Oculus Rift

Valve update - No competition here....

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2088747/valve-and-oculus-team-up-for-virtual-reality-supergroup.html

And now for the reality check: This unnamed technology isn’t coming out any time soon. News out of Valve’s virtual reality panel at Steam Dev Days is that this prototype is for research purposes only. Research that will then be shared with Oculus.

Yes, it’s a virtual reality dream team. Oculus’s new Crystal Cove prototype is in part a collaboration between Oculus and Valve. Specifically, Valve contributed its superior position-tracking system.

By 2015, Valve claims virtual reality headsets will reach 20 millisecond latency, 110 degree field of view, and millimeter-accurate tracking.

Those specs would solve a lot of today’s most pressing VR problems, though Valve also has a list of future developments it’s looking into. The most welcome path of development involves a wireless model. Today’s wired virtual reality headsets are easy to get tangled up in, but those wires are currently necessary to achieve lower latency. Achieving low latency wirelessly (perhaps through a system mounted to the headset itself) would be a huge advancement.

Hopefully, this Valve/Oculus collaboration will continue to pay dividends. Virtual reality is by far the most fascinating space in PC gaming these days (sorry, Steam Machines), and it’s great to see a company like Valve pitching in on development.

And now, back to waiting impatiently for the consumer version of Oculus...
Click to expand...
 
Matmulder said:
People have asked if 1080P will be enough, this review:

http://techreport.com/blog/25901/oculus-rift-crystal-cove-prototype-tickles-our-rods-and-cones

says:

"When it's that close to your face and divided between two eyes, a 1080p display feels pretty low-res. If you stop and look, you can see the individual subpixels in the Crystal Cove's AMOLED array."
Click to expand...

I'm wondering if they're using the same screens as the Samsung Galaxy S4? Or near enough? If it's true the 2k screen are coming for the S5 then i can see the 3rd gen Rift being the holy grail on resolutions
 
Say you need about 60 ppd (pixels / degree) for the pixels density to be unnoticeable to the eye (retina display). That's about 1080p on 24'' monitor, viewed from a meter away (which is about 30 degrees FOV). So you'll need about 4x by 4x 1080p to cover a 120 degree FOV, vertical and horizontal (ballpark estimate). So yeah.... take 4K, and double it :) But I'm sure we'll be ok for a while with 2K or even 4K on an oculus. Plus, your peripheral vision isn't has demanding, so you could get away with lower densities, clever optics and more complex barrel distortion shaders.
 
NeilFawcett said:
Surely the problem of these units running at native resolution and not being at HD but QuadHD is that most consumers will not be able to run smoothly at that sort of resolution (eg: 60fps+)?

I guess maybe a generation or two will bring QuadHD resolution graphics down to main stream?
Click to expand...

Bingo..

They are going to have to juggle the "ideal" vs performance of current rigs, especially if they want to keep the unit at the $300 mark
 
olivier renault said:
Plus, your peripheral vision isn't has demanding, so you could get away with lower densities, clever optics and more complex barrel distortion shaders.
Click to expand...

That's the exact conversation I had with my mate! You only really need an ultra high res in the centre of each screen. The rest being peripheral vision could be lower.

To save on needed graphics power a way to track eye movement and focus the bit of the screen your looking at would help.
 
Here's a question for all those who are freaking out about resolutions..

How many pixels can you see on a cinema screen? considering most of those are only 2k..

Most people that were at CES that actually have used Crystal Cove (instead of just looking at numbers) have said that there is very little pixelation, and almost no ghosting or latency.
 
The resolution of DK1 is obvious, but only when you examine it, or try to read text.

As long as the first consumer version has a bumped res (1080p at least) I think it will be a none-issue. Then later refined versions can be released as average gaming PC hardware allows.
 
Yeah, I have a DK1 and while the resolution (which is 800p) is too low for a consumer product, it only needs to be a little higher to be suitable (i.e. being able to read text without issue, etc). 1080p I'd say is the minimum viable product, which I'd be happy to pay for :) If anything I'd say the other issues (lack of positional tracking and other things that lead to motion sickness) are actually far more important than getting above 1080p for now, as they make it unplayable for any extended period in my experience. Presumably some of this has already been solved with their newest prototype :)
 
NeilFawcett said:
1kx1k per eye? So that would be noticably than the Oculus Rift's 1080p? ie: It uses a regular 1080p image but each eye can only see a small portion of less than half of that image?
Click to expand...

