Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
Then there's the structure of the deal with a Kickstarter. A Kickstarter campaign is emphatically not a crowd-sourced angel investment: it's a busker's hat, with basically the same responsibilities and obligations that a street musician has to her audience of sidewalk quarter-droppers. Palmer Luckey clearly wants this money with the minimum of fuss. Why would iD effectively donate 250k to a tiny hardware company? Short answer: they wouldn't. Companies spend their money only in the expectation of a return. There is absolutely no possibility of a return for any one of these companies, because the money is given in exchange for nothing. There is no equity stake, there's no debt, there's no guarantee of future exclusive rights to the headsets. It's just a gift.
So let's say these firms consider investing 250,000 with Palmer to build his headset. That kind of decision is not made lightly nor is it made by any one person. All of these industry figureheads are responsible to their board of directors and their (private) shareholders. They don't have complete freedom of access to their companies' bank accounts. Such an investment would come with equity stakes and strings attached: strings which would likely not benefit Palmer, since competitors are usually unwilling to co-operate, even on something as cool as this. Then, Palmer himself may not want to sell of pieces of his fledgling company until he's in a stronger position.
They (Carmack etc.) might well be tempted to make a personal angel investment with Oculus and indeed they may even have done so. Those deals will be highly secret, not least to protect Palmer's interests.
All in all, the Kickstarter is a perfect way for Palmer Luckey to gain both a pile of risk-free, no-strings-attached cash and a great deal of exposure, without any of the dilution, influence or responsibilities of external investment.
I want it more the worse the economy recesses, the more pregnant my wife grows, the younger policemen get and the more stress my job induces. Bring me my wide field of view, low latency, low resolution escape!
He gives more technical information:
"Technical comments based on the prototype unit I have been using and conversations with Palmer: The display is a single 1280x800 panel; each eye only sees a 640x800 image stretched across the huge field of view. The perceived resolution is therefore much lower than even previous generation consumer HMDs. If you are looking for high resolution, this isn't for you. For immersion, the high FOV is much, much more important, though.
It is not wireless.
The prototype was analog VGA, but I think the kickstarter versions are DVI.
Everyone commented on how light the prototype was, especially compared to the Sony HMD.
The early prototype could not be worn with glasses. If you modify it to stand off far enough from the face to allow glasses, the fov will be reduced a lot. One reason it can be so light is that it has smallish lenses very close to your eyes. With the limited resolution, you don't really need 20/20 effective vision.
I hope someone experiments with the kits and builds a variable focus version, but the standard system is fixed focus."
My eyes are about -6. There is about 1 inch in which I can focus clearly without my glasses. Nearer or farther and things get blurry. Most HMDs that I've used are at the outside of this range and are slightly blurry, but barely usable.
They're saying this one has a lens that is closer, but they don't say how far the screen is. I'm guessing the screen will be about the same distance, but the lens will be stretching the screen to wrap around your vision. There's talk about a fish-eye effect that I believe they're using to have more of the pixels in your main vision, and fewer in your periphery, since that's where yours are most sensitive.
Edit: A choice quote I found:
We played without our prescription glasses, so our vision was blurry enough that it didn't affect our gameplay. However, one of our video production members with better vision noticed the low resolution and felt it took away from the experience.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/30/3052191/doom-3-bfg-edition...
Why? because the Oculus exists, there are prototypes running Doom3 since E3. Granted, those units are held together by duct tape which is not exactly consumer-grade, but.it.works, and that's what matters here.
Valve and Epic support probably (I hope) means they are going to use the Oculus SDK so that most Source and Unreal-based PC games could be patched and thus used with the Oculus.
Now consoles, the problem with MSFT/Sony using this for the Durango/PS4 is that they would have to include one with each console sold, else you have the chicken and the egg situation where developers don't support it because it lacks an installed base and gamers don't buy it because it only has a few games.
The Wiimote for example was meant to be an accessory for the Gamecube, but Nintendo knew that was a possibility so they decided to wait and launch it with the Wii instead.
Regardless of singularity thoughts, I really enjoy watching new tech become possible due to price drops in components. This would not have been possible just a few short years ago as the price(and size/weight) of LCDs and sensors have fallen significantly. I'd say the smartphone boom has been responsible for most of this advancement. This device is not much more than two phone-sized LCDs strapped to your head. Of course it's the code that makes the magic happen with low latency head tracking.
Commoditization of hardware components will continue to open new doors for developers. "No one would have bought a $10,000 iPod" - as the saying goes.
I also think a controller gives a bit of touch sense to the experience. Using your hands and feet for full controls of a plane stick and rudder or car wheel and pedals lacks only the feedback from acceleration and weather. Looking down to see the pedals and "feeling" your vehicle react to your foot pressing could be more psychosomatic than we really know yet.
