Comment by jron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jron | Hacker News Reader

John Carmack and his friends made it clear that they have no interest in the PC being a first class VR platform when they tossed Brendan Iribe to the curb. The Rift-s is a big fuck you to all of the hardcore early adopters that made the Rift a reality.

I skipped gen-1 thinking gen-2 was right around the corner; unfortunately, three long years later the future truly looks like a "race to the bottom." VR is starting to feel like a cheap trick instead of something that promised the future of gaming - a toy that just collects dust on the shelf after playing a handful of crap mobile games.

The state of the industry from my perspective:

1. The VR industry seems to think PC gaming is dead

2. Oculus hasn't released better HMD in three years:

- Worse inside out tracking despite the need to be tethered to a PC anyway

- A downgraded refresh rate of 80hz after claiming 120hz was the sweet spot

- A single panel and a downgrade from OLED to LCD with no ability for IPD adjustment

- Is outsourcing work from Lenovo instead of doing in-house RND

- Scrapped headphones despite saying it was a critical feature of the OG rift

- Rumored to have a slightly worse FOV than the OG Rift's already small FOV

- Attempting to roll their own walled garden store

- Owned by Facebook

3. HTC hasn't released a marginally better headset in three years:

- Lenses are garbage despite the better display

- Future headsets are adopting inside out tracking despite it having worse performance than lighthouse

- Owned by HTC

- Terrible support

- Attempting to roll their own walled garden store

4. Pimax doesn't seem to have the manufacturing or support chops to deliver despite knowing exactly what the hardcore PC gamer wants

5. Valve can't seem to release anything - ever.

What a shit show.

I'm a relatively new VR user, so I'm a little less burned out from the apparent stagnation than someone who's been doing this since the Oculus Rift dev kits, but I think maybe you're being a little pessimistic?

> The VR industry seems to think PC gaming is dead

Sad, if true. This is definitely how Oculus seems to feel about it, but maybe they're just ceding that segment to HTC.

> HTC hasn't released a marginally better headset in three years

Their upcoming roadmap seems promising even if it's only evolutionary changes. It also seems like they're not abandoning the high end.

> Future headsets are adopting inside out tracking despite it having worse performance than lighthouse

It's strictly worse in terms of sheer "performance", but it can be potentially so much better in other terms that it might be a better idea to dump engineering effort into improving the performance until it's good enough.

If I set up my tracking sensors perfectly and go through the calibration ceremony, my VR environment would be capable of higher-precision tracking than is possible with inside-out technology. At least, it is until a cat knocks into my sensor, or the USB connection flakes out, and I have to recalibrate the damn thing all over again.

This has happened before. You can (or at least could) get better photographs from film than from digital. CRT displays are (or at least were) capable of better image quality than LCD. Gas tanks can store more energy than the batteries in a Tesla and can be refueled faster than the battery can be recharged. The .30-06 cartridge is more lethal than the 5.56 NATO. Analog telephony has higher sound quality than digital.

However--digital cameras are far easier to use and make the photos themselves easier to share and store, so they got the image quality good enough. LCD displays are less bulky and more energy-efficient, so they got the image quality good enough. Electric cars are more eco-friendly and can deliver higher performance due to the mechanical simplicity, so they got the batteries and Superchargers good enough. 5.56 has less recoil, particularly in full-auto or burst fire, and you can carry more rounds because each round weighs less, and the rifle itself can be lighter. Digital telephony scales better and suffers less quality drop for mobile phones, and VOIP dispenses with dedicated telephony infrastructure entirely.

The big issue with inside-out tracking isn't precision, it's occlusion. While with an outside-in tracking system my hands needs line of sight to one or more sensors, inside-out tracking systems require line of sight to my head!

There's often not a path to my head, as other commenters on the thread have pointed out, in Skyrim VR.

EDIT: Here's an article that mentions this point for the Oculus Quest specifically: https://uploadvr.com/oc5-oculus-talks-quest-controller-track...

One solution might be to put inside out camera trackers into the controllers as well, so they can judge where they are in the space, and even look back and scan your body position. possibly bandwidth and power limitations in wireless handheld controllers would make that a bad idea?

I hope you're right. I suspect HTC is far worse off than Oculus and will follow them down the rabbit hole in search of mass market appeal. If Facebook spent FAR less than 2 billion on Oculus I doubt they would even still be around.

I'm of the opinion that VR only appeals to the high end PC gamer with disposable income. Perhaps I'm wrong and a market at the bottom exists, developers can earn a living, and the high-end can eventually reap the rewards.

People get so angry whenever VR is brought up.

Are there not other companies besides Oculus to serve the higher-end VR market? What's wrong with a company focusing on a mainstream market?

The waste of talent?

The new HP headset is surprisingly quite promising as a higher end option, I tried it out yesterday and the resolution is great but it is still using the standard Windows MR inside out tracking which is decent but not great, particularly when it comes to the tracking volume for the controllers.

Well, HP's new version of the Reverb jumped to a 2160x2160 per-eye resolution.

If Pimax can get their shit together, the 4K resolution and ridiculous FOV is promising.

I think the ultimate problem is that the higher-end market isn't willing to spend what it would require to build a sufficiently-good headset right now, nor are there many home gaming computers that can realistically pump 8+K low latency, high FPS graphics. There are many millions of people who might spend $500 on a standalone headset that is good enough to play beat saber, though.

The market for a high end HMD is pretty much anyone that already has no problem spending $1,000 on a video card. That is a lot of us but it isn't big enough for a company like Facebook or HTC. My fear is pushing crap at $500 instead of gold at $900 will leave a stigma on VR that will take another decade or more to wash off.

The reverb actually looks great but the tracking is a flop.

I think of the kid factor. My kids can't tell the difference between the gear VR, PSVR, and high end setup. Or they just don't care. All they want are fun games. That leaves the gear VR for things like rollercoaster sims and 360 pov video of the same, and PSVR for Beat Saber and Job Simulator. No interest in the high end gold level setups

A lot of us have been dreaming about quality VR for 20+ years. The original Oculus team was a group of those folks. A lot has changed over there in 3 years and people fear it may be another 20 years if this mass market plan fails.

Facebook think they can make much more money targeting causal gamers. I think VR has a huge potential, not just in gaming, but also professional tools, like controlling vehicles and aircrafts. Imagine driving a drone, controlled via microwave radio, less then 0.1ms latency, and ultra HD view in all directions.

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