1080p means 1080 vertical pixels. Both eyes have that. It's 1920 across so each eye on the OR is 960x1080.
 
Darg said:
1080p means 1080 vertical pixels. Both eyes have that. It's 1920 across so each eye on the OR is 960x1080.
Click to expand...

yeah , but the OR has a full field of view so half it again as the a lot off those pixels will be out in your peripheral vision.

Out of 960x1080 pixels your useable image will be something like 600x700

6o3l.jpg

*the circles represent your field of view on the screen.
 
Last edited:
If you have any questions at all about VR, about where it is currently and where it needs to be to be commercially successful, this is a very interesting series of slides from a dev at Vavle. He identifies some of the issues around resolution, about why motion sickness occurs and how it will be stopped, about how he expects us to achieve VR 'Presence' (i.e. the point at which the mind believes the VR at a subconscious level) within two years, and what are some of the obstacles to be overcome in doing that.

I am surprised at just how far along they are on all of this.

Michael Abrash's VR Talk Slides
 
How is the Rift connected to the device (preferably on the general release version, if thats know)? Is it just HDMI/DisplayPort for video and USB for additional data, and is it recognised as an additional monitor by the OS or more like a controller/device?

I really like the idea of these, especially if they can release the consumer version around the $300USD mark, but i wondered whether if it acted as a monitor whether it'd be feasible to fire up something like XBMC and get a cinema experience, so the screen size feels absolutely huge in terms of viewing perspective, compared to a large screen TV a few meters away filling just a tiny portion of your perspective.
If it was able to split a single image to 2 screens, with or without 3D enabled, that'd be pretty cool. Image quality wouldnt be as good (till 4k), but a better experience i'd imagine.

I've also wondered whether they've looked into adding a small fisheye camera onto the device, which could be switched on to view your actual surroundings. Any game which requires the use of a keyboard for much more than WASD type control is going to be hard to find when you're blindfolded by a monitor. Having a key/button mapped to enable viewing through the camera would be handy for reaching for a drink, finding a specific key or typing a message, or looking when someone enters the room, stuff like that.

Im already wondering about my life expectancy if im sat glued to a game with headphones on minding my own business and then jumping 6 foot because someone has 'sneaked' up on me and entered the room. Its not so bad when you've just got headphones on cos of peripheral vision, but remove that too... :D
 
Would be cool, if it had some sort of augmented reality, so hands kryboard/mouse/joystick. Could be shown on the goggles, but the rest of the surrounding was in game. Of course games would have to design the cockpits or whatever with room for such devices, if you glance down to look at them.
 
PaulC2K said:
How is the Rift connected to the device (preferably on the general release version, if thats know)? Is it just HDMI/DisplayPort for video and USB for additional data, and is it recognised as an additional monitor by the OS or more like a controller/device?

I really like the idea of these, especially if they can release the consumer version around the $300USD mark, but i wondered whether if it acted as a monitor whether it'd be feasible to fire up something like XBMC and get a cinema experience, so the screen size feels absolutely huge in terms of viewing perspective, compared to a large screen TV a few meters away filling just a tiny portion of your perspective.
Click to expand...

You just connect via HDMI or DVI, and then a USB cable for the head tracker. It's treated as a monitor - there aren't any drivers to install.

As for a cinema experience, it's already been done with an actual virtual cinema and yes, it does feel like you're actually sat in a cinema (there are different cinema/screen sizes to choose from). There's a link below to some video I recorded of a test event. There were 40-50 of us altogether in the same cinema at one point in the evening.

If you want to see some media actually being watched in the virtual cinema, use the link in the 'about' section on the YouTube page to download an extended version. I just didn't want to worry about potential copyright problems by posting the entire video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4hTrKH-38
 
Interestingly, theyve stopped production of the dev kits (and sales) due to component supply issues. Im hoping its because they want to quieten down sales and bring out Dev kit 2 without the wailing and gnashing of teeth. If it is actual supply issues then thats a concern for long term development. Going to hunt for additional info.

edit - hmmm

Now at the helm of Oculus, Iribe is excited about the future. He expects that an upgraded developer's kit will be available in a few months, and a consumer version will hit the market before the end of 2015. "We are working as hard and as fast as we can. The public is anxious for us to ship, but we want to get it right. That's what we're all about, delivering a really comfortable VR experience that everybody can enjoy and afford," he says.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom