Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[Deleted member 13524]

I didn't see the highlighted text with the link.
Still too expensive though.

I'm waiting to see reviews of this:

http://www.gearbest.com/pc-headset/pp_436489.html

It won CES Asia's best VR Product.

 

[hughJ]

Oculus Touch Controllers to cost £190!! Who the hell is going to target these as the primary interface for their game?

All VR developers will. Oculus first/second party titles naturally will, plus the Vive developer community porting existing content over.

The ~$200 price tag for the two controllers and a camera was about what most people seemed to expect.

The degree to which it allows for "room scale support" is up for debate - I don't expect that the tracking volume will be comparable (in terms of usability or size) to the Vive. I suspect that we'll see native Oculus Touch content predominantly be forward-facing with a smallish volume intended as the play area. The cable lengths for the cameras will make it unwieldy to try and replicate a lighthouse setup where they're positioned in opposing corners of a medium sized room. Plus the FOV of the cameras aren't as expansive as the beam sweep of the lighthouse, so you're not going to get the same sort of corner to corner room coverage.

 

[manux]

Oculus touch controllers are expensive but I hope it also means that is as highend as it needs to get and future is just making the same/similar technology cheaper. It would be unfortunate to release something now and have it be obsolete in couple of years.

Oculus touch controllers should be rather similar as htc vive controllers from functionality pov. Probably many games will work with similar codebase without needing to specifically target oculus touch. Similarly games originally designed ps move/vr stuff should just work(better) on oculus touch.

In near future we might have controller wars similarly we have fps and pixel counting debates. This game works this much better/more accurate with that controller but,... and so on.

 

[Billy Idol]

On my case after trying Vive and rift games yesterday, the nausea persist in the next day.

Really? That is a shocker! I thought that with the new tec, you don't get motion sickness anymore...

 

[Kaotik]

Really? That is a shocker! I thought that with the new tec, you don't get motion sickness anymore...

It's always personal thing, some do, most don't with the Vive and Rift. I myself got only slight nausea which passed in under a minute when I first tried Rift consumer version

 

[Billy Idol]

Ok, I am curious to try it out myself...in a couple of weeks I'll visit my friend, who has a Rift.

 

[cheapchips]

Had a go on a Rift yesterday at one of their 20 minute store demos. In the UK at least, looks like they've trained up reps to chaperone you through the experience. He made sure the fit was good and that I found the lens sweet spot. I don't think I've had good image convergence in 3d before. This was flawless on that front.

The sense of scale in the demo real was great. Since there was little or no text the resolution was fine. The only time it really annoyed me was during The Climb's loading screens. That might change if I owned one.

I don't think I'll be getting a headset for a while. As much as I'd want to play Elite in one, there's other things I'd want to spend the £1000 over the next year (as I'd need a new gfx card to run it as well).


I'd really love a HMD one the cost comes down though.

I would say that while the demos give you an excellent feel for why VR's special, the demos don't give you a clue what you'd play once you're home with it.

 

[orangpelupa]

probably PSVR will be cheapest PC VR headset in term of VR gear cost and the PC spec. Dunno how fast the community will hack together a working driver though.

maybe they can work together with those guys that got their hand on devkit PS4

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Should be easy for those who know what they're doing. Just snoop the (presumably uncompressed) data over the port and piece together the parameters. That's assuming a simple control data in, video data out model.

I reckon a week! I think there'll be a lot of interest because of the low price.

Now getting PC games to target it will be a whole other matter as it'll have to spoof OVR or Vive.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Now getting PC games to target it will be a whole other matter as it'll have to spoof OVR or Vive.

The Pimax 4K already claims Oculus and SteamVR compatibility.
At least for SteamVR it should be relatively straightforward, as Valve already made it very clear they're not interested in stopping other hardware from working with their software.

 

[orangpelupa]

Should be easy for those who know what they're doing. Just snoop the (presumably uncompressed) data over the port and piece together the parameters. That's assuming a simple control data in, video data out model.

I reckon a week! I think there'll be a lot of interest because of the low price.

Now getting PC games to target it will be a whole other matter as it'll have to spoof OVR or Vive.

maybe they can work together with those guys that spoof vive as rift, rift as vive, and cardboard as vive?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The Pimax 4K already claims Oculus and SteamVR compatibility.
At least for SteamVR it should be relatively straightforward, as Valve already made it very clear they're not interested in stopping other hardware from working with their software.

I'm still skeptical on the Pimax 4K. I do like that they increased the resolution from approximately 1k x 1k to approximately 2k x 2k. However, there are no tracking stations. So it relies on internal tracking similar to Gear VR (just 2 gyros). So it's likely to suffer from the same issues with absolutely positioning, drift, etc. The refresh rate on it is also rather ambiguous.

The resolution increase while nice is still not nearly enough, IMO. If it was going for 150-200 USD, I might give it a shot, but not at the current sale price (300 USD). Perhaps after independent reviewers have tried it out and given their impressions it might pique my interest.

Oh and if you use prescription glasses, they've stated that you cannot use glasses with the Pimax 4k in their FAQ.

