A European Driver's Review of an American Muscle Car

Hello everyone,

As they say in Monty Python, "And now for something completely different."

I travel to the US a few times a year on business and the company pays for a hire car when I need one, which is most of the time. If you've hired a car with any regularity, you know that a lot of the time you can get sweet deals and even free upgrades, because they don't pre-allocate you any particular car, you choose one when you go to pick it up. Also, hire car companies don't really try to keep any of a particular class in stock, so it is not too unusual for them not to have one in your particular class. So this is how you get the free upgrades.

And this is how I got an American muscle car for the price of a standard full-size sedan, a 5.7l v8 Dodge Challenger!

Because I got to enjoy this beast for a week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to blog my thoughts on it. As someone who only really knows anything about European cars, and even then I'd hardly call myself a petrolhead, I thought it might be an interesting insight for muscle car fans and European car fans alike.

Actually, having written this article once, I decided to re-write it. I felt my original article really missed the point of the American muscle car and probably would have upset fans of them to the point where what I wrote would have just been dismissed. And what's the point in that? I want to write something that fans and non-fans might find interesting. So this blog post is actually take 2.

First Things First - Performance.

This car is the epitome of what the American Muscle Car is all about, a 5.7l Hemi v8 engine that produces 375 hp. That's hp, not bhp, (you can read about the difference here) so that's even more impressive than a 375bhp car you'd read about in Europe.

The engine makes this car a beast. If you are one to appreciate cars and like the performance aspect of it, then the noise of the Challenger will make the hairs on your neck stand up. It is fantastic, I have never driven anything like it. I have a friend in the UK that has a Mercedes C63 AMG with a 4.0l v8 engine, a magnificent sounding car, but the Challenger is just louder, bassier and more guttural. I think it is actually probably quite likely that the Challenger wouldn't be legal in Europe because it doesn't have sufficient noise suppression in the exhaust, it is LOUD!

The 5.7l Hemi V8 Engine

My hire car is the automatic variant, which I understand to be an 8 speed. It's fairly responsive and seems perfectly good enough for the engine by American car standards. I don't know the specs for sure, but I bet this is a single clutch system. I'm lucky in that my own car at home, the Audi A4, has the S-Tronic system and obviously the dual clutch system on the S-Tronic gives it a big advantage. Compared to typical American hire car fare, however, the automatic clutch on the Challenger is definitely man enough.

Muscle car fans probably won't agree with my next statement however. Although the power of the Challenger made me laugh with pleasure every time I put my foot down, I still couldn't shake a feeling that it didn't quite have the same sense of urgency even as my own car. And this is where I think there is a key difference in the typical European sports car vs the American muscle car. For all of the Challenger's power, it is only 0.7 seconds quicker to 60 than my 250bhp A4. Once you start to look a bit deeper I think it becomes obvious why. In the Dodge Challenger you have 375 hp going through the rear wheels in a 2000kg car. In my A4 you have 250bhp going through 4 wheels in a 1350kg car. Even if you just look at the power to weight ratio you have 0.1875hp/kg in the Dodge and 0.1852bhp/kg in the Audi. That's not much of a difference, and if you consider that with Quattro you are getting power to all 4 wheels from a standing start, this is why I think the Challenger ultimately lacks that urgency and that "shoving you in the back of the seat" feeling you might expect with all that power.

The American muscle car is a frickin huge, powerful and heavy engine with just enough car round it to enjoy it. The European (or rather German) sports car is all about engineering, and that engineering largely gets you to the same place as the muscle car but with half the fuel consumption.

I know muscle car fans will probably not like the comparison and in a way it isn't fair, because really it is comparing apples to oranges. I do not mean to be negative about the Dodge Challenger at all, it was absolutely thrilling driving it for a week, but nonetheless that feeling about the lack of urgency despite all that power was there and I'm just trying to articulate why I think that is.

So, moving onto other points...

The Exterior

The outside of the car looks great, it says American muscle car all over it. Aggressive styling from the front and rear, great looking rear light clusters, excellent side profile with obviously only 2 doors, this being a coupe. The car certainly looks the part from the outside and goes well with the engine sound. There's certainly no comparison to the (in)famously fairly modest looking Audi in the looks department (even though actually I love how my Audi looks, especially the rear lights).

The Interior

The stereo  and integrated controls, pretty poor.

Taking a serious look at the interior of the Challenger reinforces the ethos with cars of this type. The interior is quite sparse. The upholstery and quality of the fabric is fine, but there is no leather in sight. Even the steering wheel, whilst comfortable, is a poor fake-leather/rubbery type material. Looking at the Dodge website, leather doesn't even seem to be an option, I think that is quite a poor show for what is essentially meant to be a car you impress your friends with. Why wouldn't you want to add a harder wearing and better looking leather interior to go with all that muscle?

I could write pages about my feelings on the Dodge interior, so let's break this down into pros and cons:

Pros:

• Almost fully electric seats with adjustable back support. Electric windows and mirror adjustment.
• Keyless entry and engine start/stop.
• Having a touchscreen display in the centre console is a nice touch.
• Driver's dashboard, whilst basic, does fit in with the sportiness of the car and it also partially features an electronic display.
• The car does appear to have some kind of stability program, although I'm not sure if it is only ABS or if it includes traction control (having successfully had the wheels squealing during my second day in the car).

Keyless entry is a nice feature, however.

