I am typing this in Immersed, leaning back on the couch, laptop in lap, with a huge screen hovering in space in front of me.
One real advantage of VR is completely unchanged: it is great to have no option of glancing at the keyboard when typing. Instead, I actually have to orient my hands properly, find the guides on f and j and keep myself from drifting.
Yes, I know there are options - multiple ones even - for seeing your keyboard in VR. I consider the extra discipline too much of an advantage to try any of them. It is nice to have to go by feel, and realize how good a feel I do have for where the keys are when I actually trust my hands more. I used to write regularly with my eyes closed or with the laptop screen off, so I know how nice that invisible flow can be for me. This is of course not the same since I have my words staring at me all the time, but it is a nice and useful path back to really trusting my hands.
I have got a screen resolution, size, and text sharpness which feels really nice to me now. The next step is, I think, to play around with settings and see if I can decrease input lag somewhat.
One striking downside to working in the Quest instead of right on the Macbook air: there is a fan in my life again, right next to my face. Should these things not be prohibited in this futuristic world we live in?
Playing around with settings is clearly a bad idea, I locked myself out and could not get connected again until I restarted both the app on my computer and Immersed in the headset. So no lower lag for me right now.
Hm … the fan just turned itself up a notch … I am not doing anything taxing, I even turned off the 3d environment and changed to a 360 photo like they recommended. And I only have one virtual screen to work with. What else can I do for you, headset?
I lowered "retina image quality", getting myself kicked out again but this time getting reconnected without needing to restart anything. Did nothing for the fan noise, but possibly improved lag just a little bit. I wonder what more I can do to drive down lag, because that would make everything that much nicer. I would not enjoy doing any precision tasks like this, but writing works fine.
That, and asking for help on Discord. Anyone else have their cursor go invisible every time they enable the "VR mouse cursor"? Yes, they do. Always good to have company.
I guess I will need to try that trick of wiring the air, creating a wireless network from it and connecting the Quest to that, just to check if there is any blame to be placed on my general network setup.
Some other day …
How about a little bit of gaming right now?
Gaming summary
Pistol whip is fun, I should delve into it more. I have fun in short bursts already, but I have a feeling I have not got into the flow of the game yet. I imagine it starts to flow somewhat like Beat saber tracks eventually, and it would be fun to get to that point.
Then, I got lost in Deisim for a while. A lot has been added to the game since the last time I played it, and yet it feels just as accessible and easy to get into as it did then. It never feels like there is more I need to know, or that things are getting out of hand because of systems I am unaware of. Instead, it feels like I have more fun stuff to discover as I play. Oh look: ships! Little armies! Other kingdoms! A whole host of disasters! And a lot of clarifying tooltips! Yet still just the same calm immersion of sitting down in your own model train world, setting things up and watching them go.
I could have sworn I had written about Deisim here before, but apparently not … Perfect topic for a post of its own. For, you know, the SEO. Or for the fact that this one is surprisingly long already …