One of the other consequences is that the pixel density in the centre of your field of view is higher than at the edges. If your eyes are pointing straight ahead, the biggest pixels (due to the lens distortion) are at the edge of the picture.
A serious question, not a jab. It seems "success" in the world of Kickstarter is defined by achieving a funding goal, not necessarily producing anything.
I'm very tempted to sign on for this one, but I've already kicked into a handful of projects, none of which are anywhere near shipping or this price.
Nathan Seidle had an interesting blog post on it. http://www.sparkfun.com/news/909
Jot stylus - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/531383637/jot-capacitive...
They are still making progress albeit slowly. Openvizla - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bushing/openvizsla-open-...
It also all depends why you back projects. I back them for the same reason that I'm a trustee of the Awesome Foundation- I want to encourage amazing things to happen in the world. Sometimes, this involves a lot of failures or false starts. Some people are ok with that, others aren't.
How many Y-Combinator companies have actually shipped a finished product? Same thing.
And if you ask me, if a bunch of Kickstarter projects fail to deliver and the money is simply squandered, that says more about the "kickerstarters" than Kickstarter itself.
Of note, money is often squandered in startups too :)
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=15086
It'll be great to actually get some hardware to play with.
I have to admit I'm a little turned off by the way those big players are only symbolically endorsing it but might very well get myself a dev kit anyways.
The early prototype could not be worn with glasses. If you modify it to stand off far enough from the face to allow glasses, the fov will be reduced a lot. One reason it can be so light is that it has smallish lenses very close to your eyes. With the limited resolution, you don't really need 20/20 effective vision. I hope someone experiments with the kits and builds a variable focus version, but the standard system is fixed focus.
The display is a single 1280x800 panel; each eye only sees a 640x800 image stretched across the huge field of view. The perceived resolution is therefore much lower than even previous generation consumer HMDs. If you are looking for high resolution, this isn't for you. For immersion, the high FOV is much, much more important, though.
Those are the prototype specs, mind.
There was a good point on one of the boards that HD will be hard to achieve on regular hardware just because you'd need to render at a minimum 60fps for each eye, and at 1080p few recent games will render at a smooth 120fps which this implies :) Maybe using 2 graphics cards?
Not exactly high resolution (considering the wide FOV), but not bad either
Seems like an oversight that they've left out the specs
Technical specs of the Dev Kit (subject to change)
Head tracking: 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) ultra low latency
Field of view: 110 degrees diagonal / 90 degrees horizontal
Resolution: 1280x800 (640x800 per eye)
Inputs: DVI/HDMI and USB
Platforms: PC and mobile
Weight: ~0.22 kilogramsSadly Nvidia stopped including 3d support in the drivers for their new cards beyond the 7900. LCD monitors also became popular and didn't support the higher refresh rates needed for shutter glasses to work. so my glasses went into a box and eventually broke.
I am extremely excited about the Oculus Rift. I pledged $335 and anticipate including support for a space combat game I've been working on for the past few years.
I'm also super stoked that the biggest rock stars of game dev are pledging their support in upcoming games.
http://www.platformnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Cab...
But if it could bring VR gaming into the mainstream, that would be awesome.
Maybe people will start making games use the Razer Hydra natively, too. The only game so far to do that is Portal 2, and it was amazing. Everything else is emulating a standard gamepad, and it's horrible.
(There's an indie game using Unity that uses the Hydra and it's showing promise, but it's not ready yet.)
For $300, even if it just turns into a toy to develop with I will still be happy about funding it (assuming, of course, it reaches its funding goal and is delivered - still big "ifs" with Kickstarter campaigns).
Compare a focus group or poll where the results are based on whatever some random person says, in comparison with a Kickstarter where the participants have to actually make a financial commitment.
On a side note, I think Kickstarter is going to be as important as Google & Wikipedia in terms of the radical long term influence it has on human action. This completely reshapes the dynamic and monopoly that capital performs in the consumer marketplace. I continue to be blown away by how much money micro-niche, but legitimate, projects manage to raise in short time frames.
EDIT: It doesn't look like it will be possible with this though. The resolution is very limited.
If yes, then the next generation of games will be incredible, social and mobile.
"I've been thinking of buying a new car. Pledge to give me $500 to help me buy my car and I'll send you a t-shirt with my car's picture on it."
For this, though... Well, it's already over 3x its initial goal and shows no signs of slowing. They absolutely made the right decision to charge for the devkits. At least, to the plebs, like me.
Higher level developers (i.e. famous names) probably will get a kit or 2 for free still. If Carmack wasn't already part of it, he'd be one of the names I'd expect to get a free kit.
iD/Zenimax, Epic and Valve would all see the hoped for $250 000 as chump change for a dev kit. Split between the three and it's essentially nothing. My guess is Microsoft or Sony would love nothing more than to tie up an exclusive peripheral for their next-gen consoles, and buy the company outright (as MS did with Kinect). This would be a true differentiator.
