The review read like he was expecting it to be the iphone version of VR. Complaints about using an expensive computer, the cord, having to use muscle memory, etc. come off like the type of person who wouldn't be interested in the Oculus in the first place. While I agree that it looks clunky, really it's the performance that most would-be buyers are interested in.
Is ~50 million people "mainstream"?
Considering he complained about downloading drivers this must be very easy to setup.
Gaming PC's used to be ~2,000$, this is 600 + 950PC = 1550$. https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/ Which is not free but hardly going to break most people. Don't forget this is just a mid-range gaming PC which many people are going to get anyway which drops this down to the cost of a high end cellphone.
PS: IMO, WoW was mainstream as a PC only MMO with a few million subscribers in the US.
Comparing the number of Steam accounts to WoW accounts is comparing apples to oranges. (And also makes an implicit assumption that everyone who has a Steam account has a gaming PC, which is not a good assumption.)
In 2004, Steam had no noteworthy buzz and its only purpose was Half-Life 2 DRM.
Steam survey actually provides good hardware numbers.
The important thing is with the number of Steam Users each 1% is more than 1 million people. Thus < 50% can still be a lot of people. (4.39% own a 970 GTX GPU, 0.92% own a 980 GTX GPU, 0.72% own a GTX 980 Ti ~= 7.5 million people who don't need to upgrade graphics card, now add ATI and SLI.)
PS: Active Steam account = bought something from steam AND logged on in the last 2 weeks. Which IMO is a much higher hurdle than most website tracking. And clearly not all gaming PC's are on Steam.
Steam often logs in on boot. I don't see this as a very interesting metric and certainly not related to the popularity of the first generation of a VR device.
If any go mainstream it will be the PS VR. Sony has 30m consoles out there, and it only costs $500 to get setup with PS VR. Total price is about $800-900.
Plug and play, games work great because they're designed for the system.
On the other hand with the Rift and the Vive you need a PC which has to be up to spec, the hardware is more expensive, etc.
I was looking though the Steam Survey and on the nVidia side ~7.5 million people have a nVidia GPU fast enough for the Rift. Add ATI and people upgrading this year and I think the market may be similar sized.
The real question IMO, is if you own both which do you add VR to?
For me the answer is easy. I don't have a good PC (just a 5 year old laptop that I don't use much) so going with a Rift or a Vive is a huge investment and requires me getting back into keeping a PC setup just for VR.
The PS VR is cheaper and I already keep that equipment setup. I don't need to worry about specs/etc. Plug and play. Plus the PS VR is cheaper.
For me I'd go with PS VR and see how that goes. If I really liked it then I might buy a Vive for my (we'll pretend I own a) gaming PC. I could sell the PS VR to offset the cost.
Don't own a console? Already hard-core into PC? Then just going straight to Vive/Rift makes plenty of sense if you're willing to buy in.
"Which is not free but hardly going to break most people" - most people make ~$4500 a month or less (pre taxes). $1550 is a big chunk of cash for most people.
Where is this number coming from? Even the people I know interested in VR aren't exactly leaping to buy this first generation, and that's exactly what the review should (and does) reveal—you should continue waiting unless you want to deal with typical early adopter issues.
Yep, pretty big gamer here, have three of the current gen consoles, even bought a simple Google Cardboard peripheral to get a feel for VR, but I'm probably not going to drop serious cash on anything that's out there for at least a year, and until I see which way the wind is blowing. I'm excited for it, but it's too much money for me to spend right now.
That sounds like the review is valuable for most people, since most people would be interested in knowing about these complaints when making a purchase decision about the product.
It IS the iPhone of VR. The first iPhone didn't have over-the-air updates, over-the-air app installs, over-the-air music downloads. The screen was crap (compared to today).
More than that, the first iPhone had no third-party apps period and still ran on the EDGE network. Even with all those limitations, it was still groundbreaking. The iPhone made everyone wake up and rethink what we were doing.
The comparison to VR is apt. It really is a game-changing technology.
Anyone off the street could pick up an iPhone and do something productive in a couple of minutes. Everyone who bought a first generation iPhone was pretty impressed with the product itself; it took me at least a week before I really wished I could install more software on it. And even so, it was still really useful.
Compare this to the Oculus Rift, the average person doesn't even have a machine they can plug it into. I mean, who even has a desktop computer anymore? Everyone I know has a laptop.
The product is clearly aimed at serious gamers who have the money to sink into serious gaming rigs. The iPhone-of-VR it certainly is not.
Why is everyone using the with-PC price when talking about the Rift? It's a peripheral, not a console.
The target market for this thing already has a gaming machine. It would be like releasing a really awesome gaming keyboard for $100, and having it characterized as costing $1500 since it implies the use of a powerful PC.
I totally think VR is The Future, but I don't disagree with anything he said. It's an expensive toy for early adopters and developers, still. They're not going to sell millions of these in the first generation. The Vive won't either. I got to try it last week, and it's mind-blowing, but a) it takes up a lot of room and b) there are going to be casualties from room scale VR. Injuries and loss of furniture at least. I only watched people playing for 3 hours, and the guy doing the demo took an elbow to the ribs, and the 1500 pc they were using was tripped over.
The VR PR machine is making it sound like these new VR headsets are something anyone can just buy, plugin and play with! But it's more complex than that.
I tried the consumer version while wearing glasses a few weeks ago. No lenses were changed out and the device just sat over top of the glasses, it was fairly comfortable but I only spent less than 5 mins with it on.
