First Look at the Rift, Shipping Q1 2016
oculus.com
oculus.com
If you've been playing with the DK1 or DK2, the consumer version is fundamentally better. Do not assume you know what the state of the art is until you've gotten your hands on a preview. I don't know exactly what the resolution differences are, and I don't care - it's not the relevant spec to compare. It's gotten to the point where resolution is "good enough" to trick the mind and anyone who says otherwise is bikeshedding. They've gotten the screen door effect under control. With head tracking implemented and drift solved as a side effect, two huge problems are gone. Their low-latency head tracking stops people from feeling nauseated like they did with DK1. I could barely stand without wanting to vomit after playing the Doom demo. The only game I could play for any length of time was a simple platform jumping game called Rift Rush.
I don't know what they consider their largest hurdles, but from my perspective the hardware/software problems are solved for now and they need excellent made-for-VR content. When done well, the effect is stunning - in one of that calmer, more exploration-oriented demos I just stared at the light glinting off a metal bowl as I moved around it for at least 30 seconds.
But the difference between "good" and "mind blowing" was often the result of things that nobody has thought about before. In the movie-like demos, sometimes I missed things because I had my back to the action. In VR movies, the user controls the camera and needs to be told where to look; that's a problem nobody making movies has ever faced before. Even Pixar's demo suffered from this - the action was too spread out for the screen's field of view.
Otherwise I'm with you. Positional tracking was the thing that really made it awesome for me. There are so many tiny head movements that you make when you're looking around; if positional tracking isn't pretty much 100%, then it just feels wrong.
That said, I think Crescent Bay would help to solve the problem.
If you're targeting a game or other application for VR (and assuming generally similar hardware to DK2 or whatever), there are a lot of design decisions you can make to improve the experience. Something as simple as using larger text goes a long way. Color choices help, as does less focus on lists and menus in favor of gaze-based control.
Then there's the general stuff like "not trying to shoehorn that awesome first-person-shooter style that was so great on 2D screens into VR". Yeah, it's neat to look around in a FPS-style game but whereas seated or less frenetic experiences are gorgeous and immersive, asking someone to run around in first person while actually sitting in a chair is nauseating. I've seen all the omni-treadmills and other workarounds and I appreciate the way people are trying to engineer solutions but I feel like it misses the point. Some things just work well in VR while other things require a lot of tradeoffs or addons.
It's natural pixel style makes you not notice the resolution at all, and all of the text is large, and easy to read. The cube nature also really makes me aware of the 3D, which is nice.
It doesn't do anything to deal with the FPS/nausea problem, though I don't react very poorly to playing an FPS in the rift as long as it uses a keyhole style control with the mouse (half-life 2 is a prime example of that).
One other thing I like about minecraft on the rift is that it really shows off the true blacks you can get with the OLED display. It smears a bit, but it's still really rad to look into a mine shaft and have it fade to actual darkness (not sure if the consumer version is planning for OLED off hand).
I definitely agree that it'll be cool when game shops start really thinking about building their games for VR, and that they can work around VR weaknesses.
Weird scaling is another issue, when something was scaled to look right from 2D on a screen, but drops the ball in VR. I played Skyrim using Vireo and the mountains ended up looking like glorified hills, heh.
Another funny issue I had was playing Alien Isolation. VR made it super obvious that looking out through a spaceship window into "space" was actually looking at a black wall about twenty ft away.
Looking forward to wherever VR goes, either way.
The DK2 is pretty close, but if you use it a lot the tracking isn't good enough as are the screen resolution and the refresh rate.
All these problems have been addressed so it should be great!
It seems like there are still plenty of challenges to solve with VR devices. John Carmack recently spoke [1] at the University of Texas at Dallas and mentioned that designing for VR is all about tradeoffs--hardware just isn't powerful enough to reach the ideal combination of resolution, framerate, etc.
He also talked about how to design media to work well with the current generation of VR devices. For example he said to avoid accelerating the user, because this commonly causes users to feel sick (due to mismatch between what your eyes and inner ear are telling your brain). Moving at a constant velocity is fine.
Or more importantly, I was hoping to read why I should still care when Valve's offering is planned to come out this year and is supposedly the bee's knees.
