Razer Hydra at 50% off. Worth it?

Post by **German** » Wed Jan 16, 2013 5:11 pm

EdZ wrote:Finally back in stock in the UK, and the code has expired!

It expired before Monday or I would have ordered one too.

Post by **mm0zct** » Wed Jan 16, 2013 6:16 pm

Personally I quite like playing games with it in mouse emulation mode (with ratcheting, which takes a little while to get used to) for slower paced shooters like TF2. Sure I'm not as good as with the mouse, but I think it's more fun. I really got it (a few months ago) for my impending Rift delivery though. It seems like the best way to separate aiming from looking in a VR setting.

To give the sort of accuracy people are used to with keyboard+mouse FPS games I think a little auto-aim assist might be beneficial. I find it very hard to aim lightning spells accurately in Skyrim with the Hydra because of the controller twitch when puling the trigger for example. For accurate aiming, eg iron sights, scope, or magic casting, perhaps the aim should be dictated by the head tracking, which won't be affected in the same way by the trigger action.

Post by **geekmaster** » Wed Jan 16, 2013 6:37 pm

As mentioned earlier, newegg.com has a big discount on the hydra/portal bundle (about the same price I paid with the promo code).

EDIT: I see that newegg is now out of stock. They had them when I posted previously.

Post by **Endothermic** » Wed Jan 16, 2013 6:53 pm

mm0zct wrote:I think a little auto-aim assist might be beneficial.

I cast thee back to the fowl depths of hell, heathen!

mm0zct wrote:perhaps the aim should be dictated by the head tracking

I repeat my action again, but this time with twice the conviction demon spawn!

Post by **mm0zct** » Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:07 pm

Have you tried playing an FPS with the Hydra? If you have a completely fair environment, where everyone is using a Hydra, then yes don't give assists, but when you have to compete against mouse players, it's a serious disadvantage. Remember not everyone that plays games has time to put in the hours to master the fine muscle control to squeeze the Hydra trigger without tliting the controller slightly.

Other options I would like as alternatives is an easy to set "dampener" button option for the Hydra, much like a DPI switch on a gaming mouse, to make fine aiming easier.

In a magic casting setting I see no reason why magic couldn't be aimed by sight, it's cast with intent after all, not physically thrown (usually). Think of it like the eye tracked missile lock in jet fighters. Perhaps an option even for the player, if they prefer to aim by hand like actually throwing fireballs, but be aware the Hydra can have quite a lot of shake, which could cause endless frustration.

Post by **Endothermic** » Wed Jan 16, 2013 11:52 pm

mm0zct wrote:Have you tried playing an FPS with the Hydra?

Yes, that's why when I play L4D2 versus mode I don' t use it

mm0zct wrote: but when you have to compete against mouse players, it's a serious disadvantage.

It Is but that's the problem with using devices like this or an HMD. If you give aim assist if not everyone is using them then you have the mouse players at a disadvantage instead. It's why they don't let console players play against PC players since without aim assist it wouldn't be fair on the console goers but if they did have aim assist then it wouldn't be fair on the PC players.

If you're using a motion tracker or a VR HMD or other device then you are obviously doing it for the fun and experience it gives. If you want to use it with multiplayer then you have to play something that is co-op, put up with being at a disadvantage or play with friend's that will use it as we'll or take into account your using it and not go as hardcore. Either way you're using these devices for fun so there is no reason to try and balance them against kb/mouse/monitor in competitive play..

mm0zct wrote:if they prefer to aim by hand like actually throwing fireballs, but be aware the Hydra can have quite a lot of shake, which could cause endless frustration.

It won't be too long before the problem is solved, I don't see why they can't make some kind of filter (hardware or software) to get rid of the jitter and not add too much latency as well. It has to get fixed somehow since you can't have a proper VR experience if your motion tracker has that much jitter and a lot of people don't seem to like any kind of hand tracking.

Like you said before that too, I think head tracking for aiming with certain spells in an RPG would be fine as well considering some of them are just meant to go where you are looking. But I fear too many developers will just take the easy road of either just having everything head targeted or independently aimed and not bother with a combination which would be a shame.

Plenty of games have a spell, missile or turret/smart weapon which is mean to follow where you are looking till it hits as well as regular weapons/spells, so having both head track aiming for those weapons/spells and independent aiming for point and shoot weapons and regular spells would be great.

Post by **mm0zct** » Thu Jan 17, 2013 7:01 am

I would just like to clarify that I'm not actually an advocate of aiming assists and don't play with them, just that for any casual gamers that are used to gamepad gaming where there is aiming assists, they will get very frustrated without them on the hydra. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to not have them in multiplayer but just have them in single player for example (with the option to disable them of course), but AI difficulty may need tweaking to compensate for the no-longer super-human aiming ability of the player.

