Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[idsn6]

Any game with a cockpit strikes me as low-hanging fruit, control-wise. Standing up, not so much.

Otherwise, yes, controls are going to need some rethinking. I am not convinced that omnidirectional treadmills are the answer here.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Not a fan of the idea of steering your player by turning your head. To me, I just like the idea of being able to look around a bit in first person games. Yeah, it doesn't seem like much because you're probably going to be looking straight ahead most times, but I think it's an added level of immersion. For games with cockpits, like Battlefield, it would be great. Pretty much any vehicle you ride in would benefit from being able to look around.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Oculus's concept for the eventual (c. 2014) consumer version shows that they are at least aware of these limitations of the developer preview model.

...

That looks pretty nice. Hopefully they can get a good design for the final version. Is it not supposed to have headphones/headset built in?

 

[Rodéric]

Amusingly, after some thoughts, I end up preferring my Wii U Gamepad. It offers something quite similar w/o begin isolated from my environment, which I find important.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Amusingly, after some thoughts, I end up preferring my Wii U Gamepad. It offers something quite similar w/o begin isolated from my environment, which I find important.

I would not have expected any similarities between these devices. What is the overlap?

 

[Davros]

Not a fan of the idea of steering your player by turning your head. To me, I just like the idea of being able to look around a bit in first person games. Yeah, it doesn't seem like much because you're probably going to be looking straight ahead most times, but I think it's an added level of immersion. For games with cockpits, like Battlefield, it would be great. Pretty much any vehicle you ride in would benefit from being able to look around.

Turning with head movements is horrible Ive tried it with track-ir

 

[Rodéric]

I would not have expected any similarities between these devices. What is the overlap?

It's almost the same, very low latency, motion sensitive "window" to a virtual world.
The Wii U Gamepad doesn't have relief/stereoscopy though, but it doesn't isolate you from your surroundings either. (and you can't see its pixels/subpixels.)
I was quite surprised when I used my Wii U Gamepad with NintendoLand to see that the pad really is a window to that other world, you move it around you and you see what you expect, without any perceivable lag (it's even more responsive than some LCD TV), which is what the Oculus Rift also offers. (but the Oculus Rift has perceivable lag and ghosting.)
The Gamepad is both a window and a wireless controller, whereas the Oculus Rift isn't a controller. (And I assume customer versions of the Oculus Rift will be wireless.)

I've been wondering if it could be used for an investigation game, get into a room investigate your surroundings, find clues...

 

[idsn6]

I can only say that I do not agree with the comparison. Playing Rage on the iPad in window mode is a very different experience from Doom 3 with the Oculus Rift (FPSes so far seem to successfully use the Rift to augment mouselook rather than replace it), and sensory isolation is a positive contributor to that. The market, too, appears to disagree with you on the appeal of the Wii U.

I am still blasé about augmented reality, but this new project demonstrates at least the principle (but not the performance) of stereo camera hand tracking that I think could pair well with VR.

 

[Rodéric]

I can only say that I do not agree with the comparison. Playing Rage on the iPad in window mode is a very different experience from Doom 3 with the Oculus Rift (FPSes so far seem to successfully use the Rift to augment mouselook rather than replace it), and sensory isolation is a positive contributor to that. The market, too, appears to disagree with you on the appeal of the Wii U.

I am still blasé about augmented reality, but this new project demonstrates at least the principle (but not the performance) of stereo camera hand tracking that I think could pair well with VR.

I fail to see why you compare playing on the iPad to playing on the Wii U' Gamepad, given it doesn't have proper controls, neither games using the iPad as a window to another world (ie motion control) ; neither why "the market" appeal of the Wii U has anything to do with my opinion after first hand experience of both devices...

 

[Daozang]

Amusingly, after some thoughts, I end up preferring my Wii U Gamepad. It offers something quite similar w/o begin isolated from my environment, which I find important.

It seems to me, that you answered everyone's question here.
And that is that you don't like being isolated from the actual environment.
I have to say though, that this, is exactly the difference between the two devices.

 

[idsn6]

I fail to see why you compare playing on the iPad to playing on the Wii U' Gamepad, given it doesn't have proper controls

Your description of a low-latency gyroscopic motion-controlled window to a virtual world is identical to a number of tablet apps. I chose one, Rage, in order to contrast id game with id game. Your post applies equally well to this virtual experience; "proper controls" are beside that point.

