Pinc: Oculus Rift for the iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Pinc: Oculus Rift for the iPhone

hellopinc.com

67 pointssunnynagra35 comments

I don't get the online shopping thing. What does VR contribute here? I'm sure if VR really gets going, retail will be a part of it but going there at the demo stage seems really weird.

BTW, what are the basic applications of VR headsets.

IE, a smartphone's basic jobs are text based communication (SMS, whatsapp, twitter, email etc), calls, camera, web browser, media players, games… There are an unlimited number of the jobs and different people use different things, but… well, online shopping isn't one of the big ones.

What are VR headsets for? Do we have any better understanding of this now than we did ten years ogo?

I'm not sure if this is practical, but my mind goes to 3d movies. IE, there's a movie that you watch by walking around and listening to different conversations and seeing different things.

Granted a lot of this is just speculation based on following more recent developments and projects on the Oculus forums/subreddit but I think along with the 3d movie idea, telepresence would be a big one.

There are already a few teams working on prototypes that make use of one or more Kinect depth cameras to "record" a room in 3D so you can put yourself back in these recorded 3d scenes later on. Others have been experimenting with encoding and compressing this data for transmission over networks and decoding at the other end to provide a sort of real-time 3d telepresence.

Obviously it's limited by using Kinect depth cameras, current consumer computers, and standard broadband networks but the way I see it, my first Treo smartphone was limited by the SoC and touchscreen tech of the time as well as the wireless data networks of the time. Still, it eventually evolved into the iPhones and Nexuses of today.

I think that at some point, the head-mounted hardware will become more ergonomic and more functional at costs that allow them to be sold to average users. Likewise, the hardware and software to capture and encode 3d video models of a room or "scene" will become more commonplace. Right now it's games and demos...parlor tricks like the first motion picture reels that eventually led to IMAX movies.

Telepresence is a "who knows" I think. Communication is all nuance. Who would have expected IM will be more popular than video calling? The only way to know is to get it out there, I guess.

Gaming seems like a good place to experiment though.

Interested to see how this compares to Samsung Gear VR (http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/index.html) which combines Galaxy Note 4 and Oculus Rift and is made by Samsung & Oculus together.

Having watched the John Carmack technical presentation on Gear VR, and the importance of a low-persistance display, which only AMOLED can do, I'd say the Gear VR should be superior.

I think that's probably a bit of a reach – the Note's screen only has a 60Hz refresh rate, for one!

60hz is generally considered "good enought" for presence, the the improvement at 90hz is perceptable. Particularly with the low-persistence displays, frame rate is less important than you'd think.

Latency is a bigger problem.

The GearVR only works because of the external sensors on the HMD and the low latency display driver among other things.

This doesn't seem to have any external sensors, no low level / latency access to display driver, and with an iPhone6 720p-ish display, I can't see how there will be enough resolution - the GearVR with its 2560x1440 display appears low res enough - if this worked, and I highly doubt it, we would be regressing to DK1 levels of quality at best. You wouldn't be able to read key labels on a virtual keyboard at that resolution.

The 60Hz refresh is fine. Latency >>> refresh. Even 30hz gfx update with 60hz timewarp actually feels "fairly" comfortable with gearvr if you can put up wth the slightly swimmy image - as long as you dont drop frames. 60hz with dropped frames is a far worse experience.

This is google cardboard in a pretty skin.

This is extremely interesting. Pretty impressive, actually. I wasn't expecting this level of quality.

I see this as a great opportunity and industry in the future. I'm surprised Oculus themselves and Facebook haven't teased any sort of OS layer on top of the VR environment.

The experience seems a little bit heavy for me. People might get tired quickly of operating a similar flow, but I'm sure it has many other uses (than browsing youtube videos).

Reusing phones as VR displays, as in this project and in Google Cardboard, is nice from a cost perspective. But from a quality perspective I think it's a step wrong direction. VR that's a little bit wrong or inferior is not almost as good; it's VR that some people can't use because it'll make them sick. This might match the current generation (if the latency is good enough), but the current generation isn't quite good enough, and the next iterations of VR are heading in directions that phone-in-a-box setups can't realistically follow.

Agreed, watching the video, it looked very disorienting. These mostly seem to be a stop-gap until hard launches of products that actually can cope with the ultra-low latency and orientation accuracy that is required for VR headsets.

The presentation looks impressive. How well does the optical control system for fingers work for interaction and typing?

It's interesting that they are using the Polish "Ć" character in their logo. Reading it out with the "Ć" character pronounced correctly makes it sound a bit funny.

