Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[pcchen]

Yes, USB cams are often extremely laggy. However, the IR camera that goes with the rift is supposed to be low latency (comparatively anyway) to aid tracking precision and avoiding feelings of seasickness, so this can be done it would seem. I'd assume there's some sort of embedded computer system inside the rift to read sensors and drive the screen and that sort, surely it could also handle the cameras and draw the camera images straight into the rift's LCD screen for low-latency screen updates...

Well, the only task for the IR camera is to detect attitude/position, so it does not have to be with very high resolution and nor does it have to be very noise free. On the other hand, you probably want to use a real 1080p 60 fps video camera for AR purposes. And you can't just use 1/60 seconds as shutter speed as that's just too slow, so the only way is either to require very good lighting or use larger sensors and/or larger lens.

For now I think weight is going to be an issue, so a video camera system is unlikely. For gaming purposes the "phantom effect" can be mitigated somewhat by rendering a fake body, and you can always use external systems such as Kinect for matching the rendered body with the real thing.

 

[eastmen]

Game Face

Welp game face just announced their 5.5 inch 2560x1440 (534ppi) vr head set.

http://www.roadtovr.com/gameface-labs-first-vr-headset-block-2k-display-mobile/

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Welp game face just announced their 5.5 inch 2560x1440 (534ppi) vr head set.

http://www.roadtovr.com/gameface-labs-first-vr-headset-block-2k-display-mobile/

It seems there a battle on display resolution now.

And as a customer, I'm perfectly fine with it.

 

[pcchen]

But of course the real strength of Oculus Rift is its low latency. That's a far more important factor than resolution.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Regardless, higher resolution definitely won't hurt and it'll be a pressure point to drive the competition.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Resolution is super important too.

 

[MfA]

Why is that article pretending mobile VR makes ANY FUCKING SENSE WHATSOFUCKING EVER? (I know he is also talking about wireless and wireless makes sense ... using your mobile phone with your expensive VR headset however does not.)

PS. full body rotation has no attraction to me whatsoever ... going in circles on a swivel chair superior to having an additional rotation input on a controller? Not buying it.

 

[Alexko]

Why is that article pretending mobile VR makes ANY FUCKING SENSE WHATSOFUCKING EVER? (I know he is also talking about wireless and wireless makes sense ... using your mobile phone with your expensive VR headset however does not.)

PS. full body rotation has no attraction to me whatsoever ... going in circles on a swivel chair superior to having an additional rotation input on a controller? Not buying it.

Performing rotations with your body means your hands are free to do something else. Plus it's a lot more natural.

 

[pjbliverpool]

360 degree TV documentaries the next big VR thing?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...h-is-making-an-oculus-rift-nature-documentary

 

[Zeross]

Zenimax, previous employer of John Carmack wants its share of Oculus

So basically, the guys that John Carmack left because they didn't believe in VR and its potential, now think that they "own" VR due to the work that Carmack did while he was an employee of id software.

How to ruin your reputation and pass for a bunch of greedy bastards.

 

[Malo]

That's fairly normal agreements that work done by an employee during the work hours of a company for another company are owned by that first company. The agreement mentioned in the update tends to point to that as well. Until we know more details I really don't see why they would be considered greedy bastards, it's perfectly normal business practice?

 

[pcchen]

So basically, the guys that John Carmack left because they didn't believe in VR and its potential, now think that they "own" VR due to the work that Carmack did while he was an employee of id software.

To my understanding, Zenimax started negotiation back in 2012. The problem is that they asked for too much (from Oculus VR's point of view) and no deal came through. So it's probably not fair to say that they "didn't believe in VR".

 

[eastmen]

That's fairly normal agreements that work done by an employee during the work hours of a company for another company are owned by that first company. The agreement mentioned in the update tends to point to that as well. Until we know more details I really don't see why they would be considered greedy bastards, it's perfectly normal business practice?

So does zenimax own all the work that john did with his space company ?

 

[ERP]

So does zenimax own all the work that john did with his space company ?

Depends on his contract, most employment contracts state that work is owned by the employer, if it can be shown any of it was done on company time, unless there are explicit exclusions.

