Oculus VR raises $75M
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
(Kind of loud. But be sure not to miss his awesome reaction at 4m20s.)
I have the original devkit, and it's amazing. You can even interface it with Google Street View. There's nothing like typing in "Eiffel Tower," tilting your head back, and staring up in awe.
In fact, I'd say no one here has experienced Street View until you've seen it with an Occulus. It simply cannot be described how incredible it is to look around with your head instead of dragging your mouse!
EDIT: Okay, if you're unhappy with that particular video, then this one might be more to your liking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7fz__6B-4#t=15m30s
EDIT2: Wow, that Dreadhalls game is terrifying. You actually don't even need an Oculus to get the full effect, just headphones. https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=3... (Windows / Mac)
(I am aware can be used outside gaming environment.)
That would be my number one fear about occulus. If it makes you motion sick, it would be a damn shame to know something like VR exists but you cannot play it unless you are fine with feeling like a dog for hours after a session longer than 30 minutes.
Fair warning to anyone clicking, pewdiepie videos are absolutely obnoxious. don't melt your brains.
otoh, I am very excited to play this game, Routine when it comes to oculus rift
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAcAd1fUiy8
it looks bloody terrifying.
Either you go huge and buy a stake in the winners at all costs, or you go wide and super early like YC. It does leave a large seed/series A financing gap someone will need to close, and I suspect their returns won't be as stellar as those in the extreme ends of companies financing.
[1]http://www.quora.com/Oculus-Rift/Virtual-Reality-Oculus-Rift...
Why compare them to one of the most extreme things humans can do ? Why not compare them to the food industry(under some regulation , and there's a debate if should have more) And Doctors (a single doctor can harm dozens/hundreds of people max , while an innovator can hurt million)?
Yes, VR is more immersive, depersonalizing, and derealizing ... but I don't think it will prove much worse than large-screen high-res video games, or even textual social media, are now. Those prone to the implied problems are already getting their "fix". Heck, TV sucks up near 40 hours each week from the majority - and that was reached with grainy 720x400 resolution media with few options for interaction. VR provides diminishing returns for information addiction.
Invest in truly exceptional companies and people, at a good price. Rather than a good company, at an exceptional price. [1]
I wonder if John Carmack wouldn't be better off just launching a competitor to Oculus. Wherever he goes the magic will follow, and it'd be nice if he was the ultimate boss like he was at id Software.
I'd just really hate for him to get bogged down in a bad environment, kind of the way Linus did with Transmeta, and be forced to resign at some point and start over after wasting years of productivity.
The A16Z guys can probably help avoid any massive stupidity, so that's a nice benefit to this investment.
And I'm not convinced Carmack likes being in charge. He might well he happy if he can just hack.
I think for a lot of companies (is tech startups) CTO would be the right answer.
So long as the CEO stays the hell out of the way
It's quite arguable that the best time for id was back in Romero's time, through Quake 1. Carmack was an excellent steward technologically, but from a business standpoint I think they were far outstripped by Epic in terms of being a business based on technology licensing.
While i also believe that Ids best time was in the 90ies when Romero was there, its not that he made anything noteworthy since he left.
Except it isnt. Brendan Iribe has been working in the Computer graphics/games industry for ages, co-founding Scaleform (video game UI system) and then working as chief product officer for Gaikai (really impressive video game streaming technology). Oculus also has other co-founders who worked in the same companies. The fact that Luckey, who is 20 years old, gave the CEO role to Iribe makes perfect sense. This is not the next social networking website after all, they want to transform the world with hardware products.
And their investors are Kickstarter, Spark and a16z. Isn't literally the ideal thing to prove the concept with the crowds, then take money from a vc with a proven record of successes, and then take more money from another vc with a proven record? (I wonder if they had any other term sheets for their b)
Regardless, Oculus's concept is the future of gaming -- anything that can trick the brain so substantially is going to be a winner.
RIP Andrew Reisse (http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/andrew-reisse-in-memoriam/)
If you've got 10 minutes to thumb through this 20 minute video this shows off whats possible with augmented reality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA If we can get that into a pair of sunglasses in the next 10-20 years I'm pretty sure we'll be living in a wildly different world than we are today
Edit: experimenting with it a bit, I've found an easy way to do it is to full screen and sit a good ways back from the screen. (I went about 5' from my 27" monitor.) Then hold your hands up in a sort of window about a foot in front of your face. The idea is that looking through a window between your hands, each eye can only see the picture opposite it. Not seeing the other picture makes it a lot easier to focus on the composite one.