My reading of this is that he's unhappy with using a gamepad for VR, which is understandable. I think the Vive is going to be much more impressive. Oculus launching without proper touch controllers was a very risky move. I think ultimately its going to hurt them, and people will be pissed that they need to spend another $200 to get what anyone would consider a proper VR experience.
I always think about the people developing such groundbreaking technology, sweating for years to craft something revolutionary, putting everything you got into a product, just to get some guy from the Wall Street Journal declare that it's not ready for mainstream. A guy that knows nothing of the challenges, the hurdles and quite frankly, nothing of the actual success the produt will actually have.
But just because Wall Street Journal, that person is somewhat a "voice that matters" even though he's just some random columnist, with no experience in the domain and nothing to back it up but his personal opinion and factoids. How annoying that must be.
I doubt they'd disagree. It's not ready for the main stream. But It is ready for the hardcore niche audience that will build $1000+ dollar machines to power a $600 headset.
When you've been deep into R&D and then translating that into a shipping product, it's very easy to not realize that you've been building a product which simply nobody wants or just isn't right.
Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but that's why you often need external pragmatic perspective, like from the WSJ.
There's nothing particularly new in this article. All of these criticisms have been obvious for years. Oculus/FB seem as if they don't care and are deliberately targeting hardcore gamers. Presumably they know what they're doing.
This is a major logical fallacy I've faced in "engineering". Technical challenges and effort are irrelevant to the consumer: their contract is the exchange of disposable income for something that they get pleasure / function out of in a way that is measurable against the investment. If you've spent years and invested everything in something that sucks, then it sucks until someone evolves it into something that doesn't. That is why first to market is not always the golden ticket.
What you've identified is a primal dismissing of criticism as a discussion technique with any merit. The same could be directed back at your comment, which would create a funny but useless negative feedback loop. As in, your criticism of the author for not having an engineering background means nothing because if you have an engineering background you're not qualified to render an opinion of a journalistic enterprise.
I wouldn't recommend that anyone buy VR unless they have tons of extra money sitting around and know exactly what they're getting. And I pre-ordered the Oculus on day one. It's not for everyone. I think there are two kinds of people here -- people who have been waiting for this their whole lives, and people who should probably wait until it gets cheaper.
Many interesting technologies aren't for mainstream users initially. Not everything is a messaging app that can scale to billions of users with dozens of engineers. It is okay to get things right with early adopters before crossing the chasm.
>There’s already another VR rig that doesn’t have a tether—and it costs a fraction of the Rift. Samsung’s $100 Gear VR, made in partnership with Oculus, is powered by a smartphone that you physically insert in front of two lenses. The extra costs of the Rift (monetary and otherwise) would be justified if its image quality were dramatically better than the Gear’s, but it isn’t.
I already got the sense that the author really hadn't done much research before writing the piece, but that statement is very telling. The key benefits of a rift over a gear vr are in it's motion capture, the processing power made available to it by the attached computer and not being time restricted by limited battery life, and I would expect a critic to know that.
As it stands I respect the dudes view, and it'll be one shared by a lot of non-gamers, but this is basically a lets-play, not a critical review.
Off the top of my head I don't think you can with the gear vr (doesn't the USB port get taken up by the headset?), but even if you can, one of the authors key complaints leading into that statement was that the rift was not wireless. If you told him to wire up his gear vr, he wouldn't be impressed.
Correct, the interface between the phone and the headset is the charge port, but there is an additional port on the Gear VR itself to allow for charging while being used.
The original Gear VR ("Innovator edition") could not be charged while used though if I remember correctly.
The person I responded to was complaining that the rift alternative (a phone with appropriate lenses) had limited time usage due to relying on a battery. Most phones can run indefinitely by hooking them up to an external power source, obviating one of the poster's concerns. Additionally, you could augment the phone's processing power through a high-speed interconnect (like the USB cable that also supplies continuous power).
Phones get very warm when you charge them while playing 3D games. I doubt you would want to have that much heat with an enclosed headset for very long. Unless you can get a lot of ventilation without letting light in.
The Gear VR has an extra USB port that you can connect to a charger which keeps the phone powered while in use. Or (more convenient) you can connect it to a self-contained brick battery you could wear on your waist.
I hacked up a quick head-tracking solution one weekend using my phone and WiFi. The problem was passive calibration. Accelerometers and gyroscopes are noisy and imperfect. Drift occurs and without the Occulus tracker or Vive lighthouses you are in for a frustrating experience.
I own a DK2 and for many concrete reasons disagree with the author, it is not a novelty. Phone-based stuff is most certainly a novelty.
The difference between something like the Rift or the Vive and mobile-based stuff like Gear are huge when you get down to actually using it. Even discounting the differences between Rift and Vive regarding how they track motion, the Gear doesn't even have positional head tracking, just orientation.
In use, this makes a huge difference if you're looking to put someone in a virtual environment. It's not even restricted to gaming applications. All of the software I've tried on my Rift dev unit and someone else's Gear made this abundantly clear to me. Not being able to lean forward/back/around things takes away a huge part of the "immersion" factor leaving you with more of a souped-up 3d screen.
In terms of cost, for the Gear, don't you also need one of a few specific, expensive Samsung phones? I admit I haven't followed it as much lately so I don't know if they are selling something more affordable with the phone-stuff integrated or allowing the use of other phones. When I looked last, you needed a ~$700 phone plus the Gear. Not too big a price difference between $800 for phone+Gear and $1000 for a good video card+Rift. Personally, when I'm even considering something this expensive, new, and unnecessary, $800+ versus $1000 isn't a huge difference since I'm already spending a lot on something I don't really need.