"A developer edition is set to launch this spring, with the consumer version becoming available "later in 2015", which we guess means the same November release window as the other Steam kit."
http://www.wareable.com/vr/htc-vive-vr-headset-release-date-...
Yeah I don't think they would abandon the series but the way valve works it seems to me they never really cared about pairing it up unless it's something they have to do (like source). Meaning it wouldn't be any type of forced pairing.
* They have an input solution and will reveal it in the next couple of weeks
* The have improved the tracking and will now officially recommend standing experiences.
All in all, a Q1 release date is somewhat sad but in the big picture it won't matter.
One other takeway from this release, is that we will _probably_ be expecting technical specifications and details come E3. At least, it's alluded to.
The fact that the Vive very openly was advertising a stand-and-walk-around experience may have helped convince Oculus that the risk of litigation was outweighed by the need to not be giving a sense of inferior hardware.
But...the early investor of Oculus is also the CEO, and he apparently has the weakest stomach for VR of anyone at the company. The hard line seems to have been set entirely by him.
Doom and Quake both made many people nauseous. So do rollercoasters, 3D movies, and Telsa Roadsters. There's no reason to eliminate experiences that most people can thoroughly enjoy. Fortunately, the fun camp seems to have won finally.
This is also why I see Sony having great success with its Morpheus headset. The PS4 is cheap as-is ($399) and if you already own one, its a no-brainer to go with their product. I'd be really surprised if Oculus ever goes mainstream. It still looks like an uber-nerds hobbyist toy like a, say, 3D printer, which technophiles have been telling us for years would be mainstream by now and in "every kitchen."
Carmack isn't stupid. He didn't sell to Zuck because he thought he'd be moving 10's of millions of product every year. He sold to Zuck because he knew that the shipping date doesn't really change things for Oculus. Its still a very rough road to mainstream acceptance and economic competitiveness. I can afford $299 for the headset, but I'm not interested in buying a super gaming box to make it work. Nor am I interested in being a beta tester for a technology known to be a bit wonky, cause motion sickness, have questionable 3rd party support, and Facebook ownership/integration/driver and API's TOS.
This is what on top of what Valve is doing, which may just steal Carmack's thunder as they have everything they need to make this work: the store, no relationship with unrelated businesses like social networking, large customer base, community goodwill, game publisher relationships, a decade plus in the game selling world, etc. If both the Valve set and the Oculus set go for $299, I can't think of any reason to even consider the Oculus.
In terms of specs I'd buy a GPU with at least a 3TF performance, and even that it's probably going to be "mediocre" for the next 2 years. 2TF should work, too, but might not last you too long, especially for new games. Obviously, the higher the performance the better, so if you can afford to pay thousands of dollars for a gaming rig knock yourself out. It will last longer.
You might also want to keep some accessories in mind, such as the Virtualix Omni or those full body controllers, which could cost you an extra thousand dollars.
I don't think a lot of people interested in this technology realize how much hardware they will need to buy to make this work. You're looking, at minimum, a $400-500 graphic card. Assuming you have the CPU heft to handle everything else. If not then there's another $400-500 for the chasis, mb, high-end cpu, high-watt ps, fast 8-16gb of RAM, etc. And that's for a fairly mid to low-end VR box. That could be $1000 out of pocket right there on top of whatever the Oculus costs.
It's also worth considering whether new games that come out will take VR into account in terms of graphical complexity. If it's clear VR is a viable marketing strat for a game or it gets to a point where big games are expected to support it, it could mean a developer will compromise scene complexity for it. I'm okay with that.
For example, just last night I played a game of Supreme Commander. That was one of the first games I know of that supported dual monitors, and it does it well. But I digress- the point is that I had it maxed out on two 1080p monitors and it was running at 60fps the whole time.
So yes, you will need a big beefy expensive graphics card to play the newest AAA games maxed out at 60fps. But you could always just turn the settings down, or play older games. I'm also willing to bet that when the VR market takes off later this year/early next year, that the indie scene will heartily embrace it. And typically most of those games run fine on "normal" hardware.
I'm not buying a VR headset in 2016 to play a game from 2007.
Bottom line is that a real VR product ships in less than 12 months.
My experience was very smooth and playable for hours. On a Mac. With laptop graphics. I'd definitely build a machine around a 980 next, but the tech is perfectly accessible.
