Oculus Rift

[red_slr]

Guvernator said:

I disagree, I bought my first flat screen TV for £1500 and that was after they'd been selling for £3-4k the year previous. You can now buy a 4k TV for £500.

If there is one thing you can guarantee it's that technology get's cheaper and better. This is the first shot of the new VR wave. Increasing competition and cheaper manufacturing processes to make all the gubbins that go into a VR set will mean prices come down.

Also as the toxic has pointed out, at £500 they are an irrelevance bought only by the dedicated few, to make a real market impact they need to be £250 or less. Judging by the huge players that are getting involved in this space (google, apple, facebook) I can't imagine they are betting on a niche market.

You may be right but I just get that feeling that Rift V2 will be just as expensive as V1, if not even more expensive!

[Mr Whippy]

Exactly.

They scope has drifted from every-home novelty to super high end device that will kill itself by too high initial expectations.

So now they're inbetween a rock and a hard place. They need to sell lots to get the ROI, but they won't if the price is too high.

Unless they just run at a loss until they get the cheaper kit out the door in such huge volumes 2-3 years further down the line?


I'm a gamer and enjoy my PC, but I honestly can't justify that kinda money. Stuff is generally meant to be better and cheaper each generation and I've never paid more than £200 for a GPU... so £500 would be a HUGE step up!

Maybe I'm getting old, but I find it better to wait 2 years to do anything with computers now. Buy hardware 2 yrs behind, games etc etc... much more enjoyable as all the bugs are fixed, thriving communities, run in max settings at decent FPS on a moderate PC, and for about 10x less cost

[JustinF]

For sure prices will become more mainstream as the tech matures and the development costs get consumed by the uptake but don't underestimate the buying power of twenty something gamers who live at home and don't have a family to support, there's enough people dropping silly money on 980ti's and Titan Black's.

[Mr Whippy]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Yep, for once Facebook could do some good in the world here haha

As for the latter part, yeah it amazes me how much some people spend on PCs. Even if I were earning £100,000 one year I'd struggle to justify £1,000 on a Titan or the latest high end card. It's just non-sensical for splishing pixels around on an LCD screen.

The only time I'd justify anything over £200 were if it were making me MORE money in my work because it was slowing down my entire pipeline.

Beyond that I can just render stuff over night, or play at lower settings... and like you say, that is where the meat of the curve is, so that is where the meat of the quality/£ ratio developers aim at any way.

[Guvernator]

My thoughts exactly, I'm a gadget freak and avid gamer so this should be aimed squarely at me and if a product justifies it, I will splash out and yet I'm in no rush to purchase at the moment. As a famous Dutch beer commercial once said "It's jussht not ready yet"

Of course if my friend gets his in April and is absolutely gushing about it then all bets are off.

[Bullett]

I'm an outlier as well and I have a DK2 sat on my desk and used to own a DK1.
Avid PC gamer (gamer in general). And Sim racer with some expensive peripherals.
I should be the perfect customer

The £500 is making me pause and then the new CPU and GPU (so let's face it a new PC) on top is a lot of money.

This will remain niche and therefore expensive for several generations (of VR tech) at least. It will take someone like Valve to release a generic spec and SDK/API/integration to drive prices down as the biggest barrier at the moment is having exclusive support.
I've shown the DK2 to friends and they have all thought it was brilliant and want one until they found out it was £350.

[Irrotational]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

This is all fine though. It's a brand new type of technology (albeit made out of existing tech) and I believe them when they say they have priced it as cheaply as they can.

Their view (which I agree with, but is subjective) is that motion sickness and crap experiences will kill VR much more effectively than price.

Sure it's a niche product right now, and they are not going to sell 10 million in their first year (like the PS4 did), but they are not planning to. They'd rather sell a few thousand units, to start with, and have word of mouth etc to then sell the next 10 million.

They also want to be one of the first so that they can make all of their money from the digital store. I.e. they want to become like Steam but for VR (which is what Steam VR is trying to do). They won't make any money from hardware for a long, long, time. The margins will always be tiny.

Facebook is looking even bigger again and it just wants to be some giant hub of "social". If in 10 years that means virtual skype calls where you're all in the same room with avatars etc then that's what they'll do.

