PCVR Gaming. - The Bear and Badger

SpaceGazelle

A thread for all VR games that need a PC, especially now The Quest can play too. Some of this might make a noob feel ill but eventually you'll be fine. It's not unlike children and car sickness.
One of the most surprising things about VR is how good it is in multiplayer. Even just hanging around in Sports Bar Vr with Badgers is great, especially if you're getting pissed irl too. And many of the games here are miles better in co-op.

Free Stuff:

Essential

The Lab: Lots of little experiences that give an idea of what VR can do. The bow and arrow game is lovely.

Google Earth: Often gobsmacking and strangely atmospheric. Grab the Sun and move it about for sunsets/sunrises in your preferred locations. Don't forget to go into options and make it human scale, then go to New York and peek over the roof of a skyscraper. You will shit yourself.

Rec Room: Can crossplay with untethered Quest owners. Lots of stuff to do and people to meet. The sheer amount and diversity of content is getting really huge. You will meet mainly annoying people but if there's a few of you in a Badger posse you can ignore everyone else and do as you please.

VR Chat: Not for the fainthearted so have a few drinks first. The Berghain of VR. Utter madness, occasionally sweet, sometimes sexy but mainly annoying. Try not to insult every American you meet.

War Thunder: If you have the GPU power then this this is great - GTX 2070 Super minimum.

Non-Essential

AirCar: Basically flying about in Blade Runner, complete with heavy rain running down the glass of the cockpit. Nothing to do but fly around and relax. Moody but not exactly a game. Very detailed and pretty for a free thing.

Wolfstein VR 3D: Needs smooth motion to excel so get your VR legs on. Same game as flatsreen but more fun. They've added a few VR specific actions like opening doors by sliding them open.

Spiderman: Far from home: Better than you think it's going to be. They'll make a full Spidey VR game one day and it's going to be amazing if this is anything to go by.

Eleven: Table Tennis: Cheap on Steam!

Loads more free stuff here according to Ben Plays VR.

Free Films - some of these are great.

Games

Essential

Half Life Alyx: Just play it. (Free if you own the Index or Index controllers)

Elite Dangerous: A whole galaxy to explore, only 1% of which has actually been discovered so far. When you do find an undiscovered planet you really will be the first person to visit it, and in VR that feels extra special. If it's atmosphere you're after this is the game for you. The scale of it is mindblowing in VR. You'll absolutely need the Horizons expansion pack because getting in a buggy and driving around is spectacular. I will point out this will not be suitable for all headsets. So far I can only recommend The Index because of the clarity of the visuals, and it's such a visual experience, but The Quest 2 or whatever should be fine when it arrives next (this?) year. This is only going to get better as the hmds improve.

Beat Saber: Dancey but cool.

Boneworks: Improved substantially since release but I'd only recommend it with Index controllers. When it clicks the initial clumsiness vanishes and in many ways it has better physics than Alyx.

Non essential (my personal favourites)

VTOL: Built for VR in that the flying is designed around motion controls. Use your controllers as a HOTAS setup. Plenty of Steam Workshop levels to keep you busy.

IronwolfVR: I cannot recommend this enough if you have a Badger to play with, and I'd love to try it with a four man crew. You'll not find a crew online but that doesn't mean there aren't people playing, they're just playing in private groups. It's the kind of game that playing with a stranger would be a bit odd. Once you have a crew try the open world at least once for an intense Sea of Thieves experience. I can get really tense when you come across another crew out there. Also there's plenty of campaign missions to get through, but do it in co-op. It's fucking ace. Still in Early Access but don't let that stop you. Quest owners can also play this untethered.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes: Again, this really needs two people.

Quest Games: You can play Quest exclusives without a Quest by using Revive. Just steal them without feeling guilty, the walled garden Facebook bastards. Because Quest games are small you can often find an up to date torrent that has all of them. If it isn't a Quest exclusive and you like it (eg Pistol Whip) plz buy it.

There's so much I've missed and VR is particulary subjective, but I think it's a solid list to be getting on with.

jdanielp

Thanks for this. The Index just arrived, but I won't have time to unpack it until this evening and probably won't get into it properly until the weekend...

djchump

HL:Alyx is great.
I really dislike Boneworks.

nick_md

I'd add Quake VR into the games list, if you're having Wolfenstein. Not free, but you can get it for £3 or so on Steam, then grab the VR requirements from SideQuest, including HD textures. OG Quake still very atmospheric for me, with it's dank castles, going in with VR just dials that up.

I'd put Pavlov on the list too.

SpaceGazelle

jdanielp wrote:

Thanks for this. The Index just arrived, but I won't have time to unpack it until this evening and probably won't get into it properly until the weekend...

YAY! I'm going to stalk you until you buy IronwolfVR.

SpaceGazelle

djchump wrote:

I really dislike Boneworks.

It's not intuitive, I'll admit.

SpaceGazelle

Also everyone try Aircar. I hadn't tried it since I got my Index and I'd forgotten how beautiful it is. No gameplay, sadly, but as an indicator of what VR games might look like in the future it's a doozy. A great thing to show off to noobs.

jdanielp

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Thanks for this. The Index just arrived, but I won't have time to unpack it until this evening and probably won't get into it properly until the weekend...

YAY! I'm going to stalk you until you buy IronwolfVR.

Hmm. I mentioned it to a friend who also has an Index. It looks promising, but kind of hoping for a sale...

I have The Lab, Alyx, some existing games with VR support (mostly racing) and I bought Tetris Effect (Epic).

Also downloading AirCar, Google Earth VR and VR Chat. This seems like it will be enough for a starting point!

bad_hair_day

Great OP Spazelle.

SpaceGazelle

bad_hair_day wrote:

Great OP Spazelle.

Why thanks. I'll update it with suggestions. The Ben Plays VR channel also has plenty of free Quest stuff btw. i put aside an evening every now and again and go through his recommendations. Some of the free stuff is surprisingly good

SpaceGazelle

nick_md wrote:

I'd add Quake VR into the games list, if you're having Wolfenstein. Not free, but you can get it for £3 or so on Steam, then grab the VR requirements from SideQuest, including HD textures. OG Quake still very atmospheric for me, with it's dank castles, going in with VR just dials that up. I'd put Pavlov on the list too.

I'll try it tonight.

SpaceGazelle

jdanielp wrote:

Thanks for this. The Index just arrived, but I won't have time to unpack it until this evening and probably won't get into it properly until the weekend...

YAY! I'm going to stalk you until you buy IronwolfVR.

Hmm. I mentioned it to a friend who also has an Index. It looks promising, but kind of hoping for a sale... I have The Lab, Alyx, some existing games with VR support (mostly racing) and I bought Tetris Effect (Epic). Also downloading AirCar, Google Earth VR and VR Chat. This seems like it will be enough for a starting point!

Quick tips for better immersion on setup.

You need to wear the HMD more like a hard hat, so it shouldn't cup the very base of your skull. Once you've nailed it you don't need to adjust it again, just pull it forward and take it off.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5523-WTGC-1875

Dial those lenses right in. It makes a huge difference. Ideally, you'll see dark semi-circles at the far left and tight of your vision. This seems odd at first but stick with it and your brain will quickly just filter it out. Maximum FOV is very rewarding so if you can see those black arcs you're dialled in pretty good. You shouldn't actually see an upper boundary when the FOV is good.

Get the IPD right, it makes a difference to the clarity of the peripherals. This means you can look around without having to move your head, and the image should be relatively clear. It's not perfect but it's miles better than the Vive I used to own.

Get that sound turned up and make sure the speakers hovering over your ears (it doesn't have to be perfectly aligned). It's easy to forget this when you're putting it on. The speakers btw are amazingly good, and it seems so natural because they're not actually touching your head.

jdanielp

Just been into VR with the Index for the first time! Pretty cool, but still need to adjust things. I played around in the home environment thing, AirCar and The Lab for now. AirCar was amazing but did start to make me feel a bit nauseous. After exiting there were update options though, which means I will be able to run it at 120 FPS instead of 90 next time so it'll be interesting to see if that makes a difference. I think I still need to adjust the IPD somewhat (I'm hoping I have an accurate reading from an eye test written down somewhere), but I also realised I had not removed some protective film from the lenses!

SpaceGazelle

There's a whole reddit thread somewhere about the lens film. So many people saying it wasn't quite as sharp as they'd hoped and had not realised the cover was still on. You'll know when it's right because the clarity is amazing.

I'd 120Hz everything. It helps a lot with nausea and it keeps the image clear when looking around. The Index panels have a ultra low pesistence anyway which reduces blurring a tonne, and with 120Hz on as well it really adds to presence. It'll also mean you can generally play for longer as it's easy on your senses. Sensory comfort (and physical) becomes important with some of the deeper games when you've been playing for hours. You can change framerate at anytime by hitting the menu button on the controllers. The menu button pauses any game and brings up the SteamVR menu. From there you can adjust anything on the fly including Hz and supersampling. With my 2070 Super I can play most games at 120Hz with SS @ 140%. Supersampling will make your games look significantly sharper.

jdanielp

Glad it's not just me then

SpaceGazelle

Btw in Aircar you can land on various pads scattered about the city to pick up extra boost speed. It's nice just flying around trying to find them (use the panel on the left to line up when landing). Think there's about 8 in all. Landing the thing just right is cool af.

They look like this.

jdanielp

I see. I did try to land on the roof of a tower, but a combination of it not being a landing pad and my lack of skill resulted in crashing sounds effects...

ShabbyMcCrabby

Haven't checked out aircar yet. Will definitely have a look as that looks sweet

jdanielp

I think a mistake I made when playing AirCar was to remain standing, which definitely felt unstable and probably contributed to my mild nausea. Is it possible to switch between room scale VR and a more static setup easily other than by just sitting on the floor? In theory I will be able to roll a chair into my room scale zone from the non VR alcove.

SpaceGazelle

Yeah it's not great standing. Your brain needs to be grounded a little bit with the action and it'll make you sick if your body is doing something different. The lighthouses have a pretty good fov so even though they're facing my roomscale area they still pick up my PC desk in the corner, so I can do sitting and roomscale without adjusting anything. The only difference is I only turn one lighthouse on when I'm at the PC.

I'd definitely use a chair rather than sit on the floor. I've found little things make a big difference in VR when it comes to immersion and nausea. Eg, having a HOTAS is nice for Elite Dangerous using flatscreen but it's amazing in VR. The HOTAS setup also stopped me feeling so sick compared to the Xpad. It made an instant difference.

SpaceGazelle

ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:

Haven't checked out aircar yet. Will definitely have a look as that looks sweet

For free it's a belter. There could be an amazing game in there if it was expanded upon but for atmosphere it's pretty special. The music helps, as does the rain.

jdanielp

Interesting. I'll try the single lighthouse approach given that one of them is able to see the corner within which the armchair is currently banished.

jdanielp

Just out of a sit-down VR session. Everything is running at 144 FPS now which was available in addition to the 120 FPS that was promised when updating the hardware. Haven't set supersampling yet though. AirCar was a lot more manageable. I still didn't manage to land but I did have a serious mid-air crash this time which reset the experience. Also had a look in Google Earth VR, which is very cool but my slowish internet and the old controller overlay was frustrating (how do you rotate using the Index controllers?). It took me a while to get into Tetris Effect in VR mode, but that was really nice when I sorted it. Still fiddling with my IPD...

JMW

Is anyone playing Elite Dangerous with just a Rift or a linked Quest? I can get it looking good, moving through menu items etc but can’t get it to recognise a button press?

SpaceGazelle

On Steam you just start it in VR mode and use the Xbox pad or a HOTAS. You can change the controller method in ED options but it should recognise the Xpad without doing this.

JMW

I got it working earlier with just the Touch controllers, for some reason a button seemed to work this time. Not taken it far enough to see whether nav etc is doable though. Am liking Steam VR though, it’s a a lovely little environment.

SpaceGazelle

The Xpad has really good mapping for this game, mainly because it uses combination button presses along with the Dpad to get all the various inputs this game needs without using a keyboard.

If you get into it, the HCS voice packs are brilliant. Not only do they use voice controls for all your commands (landing gear, engage jump, docking etc), they add to the immersion quite a bit. Also, on those long journeys you can chat with them and actually learn galactic facts. Combined with a HOTAS it is one hell of an experience. They're often half price in a sale (like now!).

The ASTRA one is updated the most and has the most responses.

Shatner is good fun.

SpaceGazelle

Drone Hero is only 71p on Steam right now. It's fun.

jdanielp

I will give that a spin at some point.

SpaceGazelle

For 71p you can't go too wrong. It's another example of something that plays brilliantly in VR that would be pretty poor in 2D and it's a terrific advert for Valve tracking. The motion controls are just perfect.

SpaceGazelle

Also, pinball in VR is great.

Get one free table here to try it out. If you like it you can get 10 or so additional tables for £5 in the sale. And FX2 is also good although it's currently more expensive.

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