Cons:

• The seats have a manual fix/loose lever you open and close to adjust back tilt. Bizarre when all other seat controls are electric.
• Too many controls centralised on the touchscreen digital display and the stereo/control system itself frankly rubbish. In particular I don't like the way half of the AC controls are only accessible from the touch screen.
• The driver's dashboard is basic. An analog and digital speedo, rev counter, engine temperature and fuel gauge, and that's it. Quite the comedown when you are used to Audi's Virtual Cockpit.
• No leather interior option.

The stereo system and a lot of in-car controls are centralised on the touchscreen display. Frankly, it is a really poor and basic system. It pesters you with a pop-up message you have to say OK to every time you start the car (although that may be normal with American cars). I paired my phone to the stereo but it never remembers to use Bluetooth when you turn the car and on always switches back to radio. Half of the AC controls are on this touch-screen system and the other half are traditional dials. The display is too small and difficult to use when driving (even with sensible use such as when you are stopped at lights), although you can upgrade to a bigger display with more features as an optional extra.

Really, the interior does tell a story about the price you pay when buying an American muscle car, on top of the actual price of course. Essentially you are buying the 5.7l v8 engine and only enough car around it to enjoy using that engine, there is precious little on top in terms of toys. Keyless entry is a nice plus you might not expect, but a lack of any toys, even as additional extras, are huge negatives, and seems like a missed opportunity from Dodge. On the other hand, the car already weighs 2 metric tons, so maybe putting even more toys in it isn't the answer.

The Price

So, by looking at the features that are obvious (or rather the lack of them) and using Dodge's "Build & Price" feature on their website, I calculate that the car I have costs $34,840 brand new, which is £26,842 at the time of writing. That is quite a bit of money for a fantastic engine in a good looking but functionally basic car. You could spend that much money on a European car and get a top of the range model of a non-premium-brand car with a decent engine, although nothing like the v8 of course, and without four wheel drive you're not going to get close to the acceleration from standing either, so ultimately there is nothing comparable in the UK market that is "better."

Summary

Ultimately, the American Muscle car is not about having something that makes sense on paper, because they don't make any sense at all on paper. Heavier, thirstier, somewhat expensive and ultimately a fairly basic car with the old-school muscle engine in it.

But my god is it fantastic to drive!

And that sums it up, if you just look at the specs on paper and considering technical engineering points as a basis for reviewing the Dodge Challenger, you've missed the point (I know I've done that but only to try and articulate my thoughts). Driving a muscle car isn't about making sense, it's about having muscle and putting rubber down on the road, and it's as simple as that, and it's f*****g fantastic!

If I could get to drive a Dodge Challenger or another manufacturer's muscle car again in the future then I'd totally go for it!

I'm not sure I could own one as my everyday car though.

How to Watch 3D Movies in VR (HTC Vive / Oculus Rift)

Hello blog fans,

This week we have a practical blog post on how you can watch your 3D Blu Ray movies on your VR headset. This one will work on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

The main reason I'm writing this post is because I scoured the internet trying to work how to do this. I was trying out loads of different movie players including VLC, Media Player Classic, Stereoscopic Player, DeoPlayer, Vive Cinema and loads of different ripping and transcoding software including Brorsoft, DVDFab, Handbrake, MakeMKV, etc...

In the end, the solution I found is relatively simple, although a little time consuming. But more importantly, I did not find this method anywhere on the Internet, it is a lot less complicated and cheaper than most of them and some of them didn't even work for me! Believe me, I must have looked in a hundred different places and not one of them highlighted this particular method.

This solution is better than any of the others I have found on the internet in that

1. It actually works, and the only other methods that worked for me are ones that required expensive re-encoding software.
2. It is cheaper than most, if not all, of the other methods. Stereoscopic Player is cheaper at 49 EUR than the non-free video encoders that other methods use to convert MVC 3D movies into SBS (Side by Side) format.
3. It is quicker. Although you need to spend an hour ripping the movie off the Blu Ray, you have to do that anyway. Unlike other methods, this way of playing your movies does not require you to re-encode your movies, and this will save you having to wait another 4+ hours after you have ripped the movie.

So what better blog post to make then a new and simple way to watch your 3D Blu Rays on your VR headset!

Step 1 - Get the Software

You need 3 free bits of software to watch your Blu Rays on your VR headset.

1. MakeMKV (with beta key here)
2. Stereoscopic Player
3. Bigscreen Beta on Steam.

A few words about these applications.

1. The whole time I've known of MakeMKV is that it is free whilst it is in Beta, which is forever so far. All you need to make sure you do is get and register the latest beta key, because they expire every month.
2. Stereoscopic Player is only free for 30 days, after that you you do need to buy a registration key. This software provides the magic sauce over other so-called howtos on playing 3D Blu Rays in VR, because it can play MVC 3D titles, no need to convert your Blu Rays to SBS. If anyone finds a free way to play MVC 3D movies as SBS output then let me know!
3. Bigscreen Beta takes Stereoscopic Player and presents it in full 3D in your own VR movie theatre, it looks great!

Step 2 - Rip the Blu Ray

Unfortunately, because Blu Rays are encrypted, Stereoscopic Player can't play straight off the disc, so you need to use MakeMKV to do a straight rip of the movie to your hard drive.

