Oculus Rift

PaulC2K said:
I suppose in time you'd adapt to it all too, but i still wonder whether theres a benefit (beyond immersion) to VR, likewise if it might hinder.
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Nail/head. I don't think there is anything beyond immersion- immersion is the key raison d'etre of VR.

I bought a G27 wheel to play GT5 on my PS3, not because it made the game easier, in fact I always found it 1000% easier with a gamepad, but because it made driving far more immersive.

I read a review of Alien Isolation using Oculus, and the reviewer said he didn't like looking down at the tracker in the game because it exposed the back of his neck to an environment where an Alien was stalking him. Now that's immersion, and the reason why I want my Oculus.
 
There's more than just immersion. You get a better sense of your surroundings, especially in racing games, and even more in combat flight sims. Screen res aside, it'll be an advantage. The 3D also gives a better sense of distance. But yeah, it's pretty cool to be inside the game (even with the old DK1). The sense of scale, distance and also paradoxically claustrophobia (Minecraft, Ravenholm) is much better.
 
olivier renault said:
There's more than just immersion. You get a better sense of your surroundings, especially in racing games, and even more in combat flight sims. Screen res aside, it'll be an advantage. The 3D also gives a better sense of distance. But yeah, it's pretty cool to be inside the game (even with the old DK1). The sense of scale, distance and also paradoxically claustrophobia (Minecraft, Ravenholm) is much better.
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Sounds like a description of immersion to me! :)
 
I guess it does, but it made sense.
Its not simply feeling like you're sitting inside the car, its the situational awareness which is improved as a result of actually having depth to the image.

I guess it depends how you define immersion, i'd say its the feel of being there and it feeling realistic. I was more interested in whether there are benefits beyond it simply looking like im sat in a car which i can look around, because as nice as that is, you're unlikely to pay much attention after the gimmick wears off. I wanted to know whether its mostly gimmick or if there are beneficial aspects to it, and better situational awareness answers that.

I'll probably go back n forth between being really hyped for one and being pessimistic about the whole thing, and i doubt i'd really know which way things will fall until i've used one for a few days and experienced the things im concerned about, as well as those im excited for.
 
olivier renault said:
The 3D also gives a better sense of distance.
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The human eyes aren't particularly great at depth perception over more than a short distance - I don't know what the exact distance is, but i'm sure our stereo perception isn't good for more than a few meters or so, if we'd needed that evolutionary wise we'd have these big old eyestalks.

The work they've done with the head tracking really helps out a lot here - I think our brains are wired to sorting out parallax and other depth cues in addition to our limited depth perception.

The biggest problem is still the field of view, you are still viewing the world through a pair of toilet rolls and it's not natural to be moving your head around so much to look at stuff - maybe eye tracking could help here - but the eyes move fast.
 
It's likely eye tracking will become a big thing at some point in the not too distant future, just as Michael Abrash said, true retina quality displays would need to be something silly like 32k x 24k pixels which is just insane, but with eye tracking they could have high resolution 4k/8k where your looking at lower resolution outside of that, which would be far more likely to happen in the short term.
 
PaulC2K said:
I'd like to say i cant quite see the benefit of what eye tracking would do, but to be quite honest the idea of head tracking is somewhat lost on me anyway! You look left, and the game camera looks left. Brilliant... except im now looking either side of the monitor :D Okay, so I do get it, but it just seems an incomplete concept, and thats where VR like Rift takes a hexagonal wheel and makes it round, it completes the idea.
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This is a common assumption people seem to make. It is not a one to one ratio, if you turn your head 20 degrees to the left you can have your ingame view looking 180 degrees behind you if you want, just depends on the settings you use.
 
It has built in sound now, but do we really want or need built in sound?

I feel like I would much prefer to use my own much superior headphone and sound setup.
 
twoodster said:
The question is whether we'll be getting a DK3 before the consumer version then I guess
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From what ive read it will be an invite only limited distribution prior to CV.

MadMossy said:
They will be good, Palmer Luckey is a proper audiopile so will want them to be good or he wouldnt add them at all.
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The positional audio software looks mental, i would agree these should be good, but they need to add something. I also wonder if they were just added for demo purposes as a lot of people are fond of their own cans.
 
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My DK2 just arrived :) but I am at work :(

I've got PCARS and Elite ready to go... what other games/demos should I be downloading?
 
Can't wait for the final version to hit the shops. I'm very excited about VR.

Facebook bought Occulus for $2 billion, so Palmer Luckey must already be wealthier than John Carmack before even bringing a consumer product to market.
 
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