Popped into town on my lunch yesterday and there was a stand setup demo’ing the GT sport VR stuff with a race seat, wheel and pedal setup.

WOW – absolute game changer!! I’m a massive fan of driving sims albeit XBOX and Forza rather than GT.. and I wasn’t sure what to expect but it far surpassed my expectations!!

I cannot think of a better application of VR than this. Completely immersed in the racing, checking mirrors for other cars, looking out of side windows, looking towards the apex approaching corners, big rev counter in front of you, shift lights on wheel, etc. just incredible.

Just sat here working out the cost of a PS4, GT, race seat, VR headset, wheel and pedal set and it’s coming out at £1500ish… WANT. Mind you I would probably become a complete hermit and save £1500 not going to the pub pretty quickly..

I don’t have VR but use EdTracker for IL2 BOS & Elite Dangerous and even just having head movement tracked is a game changer. Would love a VR set up but would prob need a new PC as well.

I have a friend whose been a huge GT fan since the PS1 version and has a full rig i.e. homemade bucket seat chair, force feedback wheel, pedals, gearstick and now the VR headset and we haven’t seen him since the new GT came out. 😆

I can imagine he won’t be out on any group rides for a good few months.

I’m not surprsied you haven’t seen your mate for a while TBH. I’m going back today to have another go.. I’ll be wearing a fake tash and a wig by the end of the week!

What was interesting was when I started losing control of the car I felt little sick as my eyes were telling me I was about to spin but obviously wasn’t experience any of the G-forces associated with it.

Hedley – I’m going to google EdTracker now as not something I’ve heard of. How does head movement without VR work?

Still worth while for those of us that don’t have the space for a decent chair/wheel setup? I’ve got a wheel and pedals, but sit on a sofa and fashion a cockpit from tables but its far from ideal, so tend to just use a pad, so my only cost would be the VR kit (£350)

Tom – was talking to a lad at work today and he asked the same as he already has a PS4. I think it would still be worthwhile using the VR headset with a controller yes, but I would want to try it out first.

Good shout on the edtraacker – I’m going to order/build one of those. I used to have a trackir 5 but found it a faff and sometimes a bit temperamental. Fortunately I was able to sell it on ebay for more than I paid.

What was interesting was when I started losing control of the car I felt little sick as my eyes were telling me I was about to spin but obviously wasn’t experience any of the G-forces associated with it.

Has anyone tried using a tilting seat to compensate for that?

Ben – I had a go on one at the Goodwood festival where the seat was mounted on a frame that moved and twisted albeit with a big screen rather than a VR headset. That was really good but another order of magnitude in terms of cost.

Racing is definitely the best thing for VR right now. Try PC sims with proper direct drive wheels and vibration/motion jigs, its a whole step up again. I made the mistake of working out how much my rig had cost recently and it came to well over 5K … whoops! I quite like the engineering side of it, a lot of my stuff is home built; button box, handbrake, rig with mountings for everything, 6 way simvibe setup. Looking forward to Primax/next generation of VR headsets with higher resolution and wider FOV.

GFJ – That sounds INCREDIBLE! How do you manage to get out the house to do.. err.. anything?!

thinking more about this (really want to do it, as apparently Project cars 2 is ace on VR as well). If I were to get a seat, would I have to be perpendicular to the tv if I were using VR? layout of the room means I could only fit the seat alonside the front of the tv. Would always be staring out the door window, rather than the windscreen?

Interested but £1500 I could buy a winter bike.

My office chair is a race chair and I have a surround pro logic system.

Might buy the VR headset.

How was the weight of the VR on your head?

How was the weight of the VR on your head?

Think full face helmet

Aye – full face helmet was about the weight of this thing. It was well padded and not an issue for the 5 mins or so I was wearing it.. Didn’t even think about it TBH I was so immersed in the Nurburgring GP track and trying to pass the Veyron I was racing!

When I heard GT Sport + VR I thought it would be awesome and cheaper than a new TV, then I read how its only in certain modes and limited to certain tracks. 👿

I bought a wheel as I thought it would be cheaper than looking at bike bits I don’t really need… Oh how wrong I was, nearly pulled the trigger on a Gaming/Workstation, Obutto R3volution and bought some tactile transducers along with an amp for the authentic feeling, then realised how much of a slippery slop this is. 🙄

Add my PSN if you want to compare GTS laptimes: MilkieDJ
You’ll have to put STW in the message or it’ll get ignored.

thinking more about this (really want to do it, as apparently Project cars 2 is ace on VR as well). If I were to get a seat, would I have to be perpendicular to the tv if I were using VR? layout of the room means I could only fit the seat alonside the front of the tv. Would always be staring out the door window, rather than the windscreen?

