Oculus Rift

http://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/htc-vive-pre-hands-on/
Just been catching up on a bit of VR news about the HTC Vive and how the camera is used in this article which sounds quite amazing.

Seeing the world behind blue eyes

Previously, when a user approached the boundary of the square playing area, the Vive would fade a grid into view, showing neon bright lines marking the virtual prison walls of the home holodeck. The boundary grid looked something like those laser background yearbook photos we all remember from the 1990s.

Thanks to the new camera on the front of the Vive Pre, approaching the grid now shows you the outline of the objects and people in the room with you. And it’s all in vivid teal — HTC calls it “Chaperone mode.” I’ve only used it for a few minutes, but I don’t really want to Vive without it.

If you want to pause your game, you can also turn the real world back on at any time by double tapping a button on either of the Vive controllers. This dissolves your game space and recreates the real world around you in a darker, more detailed, shade of teal. This allowed me to find a real chair someone put in the middle of my virtual game space and sit in it. Like one of those trust falls you do at camp, I half expected to fall right to the ground. It takes a lot of trust to sit in what appears to be an animated chair, even if you know it’s real. But the chair was where it appeared to be, and I sat down, relieved and giddy.

With the Chaperone mode, HTC and Valve have opened the door to an endless string of ideas. Like Microsoft’s HoloLens, the Vive can now merge the virtual world with our own, making our world more magical and the games we play more real. It can blend and mold our world into something entirely new, demonstrating what may soon become fact. For virtual reality to truly take off, it must also include a way to augment and connect to the real world.
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Vive still seems superior to oculus when people have had ago on both prototypes in the reviews, in fact it seems like the one to have for many reasons like the controllers and tracking ability and now the chaperone mode.
The Vive is also meant to handle motion sickness better which will become fairly important when it hits the shelves as people are not going to be happy if they cant use there new shiny HMD because it makes them sick.
Which has been mentioned by quite a few people now on Reddit for example.
I also get the feeling oculus is playing catchup with a lot of things but has good PR people which seem good at obfuscating what they are able to do with it, generally when vive does something awesome like the controllers and tracking oculus is like yeah we have that too but but you cant see it yet.

Unlike say something like a GPU which can be measured and compared relatively easily VR is all about the experience it delivers over just the specs shown and i feel like Vive will give the better experience and it seems most people who have tried it have said the same:
Oculus be damned, this is the future

The Oculus Rift is now on sale for $600, and the HTC Vive will likely cost even more when it arrives in homes this April.

I don’t think it matters. No other VR headset can immerse users like the Vive, and the Vive Pre takes a huge leap forward by including a camera that connects its virtual holodeck space to the real people and objects in a room. That eliminates the alienation felt when wearing a virtual reality headset, which is normally blinding, and may lead to games and apps that transform real world objects and people, rather than ignoring them.

I’m still excited about Oculus Rift, can’t wait to see more from the HoloLens, and the Gear VR won the Digital Trends Product of the Year for 2015, but damn it, I’m putting my virtual money on the HTC Vive.

This is virtual reality. Everyone else needs to catch up.
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This is also a good video showing the Chaperone mode at around 6:40min onwards showing that the accuracy was good enough that the guy could find and sit in a chair with ease for example and also shows how easy it is to grab the controllers from someone as if you are directly looking right at them.

I have been putting money aside for a Vive for a while now, i am really excited about all the VR stuff its what we dreamed about in the early 90's but never came into being.
I feel like now its coming and in a few years when we have 4k+ displays and even wider FOV like 180degree Horizontal it will be even more amazing.
Plus i think it will give the GPU makers a kick up the backside to make faster cards that work well with VR if it takes off, i want to see something like the leap the 8800gtx made when it came out rather than the small increments of performance we have become used to.
 
Meh, I'm not taking all that fanboyism that seriously. And it's gonna get especially annoying as time goes by.

