> I think we are no more than two years away from an explosion of new consumer startups
I remember reading similar sentiment two years ago, back when the Oculus started getting massive attention after their successful Kickstarter.
There are counter arguments to the rise of VR. As mentioned, price and hardware are too high for casual use, but that will be fixed in time.
What can't easily be fixed is that fact that it is not conveient. VR tethers you one spot, and using VR in public looks ridiculous/antisocial to outside observers. In contrast, an AR approach can avoids both issues by embedding an immersive context with subtlety. (in theory anyways; Google Glass looked ridiculous too.)
I played with a Vive for a while and it's pretty mind-blowing that it's possible to do it, I also haven't bothered picking it up again. Aside from games I'm having a hard time thinking of any problem domain that would be served by VR. We've had screen-based VR going back to the 90s (VRML?) and the few applications that were attempted like virtual tours didn't really take off. I look at how little has been applied to using the Google Glass and Kinect as precedents. Even voice recognition has been going for 25 years and is barely past the novelty stage. I know the tech is still relatively new, but it's been a few years since we've had retail VR headsets and no one has come up with a killer app.
Big screen TVs aren't convenient either - but a huge number of households have them - VR doesn't have to be exactly like smartphones in order to be very popular
You can do other things while watching TV, though, like eat dinner, talk to your friends on the couch, pet your dog, etc. None of those things are possible with a VR headset on, making it very inconvenient to use.
It's unlikely people will even feel comfortable walking through the room, since they have no idea when the VR user is going to freak out and blindly start flailing body parts around reacting to something only they can see. This means the entire living room is off limits, which is also very inconvenient when compared to someone just sitting on the couch watching Netflix.
There are a lot of social hurdles that VR will need to overcome, in addition to each of the technical ones.
One of my favorite things to do is to pack up my PC and Vive and take it to a friend or relative to try out. A lot of people view VR as a gimmick akin to 3D movies, which fairly predictably has died out, but once they have a chance to try VR they often understand the potential.
I think VR has a real future - which certainly will depend largely on falling hardware costs and increased software funding - and while I'm sure the next consumer device version will be significantly improved and appreciably cheaper I'm glad I was able to make a small contribution to the bootstrapping efforts.
What is your solution for mounting the base stations? I've looked into tripods before, but the sensors are meant to be much more firmly mounted from what I've read.
I've done just fine with tripods, even fairly cheap ones. The software seems to compensate really well for any potential drift - even if the tripod gets bumped, I often don't need to re-run the room setup to re-calibrate. The most difficult part of the cheaper tripods is that they're often fairly short, so if someone walks between them they lose optical sync. In a pinch I've set the tripods on top of tables and desks, and that's worked well enough.
The best I have found so far* is a PVC 5 way side outlet with some short legs for stability and a tall sections based on how high you want to go. I wanted added stability to I made two per lighthouse, and a cross beam on top. Using some old go-pro accessories to attach. *You are right, you want it to be super stable, moving it while its plugged in can seriously damage it.
Having both an Oculus Rift (pre-touch controls) and a Vive to play around with I have a couple thoughts on this.
The first impression/experience is powerful and most people are impressed by it. The Rift prior to touch controls was unusable in comparison to the room scale, touch control Vive (to the point that I sold it). Maybe it's better now with the new touch controls, but I think they still lack room scale and the ability to walk around is a big deal. The Vive headset also fully blocks external light which is nicer (but these are relatively minor things that can be fixed).
VR in its current early adopter state is a lonely experience - more so than playing a one player game on the couch, you're completely isolated. While this makes for strong immersion - I think it increases the barrier to entry for most people. I suspect FB is right about the importance of social interaction getting people to actually use VR for longer than just showing it off to people.
I suspect finding the "Doom for VR" - the application that really takes advantage of the medium hasn't happened yet, maybe when it does it'll be obvious in hindsight. As for the comparisons to AR - I think Michael Abrash's points still stand: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
> VR in its current early adopter state is a lonely experience
Some solutions to this have been asymmetric games/experiences where there are people in VR and on normal PC interfaces interacting with each other. The most popular example by far is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes[1], whereby the VR player is a bomb defuser and the other player is the one with the bomb defusing instruction manual.
Another example is Mass Exodus[2], where a VR player must try to "catch" a PC player trying to blend in to a crowd of lookalike robots.
I spent years developing and then offering a system that remotely enabled creating realistic 3D avatars of people from a single photo. It works, I scaled it to viral capacity levels, the quality is high (https://twitter.com/3davatarstore), and my prices were nearly free. Yet, game, VR and VFX studios only wanted it free. After being jerked around for years by circuses of clowns, I shut it down. I'm happier doing FR now for government agencies. VR will continue to be a lonely place until the corporate exploitation is regulated to the degree that an individual will have legal and portable ownership over their appearance in VR technologies, with all the legal ramifications that exposes.
Interesting! Are you able to share anything about how your algorithm works? I've been playing around with feature detection (using HoG descriptors) plus constrained local models to identify locations in an image and then manipulating the mesh to better match these locations and extracting a corresponding texture.
I dunno if it's fair to blame corporate exploitation for your experience - I feel like the current perception that everything must be "free - maybe with ads, and maybe pay later" is more to blame. :/
Portable personal avatars is going to be a huge undertaking. I'm really looking forward to the results, though!