This is how it should sound: http://www.forvo.com/word/%C4%87/

Yeah, if you use the Serbian pronunciation, and the Hungarian meaning of the word then it's a kind of bird: https://translate.google.com/#hu/en/pinty

I would like to understand what advantage their ring-controllers offer over a wide-angle Leap Motion. Text input by pinching two fingers together seems a bit clumsy, for example.

Really interesting to see this coming from a digital agency / consultancy.

What I would really like to know, is how far along development of this thing really is at the moment. The "preorder" button leads to an IndieGogo page which mentions expected delivery in June 2015 and aside from a really well executed landing page with impressive videos and interface shots, there is little detail about the state of the project.

I wonder how this system will do with arm fatigue (commonly called "gorilla arm"). This problem plagues touch screens, and based off of Pinc's demo, I worry about it here as well. Still though, I'm rooting for the team - I've been dreaming of something like this for a long time!

Can't wait to see wives and husbands coming back home to their kids after work and instead of twitting whatsapping and facebooking at the table during family dinner, the whole merry family puts on these headsets and dissolve into VR, eating soylent green (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green), rendered as roasted chicken in full 3D splendor.

So what if the weather is insane outside, no big deal if we have to wear masks to breathe, we can always buy clean water at the supermarket and outside reality will be just fine. We'll spend our life inside these programmed virtual worlds, were we can be Gods instead. Fuck reality, we're going Virtual.

I know it's not the most popular idea, but I'm just saying... What is the purpose of this, except really cool entertainment ?

Why is it that so many extremely smart people work on entertainment instead of some real save-the-world-because-we're-fucked kind of problems ?

Perhaps they have lost faith in this world and wish to create an better, virtual world instead. Which save-the-world problems are you talking about exactly? It seems to me that most of the "save the world" problems are political problems that require a human solution as opposed to a technical one.

I would agree - things like global poverty, hunger, climate change, terrorism, malaria, AIDS, etc., all require high-level inter-governmental willing and cooperation.

(Now, to be fair, some of those also involve technical solutions but generally also of the governmental level of investment.)

By 'lost faith in this world', you mean they don't understand how to solve the problems they see.

If they don't understand how the solve the problems of this world, what makes them think they'll be able solve the problems of the virtual world they create?

You can change the rules of physics in a virtual world. That may help a lot in finding ways to solve problems.

Are human conflicts solvable by changing the laws of physics?

Haven't you seen Cinderella?

This is what Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo does!

VR and AR, which is borderline related technology-wise, have a lot of real-world use cases and can actually improve the overall quality of life. They are not just toys to experiment and play around, they can lead to serious technological advancements. We live in the information age, if it were me I'd say that the pinnacle of this "information" age would be accessing all kind of information from everywhere. And to do that, you need to actually immerse yourself into it fully.

Imagine visiting your friends or parents or relatives in another continent, without having to move from your chair. No, not like Skype or whatnot, actually BEING there with them. VR can give you that (and in the future, it can give you force feedback and tactile feedback too!). You will be able to visit the Coliseum in Rome without moving from your NYC apartment. You will be able to commute to work in milliseconds without having to get up from your bed. People with moving disabilities (like a wheelchair or whatnot) will be able to walk again and interact with people as they never have done before.

Furthermore, VR can be used to train people in several jobs, like being a pilot, a surgeon, a firefighter or whatnot. Even put people in situations they have never been before. It can be used by psychologists and doctors to treat patients, diagnose mental problems, study and research some conditions of the mind, etc etc.

Last, but not least, AR can provide an additional layer of information on top of our everyday life. Yes, VR gets you stuck in a chair at home and you will never go outside, but when/if you do, there is AR to assist you. You will be able to interact with every terminal around you while walking down the city (or at a park, or whatnot). You will have an overlay of information and knowledge on top of reality that will not only make your life easier, it will AUGMENT it. Nevermind hiring a guide when you want to actually visit a museum, you can just pop on your AR kit and tap into the knowledgebase of every person in the world. Just there, at the tip of your fingers.

Anyhow, let's be real, AR and VR are damn cool anyway.

...That makes me think of Sword Art Online.

You saw the woman spinning those shoes around.. changing them from one color to an entirely different color!

I know you're being sarcastic but without a jot of sarcasm...

Fuck reality, we're going Virtual

This. Reality is poorly designed. Using it merely as a substrate to compute a superior environment makes a lot of sense.

As a long time Oculus owner, I like that they put the screendoor effect on the video

The shopping/gallery angle is unlikely to work out, because Apple bans third-party stores of all kinds from their App store, and blocks end users from installing native apps from anywhere other than the App store.

Single phone vendor tech is a bit 2012-style. Time to catch up.

I suspect there's a few people out there with iPhones, they'll be ok.

Please note: 3d-printed prototype. I'd say, making a product out of this - instead of, say, an open model on thingiverse - is so 2012.

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