You may not see why I conflated the iPad and GamePad, but I think there is more commonality there than when you compared the GamePad and the Rift.

neither why "the market" appeal of the Wii U has anything to do with my opinion after first hand experience of both devices...

Call it a lack of imagination on my part. I value your first hand impressions, but I cannot imagine that if your opinion of the GamePad experience was widely shared the Wii U would be struggling.

 

[Rodéric]

It seems to me, that you answered everyone's question here.
And that is that you don't like being isolated from the actual environment.
I have to say though, that this, is exactly the difference between the two devices.

Pretty much, except for the large pixels/subpixels, ghosting, lag and lack of wireless on the Dev Kits though. ;p
I'm still curious to try the future consumer version. ^^

 

[Daozang]

I think that most of these, with perhaps the only exception being the resolution, will remain the same.
Still, I fell I want to try it.
I hope it will make an impact large enough, for devs to start developing for it.

 

[hughJ]

Resolution is going to be a tough one, as 1080p really isn't that big of a jump up. 960 pixels of horizontal resolution per eye vs. the 640 pixels they have now. They're going to need to go well beyond even 4k displays before they can approach the sort of perceived pixel size that we have with traditional displays. I suspect that a lot of the people looking to 1080p as being a saving grace are going to be disappointed at how marginal the jump is (probably myself included.) If sub-pixels are clearly visible now, then they probably still will be with a 1080p panel.

The next question I ask myself is whether or not tablet/phone displays are going to stop advancing in terms of resolution before the sort of pixel densities needed for an ideal VR experience are reached? Is there a reason for a 6-7" display to have an 8k resolution outside of the HMD market? And then comes the issue of filling such a display at the 120+hz that's hoped for. Seems to me that the hardware requirements for VR/HMD's are going to sharply diverge from that of the traditional PC/console/phone markets, and by that point may not be large enough to push the R&D by itself and keep part cost low via economies of scale.

 

[PixResearch]

I'd be very surprised if the customer version doesn't go above a 1080p display...

Retina-ish resolution displays are common enough on phones and tablets now to be essentially commodity items within a year or so. While I'm not expecting games to be rendered at that resolution (without scaling) they're very likely to use a display with a resolution below what's readily available. There's an argument for going to higher resolution but I can't see them using anything other than what they can bulk buy.

 

[Colourless]

The issue with going above a 1080p display, the graphics hardware might start to struggle at maintaining a smooth frame rate. Smooth frame rate or smooth images is the trade off they need to make at the moment. They choose for higher frame rates.

If I move close to my monitor so it fills my entire fields of view, I can see each individual pixel and the grid they make up. Oculus Rift is probably going to be tolerable if there is good AA depending on how much field of view it actually takes up. It wont be great though. Aliased lines are probably going to look pretty awful.

Would be nice if there was a higher res version for people who have the money to spend and the hardware to drive it.

 

[idsn6]

Foveated rendering could help with both factors, e.g. hypothetically concentrating graphics power in smaller high-PPI focal render targets overlaid onto the screen with pico laser projectors aimed at mirrors mounted in MEMS gimbals driven by IR eye tracking...but this scheme seems far less realistic for consumer hardware than simply hoping that phone manufacturers will continue their resolution race and GPUs will advance apace.

Resolution is absolutely a concern, and if phone screens decide not to chase the marketing point of "print DPI" then stagnation is probable. But ideal VR has always been years and years in the future; the current hurdle is just to prove and build a market audience, and 1080p will hopefully be at least acceptable for that aim and sufficient to kickstart competitive pressures.

 

[PixResearch]

If they use a high res screen and a scaler there's no issue with graphics hardware maintaining a smooth frame rate. You can make a pretty decent in line scaler without requiring a frame delay.

A high res screen not rendered at native res has to be the most likely solution to both stop you seeing the individual pixels like you can today and retina-like screens will be a commodity buy from Sharp, Samsung, etc within 12 months.

I'd even expect the scaler to be inside the headset to minimise the amount of data being sent between PC/console and the display.

 

[V3]

Can Oculus Rift uses dual screen solution like the Sony HMZs to solve the resolution problem ? Like using two smaller 1080p screens ? I'm sure the like of Sony or Samsung can manufacture those sorts of screen.

 

[eastmen]

Can Oculus Rift uses dual screen solution like the Sony HMZs to solve the resolution problem ? Like using two smaller 1080p screens ? I'm sure the like of Sony or Samsung can manufacture those sorts of screen.

I don't see why it can't. I think it uses 1 screen so its cheaper