You are correct that the touch controllers are essential for immersion. After getting the controllers, I've stayed in VR longer than I've ever had in the past, and the comfort level has increased significantly. Google earth VR is so much more addictive now. Also demo'ing it to people requires no feedback since the learning curve is so low.
The room scale works really well but is limited because of only two cameras. But adding a third camera would make it full room scale (which Oculus has announced)[1]. Combine that with new wireless hdmi/usb adapters for VR [2], full room scale VR is almost here.
I run a 3 camera setup and it works fine for my 10 foot by 10 foot play space. I have a fourth, but I have been too lazy to set it up.
I do run two Inateck PCI-E USB cards so I don't run into capacity issues. There are many reports of issues running > 2 sensors and difficulty getting the Inateck cards working correctly due to driver version issues, USB power management etc.
If it's lonely I think you are just missing out on the right software. Oculus has a built in mic that works great and is enabled by default. The Unspoken, Rec room, Dead and Buried, Arizona Sunshine are all very fun experiences that have a strong sense of presence for the other players. The inverse kinematics combined with various bits hand detection functionality are a hoot.
Are we sure that VR in its current form (headset ala Oculus) is the form of VR that will become ubiquitous? I find it hard to believe that the average consumer will be interested in buying that clunky, expensive piece of hardware just for the "coolness" of it.
If VR is to become popularized i feel like it needs to be more seamlessly integrated into our daily lives.
> Because VR games are so physical, gaming will no longer be perceived as an unhealthy activity. I could have used this growing up.
In my experience, the best VR experiences are sit down. Sony's approach fully embraces this. Room scale is great, but I've had much more enjoyable experiences with the likes of Euro Truck and Elite than Showdown.
VR demos amazingly well, you're excited to try it out and it is genuinely breath taking the first time you look around your cockpit in outer space. But the isolation and cumbersome nature of it kills everyday use.
> In my experience, the best VR experiences are sit down.
This will be as subjective as which non-VR games consumers prefer. I have a friend that can (and has!) happily spent hours playing Fruit Ninja VR, which can be quite the workout. I personally really enjoy AudioShield and The Lab's Longbow game, which are also fairly active.
Honestly I think the biggest impediments to "active VR" are the cable and the buildup of sweat in the headset's padding.
I found that Superhot VR was much more exciting than Eve Valkrie. The immersion was so high that I started closing an eye to shoot better. I haven't done that with any other game.
One thing I can't stand is the resolution, it really needs to be 2x-10x increased for me not to feel like I'm staring really closely at a screen. And when you increase the resolution by an order of magnitude, you need more processing power, which makes it harder to solve the giant problem of the size, cost, and awkwardness of the hardware. I can't wait until contact lenses are VR enabled.
Blown away? Hyperbole of the century. At CES this year, I tried all the VR/AR tech I could get my hands on. Microsoft HoloLens, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Sony VR, Galaxy Gear, and everything in between.
I wasn't expecting much and yet I was still underwhelmed. There is zero immersion, primarily due to the poor resolution, the screen door effect, and the crippled field of view. It felt like watching a scene through a pair of binoculars, but that's not a fair comparison either, as physical binoculars are more immersive than any of these devices.
I feel like I the only one that feels such disappointment!
This brings up another point... VR is much more dependent on the user's body characteristics than past technologies. One person's eye distance and head/body shape can be a completely different experience from someone else's.
One person, like you, can have a much worse view and experience than someone else.
I can see why the current issues might bring someone out of immersion. But from somebody who owns a Vive, I think having a more personal experience is key to getting the most out of it (for now).
When you describe the binocular effect, I know what you mean, however my experience is that all those issues fade away once your brain "accepts" the inputs and starts filtering out the noise. How long did you get to demo the Vive? In my experience (and those I've demonstrated to) it takes a bit. These days, if I'm in an engaging game, I'll lose the peripheral darkness on an unconscious level in the same way I'll lose the world outside a monitor when playing an engaging PC game.
Yes, demoing things are using it every day are two different things. One issue for this tech is, you can show someone, they have to experience it - and for some things you need to actively use it to get your VR legs and really start being able to appreciate it.
The best analogy I have heard is that VR is experienced in layers, and the time it takes to settle into deeper and deeper levels is different for everyone.
> When you describe the binocular effect, I know what you mean, however my experience is that all those issues fade away once your brain "accepts" the inputs and starts filtering out the noise.
Personally, as someone who owned and purchased some of the early HMDs of the 1990s - these kind of comments look "interesting" to me. I mean, people are complaining about the "low FOV and resolution" - when they clearly never had to use HMDs with 20 degree FOV and 320 x 240 resolutions...
Today's HMDs are things we only dreamed about (and those who could get close to this - well, those HMDs cost more than an automobile.
Regarding the "filtering out the noise" - we used to call this "seeing past or beyond the pixels". It was purely psychological or something going on (I think there were studies done on the effect). There came a point where you stopped noticing the pixels, and/or the low FOV - and it all just started looking much better than it did. The key, though, was to stop focusing on the issue - which some people couldn't.
> they clearly never had to use HMDs with 20 degree FOV and 320 x 240 resolutions...
Being better than what they had in the 90's doesn't mean it's good. It's still too low - like trying to view 4k content on a 720p display.
> The key, though, was to stop focusing on the issue - which some people couldn't.