Perhaps another solution wouldn't be aiming assist, but twitch detection and correction, which records a circular buffer of positions up to 10ms, and when you pull the trigger it scans through this buffer for the position before there was a sudden change in movement, and actually fires it at that trajectory?

I might experiment with this when I get some free time.

Post by **MSat** » Thu Jan 17, 2013 12:19 pm

Shipped! Estimated delivery day: Saturday

Post by **MrGreen** » Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:13 pm

MSat wrote:Shipped! Estimated delivery day: Saturday

Tomorrow here!

Post by **MSat** » Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:58 pm

MrGreen wrote:
MSat wrote:Shipped! Estimated delivery day: Saturday
Tomorrow here!

*insert fist shaking emoticon*

Post by **MrGreen** » Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:24 pm

Bah!

Can't get it to work properly in any game. Tried the Razer drivers. Tried Motion Creator 2. No dice. I can get it to emulate the mouse in windows when I press start and the left/right calibration seems to work but nothing more.

Maybe it's a Windows 8 issue...

Post by **Endothermic** » Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:11 am

MrGreen wrote: Maybe it's a Windows 8 issue...

Well see there's ya problem...

It fixes every other problem so just reformat and everything will be good

Seriosuly though have no idea if W8 has an issue with it, suspect you've tried reinstalling? Hydra that is not windows

, though never know maybe a fresh install would fix it

but I wouldn't both with that.... yet... lol.

You could always try just dropping it and the base station on the floor to see if it fixes it

True story, a long time ago my PS3 stuffed up (yes I know... I dunno why I got it I only even got like 6 games for it) in that well first when you'd press the eject button the disc tray would fly out about 10x faster then usual and make this loud thud then you hear the motor whining like it's still trying to push it out further, press it to go in and woooosh just as fast. Anyway that wasn't really an issue the issue was the damn thing was in B&W and there were other graphical glithes going across the screen and there was no sound.

Tried new cables... nada, was out of warranty so tried to open it up and take a look... do you think I could get the damn thing open

so I just shoved it away. Anyway couple years later I thought i'd try again.. never know.. might work... nah still the same problem. I was just going to throw it out anyway so I thought stuff it and I just picked it up and dropped it onto the ground.... didn't seem to break... wow... oh well, about to throw it out then thought i'd just plug it in again to see if I messed it up so it wouldn't even boot and..... worked just as the day I bought it (except the disc tray still comes out and in too fast) and has ever since

So since it's new you probably shouln't do it but dropping it on the floor could fix it

Post by **MSat** » Sat Jan 19, 2013 7:32 am

MrGreen wrote:Bah!

Can't get it to work properly in any game. Tried the Razer drivers. Tried Motion Creator 2. No dice. I can get it to emulate the mouse in windows when I press start and the left/right calibration seems to work but nothing more.

Maybe it's a Windows 8 issue...

Sucks.. A quick google search shows that it _should_ work for Windows8.. I suggest you see if someone on the Razer support forums can help you out. Or as Endothermic suggested, drop it on the ground

(j/k)

Post by **MrGreen** » Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:24 pm

Figured it out. For some reason I have to run Motion Creator 2 as Administrator even though my account has administrator rights.

I had this problem with Steam and the Logitech Gaming Software as well...

Oh well. I guess that's what you get to running a Windows 8 upgrade. To be honest, I expected worse.

Post by **Endothermic** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 1:25 am

Wow so I could of ended my post after my first sentence

It would of made more sense if they named the "Run as administrator" command to something like "Run as Super User" "Run as uber god of computers" "Use me to run this" or something without "administrator" in it so that so many people wouldn't think "errrr I am an administrator... wtf do I keep having to tell it to run as one all the times!! wtf is the point of being a damn administrator when I can't friggin run things as one without click a stupid command!!!!!! arrgghhhh!!!!!!!"

But hey... it's Microsoft.....

Post by **MSat** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:37 am

Hmm.. Expected delivery date was Saturday. Now it says "Expected delivery day: N/A"

Post by **EdZ** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 11:15 am

Endothermic wrote:It would of made more sense if they named the "Run as administrator" command to something like "Run as Super User" "Run as uber god of computers" "Use me to run this" or something without "administrator" in it so that so many people wouldn't think "errrr I am an administrator

The default accounts in Windows 7 and 8 are not administrators. There's a separation between accounts with administrative rights (which will run programs with standard privileges unless "run as Administrator" is used), and administrative accounts (where everything is run with administrative privileges by default).
This is closer to the Linux security model, rather than the case of Vista and earlier.