If anything your sub-par experience is proof that I'm correct. Without excellent hardware, the experience is terrible. Just because "it kinda worked" doesn't mean its going to sell or impress anyone.
I also never said the experience was terrible or "kinda worked." Quite the opposite, in fact, I rather enjoyed it even at a lower quality because I understand the limitations of things. Outside of Lave I stayed right at 70fps and could turn my head from left to right without even a millisecond of delay. It was actually the most fun I've ever had in PC gaming. But you're right, because I didn't have everything turned up to maximum, I should rethink my enjoyment.
But I don't have a PS4. What I do have is a solid, modern computer since I need one for all sorts of work and play situations. I can either spend $400-500 on a PS4 and any typical addons or I can spend $400-500 on a powerful graphics card for my computer. And with graphics cards, performance goes up and price comes down every year.
The other angle I'd need to consider is what you can do with the whole package (computer + Rift or PS4 + Morpheus). Morpheus will work on the PS4 and I'll be able to buy PS4 content to use with the Morpheus. The Rift will work on any capable computer and I can either buy games/content from Steam or from other sellers or I can go to Oculus Share and download all sorts of experiments and demos and games from all sorts of developers. I can even fire up the free version of UE and start building environments to walk around in via the Rift immediately. The power to create and share content shouldn't be underrated, especially at this early stage.
I think that in 5-10 years time, if this hasn't gone the way of 3D TV (something cool and easy to find but ultimately not that big a deal), the costs will be low enough and content will be abundant enough that it won't matter whether you use a black box under the TV or a silver box under your desk. But during this early time in the market, access to demos and creative tools will be a big deal.
When someone develops a VR teleconferencing app with depth cameras and live streaming, the betas and first release won't be on some Sony or Microsoft game console. They'll be on Windows, OSX, and Linux. When you want to use a sweet HOTAS for your VR flight simulator or enable VR support in the config of some new game, you won't be able to do that on a Playstation or Xbox.
All that stuff is more than enough to get me to lean toward a $500 GPU upgrade over a $400 console purchase. I think until VR stuff isn't early adopter/enthusiast territory by definition, the more packaged solutions will be lacking. Once it's commonplace, it'll be more a question of ergonomics like PC/console gaming is now.
We live in a truly incredible time.
I hope input is good. I trust that the VR will be good, but input, need good input.
hard plastic frame,
eye tracking,
blood circulation
the lack of eye tracking really disrupts the experience. Look around the place you are in right now, but keep your eyes straight only moving your neck as you move from object to object. The movements are awkward and feel like a retrofuture automaton. Now look around casually and notice how often you utilise the movement of the eyeball. ( unable to tell at this moment if there is any extra hardware in the mask )
as for the blood circulation if i wore the dk2 for more than 20m and took it off to look in the mirror the area around my eyes was white for want of blood and highlighted by the red marks where the mask was pressed against my face. ( the images show the same face pressing frame )
i had many more issues with the dk2, but these three seemed to me to be confirmation proofs that the direction digital stereoscopy is going in is innately flawed
a constructive alternative would be digital stereoscopy that uses eye tracking to measure pupillary distance and the pupils' direction vector in order to create a scene ad hoc, or virtual reality through direct sensory manipulation
An interesting implementation would be virtually working from a beach or sitting on top of a colorado 14er. Just have a table fan sending randomized breeze your way. :)
There is potential to re-imagine programming, but I have no clue how.
Also, keyboard input is not very compatible with HMD. I guess brain interfaces are the most promising, but why can't we just tap into my pinky's nerve and train my brain to use that as output?
The only real issue is that until you've got some sort of passthrough, even a good touch-typist will find themselves peeking out under the HMD every so often. It's really best for messing with programs that are more GUI/mouse driven.
I mostly just use it as an easy way to watch 3D movies in the Rift but it's got potential.
And on the topic of games vs. everything else, I really do think that while games will be the initial focus, they won't be the final say. I'm more looking forward to VR "movies" where you feel like you're in the room with the action or VR telepresence where a few webcam-sized depth cameras are set up around the room at each end so a live, 3d reconstruction of an environment can be sent over networks and allow you to visit other locations or have "VR Skype" calls. That stuff will appeal to a much more general audience than the games which are the logical first avenue to explore.
