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Brief addition from me, typically belongs to my replies when a similar topic comes up, but forgot it this time:
If you use a user profile from an author that has a donation link in the description, consider donating to the profile author. What RJK_ describes above is indeed somewhat embarrassing, guys. You can do better than that. :)
Your post has been moved to the technical support forum.
Please help keeping the forum usable for yourself and others by posting in the appropriate sub-forum. Thanks!
BTW: any future post you make that sounds even remotely like the one above will be deleted without further notice though, alongside a three months forum ban for you.
The beta linked in the beta thread comes with a shiny new and customizable motion controller gesture system. There currently are no flight sim specific gestures, but generic steering is already there. Should work in a flight sim just as well as for cars. Moving controllers forth and pulling them back for controlling elevation sounds like a good idea though. Can’t promise that for the next beta already, but it’ll definitely come.
There is a short video in the beta thread that explains how to configure the gestures.
I’ll be a bit more careful this time, but if nothing important comes up that requires more time, it will be out later this week.
Disclaimer: just like last time there always may be some last minute showstopper, so consider beta release dates something that may get delayed any time.
Thanks for the super nice ‘rant’! The forum software considered it spam first, but I could salvage it before it was gone. As an additional way of support maybe Patreon is worth thinking about, but as a sole way of distribution it just isn’t what I want to do.
Patreon is absolutely the right tool for artists, podcasters, YouTubers etc. But for selling software, and that’s what it is in the end, it’s just too close to today’s rental models because you pretty much force your customers (or followers if you like) to pay for even the smallest update or bug fix. Not my thing. Although I’m slowly starting to get old, so maybe it’s just me. ;) What looks like cynicism to me, apparently looks way nicer to others for some reason.
When I did more 3D and GFX work than programming back in the day, I happily paid Adobe, Autodesk etc. hundreds of Euros each year for updates, thousands in case of Autodesk actually, but the moment they decided it’s a good idea (which business wise it probably was) to enforce that via a subscription, I was out right away. Would feel odd to do something fairly close to that myself now…
If you want to invest some time creating profiles, shoot me a mail to support at vorpx com, I can help with that. Would be awesome.
Try the beta linked in the beta thread below. FullVR is always selectable, with or without a profile, but what that actually does very much depends on what the profile is able to do.
For the lack of a better comparison consider a profile a sort of plugin that may have wildly varying scope of functionality depending on the game.
I’m not really a fan of Patreon for software and similar things. It absolutely has its place for podcasters, Youtubers, artists in the broadest sense in general who rely on an audience of some kind. In my personal coordinate system providing software falls in a different category though. Probably the biggest issue being updates, locking even bug fixes and maintenance releases behind a monthly payment just doesn’t feel right. Never say never, but unless at some point I’m forced to do that, I won’t consider it. I don’t claim to be the good Samaritan next door, but that has always been too cynical for my taste. Doubly so for vorpX, where game updates can break things anytime.
There will be some form of license renewal in the not too distant future though. 10 years of completely free support (for those who bought 2013) on the other hand is indeed way more than what was originally planned.
I’m currently weighing a few options and have to see what is easiest to implement. Either 18-24 months free updates and then a paid upgrade at a reduced price or alternaticely 3-4 years of free updates and a full new purchase after that. Financially the same, what it will be in the end will depend on what is easier to do with the current licensing/store implementation.
There probably will be a handful of people who got so accustomed to free stuff over 10 years that I’ll have to deal with a few inevitable complaints, but in the end hopefully everyone will come to the realization that free updates forever are just not a reasonable thing to expect. Especially not for something like vorpX, where a version purchased 10 years ago would be completely useless by now without continuous updates.
I’m not really familiar with Plex unfortunately, but if you are using the Windows Store app, vorpX *might* not be able to hook into it directly anway. Windows store apps may run in a sandbox that shields them from hooking, so the desktop viewer might be the only option anyway.
Sidenote:
There is an extra caveat in regard to video streaming, although it probably doesn’t apply to Plex. Windows has built-in video DRM, so the Netflix app for example only displays a black image when you try to capture its output window. Most other apps from big streaming services almost certainly behave the same. Unlikely though that Plex is affected by that.
If you want to watch protected content like Prime Video or Netflix your best bet is watching them in a web browser. If Chrome/Edge don’t work, try Firefox or vice versa. If none works, the streaming service doesn’t even allow capturing of (usually quality reduced) web browser streams.
Room: Change the ‘Play Style’ back to cinema mode in the vorpX menu. Comes with two different rooms and and a bunch of other background options. You can even import your own 2D/3D panorama images in the config app.
Resolution: As far as the desktop viewer is concerned ypou change them in the Windows display options currently. Guess I should add an option in the vorpX menu for that too to have it all in one place. In games you use a game’s video/graphics options (or the ‘Resolution Quality’ option in the vorpX menu if vorpX can handle changing resolutions for a game).
