Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

Abrash's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4yEyt5Qes&t=58m53s
Carmack's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7NL5DkVFpc

Is really interesting to hear how their talks have changed on the topic of VR over the last couple years. Back at the 2012 Quakecon, Carmack's keynote was incredibly positive and hopeful sounding about the prospect of VR, while Abrash's talk was very grounded and cautious. Here Abrash seems to glow with optimism, and then Carmack walks out and the first words out of his mouth is his real-talk™ about what doesn't work and what all the problems are (albeit he's specifically talking about their GearVR implementation). Nevertheless, the transition between the two made me laugh out loud. As per usual though, Carmack manages to cover a lot of ground with little jargon and gives a lot of neat insight into their relationship with Samsung.

 

Otoy holographic video recreates Batcave for immersive virtual reality

Samsung Galaxy Gear VR and Oculus Rift users will be among those having a first shot at exploring Batman’s sanctuary from the 1990s animated series.

http://gfxspeak.com/2014/10/08/holographic-recreates-immersive/


http://render.otoy.com/newsblog/?p=641


http://render.otoy.com/newsblog/?p=547

Tommy McClain

 

Alien Isolation on DK2, for strong heart peoples ... need to change some config files..

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/alien-isolation-on-oculus-rift-dk2.html

 

That's just totally insane. I'm gonna wait until the rift is released to pick up this game.

 

What i want to see is the face of the girls and guys who are playing lol...

 

Alien Isolation looks like a pretty solid killer app for the Rift, I'll refrain from playing it until the consumer version is out.

 

It's a shame the game does not support decoupling of hands from "look camera".

 

I think it does it but on a limited way, for sure it is nowhere near the return on DCS flight simulation (A10C, Blackshark2 ) with the head movement of TtrackIR 5 ..

This said, this is typically a game style who look to be nearly made as a demo of how immersive can be the Occulus, at a point that it could be part of marketing launch for it. But the game have not been developped for it, just it bring an relative compatibility for it.

 

Not sure where to post this.

http://vrfocus.com/archives/8011/magic-leap-secures-542-million-funding-tech-will-transcend-vr/

 

I tried the Rift DK2 a few days ago. It certainly is an improvement on the DK1 in latency/responsiveness. Unfortunately the resolution is still far from sufficient, and I'm starting to think that even 2560×1440 might not be enough.

 

Since you have tried both of them, what do you think of the simulation bellow?
http://vr.mkeblx.net/oculus-sim/
Is it anywhere close to what the dev kits look like when it comes to screen door effect?

 

I've been lucky to use dk1 ,2 and cresent bay. I can tell you that cresent bay looks better (I used it about 3 months ago) than the CV1 shown on that site but not as good as the 4k option . I'd put DK2 at about 1080p and the gear vr at the cv1

 

It's hard to say because I've only tried each model for a few minutes, but I'd say it looks about right.

 

Thanks guys!
The CV1 option looks like a nice entry point for VR. If they manage that and get the latency low enough, I think that the future will look bright for Oculus.

 

HTC Vive, made in cooperation with Valve, so apparently Valve's VR-headset will be HTC VR-headset, or the same device will be marketed under 2 names.

Dev edition will get out to markets during spring, end user version later this year

edit:
Valve will use HTC's VR-headsets at GDC.
When paired with two Steam VR -base stations, the user can move within 15x15 feet area freely and the movements will translate into VR-game. There will be motion sensing controllers for each hand, which position is also being tracked.
The VR-headset doesn't include headphones, but instead has 3,5mm jack for your own headphones/headset

Each eye has 1200x1080 pixels at 90Hz, so total resolution is 2400x1080. The set is said to be free of motionsickness

 

I guess that huge resolution wouldn't make sense on a console, so Valve/HTC developed a VR headset that will need a powerful PC to be fully taken advantage of.
I'm starting to predict lots of people with dual card setups for VR. Me included

 

2400x1080p isn't a large leap up from 1920x1080p. Going from 60fps to 90fps shouldn't be that big of a deal either. I'm going to guess that the cards out in the fall might make short work of the spec.

My fear is that while the rumors point to the headset costing $300 the 2 base stations and the controllers could bring the cost way up. We don't know whats in the base stations.

I'm also worried about weight. This has two screens which requires to boards to drive them. The dk2 is about the heaviest I could handle and even that makes my neck tired after an hour or so.

 

Has 2 screens been confirmed instead of 1 2400x1080?

 

well this is what htcvr.com says
The Visuals
A 1,200 by 1,080 pixel screen in front of each eye, with refresh rates of a blistering 90 frames per second, displays photorealistic imagery that fills your field of vision in all directions, eliminating the jitter common to previous VR technologies and transporting you to another world.

 

Vive impressions from Jon Olick:

The future is going to be interesting.