The other huge thing I've noticed is that all of the best new and in-development VR stuff just isn't gonna be something you can run on a phone or a Playstation. It's gonna be beta software (if you're lucky) and require a powerful, flexible platform like a computer. Down the line it will even out but right now, none of the really impressive stuff I've seen for VR will run on Gear and I doubt it will be in the Sony Playstation store anytime soon. That same console-level polish and ease comes with a flip-side: no access to anything that isn't seamless or marketable just yet.
Speaking as somebody who is frustrated with the current dev story for AR and VR...
...maybe the specs wouldn't be so goddamn high if they actually let us do dev work against a lower-level interface. Forcing us to deal with massive frameworks like Unity and Unreal might well be the cause of spec creep. :(
EDIT:
And Meta can go eat a bag of rocks--no public docs on their API, and they seem to be wed to Unity...which can really screw up certain types of AR work they'd otherwise be perfect for.
Oculus, at least, offered a native SDK for the brave and foolish.
I've been following VR for the last year or so. There is no question that the Rift has better specs and can do better graphics than the Gear.
But I've read more than a few people in the VR space (game journalists, developers) say that there is something special about the Gear because there is no cable. There's nothing you have to keep conscious of so you don't trip over it or feel it on your back breaking immersion.
The Gear VR could be enhanced with better tracking, and as new phones come out it will get better processing power. I think Fowler is right.
VR is very new. Let's say your a consumer who wants to play with it. What's a better investment? $2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)?
If you just want to try it for now, play around a bit? The Gear is very compelling.
(I'd love one, but I use an iPhone. I've got a PS VR on order though.)
>$2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)?
Your figures are a little off. A rift is (all following figures in USD) $599, and a computer that will support it is generally quoted at $950, making it's package price $1550. You can buy bundles that include a Rift and an Oculus ready PC for $1499[1].
The gear VR only works with very recent phones, and only works on all games without heat problems on the S7. S7's are generally quoted at $700, making the package price $800.
Rough figures, I know, but yours are well out of whack.
Just about any of them, or playing video, or really using the device in Gear VR mode at all. I generally started getting the cool-down-please warnings after about a half hour of use, regardless of what apps I was running.
I was under the impression you needed a $1500 PC. So I'll give you that.
I'm assuming you're not buying the phone but that you already have one. People still get them with subsidies too.
The point is that for someone who wants to dip their toes and had a recent Samsung phone the Gear is DRASTICALLY cheaper. If you have a PS4 (or even if you don't) then the PS VR is cheaper too.
For people who aren't already committed to VR, I think Fowler is right that the Rift is way too much at this point.
> The point is that for someone who wants to dip their toes and had a recent Samsung phone the Gear is DRASTICALLY cheaper. If you have a PS4 (or even if you don't) then the PS VR is cheaper too.
And on the other end of that, I have a GTX 970 but my phone is from Sony and I don't own a console. If I want to get into VR, the Rift is my cheapest option.
Different target markets - the Gear is aimed at the general public with Samsung phones, the Rift is aimed at PC gamers with gaming PCs. Sure, some people will buy a slightly better rig or upgrade sooner than they would have otherwise, but fundamentally it's targeting people who are going to own a gaming computer anyway.
I'd guess that the people buying a Rift + PC bundle as their first PC gaming setup will be doing it after trying one on in person to evaluate it. It'll happen, but it'll be a slower push driven by word of mouth.
> And the article is aimed at the general public, not gamers. That's why there is nothing wrong with Fowler's analysis.
I think we agree, but it feels like he's writing an article proclaiming "Tesla Roadster Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream" just because Elon Musk said that electric cars are going to be a transformational technology.
If the big takeaway of the article is "Bleeding edge product that isn't intended for the general public isn't ready for the general public" then I'm right on board with him.
It's a WSJ article, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of their readership doesn't have a recent gaming PC, or at least the number is significantly less than those with a recent Samsung phone.
All I was doing was defending Fowler's point that the Gear VR might be a better option for people wanting to dip their toes in for now without spending big $$$. Not the 'I have hundreds of dollars and a good computer' case (we all know the Vive and Rift and even PS VR will do better than the Gear).
> All I was doing was defending Fowler's point that the Gear VR might be a better option for people wanting to dip their toes in for now without spending big $$$.
Perhaps even then is not a good idea after all. Consider the option that some Joe Average will try out Gear VR on his Samsung mobile phone and is dissatisfied with the quality (say, because it causes nausea on him). So he will avoid trying out VR again in the expected future. If from beginning on he had tried a product of satisfactory quality he would perhaps have liked VR.
TLDR: Trying out a cheaper, but inferior product can be worse than trying no product.
It could. I'm hoping it's 'good enough' if the software is done well.
I bought a Google Cardboard for my iPhone and the experience basically sucks. I can't use it with my glasses, and I get eyestrain (and everything is blurry) without them.
But it's still kind of neat and has me interested. I've got a PS VR on preorder. I'm hoping this one of those cases where if someone is shown that the apps are good enough that they'll see it as "Well this is only $100, I'm sure those $500+ versions do much better" in the same way a $800 smartphone is usually much better than a $100 feature phone.
You're right though. We still run the risk (with ALL of this, even bad games on the Rift/Vive) that consumers will quickly learn to avoid it due to a few very bad experiences. Oculus/Sony/Valve have been pushing hard to make sure developers don't screw it up. The Gear is a bit more wild-west.
> The point is that for someone who wants to dip their toes and had a recent Samsung phone the Gear is DRASTICALLY cheaper.
