Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[hughJ]

Oculus's back-end infrastructure = Facebook. When you login to your Oculus Home app for GearVR and Rift to download and update apps, you're running through a Facebook service. Is your issue the always-on service, or the fact that it's related Facebook? Presumably you have other applications on your phone or computer that are granted similar access?

edit:
If you look at some reviews for the Rift you already see people complaining about the inability to perform certain installation/setup functions seamlessly inside the Rift due to additional redistributables needing to be installed (cases where you're forced to remove the HMD to interact with your mouse and monitor.) The Rift is not a monitor and Windows 7/8/10 were not built to accommodate the Rift/VR for everyday tasks, so having the operating system and store front work hand in hand to behave as though it were a unified, user friendly platform requires a lot of deep permissions.

 

[manux]

If true this sucks... But wrong(old version) lenses from vendor would somehow fit the current situation

 

[manux]

So you're saying an always-on background service with full permissions that constantly communicates with facebook servers is a very important functionality for a VR headset?

Apparently the communication has been reverse engineered. The background service is checking for updates to oculus software every 5 minutes. Crap code but not something that is spying on you.

 

[eastmen]

If true this sucks... But wrong(old version) lenses from vendor would somehow fit the current situation

Yup this really sucks if true because it will be months before that is fixed. I can preorder a vive and get it in May which seems to be sooner than I will get a rift that I preordered 20 minutes into their preordering run.

If the above is true oculus just screwed themselves by not doing proper QA testing

 

[hughJ]

Any news is good news at this point, provided it's straight talk without any sugar coating. Also if this news is accurate then I'd look on the bright side (for consumers anyways) that it means the potential for better hardware than what's currently being reviewed now. People want their VR asap, but ultimately we're talking about devices that are intending on having an ecosystem built around them that's expecting to last a few years, so they should really get the hardware right even if it means a substantial manufacturing delay. Certainly sucks for Oculus though if true. I find it hard to believe though that folks out there that have both the engineering samples of the CV and the shipped final hardware couldn't tell the difference?

edit:
also have to account for April Fools sadly - this is going to be an awful week. I suspect this post is BS/april fools.

 

[eastmen]

So on reddit a few things happened.

1) People assume from a poster that its payment processing issues . That is why so few are shipping as the company that is processing payments is only processing a few at a time. This started from a reddit user who was right about other shipping things in the past

2) Someone used a throw away account as seen in manux's post. IF it is the optics I don't know how long it will take to fix , it depends on how many units they have that are bad vs good. IT sounds like they don't even know which are good and bad. So they open them up and test them and then if they pass their test they send them off for shipping. I'm assuming they are waiting to hear from the optic guys how long it will take for new batches to arrive and how long it will take to switch out the optics . That sounds like a daunting task.


If its number 2 oculus is totally screwed , people will jump to the vive and people will have a bad taste in their mouth worse than what it is now if their march / april orders become late april / early may orders. I was already upset with the $600 price and the website issues causing me to not be able to get my order in right away. The silence from oculus is just adding more salt to the wound.

 

[MrFox]

If this is true, bad idea to publicly shame a supplier this way. Procurement errors happen all the time and they should be caught early. Usually when lawyers of a multi-billion corporation tell you to shut up.... You're supposed to shut the fuck up. (but I'm not a lawyer, maybe you're supposed to ignore them)

 

[eastmen]

If this is true, bad idea to publicly shame a supplier this way. Procurement errors happen all the time and they should be caught early. Usually when lawyers of a multi-billion corporation tell you to shut up.... You're supposed to shut the fuck up. (but I'm not a lawyer, maybe you're supposed to ignore them)

well none of this is coming from official channels. Its all leaks and insiders which could be full of shit.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

So on reddit a few things happened.

1) People assume from a poster that its payment processing issues . That is why so few are shipping as the company that is processing payments is only processing a few at a time. This started from a reddit user who was right about other shipping things in the past

2) Someone used a throw away account as seen in manux's post. IF it is the optics I don't know how long it will take to fix , it depends on how many units they have that are bad vs good. IT sounds like they don't even know which are good and bad. So they open them up and test them and then if they pass their test they send them off for shipping. I'm assuming they are waiting to hear from the optic guys how long it will take for new batches to arrive and how long it will take to switch out the optics . That sounds like a daunting task.


If its number 2 oculus is totally screwed , people will jump to the vive and people will have a bad taste in their mouth worse than what it is now if their march / april orders become late april / early may orders. I was already upset with the $600 price and the website issues causing me to not be able to get my order in right away. The silence from oculus is just adding more salt to the wound.

It's a QA/manufacturing error similar to the one that AMD had with the Fury X and the motor for the water pump in many shipping units not being the same as the water pump that AMD specified for shipping units.

Sure, if it takes too long to correct the error, I'm sure many may switch to the HTC Vive. They'll get their unit faster, but with inferior optics compared to the Rift. For many that may not matter.

I just wonder if this was deliberate on the part of the supplier or an honest mistake. Perhaps someone in middle management in charge of warehouse storage thought it'd be a clever way to unload stock that wasn't moving. Perhaps they thought it's good enough and it's similar in quality to what the competition to this unit is getting that Occulus will just accept a partial refund on the lenses used and hope that most of their customer's won't notice.

Only some of their customers did notice and made Occulus aware of it. Occulus wasn't about to settle for something inferior to the experience they wanted their users to have and back up the chain it goes.

Or it was just some honest mistake. If so, that parts supplier needs to take a long hard look at their organization, and their order fulfillment process. This isn't something simple like Amazon getting a few shipments wrong. This is their customer potentially losing a lot of their business due to a screw up on their end. And since it's still in the early adopter phase, potentially losing most or all of their business.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

https://www.reddit.com/user/VR-Researcher

This is the guy posting about it being a payment processing error. He also predicted a $650 price point back before the launch. I'd put more money on this being true then the lenses.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Any news is good news at this point, provided it's straight talk without any sugar coating. Also if this news is accurate then I'd look on the bright side (for consumers anyways) that it means the potential for better hardware than what's currently being reviewed now. People want their VR asap, but ultimately we're talking about devices that are intending on having an ecosystem built around them that's expecting to last a few years, so they should really get the hardware right even if it means a substantial manufacturing delay. Certainly sucks for Oculus though if true. I find it hard to believe though that folks out there that have both the engineering samples of the CV and the shipped final hardware couldn't tell the difference?

If it's true then I'm actually taking this as good news. The one (fairly major) flaw that Rift seems to have right now is with the light rays issue. I was quite disappointed to hear that and surprised it hadn't cropped up before. Mines not due until July anyway so I'm hoping the impact to me will be minimal but even if not, in percentage terms it probably is. I'd much rather get a better product than get it a little sooner.

edit:
also have to account for April Fools sadly - this is going to be an awful week. I suspect this post is BS/april fools.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I suspect you may be right here. The other point to note is that Vive has been reported as having a similar artefact, which lends more credence to Rift also having it. If it is real though, I personally loving that guys honesty. In any case it's a well written fake if that's what it turns out to be.

Or it was just some honest mistake. If so, that parts supplier needs to take a long hard look at their organization, and their order fulfillment process. This isn't something simple like Amazon getting a few shipments wrong. This is their customer potentially losing a lot of their business due to a screw up on their end. And since it's still in the early adopter phase, potentially losing most or all of their business.

I imagine they can expect a huge lawsuit in any case. That's probably why the fb lawyers wanted to keep this under wraps for now (if it's true at all).

 

[MrFox]

If true this sucks... But wrong(old version) lenses from vendor would somehow fit the current situation

------> "Edit: April fools, you animals. Love this subreddit."

That was very well written.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So the lens quality is still an issue? That is, the complaints (according to this thread references) are valid and not part of a manufacturing screw up, and there's no fix?

 

[hughJ]

It's a natural artifact of fresnel lenses, yep. The fact that the OLED panels already have trouble with displaying black probably meant that they felt confident about choosing a lens that was suited for content that doesn't involve high contrast, bright-on-black images where the fresnel scattering is most visible. IMO the lens artifacts are not nearly as big of a deal as the fact that the panels can't do blacks without very ugly artifacts. Looking at content that has subtle dark gradients reminds me of color banding in games from 20+ years ago.

 

[MrFox]

So the lens quality is still an issue? That is, the complaints (according to this thread references) are valid and not part of a manufacturing screw up, and there's no fix?

Over a year ago, I noticed the radial flaring when they unveiled the new prototypes, hence my prediction of some form of fine diffractive/fresnel optics on oculus because we couldn't see ridges on the pictures, but we could see the resulting artifacts in the reflection of point lights. These artifacts are still in the launch model being reviewed.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1829407/

It looks like fresnel is used to reduce the weight and helps reach a higher FOV in a small form factor. While the diffractive/refractive "hybrid" allows some cancellation of chromatic aberrations, I haven't seen any indication it can help the worse contrast, radial flaring, and scattering caused by the fresnel ridges.

The roadtovr review took the time to describe it...
http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-rift-review-prologue-to-a-new-reality/2/

What I’ve been calling the ‘light ray artifact’ is a glaring fault in an otherwise impressive display and optics system. This artifact can be seen obnoxiously wherever there are high contrast elements in the scene (especially white text on a black background). When you move your head, the light rays move with you, like a lens flare on a panning camera, calling even more attention to them.

To my knowledge, the light ray artifact is caused by the Rift’s Fresnel lenses, which causes light to scatter because of the ridges. For the record, this artifact is an issue for all headsets that I’ve seen using Fresnel lenses (which includes the HTC Vive), and is not unique to the Rift.

Radial flaring (light rays artifacts) and intra-scene contrast reduction are pretty much unavoidable with fresnel. Scattered reflection back toward the panel would be blocked by it's circular polarizer, but the radial flaring is not easy to remove. Also AR coating cannot be applied to a fresnel surface so it's not a possible solution.

 

[manux]

One of the more thorough rift reviews

 

[cheapchips]

Tested's VR coverage on the whole has been some of the more informative and interesting stuff.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

One of the more thorough rift reviews

I found it fascinating just how much physical adjustment there is for IPD. While I'm sure the majority of user likely won't need to adjust it much, it'll be quite welcome to those who have greater or less eye separation than the average.

I'd hate to have to use any device which doesn't have physical IPD adjustment.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Oddly enough, with all the various games that came with the release of the Rift. THIS is the most compelling thing I've seen that makes me somewhat interested in VR.

I would be extremely tempted to buy an OR with this game and a pre-fabricated faux pinball cabinet interface.

It's interesting that the thing that actually makes me interested in VR is just something that allows me to play a game that I could walk down to the local pub and play.

Not flying in space. Not shooting things. Not walking on the moon. But playing a pinball game like a real pinball game.

Compared to buying an actual Pinball game (5000-8000 USD new), it'd be a bargain.

Regards,
SB

 

[hughJ]

Not a huge pinball guy, but from the standpoint of VR tech it should be particularly suited for it. The table exists in the sweet spot for stereo depth and the effective focus distance produced by the lenses, so visually it should appear as natural as anything can in VR right now. Trying to abstain from making any purchases on the Oculus store until I know for sure that my Rift is actually going to ship, but it's tempting to try this out.