1. Run MakeMKV and put the Blu Ray in the drive. Once the drive recognises the disc, press the large Blu-Ray Disc icon on MakeMKV to open the Blu Ray.
2. Now MakeMKV will present you with a lots of options of what to rip. The Blu Ray disc may have multiple titles, in which case make sure you are working with the biggest one in size, as this will be the main movie. I recommend you expand all the arrows so you can be very clear about what you are choosing to rip.
3. You need to make sure you tick the MVC-3D box for Video under the standard Mpeg4 Video line, otherwise you will only rip the video for the left-eye, the MVC track contains the right-eye video. Also, select an audio track, it's up to you but I tend to go for the 7.1 Surround option for best possible audio.
4. Then you can pretty much untick everything else, although you can of course choose other language soundtracks or subtitles if you want.
5. With everything correctly ticked or unticked, proceed to rip the movie by clicking on the MakeMKV button on the right-side of the application.

Once you click the button, then you come across the only downside to this method because it takes around an hour to rip the movie to the hard drive so you can play it. If anyone can find a method where you can play an MVC movie straight off a Blu Ray disc then let me know!

Step 3 - Play the Movie in SBS Mode

The reason we don't have to convert the movie to SBS (or Side-By-Side) mode, is because Stereoscopic player will take an MVC 3D encoded movie as input and play it as SBS on output. Playing the movie in SBS mode is what allows Bigscreen to show it in 3D.

1. Ignore the option "Open Left and Right File" because this is for when you have a seperate movie file for the left eye and one for the right eye. Actually, on the Blu Ray itself they are seperate files, but we merged them together when we ripped with MakeMKV. So just chose the regular "Open File" option to open your movie.
2. With the default options, the movie will play as an analgyph picture. This is when you have different coloured images for left eye and right eye and you need those old fashioned blue and red 3d glasses to watch them. We don't want to watch the movie like this, so go into File → Settings.
3. Select "Playback Options" and change "Viewing Method" to "Side by Side for 3D-TVs". When you click OK, you will see 2 images appear side by side. They will look stretched but this is okay, because BigScreen needs the image this way so it looks properly on your headset.

Step 4 - Run BigScreen and Select SBS Mode

Here's the final piece of the puzzle, Bigscreen can take SBS video on your desktop and play it as 3D in your bigscreen virtual movie theatre.

With the movie playing in SBS mode, run BigScreen and put on your headset. Use the controller to select the screen icon on the Bigscreen control panel, that says "Customise your screen" when you point at it. Then select SBS. Et voila, you should see the movie playing in 3D on the big screen in front of you.

If you are still in the default room in Bigscreen, which is the lounge, I recommend changing it to the next room in the list, which is the home theatre room. This is the ideal way to watch the movie in your headset.

Result!

So there we are, how to watch your 3D Blu Rays in VR. Unfortunately you do need to rip the disc, which takes an hour, but you don't need to convert it, which would probably take another 4!

Don't forget to delete the movie when you are finished, because you are probably using 40GB of space for a typical 3D movie. :)

Enjoy!

The Horror Genre in VR

Hello VR seekers,

VR seems to especially fire the imagination in some areas. To be frank, porn is one of them. No great surprise there I guess but this isn't something I'll be writing about at any time.

I mention porn, only because in the film world, I use that word with another entire movie genre, the horror movie!

Talking About Horror

The Thing - one of the all-time classics

I'm not a big fan of horror movies because I feel most movies are really horror porn. What I do mean? Well, I mean the plot is thin, the story is generally unbelievable and you get entire movies which are totally derived and only exist as a platform to try and scare or gross you out.

That's not to say there aren't good horror movies out there, but for me it is mainly restricted to some classics: Films like Alien and The Thing, these are movies that are really good in their own right and they just happen to scare or horrify as well. There are other movies I like as well, such as some of the old Hammer Horror movies, but they are so old that, from a point of view of causing scares, they are lame by today's standards. You don't watch the really old films any more because you want to be scared.

I find Nightmare on Elm Street is okay, but here we are already slipping back to the horror porn genre, with the likes of Hellraiser and Friday the 13th. The original Poltergeist is okay but it is an anomaly for me, there is something unique about that movie that turned it into the cult classic it is.

Why am I telling you all this? I want to give you the context for how I feel about horror in general because it's really important to understand where I am coming from when it comes to horror in VR.

Horror in VR

I must admit, I haven't tried a great deal, in particular I am still restricting myself to the free samples out there, but I do have an ambition to buy Resident Evil 7 VR when it hopefully comes to the PC in 2018 and that ambition is boosted by my experiences so far.. and that is coming from someone who is not a big fan of horror in general. You can probably start to sense where the rest of this blog post is going.....

So I tried the following 2 very short horror games, both available on Steam.

• The Abbot's Book
• The Bellows

The monk in The Abbot's Book

The Abbot's Book professes to be a snippet of a much larger 8 episode game, with a snippet of the 7th episode forming the demo. That's great, but there's precious little information about when the full game (or even episode 1) is going to come out, but that doesn't matter. The setting for the game is the role of an Italian aristocrat who owns an estate associated with a myth about an old evil God. In the demo you play said aristocrat as he is about to go down into catacombs that run under his estate, bringing with you some local monk who apparently believes none of it.

The Bellows doesn't really explain much about the setting. You wake up in a dark room and start off by looking out a window, which immediately gives you the impression you are in some kind of large building like a mansion. Then as you start creeping through the place you realise you are in what looks like an old asylum.

To be honest, the settings don't really make difference to my review. There are a lot of parallels between both games. Similarities are as follows.

• You are defenseless
• You are limited to moving around quite slowly
• Both games are very moodily lit with infrequent light sources and lots of dark corners

What are the differences?