Why even compare with Gear VR if you're trying to illustrate how cheap this solution is? Why not simply talk about Cardboard -- which you can get literally for $1/free if you know the tricks, or the rest of the cheapo plastic VR sets you can buy for around $10-$20?
On the other hand, you have to consider ISP deals. I've just got the S7 plus the Gear VR for 200 euros. Way cheaper than any option that includes the Rift.
It is worth mentioning that the PC requirements would be almost the same if all you wanted to do is play a modern game at steady frames per second (90) on a 2160x1200 monitor.
The big difference is that if you're gaming PC isn't up to 2160x1200 and your framerate drops to 60 or 45 it just doesn't look as awesome. Reports I've heard (listening to Ben Kuchera on a podcast right now) say that when you're in an Oculus and the framerate drops (say just to 60) you can get VERY sick VERY fast.
> $2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)?
I'm guessing there's a middle ground here. We already have the Solun Q shipping shortly, which uses a low power AMD CPU/GPU combo that can deliver graphics that land somewhere between what a phone and a console can do. All of it running on battery power with no wires.
Its an interesting form factor at the very least. I imagine the first gen of all these products will be pretty poor, but being attached to a $1500 PC is going to be the first problem solved in this space. Its too much of a hassle and cost. Being able to just buy a VR set that you turn on and put on your head is going to be a big win. People won't be intimidated by this and will prefer an all-in-one machine. It'll need to ship with motion controls and somehow get this all to work without a lighthouse/usb camera system.
$100 investment in a Gear or a $20 investment in Cardboard has you chomping at the bit for more.
It will be another generation before VR really comes to roost, but by putting this in the hands of early adopters it really opens up the imagination of developers - and it opens up their abilities to actually get to work.
Playing with a Cardboard, despite the fact I can't use my glasses with it making it an obnoxious experience, meant that I could see enough to make me want to preorder a PS VR (no PC, so it's the obvious choice).
To give useful feedback, it's less important for a critic to "know" those things in advance than to actually try out the device (and its competitors) and tell us how it works out in practice.
I disagree. If that's what I'm after, I could just ask two or three people who own one to render an opinion. It would take me less then a minute to have that thread up on reddit.
The whole argument behind why websites like wsj are allegedly valuable and thus worth un-adblocking or paying 10c an article for or whatever is the trendy solution now is that they're supposed to be offering a higher standard of information than whatever reddit thinks.
If the guy writing the article knows so little about the topic he cannot even make factually correct comparisons between similar but distinct products, I might as well stick to reddits opinion, no?
Yeah, okay, you're right, domain knowledge is important. I still think a clear and insightful description of practical experience is more important, though.
I don't see what's factually incorrect in this article. The author says that the tether is kind of a pain, and the fact that the Gear is tether-free makes it more compelling (even though it's weaker in other aspects). That's opinion -- useful opinion! The basic facts (tethered versus untethered) seem correct.
Not to mention that mirroring the VR experience to a TV or monitor is absolutely delightful to watch. I've had people come over to play Alien Isolation, Dreadhalls, or Volo Airsport, and watching them play was a huge delight for everyone. The responses you get from someone who is trapped in a room with an alien are much more visceral.
They aren't isolated, though. If you know you've got an audience only a foot or two away, you do behave differently.
In my experience, people often run their mouths constantly -- "Oh god, what's that, what's over there, is that the alien?" And there's feedback from the audience, "Oh shit, watch out!"
Not to mention the occasional breath on someone's neck or tap on the shoulder.
When the experience is over, you pull the headset up -- an action not too far removed from looking away from a monitor -- and immediately start sharing. "Man, in that room with the shadows, I was watching the alien for a good 20 seconds before any of you saw it!"
Absolutely!! I mean, we can quibble over the exact meaning, but the oculus team took so long precisely in order to have a wide-adoption product instead of a tech demo, which was available over a year ago.
The Big Question we all have right now is precisely this: will VR enter mainstream or will it be a gimmick? Oculus is supposed to be leading that charge. If they can't break into some huge number of homes, then the VR ecosystem will die before it gets started. Goodbye JauntVR, etc.
This has been my suspicion. The new kids on the block are actually really fucking great. In fact, they have so much hardware expertise and ready audience to launch it mainstream, for example, ps vr
VR itself isn't ready for mainstream period. The problem isn't Oculus Rift but the tech itself. Who can really spend an hour with a VR headset on ? very few people.
Oculus is meant for the more non causal gamer; I know quite a few of those and when they are playing they might as well have a VR set on. A friend of mine, when she is playing (and she plays for 3-4 hours per day) seems dead from a distance: when you come closer you see only her eyes and fingers move slightly while on the screen she is walking through large worlds wielding spells and weapons. Very few in % might be right but that is a lot of sales for the solutions that work for these people. I have a few of them (oculus backer, few simple ones that can be uses with a mobile phone) and I see uses as I do enjoy the experience and I do see the opportunity to, when the hardware allows, have enormous virtual screens when focusing on code or other work. My biggest issue for now is that all off them start to physically hurt when the weight of the device pushes the plastic into the cushioning in one location on my face after about 30 minutes.
Coming from a background with thousands of hours of hardcore multiplayer gaming, I'm very dis-interested in VR as a gaming platform, most specifically Oculus due to cost. The competitive field sounds like it needs some time to work through which device(s) get the best market traction (flashbacks to HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray). I think the author of the article knows his audience pretty well and meets the review expectations as stated - what is the 'mainstream' use case?
I think one of the most relevant parallells - for now, at this stage of development - is with a projetor. Relatively high cost of entry, takes effort and space for setup, and for basic day-to-day entertainment, kind of overkill. Sure it's great from time to time to take a projector and game rig outside and play Forza on a two-car garage door with a screen so big landing planes can probably see it, no doubt. It's actually nice to have one when other people are over, so it's a more engaging device, unlike putting on a headset.