Pretty much any employment contract I've signed in the last 10 years has stated that. Most require such exclusions to be listed at the time the contract is signed.

How that would hold up in court remains to be seen.

 

[eastmen]

cool , i never had to sign something like that so I was wondering how it works. Some people work for multiple companies or even own multiple companies. So its interesting to me how it works.

 

[Zeross]

To my understanding, Zenimax started negotiation back in 2012. The problem is that they asked for too much (from Oculus VR's point of view) and no deal came through. So it's probably not fair to say that they "didn't believe in VR".

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/02/03/john-carmack-on-oculus-rift/4938887/

"I would have been content probably staying there working with the people and technology that I know and the work we were doing," he says.

"But they couldn't come together on that which made me really sad. It was just unfortunate," Carmack says. "When it became clear that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id software, I decided to not renew my contract."

Doesn't sounds like big believers in VR in my eyes
And the fact that all this surfaces just after Oculus was bought for an indecent amount of money is quite telling. First they let Carmack work for Oculus half time (even if the 2012 negotiation fell throuh) then they let him go work there full time without asking anything (why not use some kind of non compete clause or something at this point to negotiate again with Oculus if they thought it was worth something) but when Oculus is bought, then they remember an old contract from 2012 that they didn't bother bringing up before.

I'm sure that, if they really believed in VR from the start it wouldn't have happened like this, they wouldn't have let their CTO go work for this little promising start-up for nothing. Moreover while at id he would have been able to bring Doom III BFG, Wolfenstein and Doom 4 to VR.

But here it just sounds that they didn't believe in it and now that Oculus won the lotery ticket they try to find whatever they can to get a piece of it. It would sound different if the company making the claim was Valve: they've worked a lot on VR, shared a lot of things with Oculus and a lot of Oculus employees were previously at Valve.

 

[pcchen]

I don't really understand your logic. If you don't believe in something, why would you allow one of your key employee to spend quite a lot of time on it? Salaries don't grow on trees, you know.

To me, it looks like Zenimax tried to make a deal with Oculus VR through lending one of their employee. They did want to see the deal happen (they are not likely to have the necessary expertise nor resources to launch their own VR project). If they don't believe in VR, they could just let John Carmack go from the start, and saved a lot of salary money, and also saved the hassle of having to negotiate a deal.

 

[hughJ]

That's fairly normal agreements that work done by an employee during the work hours of a company for another company are owned by that first company. The agreement mentioned in the update tends to point to that as well. Until we know more details I really don't see why they would be considered greedy bastards, it's perfectly normal business practice?

Prior to Carmack officially joining Oculus, Palmer was always very quick to point out that Carmack's technical involvement with Oculus's products has been virtually nil. The distortion shader and tracker that Carmack implemented in his original modified prototype were not the first implementations of those features, and were also not what ended up being used in Oculus's own prototypes and eventually devkits. I would think it's reasonable to say that Palmer has been careful to avoid any serious landmines in regards to Carmack's work.

Presumably Zenimax are going to be in a position of having to prove that some features or technology implemented by Oculus were actually sourced specifically from Carmack's research and not somewhere else? Given the fact that Valve has had an entire team dedicated to VR research for several years and that they've been in regular contact, freely sharing research with Oculus, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if none of Carmack's brief period of part-time VR research is genuinely novel enough to not have already been proposed by Valve or some ancient research paper.

 

[Zeross]

Oculus responds to Zenimax: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/05/oculus-responds-to-zenimax/

Some highlights that reinforce my first impression:

"There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products."
"Zenimax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers."

"A key reason that John permanently left Zenimax in August of 2013 was that Zenimax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company."

"Zenimax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax's demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus."

 

[Grall]

Always thought Bethesda/Zenimax were a bit suspect at best for the way they launch seriously bug-infested games on the public and then prematurely abandon the titles still riddled with game-breaking bugs after them having sold millions of copies.

This latest development just reaffirms that belief in me, lowering my opinion of the company from "suspect" to "bag of cocks".