Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewDucker | Hacker News Reader

I've played with an Oculus VR, and I think they're amazing.

But I'm not convinced that they're ready for the mass market yet. Not because of any failing on their part, but because I think that they need games, and controllers, specifically designed to work with VR.

You can't use mouse/keyboard well if you can't see the mouse/keyboard. UIs that float at the bottom of the screen feel very odd when you move your head around and they stay at the bottom of your vision.

We're going to need a year or two of people producing iterations of new interfaces before we have something that feels really smooth to the average user.

(In the meantime they're great fun to play with.)

View on HN

> You can't use mouse/keyboard well if you can't see the mouse/keyboard.

Uh, what? Even if you don't touch-type, you shouldn't need to look at the keyboard and mouse to play a game. All the keys you need should be under your fingers or in easy reach, and a mouse especially should be easy to use without watching your hand and fingers.

I do agree with your comments about HUDs; VR games lose a lot of immersion if you have UI elements present (unless your character is supposed to have a HUD in-game). However, many games do fix that, by eliminating the HUD entirely.

Sure, but the instant you take your hands off the keys (or the mouse), you're groping and flailing wildly to find them again.

I didn't think it'd be an issue until I got my Rift, and it turned out it was :). I'm sure there'll eventually be a clever solution though.

Sounds like Rift needs a reverse version of Google Glasses inside of it! A camera on the front would show a small screen of what's in front of you IRL.

Try Minecraft with the mouse and keyboard, and the HUD off.

It's a spectacularly immersive experience with the Rift - the first "holy shit, I totally lost track of time there" experience I've had with the technology.

What makes you think Oculus are convinced they're ready for the mass market? They haven't even mentioned a vague release date and are still openly iterating and researching hardware and software ...

You can't use mouse/keyboard well if you can't see the mouse/keyboard.

I can't imagine being able to properly play PC games while also having to constantly look at your mouse/keyboard.

I can touchtype, so I don't need to see my hands or the keyboard. But when I play a game, I never ever ever look at my hands - my eyes are clearly glued to the screen. I know this is definitely the case when I play games on my laptop but with an external screen that is to the side of the laptop because I sit in a way that I look right at the screen and to see the keyboard would mean I'd have to look to the side. In many fast paced game (FPS, MOBA etc) glancing at the keyboard means death...

I can touchtype with my WASD hand, but not with my right hand.

The Razer Hydra is a great game controller for the Oculus Rift. An outstanding example of its usage can be seen in "The Gallery: Six Elements", which is currently under development and will take full advantage of the Rift used in conjunction with Hydra: https://www.thegallerygame.com/

> UIs that float at the bottom of the screen feel very odd when you move your head around and they stay at the bottom of your vision.

I haven't used an Oculus, but just thinking about it I suspect the solution is going to be to locate HUD elements in world space locked to the player's position.

That's what CCP did with the EVE-VR demo, and it makes sense in the context of a flight sim. It'll be interesting to see what developers come up with for FPSes.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/eve-vr-an-expe...

"Wrist-watches" with bullet and health readouts. Just look down at any point in the game and your virtual arm will come up, showing everything that you need to know on the back of it.

Well, hopefully not for health or ammo. The whole point of a heads up display is so that you can literally keep your head up. A "look down for info" mechanic might be neat for stats you'd normally put on a pause screen or things like your inventory, though.

For health it might not be best, but I think for ammo it would work well. I mean, in the real world you don't even get a HUD for ammo, unless you're in an airplane or tank I suppose. A HUD for health is necessary just because the game isn't real life, but the ammo HUD is just a convenience; you can be more creative with it.

Maybe gun models that give a visual indication of remaining ammo will become more popular.

Perhaps adding blur/color saturation filters to your entire field of view might take off as a primary indication of remaining health.

Amusing to consider due to the viewport, but virtual Glass-type goggles with HUD, rendered within the OR.

Otherwise, yes, watch, checking gun magazine or condition of a blade, or a PDA/map - gaming is going to take a monstrous step up.

Not to mention immersive story-telling as a new way of presenting films.

Yup, that's what Minecraft VR did - and it works well.

That's what I've done to date in First Law and it works well - as I continue to need more traditional configuration/UI stuff I am finding it a bit of a struggle though. Like right now I'm trying to create a controller/flight stick configuration screen and the number of choices continue to expand. Lots of work to figure out what works well for complicated UI structures.

Awesome work on First Law, btw. Very much enjoyed the demo, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.

I'll probably be recommending it on http://www.oculusriftinfo.com tomorrow.

(For anyone else looking for Rift demos - First Law is a really excellent demonstration of the power of the Rift for cockpit-based games. )

Thanks! After getting slammed by my day job for a couple of months I'm hard at work on the next build -- been posting screens/videos over at my website http://rjevans.net if you haven't seen them already :)

I had no trouble using the mouse+kb with the rift. Also, the Razer Hydra seems to be the controller people are converging on. I believe Carmack will have a huge impact on getting other developers to adopt the Oculus VR tech. It's one thing for Palmer Luckey to get the support of Valve, Carmack, and others, but it's a whole different world when Carmack can spend his productive time improving the product, getting other developers to adopt it, and bringing it to market.

I agree with you, but what I found really encouraging was how apparently easy it is to get your 3D game working on the Oculus. I play iRacing.com, and they released official support for the Oculus in their shipped product less than a month after receiving their devkit. That kind of turnaround is really impressive to me. I'm really excited to see what Oculus decides to release as their final product.

A better UI would be something like the Hydra. There was a cool hack where someone used one Hydra controller to track the user's body while the other was used as a gun: http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/6/4595062/new-oculus-rift-cov...

It may be noted that one of my medium-term projects is a Rift word processor.

RenderToTexture and a webcam pointing at the keyboard is a lofi but possible way of solving the "can't see the keyboard" problem.

Leap Motion?

Omni would be even better.

Omni is smell-o-vision. Neat, but a bit too gimmicky.

Agreed. http://www.virtusphere.com/ This is more like it, but they've totally failed to get on the recent hype train and they don't even seem to realise it needs to be powered. It needs to start the instant you lean forward and stop on a dime to work properly. Plus, you need to be fully portable with the entire computer on your back to reduce latency.

Razer's Hydra project, which you have to hold onto but gives you a much larger play area, is already being used in some Rift games.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com