No, you shouldn’t need to be facing the TV.

nickewen
Hedley – I’m going to google EdTracker now as not something I’ve heard of. How does head movement without VR work?

Very well but caveat… I have a triple monitor set up running in 5760×1080 so can move my head around to look and still see the screen. I suppose with just one monitor you would just move your head less.

EdTracker gives you left/right (yaw) and up/down (pitch) along with roll. If you install Opentrack as well you can then simulate 5 or 6 DoF using some tricks.

EdTracker is £5 if you can solder and flash firmware or £45 if you want a pre-built unit that you just plug in and is what I have. They have a newer WIFI version without wires which looks great but I can’t justify buying it as my current one works well.

Here’s a YouTube video of it in action in IL2 BOS.

Head tracking is good for flight Sims but I didn’t find it all that useful for racing. It doesn’t feel natural in the same way as looking around in VR.

Of course it is a hell of a lot cheaper.

Edtracker is pretty good (I have 2 .. thought I’d borked one by soldering badly, so bought another and then realised both worked! Then I broke the USB connector off one :O) (now reinforced the other with hot glue).

All forms of head tracking (short of having the screen clamped to your head .. i.e. VR) basically rely on you looking maybe 20 or 30° left, right up or down while keeping your monitor in view but the view on the monitor rotates 180° L/R or 90° up or down.

Ed tracker is better than nothing but its hard to get used to 3 degrees of freedom (yaw pitch roll) rather than 6 (yaw pitch roll X Y Z) which you get with IR trackers and cameras.
Although, as someone said, you can get pseudo 5(?) dof with a few tricks (use roll as an analog for X (side to side) and pitch forward as an analog for Z).

Having used a PS eye camera and IR headset, I’d still go for that as a single option, but ed tracker is much, much better than nothing, and astoundingly cheap for what it is.

Well, the Vr starter kit has dropped to £250 now, so the inevitable has happened. It should arrive next week…

So… could you use a VR kit rather than a telly to drive a PS4…

I don’t have a console since I would never get on the telly due to the Xbox One that my wife is currently playing. Forces me to play guitar (or on the laptop) instead 😉 There are some PS4 titles coming out that I wouldn’t mind playing see!

Now imagine the same experiernce, but checking six over your shoulder in an Me109 whilst doing a split S and whacking a Yakolev with a deflection shot during the merge… banking and watching him spin, ailerons flutteting through the air from cannon fire damage… into a forest spewing glycol somewhere over an icy cold Kursk.

Ahem……. Daaaaangerzone

could you use a VR kit rather than a telly to drive a PS4…

Yes that’s possible.

For those with a TV I believe it has an option to mirror the VR display onto it simultaneously, but with a bit of lag or similar.

Also re GT Sport, I’ve also heard its very limited when using VR – something like demo mode and racing a single opponent.

I spent an evening on an Oculus setup with motion cameras and was completely blown away.

Shooters, flying and driving games were on another level from a gameplay perspective. What I saw was mirrored on the pc screen/tv.

If I had time to regularly play games, I’d buy a new pc and headset in a flash

Im tempted with a PSVR. I have a PS4 pro and wheel/stand and love project cars which id hope had VR on launch but nope. Hopefully they’ll add it in the future.

The limitations of GT Sports 1 on 1 is a shame. Whats the graphics like through the VR headset?

Was the demo on a pro console or standard PS4? I wonder Id theres any difference between the two.

I’ve had a bit of a read round on driving games that support PSVR, and it doesn’t look good for project cars/2 or assetto corsa, as the developers aren’t happy with the spec for what they need/would be happy with. Ho hum. Fingers crossed I’ll be out of hospital tomorrow and will report back on the VR I have waiting at home now!

Slightly related news is that GTS looks to be getting a ton of updates in the not to distant future, so hopefully will expand the vr aspect.

My Rift arrived yesterday and we were all completely blown away by it. VR is a game changer. No description can do it justice.

Laughed when my wife tried the First Contact demo and when a butterfly landed on her finger she tried blowing it off. Total immersion.

If you get a chance to demo it. Do it.

J273 I have a Pro + VR and the graphics on GT Sport are OK.. just OK… you can’t really compare to playing on a Full HD telly because the screen is so close to your eyes and fills almost your entire field of vision.. so it doesn’t appear to be nearly as sharp and is pixelated to some degree. The overall immersion of the game is fantastic though and you find yourself distracted by the inside of the car and ducking down to see the passing mountain tops out of the top of the passenger window 🙂

Whatever you do, don’t drive whilst stood up with the standard controller.
Just did on the game on the demo disc, and I’m feeling pretty queesy right now 😥

Not a first hand report, due to my prolonged incarceration stay in hospital, but MrsTHtobe, in setting up the G29 and PSVR in anticipation of my release return (she’s def a keeper…), had a ‘quick go’ on GTS and, despite a raised eyebrow and a ‘uh-huh…’ (this accompanies many of my purchases) when told about it, this ‘quick go’ turned into multiple hours of gameplay, followed by her going out and getting a couple more games as ‘It’s amazing!’

