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Wired has posted a small slide show tour of this year's Game Developer Conference.
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my choice, virtual game or real kick in the ass if I don't take the dog for a walk.
Those virtual goggles look really comfortable......
I can just hear my wife yelling at me now.....
my choice, virtual game or real kick in the ass if I don't take the dog for a walk.
Awesome video of the Rift in action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uso6vxZ5O4c
This is nothing like VR of the past. Valve is even porting "Team Fortress 2" to VR from the ground up specifically for the Rift. Ships with the SDK.
I never understood 3d and VR they never cater to the many people that have glasses, at least google glasses will have something.
I wouldn't be surprised if folks develop a picture-in-picture mode to view a webcam or some other external feed...I want to watch the hockey game in the background.
Can't let me do that, can you, Mr Occulus Rift? lol
Looking good, though that guy in the video is OBNOXIOUS.
Large companies have been selling HMDs to consumers for a while. Sony is one.Had that been the case, past attempts would have taken off and VR would be more commonplace or sold by a large company that has the resources to conduct a market feasibility study and determine if there's any profit to be had in soaking up development costs.
Except the buzz at GDC is that it isn't following the path of its predecessors. Thanks to huge technological leaps thanks to the smartphone industry, the Rift can take advantage of wide FOV, ultra-low latency, and high resolution displays which didn't exist in the 1990s and aren't even being used by Sony's HMD.It's following the same path of other hardware that came before it that other small companies attempted to sell.
there just isn't a big enough market of people who are interested in it for it to leave the niche.Valve and id Software have hinted that they are very interested in supporting the Rift. I think the market for the Rift is going to be huge with the Steam community. The fact OculusVR asked for 250k on Kickstarter and received 2.4M in donations should be telling in itself.
and the list of supported games grows... I'm pretty excited... not enough to "pre-order" it, of course... but I hope it is successful...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#Software
Large companies have been selling HMDs to consumers for a while. Sony is one.
Except the buzz at GDC is that it isn't following the path of its predecessors. Thanks to huge technological leaps thanks to the smartphone industry, the Rift can take advantage of wide FOV, ultra-low latency, and high resolution displays which didn't exist in the 1990s and aren't even being used by Sony's HMD.
I don't see this being anything more than a brief pop of interest that might see a few years with a small amount of developer support before it vanishes.
I'm not debating that. Sony is a large company, however, and their recent HMDs have been profitable.Sony has an insignificant presence in the consumer market with VR headsets.
Not quite. id is jumping on VR internally. Prior, id only allowed outside HMD manufacturers/integrators access to their codebases to do VR tie-ins. They did this because they were paid by these companies, and only because Carmack thought the technology was "kinda neat".ID has jumped onto other now obscure VR headsets so that's not a shocker. They had full support in many of their games for the VFX-1 and VFX 3D.
True of monitors in some respects: most displays are "fast enough". Not true of head-tracked HMDs.Latency is a problem mostly invented by monitor producers to have something else to compete with on paper and is propped up by a few so-called professional gamers. It's, in essence, a non-problem and not a factor.
Total head-scratcher of a comment. It's like arguing that 32-bit color isn't a big advantage leveraged by modern displays over their 8-bit predecessors. When the entire purpose of VR is to be immersed in a virtual world, not having any information displayed in your periphery, and not being able to move your eyes without your focus falling out of the edges of the display is obviously a pretty big problem.A full field of view is also not a big advantage leveraged by the Rift over existing VR headsets.
Oh, I think the point is that Oculus isn't doing anything the others aren't already, which is basically true. The VR stuff is really in it's infancy, as you noted the problems are pretty obvious. It's much like at a place where graphics were at 8-bit IMO. When it can solve eye-tracking and focus along with the other slew of issues to tackle, then it'll be reaching 32-bit era comparability.Total head-scratcher of a comment. It's like arguing that 32-bit color isn't a big advantage leveraged by modern displays over their 8-bit predecessors.
I kinda have the same feeling... but do you think these VR "pops of interest" are larger and longer lasting each time? At what point, if any, do you think it will be satisfactory in your eyes? When it's something as light as regular glasses and under 100 bucks? ...or until we can just mind-hack the experience completely? I think both of these scenarios are on their way, it's only a matter of time and enthusiasm to help push us to get there, even if that means a few more iterations of these clunkier/expensive designs.
I'm not debating that. Sony is a large company, however, and their recent HMDs have been profitable.
Not quite. id is jumping on VR internally. Prior, id only allowed outside HMD manufacturers/integrators access to their codebases to do VR tie-ins. They did this because they were paid by these companies, and only because Carmack thought the technology was "kinda neat".
It isn't the same situation at all.
True of monitors in some respects: most displays are "fast enough". Not true of head-tracked HMDs.
Total head-scratcher of a comment. It's like arguing that 32-bit color isn't a big advantage leveraged by modern displays over their 8-bit predecessors. When the entire purpose of VR is to be immersed in a virtual world, not having any information displayed in your periphery, and not being able to move your eyes without your focus falling out of the edges of the display is obviously a pretty big problem.
Oh, I think the point is that Oculus isn't doing anything the others aren't already, which is basically true. The VR stuff is really in it's infancy, as you noted the problems are pretty obvious. It's much like at a place where graphics were at 8-bit IMO. When it can solve eye-tracking and focus along with the other slew of issues to tackle, then it'll be reaching 32-bit era comparability.