Honestly I think about the time VR will be considered 'mainstream' is when the more customary (and accessible) entertainment forms start generating in-demand content. Think major motion picture studios, TV networks, and concert-type footage (Rolling Stones in Cuba probably in development as I type this). Or, as one more comparison, once the VR platform is as dynamic and simple as the iPhone environment (games, communication, media) then more people will adopt in turn and the market will diversify in beneficial ways (serious vs. casual gamers, etc).
I'm really excited to see what the 'traditional' creative platforms like music and storytelling are going to do in the environment over time.
my main complaint with the rift is often overlooked, (edit: this is simply untrue, it appears since i walked away from the stereoscopic vr world the issue of ipd has certainly been addressed and efforts have been made to assuage the problem)
and unfortunately i think will only start to be addressed when the number of people who spend more time with the device increases,
the headset is one size fits all
the center of the split screen, the stationary lenses, and i'm assuming the stereo render all presume everyone's eyes are the same distance apart and perfectly level
which is simply untrue, and without configurable variables those minute discrepancies will result in peoples' brains working much harder to compensate
my eyes went cross for an hour after taking off the headset the last time i ever used my dk2, i wonder if i will be reading someone else's similar story in the near future
i stand corrected, and your linked article is even from june of last year as well
i commend the oculus team for addressing the issue for the consumer product
that said, i think digital stereoscopy is the wrong direction for vision manipulation
there are many minute issues similar to ipd that need to be addressed, an engineering analogue to the curse of dimensionality
if one looks at the history of stereoscopic viewers it is clear they failed to usurp their two dimensional counterparts and i think it of interest to question why that may be
I have an unusually wide IPD (about 73mm), and I struggled with this on the DK2. The image would not focus properly because the alignment of the lenses. I was able to address this fairly easily with a 3D printed set of adjusters.
The consumer rift, however, has a IPD adjustment knob on it for exactly this reason. In playing with the prototypes they had at PAX last August, the IPD was much, much less of an issue.
Let me see if I have this straight: the advantage of the Rift over the Gear VR is that the Rift lets you move around and the Gear doesn't. But the Rift has a (fairly short) cable, and the Gear doesn't. Is that right? Because the problem seems so obvious that I almost feel a little foolish pointing it out: cables and movement don't play well together, particularly when, by design, you can't see the cable.
The rift has cameras that track your movement. That is the main difference that you are looking for. I've used the rift dk1 with extension cables and can actually move around quite freely, though obviously not as much as a wireless setup. With gearvr you can move around but the headset/game doesn't actually know you are moving around as there is no external tracker or reference point like with the rift.
The positional tracking is useful even if you don't walk around though. Imagine you lean to the side in your chair but you view doesn't change at all - how weird would that be? Or you're stood on the edge of a building, and try to lean over to see below, but you can't because your viewpoint doesn't change. Positional tracking means that would work as expected - it's good even for seated experiences (where a cable isn't really a problem). Besides from what I hear, users get used to the cable after a while, even though all recognize that it's not ideal.
The GearVR doesn't do positional tracking at all, just basic head tracking. It also has to use your smartphone GPU, which means games are severely limited in comparison to a Rift connected to a GTX 970 or 980.
It's strange to have a non-gamer do the review for this, as he seems to know very little about the field, or computer gaming. I guess they are aiming for a mainstream opinion, but Occulus is not a mainstream device. It's a high-end gaming peripheral. For instance that the author mentions incredulously multiple times that his high-end PC requires two power cables, which I just don't understand. I found his colleague's review (which is referenced in the article, also wsj) much more informative. His take was that it's a pretty cool piece of technology, but needs more games.
It's not about hardcore gamers if you mean FPS or something. But it's not aiming at the middle of the market. It requires a high-end PC just to drive it, and it's an expensive peripheral, so it really can't be "mainstream". It's about people who are the most interested in VR gaming.
Read what Zuckerberg had to say when Facebook bought Oculus.[1]: "This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures." He's talking about VR as a social medium, like Facebook.
Sort of like Second Life. Second Life has supported the Oculus Rift since late 2014. Nobody cares.[2]
I can see using one for FPS games, but beyond that, it's not that compelling. There's still no killer VR app.
I got a chance to try out both Oculus and Vive at GDC this year. Oculus' image quality was exactly the way the author described - like looking through a screen door. Vive seemed to be much better (and its controllers had mind-blowing force feedback, which added some realism).
Overall, though, I have two major concerns about VR.
The first is limited range of movement. All VR experiences seem to require the player to either be seated or move in a confined space. But think of all the virtual miles you've walked in Fallout or GTA - it's not going to be possible with VR. I mean, sure, you could use a controller, but it's a solution similar to putting fake buttons on a touchscreen.
The second is that I'm afraid that this is as good as VR is ever going to get because of hardware limitations. People sometimes compare the current state of VR to the early days of gaming consoles, implying that it's going to get much better. But the NES and PS4 are separated by 30 years of moore's law, which is predicted to end in 2025 (only 9 years away). The pace at which hardware is getting better/faster is slowing down.
There are quite a few comments on price here. I will wait for more games or at least a compelling game or app before buying one. I'm sure I will though.
Consider the price of the HP LaserJet III. It came out around 1990, and I remember a conversation with a salesperson that said that the price had already come down so much since the HP LaserJet I that it probably wouldn't ever get much cheaper. It was a complex machine, motors, belts, gears, laser, etc., and in today's dollars it cost about $4400. High quality printers today are everywhere and can cost under $100. It's interesting to consider where VR will be in a decade or two.
