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Lone Echo II has arrived in the Rift Store - trailers, reviews and impressions

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Lone Echo 2 has arrived - get it here:

 

www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1711938725528735/?locale=en_US

 

Trailer: 

 

 

- but I'm not going to watch it myself - often trailers spoil too much 😇

 

Some shots:

 

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Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

157 REPLIES 157

Anonymous
Not applicable

@pyroth309 wrote:

 


@Anonymous wrote:

Think I will stay away from this one - Lone Echo would never run on my rig constant crashing to desktop and no support.

Only game out of my many that has ever done that to me.


Did you ever try with the 3090 setup? I never had issues with Lone Echo on any of my 4 systems.


Yes sure did - same issue always crashing to desktop at start of play with a bug splat error message.

Believe me I troubleshooted this extensively and could never get it to run.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Since Reddit has many more readers than in here I focused my efforts there last night trying to get more attention to the game. Had very limited time last night, and great to be back here 🙂

 

My rating is like 14/10 🤓 - only Alyx has better graphics and (much) better performance. But I have only played the game for a few hours, need to test it more.

 

Lone Echo 2 is a very demanding game (I get similar performances with Rift CV1 and Index, so Revive is working perfectly). If I use the High setting, then Index res 200% is about the max I can do for 90 fps - and that's using the Asus Strix OC RTX 3090 and an i9 10900K cpu (10 cores, 20 threads, max 5.3 GHz) - and 32GB 3200 MHz. For CV1 the max is ss 2.0. Both Index res 200% and CV1 ss 2.0 correspond to 17 mill pixels per frame (for both eyes).

For Index users with a RTX 3080, similar or better gpu, I'd recommend using the High setting and res 200% - and note that all MSAA is automatically deactivated using High, and don't try to activate it 😉 When trying to add MSAA I don't get 90 fps anymore, and it does not look that much better. TAA with max sharpening and res 200% look quite good - and remove most jaggies. You really do not an extremely fast gpu for this game - at least for the High settings. Similar results for the CV1 - do not activate MSAA or 90 fps is no more - but CV1 needs MSAA less than lcd. 

Remember to remove the auto-scaling - also deactivate the setting that reduces objects in the periphery.

I did try Index res 300%, but can't do that using the High setting in 90 fps, and motion smoothing does not look good to me - in this game. But Index res 200% looks great enough. For now - might take some time really getting to know this game. Going below Index res 200% the TAA blur adds up - I would not recommend going below res 200% (17 mill pixels for both eyes) with lcd. 

 

Knuckles work like Touch - Index sound is even better than the Rift CV1, and that says a lot, because CV1 has awesome sound. I tested the game using both Index and Rift CV1 - Rift CV1 ss 2.0 looks awesome too (I can't do ss 2.5 in 90 fps, but ss 2.0 looks great - High setting with no MSAA). I still believe this game was made for oled - everything just looks slightly more balanced with CV1, sure lcd is great, but some low-res textures pop more with lcd than when using CV1. CV1 has better controls - easier to press buttons - but Knuckles work great. 

 

Had one crash with the game during 2 hours - but I did change settings a lot - and the crash happened with the CV1 😉

 

I took 88 screenshots and selected the best below - no spoilers - High setting - res 200% and res 300% (latter with reprojections):

 

Click to enlarge (very important or you can't see many details)

 

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Probably the most detailed face ever in VR - click to enlarge or you can't see all the details!

 

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The right side of Liv (pun intended)

 

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Volumetric lights and shadows

 

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Liv when we meet again after all those years 🙂

 

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Textures quality - but not all is ultramersion quality - Rift CV1 does provide the better cover-up of some lower res textures

 

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Liv is thinking - or maybe remembering something - she has many facial expressions

 

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Soft shadows (see the floor). This is a change from Lone Echo 1 which used sharp shadows

 

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She is on to me 🙂

 

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Hands look the same as in Lone Echo - which is still beyond awesome

 

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More volumetric lightning (High setting)

 

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Also a nice place to show some illumination

 

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And if some wonder what hmd I used to take the shots, 2 sensors reveal it, lol 😉

 

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Just a fun bonus shot - there's some kinda fish-bowl distortion when I get this close - but that's the price when trying to capture her very fine skin details        

 

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Some scenic views will be present 🙂

 

Btw, the above images are reduced in size to about 25% of the originals. This is 1:1 image quality using res 200% - you can see the tiny arteries in her eyes:

 

20211012212701_1.JPG

  

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

nalex66
MVP
MVP

I managed to play about 90 minutes last night, and quite enjoyed it. the game generally runs well on my system (tethered Link at 90 Hz and max resolution, 5408x2736), although I did notice some brief stuttering in one part, and I did have one crash while adjusting some graphics settings. I also had a moment when the high-res texture failed to load on a background object, and one time I noticed that Liv's facial animation froze--her lips weren't moving while she was speaking to me.