Or the low resolution is thrown in your face. For example, attempting to view a virtual poster on a somewhat distant virtual wall. It's large enough that you should be able to read it, but the resolution is so low you can't.
Nothing pops you out of that immersion faster than having the fact you're looking at low resolution display thrown in your face.
It's an problem the medium has to solve the way every other medium handles it's technological constraints. Pop music production was partly a way to handle the constraints of AM radio. Opera's vocal style was the result of the clash of large venues, growing orchestra's and the desire for solo vocals.
If VR can't render readable posters then good artists will stop putting posters in VR.
I very much get the same sense from the uptick in VR over the past year or two that I did when 3D TV was all the craze several years ago - kind of interesting, but in practice not very good
I feel the same as you tbh. Does the geek in me love it? Sure! But if I take that out of the equation and look at things as they actually are then I still feel VR has a long way to go.
Interesting. I got a PSVR over the holidays, and had everyone in my family try it out. Experiences were mixed, but trended strongly towards 'blown away' (the major exception was my mom, who was underwhelmed). I'm genuinely blown away by the immersion of the games is Virtual Worlds, and have played hours of Thumper in VR, which is my favorite game of 2016. I did find the more 'room scale' games to not work as well with the setup, though (I'm looking at you HoloBall) but that might just be that my play area isn't set up correctly for it.
My experience was the opposite of yours: I expected a lot, and was still happily surprised by the results. Head tracking is excellent, no motion sickness at all, and consistently high framerates made the experience extraordinary immersive for me. I love just spending time in Windlands and Robinson.
Like you, though, I look forward to higher resolutions and field of view, but I'm a very happy customer with the current setup. I guess we'll see how I feel in a few months!
This is so different from my experience with the HTC Vive: while I obviously perceived the poor resolution, screen door effect, etc., after the first minute I started feeling more and more immersed, and then something in my brain clicked, pretty much like when you are falling asleep. That's when everything started feeling almost like a lucid dream. My heartbeat was noticeable faster and I felt strangely happy/exited, like if my brain was pumping serotonin. It was so weird and fantastic. The only reason why I still didn't buy one is because it currently is a relatively big investment (ie gaming desktop+vive) for an entertainment technology.
I found the initial experience very compelling, too. Unfortunately, that initial thrill wears off fast. I challenge you to buy a Vive and report back in a few months with your daily usage level.
My daily usage level has dropped, but mostly it is due to the lack of new interesting software. When you read this thread, or /r/Vive or anywhere else, it's always the same story: people talking enthusiastically about games that came out months ago. The same ones, over and over. Space Pirate Trainer. Holopoint. H3VR. Job Simulator.
Have had the Vive since 1 month after launch, use it almost every day for a few hours. Just got Elite Dangerous set up as well so I expect to be using it even more. Other games I usually play are smashbox arena, and Onward, as well as Holopoint, Space Pirate Trainer, Audio Shield and Audio Beats. Tilt brush is also amazing for drawing in. There is so much content to play its great.
I think you nailed it: you have to relax a certain amount and let your brain do it's own thing—like falling asleep. Some people have more of a tendency to latch on to the fact they're looking through a device and don't 'let go' and the magic doesn't happen. It's also probably situation dependent; your mind is less likely to let go of your actual environment and focus on the virtual if there are distractions or anything you're concerned about in your surroundings (e.g. it will be less likely for some people while in stores and at conferences etc.).
I have a Vive and agree. I personally don't see the SDE but I think I need glasses. The visual issue for me is not being able to look away from dead-center where it's the sharpest.
I read once that in VR "geometry matters more than textures" and I totally agree with that. Some of the most immersive moments I've had in VR are when I was peeking around a corner. The graphics were all simple, but the geometry of the corner and connecting corridor are what gave me such a great sense of presence.
I've written software for nearly 20 years now and I don't want to do anything other than VR development. It's the new frontier.
I think the closest I experienced to this was when I first discovered Second Life. My dreams after an evening on Second Life were insanely realistic. That thrill of addiction sounds familiar, almost like a dopamine chasing rat.
Interesting. I've got a 4k setup with a GTX 1080 at home right now. I'm sort of debating about a Vive or another 1080 when I've got some extra cash to blow.
The Vive seems harder to rationalize because it seems like a really expensive toy with only a few crappy games for it. Am I wrong about this? Is the VR really worth it? I keep reading awful things about the resolution and about motion sickness issues - I care very much about those things.
I'd have an easier time with it if the resolution was doubled and it was closer to a $500 price point. But as is it just seems crazy to pay that much to have a way lower resolution screen than my current monitor strapped an inch from my eyes.
The coolest thing about VR right now isn't the visuals, it's the controllers. Being able to move around and interact with things in virtual space is a very powerful experience/concept. I can actually see some future apps/games using controllers without the goggles.
"...after the first minute I started feeling more and more immersed..."
VR = immersion.
The gear, resolution, tech is all details.
Given my loose definition, we've had VR for years. Dr Dan Bricklin once asked me (rhetorically): where are you during a (deep) phone conversation? Here? There? Both?
AR is when the gear matters as much as than the story.
I went to the VR Expo in downtown LA recently where I had to wait in line for over an hour to play for 2 minutes on the vive with the full setup. It was 'kinda cool', I suppose. On the way out they mistook me for the next in line and offered to have me play another 2 minutes on another game but it just wasn't cool enough for me to waste any more time.
