Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[Shifty Geezer]

What's the quality actually going to be like on that $500 machine?

In other words, it calculates where your head was in previous frames to project a synthetic image every other frame. This allows an app to run at 45 real frames per second, with synethic frames being used to then bring it back to the Oculus minimum standard of 90fps.

Is that a good enough solution, or is it is a low-ball target that won't provide the minimum quality VR really needs for the sake of a nicer headline price-point?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

After all that discussion about Oculus chosing headphones because according to some it was better than earphones for virtual surround... turns out that Oculus themselves have declared that earphones are better, by launching an earphone upgrade.

http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-announces-49-earphones-accessory-for-rift-launching-december-6th/

So now we have HTC/Valve, Oculus and Sony all using earphones for VR. Is there any lingering doubt that earphones are better because then the sound waves don't have to go through the outer ears which are different for each person?

What's the quality actually going to be like on that $500 machine?Is that a good enough solution, or is it is a low-ball target that won't provide the minimum quality VR really needs for the sake of a nicer headline price-point?

Asynchronous Timewarp is what Playstation VR's processing box does, and the overall performance of the lower-end PC version is just a tad higher to what you'll find in the original Playstation 4. The PS4 only has to render 2MPx whereas a GTX 960 (or R9 285/380?) renders 3.6MPx. The PS4 doesn't need to dedicate GPU compute power to do async timewarp, but I don't know how much that taxes the GPU.

That said, I think these lower hardware specs will simply result in a similar VR experience to the PSVR with the original PS4.
Though the PS4 Pro should be able to provide a substantially better experience IMO.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sony doesn't allow warping from 45 to 90 fps. There must be a reason for that. (?) Also PSVR games are targeting PS4, whereas I imagine OVR games are targeting a much higher spec and you just scale things back to run on this or other low spec machines, which probably has a notably inferior QA.

I think this smacks of forcing a lower entry price perhaps to compete with PSVR+PS4. It'll be very interesting to see how the quality compares and whether the fixed hardware targets for Sony allow better utilisation and results or not.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Sony doesn't allow warping from 45 to 90 fps.

Do you have a source for that? I was pretty sure they do.

I think this smacks of forcing a lower entry price perhaps to compete with PSVR+PS4.

Except the VR experience of a $500 PC + $650 Rift will probably pale in comparison to a $400 PS4 Pro + $400 PSVR (+ $50 camera).

 

[MrFox]

Sony doesn't allow warping from 45 to 90 fps. There must be a reason for that. (?) Also PSVR games are targeting PS4, whereas I imagine OVR games are targeting a much higher spec and you just scale things back to run on this or other low spec machines, which probably has a notably inferior QA.

I think this smacks of forcing a lower entry price perhaps to compete with PSVR+PS4. It'll be very interesting to see how the quality compares and whether the fixed hardware targets for Sony allow better utilisation and results or not.

I'm wondering if there's a reasonable corellation with performance target where:
PS4 ~= OculusLite (whatever it becomes)
PS4 Pro ~= Oculus Ready PC

So maybe the tweaking necessary would be simple for developers. VR platforms are all over the place, a third party wanting reasonable sales will need to target a lot of platforms so any corellated target would be very welcome. They obviously did this between Rift and Vive, maybe they can do the same for a lower target.

It does look like a more elaborate warping than what sony does. If we consider PSVR is using a simpler reprojection to double frame rate, and reconstruction to increase resolution, as two separate things... this is different because it's a step further with reconstruction for complete frames?

Do you have a source for that? I was pretty sure they do.

The developers presentations for PSVR repeatedly said it. They also warned devs they will reject any game that doesn't hit consistently 60fps before reprojection.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The developers presentations for PSVR repeatedly said it. They also warned devs they will reject any game that doesn't hit consistently 60fps before reprojection.

You're right. The system either supports 120Hz from reprojected / async timewarped 60Hz or direct 90Hz.
Seems a bit too demanding to require 60FPS minimum, when 45 FPS + reprojection could be done. through their hardware.

 

[MrFox]

You're right. The system either supports 120Hz from reprojected / async timewarped 60Hz or direct 90Hz.
Seems a bit too demanding to require 60FPS minimum, when 45 FPS + reprojection could be done. through their hardware.

Supposedly 45 reprojected to 90 causes too much artifacts. What Oculus is presenting now is something more elaborate which deals with the the artifacts by doing much more than just compensating the head rotation.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

What Oculus is presenting now is something more elaborate which deals with the the artifacts by doing much more than just compensating the head rotation.

Do you know exactly what the PSVR is doing to make the claim that Oculus' is doing something more elaborate?
Would a custom IC that simply has a sound DSP + social screen display + 720p30Hz H264 encoding really need active cooling?


Where can I read about this "much more", BTW? Everything I read about ASW just looks a whole lot like ATW..

