Iracing forum is going on and on about how great OR is and it's making me

[isamu]

........sad!


These guys are going on and on and on about how great the Oculus Rift CV1 will be and it's starting to piss me off! I am someone that will be buying a Rift and will no doubt enjoy it with iRacing, but for those of us here in BYOAC that primarily play and enjoy arcade racers, we are pretty much left holding the empty bag

Here is what I posted over there a few hours ago.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


It's posts like this that make me want to cry. I said this a little over a year ago and I'll say it again. I am VERY excited about trying the CV1. But that excitement comes with sadness as well. It is a bittersweet dilemma I'm facing. Why? Because I am cut from a different cloth than the rest of you. I for one, enjoy a wide variety of racing games, not just iracing, and unfortunately the majority of other games I play are arcade racing games.

These are games that do not and WILL not ever have Oculus Rift compatibility. Games like Daytona USA, Daytona 2, Scud Race, OutRun 2006, Ridge Racers 2,  and whole host of others that will never work with the Rift. I understand that a lot of you enjoy iRacing tremendously and play it almost exclusively most of the time, but what about someone like me, who enjoys other racing games that will never work with the Rift? What are we supposed to do in a situation like this, where we want to embrace Virtual Reality but can't due to our love for "non-Rift" enabled racing games that are decades old?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


@all my fellow brethren here at BYOAC.....

How do you guys plan on dealing with the oncoming wrath of new Virtual Reality head mounted displays being released this year? No doubt you are all here because you love arcade racing games like me, but what do you think of the idea of playing these games in VR? Is it possible someone like say, Bart could mod Supermodel to be compatible with the Rift? Or maybe El Semi make a version of Model 1 Emu that works in VR? How about the possibility of Howard making OutRun 2006 work with the Rift? Are any of these things possible down the road? Or will our beloved arcade racers forever be limited to a single flat screen display?

[Howard_Casto]

Next year when they are in the bargain bin because the whole project goes bust, I might pick one up to play with. 

VR isn't happening until they can make a cheap, high resolution set with responsive 100% accurate motion tracking, some sort of solution to eye strain, and some way to see the outside world while wearing it.  The OR is currently 600 bucks.  So yeah it's DOA.  We are a few decades away from the innovations required to fix the other issues. 

It would be quite hard to get 2k6 working in 3d due to the way it renders things.  It's not impossible, but probably above my pay grade.  The emulators might be more doable due to the fact that the rendering is emulated.... tweaking things would be easier. 

[Boomslang]

Yep at $600usd we ain't missing much.  It won't be that damn good, I actually really disliked my dk2 ended up selling it and went curved projector screen which I personally much orefer

[BadMouth]

and some way to see the outside world while wearing it. 

Yeah, it would be cool to have a sim cab with a greenscreen behind the controls and software that keeps whatever isn't green visible.
You could still see the controls and your hands, provided you aren't wearing green.
I guess the greenscreen would have to be a wraparound or a dome if you wanted to be able to turn your head.

Of course, that's just adding another layer of processing which adds more delay to overcome.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah that's really the issue, the processing.  Even without anything else it requires twice the video processing power of a monitor because there are two screens.  Then you need to process motion tracking, and play a cutting edge game that most likely barely plays on a pc/console with top of the line specs.  Currently that's just not possible so something has to give and it's usually graphic fidelity (like where 3d tvs interlace the left and right frame into a single image, thus halving the resolution).  So you pay all this money only to NOT have it look as good as your pc monitor. 

I think this is why Microsoft is going with the "hologram" tech.... they realize that true 3d isn't practical, but augmented reality might be.  Then again it's Microsoft, so they'll put the corpse of Rare on duty to make crappy Kinect-like games and drop support after a year or so. 

[isamu]

Excellent replies, gentlemen. Your posts made me realize the game we love and hold dear to our hearts weren't even made to run on dual or triple screens, let alone in virtual reality. These are games that were designed to be enjoyed on a single screen and we should simply embrace this fact and accept it for what it is. I still would love to have the next best thing though....a triple curved bezel-less projection screen setup. Boomslang you mentioned you have a curved projection screen....are you running three of them of just one? If just one, do you plan on expanding to three screens?

Triple screens are great for both racing sim games and arcade racers. But which arcade racers actually supports triples?

Which emulators in particular and which Sega games?

Does SuperModel or Model 2 emu allow you to run games in triple screens?

Does Dolphin(F-Zero GX)?

How about Outrun 2006? Howard didn't you post a screenshot of you running the game on a triple screen setup a while back? Or was that somebody else?

[b00fa]

But which arcade racers actually supports triples?

F355 had triples

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I'm generalizing here but I'll try to answer as best as I can. 

First off FXT is multi-monitor ready.  Yeah the hud distorts, but I'm working on solutions to that and there is already code in place to force the menus to 4:3 aspect.  The guys at Sumo were surprisingly forward-thinking in regards to this. 

Now to answer the question at hand.... for 3d games, in general at least, yeah it's doable.  Model 2 already has hacks in place to do a 16:9 mode and that of course can be expanded somewhat.  The reason is any 3d game supports multiple resolutions... even arcade games had a few resolutions available by the mid 90's after all, and any 3d game supports camera manipulation because that's the whole point of 3d.  The only thing you need to do in regards to aspect is hack the native resolution to be the total res of all the monitors and possibly modify the camera viewport to take in a wider angle.  This is relatively easy compared to 3d, where you have to render the same scene twice on two separate draw surfaces without messing up the timing of the game. 

That being said it's only technically possible.  Practically speaking, when you widen the view you'll eventually start rendering areas that weren't meant to be seen and they may look weird.  In general though, most of the sega games look pretty good. 