• The Abbot's Book is a bit more sophisticated than The Bellows in that you have another character following you around, the monk. This character forms a typical mechanic in movies, which is the unbeliever or the innocent or ignorant party. He basically allows another person to explain to him what is going on, which of course fills in the viewer at the same time.
• The other cool addition to Abbot's Book is that it is actually your character that fills in the monk, you hear yourself talking to the monk, explaining things to him, and the game gives you the chance to tailor your replies with some simple options.
• Another difference between the 2 games is that The Abbot's Book relies on a slow-operating blink system for movement (i.e. teleportation) and The Bellows gives you free direct (and slow) movement.

So Where is This Going?

Fancy having a face-off with this fellow do you?

The 2 final similarities between the 2 games sum up my feelings on the Horror genre in VR.

Firstly, both of these games are filled with very old school tried cliches of horror. Things flying around on their own, dark corners with hints of movement, images appearing and then suddenly disappearing, things suddenly moving next to you with sudden sound effects designed to make you jump. Really, if you watching a movie rather than playing in VR, you'd be thinking this is tired old crap and turning it off.

So the second similarity, the VR experience turns the tired old cliches on the head, because you are actually there! Some of the mechanics are still quite tame, flying furniture gets old really quickly, but the slow moving around, the dark corners everywhere, the really odd sounds you hear behind you... These tired old cliches take new life in VR.....

Because you are right there in it all. There's no hiding behind the couch here, there's no respite from the suspense, that dark corner or room you can see, or rather can't see anything in? Yeah, you've got to walk into that. It's quiet different having a pitch black view on a TV then having pitch black all around you, whilst you are waiting for what happens next.

The biggest, BIGGEST frights I got, were the ones where you are being approached by a malevolent character. In one experience, there is a character you see throughout the game doing really horrible stuff, this character keeps appearing again and again, and at one stage he comes for you. You are there paralysed in fright whilst he moves purposely towards you. That one is quite the hair raiser. In the absolute biggest frightener however, there is a moment when this human-like figure with a mutant face jumps out from nowhere and right in your face, so you turn away and HE IS STILL RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU, YOU STEP AND LEAN BACK, REELING AWAY BUT HE IS STILL RIGHT THERE. Then he disappears and you breathe a massive sigh of relief. As someone who doesn't scare that easily, I have to say this one really got my heart racing.

Horror Movies and Horror VR - Not the Same!

So this is why the film review at the start was so important. When it comes to horror in the movies, a lot of it is plot-thin tired old cliches. In VR, however, none of that matters. It doesn't matter if you think you know what happens next, because it is you in this place, not some movie character on a screen.

I'm a VR horror believer. This is why I'm keen to try Resident Evil 7. This is why I'm now going to be looking at other horror VR experiences! If you have a VR headset and you haven't tried out these games yet, you need to do so or you are missing out.

Maybe don't try them if you have a heart condition though.

nVidia VR Funhouse (Verdict: Great Fun)

Good morning, afternoon, evening and night my VR followers,

If you have been reading my blog, you'll know that my opinion of the VR software market is that you have to pay a lot for not much at the moment. As a result I'm still very much tied to looking at the free or low cost games and experiences you can play.

Actually, I'm spending most of my time in Fallout 3 using VorpX. It's really great fun, slightly tarnished by the instability of the game, but fast and easy quicksaving means you only need a bit of patience for that.

So on the side I'm still trying other things out, and I recently discovered that the nVidia VR Funhouse is free on Steam. So here is a review!

What is it?

nVidia VR Funhouse serves 2 purposes

1. It is 9 funfair style mini games of varying types.
2. It is a tech demo of nVidia VR graphics

The Games

The games are based on either a throwing, shooting or hitting mechanic.

Clown Painter

1. Clown Painter - You have to shoot paint into the mouths of clown heads in order to pop the overhead balloons. The guns have a paint cartridge that only recharges when not being used, so part of the game is managing your 2 guns so you are not wasting time.
2. Fire Archer - Basic shoot the target game, but the flame arrows means it doesn't matter where you hit the target, score is based on target difficulty.
3. Balloon Knight - You are in a circle where balloons starting inflating from around you and you have to pop them with the 2 swords you have. Slashing the balloons doesn't work because the sides of the sword are dull, you have to pop them with the tip, which adds to the challenge.
4. Basketball - Standard fairground game to get as many balls in the hoop as you can.
5. Wallwalker - You have to fling jelly octupuses (octupi?) at a target and make sure they permanently stick in order to keep your score.
6. Whack-a-Mole - Standard fairground whack-a-mole with 5 targets.
7. Mole Boxing - The same moles return. They spring towards you and you have to punch them back.
8. Shooting Gallery - Shoot all the pottery in the allotted time.
9. Cannon Skeet - Similar to shooting gallery except this time the pottery is being fired up in the air by a moving cannon.

Whack-a-mole

The games are actually pretty fun. There is a good variance in the different types of play and if I did badly in a round, I found myself wanting to do better before moving onto the next game. Wallwalker is one of my favourites because as well as throwing the octupus at the target, you have to do it in such a way that you get a good splat with as many legs as possible. If only a couple of legs stick then there is a good chance it will fall off the target and you will lose your score.

And that sums up one of the things I like about these mini games, to get the best score possible, you are thinking about the physics in orders to get the best score, whether it is throwing the octupus using a certain technique or trying to find the easiest way to throw the basketballs.

The other thing I like is you can think outside the box a bit and cheat to gain a small advantage. For example, with the basketball game, the balls are halfway up the machine on a platform that only retracts when the timer starts, but actually you can lean forward and grab a ball in each hand before the timer starts to get that extra second for the best score.

