More Headtracking

Some of you have noticed that various racing games in the published games list did not support headtracking. That has changed! vorpX now has headtracking for most Codemasters racing games and various other titles that don’t support looking around with the mouse. How good this works depends on how a particular racing game handles head rotation internally, so it’s not always as perfect as in shooters or other games that support mouselook. But in all games I tried so far it’s definitely better than no headtracking at all.

Just in case anyone wonders :) : This does only apply to the few games that did not have headtracking until now. All other games work as perfectly as they ever did.

Depth Buffer 3D vs. Geometry 3D

vorpX supports two different modes to create a 3d effect. The main mode is a fast Z-buffer based reconstruction, the second mode is geometry based 3d that renders two distinct views (not available for all games so far). In all games that support both modes you can easily switch between them on-the-fly, making it easy to compare them.

Both methods have their pros & cons, what you like better will definitely be a matter of taste, and might even differ from game to game.

Z-Buffer 3D:

+ Very fast (almost twice as fast), 60Hz almost guaranteed (very important on the Rift)

– Usually worse depth perception

– Some artifacts due the 3d creation (mostly less annoying then the geometry 3d artifacts)

Geometry 3D:

+ Usually better depth perception

– Slow (roughly half the speed of the Z-Buffer mode)

– Often annoying artifacts (misplaced shaders/reflections, effects/ui at wrong depth etc.)

No easy choice. Personally I tend towards the Z-buffer mode in most cases though. High speed really is extremely important on the Rift, and (somewhat surprisingly) in many modern games the Z-buffer method does even look better than the geometry 3d.