I'm still slightly amazed that they have sold VR as a primarily gaming device first - I think it makes sense as there will be a lot of cross over between gamers and people who have big PC's and love gadgets - but other markets will be much larger than gaming longer term.

All the big tech companies have got where they are by being first/best in disrupting a market...they're also probably quite paranoid that someone will come along and do to them what they did to Yahoo and MySpace.

[8bit]

Bullett said:

It will take someone like Valve to release a generic spec and SDK/API/integration to drive prices down as the biggest barrier at the moment is having exclusive support.

Valve have done this already, it's called Open VR. You can install it by opting in to Steam beta participation and installing the Steam VR beta. This is how to get Rift DK2 working with Elite: Dangerous on the 0.8 Oculus runtime.

Open VR also works with the Razer OSVR headset, which is cheaper than Rift CV1 and is customisable. http://www.osvr.org/

[Bullett]

Ok thanks, wasn't aware but it has to be the way to go.

[Motorsport_is_Expensive]

Not wanting to state the obvious but the issue with VR is that it's a little before its time.

PC power development has stalled, whilst reasonably high spec machines have become easily affordable. Think back 10 years and the costs of PC gaming then, then consider the O/R asking price. It's not that high, really.

Current gen consoles are some way to blame, I think. Both are woefully under powered (the Xbox laughably so) but they're totally dominating the market and cross platform development is king. My PC (Geforce 770 s/c / i7 ) trounces the PS4 in every way, but st itself trying to render Alien Isolation on a DK2. Quite how Sony reckon their VR will fair, I've no idea. I read somewhere that the headset itself will bring it's own processing power? It'll need to.

The oft repeated VR mantra is that 'you need to experience it for yourself'. I'd agree with this totally. Whilst my PC wheezed through Alien, the experience was something else entirely. It was incredible. Even at this stage, its one of those 'I was there when this happened' moments. I'm really, really excited for VR.

That said, to kick the year off I had a choice between fixing up my spare track car, or upgrading the PC and buying an Oculus. It was, effectively, a choice between real and virtual racing cars. I went for the former, but it wont be long before VR offers a genuine reason to go for the latter. Give it a year, I say.

[Mr Whippy]

Motorsport_is_Expensive said:

Not wanting to state the obvious but the issue with VR is that it's a little before its time.

PC power development has stalled, whilst reasonably high spec machines have become easily affordable. Think back 10 years and the costs of PC gaming then, then consider the O/R asking price. It's not that high, really.

It's always before it's time.

We just take todays visual expectations on one screen at 60fps and 1080p, but to make it work we need to double the res and frame rate, so 8x more power is required, or more perhaps.

And we know as you venture off the bell curve of 60fps 1080p target for everything, you get negligible returns for vastly more expensive kit too.


So VR is always going to be a hard sell vs a conventional screen.


But this is why I think they've let project scope drift. Personally my interest was in the immersion and having quality being a tradeoff for that benefit.
But the developers now seem to want the quality AND immersion and have forgotten people need to be able to buy the kit in the first place!


So yeah. I'm out. If VR flops between now and it maybe becoming cheaply available so be it. Maybe the 3rd time round someone will finally realise that the first succesfull VR needs to be low quality but high on immersion benefits to SELL the concept first.

Imo.

[Irrotational]

Motorsport_is_Expensive said:

Quite how Sony reckon their VR will fair, I've no idea. I read somewhere that the headset itself will bring it's own processing power? It'll need to.

The kits to date all come with a mysterious extra box which everyone assumes has some extra compute power. The PS solution also has a "frame doubler" system to translate a 60 FPS game into a 120 FPS game. It doesn't render a new scene/image but it interpolates the existing one for the latest small bit of head movement. This apparently gives you smooth head tracking whilst "only" having to render the game at 60.

A lot of people seem to be having amazing/immersive experiences with the existing graphics so I don't think the gap between Ultra settings at 1080p or low settings at 2160p will matter too much. I.e. people will be too busy feeling amazed being in the game to start worrying about the lastest shadow render.

[Bullett]

It's not about the effects it's about the resolution.
1080 looks great on a 24" screen with your nose 3ft + away. Make the screen 5" and on the end of your nose and everything looks fuzzy. For example, text you can read easily on your large monitor becomes illegible on a 1080hmd.