Balloon Knight

Also, I discovered, there is the odd achievement for doing silly stuff outside the immediate game mechanics. After a game of whack-a-mole I casually decided to throw my hammer into the fairground outside of your arena just because, you know, why not? I got a Steam achievement that suggested I was teasing out my frustration for having a mundane job.😊

Well... I think testing is a mundane job, and I work in IT.😛

As a Tech Demo

nVidia VR Funhouse is actually quite a cool tech demo as well. The graphics as far as the general environment go are to a good standard, but the real point of the demo are the special effects. Flame effects, water stream and splat effects, very high particle confetti and the general physics. All the effects are very convincing and cool. The confetti in particular is something that might pass you by unless you take a second to stop and admire it, literally 100s or 1000s of confetti particles around you, all with their own depth relative to you, spinning and blustering around, and all being individually rendered very smoothly, it's actually quite impressive.

Cannon Skeet

The downside to this is that the software does put quite a high spec requirement on you. It is higher than the GTX 970 which is the base HTC Vive spec, and which I have. It says the minimum requirement is a GTX 1060 and when the game first starts you might get frustrated with that. Why? Well, when the game first starts, you are wondering if it's going to be a load of crap because it's jerking around, the SteamVR empty world pops in a few times, frame rate drops to single figures, etc. So first thing you'll do, or first thing I did anyway, was go to settings and put them on minimum. However, I found changing the low-medium-high graphics setting didn't make a whole lot of difference.

Have patience, however, because actually, if you give the game 30-60 seconds to settle down, it goes back to being a very smooth VR experience, even on my GTX 970. It seems the game just needs some time to finish loading itself up when it first starts and then it is basically fine. It's a bit odd, really, because you'd expect a company like nVidia to do better than creating such a poor initial experience, but nonetheless, patience is well rewarded. Maybe this issue is only because I have a less than minimum spec GTX 970 for this game, I'd be interested in knowing how other peoples' experience are.

To Summarise

Well it's free, so the price is right. The graphics are good, the games are good fun. There's the issues with the game being choppy right after startup but really it is no big deal.

nVidia VR Funhouse is one of those games where you think this would make a great party game with a few friends round. Trouble is, of course, you only have the one headset.

My final point, if you are a hard working career person and don't get nearly enough exercise (I'm giving away my secrets) then you'd do well to play this game just because actually it will warm you up when you are waving your swords around or whacking or punching moles! Play it once a day, spend 5 minutes getting your blood flowing (or do some proper exercise instead).

I highly recommend nVidia VR Funhouse. Free and good clean fun for all the family.

Mobile VR vs Full VR - How Does it Compare?

Hello everyone,

Buying a full-on PC/console tethered VR headset is an expensive proposition. If you are like me then you need to be really sure you are going to get your money's worth when you drop several hundred pounds on a full-scale VR system. And there are plenty of options out there, some of them quite cheap.

So this article attempts to answer the question "Why drop several hundred on a full-on VR system when you can get much cheaper VR solutions?"

First, you need to understand today's VR market. You can categorise the market in several ways.

Is it VR/AR/MR?

An example of Augmented Reality - virtual on top of real.

The key categories here are VR and AR. VR (Virtual Reality)
really means a completely artificial world. Everything you are seeing is being drawn by a computer. AR (Augmented Reality) means that a computer is drawing artificial objects on top of a view of the real world. The most widely known example of AR is Pokemon Go, which had millions of people across the world wandering around the streets with their smartphones (and occasionally walking into traffic). People were chasing Pokemon that were drawn on their phone screens over a camera view of the world.

You have MR (Mixed Reality) as well. Technically, MR consists of Augmented Reality (Artificial objects overlayed onto the real world) and Augmented Virtuality (Real world objects that can interact with a virtual world). If you brain is starting to explode then I invite you to forget the term Mixed Reality because of the next question.

Is it available today?

There are loads of VR/AR/MR technologies out there that are still in development. Microsoft, Intel and other companies are all working on their own versions. The future is exciting, but it is also full of marketing, pipe dreams and frankly, wishful thinking. If you are interested in what you can buy today, then you can buy VR and that is about it.

Mobile vs Tethered VR

Google Cardboard - Ultra cheap

As a basic definition, mobile VR means a fully mobile device you can chuck in your suitcase and take with you. Tethered VR means a unit that has to be either physically or wirelessly coupled with a main unit that does all the processing needed to create and manage the artificial world.

Today, the definition of "mobile" goes a bit deeper as well, because it currently literally means VR on your mobile phone, which you then turn into a VR headset with a headset accessory you put your mobile into.

So to summarise what is available?

Mobile-phone based VR and full-on "tethered" VR, it really is that simple.

So how do the 2 types compare?

There are several major points of comparison between mobile and tethered VR.

		Mobile VR		Tethered VR
Display Resolution		Similar to 1080p		Similar to 1080p
Effective Resolution		720p		720p
Field of View		A little restricted		High
Refresh Rate		Moderate		High
Relative Cost		Inexpensive		Really expensive
Quality of Experience		Okay		Good
Feeling of Immersion		Poor		Excellent

Let me explain these ratings:

Samsung Gear VR - A controller doesn't improve mobile VR.