Audio synthesis itself, with it's raw waveforms and various modulations, filters and distortions could be brought to life in space around the users. Imagine being able to surround yourself with the signal path. To examine the shape of a sound in 3D space and track it's progression from, for example, a raw sine wave into a layered deep bass line.
Considering how much audio professionals already spend for high quality production environments and the IOS's popularization of unique, small team created software synths... I can't wait.
Korg's mock up of their IOS software Gadget as real objects really gets my imagination going. http://macprovid.vo.llnwd.net/o43/hub/media/1087/8774/korgGa...
http://qz.com/218129/virtual-reality-headset-oculus-rift-mee...
I spend more time in my basement woodworking these days then gaming. So i'll probably buy a hololens, I want to design furniture in 3D while seeing how it will look in the spot that it will eventually "live". I know AR != VR, but if I can only have one, i'll choose AR.
I'm wholly onboard for the headset, the DK2 is a fantastic experience (barring the experience of setting it up and launching applications, which is totally fixable.) Can't wait to see the consumer edition.
I was a bit disappointed (my expectations were ridiculously high going into it though). I was surprised to find (1) the resolution to be quite pixelated and (2) visible black strips of the hardware bordering my viewport.
After usage, both the resolution and the visible hardware were not issues. They "melted" away and I was "immersed".
But I'm curious: is the Rift expected to be higher quality than Gear in this regard?
In my opinion, they've taken a bit too long, and now they have a high likelihood of being dethroned between now and their release date (e.g., Magic Leap, Holo Lens, Gear VR, etc.).
However, John Carmack hinted in a recent keynote on mobile VR[1] that the next version of Gear VR would be promoted widely for all consumers and that it would come out along with the next major Samsung phone release, presumably the Note 5. The Note phones get updated every September.
Microsoft said Holo Lens was coming out this summer - http://bgr.com/2015/05/01/microsoft-hololens-release-date-an...
imagine gripping in-game items, being able to control them as you would with real objects. squeeze to fill the glove pressing back, feel cold/warmth, feel textiles.
Combined with increasingly photorealistic games + VR...we are at the mouth of uncanny valley...it's going to be a very interesting decade.
Maybe we live in a future where people completely abandon their real world life in favor of a virtual one while the appratus in the real world just keeps you alive, very much like Matrix...
Pick any Mid-Range Card and upgrade once you hit a roadblock, that will keep your expenses reasonable while not excluding you from experiences if you deem them necessary.
Of course if you want to experience GTA 5 in this resolution and necessary framerate, thats a whole different matter.
Honestly, I'm impressed you've been able to do a whole lot with it at all. I've got a fairly decent laptop (i7, 16GB RAM, and a mediocre nVidia 760m GPU) and it's still been underwhelming when I hooked the Rift up to it.
Desktop will be much more power for the buck this early in the game. Portable will catch up but you sacrifice some bang for the buck when you get something more optimized for portability and battery life.
Agreed. Wonder what they'll suggest? Prob one with tons of fast memory. I read that most devs are using the new Nvidia 980s because the latency is less.
Don't make it sound like Oculus is more expensive than what gamer already have to pay to get the best experience.
That being said, I'm sure you could play games on the lowest setting without the need for $1000 worth of GPU.
Then again, if you already have a decent GPU you can still do quite a bit. When I got my DK2 it ran many things just fine on an older GPU. I only upgraded to a GTX980 because I hadn't splurged on anything in a while and it helped a lot with un-optimized, demanding programs like Elite: Dangerous. I could have kept using my existing card if I just wanted to mess with less demanding content or make stuff in UE4.
The new PASCAL Nvidia cards will be out and so will the new Intel chips will be releasing this August (with potentially a progression to 7nm next year).
Great news!
You can get a sense of where the Linux support currently stands by looking at share.oculus.com, where third-party developers can submit their games and demos, and you can filter the list by which operating systems they support.
4k is necessary for readable text, ability to watch HD movies and using virtual monitors. Currently the resolution is too low for any of these, as in it works but not good enough for being practical.
Source: Palmer Luckey https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2rayri/hint_that_cr...
Current resolution still not works well with viewing virtual screens e.g. movies, virtual desktops and text. I think this is much more important as it increases practicality of the device.