It seems like an important development; one I've been waiting for since 1977. I was in a graduate-school computer graphics course and I described an idea that I had for a helmet that would capture motion and position of one's head and through two small CRTs present a rendered 3D virtual view. The rest of the class (and the professor) seemed skeptical, but I've always remembered that feeling about VR like there was an idea that was eventually coming.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadGaming PC's used to be ~2,000$, this is 600 + 950PC = 1550$. https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/ Which is not free but hardly going to break most people. Don't forget this is just a mid-range gaming PC which many people are going to get anyway which drops this down to the cost of a high end cellphone.
PS: IMO, WoW was mainstream as a PC only MMO with a few million subscribers in the US.
Sure, a mid to low end PC could play WoW in 2004, but it only broke 2.5 million subscribers in late 2005. http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/wow-sub... And 10m in 2008.
Give it 4 years and a GTX 970 will be a very low end graphics card.
In 2004, Steam had no noteworthy buzz and its only purpose was Half-Life 2 DRM.
The important thing is with the number of Steam Users each 1% is more than 1 million people. Thus < 50% can still be a lot of people. (4.39% own a 970 GTX GPU, 0.92% own a 980 GTX GPU, 0.72% own a GTX 980 Ti ~= 7.5 million people who don't need to upgrade graphics card, now add ATI and SLI.)
PS: Active Steam account = bought something from steam AND logged on in the last 2 weeks. Which IMO is a much higher hurdle than most website tracking. And clearly not all gaming PC's are on Steam.
It's not low end, it's mid-range. HD at 60fps (often higher) on med-high settings on everything but the very most recent games (without MSAA).
Again, you'll probably need to wait more than 4 years for a high-end card to become "very low end". I'd give it five or six years.
Granted, in terms of hardware people are currently using the GTX 660 might still be mid range.
Plug and play, games work great because they're designed for the system.
On the other hand with the Rift and the Vive you need a PC which has to be up to spec, the hardware is more expensive, etc.
The real question IMO, is if you own both which do you add VR to?
The PS VR is cheaper and I already keep that equipment setup. I don't need to worry about specs/etc. Plug and play. Plus the PS VR is cheaper.
For me I'd go with PS VR and see how that goes. If I really liked it then I might buy a Vive for my (we'll pretend I own a) gaming PC. I could sell the PS VR to offset the cost.
Don't own a console? Already hard-core into PC? Then just going straight to Vive/Rift makes plenty of sense if you're willing to buy in.
You can get a reliable used car for ~12k. Look at how many people spend 2+K more than that.
AKA if you buy a car for 20k vs 12k the extra 8k was not needed.
Where is this number coming from? Even the people I know interested in VR aren't exactly leaping to buy this first generation, and that's exactly what the review should (and does) reveal—you should continue waiting unless you want to deal with typical early adopter issues.
The comparison to VR is apt. It really is a game-changing technology.
This ISN'T the future - but it's changed the game - we now how a different vision for what the future will be.
Compare this to the Oculus Rift, the average person doesn't even have a machine they can plug it into. I mean, who even has a desktop computer anymore? Everyone I know has a laptop.
The product is clearly aimed at serious gamers who have the money to sink into serious gaming rigs. The iPhone-of-VR it certainly is not.
The target market for this thing already has a gaming machine. It would be like releasing a really awesome gaming keyboard for $100, and having it characterized as costing $1500 since it implies the use of a powerful PC.
Is this bugging anyone else?
The VR PR machine is making it sound like these new VR headsets are something anyone can just buy, plugin and play with! But it's more complex than that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4cagl1/giant_bomb_liv...
But just because Wall Street Journal, that person is somewhat a "voice that matters" even though he's just some random columnist, with no experience in the domain and nothing to back it up but his personal opinion and factoids. How annoying that must be.
All is according to plan.
Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but that's why you often need external pragmatic perspective, like from the WSJ.
I already got the sense that the author really hadn't done much research before writing the piece, but that statement is very telling. The key benefits of a rift over a gear vr are in it's motion capture, the processing power made available to it by the attached computer and not being time restricted by limited battery life, and I would expect a critic to know that.
As it stands I respect the dudes view, and it'll be one shared by a lot of non-gamers, but this is basically a lets-play, not a critical review.
The original Gear VR ("Innovator edition") could not be charged while used though if I remember correctly.
I own a DK2 and for many concrete reasons disagree with the author, it is not a novelty. Phone-based stuff is most certainly a novelty.
In use, this makes a huge difference if you're looking to put someone in a virtual environment. It's not even restricted to gaming applications. All of the software I've tried on my Rift dev unit and someone else's Gear made this abundantly clear to me. Not being able to lean forward/back/around things takes away a huge part of the "immersion" factor leaving you with more of a souped-up 3d screen.
In terms of cost, for the Gear, don't you also need one of a few specific, expensive Samsung phones? I admit I haven't followed it as much lately so I don't know if they are selling something more affordable with the phone-stuff integrated or allowing the use of other phones. When I looked last, you needed a ~$700 phone plus the Gear. Not too big a price difference between $800 for phone+Gear and $1000 for a good video card+Rift. Personally, when I'm even considering something this expensive, new, and unnecessary, $800+ versus $1000 isn't a huge difference since I'm already spending a lot on something I don't really need.