Post by **Endothermic** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 9:24 pm

That's my point, average person does not know that they simply see "administrator" on their account type and it makes perfect sense to them that since they have "administrator" on their account they will be able to run everything with administrator privileges without having to tell windows to do it each time and get annoyed and confused when they keep having to tell windows to do it since they think (incorrectly) they already have those privileges.

Post by **unsilentwill** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 9:35 pm

Thanks for the heads up, I probably wouldn't have gotten this until way later if it wasn't for you. And heck, using IE and forcing a certain shipping? They didn't make it easy for me to want to give them money.

But I've got no complaints about the product itself, it's super nice. The tracking, the range, feels perfect for VR. I'm a little surprised at the support for it though, as far as I can tell it's all mouse emulation. Lots of great youtube demos, but is there anything you can actually play that I don't have to code myself (besides Portal 2)? To be fair, I saw this coming, and figured some games I have are better with analog, and its the same price as an XBox controller anyway.

Post by **MSat** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:55 pm

I don't know what that IE thing was all about. I was able to place my order using Chrome (or chromium, I don't remember) on Linux.

Post by **MSat** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 12:05 pm

Finally got it! The first thing that came to mind after opening up the brown shipping box to pull out the actual Hydra packaging within was "This is the flashiest box I've probably ever had"

I like the materials that they used on the controllers and the base station, as well as the fabric cables (which are nice and long). So far so good. I'll be trying it out shortly.

Post by **pAnatiC** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 2:37 pm

This Hydra feels just like a small funny tool for 2 or 3 games.. Ya IF there is support for a game, everything is fine and cool. Hopefully there will be more games with support.

Post by **geekmaster** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 2:47 pm

My hydra and bundle both came today. Even though the "authorized store" is only a short local drive from me (in Minnesota) and they had these listed as "in stock", my packages got to visit exotic locations in Canada, Nevada, Indiana, and other states before getting to me. They took the "scenic route".

I wonder how they define "in stock". If they had shipped them locally via UPS, I would have gotten them in one day regardless of shipping cost. But because they started off as "Canada Post", apparently "in stock" does not even mean in the same freakin' country...

EDIT: Okay, I tried registering with Steam. It seems my email address is already registered, so I recovered my username. I am logged in. The Portal bundle has no disk -- just a product code. The steam client is now downloading, with an ETA of 13 HOURS (on a 20Mbps connection). That sucks! I wish this thing came with a CD instead of needing to spend a day downloading it...

Post by **mm0zct** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 4:20 pm

If you are anything like me you will find portal2 well worth the wait to download. It might help to play the first game beforehand though. I prefer a different hydra control method to the portal2 default, so you might want to experiment to figure out what you like.

Post by **spire8989** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 4:35 pm

geekmaster wrote: EDIT: Okay, I tried registering with Steam. It seems my email address is already registered, so I recovered my username. I am logged in. The Portal bundle has no disk -- just a product code. The steam client is now downloading, with an ETA of 13 HOURS (on a 20Mbps connection). That sucks! I wish this thing came with a CD instead of needing to spend a day downloading it...

Try going into your steam settings and changing the download server and your internet connection speed. You should be downloading around 1mb/s

Post by **MSat** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 4:38 pm

I'm bummed out that the Hydra doesn't even come with the drivers on CD, because my internet connection is painfully slow and unreliable. I'll spend hours to get to 90%, just to have the connection drop.

Post by **Mystify** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 4:48 pm

MSat wrote:I'm bummed out that the Hydra doesn't even come with the drivers on CD, because my internet connection is painfully slow and unreliable. I'll spend hours to get to 90%, just to have the connection drop.

Find a download manager. They can allow you to resume from the 90%.

Post by **geekmaster** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 5:41 pm

Mystify wrote:
MSat wrote:I'm bummed out that the Hydra doesn't even come with the drivers on CD, because my internet connection is painfully slow and unreliable. I'll spend hours to get to 90%, just to have the connection drop.
Find a download manager. They can allow you to resume from the 90%.

It finally completed. The 13 hour estimate was not accurate. It did take more than an hour though...

Post by **spire8989** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 6:34 pm

geekmaster wrote:It finally completed. The 13 hour estimate was not accurate. It did take more than an hour though...

When EQ2 first came out, it was 10 CD's and took me almost 2 hours to install before even getting to the online updates. Sooo... an hour isn't that bad. We need to hurry up and get 1000mbps internet though.

Post by **MSat** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 7:21 pm

If the number of times V1.0 driver has been downloaded is anything to go by, then they haven't sold very many Hydras at all. It's around 13k (not to mention some users probably downloaded the driver more than once).

