So, what do you need...
- Obviously, you need a PC able to handle VR. I own 2 years old Dell laptop, with i7 CPU and GeForce GTX960M. Those specs are actually already below recommended specs for both Rift and Vive, but Condor in VR runs fine.
- Another must is a mobile phone with Android OS and a screen with decent resolution (full HD or more, but of course you can try it with lesser resolution, just don't expect miracles). Alternatively, you can use any of the following hardware if you already have it running -- Vive Focus, Oculus Go, Samsung Gear VR or Google Daydream.
- For everything to work, you need Riftcat. Riftcat is an application that basically acts as a virtual VR device, that tricks SteamVR into using it as a regular OpenVR headset. This obviously is not enough, since you need to see the image somewhere. Here comes VRidge on your phone. VRidge is a mobile application that connects to the Riftcat on your PC via Wifi or USB and acts as 3DOF motion tracker and shows the rendered VR view on your mobile phone screen (it basically just plays a video stream sent by the PC app). Riftcat is payware but you can try it for 10 minut for free. If you decide that you like it, you can unlock it with a single one time payment. With current Christmas sale, the price of the Riftcat is just 11.99 Euro. You can get it there: https://riftcat.com/vridge
- You also need: Steam with SteamVR installed, Oculus apps and Revive.
- Visit Riftcat Help Center and make your way through their VRidge Basic Tutorial and then through Revive Tutorial - Playing Oculus Rift games with VRidge. After that, you should have everything set up for Condor.
- Start Riftcat on your PC and VRidge on your mobile phone. Connect them and start VR ("play" button). Your 5 minutes (if not logged in) or 10 minutes (if logged in) of trial time starts at that moment. Riftcat will start SteamVR and after a moment SteamVR "cottage lobby" will show in your headset. In system tray find the Revive icon, right click it and select Inject... Navigate to the Condor.exe and select it. Condor will start in VR mode.
- In Condor settings, enable Oculus Rift. Keep Mirror rendering disabled, as it would just consume more GPU power, lowering your FPS (on my computer I get 15-20 FPS less with mirrioring on, as the GPU must render one more view). You MUST set MSAA in Condor settings to 0, otherwise you will just see black screen in VR.
- Start flight and enjoy the view... After the trial time runs out, VRidge will disconnect from the PC. If your Riftcat is unlocked, then you have unlimited time.
- If the image in the VR looks too "pixelated", try increasing the resolution in the Riftcat. For example, my phone has 1920x1080 screen resolution and with the same Riftcat setting the image looked too blocky. Increasing the resolution to 2560x1440 improved readability of all texts and instruments. Don't worry that your phone doesn't have such resolution, the image is scaled back to the right resolution (this is basically the same process as supersampling).
- Depending on how good the sensors in your phone are, your image will most likely start to drift to left or right after some time (sonner or later, more or less, depending on the phone). You can try calibrating the sensors before runing VR. Google calibration tips for your particular phone. Calibrating should slow down the drifting, but it won't disappear entirely. You can also do the following:
- If you have TrackIR/Freetrack, you can use it for position tracking of your headset (I don't have it so I couldn't try it). See Riftcat Help Center for that.
- You can use Riftcat shortcut for centering the view. This brings the center back from where it drifted to. Alternatively (and that's what I use for the moment) you can map the view reset input in Condor to one of your joystick buttons. All you need to remove the drifting then is just to look in front of you and press the key.
So, merry Christmas and enjoy the Condor in VR