Virtual Reality

[halobob]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2016/03/16/the-everest-vr-experience-on-htc-vive-is-so-terrifying-i-couldnt-finish-it/#448487321d92

 

 

This might actually make me give VR a shot.

 

Iceland-based developer Sólfar Studios is developing Everest VR as a sequence of connected experiences that illustrate the major milestones of summiting Everest. Milestones that range from serene to utterly terrifying.

The VR porn didn't sell you?

[red321]

The VR porn didn't sell you?

 

 

Even though I'm married...I'm more likely to have sex than climb Everest

[Chuck]

So a friend sent me a 360 short (4 min) DEMO porn flick to check out on my VR Gear.

 

Speechless. So life like. You turn your head to look around the room and the girl says "Hey, I'm here for you, pay attention to me" I have a surprise for you". It gets GNAR after that. 

[mrwicked]

i was hoping this thread was gonna be about jamiroquai.

[gotbeer]

Went cheap and went with google cardboard.  So far Vanguard V has been a fun little game.  Might try out the google cardboard camera at the golf course tomorrow. 

[Thomas]

Putting together a new desktop system after my last one literally blew (a capacitor). Sparks and everything when it was powered. I was about to pull the trigger but with the Nvidia announcement of the 10xx series I'm back to twiddling my thumbs for a bit.

[nate]

@Thomas I just built one for a friend.  Really nice compact design.  Only thing is the case doesn't have a 5.25 bay so if you plan on having a dvd/bd drive it won't work.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/yNWsHx

He already had the 970 and the soundcard (it is a beast, he does a lot of audio editing and production)

Edited May 16, 2016 by nate

[Thomas]

It has been so long since I've built a system (i7s don't become obsolete very quickly!) I didn't even know about pcpartpicker until a few weeks ago. Amazing resource. I'm debating storage. Part of me wants to built a RAID 10 array using 4 spinning disks with a 0.5 TB or so SSD OS disk which would eventually all become a zfs setup but still debating that. I'll need more RAM. At least 32GB, flirting with 64GB because of running VMs and because I spent more on a 8MB stick as a kid than it would cost. Considering running Windows as a VM with PCI passthrough to the gaming video card. I have a hunch though that the technology isn't quite there yet. Probably will just dual boot it for the time being. Because of cooling considerations, as in my house doesn't have any, I'll probably skip overclocking but considering a water cooler because of...reasons.

[nate]

Watercooling is really nice, especially like the one I posted and the price is reasonable.  I don't OC anymore and that i7 is the non overclockable one.  You have to spend another $50 for an unlocked one.

Go SSD, trust me.  The speed is light years faster than spinning disks, even in raid and the silence is golden.  Big spinning disk for multimedia storage.

16GB of ram is a lot, how many and what kind of VMs are you running?  Good thing is ram is cheap right now.  I occasionally have one or two vm's running some sort of *nix but almost everything I have is on AWS/ec2 now or a RPi 2/3.

Don't think you could game on a VM yet.  Virtualization is really nice on i7s but still not quite there.  I do know a dude that plays World of Warcraft on wine which is crazy.

Edited May 16, 2016 by nate

[Thomas]

You can and people are, I'm just hedging my bets a bit. I mean the dream would be to run a base barebones FreeBSD host OS running ZFS and then VM everything. Tough part seems to be that Nvidia is being dicks about the whole process. But conversely good guy AMD runs like ass on Linux so your screwed either way. Perhaps Vulcan really will be the savior and turn SteamOS into a serious contender? And perhaps the Angels will find a solution for all their issues using unicorns and pixie dust.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3lno0t/gpu_passthrough_revisited_an_updated_guide_on_how/ 

For storage I'm torn. Another option would be to go smaller on the desktop and setup a separate FreeNAS or similar box to store everything. I'm trying to use this as a learning opportunity. 

For VMs I have 16GB on my Xeon workstation at work and wish I'd had more for sure, though the 128GB on each of our VM nodes for my home lab setups would probably be a bit excessive. Probably.

[nate]

I have a FreeNAS box setup from one of those HP MicroServers.  I run three 3tb drives in it.  I just have a 1tb spinning drive in my own box and the 500 SSD.  Thing is a 500gb SSD only costs $150 so there is no reason not to for your OS/Application disk... except for you wanting to run everything on a VM.