Praise indeed.

Right. Had a few hours play now. These are my findings.

GTs is OK, the first time you try it, you are blown away, looking round the interior, checking your mirrors, spotting apexes, looking out the side windows when you get your drift on, even sticking your head out the window on convertibles (ala Ace Ventura) 8) also, all the cars and tracks are available to use, if not all game modes.

It is very immersive, a couple of times I went to grab a handbrake lever that wasn’t there…
BUT.
The frame rate is very slow, what you see is a lot less rendered/detailed, and it feels a little notchy in places, think early PS3 graphics. The one on one is fine, but you find that the opponent is very easy to overtake, then stick to you like glue after, I guess to make sure they are always close so you have something to look at.

The driving physics are very much in the realm of ‘arcade’ rather than ‘simulation’, rather than the more simmy full non vr game.

In summary, it’s a decent sideshow, but a long way off the standards of full GT games of the past. Not sure if it’s a rush job, or the developers are limited by the hardware.

By contrast, Dirt Rally’s VR mode is incredible. Again, it’s not the entire game that’s VR, but you can create your own rallies etc so there’s loads to do.

I have a fully re-enforced respect for rally drivers, even driving a little mini round had me going ‘FFFFFUUUUUU…..’ as I slid at mega speed into a tree/off the edge of a cliff.
The Group B monsters are simply terrifying to drive, as is the 800hp pikes peak special, which you drive up pikes peak, in the wet 😯 I really can’t stress how hard they are to drive/keep under control!

Then you add in using a steering wheel and it’s another level up again. After a 5 minute stage, I. Am. Knackered. I’m using a G29 and the force feedback is brilliant, you really feel the surfaces under the tyres. (If you get one, be sure to factor in the cost of a proper mount, mines just on a coffee table and laminate floor at the minute, so the pedals slide forward and the table wobbles a bit when you are really wrenching on the wheel.

You get to race AI cars too in rally cross which is a little more like gt in that the graphics take a hit with having to deal with 3 other cars, but not a massive one, still great fun.

In case you can’t tell, this is what has really sold VR to me, if this is a first effort, I can’t wait to see what will be here in a couple of years.

From the demo disc/VR worlds, it seems that the best games will be ones where a human is strapped into a machine (be it car, plane, mech walker) and then the machine respond to input from the controller, rather than pretending the controller is your hand/a gun/racquet etc

I don’t have VR but if you fancy some gentlemanly racing… PSN lazybike

Further update on the ‘easy to overtake, impossible to drop’ nature of GTs’ AI. (Note this is a only the VR part, the rest of the game is fine)

*scientific test content*

Did a lap of the nordschleife in GT3 cars. First go I just sat on the other cars bumper for the whole lap. Never got out of second gear, or much above 80mph. 11 minute lap time

Next go, gave it the berries, have a sweat on having finished. My lap time 6:55, same opponent as last time 10 secs back. From looking at the replay the computer, once I got a 10 sec lead, just maintained the same pace.

Third go, I followed for a bit then nail it on straights, cpu was slow til I overtake, then it drops the proverbial hammer when side by side, like bell ends who won’t be over taken on A roads

Maybe the game just gets the red mist when in 2nd place, until it knows it’s beaten?

Now you’ve had a good go with the PSVR what do you think to it to tomhoward?

I love my sims currently on PC2 and assetto corsa. I’ve got GT but hardly played it being a bit too arcady but I’m tempted with the VR headset to give it a try.

I used to use a PC as a sim rig but it’s too much faff so much prefer console now even if I do miss the mods.

At £250 for the starter kit, it’s pretty good for a casual gamer, I’ve been having a right laugh trying to get cars sideways enough to need to use the door windows, rather than windscreen, turning my head to do so.

As I said, Dirt rally is great, really tough, but it’s mainly just you racing the clock.

If you want a full racing simulation experience though, ie a full field of competitive cars, that look as good as in non VR, it’s some way off yet, I guess having a pspro and the newer HDR visor (£330) will help, but the games aren’t available yet. Hopefully PC2 and assetto corsa will come good for PS4, as they have loads more cars and tracks (especially the vintage stuff) but suspect they might not sadly 🙁

*not tried driveclub VR yet, but from memory of the normal game, that’s very arcadey too. Not bad, just not a sim.