Post by **drifter** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:05 pm

MSat wrote:If the number of times V1.0 driver has been downloaded is anything to go by, then they haven't sold very many Hydras at all. It's around 13k.

That 's the number of devkits sold

That's seems low, that would explain the big discount...
Let's hope that will change with the consumer Rift, and then we would quickly have a even better, wireless, Hydra 2 [/optimistic mode]

Post by **langmyersknow** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 10:33 am

Hi guys,

I bought my Razer hydra recently, and just got it yesterday. I also agree, that box is crazy good... too bad i'm not a open box video guy.

Anyways, apparently you should be downloading the Razer driver from their website, but get the MotionCreator from Sixsense forums. Apparently it is better, from what I've heard.

I've haven't actually tried it yet, will be trying it tonight.

Really excited, of developing a game, where the gun aim is independent from the head view.

April, and may can't come soon enough....

Post by **drifter** » Wed Jan 23, 2013 6:10 pm

langmyersknow wrote:Anyways, apparently you should be downloading the Razer driver from their website, but get the MotionCreator from Sixsense forums. Apparently it is better, from what I've heard.

yeah you need MotionCreator to create/import/modify .mce files and make new games "work" with your hydra (the easiest way is to download these files from Sixsense forum)

I've haven't actually tried it yet, will be trying it tonight.

First thing to do when you get the box : launch the download of Portal 2

Post by **langmyersknow** » Thu Jan 24, 2013 9:52 am

I'm a bit confused.

My hydra didn't come with any mention of Portal 2. Do I have to buy the game on steam and then download the extra content for the hydra ?

- Lang

P.S. I was just planning to use this to play Skyrim, with the "Real First Person Mod", and the oculus rift when it comes out...

Post by **geekmaster** » Thu Jan 24, 2013 10:33 am

langmyersknow wrote:I'm a bit confused.

My hydra didn't come with any mention of Portal 2. Do I have to buy the game on steam and then download the extra content for the hydra ?
...

The $99 hydra does not come with portal 2. The hydra / portal 2 bundle costs $139, and comes with a "product code" for downloading portal 2 from steam, after installing the steam client. If you already own portal 2, you can email sixense for a free "DLC pack" for your hydra.

Post by **drifter** » Thu Jan 24, 2013 8:46 pm

Sorry i forgot the Hydra was also sold without Portal 2
Btw the price right now is $100 with Portal 2 and $68 alone (sometimes there are even better discounts, i got mine for $68 with portal 2).

Post by **langmyersknow** » Fri Jan 25, 2013 9:16 am

So I finally had the chance to play with the Razer Hydra.

Let's just say that setting it up has been a bit frustrating.

I think I'll be making a youtube video to help all those others out there because it was annoying.

Anyways, basically it's like this :

I thought that Razer Hydra was good to go , and had some drivers in the box. It doesn't. It doesn't even say that you need to goto razer's site for the drivers. Since I'm pretty smart, I decided to go to Razer Hydra's site to get the drivers. Turns out these drivers are outdated, and the company that actually designed the hydra (sixense), has a updated beta version software called MotionCreator .

Well, I didn't know that, so I installed the razer drivers first, and that didn't help . (I just want to play left 4 dead 2 with the controls ). So I had to uninstall the razer drivers and install the motion creator drivers.

The thing is, the MotionCreator Software Driver works well, (if you know how to use it ).

That's why it took me a couple of hours to figure it out. First off, the bindings for Left 4 dead 2 in the MotionCreator only have mouselook (which means that the right stick emulates a mouse, and that if you wanted to reset your arm , you had to hold a button and ratchet it back )

Things is I learned all this because I had to goto the youtube channel of Sixense, and not razer. Razer didn't have this information.

Anyways, I wanted to play Left 4 Dead 2, with the hybrid configuration, but had no idea how to do it. And the interface of the MotionCreator can use some work. I'll make a video tonight, so I can help those who buy it so you won't get frustrated like me.

Anyways, when I finally got it to work, it was a pretty fun experience... It takes some time to get used to, and find the right settings for you .

Post by **brantlew** » Fri Jan 25, 2013 9:33 am

FYI: There is also support for the Razer Hydra in FreePIE which means that you can map all buttons to keys and you can do mouse emulation for basic head tracking. Also for games that support 6DOF via TrackIR you can pipe the Hydra motion into those game. Gesture support can be added via a bit more advanced scripting.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 051#p91610

Post by **German** » Fri Jan 25, 2013 11:53 am

How long is the Hydra's cable from the base to the controllers? Are there two separate cables or one that branches to each controller? I can't find this information anywhere.

Post by **brantlew** » Fri Jan 25, 2013 11:57 am

It seems to be a little less than a meter long for each cable to the base station.