Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

The Oculus dev kit is absolutely incredible on fast hardware with the right game (http://owlchemylabs.com/aaaaaculus/ for example, is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, without much nausea). I expected to be somewhat lukewarm about it, but it almost immediately became the most exciting bit of consumer tech in my eyes, whereas the Glass had the opposite trajectory for me.

Most of the issues I've come across have been from low frame rates with low-powered hardware (most laptops), and games with jarring transitions (loading screens where everything freezes are terrible). The dev kit also has very visible pixels, which gives it a substantial screen door effect, and there's some blur when turning your head. The biggest issue, though, is that there's no way that I know of to match what's going on in your inner ear with what's going on screen in something with a lot of quick acceleration/deceleration like a driving game.

However, I think that with translation tracking, less motion blur, better resolution, and games that are well suited to it (maybe not driving), it's going to be completely transformative. And I think it will open up new fields outside of games.

If you have a bit of cash you wouldn't mind spending, I would highly recommend ordering one of the dev kits from their site ($300), even if you don't immediately plan on developing for it. It will most likely spur a lot of ideas for you, game related and otherwise.

For driving games, there's one solution for simulating turns, and acceleration/deceleration. That's rotating your seat. When you accelerate, the chair rotates backwards, and gravity does the work of pushing you back in your seat. The faster you accelerate, the more the chair leans back. When you brake quickly, the seat leans forward, and you feel your seat belt pushing into your chest as it holds you in place. Turn right, chair rotates left, etc.

You're limited to 1G though. This is enough to give the experience of driving and turning in a fast car, but you're not going to be pulling Formula 1 level Gs, although I don't think the average person wants to experience that anyway.

Here's a similar simulator. You'd just be using the rift instead of a TV mounted display.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFCRh-anfRg

Edit: Just noticed the system in the video also does up and down. I imagine that's an awesome effect when you go down a hill fast, and get that sense of weightlessness for a brief second.

Fun article I just read on G forces because I was curious just how many G's an F1 car put someone through:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/motorsport/7681665/Formu...

More impressively, see just how crazy strong F1 driver necks are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBtKSGvVxw8

> For driving games, there's one solution for simulating turns, and acceleration/deceleration. That's rotating your seat. When you accelerate, the chair rotates backwards, and gravity does the work of pushing you back in your seat. The faster you accelerate, the more the chair leans back. When you brake quickly, the seat leans forward, and you feel your seat belt pushing into your chest as it holds you in place. Turn right, chair rotates left, etc.

> You're limited to 1G though. This is enough to give the experience of driving and turning in a fast car, but you're not going to be pulling Formula 1 level Gs, although I don't think the average person wants to experience that anyway.

These motion simulators are cool but they are really big and very expensive, not something that average people will have in their living rooms. A commercial motion simulator for gaming (ie. not a "professional" sim rig) costs around $60000. Even if I had that kind of money, I couldn't explain that to the missus.

And the motion is limited to way less than 1G because the platform can not turn fully horizontal. Maybe some kind of spherical rig could get up to 1G but these things are limited to 0.3 to 0.5G, less than you get driving around in your car in traffic.

I've tried a motion simulator like this once and it wasn't a positive experience. I'm a hard core racing sim fan so maybe my expectations were a little high but all I got was a sore back and a bad lap time. The motion platform can't pull many G's but it shaked and rumbled like hell.

If you could have one of these with a nice seat and strap yourself tightly in, it might be a nice experience but this is never going to be something that will be in people's living rooms.

Btw, this here's someone's cool DIY home rig made with windshield wiper motors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_la_IzrZ4

>The Oculus dev kit is absolutely incredible on fast hardware with the right game

It's amazing even with the wrong games sometimes. Playing Planetside 2 and being man sized completely changed how I viewed the game. The previously small feeling rooms were revealed to be cathedral scale and running with a group of vehicles across the plains of Esamir watching tracers and tank rounds flash in the night as ESFs duelled over the mountain sized mountains was amazing.

So like I tell everyone who hasn't tried a Rift yet, believe the hype, all of it because for once it's true.

That was what struck me too, the scale is what is most impressive.

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