In any case, the next gen GPUs might be interesting for VR (dual GPUs, dual cards, VR mode). They'll be more optimised towards reducing latency and the likes, then 4K VR panels... maybe wireless (doubtfull though). Next gen is where it'll be.
 
Initially I was grieved at the price of the pre order. I was dead set on pre ordering the consumer version (having been an owner of the DK2).

Now I'm almost pleased that oculus has forced me to wait. The VR game is huge, waiting will be worthehile. Unless you have £600 to waste.
 
See theres aspects of the Vive that I think would really suit me, being able to have that forward facing camera to bring in controllers visually would be great, half the time with my DK2 I was getting a little but frustrated by trying to find some on the buttons on my X55.

I really need to wait and pick the one that best suits my needs.
 
Well my orders just been sorted finally, after showing -- for Totals.

Looks like ive got in on the March deliveries 'fingers crossed' with a 613000026-----, can March 28th come any sooner?
 
OldComputerGuy7 said:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/htc-vive-pre-hands-on/
Just been catching up on a bit of VR news about the HTC Vive and how the camera is used in this article which sounds quite amazing.
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The camera is really there as a safety device as far as I'm concerned and that's how HTC have spun it so far, I'm not sure it's good enough on this generation for devs to use it in games.

Tested posted their thoughts last night, and said that it doesn't do any depth mapping and so the camera view is actually off from the real world i.e. when looking through the camera things aren't quite where they should be, which is one of the factors which can introduce nausea and a lack of presence. Switching between both VR and a sort of AR can be jarring.

They also said the HMD still even with the revisions isn't quite as comfortable as the Rift.

The changes to the lighthouse system sound good though, much quieter motors, and I didn't actually realise until last night they only need power, not a wired data connection as well. The touch controllers are looking better, but I still like that the Rift will be able to do finger tracking and gestures.

Other folk coming out of CES are also saying that both systems are excellent, the Vive positional tracking in particular seems better which isn't a surprise given lasers vs. an IR camera, but that they feel this round of VR will still be a seated experience mainly and we aren't ready for full standing/roaming yet, which may mean some of the Vive's advantage gets wasted.
 
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Same here. I'm glad my order number is a 31, if the shipping date stories are to believed I'll have a little time to gauge consensus before they charge me and ship mine. However on face value I'm okay with spending this price for a decent first VR experience.

Would I have preferred it to be cheaper? Of course, but not at the expense of quality of experience. The same goes for the Vive too, I'll probably get that also. I really hoped Oculus/Vive conversations wouldn't deteriorate to the level NVIDIA/AMD threads always do. I want both platforms to succeed, it only means good things for the consumer and a promising start to the future for VR!
 
Kiyoshi said:
I really hoped Oculus/Vive conversations wouldn't deteriorate to the level NVIDIA/AMD threads always do. I want both platforms to succeed, it only means good things for the consumer and a promising start to the future for VR!
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The conversations were always destined to do that, its human nature to want your item to be better than someone elses item. It makes a person feel self justified in their choice and that they have something superior to someone else. Its why people have bickered and argued over the decades about WoW v Other MMOs, VHS v Beta, Nvidia v AMD, AMD v Intel , Playstation v Xbox, Sega v Nintendo, Amiga v Atari ST, Commodore v Sinclair and so on and so on.

Vive buyers/owners will big up Vive and Rift buyers/owners will big up Rift. Both sides will do everything they can to suggest that they made the right choice and spent the right money and the other person made the wrong choice/wasted money. Then there will be a 3rd group of people, those who cannot afford either the Rift or the Vive, who will , in their jealousy of not being able to get one, lash out at both the Vive and the Rift.

All human nature :)
 
Tombstone said:
Then there will be a 3rd group of people, those who cannot afford either the Rift or the Vive, who will , in their jealousy of not being able to get one, lash out at both the Vive and the Rift.

All human nature :)
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You forgot the 4th group of people with money to burn, who will buy both and not get involved with taking sides (unless one is massively superior to the other)
 
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