Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[Rodéric]

If it doesn't need phone, PC or cables, and costs $200, it'll be very anaemic, good only for VR video I imagine.

It will most likely have mobile hardware inside, if built at huge scale & sold with no profit you could have high-end hardware inside (Galaxy S7/8 level), no idea whether it will be the case of course ^^

 

[manux]

Based on tomshardware it is snapdragon 821.

There also is the santa cruz standalone device coming that apparently is snapdragon 835. It has inside out tracking and very functional tracked controllers.

Oculus hw stack will be go on bottom(your equivalent of gearvr with better display), santa cruz that adds on go and the highend pc solution with cables aka. rift.

200$ for high quality vr display and entry level games doesn't sound too bad. In fact it reminds me of wii with possibly more legs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It will most likely have mobile hardware inside, if built at huge scale & sold with no profit you could have high-end hardware inside (Galaxy S7/8 level), no idea whether it will be the case of course ^^

Right. You'll have a mobile SOC driving a 2560x1440 display at at least 90 Hz if not 120 Hz. PS4 can just about produce VR at 1080p 120Hz using frame interpolation. Games on Oculus Go are going to be very limited even with the best hardware money can buy. And what developers will target it? It's not going to run OVR software from PC, and that software won't downscale enough to run on OcuGo in most cases. I'm guessing it'll have to run Android for an OS, at which point how can Oculus monetise the store?

 

[manux]

Performance is matter of compromises. Graphics would have to be very simplified, cartoonish.

Go is gear vr compliant. This implies some flavor of android inside and gives pretty nice developer ecosystem and good amount of content on day 1.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's the content like for Gear VR? Are devs making money from it and so interested in creating more content? We've heard that devs aren't making money from the major VR platforms on the whole, and I'd have thought the limited options of mobile VR would make the content even less appealing on the whole.

 

[manux]

Time will show what market can support. From my pov it's good oculus is not fragmenting the market. Single oculus store/sdk across rift, Samsung gear vr and oculus standalone devices makes sense.

Depending how market reacts maybe oculus can or already supports google Daydream.

I believe gearvr is the vr solution that has sold most units so far.

 

[manux]

 

[cheapchips]

There was a VR walk in session running in the meeting room next to my desk at work yesterday. It was a Vive based experience where you went up a lift and rescued a cat from the end of a gantry.

The reactions of people who'd never tried VR, nevermind Vive level VR, kept a smile on my face for most of the afternoon.

I did have a go. The cat was actually a cuddly toy with Vive tracker on it. Reaching to pick up a virtual object that then turns out to be real is a very novel sensation.

 

[BRiT]

Did the VR Experience let you push, drop, or throw the object?

 

[cheapchips]

It's the Vive tracker thingy attached to the back of a toy cat. You just picked it up and the virtual cat was on the approximate position of the toy one.

I didn't try throwing it.

 

[manux]

Come on, throwing the cat, that would just be cruel :/

You can manipulate real objects in vr if someone adds tracking hw to the object(s). Valve allows third parties to create custom "controllers" with tracking. They even sell dev kit you could use to build your own.

Dev Kit Contents

• A modular reference tracked object suitable for attaching to prototype HMDs or other devices
• Full complement of EVM circuit boards to enable rapid prototyping of your own tracked object
• 40 individual sensors for building your own tracked object
• Accessories to enable custom prototypes

Tools

• Software toolkit to assist with optimal sensor placement
• Calibration tools for prototyping and manufacturing

Documentation

• Schematics and layouts for all electronic components
• Mechanical designs for the reference tracked object and accessories
• Datasheets for the sensor ASICs

https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-thir...vr-tracking-htc-vive-dev-kit-license-royalty/

 

[BRiT]

Come on, throwing the cat, that would just be cruel :/

It wouldn't be cruel if it's just a VR Cat. It might help keep @orangpelupa stress levels lower.

 

[cheapchips]

It was essentially like that video. It wasn't a custom cat projectile tracker, it was the one HTC produces.

 

[manux]

Pimax 8k is interesting as it has especially good fov and resolution. It is also steamvr compatible both on software and tracking hw.

The Pimax 8K Kickstarter campaign started with a bang, and the funding is still rolling in at a steady pace. Pimax’s original funding goal was $200,000, which it managed to rake in within the first hour. Over the weekend, the campaign cracked the $3 million milestone, which unlocked the last of six stretch goals.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/pimax-8k-stretch-goals-unlocked,35795.html

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Pimax 8k is interesting as it has especially good fov and resolution. It is also steamvr compatible both on software and tracking hw.


http://www.tomshardware.com/news/pimax-8k-stretch-goals-unlocked,35795.html

Now this I want to try. The FOV would be really good for me. I'd like to see if it's good enough to get ride of the "black half circles" (caused by the smallish FOV of each lens in the current VR solutions) when I use the headset. And the resolution is what I would consider the minimum for me, personally, to feel immersed (IE - not distracted by the pixels or SDE).