As for 2d games... not really.... except maybe for sega scalers.  Cannonball already supports 16:9 aspects but again, things might start to look weird after a certain width. 

If you are focusing on classic games a 16:9 monitor is your best bet.  Triple screens are more of a sim thing, with some notable exceptions like the one above. 

[isamu]

Thanks for the detailed explanations Howard. Very interesting info.

[Boomslang]

It's 180 degree projection screen so uses 2 projectors and it does triple screen in games that support it eg iracing without bezels etc obviously

Otherwise it's just 1 screen and you modify fov to what suits best

[ant2]

Emulators i run on my triple at 5960×1980 successfully :

Model3 - all
Dolphin - wii, gamecube. - all games
PC games


Model2, I've attempted previously to get this working in widescreen mode but the aspect ratios are messed up. If any one knows the exact config i can re-try.

Will be trying daytona++ and outrun at some point soon.

[isamu]

Very nice Boomslang!

[isamu]

Emulators i run on my triple at 5960×1980 successfully :

Model3 - all
Dolphin - wii, gamecube. - all games
PC games

Very nice. How is the stretching particularly in the SuperModel games(ie Daytona 2, Scud Race) and in F-ZeroGX via Dolphin? Is the distortion bothersome and looks out of whack or does it look fairly acceptable?

[Fursphere]

I've been thinking about a triple screen for a long time, but with the new 21:9 format, I'm wondering if a single one of those might be more practical?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824014487

Thats currently out of my price range, but I'm watching the format closely.  With a little modifications, I could get one of those in my driving cabinet.   It would end up being like 1.75 screens in width (resolution wise).   Not as wide as a triple setup, but no ugly black bars between screens either.

The only way I'd really want to do a triple would be 3x rear mounted projectors and a big curved screen for true seamless play.   But then you get into screen warping issues (there is some software out there to help)...  and you have to build the screen, AND buy 3x projectors. 

I think this guy has the right idea with the current technology available. 

http://www.projectimmersion.com/

[jtslade]

Daytona USA modded to support OR would be pretty amazing.

What about 90's Arcade Racer? Wonder if OR support is on the to do list..

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/896834116/the-90s-arcade-racer/posts/1388987


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ant2]

Emulators i run on my triple at 5960×1980 successfully :

Model3 - all
Dolphin - wii, gamecube. - all games
PC games

Very nice. How is the stretching particularly in the SuperModel games(ie Daytona 2, Scud Race) and in F-ZeroGX via Dolphin? Is the distortion bothersome and looks out of whack or does it look fairly acceptable?

The supermodel games look amazing. Games via dolphin also look really good, i.e mario kart double dash/wii etc. Fzero GX is pretty good. The menus for Fzero do go a bit weird and look massive, but game play is much better with the triples.

Will have to upload a newer video, this one was taken in about 2012, but the camera we filmed it on was really crappy and the resolution makes the aspect ratio really weird. I also had the screens mounted too close (was when I first built it )


This one was filmed with my samsung s2 18 months ago, so was an improvement -

[isamu]

Emulators i run on my triple at 5960×1980 successfully :

Model3 - all
Dolphin - wii, gamecube. - all games
PC games

Very nice. How is the stretching particularly in the SuperModel games(ie Daytona 2, Scud Race) and in F-ZeroGX via Dolphin? Is the distortion bothersome and looks out of whack or does it look fairly acceptable?

The supermodel games look amazing. Games via dolphin also look really good, i.e mario kart double dash/wii etc. Fzero GX is pretty good. The menus for Fzero do go a bit weird and look massive, but game play is much better with the triples.

Will have to upload a newer video, this one was taken in about 2012, but the camera we filmed it on was really crappy and the resolution makes the aspect ratio really weird. I also had the screens mounted too close (was when I first built it )


This one was filmed with my samsung s2 18 months ago, so was an improvement -

Very impressive mate!  I'll probably go the three projector screen route(some day).

[MrThunderwing]

FYI, There has been work done on getting F-Zero GX working on Oculus Rift via Dolphin. Apparently it's a pretty amazing experience. There's loads of links to stuff on the web, just Google for f-zero gx oculus rift (or you could just click on the handy link I've supplied).

Edit: Ooops, just realised this is old news to BYOAC:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=131732.0

[isamu]

FYI, There has been work done on getting F-Zero GX working on Oculus Rift via Dolphin. Apparently it's a pretty amazing experience. There's loads of links to stuff on the web, just Google for f-zero gx oculus rift (or you could just click on the handy link I've supplied).

Edit: Ooops, just realised this is old news to BYOAC:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=131732.0

Yup, and that is fortunately, one of the biggest games I'm looking forward to trying. I can't even imagine what it's like going around those tracks at crazy speeds in VR 

[isamu]

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan this forum has been slooow lately. 

Anyway.....

Speaking of triple screens, GOOD NEWS!!! Nvidia's new GeForce Pascal 1080 gfx card comes out in about a week, and will properly render triple screen aspect ratios without the funky stretching for ALL videogames NATIVELY RIGHT OUT THE BOX!!!!!! That's right.....this card supports proper triple screen setups right out the box without the game having to support it!!! 




That is a GAME CHANGER for me as one of the things I really hated about the idea of triple was the goofy fat stretching. Now all we need are bezel-less monitors and 144Hz PC displays larger than 35" and we're golden!

What are your thoughts on this? Will any  of you be getting the new GeForce 1080? The benchmarks are quite impressive from what I've seen. Daytona and OutRun 2 at 400fps? Sure why not  :