Oculus Rift

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isee

Original Poster:

3,713 posts

182 months

Wednesday 21st August 2013
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Anyone excited about it?
I was about to buy a 3d monitor for my pc with the NVidia 3dvision bundle for £400 last night, when a mate mentioned Oculus Rift.
having checked out the tech so far and some youtube reviews, I decided to hold fire and get this instead when it's out. I hear the 1080p version of it is superb and a $300 (or £300 for us no doubt) is actually 200 less than i'd be willing to part with!

http://www.oculusvr.com/

Altrezia

8,517 posts

210 months

Wednesday 21st August 2013
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I have a dev kit - it's a fascinating bit of kit, but useless at the moment for anything other than experimenting. The screens are just too low resolution.

When the higher resoution ones come out they should be much much more exciting.

isee

Original Poster:

3,713 posts

182 months

Wednesday 21st August 2013
quotequote all
Altrezia said:
I have a dev kit - it's a fascinating bit of kit, but useless at the moment for anything other than experimenting. The screens are just too low resolution.

When the higher resoution ones come out they should be much much more exciting.
yeah that's what I've heard!
I read that the 1080p has pretty much put that issue to bed already and the reltail version is likely to be even better!

I can't wait. Do you think they are likely to release in 2014 at least?

Altrezia

8,517 posts

210 months

Wednesday 21st August 2013
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I don't see why not - there's nothing technically wrong with the dev kit except the screen. They're probably waiting for developers to implement it in games more than anything.

If you are desparate for a go you're more than welcome to pop over, or I could be tempted to part with it.

MattyB_

2,008 posts

256 months

Wednesday 21st August 2013
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Rumours are about that it's going to be more like early 2015 by the time they've finalised it and got full production in place - bear in mind they demo'd a VERY early build of a 1080P version at E3 and there's still a long way to go.

It's going to be huge though - they're getting some big names behind it (Carmack) and some big titles/devs too (Star Citizen, Valve). I can only see this is being a massive step forward in immersion, especially in sim games (driving/piloting).

isee

Original Poster:

3,713 posts

182 months

Wednesday 21st August 2013
quotequote all
Altrezia said:
I don't see why not - there's nothing technically wrong with the dev kit except the screen. They're probably waiting for developers to implement it in games more than anything.

If you are desparate for a go you're more than welcome to pop over, or I could be tempted to part with it.
That's very kind thanks!
I think i'll wait for the hd dev kits to be shipped out as standard and then just lift one of those smile

MattyB_

2,008 posts

256 months

Thursday 22nd August 2013
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isee said:
That's very kind thanks!
I think i'll wait for the hd dev kits to be shipped out as standard and then just lift one of those smile
They've confirmed that there will be no HD dev kit before the officially released consumer version. Although in that same (recent) article, they have stated it'll be out in 2014.

MattyB_

2,008 posts

256 months

Thursday 22nd August 2013
quotequote all
Altrezia said:
I don't see why not - there's nothing technically wrong with the dev kit except the screen. They're probably waiting for developers to implement it in games more than anything.

If you are desparate for a go you're more than welcome to pop over, or I could be tempted to part with it.
I was going to ask how much you wanted for it, but they're over £500 on eBay!!

Altrezia

8,517 posts

210 months

Thursday 22nd August 2013
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I would accept £400

Mister V

1,106 posts

199 months

Thursday 22nd August 2013
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Took delivery of my dev kit today, been playing with a few of the demo's that are out for it. The roller coaster demo is quite an experience. vomitbiggrin

John_S4x4

1,350 posts

256 months

Thursday 22nd August 2013
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I have had my Oculus Rift Dev kit for sometime now. I agree with what has been said and would say that it is good for testing and demo's. Really like Half Life 2 on the Oculus. Very impressed with the inmersion factor of being 'in' HL2 and the scale of you in the buildings. Not so pleased with the motion sickness affect or the screen door effect. Can't wait for the consumer version and I hope the consumer version Oculus would have a screen resolution better than 1080 HD but can't see that happening due to HDMI 1.4 standard bandwith etc.

Really enjoyed Titans of Space demo and lots of other cool things happening eg. Oculus Rift Google Street View smile

flat-planedCrank

3,697 posts

202 months

Friday 23rd August 2013
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Utterly fascinating blogs from Micheal Abrash on VR - http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/


Who would have thought it was more complicated than putting 2 displays on a headset? winkhehe

scorp

8,783 posts

228 months

Friday 23rd August 2013
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We got the devkit at work the other day. So much potential, and surprisingly light.

scorp

8,783 posts

228 months

Monday 26th August 2013
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John_S4x4 said:
I have had my Oculus Rift Dev kit for sometime now. I agree with what has been said and would say that it is good for testing and demo's. Really like Half Life 2 on the Oculus. Very impressed with the inmersion factor of being 'in' HL2 and the scale of you in the buildings. Not so pleased with the motion sickness affect or the screen door effect. Can't wait for the consumer version and I hope the consumer version Oculus would have a screen resolution better than 1080 HD but can't see that happening due to HDMI 1.4 standard bandwith etc.