 

I played up until the part where you're introduced to the Ticks. One thing that had been bothering me for weeks--when I finished my second run of Lone Echo a couple weeks ago, I remembered a sequence with Liv and Jack powering doors and trams to pass through an area with an enemy attracted to electricity, but I hadn't seen that scene in my just-finished run. I was wracking my brains trying to remember what game it was, because it really felt like it had been in the Echo universe. Anyway, it finally clicked that RAD had released a Lone Echo 2 demo a couple of years ago, feature the new Tick enemy.

 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Some may just play the game using the default Low settings and not have a clue what they're missing. And to play this game on High you do need an extremely fast rig - I noticed several dudes crying in the Rift Store:

 

"Graphics, while still good, are not noticeably improved over lone echo 1, yet runs significantly worse. There is also texture and mesh pop-in that wasn't present in the original. Game claims gpu isn't supported on anything above low. RX 6800 16gb."

 

"One hour into the game and i'm rather annoyed about it. First of all the graphics can't be set to higher than low with a Radeon RX5700XT/AMD Ryzen9. No matter what i configure, the settings always stay at low quality."

 

"BUT the performance in terms of the graphics is very disappointing. I have a relatively good gaming PC with an RTX 2080 Super. I play the game with my Oculus Quest 2 via Link (cable), and the performance of the graphics is only bearable in the lowest graphics setting and reduction to 80hz."

 

"The performance of this game is a total mess. The recommended specs are:

 

Intel i7-6000 equivalent or greater

NVIDIA GTX 1080 equivalent or greater

16.00 GB

 

my specs are:

 

Ryzen 9 3900x

RTX 2080ti

32gb DDR4

 

So it's more than enough to get this baby running and still this game stutters and give reprojection like hell. It doesn't matter if I play with my Quest 2 + Link, or with my Valve Index + Revive. Same results, same poor performance."

 

"The GPU is not supported according to the display in the menu as soon as I set just one setting higher than LOW ... that can only be a joke (RTX2080Ti; i7 11700K;Z590; 32Gb 4000 Ram, all drivers and Win10 are up to date)."

 

"The game is fantastic but i have a RTX 2080 and the menu recommend Low graphics settings??? If i set any setting higher than Low it shows me the GPU is not supported. I tried to forced it and the game crashed after 15 minutes (i don't know if this was the cause). Played on Oculus Quest 2 with Air Link."

 

I was seriously thinking that the RTX 3080 Ti or 3090 are the bare minimum gpus to play this game using res 200% with High settings (which by default disables all MSAA). 

So is Lone Echo 2 much more demanding than Lone Echo? That's a slightly difficult question to answer - as devs changed the shadows (soft/blurry vs. the old sharp shadows) and probably changed the volumetric lighting too and more - poly count may be more or less similar explaining the unchanged cpu requirement. 

Let's take the CV1 - maxing out Lone Echo 1, which includes ss 2.0, I had to lower MSAA to 2x to keep the 90 fps. 4xMSAA would get me 45 fps. So you need something faster than a RTX 3090 to max out all Lone Echo 1 in-game settings and get solid 90 fps - and that's with the old CV1!

Now with Lone Echo 2 and Rift CV1 I get solid 90 fps when maxing out all in-game settings and use ss 2.0 - but I have to deactivate all MSAA. 

In short, using Lone Echo 1 and CV1 I could max out all settings and use 2xMSAA. With Lone Echo 2 I can max out all settings, but can't use 2xMSAA. Thus the only difference is (de)activating 2xMSAA or not. That's really not much of a difference - and using the CV1, 2xMSAA is hard to see and does not really do much. 