I thought the multi-monitor simulation setup was very impressive, you can imagine all kinds of non-gaming applications for this! Any environment where you need to be utterly focused and shut off from distractions (turning a potential negative of VR into a massive plus), with multiple monitors (e.g. Trading floors in wall street, coders) would benefit hugely from this. The company could make an absolute fortune solely from selling to wall street, and replacing traders 2,3,4+ screens with a single VR headset.
However, as a working device, something needs to be solved to reduce eye strain.
After using it for 5-10 minutes, I feel like I've been in A Clockwork Orange. My eyes are spread wide and incredibly tired after that short period of time.
Until you try it, it's hard to explain how close the lenses are to your eyeballs. I accidentally poked my wife in the eye by adjusting the distance improperly.
I'm all for the idea of something like this for long term work, but I believe a different approach will need to be taken, or a significant amount of work needs to be done to make it sustainable for 2-4 hour long shifts.
Also or alternatively, a good-sized, well-sealed helium balloon can lift 50+ grams...
https://support.oculusvr.com/entries/24808208-Will-the-Oculu...
I do hope their statement is correct, but it sounds too good to be true.
I think this is the really surprising thing for people who haven't tried it before -- you think it will be like looking at a screen up close, since you've looked at screens your whole life, but it's nothing like that at all.
The early Oculus DevKit certainly has some issues: no translational tracking gives me strong motion sickness, high persistence display makes the scene blur as I move my head, low resolution produces screen door effect. Regardless of these downsides, after 10-15 seconds of use I accepted that VR will be the "next big thing."
Large hamster ball on rollers. Infinite space to walk or run. Also, you don't need to track their motion or feet, you just feed in the data from the rollers, and you know how fast their character is walking or running, and in what direction.
A rar of the game is here, req kinect sdk installation + oculus rift. http://motionos.com/sw2.rar
Occulus Rift is going to be awesome for all these games where you are supposed to be sitting in a cockpit. For FPS, not so much (unless you have a giant hamster ball and tons of sensors as someone else mentioned).
I had a friend lay flat on the floor for half an hour after a level of Quake 2. Brings back fond memories of my first days playing Wolfenstein 3D and experiencing motion sickness..
http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/18/4852496/oculus-rift-4k-dis...
Now with John Carmack fully committed, and this massive round of funding, 4K has to be all but certain.
I imagine the prospects for 8K and 12K in the distant future are better now as well.
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/oculus-ceo-teases-futur...
I believe this will have a ton of applications from VR conferencing to going to virtual concerts to even spectating sports with an isometric view of the field instead of the 2d projection.
Isn't this investment by A16Z the most incredible reward possible for these developers who've put time and energy learning the platform and technology? At the very least, Oculus is going to be a major player in this field, if not the major player for the next couple years, so the opportunities for their products, and skills, just took a big leap today.
Reading books in the backseat of a car driving through winding mountains, no problem. 5 minutes in Oculus Rift and I want to vomit.
It definitely depends on the game/demo though, so it may just be a matter of very careful game design. Or maybe reducing latency will help.
When we look around, we move our head subtly side to side and forward and back. The Rift dev kit doesn't do that--it just tracks what direction you're pointed in. My feeling is that causes a big chunk of the motion sickness.
The production unit will include motion tracking. As long as game titles take advantage of it, and don't do stuff like shake the camera, or move it too much, or do too many cuts, then I think 99% of people will be fine.
There will still be craz
When we look around, we move our head subtly side to side and forward and back. The Rift dev kit doesn't do that--it just tracks what direction you're pointed in. My feeling is that causes a big chunk of the motion sickness.
The production unit will include motion tracking. As long as game titles take advantage of it, and don't do stuff like shake the camera, or move it too much, or do too many cuts, then I think 99% of people will be fine. For those titles at least. Other titles will push the limits.
In game side to side motion, rapid changes in heights, UI that is not fixed in world space, things that are too bright, taking camera control away from the player (slow horizontal rotation seems to be okay, vertical rotations cause immediate headaches in my testing), FPS lower than 60, etc. The FPS one is particularly interesting I was mirroring on a monitor, and I couldn't tell that the FPS was low(it was running at around 35fps), but in the Rift is was super obvious something was wrong.
I attended a talk for developers given by the founder recently, and he mentioned that stairs also are troublesome, and ramps work better right now. Something to do with how the brain has been trained to know the sensation of climbing stairs.