Regards,
SB

 

[hughJ]

Any company that's willing to sacrifice all aspects of user experience in the name of chasing a resolution specification is just someone trying to exploit consumer ignorance.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I'm still skeptical on the Pimax 4K. I do like that they increased the resolution from approximately 1k x 1k to approximately 2k x 2k. However, there are no tracking stations. So it relies on internal tracking similar to Gear VR (just 2 gyros). So it's likely to suffer from the same issues with absolutely positioning, drift, etc. The refresh rate on it is also rather ambiguous.

The resolution increase while nice is still not nearly enough, IMO. If it was going for 150-200 USD, I might give it a shot, but not at the current sale price (300 USD). Perhaps after independent reviewers have tried it out and given their impressions it might pique my interest.

It's definitely a headset for seated VR (spaceship, planes, car simulators) -> which is why it costs less than half of the others.
Higher pixel density should be great for screen-door effect. And it looks like the refresh rate can be pushed to 90Hz.

Perhaps the market will respond better to a great and inexpensive seated VR experience before a medium-good room-scale experience. Perhaps very few people are willing to spend about $1000 on a room-scale VR where they can trip on the video display + audio cables all the time.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's definitely a headset for seated VR (spaceship, planes, car simulators) -> which is why it costs less than half of the others.
Higher pixel density should be great for screen-door effect. And it looks like the refresh rate can be pushed to 90Hz.

Perhaps the market will respond better to a great and inexpensive seated VR experience before a medium-good room-scale experience. Perhaps very few people are willing to spend about $1000 on a room-scale VR where they can trip on the video display + audio cables all the time.

It's a problem even for seated applications. By using only gyroscopes for positioning, it's possible for "center" to drift. So, for example, if you were to look straight ahead to start. That will always be straight ahead for the Rift and Vive, unless something bugs out. However, for the Pimax, like all phone VR solutions, center will start to drift, so you may end up looking to the left or right in real life to see what is supposedly straight ahead in VR.

My interest in it would be for viewing media, hence why I took a look at it to see if it would be compelling for me. However, for that, I'd want at least 4k x 4k. But if it was at a 150-200 USD price point I might have taken a chance on it.. At that point I don't care too much about the ability for the headset to track absolute positioning of not only where your head is, but the direction you're looking. From a gaming perspective, however, there will be problems, just like there are with Gear VR.

Regards,
SB

 

[MrFox]

They say the max fps is 60, and refresh is 60 sync or 90 async. This is fishy, are they claiming 45->90 reprojection or some 60->90 judderfest?

I'm pessimistic. It either does 90 or it doesn't, there's no reason to require 90 to be async since it's a gpu side problem, nothing to do with the display device.

Can't find info about panel, no mention of oled, probably LCD with pulsed backlight? Pulsed more than once per frame?

Too many red flags. The gaming news so far are looking at this with rose colored glasses (so they see all the red flags as ordinary flag)

 

[hughJ]

"Great" seated VR needs low latency, low persistence displays and positional tracking. This HMD is effectively a DK1 knock-off with a higher resolution display and without the Oculus software stack. Usable consumer VR is not about specs, it's about overall execution. I don't think there's been a single chinese knock-off that's yet to match the usability of the 2+ year old DK2 yet, never mind competing with the recent consumer offerings.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I did a little research and although the headset can actually run at 75Hz according to some users, it also comes with a huge drawback: it uses HDMI 1.4 (duh..).

This means it's limited to 4K 30Hz or, at the manufacturer recommends, 1080p 60/75Hz.
So for games it would behave like a 1080p 75Hz screen but due to the higher pixel density + quadrupling each pixel there's no screen door effect (lots of aliasing though).
For videos/media, 4K/30Hz could be used.

How the hell do you put a 4K 60Hz screen in there and decide to use a HDMI 1.4 cable? What a brainfart..

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well if my interest in it was already low that pretty much made sure whatever there was is non-existent now.

Regards,
SB

 

[manux]

Good stuff from oculus connect. Roomscale option with 3 cameras. Oculus is also working on webvr optimized browser called carmel that works both with rift and gearvr.

Oculus will begin selling stand alone tracking cameras in stores and online which will allow users to build VR spaces as large as their minds can imagine. The cameras will cost $79 each and will be available on December 6th, just like Touch itself.

http://uploadvr.com/iribe-room-scale/

Oculus is developing its very own web browser to support experiences built with React VR. Currently codenamed Carmel, the browser will run on both Gear VR and Oculus Rift and is “fully optimized” for them. Little other information was revealed but Mitchell promised that a developer preview of the browser would be “coming soon”

http://uploadvr.com/carmel-oculus-web-browser-support-webvr/

Entry price is not so horrible anymore
http://uploadvr.com/oculus-finally-...fication-oculus-rift-new-499-oculus-ready-pc/

The controllers will cost $199 and ship on December 6th.

http://uploadvr.com/oculus-touch-price-release-date/

Teasing a video showing a modified Rift, completely wireless with a additional module on the back, Zuckerberg maintains that the next step, between mobile solution Gear VR and cable-bound solution Rift that it will be “a stand alone virtual reality product that is high quality, that is affordable and that you can bring with out into the world.”

http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-working-on-inside-out-tracking-for-stand-alone-vr-headset-breaking/