I'd say you were probably just very jaded going in already. I've ran literally hundreds of people through the HTC Vive (my company ran a popup VR arcade for a while as a marketing stunt) and 95%+ people said they were completely blown away.
If the content is engaging enough, and you go in with a receptive mindset, you shouldn't notice things like screen-door, etc. These are hallmarks of a developer or technologist / tester mindset.
I find Valve's the Lab demos to be very, very good. If you're looking for pixels, then the experience isn't fun enough.
Imagine people saying this about Doom when it was released. The graphics don't look photo-realistic, you can see the individual pixels, you can't look up and down, man I don't think this 3D gaming thing is going to catch on.
Everything you mention are very (very) simple technical limitations on what are basically proof-of-concept devices. If you think we don't have the technical capability to put higher-resolution screens in there, or to make better graphics, or to extend the FOV... the only problem right now is cost. The reason for these limitations is cost. They're solving the hard problems before tackling the easy ones because we already know how to solve the easy problems. Solving easy problems doesn't get you hundreds of millions of dollars worth of startup investment. And screen resolution is definitively an "easy" problem to solve.
The YC post didn't say "VR is perfect today", it said "VR is going to get a lot better". You have to be able to see into the future and determine what problems are solvable and what problems may never be solved. All of the problems you see with current VR are ones that are easily solvable (except maybe immersion, but you'd have to actually define what that actually means).
I'm very aware of the direction of VR/AR. Prior to my new line of work, I assisted corporations with invention mining in the head mounted display tech area. Despite having fairly intimate knowledge of the tech and what's currently unreleased prototype stage, I had minimal first hand experience.
HoloLens are the biggest let down. That FOV was unusable.
Maybe mercurial MagicLeap is doing AR the right way.
Being able to focus sight on far or on nearby object at will is also a simple problem and already solved in VR? (I honestly have no idea).
Until it is solved there is no R in VR.
The ability to focus in VR using your own eyes requires a light field display - that is something which sends light rays from arbitrary angles into your eyes, and your eyes focus them.
Magic Leap has an augmented reality device that does that, although not launched yet.
My feeling is that light field displays will massively increase sense of reality - and reports of people using Magic Leap back that up.
However, I don't think it's necessary for lots of use of VR or AR.
"Imagine people saying this about Doom when it was released."
Nope. We were blown away.
Even knowing full well we'd eventually have real-time photorealistically rendered worlds to explore, surgery to perform, molecules to inspect... The early advances were exciting.
"Everything you mention are very (very) simple technical limitations on what are basically proof-of-concept devices."
VR has some thorny non-gear problems to solve. Human physiology ain't simple.
I'm old enough to remember the last VR boom. I was even lucky enough to work in a CAVE for a bit. That hype train derailed around 2000. The same promises were made, the same breathless enthusiasm, the same feeling that we were about to ascend into the cybernetic matrix. It didn't turn out that way, and the only thing that's fundamentally changed is that the hardware is cheaper. This is going to bankrupt some investors, and the remaining companies will serve a niche market.
The hardware is not just cheaper, but its orders of magnitude more powerful. There have also been two huge breakthroughs that I think make this wave the real deal, sub mm motion controller tracking and 90 fps to the eye.
> the only thing that's fundamentally changed is that the hardware is cheaper.
The same thing might have been said about the commodore 64. Hardware being accessible to the (rich) consumer vs only to research labs and businesses is enough of a difference to create new industries!
IMHO presence wise we are there already, even with the PSVR (especially the PSVR in my case, prefer cockpit/controller based games). The resolution maybe needs a bit of imagination to make up for but again presence as described by John Carmack has been delivered by almost all of the devices you listed.
"Hyperbole" implies you think he's not being honest but then later you say "I feel like I the only one that feels such disappointment" which suggests you do think it's a genuine reaction which you are in the minority by not sharing.
I didn't think it could be much, but my first experience using the gear for a game of keep talking and nobody explodes convinced me otherwise. Even seeing the pixels and with the awful control method of that implementation (a classic iPod esque scroll wheel on the side of the headset which didn't map to the game that well), it was easy to get immersed.
Go up to using a rift or vice for Elite with my hotas and i can see it being awesome. Planning to get either a rift or vive this year.
How long were your demos? Have you tried VR for an extended period of time (1+ hours without a break)?
The limitations you mention are absolutely issues, but they start to fade away and the feeling of immersion rises the longer you are in it. YMMV though.
My experience with Oculus blew me away. The following three things specifically:
1. Medium, a sculpting program[1]. This tool lets you build 3D sculptures. The intuitiveness of the controls and the ease with which you can make these gigantic sculptures feels amazing. I think things like this are going to have a huge effect on how art is made. It's such an empowering experience to be able to so easily make these huge pieces of art.
2. RiftSketch[2]. This is just a simple demo, but it puts you in an open plane where you can modify the world around you by writing Javascript in an in-world console. Again, the feeling of empowerment in being able to alter your world so easily was really cool.
3. The Unspoken[3]. This is a game where you're a wizard and shoot fireballs and things at other wizards. Not sure what to say about it but it was really fun.
You're an outlier. Everyone I've observed trying VR for the first time (even Galaxy Gear) has been impressed. I've watched hundreds of people try VR because I love seeing their reactions. VIVE and HoloLens get the best response since they are the most immersive but even Galaxy Gear usually gets a shocked response.
