Overclockers UK are attending VR World Congress!

Wilkeh said:
I would like to go because IRL sucks. The graphics are good but the gameplay is terrible.
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Lol, so true. In fact, IRL is bugged. A lot of things are just outright broken and don't work as they should do. I'd like a refund please. I'm personally not interested in VR this moment (thus I'm not interested in going to this VR conference), but it seems OCUK is very excited by it, a lot of VR focused things at OCUK recently.
 
8 Pack said:
I win!! Thanks Trev ;-)
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:)
 
The winner is...

Blackbadger!!!

Congratulations, you've won two tickets to VR World Congress! :)

Send me an email with your details and I'll send the tickets over to you.
 
If you get a chance I'd like to know your thoughts on which has the better visuals out of the Vive and Rift if you get to try them using the same game/demo. My main use would be FSX and driving games so I don't need the walk around the place the Vive does better just now.

Congrats on beating me to the tickets ;)
 
Wooh what a long day !
A big thanks to 5UB, 8 Pack and TwsT for the opportunity to attend and for the great hospitality :)
It was really appreciated and was great to meet you all :D. Thankyou!

So VR...
It's a crazy time. Some very good :), some not so much. – excuse the jumbled wall of text, writing isn’t my strong point.

8 Packs system looked fantastic, incredible attention to detail! It, alongside the OCUK’s other VR-ready units appeared to be well received.

So many interesting people! I had some great in depth conversations with content developers, artists and the unity/crytek people. The engine developers were really enthusiastic and willing to share information. I made some good contacts. There were lots of familiar faces most of which I can't place, however have previously seen on you tube etc. A few I wished to speak with were constantly booked up with media etc, so no comedy chats with Roy Tailor about AMDMatt unfortunately.

Hardware wise both the rift and the vive were really great.
I personally found the vive to give a much wider view of a clear image, whilst the rift had a noticeably smaller sweet spot, which *may have been clearer I cannot say. The resolution is great for some things and not enough for others imo. The limitation is when dealing with long range items such as looking into the distance. Things in the near field were not a problem and resolution was not noticeable whilst things were “happening”. The SDE I could see in both if I tried to look for it, however was not noticeable or distracting in use.
I think the issue here is that as everyone's head is different and correctly positioning the headset makes a big difference. There was not the option to try the same content on both systems, so it wasn't a fair or comprehensive test. Nor really the time to tweak the head straps etc perfectly. I found neither more comfortable than the other, however long term as the rift is slightly lighter and less bulky it may prove to be a consideration.

I got sick with my first experience on the rift, It was a "game” on rails Ndreams the Assembly. Whilst mostly a impressive visual experience. After enjoying leaning about, and testing being able to look over the side of the wheelchair I was being pushed about on, I made the mistake of trying to look behind me, the screen jarringly jumped about resetting my viewpoint. It was very surprising how very nauseating it made me, it took maybe an hour to fade:eek:. I am not sure if it was a development issue or a tracking issue.
In a way I'm glad I experienced this, understanding how important it is to have the constant fps without these flaws, even if it mean I did need to leave to go outside and sit down, it was that bad.

There was free Haribo!

The xbox controller that all rift experiences had worked fine, however aiming with your face instead of your hands just felt wrong and detached, As we know it's just a stop gap to provide some buttons until the tracked units come.

The vive hand units worked incredibly intuitively, it was as if I had always used them, which shows how well they have been designed. They tracked flawlessly and just felt natural. The hand control units and room scale, are in my opinion is what VR is about. The chaperone system worked amazingly well and just gave you a gentle reminder of your limitations if you got to close to the edge. Even HTC couldn’t demo some of their content due to not being enough space. Nor did they have enough units. They had to take away the demo kit for TV interviews. I guess the shortage is real :)

3D/Depth perception was fantastic with both, it’s what you always wanted 3Dvision/Stereoscopic to be. Things up close appeared up close and those distant objects really did appear far away.
Being able to just look at an object and move about to view from a different angle was brilliant and flawless. I did feel 'presence'.

Multi video card support is working in development and coming to dx12 according to crytek. - Which is good news. When speaking with the engine dev’s, they did explain that the reason for a lot of content looking simple is just sloppy devs and not due to hardware requirements/limitations, I was shown some great looking demos.

