Nvidia hatches VR plan with Stanford University

[shankly1985]

When people think of VR, they do think of the Rift and the Vive and not sure if you know what AR means but hence why I put AR when talking of the Microsoft thingy (Hololens) - AR stands for Actual Reality and you have just shown that you lack any knowledge on this but tried to pick me up lol.

Don't take it personal Shankly and I was giving my thoughts on the VR headset thing but being that Nvidia are involved and your disdain for anything Nvidia, I should have known it would always be a negative post.

Not at all and let me just correct you in your lack of knowledge..
augmented reality! AR
And I'll hold my hand up and say I did miss AR speed reading on phone and expect miss types also "off"

 

[Blackbadger]

This was shown at Siggraph 2013, I expect it is what Nvidia are working towards. Long term it may be the better solution, who knows until it is refined. Whilst the Occulous are Vive are lovely items, they are not doing things much differently than the existing VR headsets that have been around for decades. I think long term, a simple lens in front of a phone screen is not the answer.

 

[pgi947]

Far too late tbh they is already well established VR headsets out there, I feel nvidia will have a hard time trying to convince people to jump on board.

But who knows one thing nvidia is good at is marketing so am sure they big this up to be the best headset around.

Established, yes, juvenile, definitely.

Considering the big 'established' players in this market are yet to release a full consumer unit yet, 3-5 years time the landscape could be very different. If someones developing something with an approx release date of 3-5 years then they will be planning ahead with 3-5 years worth of technology advancement in mind.

So in 3-5 years, when the current oculus and ViVe's are becoming obsolete, we get ready for a next gen of headsets, this appears to be what market they're aiming for, not todays market.

Its like you saying there's no point in Samsung releasing a GPU in 3-5 years time as they'd have a hard time convincing people to jump on board as, at this moment in time, we already have established vendors.

 

[FoxEye]

Mainstream products are arriving now or early next year. In 5 years time VR would have been mainstream for years assuming it takes off.

It won't be mainstream in 5 years. Unless mainstream to you means something very different from what I think that word means.

In 5 years time, your average punter on the street might have tried VR (maybe), but almost certainly won't own one.

Perhaps you'll care to explain what is going to drive VR into the hands of the masses - in such a short time - such that everybody and his dog will be using them in 5 years time? I just don't buy it.

 

[Orangey]

It's not going mainstream until it isn't a huge clunky awkward brick you strap to your head... people didn't even like 3D glasses.

 

[Gregster]

Not at all and let me just correct you in your lack of knowledge..
augmented reality! AR
And I'll hold my hand up and say I did miss AR speed reading on phone and expect miss types also "off"

Yer, earlies all week has mashed my brain and I was wrong. I guess we all differ but for me I want to see loads of competition on an open platform, so regardless of what you buy they all play the games that support it and you don't need one for this game and another for that game.

 

[r7slayer]

Can you at least not try and insult people

Sorry bro just sayin how it is. Don't need to get offending. sorry.

 

[humbug]

5 years is a very very very long time in technology development and the establishment already have a 3 year head start.

 

[andybird123]

5 years is a very very very long time in technology development and the establishment already have a 3 year head start.

But in terms of actual hardware research, perhaps they don't. All the recently announced headsets aiming to release in the next two years are relying entirely on 3rd party hardware and just putting together a Samsung screen with an IR camera (at least Valve's lighthouse is kind of new, bit then others are just borrowing that). No one else has mentioned researching lightfields for displays. One mentioned projecting in to the eye but their FOV was pitiful.

If they manage to get this out in 3 years as they suggest on the low end then they could have something way ahead of the competition who are aiming to have a 4K oled display in the same time frame.

 

[humbug]

But in terms of actual hardware research, perhaps they don't. All the recently announced headsets aiming to release in the next two years are relying entirely on 3rd party hardware and just putting together a Samsung screen with an IR camera (at least Valve's lighthouse is kind of new, bit then others are just borrowing that). No one else has mentioned researching lightfields for displays. One mentioned projecting in to the eye but their FOV was pitiful.

If they manage to get this out in 3 years as they suggest on the low end then they could have something way ahead of the competition who are aiming to have a 4K oled display in the same time frame.

It boils down to a lot more than displays, one of the leading VR developers said Nvidia had work to do with Latency on their GPU's. no OLED display will cure that and for VR Latency is fundamental.

Out sourcing your display is also not a bad thing, people like Samsung make the best small displays around.

Are Nvidia going to develop their own displays? that could cost bn$ and there is no garuntee it will be any better than one from Samsung.

 

[DarrenM343]

Once you have an established player it’s next to impossible to make a profit and get established yourself. In the case of smartphone and estimated 95% of the profits go to Iphones with most other brands losing money.

But why is this? Is it because they were the first out with the smartphone or more to do with the brand? I think Apple could bring out Apple VR in 5 years time and it'd probably sell, even if it's a worse product than some of the relatively known brands (currently). Must admit I'd never heard of Vive.
Apple could put their logo on a dog whoopise and it'd probably sell

 

[Gregster]

Do people still genuinely think that the Iphone is the best and grab only that? I work with so many people with phones and there is only a couple who have an Iphone and 95% of these guys are not tech savvy but get what they think is best.

 

[andybird123]

It boils down to a lot more than displays, one of the leading VR developers said Nvidia had work to do with Latency on their GPU's. no OLED display will cure that and for VR Latency is fundamental.

Out sourcing your display is also not a bad thing, people like Samsung make the best small displays around.

Are Nvidia going to develop their own displays? that could cost bn$ and there is no garuntee it will be any better than one from Samsung.

They already have a prototype according to the article, so whilst final fit might be somewhat custom, the panels must be available. My point is that if every other HMD maker is just using off the shelf phone screens, and Stanford have come up with something specifically for VR then it could be a good selling point.
They'll parts of the screen will still be made by a panel maker, but they can still be assembled custom and not be just an off the shelf phone screen.

Nvidia's "latency" in VR is debatable for one thing, and certainly solvable in the short term. If its not a case of a driver fix in Maxwell then I would hazard a guess they would have fixed it in Pascal.

If its a problem now, then why are both OR and HTC using NVIDIA for demos, surely they would 100% only use AMD to showcase their own products?
Oculus list the 970 and above as "Oculus Ready"

 

[Pottsey]

Do people still genuinely think that the Iphone is the best and grab only that? I work with so many people with phones and there is only a couple who have an Iphone and 95% of these guys are not tech savvy but get what they think is best.

From a hardware point of view the Iphone is pretty much the best with faster hardware then other phones. But my point was its had to get established when there is already a main player. Yes there are other guys who don't have iphones but most of those phone brands are running at a loss or fighting over 5% of the market profits.

In 5 years time the VR market wont be a new market is will be an established market. it is very difficult to enter a market 5 years late and do well. Very few company's have pulled that off and NVidia has failed when arriving late before.

Chances are in 5 years time the VR market will have either died and few are interested in trying yet another VR headset. Or it will have already taken off with established players and content websites.

 

[Insanties_birth]

I'd normally like the idea of a Nvidia headset. They make generally reliable hardware, show competence at resolving most issues (still release a lot of dud drivers but hey ho) and generally would have the right background to get this sort of thing done.

Being a bit late to the party (not too late in the grand scheme of things but still behind the others and likely to see them showing off second iterations not too long after Nvidia launch) and also Nvidia's penchant for creating hardware designed to lock you into there own brand and require you stick with them? That's usually where I draw the line. I stick with android so I'm not locked down to stupid apple stuff and never have options or diversity and I wouldn't want to be locked down with Nvidia either when it comes to PC / VR.

Do people still genuinely think that the Iphone is the best and grab only that? I work with so many people with phones and there is only a couple who have an Iphone and 95% of these guys are not tech savvy but get what they think is best.

Can confirm, crapple is still the popular choice for all the kids who like companies to do there best to force them to repeatedly buy there own brand by being unfriendly with others as is Nvidia but at least they lead instead of following on most things.

 

[D.P.]