Index is different, as I can no longer do 90 fps res 300% - but I can do 90 fps res 200% with no MSAA (so same as CV1). It's not bad. Still res 200% is kinda the lowest res for reducing the blur of temporal antialiasing to acceptable levels - res 300% looks *much* better - and I would not really enjoy having to use lower settings than res 200%. That's why I thought to myself several times when playing the game that it feels like all the devs used RTX 3090s, lol - because if you want solid 90 fps using High and acceptable image quality, you really need at least a RTX 3080 or faster. But that was also much the case for Lone Echo 1 😎

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Also had one crash, but during two hours and also just after fiddling with settings. No big deal so far. 

 

I'm slightly worried about the ratings - right now it's 4.0/5 based on 83 ratings. So 80% - which is rather low for this game. It seems low ratings are given by persons having many crashes and low performance. But again, many also had similar problems with Lone Echo. Interesting if the average rating will go up...

 

I did my best to promote the game here - but it's a really tough crowd...:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/q6whqa/just_a_few_highres_shot_of_olivia_she_looks/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/q6w1po/liv_is_back_this_time_with_the_index_res_200_300...

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/q6orpn/are_you_ready_lone_echo_2_should_be_here_sho...

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/q6wtbw/a_few_highres_shots_from_lone_echo_2_res_200...

 

Maybe I need even better shots 🤔 😄

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Whoa, VRFocus just rated Lone Echo 2 its second 100% rating! 😮 

 

"Ready At Dawn may have originally planned to release Lone Echo II in 2020 before having to push it back several times and that’s completely understandable considering the quality of videogame that’s been produced. There’s a lot to love and get engrossed in as it’s so immersive, the real criticism comes from the fact that Lone Echo II plays everything a little too safe. The experience doesn’t break any new ground and it really could’ve done with some greater challenges thrown in. On the other hand, it was engrossing until the very end, easily the standout AAA VR experience of 2021."

 

Read the review here:

https://www.vrfocus.com/2021/10/review-lone-echo-ii/

 

I'm really disappointed in RoadToVR and UploadVR delivering quite lackluster reviews. If so-called VR enthusiast can't tell gems from mediocre titles, something is truly wrong. And Lone Echo 2 is a gem that shines as bright a gems do - only Alyx does it better when it comes to what I've seen so far in Lone Echo 2. Also Lone Echo 2 should play it somewhat safe - like it's prequel, Lone Echo 2 should be a great game for many different players and thus be similar to Lone Echo 1. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

pyroth309
Visionary

I've been playing for a couple of hours and after a quick eval with Q2/Index/G2 I actually found Index to be the best combination for me between Visuals and Sound. G2 is too taxing and I dont like the Q2 audio or FoV... However, Index controls arent' lined up just right. The finger tip is a little inside the controller so you have to overreach and I can't seem to turn on my helmet light. I went down to 80hz and forced off motion smoothing and ran at 280% on high preset and it looks very nice. But, Due to the controls I'm probably going to finish it on Quest 2.

 

As for the game itself, it's fantastic and exactly what I would want in a Lone Echo 2 sequel.

I love doing pool bombs 😂

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/q7g9z1/vrfocus_rated_lone_echo_2_its_second_100_rat...

 

- and I'm immune to downvotes - to promote a game like this, I'll do what it takes! 😎

 

This is a great Metascore for now - few VR games come over 80%. 

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Source: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/lone-echo-ii

 

Again, really sad to see dedicated VR sites like RoadToVR and especially UploadVR delivering the worst reviews - reviewers on these sites should be the first to separate gems from mediocre VR titles, but unfortunately not. I guess there's truth to the saying: "with friends like that, who needs enemies?".

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Helmet light might be on the left cheek bone using Index (under your left eye, just below the hmd - at least was like that in Lone Echo 1). I was annoyed not being able to deactivate the helmet completely in Lone Echo 2 - but also could not do that using the CV1. 

CV1 has perfect controls, but so far have been able to do everything with Knuckles. 

This game really is the epitome of CV1 gaming - never seen any game looking this good using the CV1. Can't even see the spud, devs hit the perfect balance - and I don't believe in such coincidences, lol. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

pyroth309
Visionary

After a system reboot I got the light working but I actually have to press above my right eyebrow with the finger extended. So now I'm 50/50 about Index or Quest 2. The thought of having to unpack CV1 and run all those USB cables again and calibrate it eliminates that from consideration of usage unless it's my only option lol. I love being able to spider man around with the index controllers by just slightly squeezing. It's very natural so I may stick with it or just trade between them the rest of the way. Either way, going back and play.