It's not going to take off until someone solves the movement issue. The only games VR is currently suitable for are if you are stationary somehow -- pilot, tank gunner, etc. Which limits it pretty severely.
Something like the Ghostbusters Experience[1] is what people want in their own homes.
Also, maybe it's because I've been gaming my whole life, but the resolution in VR is still not good enough to "blow" me away, like I keep reading about. How people are so amazed at current gen VR confuses me.
Movement with the Vive and room scale works (walk around small area and teleport to new small areas). I think it solves the problem and feels pretty intuitive.
I've wondered if scaled movement was possible or if it would really mess with our brains. For example, 1m realspace = 3m in VR. Would your body adjust to smaller/slower movements, or would there be a disorientation?
Not scaled movement, but there was research done in the 90s about having the computer subtly "distort" (I can't remember how it was really done) things being displayed to in effect make you walk in a curve to keep you away from walls (I think it was similar to how you can attempt to walk a straight line in a forest - and without a compass, actually find yourself walking in an orthogonal direction compared to where you started - simply due to ground level differences, motion cues, etc). I'm not sure how well it worked, but it was a workable system.
There's also the more expensive idea of an "infinite 2D treadmill" - which was first implemented by a guy named Rudy Darken; iirc, he did it for the "dismounted soldier" VR/AR training project for DARPA:
'redirected walking'. This has been used in practice by some of the big VR applications and in research since them. As I understand it, the problem is that it doesn't solve the 'small living room' effect because you can only distort by a few degrees and this produces a circle of like 15 meters - so works in a sort of warehouse setting but not in normal buildings.
That works for some people but not all - but for those it does work for, it works very well.
I've added exactly that - scaled movement - as an option into my VR game, Left-Hand Path, and so far most of my users are very positive about it. I love it personally - it feels very much like it doubles my available play area.
One of my playtesters hated it and found it made him nauseous, though, so like many VR locomotion options it's a YMMV situation.
I'd love to read/hear more about your experiences, as a fellow gamedev and looking at VR but not ready to take that plunge yet (couple projects first).
I Tweet a fair bit currently, and I've written about my VR work a fair bit over at strangecompany.org over the years.
I'm actually about to start doing more writing or videos on the topic of VR development and my experiences in it, so keep an eye on my Twitter, blog or YouTube if you like - they'll be up there starting in the next few weeks.
To add to this point - I personally only buy/play Room-Scale games for this reason. And with HTC expected to sell additional LightBox sensors, it's quite possible I'll be able to expand my play space from the current HTC Vive max of roughly 12x13 to pretty much fill my entire basement. Of course you are limited by the cabling right now but HTC has a wireless module already announced for release during the first half of this year.
Exciting times for VR after decades of false starts.
> with HTC expected to sell additional LightBox sensors
You can buy additional base stations right now[1], mostly for replacement purposes, but the biggest limitation to using more than 2 has been in the software simply not supporting them.
This will be solved by untethering the experience and adding Inside-Out tracking. Then, you could go to a local park and go on a Skyrim adventure with redirected walking [1], for example. A 100yd football field could potentially simulate 2km of movement, if I remember correctly.
Yeah, I think the current iteration of VR will be comparable to how the Ninentdo Wii and Kinect were received--initial enthusiasm giving way to the realization that movement is physically taxing and requires a bunch of dedicated space.
Right now, I also think the costs are still too prohibitive for most people whose Kinect sensor or Wii-motes have been long idle.
I think Microsoft's strategy of marketing VR/AR as a productivity tool is interesting.
The ghostbusters experience was done by The Void[1], who in my opinion are on the forefront of where VR could really take off. People are thinking narrowly about VR in terms of personal use, but there's so many obstacles there for mass consumer adoption that it's a way off(and honestly I think mixed reality will be the real killer app, VR has other limitations for personal/consumer use at home).
Instead I could see a lot of VR arcades popping up once the technology is more polished. You go to a large warehouse space, don a VR suit of sorts and with your group of friends can battle pirates/aliens/whatever in a large enough environment that it doesn't matter that it's still physically confined. There's obviously an appetite for this sort of thing,(see the explosion of "escape rooms" or higher end laser tag/paintball places).
I've been thinking about this and it's bad for active entertainment, but maybe it would be fine for futuristic productivity uses where you have factory workers remotely controlling heavy machinery that still can't be fully automated through a VR interface.
Wii and Kinect sucked because they tried translating predefined motions to button-presses, with no added benefit over pressing that button on a controller. And they weren't particularly good at it. You don't see how VR is different, have you even tried the Vive?
For the record I was hugely bearish on the Wii, Kinect, 3D tv and movies, and rightly so. But there is no question in my mind that VR will be huge.
Recroom's Paintball is is one of the most popular and constantly active multipler VR games and that is all about movement.
http://vrlfg.net/ also shows Onward as being very popular - also very movement based.
(one thing worth noting in that page is how low current play counts are relative to other games. Currently there's not enough people in VR to support more than a handful of multiplayer games)
The movement problem is already pretty much solved. Teleportation works amazingly well in games where that's not inconsistent with the in-game universe, and when fluid motion is necessary games like Onward have managed to make it work quite well. Keep in mind that Onward is a competitive military sim, so there's not a lot of room in the game for players to be fiddling with locomotion. The fact that the game has been such a success is pretty strong evidence that locomotion is not the contentious issue in VR that it was a year ago.