My primary OS is W10 on my desktop, it's a must for gaming IMO and the VMs I have are mostly for fucking around with.  I put the disk images on the spinning drive.  The NAS is purely used for audio/video/software storage with some documents and family images stored for home sharing.

My laptops are all OSX which doesn't really pose any problems.

Are you going to be hosting the VMs or just opening them?  All that ram only matters if you are the one serving the VMs.

Edited May 16, 2016 by nate

[Thomas]

This is what I ended up going with for my hopefully soon VR machine. I wasn't going to go for the i7 over the i5 (6600k vs 6500k) but yesterday they were only $50 apart so I figured why not? The Blu-ray optical drive is the one hold over from my previous desktop.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive 
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB SC Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card 
Case: NZXT Phantom 530 (White) ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply 
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-29 17:32 EDT-0400

[nate]

Almost my identical system except for a 970 and I don't like Gigabyte mobos, I prefer Asus.  Also prefer Corsair over EVGA PSU.

Unless you plan on overclocking your CPU, save 50 bucks and get the i7 6700.

Next system I build will be miniATX with the Corsair 350d Window.  Something like this.

Component		Selection	Base	Promo	Shipping	Tax	Price	Where
CPU		Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor					$299.99	(Purchased)
CPU Cooler		Corsair H100i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler					$98.00	(Purchased)
Motherboard		Asus MAXIMUS VIII GENE Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	$206.99				$206.99	SuperBiiz		Buy
Memory		G.Skill Ripjaws Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory					$107.99	(Purchased)
		Add Additional Memory
Storage		Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive					$154.85	(Purchased)
		Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive					$48.40	(Purchased)
		Add Additional Storage
Video Card		EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB SC Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card					$439.99	(Purchased)
		Add Another Video Card For 2-Way SLI
Case		Corsair 350D Window MicroATX Mid Tower Case	$99.99				$99.99	Amazon		Buy
Power Supply		Corsair 760W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$149.99		FREE		$149.99	Newegg		Buy
Optical Drive		LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer					$0.00	(Purchased)

[nate]

Swapping out my full ATX setup with a mATX setup.  Got tired of having such a huge tower.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/GszK3F

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor	$338.01 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	Corsair H115i 104.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$136.07 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus MAXIMUS VIII GENE Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	$228.62 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$96.62 @ Amazon
Storage	Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	Purchased For $150.00
Storage	Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	Purchased For $105.00
Video Card	EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card	Purchased For $350.00
Case	Corsair 350D Window MicroATX Mid Tower Case	$118.37 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair 750W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$148.47 @ Amazon
Sound Card	Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card	Purchased For $200.00
Wireless Network Adapter	TP-Link Archer T9E PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter	Purchased For $75.00
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1946.16
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-08 16:28 EDT-0400

[nate]

Just sitting here waiting for a case to go in since USPS lost mine.

[nate]

It came.

Cable management didn't turn out like I wished...

size difference!

More size difference and holy crap my cable management.  I think since the case is so much smaller I am going to move it under the desk which should help hide cables and allow me to bundle them.

Turning that massive old computer into a file server to replace my 6+ year old NAS.

[nate]

Got the cable management in a better way.

[Tank]

i don't like your flooring. 

[nate]

10 hours ago, Tank said:

i don't like your flooring. 

Me either.  The rest of the house has oak flooring that is flush.  This room has the grooves and it is a bitch to clean and seal every year.

[Tank]

have you considered a nice linoleum?

[nate]

18 minutes ago, Tank said:

have you considered a nice linoleum?

that would class up the place too much

[Tank]

4 hours ago, nate said:

that would class up the place too much

good point. no reason to be that far ahead of everyone else in your neighborhood.

[notherhalo]

Ill hold out for the porn-only version

[gotbeer]

In a first, a VR short will become a Hollywood movie

 

I can see this being successful.  It's a really cute VR short.  Worth seeing if you haven't already.

 

Edited September 27, 2016 by gotbeer

[Guest]

My PS VR will be here tomorrow. I'm way too excited