• Display Resolution - Both mobile and tethered VRs have similar pixel resolutions on the displays, a little higher than what you would get on a full HD TV, but of course on a very small display.
• Effective Resolution - The problem with these displays is that they are centimetres from your eyeballs. When viewing VR worlds, the actual resolution appears more like 720p i.e. if you watch a movie on a virtual screen in the game and have it a large but comfortable size, it will be around 720p. The effective resolution is probably the single most obvious limitation of today's VR technology.
• Field of View - This means how much to the left/right and up/down can you see. Mobile VRs have quite restrictive lenses on them, which means it feels like you are looking through a small tunnel. Tethered VR doesn't have this problem and has a very natural feeling Field of View.
• Refresh Rate - Basically, mobile is 60Hz and tethered is 90Hz. The human body is much more sensitive to refresh rate in VR than it is on a display like a TV screen or a monitor. In particular, research suggests low refresh rates are a key trigger of motion sickness and immersion breaking, so a high refresh rate is essential for the "feels like you are really there and not about to be sick" experience.
• Relative Cost - The cheapest mobile VR solution is Google Cardboard, which costs a few pounds/dollars. That's assuming you already have the right mobile phone of course, but most people have something that will work (Samsung or iPhone). There's no escaping that tethered VR costs a lot, always several hundred even for the cheapest solutions like PSVR, and that doesn't even include the PC or console itself.
• Quality of Experience - This is very subjective of course, but personally I think that mobile VR is quite limited an experience. The 360 videos are okay but you can only have so much fun with that. The interactive VR experiences are okay but again, I got bored of them quickly. Probably the most mileage I got was turning my phone into a 3D cinema, but the drawback with that is the movies are quite low resolution once you cram them into the right format. Tethered VR is much better across the board, in particular the head tracking is way way better on tethered VR for better immersion and the technology allows for much deeper experiences as well then stupid rollercoaster or just plodding around underwater. See the Everest VR experience, for example.
• Feeling of Immersion - In my opinion, it's just not there on mobile, not on anything I tested anyway and I've tried both iPhone and Samsung based tech. It's fun, and you might like it if it is all you've tried, but tethered VR competely craps on mobile VR for immersion. When you try tethered VR it will be the first time you really feel you are there, to walk around objects, look at them and feel like you are completely there in the virtual world, to be able to judge distance, speed of objects, depth all the same as in the real world.

So back to the question then...

Why drop several hundred on a full-on VR system when you can get much cheaper VR solutions?

Because, quite frankly, mobile VR is rubbish today. I tried it for a few months before I bought the HTC Vive and I have not used it since buying the Vive. You might argue that mobile VR has progressed a lot in the last several months or last year, I'm sorry, but I don't believe it has caught up. What's more, over the next year, maybe mobile VR will progress a lot more still, but tethered VR will have moved ahead.

Mobile VR is great if you just want to spend a few pounds or dollars on something fun, view a few 3D movies, try the rollercoaster or underwater apps. But the whole tech is limited by the fact that you are doing all this on a phone - limited battery, limited processing power, limited experience.

Tethered VR is not perfect, but the limitations there are real bleeding edge technology limitations. You're not hampered by processing power, your limited with how many pixels you can cram onto a really small display. You're not hampered by battery, you're hampered by a physical cable you have to drag around with you. You're not hampered by the technology having to trade off processing power vs battery life, you're hampered by the fact that the technology that drives the unit (i.e. your PC) costs a lot on top of the VR headset (unless you are lucky like me an just happened to have a VR capable PC).

With mobile VR, you're limited by problems inherent with it being mobile-tech based on mobile phones. With tethered VR, you are limited by the forefront of the technology.

If you are serious about VR, you'll buy a tethered unit. The different is night and day!

No Wonder Game Are Struggling

In my very first post I said that I would write about Game at some stage. My motivation for doing so was off the back of a ridiculous situation that came up when I tried to buy my HTC Vive from Game, apparently they didn't want my business!

Who Are Game?

Game used to be an international operation, although I'm not sure they ever operated in the US and I'm not sure if they operate outside the UK today. So for all you guys from all over the world, let me describe who they are.

Back in the day, probably 20 years ago, the main video games shop on the high street I remember were Electronics Boutique, a very oddly named store that I didn't initially realise was all about computer games. Whilst Electronics Boutique was still going, the Game shops started to appear and then at some stage, Game bought out all the EB stores.

Remember these guys?

This led to some oddities, like in my local town for example, there used to be a Game shop and an EB shop competing against each other, and you could see one shop from the front of the other. You'd think once Game bought out EB they would have shut one of the shops, but no! Both stores continued to operate until Game went into administration a few years ago, and then apparently someone started making some sensible decisions and closed one of the stores down.

So, just to make that point again, you had 2 Game shops almost literally within spitting distance competing against each other for years, possibly a decade.

Really, the pattern of questionable business practices was established then.

So Are/Were They Any Good?

Amazon - cheaper than everyone?

Game genuinely was a good store at the time. Prior to the days of Amazon pretty much being the cheapest for everything, Game was a good place to go to get all the latest games, consoles, gaming peripherals, etc. I recall them being very competitive on price and they had decent sales and I would often just go in a Game shop and have a look whenever I was out shopping for something.

The trouble is, even after they went through a period of administration, they don't really seem to have worked out that the world has moved on. They streamlined some of their sections, the PC one particularly (having utterly failed to compete against Steam for years), shut down some of their shops, and basically made a bunch of business decisions they should have made years ago.

So They're Good Again Now, Right?

Well.... kinda.... not really.

I think the only reason Game still exists at all is because of the convenience of their trade-in service, that is, getting some cash for your old games and hardware. They have a system where you get a pittance if you want cash, but they upgrade that to a "low but more like it" offer if you take store credit. You can definitely get more money if you sell the games yourself on eBay, but then you have the hassle of doing it all, making sure you have padded bags, having to mail it, dealing with potential idiot customers, etc.. so the convenience goes a long way.