The other huge thing I've noticed is that all of the best new and in-development VR stuff just isn't gonna be something you can run on a phone or a Playstation. It's gonna be beta software (if you're lucky) and require a powerful, flexible platform like a computer. Down the line it will even out but right now, none of the really impressive stuff I've seen for VR will run on Gear and I doubt it will be in the Sony Playstation store anytime soon. That same console-level polish and ease comes with a flip-side: no access to anything that isn't seamless or marketable just yet.
...maybe the specs wouldn't be so goddamn high if they actually let us do dev work against a lower-level interface. Forcing us to deal with massive frameworks like Unity and Unreal might well be the cause of spec creep. :(
EDIT:
And Meta can go eat a bag of rocks--no public docs on their API, and they seem to be wed to Unity...which can really screw up certain types of AR work they'd otherwise be perfect for.
Oculus, at least, offered a native SDK for the brave and foolish.
But I've read more than a few people in the VR space (game journalists, developers) say that there is something special about the Gear because there is no cable. There's nothing you have to keep conscious of so you don't trip over it or feel it on your back breaking immersion.
The Gear VR could be enhanced with better tracking, and as new phones come out it will get better processing power. I think Fowler is right.
VR is very new. Let's say your a consumer who wants to play with it. What's a better investment? $2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)?
If you just want to try it for now, play around a bit? The Gear is very compelling.
(I'd love one, but I use an iPhone. I've got a PS VR on order though.)
Your figures are a little off. A rift is (all following figures in USD) $599, and a computer that will support it is generally quoted at $950, making it's package price $1550. You can buy bundles that include a Rift and an Oculus ready PC for $1499[1].
The gear VR only works with very recent phones, and only works on all games without heat problems on the S7. S7's are generally quoted at $700, making the package price $800.
Rough figures, I know, but yours are well out of whack.
[1] http://www.techtimes.com/articles/134240/20160217/oculus-rea...
https://www.reddit.com/r/GearVR/comments/3vlsad/is_the_overh...
Source: I have an S6 and Gear VR.
I'm assuming you're not buying the phone but that you already have one. People still get them with subsidies too.
The point is that for someone who wants to dip their toes and had a recent Samsung phone the Gear is DRASTICALLY cheaper. If you have a PS4 (or even if you don't) then the PS VR is cheaper too.
For people who aren't already committed to VR, I think Fowler is right that the Rift is way too much at this point.
Give it time.
And on the other end of that, I have a GTX 970 but my phone is from Sony and I don't own a console. If I want to get into VR, the Rift is my cheapest option.
Different target markets - the Gear is aimed at the general public with Samsung phones, the Rift is aimed at PC gamers with gaming PCs. Sure, some people will buy a slightly better rig or upgrade sooner than they would have otherwise, but fundamentally it's targeting people who are going to own a gaming computer anyway.
I'd guess that the people buying a Rift + PC bundle as their first PC gaming setup will be doing it after trying one on in person to evaluate it. It'll happen, but it'll be a slower push driven by word of mouth.
And the article is aimed at the general public, not gamers. That's why there is nothing wrong with Fowler's analysis.
I'm not arguing that the Gear is going to give the best experience of all solutions, I was defending Fowler's point.
I think we agree, but it feels like he's writing an article proclaiming "Tesla Roadster Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream" just because Elon Musk said that electric cars are going to be a transformational technology.
If the big takeaway of the article is "Bleeding edge product that isn't intended for the general public isn't ready for the general public" then I'm right on board with him.
On the other hand, for those that have a recent gaming PC an Oculus Rift is both cheaper and technologically better. So what?
All I was doing was defending Fowler's point that the Gear VR might be a better option for people wanting to dip their toes in for now without spending big $$$. Not the 'I have hundreds of dollars and a good computer' case (we all know the Vive and Rift and even PS VR will do better than the Gear).
Perhaps even then is not a good idea after all. Consider the option that some Joe Average will try out Gear VR on his Samsung mobile phone and is dissatisfied with the quality (say, because it causes nausea on him). So he will avoid trying out VR again in the expected future. If from beginning on he had tried a product of satisfactory quality he would perhaps have liked VR.
TLDR: Trying out a cheaper, but inferior product can be worse than trying no product.
I bought a Google Cardboard for my iPhone and the experience basically sucks. I can't use it with my glasses, and I get eyestrain (and everything is blurry) without them.
But it's still kind of neat and has me interested. I've got a PS VR on preorder. I'm hoping this one of those cases where if someone is shown that the apps are good enough that they'll see it as "Well this is only $100, I'm sure those $500+ versions do much better" in the same way a $800 smartphone is usually much better than a $100 feature phone.
You're right though. We still run the risk (with ALL of this, even bad games on the Rift/Vive) that consumers will quickly learn to avoid it due to a few very bad experiences. Oculus/Sony/Valve have been pushing hard to make sure developers don't screw it up. The Gear is a bit more wild-west.
Why even compare with Gear VR if you're trying to illustrate how cheap this solution is? Why not simply talk about Cardboard -- which you can get literally for $1/free if you know the tricks, or the rest of the cheapo plastic VR sets you can buy for around $10-$20?
I'm guessing there's a middle ground here. We already have the Solun Q shipping shortly, which uses a low power AMD CPU/GPU combo that can deliver graphics that land somewhere between what a phone and a console can do. All of it running on battery power with no wires.
Its an interesting form factor at the very least. I imagine the first gen of all these products will be pretty poor, but being attached to a $1500 PC is going to be the first problem solved in this space. Its too much of a hassle and cost. Being able to just buy a VR set that you turn on and put on your head is going to be a big win. People won't be intimidated by this and will prefer an all-in-one machine. It'll need to ship with motion controls and somehow get this all to work without a lighthouse/usb camera system.
http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/04/oculuss-technology-guru-jo...