I bought a Vive the week of Thanksgiving and have been using it roughly 2 hours a day. Every other day is my workout day most of the week (unless I'm playing hockey that day/night) and the VIVE has become part of my workout now too. After I complete my normal workout - a mixture of hockey specific training, free weights, aerobic and of course tons of pull-ups - I now spend an additional hour+ in VR.
I typically play Space Pirate Trainer first; once I get around level 15-20 things are so hectic I'm moving a ton and often going to one, or both knees. My abs and back can feel it big-time. I start with this game because it's not quite so intense at the start and is a good VR warmup.
More impressive is Holopoint - a bow and arrow game. That is easily the most physically demanding VR activity that I've found so far. I'm usually sweeting pretty solidly when I complete 8-10 games of Holopoint. I'm also noticeably fatigued in my arms, back, legs, hips, all over. And just to be clear most would classify me as extremely fit (regularly skate with/against NHL bound Junior players, the minimum pull-ups I do in my workout are 30 consecutive, body fat <10% etc).
Lastly I find I am no longer interested in 'regular games'... such as Madden, NHL 16, Gran Turismo, etc (on PS4), or even my all time favorite Dark Souls (series). I simply can't go back to not being physically engaged the way VR games are.
VR is going to be absolutely huge in the health/fitness space.
Not OP, but familiar with this - I don't notice it much while I'm still in it, but if you take it off and on again, it's then like putting on a sweaty shirt - it's gotten cold and clammy, but warms up and you stop noticing pretty quick.
You do need to remember to rinse the padding tho, just like a sponge in the sink. Super easy.
Good point - on the Vive you can easily remove the face padding and rinse it off. They also sell replacements, I have a few so I rotate them in/out depending on which is driest etc.
I recall reading in most places that you are not supposed to get the HTC default foam pads wet and that it causes them to degrade quicker. Anecdotally, my wide face cushion has way less definition and is squishier than my narrow face cushion. This is definitely in part because the narrow one gets used less often, but I figured sweat was definitely a factor
That has been my worry, but I figured I'd just buy new foam pads from HTC at worst. It does say not to get them wet in the manual. To alleviate this, I just purchased replacement pads that were machine washable from a 3rd party supplier.
I do but I don't mind it. I wear a thin head-cap and bought the 'VRCover' which helps absorb the sweet (but is unfortunately made of cotton for some reason). My setup is in the basement too and so it's typically pretty chilly down there so it's probably not quite as bad as it could be.
I do have to take the headgear off every few games, towel off head/forehead, and clean up the lens.
Which VRCover did you buy specifically for sweat? I bought the memory foam soft cotton one (it's supposed to come in tomorrow" because I wanted to to be washable, but also comfortable in other scenarios, though I very much have the same experience as you described and I'd like to make exercising with VR games a much bigger part of my routine.
Edit: I'm mostly curious about the "leather" ones as they sounded uncomfortable for other usage, but specifically aimed at physical exertion.
I bought this one but I'm not totally happy with it. For now it does the job but I'm sure better options will come out at some point hopefully sooner than later:
Ohhh, I actually bought one of the replacement foams. Here were the two I was considering, I bought the first of the two I linked and will be getting it tomorrow.
I am looking for a cover that does not soak up the sweat? I like to take the vr to family parties with dozens of people trying the device and the nasty factor can be really if used heavily. I am looking for something that can be wiped with alcohol between uses.
Depending on how active the game is and how much you sweat it can be bad. I am certain that one of the first improvements in future devices will be better ventilation without leaking light.
I haven't done any workout in a VR headset yet but I have cried in one, and the lens got fogged up. Clearly some sort of passive or active ventilation will have to be part of VR headsets.
Alberto Manguel narrates the history of 10 of his favourite libraries. One of them, the Vijećnica library in Sarajevo, had a particularly striking history from the civil war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vije%C4%87nica
That's an interesting observation - most of the caveats about VR (poor UX/interactions, consumer hardware at least a few generations away from a good v1.0) probably don't really impact this space much as the focus is on other things. People are already demonstrably willing to put on somewhat clunky gear for an hour or two for a workout.
So do you just have some huge empty room/garage in your house then? Are you ever afraid of smashing into stuff around you that you can't see because of the goggles?
I have half my basement setup for hockey specific workout stuff, I call it 'Hockey Heaven', and repurposed part of the area for VR use too. You can see pictures of it on my old blog below (which I'm in the process of relaunching as a VR specific site in the next month or so).
Your hockey setup is fantastic, nice work. And that is some sick stick handling.
Watch the pullups. I fried my elbows by doing too many. Doing them on rings is much better (if you don't do them that way already, I don't know).
Interesting that you are taking PQQ. I've been meaning to research this stuff. I also noticed no creatine was listed. It probably belongs in your anti-aging stack as it has neuroprotective properties, along with its other well-established effects on muscle power output.
I've been developing with my living room as my VR space for months now - as well as getting other people in to playtest a physically intense, scare-heavy game requiring fast movement - and to date we've only had one even moderately close call with a controller nearly whacking my TV. And that was my fault for setting the chaperone bounds a bit optimistically.
How do you deal with neck muscle strain from the weight of the device which also gets soaked in sweat? I think it's great that you've been able to exercise but for me those two points are still a big area of potential innovation.