I can live with the fuzzy graphics for the sense of immersion you get, it truly is mind blowing.

[Motorsport_is_Expensive]

That's interesting about the PS4 kit, thanks.

I can live with fuzzy graphics if the game works. But on the odd occasion you see (in the game, say a first person shooter) a hi-res texture that through some happy accident is working at 60fps+ and the head tracking is bang on your get a sudden moment of... whoa is this real or a game?!

Then again, if you're talking a flight or helicopter sim you just need the sensation of height and space.

It's always interesting how game developers manage hardware performance to achieve their goals, and the tricks at play. Mind, motion blur was / is a hideous creation and I'm hoping VR kills it to death, with fire. Hopefully VR will inspire the kind of creativity around during the early days of PC gaming, as opposed to the Call of Duty polish polish polish mantra of late.

[Irrotational]

Cheers chaps - I see what you mean but i was referring to a different original point about the GPU power needed for VR versus a normal screen.

Anyway - here is a good article on the PS4 add-on box with a couple of piccies. Digital foundry aim to do a lot of in-depth techy coverage so i think this is about as much as is really known at this stage:-

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2...

It mentions "asynchronous time warp" which is the process used to interpolate the extra frames to get from 60 to 120.

[Mr Whippy]

Motorsport_is_Expensive said:

Hopefully VR will inspire the kind of creativity around during the early days of PC gaming, as opposed to the Call of Duty polish polish polish mantra of late.

I think half of the problem is just a lack of risk taking.

VR is already losing it's risk edge and they want to refine it with 'early access' and consumers paying and taking all the risks.

Games have been doing that too for years mostly.


The last games that I played that really innovated and changed things forever after they arrived, at least in the FPS sense, were HL1 and HL2.

Even now HL1 plays a lot newer than it seems it is, and so does HL2, when compared to contemporary games I'm playing now.


I think creativity is somewhat dead because while players are willing to lap up the same old crap then developers won't take risks.


VR will force some creativity to have to happen, but really the indusry generally is void of any.

Just look at that new NFS game. The same old rap music cliche F&F stylee. It's so old and tired already. Blue flames of NOS flying out of exhausts. It's just the same old crap from when the console port rot set in!

Dave

[130R]

Frankly who cares about people who don't have a decent enough spec PC. I just want to find out which is best between the Rift and Vive.

[Mr Whippy]

130R said:

Frankly who cares about people who don't have a decent enough spec PC.

Game developers.

They'd be stupid to spend lots of money on features only a few people can use.

Current 'high spec' features entail mostly diminishing return visual rendering tweaks.

VR goes way beyond that and requires actual proper investment to get the best of.


The best you're gonna get if these things don't sell BIG, is normal game 'ports'...



So you get a console game, ported to PC, and then have wky VR support thrown over the top as a token gesture. Just what VR doesn't need.

[PanzerCommander]

Motorsport_is_Expensive said:

That's interesting about the PS4 kit, thanks.

I can live with fuzzy graphics if the game works. But on the odd occasion you see (in the game, say a first person shooter) a hi-res texture that through some happy accident is working at 60fps+ and the head tracking is bang on your get a sudden moment of... whoa is this real or a game?!

Then again, if you're talking a flight or helicopter sim you just need the sensation of height and space.

It's always interesting how game developers manage hardware performance to achieve their goals, and the tricks at play. Mind, motion blur was / is a hideous creation and I'm hoping VR kills it to death, with fire. Hopefully VR will inspire the kind of creativity around during the early days of PC gaming, as opposed to the Call of Duty polish polish polish mantra of late.

This is one big issue I have with PC based flight sims over flying the real thing, even on a relatively modern simulator like X-Plane 10.XX you just don't get that depth perception that allows you to raise the nose and flare out at just the right time. I am hoping that VR brings something good to the flight simulator world even if I look a pillock sat at my desk with a headset on and a blank monitor

Yes motion blur is awful I always turn it off.

[Bullett]

It's the same with car racing. In VR you get a true 3D sensation of speed and relative location and as such you can run much closer in a pack. You do have to turn your head as there is no peripheral vision but it's amazingly real. I've actually found myself reaching for my seat adjustment because I'm sitting too high/low in the car.
A rollercoaster sim I put people into actually gives you the negative G sensation over the drops. It's amazingly immersive.