ChrisBardon

Yeah, no luck. Tried again tonight, and as soon as I accept the prompt to start Oculus Link, it dies. The GPU compatibility seems to be closer to "fails spectacularly" instead of "doesn't work quite right", which means they must be doing some pretty low level GPU stuff to get it to work (as evidenced by the 0 AMD chips that are supported). Not going to buy a new graphics card just for this though (at least not without being able to test it first). Also not sure whether the i7 in my "big" PC will handle it, since it's probably about 5 years old now, and still fine for running a media server (and a bunch of PC games), but nothing that's pushing VR.

Very interesting-I remember when Valve first got into VR wondering if they'd do Half life 3 as a VR exclusive, but I suppose this is close. We'll see what the state of Oculus Link is by then and whether I can play it.

Ah, OK. I haven't looked at those SDKs, but I'm very familiar with strange and disparate sets of APIs coming out from Microsoft. Hopefully they get their shit together and come up with something that makes it straightforward to bring a common set of features everywhere. Unrelated, this looks to be the best price on an S that I've seen (https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/xbox-one-s-all-digital-edition-1tb-console/13504411). $180 CAD for the S (all digital) with 3 Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, and Forza Horizon 3. Works out well since my parents have been looking for a good streaming box, and this would not only run all the media apps they want (Netflix, Amazon, Disney), but it'll work with the harmony remote. Side benefit is that my kids will be able to play games on it when they visit. There might have to be some account contortions to make it so that everyone can play on both consoles, but worst case if they sign in with my account the odd time they want to use it, they can access everything on gamepass.

Loaded up the Oculus software on my laptop and connected the quest, but when I select the option in VR to enable Oculus Link, I get an error in the Oculus app. Might mess with it more later, but they're not listing the 1050 as a supported GPU yet, so I'm not expecting it to work. It might be due to this machine having switchable graphics (and I might have to force Oculus to use the Nvidia GPU), but that's probably the last thing I'll try before waiting until more GPU support is added. I'm not expecting fantastic things from a laptop GPU, but it'd be cool to check it out as a POC with a couple of simple things to start with.

The only thing I'd really like to see with the PC gamepass stuff is cross-save for everything. Most games already support cloud saves anyway, but Bloodstained and Outer Worlds don't sync between PC and console, so I couldn't jump between platforms. Not a huge deal I suppose, but I've used the feature before (when one device or another is in use), and it's really useful. That, and I suppose fixing the Windows Store issues. I still can't install Slay the Spire on my laptop...

Finished off superhot VR, and it's awesome. I'd actually say that this is the definitive version of the game, since it works insanely well in VR, and with the quest especially there's nothing getting in your way of ducking around obstacles etc. Tried out a couple of other new games on the Quest: -Racket NX: Kind of a 3d breakout/racketball game that seems pretty good so far. You could think of it as a much better realized Wii tennis if you want, but for 20 bucks, seems like a neat game. -Pistol Whip: Oculus was pushing this one pretty hard, and it's a little like Beat Saber with guns. On rails shooter that has a heavy dose of auto aim (without the mod to turn it off). The Beat Saber analogy falls apart since it doesn't seem like you have to shoot on the beat, but there's definitely a crafted feel to the levels. Also requires more movement to get around obstacles. Haven't finished a level with Deadeye on yet (no auto aim I think), but even out of the box, it's pretty good. Not as good as Beat Saber or Superhot, but still worth a look (also, under $25, and apparently Oculus isn't charging tax?).

Some good stuff on there-saves me from buying Darksiders 3 I suppose.

Finished off a couple of series over the last couple of days, that coincidentally have very similar ending structures: -The Wicked and the Divine had a strong ending, and in retrospect may play a whole lot better as a single continuous work. Seemed to wander a lot in the middle though. Might be fun to try a whole second pass at it. -Even though I knew the Walking Dead had ended, I hadn't noticed that vol 32 was also the final trade, so the surprise ending worked just as well as it did for those reading singles. Sometimes I guess it pays to be out of touch? In any case, this is also a series that suffers as much from its cast size as it benefits from it. There were definitely a few characters that I had to go back and try to remember, especially when they're trying to wrap up almost 200 issues of backstory in a single finale. I actually hadn't heard about the fake solicits for future issues that never happened, which is a really clever way to keep things under wraps. I think I'm down to the last few series' worth of singles, and East of West is wrapping up, Saga is on hiatus until sometime, and Sex Criminals is supposedly coming back for a final arc in January.

If it helps, it sounds like all the Simpsons on there are 16:9 crops, so I don't think you'd want to watch them anyway.

And done. By the end this actually got to be a bit of a slog, which is kind of a shame since I liked some of the mechanics. Directional spells are neat, as are the last couple of traversal abilities, but the difficulty is all over the place. Main game is OK, but then the boss fights seem like they're incredibly tough. Ended up just loading up on food to get through the last fight. Playing this actually made me wonder how well SOTN aged. I never did end up finding apples either, so lots of food I never managed to make. It also wasn't obvious-if you got blueprints for an item, did you have to do anything to make it craftable, since if you did, there's a whole pile of things I was never able to make.

The only question with that Batmobile is where to put it. Might have to relocate the BB8 that's next to the tumbler in the office if they'll both fit on the same shelf. I missed out on the last 89 Batmobile they did-won't make the same mistake twice.

I was just at Universal a couple of days ago for the Ignite attendee party, and finally got a chance to try a couple of the rides for the first time: -Kong is OK. Screens, but at least they're really big and convincing? Big animatronic at the end was neat. -Hagrid is really good. They're pretty crazy with the restraints though, and I almost couldn't get it tight enough for them to be satisfied on the bike. Longest line of the evening though. Most others were walk on to 10 mins, and this was 90 mins. They didn't seem to have the whole preshow running though-just fang wandering around that 3d screen. Besides those, managed to get on Forbidden Journey, Spider-man, and Gringott's before they shut down for the night. Not bad for 3 hours or so.

Nice-I've been using the Oculus to get a light gun fix recently, but I've thought about going back and adding an aimtrak to my mame, since the old light gun I have for it never worked quite right. Main games I miss for it are Area 51 and Point Blank (which had decent Ps1 ports), but the arcade versions are better.

I had to go through four different USB cables, but I managed to get all the developer mode unlocks working over the weekend, so I can load up custom Beat Saber tracks, as well as anything else I feel like, so I put Lambda 1 (the HL1 port) on there. Seems to work pretty well, but I only loaded it for a minute or so to make sure it ran. Also started into superhot, and it's a completely different game in VR, and actually a pretty physical experience ducking around bullets etc. It's a lot of fun doing things like grabbing guns in midair-I can see why this gets listed as the best game on the quest pretty consistently.

That's too bad-I have a work trip coming up in a week, and it'd be great to be able to play on both platforms (since I think the X is going to run better than my laptop).