Additional workout suggestion: try Thrill Of The Fight ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/494150/ ). It's the most physically intense experience I've had in VR so far - I'd say even more intense than Holopoint, although the two are close. Obviously you will have to enjoy boxing for it to be much use or fun, mind!
You might also enjoy Climbey (http://store.steampowered.com/app/520010/ ) - it doesn't look particularly physical at first but it uses a decent amount of slow muscle movement. I was surprised at how sore I was the morning after a long play session with it.
(Oh, and given you love Dark Souls - you have heard of Left-Hand Path ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 ), which keeps getting described by users as "Dark Souls VR", right? If not, I seriously need to work on my marketing. It's also at least somewhat physical, particularly if you decide to use the dodging mechanics a lot. Full disclosure: I'm the developer of that one.)
I have played Left Hand Path a lot, very intense esp. the boss fight. I can't seem to complete the ruin sequence to get past the end of level one so I put that one on hold until it gets patched, I'm pretty sure I am doing the ruin sequence right... but yeah great Dark-Souls like experience in VR. Can't wait to see what From does in VR.
Climbly is good too but it's tough because you still have to move around with their locomotion technique and I find it quite vomit-y unfortunately the way it currently works.
Thrill of the Fight is on my list to check out this weekend... new release, looks great :)
Oh, sorry to hear that! The end of that level does seem to stump people - I'm working on making it much more accessible.
If you'd like to either email me (email in my HN profile), reply here, or put up a post on the Steam forums (http://steamcommunity.com/app/488760/discussions/0/) I'd be more than happy to help you past that, as there's lots of good stuff beyond!
Climbey - yeah, the locomotion does get a little nausea-inducing :( I'm bulletproofed to it after months of VR development!
Oh great, thanks man! And I have to tell you it's impressive as hell what you have create with Left Hand Path esp. considering you are a single developer. Simply amazing man! I will definitely take you up on your offer this weekend.
I've been making Machinima films using game engines for the past 20 years or so, including working with people like EA, the BBC, et al.
(I'm actually the guy who coined the word "Machinima", with a colleague, because we needed a better way to describe what we did than "Quake Movie".)
So I had a lot of game engine experience before I jumped in.
As for beginners getting started: Unity, Unity, Unity. Grab Unity and start learning - you can get a simple VR experience going in a fairly minimal timeframe.
Do you mostly use Blender to create the actual environments? I've started to do a little reading on this stuff too and it's a daunting hill to climb coming from primary a web-dev background (at least I know C# like the back of my Left Hand haha couldn't resist...).
I'm mostly using the Unity level editor, in actual fact, although I use 3D Studio Max for my detailed 3D modeling when I need to.
The Unity editor's very powerful, and you can extend it with tools like ProBuilder and Gaia, which are all available in the Unity Asset Store.
(I heartily recommend both of those for simple geometry creation and landscape creation, respectively.)
I've been coming at it the other way - I know game engine graphics and assembly like the back of my sinister hand, but I've been on a rapid C# learning curve :)
Just wondering what tools or techniques should you specifically learn to make VR games in Unity? I can make desktop games in Unity, is a VR game just like a FPS with different physical controls?
Yes. Even the best VR headsets still have incredibly low pixel density. According to Michael Abrash, "the per-degree pixel density of a 1k by 1k, 110-degree VR display is... actually lower pixel density than the original Quake running at 320x200."[0]
And when you call the graphics "terrible" do you mean they actually look bad to you from inside a VR headset, or just looking at the screenshot on some other device?
Because what looks amazing in a traditional game can look cartoony and fake within VR, and incredibly simple things can look startlingly real.
I welcome it! Admittedly I have enjoyed the past few years of not having to upgrade my graphics card. It would seem thanks to consoles, that shader technology and performance has been a focus of game development for a little while. The result being better and better visuals still running on the same hardware just fine.
But I am also behind an escalation of the chipset manufacturers duelling it out. Some market impetus would surely bring about some great new engineering.
This is exactly why I'm not jumping into VR right now. Once we have hi-res VR headsets and GPUs that can handle it comfortably, then I'll be interested. Give it five years or so, probably.
Depends. Remember a lot of this stuff is driven by small dev houses and in some cases - one man bands. Sometimes the graphics aren't up to scratch.
Also - there's a tendency towards flat shading as an aesthetic choice - it actually looks great in VR and frame rate is king.
However - check out something like Valve's "The Lab" to see how skilled devs can produce stunning graphics that run really smoothly in VR. It shows it's possible...
That's a great point that I haven't considered before. Back on the PS2 there was an "eyetoy" camera addon that allowed you to interact with certain games. "Eyetoy: kinetic" was a favorite of mine and my nieces/nephews: they could punch and kick and get rid of enemies or blocks or whatever on screen, instantly usable compared to the abstraction of a controller. It was easily the most engaging fitness I've done. It had its faults (proper spacing and lighting was critical), and now that you mention it I'd love to get into similar things in VR.
> I've skated with guys that didn't make the NHL cut and they were extremely fast to me. All most no effort it seemed like.
All great athletes seem like they're barely exerting effort when in reality they are way above average peak performance. Just running back and forth on a football pitch for a whole game is something that would bring most of us to our knees.
Fogging in the lenses is usually a sign the lenses are dirty. Usually, if I let them fog over and then clean them with a clean cloth, they don't fog over again. I do a very similar workout to the the person you replied to. Once I get the lenses cleaned, I can play Space Pirate Trainer without any problems.