That they're looking to Kickstarter to sell $300 dev kits makes me think something very bad is going unsaid. My wild guess is that they still give people headaches as with previous VR attempts, and no-one is willing to put money in the pot with the expectation that it is unsolvable.
People putting money into this are as crazy as those who put money into the OUYA.
I don't have an opinion either way.
The problem is the reality of that dream is already here, and it's not working. Steam doesn't exist on Linux (yet). The Xbox Live Arcade Indie Games store is a cesspool. Android games, by and large, are not near parity with iOS games. There's a very real threat of piracy on an openly hackable device that will scare away anyone who actually needs to make money to live.
The dream of indie is, right now, tied to Steam and the PC platform. It's the only place it has worked. There is no reason to believe that the OUYA, which does not exist, is in any place to change that.
For more, check out Kuchera's article on it, which I agree with wholeheartedly: http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/the-reality...
In any case, I trust John Carmack on this one. He's demonstrated tremendous personal integrity again and again.
There is no reason to look to a Kickstarter in order to prove some point that there is consumer demand for it. There absolutely is, and this Kickstarter is pretty much certain to succeed. Which, again, leads me to think that something is going unsaid.
They why not do it? Honestly, I cannot understand the viewpoint you seem to hold. This is a massively easy way to get a lot of attention, early money and get developers thinking about what to do.
Do you really believe all those folks in the video would risk their reputations by putting their name to it without believing it? I bet there are ton of folks at Valve right now who've pledged. Are they wrong to do so?
Will this be perfect? I highly doubt it, but its an incremental step in moving us forward in a field that's remained stagnant on the consumer front for nearly 20 years. We need lots of beautiful failures to get to perfection.
You don't need to "involve the community". You need to show them a reality.
Plus, even if it were funded, it would be foolish not to put a product like this on Kickstarter and raise whatever additional money you could. This might also give one an idea of how much traction the product would get. I'm a bit skeptical of OUYA, given its not much more than a glorified Android device, but this product looks a bit more promising because (if the reviews are any indication) it really is a leap forward in VR tech.
It began as a post on a hobbyist 3d headset forum. The guy piqued the interest of John Carmack, who started developing for and promoting it, in tandem with a re-release of a doom game which worked with its specs. It generated a bunch of buzz, so the initial guy was going to put it on Kickstarter to get better deals on some of the components.
Regarding the Kickstarter cut, there was a forum-only Paypal 'gift' donation a couple weeks ago to avoid that, but it wouldn't have been enough. Plus, the rift developer wanted to launch on Kickstarter ahead of Quakecon for the publicity of it all.
This was scheduled to be a couple weeks ago, but then in a flurry, Palmer, the developer of the rift, got a bunch of meetings with some game companies and it's been kind of madness since.
Looking back, it may have been better to work with those companies first, but before he could even get in touch, he drummed up all this interest, and now we've all been waiting on the Kickstarter, I think he feels compelled to launch the Kickstarter anyway, since that was the original plan.
As for headaches: John Carmack demonstrated the rift at this year's E3 and the reviews were almost uniformly positive.
edit: I'm not involved, just have been excited about it for a long time and pledged today.
---------------------------------
stevejabs 44 minutes ago | link | parent [dead] | on: Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game
Well: A) These are all software companies. The hardware that they would ever make is few and far between.
B) There is no saying that they DON'T already have an investment in this company. Obviously this kid has enough capital to demo at E3, have office space and prototypes already made. At the very least, these companies may have deals made where they won't have to pay exorbitant licensing fees to put their games on this platform.
C) Perhaps this is the ultimate give back to the community from these companies. They all create tools now to extend their games to the next level. Perhaps they want to see how people will use their tools at a hardware level.
D) I feel like a $300 investment here will go a lot longer than OUYA. There is a prototype already built. They aren't trying to sell a end-user, consumer-level product. At the end of the day, you're getting a likely shitty looking developer kit. For $300, they are probably taking a significant loss just on the technology going into the kit.
EDIT: Spelling
---------------------------------
So the guy goes out and gets endorsements, on video, from the biggest names in the field. The absolute biggest. And they are unreservedly enthusiastic.
And to you, that's a negative sign.
Wow.
I'm seriously starting to wonder about the HN culture that produces such conclusions at the top comment.
First of all, how do you know they didn't front money? Answer- you don't know that. It's likely some or all them have done so.
There are very good reasons not to make this a Valve product or an id product or what have you. Can you think of them?
The conclusion that something is wrong here may well be a jump-the-shark moment for HN comments.
I'm assuming software companies don't want to get in the hardware game, but form what I've read, including the Oculus message boards a couple months ago, Carmack is very active in this and might be the mastermind behind everything Palmer is doing. He may not want all the headaches of hardware especially considering he's busy with iD and his space company.