Really enjoyed Titans of Space demo and lots of other cool things happening eg. Oculus Rift Google Street View smile
Needs to be much higher than 1080p, currently we get 640x800 per eye and you can make out the vertical blockiness quite easy, it's like the centre of the lense is focused on the middle 400 lines with the periphery getting the rest.

dmulally

6,180 posts

179 months

Tuesday 27th August 2013
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Mikes2k said:
I would love to try this out while playing iracing.

The idea of actually sitting In the car and being able to look all around you sounds amazing.

There really is no point in having a triple moniter set up anymore
That is a great point because it's how I feel. wink I spent big bucks late last year setting up a games room with a 3d projector playing onto a 110" screen. That is ok for consoles but doesn't cut it for PC.

I did just build a water cooled gaming PC and was reseaching the best three screen setup for flight/driving sims until the OR came into my life. I thought about a dev kit but I'd rather wait until the 1080p version is out so I can get the full experience. Until that day I just bought a Korean special to get me through.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/150981826701?ssPageName...

I have been waiting my entire life for this and will hold off on games like Rise of Flight and Project CARS until it is good to go. Euro truck simulator is funnily enough the only game I'm not sure to get now or not.

Durzel

12,232 posts

167 months

Tuesday 27th August 2013
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Relevant: http://evevalkyrie.com/

A prototype of this game was demoed in Iceland earlier this year, and the people I was with who had a go on it thought it was amazing and very absorbing.

Pair it with this bad boy and we could be looking at the next big step in gaming.

Problem is of course always going to be the whole chicken and egg adoption problem - it'll need wider support to make it more attractive, and without fairly wide adoption there will be reticence to spend a lot of development time on it. That said PhysX (the hardware accelerated physics) started from nothing and is now an Nvidia property incorporated on all of their graphics cards, so who knows..

Bullett

10,873 posts

183 months

Tuesday 27th August 2013
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That Omni looks very clever and surprisingly cheap (until you realise you need an Oculus Rift as well). I can't see it becoming a major hit in the consumer market, more specialist like the dedicated sim providers.
I can see a market for more commercial environments, indoor paintball without the pain for groups/corporate entertainment type stuff.

Guvernator

13,104 posts

164 months

Tuesday 27th August 2013
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I remember playing with VR glasses in the early 90's. OK the technology was in it's infancy but even back then I could see the huge potential for this tech but strangely this VR tech seemed to disappear overnight. I'm now really glad that someone finally seems to be making progress on this front and bringing out a product that I can't wait to try. However I'm just really surprised that it's taken this long for this tech to make a re-emergence as it really is the answer to some of the questions that has plagued gaming display technologies for quite a while now.

DavidCane

853 posts

240 months

Tuesday 27th August 2013
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I had one a couple of months ago and sold it. When games were well optimised for it (eg Half Life 2) they're simply amazing. But the majority of stuff out there wasn't well put together and there were real difficulties calibrating IPD, meaning I was getting headache and cross-eyed after using it.

What I really wanted was Oculus to have a user profile in the driver settings and a standardised calibration process. That, plus iRacing native support.

2 days after I sold it both of these wishes came true, dammit!

So I ordered another one which just arrived. Now to get immersed in iRacing and carry on where I left off in HL2 biggrin

In all seriousness, this has a huge future. Once a suitable screen is available and they've got positional tracking implemented this thing is good-to-go.

Durzel

12,232 posts

167 months

Tuesday 27th August 2013
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In games where the thing you're holding doesn't move - e.g. racing games - holding a steering wheel, flight sims, etc - the looking around part of it I'm sure works brilliantly.

Where I imagine it falls down in terms of current game support is disconnecting where the gun is pointing from where the camera (eyes) are pointing. In first person shooters for example the gun doesn't move as such, the camera moves and the gun is effectively welded to it. Proper Oculus Rift support would entail the gun being able to be moved and pointed independently of the camera which at best would result in people being much less accurate and at worst be pretty game-breaking - e.g. allowing you to point the gun at your own head, seeing parts of the gun you wouldn't normally, etc.

As I understand it the tech also requires you to keep your eyes looking forwards at all times, moving your head to control movement. Humans obviously look around without moving their head.

Still, it's a very impressive leap forward - it surely won't be too long before it's enclosed within glasses that are only slightly bigger than regular glasses, especially with flexible OLED developments.