Nvidia was the latest player in the GPU market and absolutely dominated it due to superior performance, drivers, software support without the requirement for a proprietary API like GLIDE/s3 metal/Mantle. VR headsets are at least 2 years away from being sold mainstream. So why does anyone think that nvidia won't succeed? They have 82% of the discrete market for starters

 

[r7slayer]

From a hardware point of view the Iphone is pretty much the best with faster hardware then other phones. But my point was its had to get established when there is already a main player. Yes there are other guys who don't have iphones but most of those phone brands are running at a loss or fighting over 5% of the market profits.

Don't mean to throw this offtopic but i can't help my self and reply. The hardware in iphones generally is inferior to other smart phones, be it the camera or cpu, memory, and storage.

Now reason why iphones do seem so fast and do really well is the OS. The operating system apple has developed for the iphones really is incredible in terms of optimisation. The phones run really well with the hardware they have. Even the camera software is quite something too. However all the hardware they are developing for is all the same for their phones. Android has to be changed for all the different hardware specs and isn't designed for a specific set of hardware which is why it's not as great as iOS in terms of performance.

 

[Insanties_birth]

Nvidia was the latest player in the GPU market and absolutely dominated it due to superior performance, drivers, software support without the requirement for a proprietary API like GLIDE/s3 metal/Mantle. VR headsets are at least 2 years away from being sold mainstream. So why does anyone think that nvidia won't succeed? They have 82% of the discrete market for starters

Plenty of companies can be large and still not do good elsewhere. Look at Sony, hammered everyone with PS2 sales but did it make them king of laptops and TV's? Did Microsoft who were the leader in PC OS' suddenly become king of consoles or did they win when they chose to diversify to phones? Just because Nvidia are good at GPU's doesn't mean they're the right brand for VR, this could go just as bad as tegra or the idea of physx cards / 3D vision monitors.

They've had there share of duds when trying to diversify and to be fair they managed to string them along long enough to not look terrible but they've made a few products / ideas that show they aren't perfect and that's before we start looking at gameworks and there latest drivers (or even my laptop which for whatever reason never can connect up to Nvidia to update drivers :?). Nvidia should be happy with where they are and quite trying to get there fingers in all the pies because they've only managed to make a few messy pies so far. I may be wrong and they might do pretty well this time but if they do I just hope it's not got the Nvidia obsession with designing stuff to deliberately try and gimp competition.

 

[Pottsey]

Don't mean to throw this offtopic but i can't help my self and reply. The hardware in iphones generally is inferior to other smart phones, be it the camera or cpu, memory, and storage.

Now reason why iphones do seem so fast and do really well is the OS. The operating system apple has developed for the iphones really is incredible in terms of optimisation. The phones run really well with the hardware they have. Even the camera software is quite something too. However all the hardware they are developing for is all the same for their phones. Android has to be changed for all the different hardware specs and isn't designed for a specific set of hardware which is why it's not as great as iOS in terms of performance.

That’s not something I agree with well the camera is not something I looked into but CPU and GPU tin he Iphone tends to be massive ahead in hardware. The CPU is getting less important and what matter more these days is the GPU which the Iphone and Ipad have a noticeable advantage in hardware. The Iphones are one of the few phones that don’t throttle after a short while and run at full speed for longer. In that respect they are far ahead of other phones both in GPU power, efficiently and staying at max speed.

The reason Iphones seem fast isn’t just the OS is that other phones hardware has to throttle down the speeds after a short while of running.

 

[David Bisset]

That’s not something I agree with well the camera is not something I looked into but CPU and GPU tin he Iphone tends to be massive ahead in hardware. The CPU is getting less important and what matter more these days is the GPU which the Iphone and Ipad have a noticeable advantage in hardware. The Iphones are one of the few phones that don’t throttle after a short while and run at full speed for longer. In that respect they are far ahead of other phones both in GPU power, efficiently and staying at max speed.

The reason Iphones seem fast isn’t just the OS is that other phones hardware has to throttle down the speeds after a short while of running.

Umm? That's simply not true. They're mostly slower devices. The area they do well is single-threading. Graphics is more of a mixed bag - the 6s was a decent step up for them, previously they've lagged with each gen.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/products/lang/en_us/devices/iphone-6,iphone-6s/

The 6s has some good results, varying by bench, but previously they were simply worse.