It will be another generation before VR really comes to roost, but by putting this in the hands of early adopters it really opens up the imagination of developers - and it opens up their abilities to actually get to work.
The whole argument behind why websites like wsj are allegedly valuable and thus worth un-adblocking or paying 10c an article for or whatever is the trendy solution now is that they're supposed to be offering a higher standard of information than whatever reddit thinks.
If the guy writing the article knows so little about the topic he cannot even make factually correct comparisons between similar but distinct products, I might as well stick to reddits opinion, no?
I don't see what's factually incorrect in this article. The author says that the tether is kind of a pain, and the fact that the Gear is tether-free makes it more compelling (even though it's weaker in other aspects). That's opinion -- useful opinion! The basic facts (tethered versus untethered) seem correct.
This sentence is pretty emblematic of the product the author of this article was expecting vs the Rift that Oculus pitched in their kickstarter video.
I also find it's boring to be around people who are Google Searching, or using Facebook.
In my experience, people often run their mouths constantly -- "Oh god, what's that, what's over there, is that the alien?" And there's feedback from the audience, "Oh shit, watch out!"
Not to mention the occasional breath on someone's neck or tap on the shoulder.
When the experience is over, you pull the headset up -- an action not too far removed from looking away from a monitor -- and immediately start sharing. "Man, in that room with the shadows, I was watching the alien for a good 20 seconds before any of you saw it!"
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/28/oculus-rift-is-built-...
It, too, is negative.
The Big Question we all have right now is precisely this: will VR enter mainstream or will it be a gimmick? Oculus is supposed to be leading that charge. If they can't break into some huge number of homes, then the VR ecosystem will die before it gets started. Goodbye JauntVR, etc.
I think one of the most relevant parallells - for now, at this stage of development - is with a projetor. Relatively high cost of entry, takes effort and space for setup, and for basic day-to-day entertainment, kind of overkill. Sure it's great from time to time to take a projector and game rig outside and play Forza on a two-car garage door with a screen so big landing planes can probably see it, no doubt. It's actually nice to have one when other people are over, so it's a more engaging device, unlike putting on a headset.
Honestly I think about the time VR will be considered 'mainstream' is when the more customary (and accessible) entertainment forms start generating in-demand content. Think major motion picture studios, TV networks, and concert-type footage (Rolling Stones in Cuba probably in development as I type this). Or, as one more comparison, once the VR platform is as dynamic and simple as the iPhone environment (games, communication, media) then more people will adopt in turn and the market will diversify in beneficial ways (serious vs. casual gamers, etc).
I'm really excited to see what the 'traditional' creative platforms like music and storytelling are going to do in the environment over time.
and unfortunately i think will only start to be addressed when the number of people who spend more time with the device increases,
the headset is one size fits all
the center of the split screen, the stationary lenses, and i'm assuming the stereo render all presume everyone's eyes are the same distance apart and perfectly level
which is simply untrue, and without configurable variables those minute discrepancies will result in peoples' brains working much harder to compensate
my eyes went cross for an hour after taking off the headset the last time i ever used my dk2, i wonder if i will be reading someone else's similar story in the near future
http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-says-consumer-rift-has-ipd-ad...
i commend the oculus team for addressing the issue for the consumer product
that said, i think digital stereoscopy is the wrong direction for vision manipulation
there are many minute issues similar to ipd that need to be addressed, an engineering analogue to the curse of dimensionality
if one looks at the history of stereoscopic viewers it is clear they failed to usurp their two dimensional counterparts and i think it of interest to question why that may be
The consumer rift, however, has a IPD adjustment knob on it for exactly this reason. In playing with the prototypes they had at PAX last August, the IPD was much, much less of an issue.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/28/oculus-rift-is-built-...
Sort of like Second Life. Second Life has supported the Oculus Rift since late 2014. Nobody cares.[2]
I can see using one for FPS games, but beyond that, it's not that compelling. There's still no killer VR app.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971 [2] http://www.roadtovr.com/second-life-now-official-oculus-rift...
Overall, though, I have two major concerns about VR.
The first is limited range of movement. All VR experiences seem to require the player to either be seated or move in a confined space. But think of all the virtual miles you've walked in Fallout or GTA - it's not going to be possible with VR. I mean, sure, you could use a controller, but it's a solution similar to putting fake buttons on a touchscreen.
The second is that I'm afraid that this is as good as VR is ever going to get because of hardware limitations. People sometimes compare the current state of VR to the early days of gaming consoles, implying that it's going to get much better. But the NES and PS4 are separated by 30 years of moore's law, which is predicted to end in 2025 (only 9 years away). The pace at which hardware is getting better/faster is slowing down.
Problem 1: Check out the Virtuix Omni, as well as software-only solutions.
Problem 2: See foveated rendering.
Consider the price of the HP LaserJet III. It came out around 1990, and I remember a conversation with a salesperson that said that the price had already come down so much since the HP LaserJet I that it probably wouldn't ever get much cheaper. It was a complex machine, motors, belts, gears, laser, etc., and in today's dollars it cost about $4400. High quality printers today are everywhere and can cost under $100. It's interesting to consider where VR will be in a decade or two.
It seems like an important development; one I've been waiting for since 1977. I was in a graduate-school computer graphics course and I described an idea that I had for a helmet that would capture motion and position of one's head and through two small CRTs present a rendered 3D virtual view. The rest of the class (and the professor) seemed skeptical, but I've always remembered that feeling about VR like there was an idea that was eventually coming.