Today we are announcing support for Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW), which was designed by Oculus to complement ATW and enhance its effectiveness. It works by comparing previously rendered frames to detect motion between them, and using that information to extrapolate the position of scene components in the next frame. This allows re-projected frames to more accurately approximate how they would look if they had been fully rendered.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PSVR just offsets the display based on head rotation. Leadbetter talks about in the DF analysis of PSVR. It's simple, but it works on the whole as artefacts are kept the very periphery. ASW could be doing more, but it most take a reasonable amount of processing to be a non-trivial projection. I'm not sure that it's something Sony would have not considered, but it could also be that originally 90 Hz wasn't going to be supported. So perhaps they stuck to something simple that'd work at 60 Hz, and maybe a fancier reprojection at 45 Hz will be an option? Let Oculus trial it!

 

[hughJ]

ASW seems to be doing not just buffer interpolation on head orientation and translation, but also per-object interpolation. This is a different beast than the translation timewarp we saw a year ago in the Oculus SDK. This is why they're able to do 45Hz -> 90Hz without the heavy scene juddering that's visible on Vive (very noticeable with hand controller movement).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If it's that effective, it could be used for 2D framerate upsampling. We still don't have much of that going on.

 

[hughJ]

In particular I could see something like that being useful for the 120Hz+ monitors, especially as things move to 165Hz and beyond. As to whether or not up-framing 45->60Hz on a traditional display would be desirable given the potential artifacts and scene specific limitations, I don't know. I suspect that this is still being viewed as a performance insurance for dips below 90Hz rather than something that's intended to enable routine 45fps VR. Having geometric artifacting on scene objects is preferable to having them judder/ghost across your view, but it's still not ideal.

edit: I'd also be curious to see who owns this technique and whether software patents will prevent it from finding its way outside of Oculus-based products.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm thinking upframing 30 > 60. I don't think anyone's done that in a released game since that Star Wars concept video way back. The push to develop the technique for VR may
(hopefully) feed back into 2D rendering solutions too.

 

[Zeross]

Asynchronous Timewarp is what Playstation VR's processing box does, [...]The PS4 doesn't need to dedicate GPU compute power to do async timewarp, but I don't know how much that taxes the GPU.

Nope that's incorrect, async timewarp is done on the GPU as an async compute job on the PS4.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Nope that's incorrect, async timewarp is done on the GPU as an async compute job on the PS4.

That's what I read from eurogamer too, but the box has to be doing something more than just the sound and social display. We have 28nm fanless SoCs with practically the same capabilities as a PS3, but this thing needs a fan?

 

[orangpelupa]

That's what I read from eurogamer too, but the box has to be doing something more than just the sound and social display. We have 28nm fanless SoCs with practically the same capabilities as a PS3, but this thing needs a fan?

its probably just overclocked VITA SoC...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

After all that discussion about Oculus chosing headphones because according to some it was better than earphones for virtual surround... turns out that Oculus themselves have declared that earphones are better, by launching an earphone upgrade.

http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-announces-49-earphones-accessory-for-rift-launching-december-6th/

So now we have HTC/Valve, Oculus and Sony all using earphones for VR. Is there any lingering doubt that earphones are better because then the sound waves don't have to go through the outer ears which are different for each person?

Nothing there is claiming that the audio quality will be better than the included ear pads.

The company claims to have tested these Earphones against a similar pair priced at $900 and says that they were comparable in audio quality.

They compared it to more expensive ear buds, not on ear or over ear headphones.

As I've stated previously there are some advantages to ear buds, assuming you have a proper fit and they have form fitting buds (versus plastic). And one of those is noise isolation which is roughly comparable to over ear headphones. And that is what Oculus are stating as the purpose for releasing these optional ear buds. Noise isolation to aid immersion for people that live somewhere with very high ambient noise. Blocking out that ambient noise should help to increase the subjective quality of the sound as there would be less background noise interfering.

If you don't live somewhere with high ambient noise, the ear buds will likely be a downgrade in sound quality. Though again, as I've mentioned many people probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. To your average person audio quality of 50 USD headphones sounds roughly the same as a good pair of 500 USD over ear headphones in casual use.

Regards,
SB

 

[hughJ]

There were talks made by Oculus audio engineers from last year that discussed the differing internal opinions on closed vs open headphones and the trade-offs with them, so it's not too surprising that they chose to release an alternate headphone option for those that want greater isolation without requiring a supra-aural closed headphone cup that their existing headstrap assembly probably couldn't accommodate anyways.

 

[eastmen]

There were talks made by Oculus audio engineers from last year that discussed the differing internal opinions on closed vs open headphones and the trade-offs with them, so it's not too surprising that they chose to release an alternate headphone option for those that want greater isolation without requiring a supra-aural closed headphone cup that their existing headstrap assembly probably couldn't accommodate anyways.

That's not all they released. They opened up the platform for anyone to make headphones for it.

I have to say the best part of the rift over my vive is the headphones. They sound great and are just there . No messing up my headset when putting them on. No stumbling around my desk for them and very additional extra weight oh and one less cord to your head.

 

[hughJ]

Admittedly I've had the Rift ear pieces detached for months now as my play sessions with it tend to be long ones in Elite Dangerous, in which case I'm using either full sized headphones for the big sound, or IEMs for their comfort and isolation. With the Vive I'm almost always using IEMs now as they allow my head to breathe a lot better while moving around.