Game's games prices (did you get that) tend to be on the expensive side these days, but I build up my store credit over time and then wait for a January or summer Sale and do okay out of that.

So Where Does the HTC Vive Come In?

So the situation was that I basically had 2 places I could buy my HTC Vive from at the best price, Amazon not being one of them this time. It was Game or PC World.

At the time, I had about £20 of store credit build up, plus another £7 left over on a gift card I received as a present. Plus Game were doing a deal of double points on the purchase of the HTC Vive so I would have got about £30 worth of store credit from the sale as well. So about £27 off the price and another £30 credit back again.

Except Game rejected my business!

I actually found out what happened from my credit card company. They said that due to the nature of the transaction i.e. a high value purchase from a store normally associated with smaller purchases, they asked the merchant (i.e. Game) some additional security questions as part of the standard transaction process.

Game didn't bother replying at all, so the credit card company cancelled the transaction. They then phoned me up to explain what happened, which actually I thought was good service from my credit card provider.

So I placed the same order with PC World and received my Vive 2 days later.

Game Astounds Me

I really really don't understand how Game continues to thrive with such a long track record of poor business management. There was nothing to single me out from any other member of the public with this transaction, so I can only think Game are also pushing away other customers like this. The HTC Vive is one of the most high value items Game sells, and yet they don't even have the process in place to ensure they complete the transactions, it's unbelievable.

I continue to use Game because of the convenience of the trade-in service, and will probably continue to do so until they die as a business. Because I'm sure they will die as a business at some stage. They are so completely out of touch with the customer it is ridiculous...

• They are relatively expensive these days, still charging full list price for games you basically always can get for cheaper on Amazon.
• They just about give enough money for trade-ins, but their second hand game prices are stupid expensive also. But a second hand copy of this game that came out 2 weeks ago for 50p less than brand new, and still more then you can get the game brand new on Amazon. What an amazing deal!
• Their choice of hardware peripherals these days is extremely limited. For example, their genuine Sony PlayStation peripherals range seems to be mainly limited to just the controllers these days. I bought my PS4 dual charging station and Move controllers online because Game didn't have them.
• Even their game selections for the latest consoles is not what it used to be.

I no longer wander into Game if I happen to be on the high street because... what's the point? They never have anything interesting. I only go in there now if I've got something to trade in or I've built up store credit to the point where I really need to spend it. I bet their foot traffic has dropped massively over the last few years.

If the people in charge of Game had any sense whatsoever, they'd be doing 2 things.

1. Understand why they still survive today, the trade-in service is a part of it, and work out how they can maximise bringing customers into the shop on that basis. More special deals for extra cash on your trade-ins are needed. Or trade-in your old Skyrim to get the new Enhanced version for half price, things like that.
2. Work out how they can sell games at better rates, or with better deals. The only time anyone should buy from a Game shop is when they want a game literally right away. You can even get release-day games from Amazon these days, for less price than Game! It's insane, they need to work something out.

Thanks for Reading This Post

My genuine thanks to you for reading this far. This blog post is a bit of a rant I guess, I swore to myself I'd write it when the whole business with buying my HTC Vive went down, because it is just so silly. So thanks for being prepared to read something a bit different to my normal technical posts about using the Vive itself.

Game's future is limited, mark my words.

Fallout 3 in VR Using VorpX

I said I was going to try BioShock as my next VorpX game, and I did indeed start going through the motions of getting it all set up. However, I got frustrated with trying to create a decent control scheme for BioShock, and I don't find using the mouse and keyboard satisfactory when using the headset, because you can't see the damn keys on the keyboard, so I put BioShock away for now and switched to Fallout 3 instead.

Fallout 3 in VorpX is Actually Pretty Good

As with so many things in life, there is good news and bad news when it comes to getting Fallout 3 working well in VorpX. The good news, really good news actually, is that Fallout 3 does look really really good in VorpX. In fact it looks good enough to give you full immersion and feel you are actually there.

Really the main thing which stops this being a VR experience as good as Doom 3 VR is the control scheme. Unfortunately, the way the VorpX seems to utilise the Vive controllers is either to mimic a mouse or a gamepad, and actually neither is any good in my opinion, but I'll talk more about that later. Still, using the gamepad, as I was with Borderlands, is still great and I'm now about 20 hours in and looking to finish the game and DLCs playing this way, assuming the game lets me.

This brings me to the second thing stopping full VR immersion, you are still at the mercy of Fallout 3's bugs. I've had a few crashes and this is nothing to do with VorpX I think, it is in line with my memory of playing Fallout 3 previously.

Fallout 3 in VorpX is Really Tricky to Set Up

Fallout 3 in VorpX - A lot of work, a lot of reward

This is the bad news, it was the trickiest title yet to get just right. This is due to a combination of the game core problems (bugs basically), the fact that VorpX, although looking great in Geometry 3D mode, really does tax your graphics card, and the really odd way VorpX messes around with physical and virtual controllers.

The Bugs and How to Deal with Them

The saving grace to Fallout 3's bugs is that there are mods to fix most of them. If you are setting up Fallout 3 to run in VorpX then you want to install a bunch of mods right after you install the game.

I recommend you do not use the Fallout 3 Mod Manager (FOMM), or the Nexus Mod Manager (NMM). Even when they were maintained they were temperemental, and I found it buggy as hell trying to use is this time. If you are running Fallout 3 in VR you want to avoid all the texture and graphics upgrade mods anyway because they'll bog your system down, which is going to be taxed running Fallout 3 in Geometry 3D mode. Installing the relatively small number of mods you need to fix bugs isn't rocket science, some of them are straight installer executables anyway, and the ones that aren't have instructions.

