -openvr for any other device). The game will now start in vr-mode and SteamVR should start first.

If you get stuck in vr (black or frozen screen or just the sand glass in your hmd), F11 key might help. It switches between desktop and vr mode (desktop mode only works with menus). I touch F11 from time to time accidently while groping for another key on the keyboard and wonder why the game stopped working. :-(

And by the way, there are many other games to have fun with in vr.

Have fun!!!

Thanks for your input

[Duke Leto]

VR is great. No more looking at the screen sideways with track IR. Note that ATS/ETS2 only support the headset - NOT the motion controllers. You are effectively blind, so you need easy controls - steering wheels and pedals, but if you are using track IR you probably already have them.

You might want a button box of some sort or just a usb keypad for extra buttons that you can locate next to your steering wheel - I find a keyboard has a few to many buttons to feel for the correct ones easily. A mouse is easy to use blind, but a keyboard can be a bit more finicky. I use a steamdeck for buttons, but that is overkill as you cannot see the images anyway - but I already had it.

You should have enough horse power with a 3070, I initially was using a 1080ti (I have upgraded to a 3080ti). Just realize that a headset is like 4k resolution, so you will have to lower some settings, in particular the scaling, probably to 125 or 100% -- i use 150 with my 3080ti and some pretty high settings to get a fairly smooth 45 fps with 90 refresh rate.

The big thing is motion sickness - I was worried that I might get motion sick - so I stuck with the cheapest headset - a quest 2 128mb - the memory on the headset is not that important as I was buying it primarily for pc vr. So i bought it through amazon because they have a good return policy - if I got sick it was going back. But in reality I never got sick once and love VR -- it brought me back to ATS & ETS2.

[Stenleh44]

Thanks for your reply.

[HighPlains Drifter]

I wouldnt dump the money into it. If you already have a headset, gear etc. Give it a try. But planning to dump money into trying it, i wouldnt.

Is it neat ? Yes, the experience was pretty damn cool.

However.... visual fidelity was lacking. Everything was blurry, from a slight blur to vaseline on your glasses. Different setups, had varying degrees of blurryness but nothing got a crisp image. Steamvr is a mess from my experience, using a link cable, or desktopVR with dedicated router, didnt matter. Although that got the better image, 20 bucks for the software and a spare router is steep for 1 game to work.

Plus the sound kept going to the headset, and caused some windows sound setting confusion. For windows, not me; i knew where i wanted the sound...

It was neat and if you have it already, try it. But i dont suggest buying anything to try it.

[Fluxuated]

VR is the only way to play, as far as I'm concerned. Makes the game 10x better

[buttmunch]

I've only played this game in VR. It works fairly well and even with an xbox controller was quite immersive. However, there are some issues.

Valve index on 3700x, 5700xt, 32gb 3600mhz

performance- running 60fps/120hz on the index I cannot maintain 60fps in some cities. Runs fine elsewhere. This will probably cause motionsickess or eye strain if you are new to vr. A quest2 with a 3070 may have slightly better or slightly worse performance, VR is weird like that.

graphics- Looks blurry, textures look low res, even modded improved textures don't look good. Road signs etc are hard to read until close. Supersampling helps but requires a very powerful GPU. Some games look great in VR this is not one of them.

Lighting/contrast- desert maps are over bright and terrain is washed out, I couldn't find any tweaks to fix this. Greener areas and night time looks OK though.

Overall I enjoyed the game but decided to shelve it until I have a better system than can run it smoothly at a higher resolution.

[Truckers Silver]

I love playing both ETS2 and ATS in VR, unfortunately I can no longer play them in VR. As it seems my PC is no longer powerful enough, not that it won't play, it just doesn't run smooth even at the lowest settings. Strange thing is I've tried SS from 100% to 250% and seems no difference in the stuttering. Specs 3800x, RTX 3070, 16Gig, and Index. I've got both Win10 and Win11 installed on separate hard drives (Win11 on a NVME) and the result is the same on both OS's. It is such a shame.

[Afoldo]

To answer the VR question, I have both TrackIR and a Valve Index, and I find the headset to be the superior experience.

What folks have said above applies, though: don't expect the same level of visual fidelity, and maintaining a stable framerate in recent versions is pretty much impossible no matter your hardware, no matter how low you go in the settings.

Still... the immersion is unbeatable, and you'll see hours go by in a blink.

> desert maps are over bright and terrain is washed out

I find that using one of the external camera helps. I'm a fan of the bumper cam anyway (feels like riding a motorcycle), so for pretty scenery that solves it for me.

Haven´t actually tried it, but playing with the Ambient Occlusion graphics setting would theoretically help, too.

[buttmunch]

There are several games that suffer poor performance in VR due to CPU limitations. The 5800x3d has shown in some of those games (fallout4vr, ms2020) to increase the minumum framerate upto 40% over other high end CPUs.

I'm wondering if this game would see similar results.