You misunderstand the latency being referenced here. Oculus is not talking about screen latency, they are talking about head tracking latency. The time it takes for the gyro's to process movement so that the game can update the display with your new relative position. Old VR systems have terrible latency. You can literally move your head, and count the seconds it takes for the screen to turn your view to match where you are looking. The oculus' design is to have the latency so low, that it is completely imperceptible to the human eye. The screen moves in perfect harmony with your head, so you feel like you are looking through a pair of goggles into the real world.Latency is a problem mostly invented by monitor producers to have something else to compete with on paper and is propped up by a few so-called professional gamers. It's, in essence, a non-problem and not a factor. Resolutions get higher with time and people were using the same arguments to discuss the value of moving beyond VGA to Super VGA.
Wrong. The FOV is the single most important factor of the entire rift design. Completely encompassing your peripheral vision is the only way to bring total immersion into play. If at any point you can see a black border around your eyes, "the edge of the screen" basically, you are immediately whisked out of the game and aware you are staring at a screen in front of you. FOV with ultra low latency is the only way to completely absorb your senses. It's the difference between watching a video of someone on a roller coaster, and actually sitting in the seat yourself. You simply cannot underestimate the profound effect of having your peripheral vision encompassed. It may seem trivial to you, afterall how often does one really use their peripheral vision. But the entire premise is based on the subconscious. Your periphery is in constant use whether you realize it or not (afterall I could throw a baseball at you from the side and you would reflexively react) and will make all the difference.A full field of view is also not a big advantage leveraged by the Rift over existing VR headsets.
The problem has always been lack of consumer interest, not lack of developer interest. VR has failed not because the public is fickle or developers were lazy, but simply because IT WAS BAD. There just wanst any enjoyment factor out of it because we lacked the technology to do it. It'd be like someone trying to make "Avatar the video game!" with graphics that look exactly like the film, in 1998. There simply wasnt enough rendering horsepower to produce such a thing. Now imagine they tried it anyway, and what you got was a horrible laggy, horribly buggy, horribly slow, and horribly UGLY experience. It took generations of upgrades to reach the point of UE4 today. We started with doom, then quake, then source, and so on. Each generational leap was met with developers tweaking performance and visuals together. Early VR was simply too ambitious for its time. However now that time has come. We have the technology. We can build it.Just because a company says they'll add support doesn't mean mainstream end users will provide enough monetary backing for a company to sustain their operations past a generation or two of development......I don't see this being anything more than a brief pop of interest that might see a few years with a small amount of developer support before it vanishes.
You misunderstand the latency being referenced here. Oculus is not talking about screen latency, they are talking about head tracking latency.
That I'm going to disagree with. I think that current LCD latency is low enough to more than outpace a human brain and its chemical senses already and has been for quite a few years now. This just isn't something that VR has to overcome at this point and I don't think that's been the case for a long time.
No sorry, this is not what they are talking about. The current demos being used for Oculus are easily rendered on any current gen system. There is no difficutly whatsoever in running UE4 at 1280x720 resolution and 60fps on low detail settings. The framerate hasnt been an issue for VR in quite some time, nor has refresh rate or pixel response time. In fact, pixel response time is indicated as being absolutely atrocious on the rift right now. There is severe ghosting that is immediately noticeable by anyone who tries it. Guess what, it doesnt matter though. Screen latency merely affects how quickly pixels can change color. It doesnt look pretty, but it certainly doesnt hurt the immersion factor, since immersion is sensory based which is entirely built upon head tracking latency. There is plenty of processor overhead to deal with the calculations for head movement. The problem has always been getting sensitive enough gyroscopes, magnometers, compasses, and accelerometers to properly detect pecise head movement. Only recently have advances been made in the smart phone sector once it was deemed necessary to have a GPS/Accelerometer/compass in every cellphone.They're really talking about total I/O latency, of which tracker, rendering time, engine frame buffering, and display panel post-processing and pixel response time are all a part. Having a 1ms tracker latency is a nice bump over 8ms trackers, but the bulk of the latency is still going to be tied to the exact same influences that FPS players know about today with traditional monitors - namely framerate, refresh rate, lack of additional frames buffered, lack of monitor post-processing, and pixel response time.
Refresh rate is an issue because too low a refresh rate adds potential latency to the output pipeline. If, for instance, you can render a frame within 7.7 milliseconds, you won't be able to output that frame until 9 milliseconds later on a 60 Hz display (assuming you're vsync'ed, which you want to be on an HMD). That's an additional 9 milliseconds of 'drift' that doesn't need to be there. 9 milliseconds of a display just waiting for something new to display.The framerate hasnt been an issue for VR in quite some time, nor has refresh rate or pixel response time.
I've yet to hear anyone say anything like this about the Rift.In fact, pixel response time is indicated as being absolutely atrocious on the rift right now. There is severe ghosting that is immediately noticeable by anyone who tries it.
No sorry, this is not what they are talking about.
I've yet to hear anyone say anything like this about the Rift.
Many people watch in 2d because they find the current "3D" (stereoscopic) implementation is annoying as fuck and ignores one basic principle concerning how our eyes work: which is the ability to focus on any object in a scene. When eye tracking offers that capability in a comfortable way, then I imagine these people will start to see it as a more logical step forward and start to adapt it.yeah 3D worlds and watch them in old flat 2D....total logic there!