Sadly, these aren't the type of bugs I am talking about

You want the following patches installed.

• UPDATED Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - This one patch fixes a huge list of the game's bugs.
• ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated - This is just a tool that makes it easier to install other mods, but it is essential, don't forget to include it.
• Games for Windows LIVE Disabler - The Windows Live overlay is a massive pain in the arse. Believe me, you want rid of it.
• Fallout Script Extender (FOSE) and Enhanced Camera - FOSE is required by Enhanced Camera. Enhanced Camera does 3 good things which aids the VR experience. 1) It renders your body even in first person mode, I like this because it means you see your shadow as you move around moodily lit areas. 2) It stops the game switching you to third person mode during certain actions, like sitting down, also aiding the VR experience. 3) It has a setting which minimises the automatic zoom when you talk to people and use the Pip Boy, which is actually critical for Pip Boy use in VR (explained in further detail later). Fallout 3 defaults to putting people right in your face when you talk to them, which is really annoying when you are in VR.
• Purge Cell Buffers - I'm not sure if this one is strictly necessary, but it basically automates the flushing of buffers in the game, which is meant to reduce the build of lag when you play the game for a while. I installed it to maximise the game's stability.
• Large Address Aware Enabler for FO3 - This lets the game use more than the old-school 32 bit limit of 2GB of memory. Again, meant to enhance stability.

The above is what I recommend for VR. You are free to install other mods as you like, but I recommend keeping it to a minimum, you don't know how some mods might affect the games stability. Also, just to repeat, you should specifically avoid texture and graphics upgrades, you don't want to reduce performance in this game. I did install a few additional mods myself, I like to install the body changer mods to improve the default game bodies, I install a basic armour replacer to match the body changer and I put in a few texture replacers for books, posters and billboards. Plus a few other small mods like map enhancers and things like that.

Enhanced Camera - An essential tool as well as cool!

When you run the game for the first time, it will auto-detect your PC's power and set you to a graphics level. If your PC is VR capable then you are going to get the "Ultra-High" settings by default. I have an nVidia 970 GTX and I find using High instead of Ultra-High seems to give good enough performance without really making any noticeable difference in-game. I'd also recommend going through the LOD distance sliders for various settings i.e. people, objects, grass, etc and pulling those down to the mid-way point. The reality is that VR is not high resolution enough to see much in the distance anyway so there is not much point reducing performance to draw stuff you can't see anyway.

DirectVR Does the 95% of the Job

Having gone through the chore of all the above, you'll be pleased to know that if you fire up the game, get to the point where you are in control for the first time (as a baby) and enable DirectVR, the game takes care of most of the settings for you. I adjusted the depth and size of the HUD for my preference.

DirectVR Screws the Controllers

This is the second to last problem to solve. It seems that VorpX tries to do a lot of fancy stuff with physical and virtual mice/keyboards/gamepads, etc, I am guessing to try and enable the use of the Vive (or Oculus) controllers. But it is unusable for me.

The problem is that VorpX tries to turn your Vive controllers either into a mouse or gamepad, and the problem with that is it locks the right controller to controlling the game's camera.

If you are looking to use the Vive's controllers then it should be because you want to stand up and duck and look around for yourself, and I ask you, what use is having a controller dedicated to moving the camera around when you can just look around by turning your head? It's insane to me, and unfortunately, the VorpX software does not currently let you reassign the controls of the right controller, so the feature is basically useless.

(Actually, I'm not the only one to think this way. A couple of folks have requested to be able to remap the right controller in the VorpX forums and the VorpX developer Ralf says he has added it to his list of change requests).

The real downside is, in order to do all this fancy stuff with the Vive controllers which is unusable for me, VorpX does crazy stuff with the mouse and gamepad drivers, to the extent where it disables your actual physical gamepad. Basically, you need to make sure your Vive controllers are switched off, disable the Vive Controller settings in the game, and you should be able to get VorpX to give you your gamepad controller back.

This does leave you in the situation, however, where enabling DirectVR screws around with the controllers and pops up a dialog box in the game telling you your controller is disabled. If you don't OK the dialog, then it stop DirectVR from working. It's maddening! The solution is to enable the DirectVR scan and then makes sure you OK this dialog straight away, so the DirectVR scan succeeds.

What a pain in the arse just to use your frigging gamepad like you normally would!

In Your Face Pip Boy

This is way too close in VR, but there's a trick to move it back

This is the very last problem to solve. When you bring up your pip boy, the game puts it right in your face, and I mean RIGHT IN your face. It's so close you'll go bog eyed trying to focus on it.

The quick and dirty solution is to use the Edge Peek feature of Vorpx when using the Pip Boy, but I don't like this because it breaks immersion and you use the Pip Boy all the time in the game.


Thankfully, there is a trick you can do to pull the interface back a bit and eliminate the need to use Edge Peek. It's still very close but it makes it way more usable and you just need a second to focus on it rather than going bog eyed like before.

This forum post on the issue solves the problem, and it makes use of the Enhanced Camera mod to do so. Basically you need to manually edit the mod's .ini file to change a setting, and it reduces the zoom when using the Pip Boy and when talking to people without affecting the rest of the game.

Enjoy!

So, after all this hard work, I think it would be very rude not to put some serious hours into playing Fallout 3, at least until the game's bugs make it too much of a chore. I will update you all in a later blog post to let you know how far I got, and whether Fallout 3 in VR is playable to the end or not.