Oculus quest/go VR support

Zwift have any plans to get the app on oculus quest & go? Seems like the ideal platform for VR Bike training. Easy setup and crazy immersive. I already exclusively use Zwift in VR on my vive with virtual desktop and it allows me to be 100% focused on the ride. It is pretty awesome, Quest and Go version would be even better (Both have Bluetooth, and also usb port so a ANT FE dongle is a possibility) Also Quest and Go’s OS is based on android.

How about it!

I sweat way too much for that. I’m sure it’s cool, but doesn’t it get uncomfortable during a long, hard effort or a race?

3 Likes

I sweat like CRAZY! I end up wiping down the VR goggles every 30 or so mins. Only takes a second and is worth it for me to distract from the VR room I have (an Unfinished basement!) You’d be surprised how focused you can be with out outside distractions. Some people even put fans on top of their hmd’s’ (powered by the USB port) because you can do more than just bike in VR and can get sweaty even playing regular games.

2 Likes

If I remember correctly, Jon Mayfield has played w/an Oculus headset since the prototype days of Zwift. I also seem to remember there being a few demos.

As @Mike_Rowe_PBR mentions, sweat would be a major issue. Another possible issue would be motion sickness. Lastly, those headsets are not cheap :moneybag::money_with_wings: which is probably the biggest obstacle.

Personally, I am not sure what value VR would add at this point. As far as Zwift has come already, there is still plenty of work to be done on the non-VR Zwift (e.g., enhancements, bug fixes, expansions, etc… ).

I agree with you that there is more important areas to focus on but I think the immersive sensation of a VR googles when riding in a bunch or sprinting to the line, looking behind you to see where other riders are etc. would be pretty cool.

3 Likes

Granted this article is two years old…

…but a few comments from Jon Mayfield and how it’s actually been around since the beginning.

“As @Mike_Rowe_PBR mentions, sweat would be a major issue. Another possible issue would be motion sickness. Lastly, those headsets are not cheap :moneybag::money_with_wings: which is probably the biggest obstacle.”

Sweat is easily handled with a face foam designed for sweat. Serval places sell them.
Also the oculus go is 200, oculus quest 399. They use the same OS. Sickness is minior and can be handled easily by leaning your head/shoulders a little into the turn and also software wise having a mask slowly appear the restristics the FOV while you turn (This a commonly available setting in most VR titles) After a few sessions in VR you do not even need it as you get your “VR legs”

The immersiveness and foucus that VR brings is striking. If you did a study on people using zwift I would say a VR version would show much longer customer retention/usage than the pancake version.

1 Like

I’d buy a smart trainer, before I’d buy a VR headset :smiley:

4 Likes

I also think that due to our physics it is really unnatural and hard to find a direct solution for virtual reality while wearing something around the head (during intensive physical activity).
But…this doesn’t mean that we should limit ourselves with some tight wearables tech around the head.

With the state of today’s tech there are simpler and cheaper solutions, well…in my opinion.

Examples:

  1. Full world creation by screening to all the “walls” in a sport (“pain cave”) room. Very simple solution and could be realized today. Well, might require some special wall cover, but still not very complicated one. Also, no need to have 4 walls, 3 walls would be also very cool. You could even implement the ceiling. And voila, you have a full bike simulation world room.

  2. Temporary “removable walls” around the bike with trainer. It could be some type of foldable material (something like a mate that could stand in a circle around the bike) that will create the whole fully closed space (beside the top) around the bike (lets say within the 1-2 meters of distance). Projectors from the top are screening to the internal surface of the material surrounding the bike. The fan turbines could be installed in the bottom and on the top. Very cheap and realistic solution for today. And again, you have almost fully simulated virtual world. This could be best solution for people leaving in usual apartments with tight space. They could install the temporary removable “walls” around the bike and remove it after the ride.
    By the way, the floor in both solutions could also be part of the screening, so by looking down you’ll see the virtual world under your bike and trainer.

  3. Tent-style virtual room. Foldable tent, same style as a usual hiking tent. The bike with the trainer is placed inside. Some holes in the bottom are made for the fan turbine (the fan placed outside with the tubes connected to the holes). The screening of the virtual world could be made from outside (the material of the tent could be made transparent and with additional micro-holes for ventilation). Simple, removable and usable in a room.

It works very well for driving sims but it took a few hours of acclimatization to avoid feeling nauseous.
And those hours aren’t spent in the game. I was driving 2 or 3 laps and then spending the next few hours groaning on a bed feeling seasick. I imagine many would give in.