Non games, - Lots of interesting applications for VR such as very clever Interactive learning/engineering/architectural applications such as submarine training where the teacher can activate events externally, strange social media experiences and semi interactive story telling. I believe just like our graphics cards other industries will have a significant impact on VR.

GearVR/Cardboard - I have to say although I was expecting them to be rubbish however they were not miles off the oculus/vive in terms of visual clarity. (using new Samsung phones) Of course you are limited to just panoramic movement. A novelty without much practical use currently. You do get good nice immersion over a standard screen, and reasonable stereo effect (if included). However, no movement. There was however a company offering bolt on bits for your headset to do some kind of movement tracking too.
I did not try elite dangerous (sorry), as by the time I could, I had a headache due to testing out too many bad examples of how to do VR. The mobile type experiences were the most problematic ones. Imo avoid these, bad VR is terrible.

There were no Magic tricks,.. . . .5UB ? :D

Content. Currently there is very little quality content.
There were a few "games" I had not seen before, such as the disturbingly bizzar Bebylom: Battle Royale, where killing babys is the goal. The dev's were great to speak with and had created a reasonably polished game, however the choice of content is possibly the worst ever. I don’t want that thanks :confused:.

I was impressed by conceptual work done by artists who had taken old works of art into the 3D realm to explore. - Nice :)

Games that are not games. A few developers were showing off "VR Games" which were interactive experiences akin to dragons lair on the old laser discs.
They last about 10 min and will be episodic. Whilst 'ok', the production quality was not acceptable. As with most of the content on show apart from Valves/cryteks/unity. it was like being back at Uni 10 years ago, but instead of our work being shown for weekly crit, these guys are trying to tell you it's the best thing since sliced bread and will be charging considerable money for the experience. Think Machinima, where older game engines are used to create story’s, however now in true 3D which you can move around a little in. Interesting concepts which have been poorly executed.

360 VR Video - This is not VR it's just a panoramic video. A fair few were trying to jump on the VR bandwagon with low quality poorly stitched videos taken with go pro's, claiming to be the worlds no.1 leading innovators in VR video production. It was embarrassing. I had to bite my tongue with the misleading hyperbole being blurted out. it was not the time nor the place to give my views. They were passionate about what they were doing and really nice guys :D. It wasn’t terrible, however until we have the ability to film in 3D with multiple cameras, such as the lytro
VR Video isn’t here yet.

It captures data at upto 400 Gigabytes per second (yes that's not a typo), and will cost around $100k to rent. You’d need an array of them costing many millions to even hire to capture a video in 3D. The post production would be absolutely insane. I know personally from the work I do, a static scene takes a few hundred gigs in ram, a few tb in hdd space, & weeks of processing, before any post touching up is done.

For me as a freelance dev, The new tech is amazing and offers so many possibilities. I think that is where we are currently at, possibilities. I do wonder if there is enough real content for the home end user yet, I think the vive /rift are 'just' about good enough. There are probably around 50 titles available for VR at the moment, maybe 10 are real, the other 40 are just quick cash grabs, which appear to not properly developed or worse. Out of those 10 real ones, some offer very short limited experiences, effectively nice/amazing interactive tech demos. Leaving just a small handful of real content.

It’s difficult as we/I have been spoilt with the high production values and in depth content from games/applications in the normal realm. I don’t think any big studio has yet taken the step to invest in producing a real VR game/App from the ground up, which has either the polish or depth/content that we normally expect.
So expectations need to be made clear, the technology is amazing, as is it's potential. It’s execution content wise currently is not at it's peak. Things will improve, and lessons will be learnt.

My last paragraphs may sound a bit moany/glum however there is no point pretending everything I saw was awesome.

I am sold, I ordered a rift when I got home, (vive order was day 1 #whereismyvive) and now regret not ordering the rift sooner.

I do believe VR is incredible, what will make or break it, is not Occulus/Htc but the content developers. I think experiences such as fantastic contraption where you are involved with the world, rather than a existing game concepts with VR bolted on will succeed.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day, and learnt a fair bit. Speaking with people in ques and other developers was fascinating.

Once again thank you to the OCUK Team for the opportunity to come along :)

I am hyped and had little sleep with my mind buzzing with ideas.
Who want's to lend me 100 xeons and 40 terrabytes of ram ?
 
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