Unfortunately, that price. Ouch! But understandable. Also unfortunately, most my RL friends have given up on VR for the moment until real games start to show up. So none of them are going to be interested in this I don't think. Going to show it to them just in case though.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

So, here's something interesting from the latest Steam Survey. The Oculus Rift and Vive are virtually tied as of Oct. 2017. All VR headsets combined, however, are still a rather miniscule 0.25% of steam users. Approximately one quarter of one percent.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

OK, so I've been looking into impressions of the Pimax 8k and I have to say this is definitely the minimum needed to give VR a chance at success, IMO. Well, once the price comes down significantly.

Some things that are massively improved over the current systems (Rift, Vive, PSVR) that make it difficult for people that have tried this to go back to any of the current systems.

• The FOV. This is one that isn't surprising to me, but has been surprising to some of the people trying the Pimax 8k. It makes you feel much more immersed in the experience and much less like looking at the world through binoculars or a periscope. It was enough that it made them not want to go back to using Rift, Vive or PSVR.
• SDE reduced so much that most people can't even detect it even when they are trying to see it.
• Resolution + lack of perceptible SDE makes text easy to read with some caveats I'll get into later.
  • This also means that it is absolutely amazing for movie watching!

One drawback is that unless you get the Pimax 8k X, what you'll be seeing is 2560x1440 per eye upscaled to 3840x2160. For games and movie watching this is still amazingly good. For text (like a desktop development environment which is what I'd be interested in) it's noticeably blurrier than native resolution, but massively better than any of the current headsets.

Currently I'm not interested in them WRT gaming, but still quite interested in them from a movie watching perspective and desktop development perspective. IMO, this is the bare minimum required for a good experience without feeling like there are compromises everywhere just to make things work.

Now I'm just going to wait until the price goes down and it's available for general purchase and I'll probably get one. Just thinking about combining this with a laptop for a portable software development environment with large (albeit virtual) screens makes me excited. Before, developing on the go on a laptop meant you'd have to compromise with a small limited screen (compared to multiple screens in a desktop environment). This would mean there'd be almost no compromise when developing on the go.

Regards,
SB

 

[Alexko]

I must say I'm confused about what VR is supposed to bring to desktop development. What benefits do you expect/are you hoping for?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I must say I'm confused about what VR is supposed to bring to desktop development. What benefits do you expect/are you hoping for?

Basically developing on a mobile device is a royal PITA with the limited screen space. A high resolution VR interface combined with a wide FOV basically allows for desktop (multi-monitor or really large monitor) style development.

IE - being able to see multiple windows without having to constantly alt-tab between them. It'd also be quite nice when working with large spreadsheets on the go or viewing large data sets. There's just so many things where a mobile device (even with a 17" high PPI screen) is just extremely limiting. High resolution and FOV VR (the Pimax 8k is pretty wide, but comfortable from reports) would alleviate this at the expense of having to bring a HMD with you. But for me that trade-off would be well worth it.

Currently all current gen headsets are lacking in that text is difficult without enlarging the text with defeats the purpose of using it as a productivity tool. Prior to the Pimax 8k announcement the best we had was the Pimax 4k. It was almost good enough but the limited FOV meant you'd need to turn your head a lot to bring windows into view. And while the resolution was decent it still wasn't quite good enough.

Granted you'd want either the Pimax 8kx or Pimax 5k if you wanted to try this. The regular Pimax 8k upscales a 1440p resolution up to 2160p which would introduce some unwanted blur with text.

Regards,
SB

 

[manux]

There is a bit more information about varjo but unfortunately it's in finnish.

Apparently their technology consists of 2 displays per eye. One display is statically placed with 100 degree fov and another display is dynamically placed based on where you look at and with 35 degree fov. The static display has 1080x1200 resolution and the "bionic" display has 1920x1080 resolution. Price is promised to be less than 10k and production towards end of 2018.

I wonder how the bionic display is implemented, perhaps some kind of projector or is there any other viable solution? I guess they get about 3x resolution or about 9x pixels compared to vive/rift where eye is focusing at.


https://www.io-tech.fi/uutinen/koti...immaiset-vr-lasinsa-tarkalla-bionic-naytolla/

Seems like roadtovr has piece about varjo in english

What makes the company’s ‘Bionic’ display so special is a unique implementation of two displays per eye; a 1080×1200 resolution ‘context’ display that sits in the background, and a much smaller 1920×1080 resolution microdisplay. Since the headset features eye-tracking, the image from smaller display is designed to move in tandem with the eyes natural saccades. This, in effect, makes the perceived resolution much higher than a standard fixed display like those found in Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

As for positional tracking, Varjo’s Alpha Prototype is tracked by the SteamVR Lighthouse tracking standard.

Good to see that tracking solutions are not diverging... It would be great to have one standard for all different manufacturers/devices to follow.

https://www.roadtovr.com/varjo-secu...resolution-prototypes-shipping-partners-soon/