Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[eastmen]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eYdWCMzk2QFZDct4IZPLBFD6ABsUauT1ZzmTum83ozk/edit

Thanks for the link , I had seen this on the reddit.

According to what I have I'm likely April which is a real bummer since I tried to preorder from when I was allowed too.

Oh well gives me plenty of time to get a Vive if its similar in price and comes with the 3d controls

 

[eastmen]

There is good chance for 360 degree 3d vr movies and movie like experiences to become a big deal. Who wouldn't like to see their favourite sport in 360 3d vr from their couch? Or have very well made clips of the next olympics for how it feels to be a ski jumper, hockey goal keeper, sledge rider,... And of course the porn industry is already there with high quality 180 degree vr clips. And virtual tourism to strange places and musems and whatnots. I wouldn't be surprised if the non game content becomes bigger deal than gaming content.

There is also push outside content creation industry like the nokia 3d 360 degree camera for professional movie makers. Not just something that was duct taped together but properly designed and implemented...

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/30/nokia-ozo-vr-preorder-60k/

Perhaps 3d vr news is great ?
http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2015/nytvr/

best thing about movie content is that it doesn't matter much for the maker if the viewer is using rift, vive, morpheus or gearvr like solution. There is potentially huge market no matter if rift has initial high volume or not.

There is so many different ways to get 3d vr content that I think it's bound to succeed. But success might be quite much other thing than gaming and gamers.

I'd love for people to just record their jogs . I could jog in paris one day , my next day Disney world , then Maine , then through Rome and so on .

 

[eastmen]

That is what I would like to know. Oculus has been the front runner for "mass" consumer VR for the last 4 years. Along the way, others have got in on the act, with the Vive and PSVR. It apparent that Oculus have changed their whole idea of "VR for the mass consumer" and have pigeon-holed it to the top end of the PC market. They have temporarily discounted the Linux and Mac as VR platforms for the moment, although it's likely Mac will never get Oculus now. They have decided to up the spec on the actual headset as well which has pushed up the manufacturing costs to the point that they now have announced it for $599. What they have done out the door, is reduce the potential audience significantly to the point that, according to Nvidia, there are in the region of 13m PC's able to run Oculus VR properly....thats a ridiculously low audience potential. Yes quite a large number of that will be dedicated gamers, some will be workstations that will never see VR. But even of the "dedicated gamers", how many are actually interested in VR and how many are willing to cough up the cash to try it out. And thats before talking about Vive......so the significantly smaller market is split between 2 units.

If it already hasn't happened, developers will be thinking twice before dedicating their time and $$$ on VR projects for Oculus, as they are very unlikely to make their money back.

This is where the Playstation comes in. Sony has just announced that 100 titles are in development for the PSVR. They are likely gonna come in significantly cheaper ($200-$300 cheaper) than the Oculus. By the time the PSVR is released, they will have a 40-45m install base; and I know the attach ratio for a PSVR will be significantly less than compared to a dedicated "hard-core" PC gamer, but the potential is there to see quite a few more units.

What we are more likely to see is, PC/Steam gamers moving over to the PS4 if they are interested in VR.

what are you blabbering on about .

Even if there is only 13m PC's out there capable of running oculus games that is still over a third of the amount of PS4's out in the wild (35m I believe)

Each day we move closer to PC VR prices to run PC VR decrease. With Pascal and whatever AMD has next year prices will only further decrease. Also don't forget that is what Oculus recommends. The great thing about PC gaming is that you can always change settings. So even if you don't have the $250 minimum graphics card required to run it and you have something more in the $100 range like whats in the ps4 you could still adjust the graphics to run the game on your rift and wait until you are unhappy with your experience to go out and buy a new video card or cpu or what have you.

A few days ago I played a demo of Eve on a DK2 running off the surface pro 4 i7

Oculus has also stated there will be over a 100 VR titles for the Rift by years end. Many will be similar between the platforms.

Also what is going to be 200- 300 cheaper ? The custom 120hz panel sony is using ? Their custom IPD adjustment ? This custom breakout box that requires its own power supply and active cooling ?

Its a lofty assumption that it will be that much cheaper since sony has been Mum about the costs .

I think the rift prices have shaken up a lot of people

 

[pjbliverpool]

Okay, so he's saying if you have a PS4, you'll get PSVR. And if you don't and have a gaming rig, you'll likely consider a $600 OVR. And if you've neither, you'll be considering a $2000 PC+Headset or a...$800 PS4+VR combo?

I think he's also trying to suggest that people with both high end rigs and PS4's will go with OR. Specifically he notes that PS4 gamers who don't already have a good gaming rig are unlikely to be part of the OR market, suggesting that those who do, will.

