Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

There's no universally agreed-upon definition of virtual reality, but it usually revolves around the feeling of presence. Since presence is not a binary parameter, neither is VR. Various situations generate various degrees of presence (which further vary on an individual basis) and the precise point where you might place a cut-off between "VR" and "not-VR" is somewhat arbitrary.

But if you use an HMD as a simple stereoscopic display, then there's very little difference between that and regular stereoscopic gaming, which is almost never called VR.

 

For a wide FOV HMD, head tracking needs to be there in some form. If you're wanting a giant virtual screen then the virtual screen needs to be suspended in 3D space and subject to head tracking. There's nothing more jarring in VR than losing head tracking and having a splash screen or a game world suddenly become locked to your face. Even if you tried to keep your head perfectly still and play some sort of F1 simulator you would still need head tracking to match all the subtle adjustments your head is still capable of doing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibulo–ocular_reflex

 

I have use head tracking, TrackIR system during years.. It was perfect with DCS A10C, Blackshark, and other addon of DCS series like the P51 one and nearly mandatory for thoses cases ( specially with P51 for cdogfight, as you need to keep an eye on the enemy planes at every second ( let alone the BlackShard aim system who use head tracking )

Ofc I have use it too on racing games, and the result was pretty good but seriously i have never been able to use it really well on a FPS (ARMA etc ) .

At contrario, with VR, i really dont see how it will work well without head tracking ..

 

Of course head-tracking is important, I just wanted to question it as an absolute boundary of the VR definition.

 

I wouldn't call it absolutely necessary, but very conducive to presence, and more so than stereoscopic rendering.

 

Someone recapping their Oculus Touch ("toybox" demo) session they had with Palmer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKExiHQvd4&t=15m49s

Makes me wonder if some sort of Matrix 'Construct' sandbox might be the true first killer app for hand-tracked VR. And what would be particularly neat about it would be how little development time it would take to create that sort of experience (compared to big AAA titles anyways). Not hard to imagine being able to combine a simplified Tilt Brush toolset to that sort of experience as well. They would be able to add new toys and tools on an ongoing basis, have it function as their test room, and connect whatever networked avatar community they have into it.

 

This made me think of MS Paint in VR. That could we awesome!

EDIT: Those guys make Oculus sound incredible. I really can't wait for it.

 

Everyone seems to agree VR is finally the real deal.

 

It has been the real deal for a while, just not with HMDs, or at affordable prices for consumers.

 

well I still think we are at the very start of the home market.

Fov is still quite low . The guys at tested tried out that new walking dead headset that has a 220 FOV and said it was night and day over the rift and vive but was heavier . Its also 60hz screens and may be lcd.

All the headsets certainly have screen door still even though for many now they can't see it unless they really focus on looking for it. Resolution is still poor and refresh rate is still poor.

The major problem will be content. IT will be sparse for those who buy these headsets at launch

 

Hasn't content demand changed with digital distribution?

There's not many VR suitable big budget games but they'll be a raft of compelling indie experiences. That should be enough to get the sales ball rolling.

 

Well, not exactly...
They said it was interesting, but lacked in many aspects, especially in optics, and the fact that a wider fov poses many challenges when it comes to how the lenses work.
Of course it was a prototype, with a huge 5k resolution that no pc can drive above 60hz, but it will be doable in the future.

 

I was speaking to the FOV being night and day. The headset itself had other problems. But I don't think it will take long for a 200+ fov with 90hz + set up to exist. 3 years maybe ?

 

I think in order to see a jump to 200+ fov in the next few years we'd have to see it from another major player that's looking to enter the PC VR market and develop a competing platform to Oculus and Valve. In the next few years we're likely only to see a single tech revision/iteration cycle from Oculus and Valve, and I doubt that a CV2/Vive2 will be a dramatic departure in form factor from their current units. Moving to a 200+ fov would require a clean sheet redesign of everything from ergonomics to optics and complicate backwards compatibility for existing software for a number of reasons. If I had to make a prediction for the feature advancement priorities of Oculus/Valve, they'll be tackling resolution and eye tracking first as there's some pretty big 'wins' to be had by getting HMDs to the point where they can legitimately be used as a desktop monitor replacement, and until we have eye tracking we're never going to have distortion-free linear perspective ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsKuGUYXHa4 ) or maintain performance requirements that track with video card improvements (it's pretty much guaranteed that pixel throughput requirements of the displays will out pace video card advancements for the next few years, and foveated rendering is going to be the only way to address this.)

 

I think its just a matter of flexible displays hitting the market at decent prices.

 

Curved screens would require some funky optics? CV1's hybrid fresnels are pushing the limits of current manufacturing, according to Oculus.

Might be less need for defusing pixels when screen res increases, which would simplify some elements?

 

foveated rendering if can be adopted also will help for rendering load in high fov HMD

 

Finally some decent Virtual Reality porn has arrived at http://sexlikereal.com/ (NSFW)
Looks like it's going to start picking up like crazy from thre

 

Yes, the buzz is all over VR, but it's not certain until we see some mass products like OculusRift getting some love from customers.

 

The buzz in the 90s was even louder for VR. At least now we have the techology (fast GPUs and hi-res displays), but the "killer app" moment is still to come.
Also, VR is rather challenging to market and advertise on traditional mass-media. You simply have to see it for yourself.