New user experiences and problem list
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So much stuff is buried in discord chats, so if you just got your T5, you will want to join and search.
But here is my list of things as a new user:
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The headset has a little fan that is LOUD unless you have some sound going to mask it.
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The wand constantly flashing a blue light oddly means connected and good.
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The cable is short, you can't just put an ordinary cable extender on it, it needs to be an active USB extension.
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The board is a finger print magnet, but they can be cleaned off gently.
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The T5 has a speaker, but Windows sets the default volume low, increase to 50% or more to hear it.
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A WarTile key was given out, but it doesn't support T5 yet until they add Unreal SDK support.
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There are currently no demos for the Android phone until they add Android SDK support.
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TableTopia is free on Steam, but only some of the games within it support T5, so change category from 'All Games' to 'Tilt Five'. You also need to 'Play Online' and tick 'Run in Tilt Five' in the top right for it to work. Hotseat mode is not supported.
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Steam Deck works, but you need Windows for the T5 drivers, and connect the glasses through a POWERED hub, as the Deck doesn't supply enough power directly. If you want to leave SteamOS alone, you can boot Windows off an A2 rated MicroSD such as the Samsung Evo Plus SDXC.
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I can confirm all the hardware-related points and I'd like to add some:
- The little fan apparently has a hard time keeping the projectors cool. If you live in Northern Europe and have a gas heating you might want to use Tilt5 a lot this winter.
- Wand- and Head-tracking are surprisingly good but not as good as you might be used to from recent VR hardware (sometimes perspective is a bit off, things become a bit whonky, etc.).
- The lines between the elements of the folded gameboard are noticeable but not to the point where it prevents you from getting immersed. Makes you wonder though if a rollable fabric version might be feasible in the future.
- If you sit relatively close to the game board you will realize that the projectors do not always cover the whole board. Sitting or leaning too far away from the board will leave you with a slightly blurry picture. Getting too close will confuse the head tracking. Once you find the sweet spot things work fine though, you'll have a pretty bright projection with decent resolution and good stereoscopic effect.
- Using the raised XE-Board you will have a very visible change in brightness near the fold which is not surprising given the angles at which you look at the reflective material.
- When unpacking the XE-Kit (probably all editions) you will be amazed by a really beautiful box. Lovely artwork.
- The first-time-user-experience of the Unity SDK is awesome (haven't looked into APIs yet). It comes with a simple plug-in package to import and a zip-file with a sample project with lots of good examples (built with 2018.4 LTS but easily upgradable without errors to 2019.4 LTS
). Using the plugin you have your first demo running in minutes.
- The little fan apparently has a hard time keeping the projectors cool. If you live in Northern Europe and have a gas heating you might want to use Tilt5 a lot this winter.