Weekend Warioring

"Just do it" Nike said. "Just do it" Shia LaBeouf said. Well, I did it. So they said that make your weekends productive by learning a few things. Two weeks ago, I ended up playing DotA2 and Planetside 2. Now, I got myself to budge and do stuff.

VR

Yep, that's right. I got a VR headset for my phone and tried viewing 3D videos, 3D games, and 360 content. Then I learned a few things:

3D video shot in actual 3D cameras look better than videos converted to 3D. That's because the conversion's depth looks off at times. They never really fool your brain into thinking it's actually in front of you. It was bad that the movie I watched was Avatar. I was hoping to feel like in the movie setting. Nope, not today.

360 content however, is a different story. It's NOT 3D. It's a video shot by multiple 2D cameras configured in a sphere formation, and stiched together. It's kinda like Street View in Google Maps. It's cool, but people need to know how to shoot 360 content. I watched a "horror movie". The actors still use off-camera practices. In 360 video, there is no off-camera. And I saw the ghost just side-step out of view! It was hilarious.

Lastly, there's 3D games. What I have is a VR viewer headset for a smartphone, not an Occulus. The experience is "good enough" but not really great. A smartphone is just too small and too weak for real 3D content. It's good enough as a viewer for 3D and 360 content, but not for real-time 3D like games.

And with weak hardware comes VR sickness. It's real. If you want to know how it feels, just imagine walking in the park, staring down a christmas tree box for hours while drinking tequila the entire time. The effects after such is the same. It's due to a very tight viewing angle and lag. The very close and tight viewing angle will cause eye strain. The lag will cause nausea due to the disagreement between your senses. Making it worse is forgetting to eat.

DS3 controller

To accompany the VR headset, I got a DS3 controller. That way, I won't have my mouse and keyboard tag along or open and close the headset all the time. Now I learned a few things about the controller, and it's really annoying.

First off, I realized right after getting the controller that DS3 is a Sony product. I just remembered how I hate Sony for extremely proprietary products that force you to buy the geniune ones. I have an aunt who is a sucker for Sony products. Whenever they get passed down to me, I always end up at a corner. When they break, you end up going to a service center or buy genuine replacements - and they're not cheap.

With that problem came the next one - you can't simply connect a DS3 controller to a PC, or anything else for that matter. For my phone, I had it rooted so that the sixaxis app will work, which luckily it did. For the PC however, I wasn't so lucky. I have tried different tools, and different approaches. Nada. The controller works when hooked via USB, but it doesn't connect via Bluetooth. The controller just fails to pair.

So what I ended up doing this morning was just hook up the controller via USB and play a game to know how it feels like to use a controller. It was... odd. For several years, I have always played with a keyboard and mouse. The last time I used a controller was college, and that was FIFA 13. The original plan for PC gaming with the controller was to play Planetside 2 and Skyrim with it. I guess I'll be stuck with Skyrim.