I wanted to post about this topic and VR, point is, sure the Oculus is going to come out and the spec is going to be a great improvement over the dk2 and we are all going to be in awe with the commercial but.. what's next and importantly as per that Elite and Dangerious HTC Vive experience, "not being a game changer". What is a game changer? Are we going to see huge fields of view increase? Much higher resolution, better lens, even better tracking. I think the answer is some of the above but mainly the below. In 12 to 16 months the Oculus commercial version 2 has no option but to follow up with...Eye tracking. Excellent to see a post on road to vr which explains nicely why its so important and what cool stuff can be done with it. It looks like 2k or even 4k per eye is going to be fine if used with eye tracking and some of the tricks that open up. The future is bright for VR IMHO, but only seriously like the stuff we really want to see in generation 2 VR Huds, first generation are just glorified and refined Dk2's? This is pretty interesting stuff, VR will get pretty flipping awesome once these technologies mesh properly, like sci-fi experience I expect. http://www.roadtovr.com/fove-ceo-yuka-kojima-hits-the-cover-of-forbes-japan/ FOVE CEO Yuka Kojima Hits the Cover of Forbes Japan Fove CEO Yuka Kojima made a splash on the September cover of Forbes Japan. In an issue detailing ‘The Worlds 100 Most Powerful Women’, CEO Yuka Kojima and the Fove headset took the cover story. The Japan-based Fove is creating a VR headset with integrated eye-tracking. Eye-tracking in a VR headset is not a new concept, but Fove is perhaps the first company to be building it in directly at a consumer price point. Accurate eye-tracking in a VR headset could bring a number of benefits. I outlined a few of them in an previous article covering Fove: •Eye-based interface and contextual feedback: Imagine a developer wants to make a monster pop out of a closet, but only when the user is actually looking at it. Or perhaps an interface menu that expands around any object you’re looking at but collapses automatically when you look away. •Simulated depth-of-field: While the current split-screen stereo view familiar to users of most consumer VR headsets accurately simulates vergence (movement of the eyes to converge the image of objects at varying depths) it cannot simulate depth of field (the blurring of out of focus objects) because the flat panel means that all light from the scene is coming from the same depth). If you know where the user is looking, you can simulate depth of field by applying a fake blur to the scene at appropriate depths. •Foveated rendering: This is a rendering technique that’s aimed to reduce the rendering workload, hopefully making it easier for applications to achieve higher framerates which are much desired for an ideal VR experience. This works by rendering in high quality only at the very center of the user’s gaze (only a small region on the retina’s center, the fovea, picks up high detail) and rendering the surrounding areas at lower resolutions. If done right, foveated rendering can significantly reduce the computational workload while the scene will look nearly identical to the user. Microsoft Research has a great technical explanation of foveated rendering in which they were able to demonstrate 5-6x acceleration in rendering speed. •Avatar eye-mapping: This is one I almost never hear discussed, but it excites me just as much as the others. It’s amazing how much body language can be conveyed with just headtracking alone, but the next step up in realism will come by mapping mouth and eye movements of the player onto their avatar. -----Also see: http://www.roadtovr.com/fove-eye-tracking-vr-headset-hands-on-ces-2015/
Title change: Now, 'The VR' thread, to reflect the fact we now have several different VR headsets to choose from.
Eye-tracking is certainly neat, but it's another technology that needs to advance quite a bit from what is currently available before it will be useful for most things. Existing eye tracking can do a pretty good job of avatar eye updating (will still lose some fast eye-flick gestures). It might be just about good enough for gaze-target selection UIs, but unlike in the stationary case you will be moving your head, so the eye tracking system need to be able to cope with high speed head rotations and translations that move the gaze target relative to the eye (i.e. gaze target stationary in world-space coordinates, but whizzing around in eye-space coords). Current eye tracking is not yet low latency enough for optical distortion compensation, and nowhere NEAR fast enough for foveated rendering with acceptable performance to avoid gaze slipping outside the high-res area (or at usefully reduced area size). Simulating depth-of-field is probably doable, but may not be of great importance. Accommodation is related with vergence, but it is not rigidly linked with vergence. At the very least, there are varying spatial and temporal offsets from what the eyes are looking at (the gaze target, that can be measured with eye tracking) and what distance that are focused on. As an example, you may focused on a far object, then track that far object as it moves while your eyes quickly verge onto and off of an intervening near obstacle, without refocussing. If you used gaze target as an assumption of focus intent, then the far object you are watching will suddenly become blurry for no apparent reason. Even measuring multiple Purkinje images doesn't give you a good idea of what the eye is actually focussing on, so you will always be basing your depth of field on a guess. And if you guess wrong, you have just artificially blurred the view of the user. This is somewhere where Oculus's 'constellation' tracking cameras might come in handy in pushing down the price and size of sufficiently fast machine vision cameras, and possibly advancing commodity on-board processing.
WAY too early to tell if there even is a difference. - Neither have had independent comparative tests of the final designs (Valve/HTC have not even unveiled the final design yet; and Oculus have only been demoing Crescent bay, not CV1, and the two are not identical) - Very few have tried both Oculus Touch and the Vive with controllers (and again, either are final designs) - In terms of tracking, displays, and optics, the current devkits are near identical. Primary differences are in terms of software support and backend API choices. Valve are using strict masking to limit pixel draw, but do not use any sort of timewarp. Oculus are using Timewarp (both synchronous and asynchronous) which prevents the strict masking (because the view may change) but minimises the latency between IMU sample and viewpoint update. Then you have game compatibility. This will likely remain unknown until both headsets are available for general purchase, so if you can only afford one then pre-ordering is as stupid a decision as ever. Oculus are directly funding development of several games, so those will be exclusive (at launch, they may be ported to other headsets later) to the Rift. Valve are using SteamVR to make a 'HMD agnostic' API, but there's no guarantee that this will not result in degraded performance (either through the extra call translation layer, or through lack of implemented functions like TimeWarp). tl;dr. Both will be excellent for first-gen consumer VR headsets. If you can only afford one (along with the REQUIRED updates to your PC for sufficient performance) then wait for both to launch to see the available software lineups.
I got to try the Vive twice this weekend. It was really amazing. I'll definitely be purchasing it. I got to try TheBlu, Job Simulator, Tiltbrush, and the Portal Demo. The Secret Shop was not an option probably because of the uncontrolled amount of time it takes (is my guess). Let me know if you have any questions, but here is was my experience. It was not mind blowing or life changing, but definitely game changing. The field of view needs to be increased just a little bit for it to be more immersive, but presence is easily achieved. TheBlu is fun, but doesn't really make use of the controllers. You walk around and wait for the whale to come. The space I was in was a little limited in size, so there were only two points that I could get to where I could look off the bow of the ship. It's a diorama, it's beautiful, and it's a perfect into to VR since you don't have to think about your hands or doing anything at all, but there's no other reason to play it. But any reason I have to criticize it is thrown out by the fact that it's a tech demo. Job Simulator is really fun. There's a moment when I remembered what the devs had said about it, that some people go about the tasks, and others throw stuff around. As soon as I started throwing stuff across the room I laughed out loud. Picking things up in VR just feels right. It's something we do every day. It's easy. And it feels like magic when you get to do it in a virtual space for the first time. Tiltbrush is really compelling. Making things in VR is incredibly enjoyable. I could play Tiltbrush for hours. I see art and creative games/toys as being a really powerful VR concept. I'll be looking for more of those experiences after getting my Vive. The Portal demo is super high fidelity. I wished I could just pause and look at everything up close. Spoiler When Atlas walks in I moved out of the way for him. My brain knows it's fake but it's just habit, you just move when stuff is coming toward you. There's also a psychological trick going on where the Valve guys must know that people make way for people who are hurt. There's also a moment near the end when the floor drops out from beneath you. I stood at the edge of the void and looked over the edge. I know there's a floor there, but it's just instinct. The Portal demo makes me realize that VR is a bit like a thrill ride. Thrill rides make your lizard brain say you're in danger, but your conscious brain says you're fine, so the fear becomes outright fun. VR does that same thing. You can look over a void and get vertigo. Things can fly past your head, but you still know it's safe, so you giggle and smile.
when in the vive did you consider how it would impact games like star citizen and get a feeling for how cool it would be for the top teir games implemented in it? flight sims, driving etc what would you give the dk2 out of ten? what would you give the vive out of ten? if you tried the dk1, and the dk2 and know the leap from dk1 to dk2, how much more of a jump up is the vive from the dk2, so is it as huge a leap up. waiting for the vive, I think a lot of us have high hopes for it, so we expect to be totally blown away, was you blown away totally and felt that the experience lived up to the hyper completely, a reasonable amount or just a little. was you completely immersed? what game would you most like to see in the vive?
I talked to a guy while waiting in line who runs a VR meetup/dev group in Philly. He owns everything you can get so far. He was talking about how good the dk2 is in terms of tracking and what a difference that made to his games. To the point of your question, he said that he has a flight sim yoke and pedals, but when playing a flight sim game he noticed his avatar was manipulating dual joysticks and that it threw him off. Not to the point of getting sick, but he said it was "weird." So I think we'll see a bunch of games and peripherals come out that have multiple ways of tracking the user's hands or representing different control schemes within a single game, but if it's done right it should be pretty amazing. I've heard accounts of racing games where people become scared of crashing where they were super daring when playing on a normal monitor. Presence is very real. I haven't tried the dk2. Palmer Luckey said, "wait for CV1" and that's what I've been doing. Now I'll be getting a Vive. Sorry, Palmer. I'd give the Vive an 8 or 9. There's a bit of a ski goggle effect that's either from the LCD limiting FOV or the HMD itself blocking my view of the LCD. The FOV is good, great even, but I never really forgot about the "blinders" on the side of my face. I'm used to playing with triple monitors and a huge FOV in games, so I may be spoiled as it is. I will say that VR > eyefinity for sure, but you give up resolution and FOV (for now). I can't say from my own experience, but the guy right behind me in line came out of his demo and said he couldn't go back to dk2 after the demo. He was completely sold on everything about the Vive. He's a total fan of VR and already owns everything else, so for him to be as convinced as he was says something about just how good the Vive is. I've been following VR pretty closely since the Rift Kickstarter. I don't think my expectations could have been any higher. I've been hyped up by youtube videos and articles and reviews and other people's accounts for all this time. The experience didn't bring me to tears, not even close. But I did giggle a few times and I'm sure I had a big dumb grin on my face the whole time. I would say my unreasonably high expectations were met handily. I had committed to buying an HMD of some kind. I was 90% sure it would be the Vive, and the demo changed that to 99% sure. The only thing that would change my mind now is if Valve-time kicked in and the Vive somehow became vaporware. If six months from now people are playing with all the fun Oculus toys and HTC/Valve have dropped the ball, I'll switch camps. But for now I'm all in for the Vive. I can honestly say that I've been more immersed with my eyefinity setup. But I've never felt presence before trying the Vive. I looked over the side of the ship in TheBlu and felt vertigo. When Atlas walked in I moved out of the way for him. When the floor fell out from beneath me I stood at the edge and leaned out to look down into the abyss. All that is to say that some part of my primal brain is responding much more naturally to VR than it ever did to even the highest fidelity game I had tried before. I can't stress enough that immersion and presence aren't the same. I didn't understand that (not really) until I tried the Vive. I thought presence was immersion turned up to 11, but it's something else. As for what games I want to see . . . idk. Not Halflife 3. If anything, the Vive convinced me that I don't want to play Halflife 3 like I do any of the demos. I wan't HL3 more than anything but I'd be at least a little disappointed if it were a VR experience. Don't get me wrong. When I get an HMD I'll go back and explore City 17 and the wastelands for sure. I want to explore and "be in" that space. The Portal demo is amazing for that. But what Halflife has always been wouldn't translate well as an experience designed for VR. So what do I want for VR? Idk. Creative games. Games I can play with friends in the same room as me like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. I see VR as being very social. Remember Wii parties in 06 and 07? It'll be like that, at least for the next few years. I also see "escape the room" games being a very good genre for the new medium.
oct 20th? HTC Says ‘wait and see’ on Consumer Vive Reveal for October Event http://vrfocus.com/archives/23449/htc-says-wait-on-see-on-consumer-vive-reveal-for-october-event/
I'm thinking that's going to be it. This was posted to Reddit tonight as well. Rumor of full length Portal experience in VR. I'm pretty sure there won't be portals in it, though. At least not portals your avatar travels through at speed. Also, it's just a single source rumor right now.
Probably best to contain your hype for now. Vive reps are generally HTC employees or contractors rather than Valve employees. No less high a personage than the chairwoman of HTC previously 'confirmed' HL3 was being worked on for the Vive, before clarifying that this was not true.
I completely agree. It's contained for sure. But after the demo I definitely think it would be the right IP for a VR puzzle game.
there are going to be some amazing cinematic and gaming moments, peak VR experiences the other day in elite dangerous CqC, the map with the glowing sun in the distance, I navigated in between the floors of a skeletal infrastructure station and looked out over to the left from inside the building, listening to the changing space station sounds that were intermixed with my very slight throttle corrections so as to remain in place, it felt spooky, adult, a great sense of SCI FI, I was really captured by the moment, I was completely impressed, It was the silence coupled with the beauty of the landscape, distance, powerful radiating light of the sun/star and ability to fly into that spot and see the nice view like that. This HTC vive just has to come out already, I'm starting to pine for a first gen VR HUD I don't mind admitting it. One question I have is, I was impressed with the optic lens shape with the cresent bay, they were not round buy alien eyes shaped or what ever, not sure the term. Do we know if the HTC vive has those non round lens which enhance the viewing experience? notice the lens shape is not round
I might as well straight come out and ask it. Any one think the VIVE will be available on ebay the same way the dk2's Any moral objections to purchasing and paying an extra £100 on ebay to ensure its had before xmas in time for elites patch.?
The demo unit had circular lenses, but they were almost like fresnel lenses. They definitely weren't smooth. I think this helps cut down on screen door effect and/or thin the lenses. But who knows what changes will come to the consumer version. That's definitely one part of the design that isn't nailed down yet (unlike refresh rate and resolution).
The current Vive devkit uses clipped circular lenses. The pitch of the integrated fresnel lens is courser than the lenses used in CV1, but the Vive is also a non-final design. As far as I can tell, the purpose of the clipped upper sections on CV1's lenses is weight reduction. While that area could physically interfere with your brow ridge, the lenses are stepped back far enough to accommodate glasses so that is likely not an issue.
edzieba, from your understaning, which vr hud would you recommend to purchase? Most people wont buy both i expect, ideally oculas would hit the market first then it makes it a no brainer. As is huge amount will not wait and clamber for the vive. Which headset should we be most excited about, i vote oculas but will be gettting the vive.
I can tell you right now, his answer will be wait and see. Anyone making recommendations right now is giving out bad information, simple as that.
From the least biased sources I've seen (Tested for one), Rift CV1 and the Vive are essentially equal in terms of VR experience. So recommendations are going to come from other things we know. 1. Release date. 2. Exclusives (or lack of exclusives). 3. The controllers (which we know quite a bit about) 4. Which tech platform do you think will be best in the long run? If you care about 1. then get whatever comes out first. They're about equal otherwise. If you care about 2. then get the one with the games you want or boycott or whatever. If you care about 3. then get the controllers you like most. (This you'll actually need to wait for.) Point 4. is the most important in the long run in my opinion. The Vive lighthouses are scalable, meaning the play area could be scaled to the size of a football pitch if desired (Although you'd be dragging a cord around with you, so I'm not suggesting this.) But we've seen 4 Vives running off just two base stations. Valve's system scales easily with low computational overhead. The Rift platform, with a camera as the tracking input, will not scale the same way. Adding more cameras to eliminate occlusion or increase play area will overload the CPU quickly. Same goes for adding headsets. However, I see Oculus' tracking as having the potential to track hands without any sort of controllers in the future, similar to the Kinect, which the Vive will not be able to do. In this way the two systems have drawn a line in the 10-20 year sand. We'll see which system works best as the tech progresses.