Also I think that should be a $1499 PC + headset since OR have already stated, post price announcent that such bundles will be available on their store. Although the PS4 bundle has a very good chance of being less than $800 too.

 

[zed]

The $699 NZ price displayed on their website is in USD, and AFAIK it includes the cost of GST.
Add the shipping cost and it ends up at NZ$1265 according to https://twitter.com/oculus/status/684883020050911234

Cheers that sounds more like I was expecting, NZ way overpaying as
I couldnt see the price on the website (I had to sign in etc) so just got it from the arstechnica article, where it saiz $699 nz = ~US$460 (which did sound too good to be true, occasionally things are cheaper in nz but its a rare event)
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/virtually-a-reality-oculus-rift-goes-on-sale/

Here are the international prices listed on the Oculus Shop: £499 in the UK, €699 in mainland Europe, AUS$649 in Australia, NZ$699 in New Zealand, CDN$849 in Canada, ¥83800 in Japan, KOR$649 in South Korea.

"That might be true. I think that there’s not many people who already own a PS4 who don’t own a gaming PC"

Can't get my head around that double negative.

following math/grammer rules they cancel each other out, so cross them out, then again I'm terrible at grammer or even english in general

I think that there’s many people who already own a PS4 who own a gaming PC

 

[davygee]

what are you blabbering on about .

Even if there is only 13m PC's out there capable of running oculus games that is still over a third of the amount of PS4's out in the wild (35m I believe)

Yes but don't see OVR capable PC's increases at the same rate as PS4 sales.

Each day we move closer to PC VR prices to run PC VR decrease. With Pascal and whatever AMD has next year prices will only further decrease. Also don't forget that is what Oculus recommends. The great thing about PC gaming is that you can always change settings. So even if you don't have the $250 minimum graphics card required to run it and you have something more in the $100 range like whats in the ps4 you could still adjust the graphics to run the game on your rift and wait until you are unhappy with your experience to go out and buy a new video card or cpu or what have you.

Change what settings? Yeah maybe texture quality, but not FPS. Oculus will require super high FPS to keep it all smooth. Isn't it 90FPS. And yes it's all extra money. PC gaming is notorious for unoptimised code and using general brute force to run games in high quality. The bonus with having only one chipset to develop for is that you can optimise your coding to get the best quality image and performance, hence the reason that some PS4 games have been better received than their PC counterparts. Of course if you have the extreme top end setup then generally you shouldn't need to worry. But look at the last Batman game as an example.

Also what is going to be 200- 300 cheaper ? The custom 120hz panel sony is using ? Their custom IPD adjustment ? This custom breakout box that requires its own power supply and active cooling ?

Well going by reports and expectations, it's should be unless they work to the same "ball park" as Oculus. The thing is, Sony already has all the manufacturing process in place to effectively produce new products at a lower cost than a company coming in from the cold.

In the end, it's just my opinion, and I do agree that the Oculus costing has rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. If the PSVR comes in at a similar price then it's DOA and VR in general will not become more mainstream until it is more reasonably priced.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yes but don't see OVR capable PC's increases at the same rate as PS4 sales.

Don't we? The more mainstream a performance target becomes in the PC market, the faster it grows. So while the growth of the PS4 market may be steady, or even plateauing, the growth of a specific performance target in the PC market is ever accelerating. For example, what are the number of PC's out there today at Xbox 360 spec or above?

Change what settings? Yeah maybe texture quality, but not FPS.

I'm not sure if this response is serious or not. Of course you can change settings in the vast majority of PC games to increase frame rate. That's the entire point of scalable settings. If the 970 is required for target resolution and frame rate at medium or high quality (but not Ultra) then a 780 for example may be just fine at low quality.

PC gaming is notorious for unoptimised code and using general brute force to run games in high quality.

While I think you're absolutely correct that PC high/Ultra settings (higher than console) are pretty unoptimised and rely on brute force, I think that's untrue for console equivalent settings where pretty much every DF face off demonstrates PC's with similar graphics horsepower to consoles achieving similar results with matched settings.

But look at the last Batman game as an example.

That's an exception, not a general example. Similar exceptions can be pointed to in the console space.

 

[manux]

I would like to try this:

http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/the-martian-vr-fox-interview/

 

[pcchen]

Okay, so he's saying if you have a PS4, you'll get PSVR. And if you don't and have a gaming rig, you'll likely consider a $600 OVR. And if you've neither, you'll be considering a $2000 PC+Headset or a...$800 PS4+VR combo?

I think what he means is if you have a PS4 but not a gaming rig, it's unlikely that you are going to shell out US$1,500 for a decent gaming rig + Oculus Rift when Playstation VR is a cheaper alternative.
He didn't imply anything on which to choose for someone with a PS4 AND a decent gaming rig, though (or for those with a decent gaming rig but no PS4).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah, but I kinda ignored that set of users because I imagine it's very small. How many PC gamers with decent gaming PCs also have a PS4?

 

[pcchen]

Yeah, but I kinda ignored that set of users because I imagine it's very small. How many PC gamers with decent gaming PCs also have a PS4?

I think that's his rationale that Playstation VR is not directly competing with Oculus (they are only directly competing for people who owns PS4 and a decent gaming rig, which is a relatively small user base).

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Yeah, but I kinda ignored that set of users because I imagine it's very small. How many PC gamers with decent gaming PCs also have a PS4?

The kind of PC gamers with decent gaming PCs who don't want to miss PS4's exclusives, like me.
There's no amount of higher framerate and IQ on the PC that would stop me from wanting to play Uncharted 4, Final Fantasy VII remake and many others.

I think he's also trying to suggest that people with both high end rigs and PS4's will go with OR. Specifically he notes that PS4 gamers who don't already have a good gaming rig are unlikely to be part of the OR market, suggesting that those who do, will.

He's wrong. People with whatever rigs they have will go for the solution with the content they find more appealing.

I have a high-end PC that I tailored for VR:
- X79 motherboard with 4820k CPU
- dual Radeon 290X 4GB for LiquidVR optimizations (also a great cost/performance solution when Crossfire works, of course).
- quad-channel 64GB RAM so I can install games into a RAM Drive to avoid stuttering from sending data towards the GPUs.
- Surround headphones with discrete drivers for front/side/back.

With Oculus' new pricing policy (and very odd dev-relations I read from reptile's post), I see the VR gaming market for the PC possibly going DOA on the content. Unless Valve goes all-in with SteamVR (e.g. releases Half-Life 3 and/or Portal 3 for VR) and brings the halo products necessary to jumpstart the technology.

Regardless, right now there's a good chance I'll get a PSVR instead of an OR.

 

[pjbliverpool]

With Oculus' new pricing policy (and very odd dev-relations I read from reptile's post), I see the VR gaming market for the PC possibly going DOA on the content.
Right now there's a good chance I'll get a PSVR instead of an OR.


Unless Valve goes all-in with SteamVR, releases Half-Life 3 and/or Portal 3 for VR and I just won't be able to avoid getting a Vive.

I hear what you're saying but I think it's quite premature to be drawing any conclusions. Oculus seems to have pretty solid dev support (as does PSVR) at the moment, and while the high price looks worrying, we firstly don't know how PSVR will compare, and secondly don't know how the price of OR will fall once it has some competition from Vive and PSVR. It's hardly surprising that the price is sky high right now given they are the only headset currently available for sale and almost certainly going to be first to market, plus they are selling as many as they can make at that price.

Right now that price means absolutely nothing for the potential size of the VR market since they could be giving them away for free and the market size would still be identical. It's only when supply starts to ramp up and there is more competition that the price will start to become more relevant to OR's market share. Of course the big issue there is that they risk pissing off the early adopters if they drop the price too soon. Especially if they drop the price before the current batch of pre-orders have been shipped!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The kind of PC gamers with decent gaming PCs who don't want to miss PS4's exclusives, like me.
There's no amount of higher framerate and IQ on the PC that would stop me from wanting to play Uncharted 4, Final Fantasy VII remake and many others.

Im' not saying you don't exist, but that I don't think you exist in significant numbers. I may be wrong on that. Anyone got any data?

 

[hughJ]

BTW point 2 is the reason why you'll find a lot of projects stuck at SDK 0.4-0.6 and not maintained any longer.

The period of spring/summer last year also included the release of Unity 5 (almost all the old content was Unity 4), the introduction of the compositor (0.6 sdk), the requirement of using the compositor for distortion and the other latency mitigation techniques, a lot of general API cleanup (0.6), and the release of Windows 10 that required the 0.7 runtime (which required content to built against that 0.6 sdk). The jump from 0.4.4/0.5 to 0.6 is/was probably the single biggest change to the SDK since its introduction, so it seems only natural that it ended up being the major cull for old content support that likely had not seen any real active development for the year previous. The 0.6 SDK still included support for extended mode, but we never the less see that as the primary divide between old and new content, not the jump from 0.6 and 0.7 as you say which forced directmode. Prior to 0.6 there was very little change that occurred under the hood that required much more than a rebuild of the game against a newer static library, while afterwards devs were faced with having to spend time adjusting how their game actually interfaces with the SDK. Heck, even some bigger studios like Frontier had problems (and still have yet to resolve) making the transition from 0.4.4/0.5 and 0.6. To be honest this is the first post I've seen or heard anywhere that's tried to link the lack of optimus support to the landscape changes in Oculus support that's happened over the past year - if I've seen any real kerfuffle over hardware support changes in the Oculus SDK I would say it's been the prospect of the 970/290 baseline requirement (which effectively excludes any optimus enabled laptop anyways), but even those complaints seem to be isolated to a pretty select number of developers with special use-cases in mind for their applications.