Icons: Windows just loves to shuffle around icons when you switch displays/desktop resolutions. One of the quirks that made me switch from a multi-monitor setup to a single ultrawide for work many years ago. Still hasn’t improved much since then. That’s one of the ‘lesser annoyances’ that I meant in my post above that the next beta will be able to take care of. It will ensure that all desktop icons are always visible on the virtual display.
The display config is stored in the Windows registry as soon as it changes. When you software-disable all actual displays with only an invisible one left and now the whole PC crashes hard for whatever reason, that’s what Windows thinks is the valid config on next launch. Say hello to a beautiful black screen. Looks like Armageddon for any normal person who just uses their PC. There are a shitton of safeguards in place that deal with such things – and even more that deal with lesser annoyances. Implementing the headset auto switch took two hours, making it airtight three weeks.
Unless I overlooked something serious, it’s now a really smooth experience: launch the desktop viewer, put on your headset, do whatever vorpX related stuff you want to do on the virtual display, at the end of the session take off the headset and your normal display kicks back in. That’s it. The programmer did his best work when the user doesn’t notice he did anything at all. :)
As far as FO3 is concerned, I’d suggest to leave automated settings changes enabled. I understand perfectly well that it’s sometimes against any decent tinkerer’s personal code of honor to not tweak everything manually ;), but FO3 is one of the games where vorpX automagically creates a next to native experience by pressing a single button if you just let it do its thing.
Gestures: the ones currently available already are enough to keep you busy most of the time. Shooting, interaction, driving, etc., a lot of the stuff you typically do in games is already covered. More is in the pipeline and recordable custom gestures are something worth looking into too, but that’s not a top priority right now. A good preset library that covers pretty much everything is more desirable.
Turning off the physical monitor (or disconnecting if Windows can’t detect that your monitor is off) just makes it easier for games to run on the virtual one. If only the virtual display is connected, you don’t have to care about selecting the right monitor in games. The virtual monitor always runs at the headset refresh rate, but if there is another one connected at the same time, you have to tell games which one to use in their video options. Also the desktop viewer always displays the primary monitor, so that only works as intened currently without other displays connected.
Anyway, don’t waste your time fumbling around with Windows multi monitor quirks if you are unsure how that all works. You won’t have to think about any of that anymore shortly.
The next beta will auto switch to the virtual monitor by just launching the desktop viewer and putting on your headset. vorpX will take care of switching off physical displays. Was quite an endeavour to ensure that the display config can’t get messed up permanently under various worst case scenarios when doing that, but now I’m reasonably sure to have that covered.
oh, that looks great!!
Now I won’t need to get out the calculator to figure new resolutions :)
That was the idea. Why doing yourself, what a computer is made for. :) The steps between the predefined ones are fine grained enough to make adding your own unecessary in most cases, but now you can if you still want to.
None of that is related to the nVidia custom resolutions. If you get accustomed to using the virtual monitor for everything, you’ll never even have to think about adding resolutions to the GPU anymore. Also works perfectly fine with AMD GPUs
Enable VSync when you play games with the desktop viewer and the virtual monitor. That’s better than using a frame limiter. The virtual monitor automatically initializes its resolutions with the refresh rate of your headset, so VSync is not only all you need, it’s also the best thing you can do. You don’t even need to know the headset refresh rate, it just works.
While hooked into games vorpX overrides Vsync and can sync the framerate to the headset refresh rate on its own, but it can only do that while being hooked into the game. So with desktop viewer + virtual display your best option is VSync.
Ha, didn’t know something like that even exists. The 1:1 resolutions are (obviously) meant for playing games in FullVR mode with the virtual monitor, but if you miss your 2730Q in VR, you can of course also use them with the desktop viewer. :)
A little teaser for those who wanted some customization when using the virtual monitor. As a ‘normal’ user you won’t have to touch these settings at all since the virtual monitor comes with a huge list of resolutions predefined, but the tinkerers among you can now add even more. In a fairly easy and well thought out way, I might add, that doesn’t require more knowledge than having heard of things like ‘4K’ or ’16:9′, which probably almost everyone has.
On a sidenote: a highly curved 32:9 desktop that surrounds your head clearly isn’t what vorpX is primarily made for, but it *almost* makes working in VR have some actual advantages over a real (even ultrawide) monitor setup. Tried that for quite a while yesterday.
Uh, and I added gestures to Aliens: Colonial Marines yesterday. One of the games that all of a sudden start to feel almost like a native VR game by adding a bunch of motion controller gestures. If you never touched the game because it had a somewhat bumpy start when it came out, try it with the next vorpX beta and motion controls. Straight forward sci-fi shooter that works very well in VR. Can be played standing with full 6DOF tracking, but even seated it’s almost uncanny how much a few basic gestures can add to immersion.