When you persevere though you can drive fast without feeling sick for hours and it’s very immersive.
Current headsets lack resolution unfortunately which limits playtime a bit and does lose in that sense to some of the 3-screen setups people use but I think it’s a win in long term.

As many have suggested sweating is the big issue. I bet the headset wouldn’t survive for long if you used it for zwift.

I have been using zwift in my vive HMD for a over year an half. I have NEVER used zwift without my hmd. All I do is quickly wipe it down every 20 or so mins while riding (I sweat like crazy) and do a good wipe down after I am done.
With these mobile all in one hmds (oculus go, quest) they are way easier to set up and they have a higher resolution then the original PC hmds.

Driving sims have a dash board that your mind uses as a stationary reference point and reduces motion sickness. Note not all people have motion sickness in current VR, It’s usually when games are not coded correctly and do not use the basic VR knowledge of doing things to reduce/eliminate it.

1 Like

What are you even talking about?
Have you used VR for an amount of time or even did a bike training session in one? These all in one hmds (Oculus go is 200, Oculus quest 399) are easy as pie to put on and you are fully immersed in the world. That immersion allows to focus on the ride with out outside distractions.

Yes you sweat, I do a lot (this is not the cause of the HMD of course). I just quickly wipe down the hmd. every 20 mins or so. You can also get fans for some of these to help cool you down.

Zwift is great, but is even better in VR

1 Like

I have a smart trainer an HMD. I wouldn’t use one with out the other!

1 Like

I guess if you are mainly doing rides that are only an hour long or under it would be ok, but anything over that would cause serious stress on the neck. My long rides are going to start getting over 3 hours and even without that extra weight I can feel a little discomfort after that long, couldn’t image with it.

I am perfectly fine with using a TV so I can see my drink bottles and other nutrition.

For for some it’s ok, but for most it is just not that useful.

Yeah I could see that might cause issues. My max play session in VR (not bike training) was over 3 hours. Didn’t notice the HMD but when I took it off the head did feel mildly sore. Obviously the angle of your head and body while biking are different then just standing up. I’ve done a little over 2 hours bike training a few times with the HMD on and my neck did feel a little bit stiffer after.

I’m blind on one eye and can’t see stereo, so a VR Headset would be just a little Display really close to my good eye for me, nothing more :smiley:
I’m happy with my 46" TV for now.

What I’m really looking for is a cheap but good smart trainer with good power reading.
Looking for a used Elite Qubo Digital Smart B+, but they’re hard to find in my country.

The oculus rift is certainly not built from materials that would be fine with a ‘wipe down’ after using it to cycle in.

The setting for driving sims is locking the horizon, i.e removing features developers added to show the car suspension bouncing around on a 2d screen which aren’t really needed when you’re in the 3d game wearing a headset.

As for features programmers add to stop motion sickness these really would be pointless in either a driving or cycling sim since the whole idea of the game is to experience moving around at speed in the virtual world. These features either remove that movement or do things like blurring the viewport during it - but when driving or cycling you’re moving all the time - that’s the whole point.

These features wouldn’t be needed at all if people were willing to acclimatize. The fact developers add these features isn’t because they are ‘coding correctly’ - it’s because many people, perhaps most are not willing to suffer.

If they feel any hint of being nauseous they decide the game is bad. That’s the problem VR has to become established. If you want to drive at 150 mph around silverstone and drift around corners, spin the car etc you have to go through a period where your brain is saying “nope” - and the reward is you can fly around in VR without needing features to break immersion.

It’s not ‘coding correctly’ that’s the issue here, it’s that most people don’t want to play VR games (or do anything) enough to go through a few hours of feeling sick afterwards. That’s the stinger, it’s not like feeling a bit sick while you’re playing it carries on after you remove the headset. Until they acclimatize to it.

Which means, yeah, developers will shrug, make their games less immersive and less fun to play.

Thus driving sims remain one of the few games that are actually worth playing because moving around really fast while you’re sat down is exactly what you do to fly, cycle, drive. Why they decided games where you’re walking around your room bumping into furniture and kicking the cat were the thing for VR escapes me - I’ve never played one of these latter games for longer than 5 minutes without getting bored.

Not sure about the rift, but my Vive has not had an issue with sweat for over 2 years.
Pimax is working fine too for the last few months.
Have to see about Oculus quest when it comes out in the next few weeks. But I doubt there will be issues.
Note: People do sweat from playing active VR games like beat saber, Creed: Rise to Glory, super hot etc. VR gets you off your ass!