 

[cheapchips]

Publicly at least, Frontier haven't been negative about the SDK changes. The line they've towed is that they're working with Oculus to sort it out (which I interpreted as waiting until sdk 1.0 before bothering to invest any dev time that would otherwise be wasted).

 

[reptile]

The period of spring/summer last year also included the release of Unity 5 (almost all the old content was Unity 4), the introduction of the compositor (0.6 sdk), the requirement of using the compositor for distortion and the other latency mitigation techniques, a lot of general API cleanup (0.6), and the release of Windows 10 that required the 0.7 runtime (which required content to built against that 0.6 sdk). The jump from 0.4.4/0.5 to 0.6 is/was probably the single biggest change to the SDK since its introduction, so it seems only natural that it ended up being the major cull for old content support that likely had not seen any real active development for the year previous. The 0.6 SDK still included support for extended mode, but we never the less see that as the primary divide between old and new content, not the jump from 0.6 and 0.7 as you say which forced directmode. Prior to 0.6 there was very little change that occurred under the hood that required much more than a rebuild of the game against a newer static library, while afterwards devs were faced with having to spend time adjusting how their game actually interfaces with the SDK. Heck, even some bigger studios like Frontier had problems (and still have yet to resolve) making the transition from 0.4.4/0.5 and 0.6. To be honest this is the first post I've seen or heard anywhere that's tried to link the lack of optimus support to the landscape changes in Oculus support that's happened over the past year - if I've seen any real kerfuffle over hardware support changes in the Oculus SDK I would say it's been the prospect of the 970/290 baseline requirement (which effectively excludes any optimus enabled laptop anyways), but even those complaints seem to be isolated to a pretty select number of developers with special use-cases in mind for their applications.

True, some of the old (and abandoned) projects were still on 0.4/0.5 and never made it past that, but i seriously doubt it was because of the changes in the API. It takes about 2-3 hours to reimplement everything using 0.6, even if just using a single foveye layer. However, forcing developers to discard their perfectly capable machines IS a problem, especially for those on a budget, affecting bigger studios less, which meshes nicely with their new "high end" approach. Laptops weren't exclusively used for special case projects - the problem with VR is that if you for example want to show it to others, you can't just send a youtube link or an executable. Smaller devs needed to have a portable "demo kiosk", and that's precisely what was taken away with 0.7.

 

[willardjuice]

Regardless, right now there's a good chance I'll get a PSVR instead of an OR.

I'm in the same boat as you (only play console exclusives on consoles), but I'm surprised you reached this conclusion. I suspect you invested a lot more in your computer than your ps4. I assume you did this because your pc offers a higher degree of quality and flexibility over your ps4 (and you don't put too much weight into the convenience factor of consoles). I don't get why this logic doesn't apply to VR. I'm going to get PSVR, but only to play PSVR exclusives. Perhaps you never tried PSVR, but the (graphical) quality isn't going to blow anyone away. That's okay because just like consoles (which also don't blow me away in quality) it has other advantages going for it (convenience, exclusives, and perhaps price).

Ultimately I don't really see the status quo changing. People who only invest in consoles will buy PSVR. People who only invest in gaming machines will go for the rift/vive. And for those of us in the middle, we'll get both and play what we can on the rift/vive since it offers a higher quality experience.

 

[manux]

Some laptops do work. My understanding is that nvidia optimus and similar solutions somehow break rift. If rift is going to be a big deal it would make a lot of sense for gaming laptop manufactures to get on board and make rift friendly hw. That might be a unique selling point ... for now.

Bigger worry to me would is the dropped os x and linux support. It will be interesting to see after 1.0sdk is out there that if oculus will start to work on supporting more host environments(os x, linux, more laptops?).

 

[cheapchips]

Bigger worry to me would is the dropped os x and linux support. It will be interesting to see after 1.0sdk is out there that if oculus will start to work on supporting more host environments(os x, linux, more laptops?).

Will it ever matter if the Rift stays Windows exclusive?

If VR is a big enough deal Apple will have their own HMD at some point. There's also next to zero VR capable Macs at present.

I'd assume Linux will have at least some HMDs through SteamVR. Although, who games on Linux anyway.