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Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

As a Rift owner, the most immersive demos I've tried by far have been ones where you are sitting in the cockpit of a ship or car. It's much easier for my brain to "believe" those demos, probably because it's not getting psyched out by the lack of 3 dimensional spacial tracking or the 'floating head' feeling you get when playing FPS's.

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The moments I saw what the rift was capable of I was thinking of simulations Renaissance.

Mechwarriors, Descents, Freelancers - anything where your in game "avatar" isn't tied to the camera can benefit immensely from the technology.

Wow. Can we please have a mechwarrior / descent renaissance?

Descent is undergoing a renaissance.

You can buy the original games from gog.com and then download the updated clients for D1/D2 from http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/ or find the patches for D3 via the links at http://descentbb.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4953 . There's a game tracker at http://www.descent-servers.net/ and built-in trackers in D1 and D2.

Some groups that are still active include http://descentrangers.com/Home/Index (primarily D2 and D1 team play), http://rbb.ripteam.com/ (D3 teams), and http://descentchampions.org/ (a 1v1 ladder for mostly D1).

You can find other Descent pilots on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/descentpilots/ , https://www.facebook.com/groups/kalikahn/ , and https://www.facebook.com/groups/583400181716926/ .

Disclosure: I am one of the founders/administrators of the Descent Champions Ladder.

Retrovirus was okay-ish, and despite 6DOF very nice to use with a mouse. I hope they make a sequel and include Rift support.

The Descent1/2 source is freely available, so some brave soul will probably add Rift support.

The first experience I ever had with a stereoscopic head tracking display was with the original D1 in '96 or so, so some sort of stereoscopic support must already be in the code.

Coincidentally the second game I tried with it that day was Mechwarrior 2.

Seconded. All demos make me want to barf after 10 minutes (Minecraft is the worst, because I want to love it but it makes me feel so nauseous), except for the ones where your avatar is static. `Blue Marble` and `Titans of Space` are great for that (ToS especially so as you can actually "see" your body when you look down- of course it doesn't move, but it adds to the immersion. Adding a Kinect in the mix to make your arms actually move would be amazing)

The best experience I've had so far was with the Proton Pulse Rift demo, probably because the head tracking is the only means of movement or interaction. If you're finding cockpit-based games easier to process than FPSes, I'd recommend PPR.

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