Guess you nevered played fall out 4, Skyrim in VR. Can’t wait for No Mans Sky!

? I use VR at least 4 days a week and I do no get sick(with 99% of VR games). In fact the majority of people do not get sick. That’s why there have been around 8 million (6DOF) HMD’s (psvr, Oculus, Vive) sold. There about to be a lot more sold with the quest all in one (no PC needed)

VR/AR is the future, there’s no looking back… Even DC Rainmaker thinks so

1 Like

“People do sweat from playing active VR games like beat saber, Creed: Rise to Glory, super hot etc. VR gets you off your ass!”

Oh, come on. You’re talking to a forum of cyclists here. Don’t insult our intelligence.

If playing superhot makes you sweat and out of breath I’d suggest playing it less and getting some exercise.

I use VR at least 4 days a week and I do no get sick(with 99% of VR games).

I don’t either because I acclimatised. Let’s not talk in circles. I specifically pointed out that the techniques you claimed coders would have to use to avoid you feeling sick don’t really work for cycling games or driving games because the flying around in the world is the only point to these games.

You’re trying to first argue that nausea is ‘bad coding’ and now that you don’t get it.

The truth is, it’s a big obstacle to making games that are actually worth playing and so far developers have just made VR worse trying to workaround the issue.

Such a big obstacle that developers like Valve whose initial idea was to make a VR version of Team fortress 2 et al had to back pedal because these games simply don’t work in VR - and that’s bad because tens of millions of gamers play games like Team fortress 2 and fortnite etc etc.

And, for sure they’ve sold a few handsets. Many are gathering dust though - mine included for the most part. Look at the game sales. Nothing stellar unfortunately. I’ve spent nothing on VR games. I’ve mostly played either demos, games they gave away with the headsets (because they couldn’t sell them) or games that existed before VR and where the developer added a VR version, like Assetto Corsa and Elite dangerous.

And, aside from a “wow” for 30 minutes after trying it, for the most part the games are awful. The only games I’ve really enjoyed and could see myself playing long term are the 2 that aren’t really VR games per se - the driving sim and Elite dangerous.

And, as I said, to get to where I could enjoy both took hours of acclimatisation to get past feeling nauseous. Of course I didn’t get nauseous with superhot, but so what? The game is dull. I’ve played over 10000 hours of TF2, hundreds of hours of assetto corsa. There’s no way I’d spend that length of time in Superhot. It’s just not that fun and there’s no real skill ceiling to it.

Unfortunately far more VR games meet that description than not.

It doesn’t look to be the future of gaming no matter how many times interested parties say it. Maybe they hope if they keep saying it it’ll come true. I get it, my first 5 minutes made me go ‘Wow’, if you’d asked me then what I thought I might have said some superlatives and made claims about the future.

But, 30 minutes later my objective self is back and what am I actually playing for the 20-40 hours a week I game? Not VR games. Games that developers have specifically said don’t work in VR. So it’s definitely not my future in gaming. YMMV but you’re probably going to have to convince a lot more people to actually start buying VR games before developers stop investing money in it.

I can see applications a theoretical higher resolution headset would have outside of gaming. Although I doubt many non-gamers would spend the amount required for the hardware to drive that theoretical headset. Right now the quality isn’t very good, certainly not if, say, you wanted to use it to watch a movie in a virtual theatre or visit a gallery or place overseas virtually.

The developers are not short-sighted, they know it won’t begin to replace all gaming. Valve have said as much. It’s a niche. Great for driving sims as I said, a game changer.

But, for people pushing their FTP or higher indoors sweat is a big issue and barrier to using VR headsets.

No its not, and I really do not care about what you like to play and that you only play in VR for 30 mins.
Also not everybody using Zwift are doing FTP work outs and I’m sure Zwift’s goal is not to just be for hardcore users. They want to get as many users as possible. (works with every bike trainer out there and even works with runners!)

I do not play flat games very much any more, maybe once a month if something good comes out.
They are just to BORING and have next to 0 immersiveness for me now.
When I’m in VR using zwift (in virtual desktop) I can make the a 200 ft screen and can block out what’s happening in the real world and focus on my workout. It would be even better will full VR support.

yeah that’s why valve is coming out with a new HMD next month (Valve Index® - Upgrade your experience - Valve Corporation)
Also do not think other companies are not thinking about VR and fitness
https://www.virzoom.com/

1 Like