[Gryper]

Its not too bad. Rift S with a RTX2080S

[☎need4naiim☎]

No, it isn't, IMHO. I don't defend my opinion though because i don't care about VR that much to begin with. Even this post came out of nowhere. xD

I immerse myself into the games without any further headset. I see nothing around me once i start the game and look into monitor with my headphones.

It was the same when i was playing NFSIII without a 3Dfx video card. Back then, having a 3Dfx supporting card was a lot more fundamental for full-throttle gaming compared to Ray Tracing support, VR support, G-Sync support, Freesync support.

Man,... 96-2006 era was extreme fun in terms of gaming quality. The days Villeneuve, Hill, Schumacher, Hakkinen, Montoya were racing... Cheesy Mortal Kombat games&movies.... Diablo Franchise's best days.... Electronic Arts was ridiculously good.... Internet was not being censored nor standardized nor plagued at current levels....

Sorry for not writing an essay on the positives of VR.

This is my take.

[ve6srv]

So you asked about any other setups that you should look into. I am guessing you are asking about alternate visual interface setups. I'm not sure how many different ways you can interface with the visuals. Standard interface is a flat representation of the view on a regular monitor. This presents a 2D visual in front of you. You can add a wide screen monitor, or additional monitors that wrap around you to help with the field of view, giving you the ability to turn your head to see what is around you. Normally you wont find people putting monitors surrounding them in 360 degrees, so there will always be a limited field of view. The images on the monitors will still always be 2D. Wrapping monitors around you makes looking in the direction desired intuitive.

Then there's the TrackIR type solution which can require you to wear head tracking hardware, and train yourself to turn your head, but look in an unnatural direction to see the image desired. I've thought about using this solution, but don't know how it might work with multiple monitors. Again, images presented are 2D.

A VR headset changes things significantly in my opinion as each eye is presented with a different perspective of the image, which turns into a 3D perspective view. Your first experiences with VR can be pretty wild. You might find yourself reaching for items in VR, and being confused when your hand does not meet the physical item.

Driving in VR is very immersive. I have hundreds of hours driving ATS in VR, and I still jump and get an adrenaline rush when vehicles pop up unexpectedly. Getting the view to point in the direction that you want to look is completely intuitive as the head tracking is automatic. Wearing the headset is the only thing that really changes between real life and VR. There is a bit of difference in the fact that the eyepieces don't give a complete field of view. It would be similar to driving wearing a snorkel swim mask.

VR is not without its issues. Resolution is lower than when running high resolution monitors. Road signs with smaller text are quite often unreadable until you are right on top of them. Even speed signs for me take some effort to read as they go by. Small text on the dashboard is also slightly blurry. The general view out the window however is very immersive.

Interacting with the real world is a bit of a challenge. A button box is on my wishlist, with custom built button types and layout to allow for easy landmarking of the desired control without visual reference.

Motion sickness isn't an issue for me. When I first tried VR, I got motion sick flying around in Google Earth 3D. The visuals didn't match my vestibular system, and my brain got all confused. I felt nauseous, but didn't correlate it to motion sickness as it felt different than motion sickness from an activity like reading a book in a moving vehicle. The out of sync issue is different in that with VR, the motion cues are visual, where when reading a book in a moving car, the motion cues are vestibular.

The only time I have issues with motion sickness in ATS is when driving on the rough gravel roads. The visual cues shake the camera view around, but the vestibular system tells your mind you are sitting still. I solve this issue by lightly shaking my head around when driving on these bumpy roads. My vestibular system is getting the motion input, and while it doesn't match the visuals exactly, it is close enough that my brain thinks everything is as it should be.

Adding in a motion simulator seat would solve this issue, and add even more immersion to the simulator.

For myself personally, trying to play ATS on a flat monitor with mouse and keyboard was a no-go. I tried it, and it was too much work to have to convert my head motion to mouse movement, and still be able to drive with a keyboard. I never tried gamepad or joystick input, so cannot comment on that. I have a wheel/pedals/shifter, so the driving control input is exactly the same as real life. No need to retrain the brain there.

A head tracking system would be a possible solution to getting rid of having to use a mouse to look around. In game settings for changing view with signal lights or wheel position help, but you cannot easily scan left/right using these settings.

I believe that while you can play the game with mouse/keyboard on a single flat screen, each bit that you add such as head tracking, surround monitors, wheel/pedals/shifter, VR headset, button box, motion seat or others adds to the experience.

Is it worth it? That's up to you to decide.

[Stenleh44]

Thanks for your input.

I have the wheel, pedals, shifter with range splitter, and Track IR. I figured VR would be the natural progression.

For the money I think the Occulus is a great deal for what you get…lots of self contained content and such. Plus all the PC games that are available.

What bothers me is the Facebook thing. How they force you to use a Facebook account, and from what I understand you can’t even use a secondary account if you already have facebook.

VR is definitly intriguing me.

Thank you to all who have replied.