Well the Vive/VR workout isn't my aerobic workout and/or what keeps me fast enough to play with those guys at age 49. I do a variation on the the Tabata Sprint workout, which is probably the toughest, most intense part of my workout outside of the pull-ups. Most people I know can't handle fully sprinting near exhausting repeatedly for 2m; the threat of vomiting alone from the workout stops most of my friends. So no, I don't mean to imply the VIVE workout is in anyway the main component of my aerobic fitness routine.
The Vive, for me anyway, is more a overall body workout that strains muscles I don't seem to hit from hockey, snowboarding and/or other such activities I do regularly. I would say it's a) a great overall, full body workout, but not super aerobic, and b) extremely good at training for tracking/responding to multiple 'threats' from multiple angles. Or sharpening my focus, or indirect focus skills. For example I often de-focus my vision and think about the "Inner Game" and just get out of the way of my body; I often will hit two targets with each hand independently from each other spread out 20ft or so apart. I've noticed on the ice I'm picking up players on my side/other team earlier and it's giving me an edge in just being ready a second earlier with the puck.
This actually brings up an interesting point I and other VR devs need to consider for our games.
We're aware of the concept of a difficulty level in games. But we now need to consider the concept of a "fitness level".
That's not so much a problem for my current game, Left-Hand Path, because whilst it's physical it's not focused on physical exertion (except in the "suddenly elevated heartrate" area :) ).
But for the next game I'm working on, which is currently roughed out as a more conventional combat-focused RPG with a heavy physical focus, I really need to consider how I can make something that'll be physically intense and challenging for someone like evo_9, whilst also not making it completely impenetrable for someone who's unfit.
Just another interesting challenge in a VR dev's day :)
I agree completely. What's really interesting is, if you start to think of VR as exercise equipment, suddenly $800 for a headset and $1200 for a high-end gaming PC aren't that much money. You can easily spend twice that on a treadmill and a treadmill is a terrible workout. You could almost spend that on gym fees in a year and not ever show up, whereas the VR system in my home is fun and compelling: I do use it. And it's only going to get cheaper from here on out.
> That is easily the most physically demanding VR activity that I've found so far
Have you tried soundboxing? I'm on OSX so can't try it, but I really want to give it a shot - it seems awesome, and a good workout. Bringing back the glory days of DDR in the arcade...
I've played Soundboxing quite a lot, its a load of fun and you definitely get a solid work out. Its usually my go to game when I want some VR exercise. The leaderboard is a nice touch as well, makes me really try push myself because I want to be #1 on some of my favourite songs.
I totally agree! The immersive experience not only makes you forget that you are working out but also makes you want to be better at moving around so you can perform better in the game.
Now just imagine how that'll play out when we have really good competitive VR games that are also cardio workouts - so you're aiming to out-fitness the millions of other players.
The first DOTA or Counterstrike equivalent for VR that also rewards fitness with increased game ability will unleash a legion of very, very fit competitive gamers on the world.
Bearing in mind - 7 hr a week is more or less the minimum to be at all competitive at DOTA, for example. 7 hr of intense exercise a week will get you pretty fit.
I think fitness is going to be huge with VR gaming.
We’re developing an FPS game, and are researching walking and jogging in place to drive character locomotion. The new Vive trackers are an exciting announcement, because that means we can have ankle tracking. In-game hands and feet.
Please consider moon physics! I haven't heard anyone talk about this but I've thought this was the answer to locomotion in VR. It strikes a balance between realistic movement and not being too tiring, and moon jumping would be hella fun, especially in a FPS.
Ever played instagib with a low gravity mod in a regular FPS? It can be fun, but the gameplay becomes pretty limited, and I imagine the moon physics being similar in a VR FPS. Maybe projectile weapons only would make it work better, or the fact that hitscan is a lot harder in an HMD than with a monitor.
I always thought that the mitigating factor here would be that you don't have to take big loping leaps, you can also accomplish a fairly earth-like gait, just with fewer steps.
I could also see another way of using it that is similar to the teleport mechanic where you clear an area, make a big jump, and when you land you clear that next area before taking another jump. But it would be an interesting thing, almost like a angry birds pulling the slingshot back thing, where the accuracy of the jump is also put to the test.
We’re mostly intrigued with 1:1 locomotion and agility in competitive multiplayer. For instance players who can run a marathon, or throw a baseball, will have a distinct competitive advantage over players who cannot. But, in theory, if you played enough it would supplement physical training.
For the casual gamer it may not be interesting, though that depends on the learning curve - eg regular sports can be pretty challenging and physically exhausting, yet people play them casually.
But in particular competitive gaming and esports would get a lot more interesting this way.
Jumping in real life and then going back down and landing while your character is still moving up seems like a really efficient way to get nauseated. 1:1 motion is very immersive and very good for avoiding nausea, so it's not something to give up lightly.
We were doing in-place walking in VR a couple years ago with the DrumPants foot sensors. It worked surprisingly well and IMO was more immersive than using a hand controller: https://youtu.be/T2K0zWZMC5E
Agreed with OP on HoloPoint and other apps (e.g. AudioShield is another favorite of mine) being a surprisingly intense workout. I sweat quite a bit with these games after ~15min, and this is definitely a problem. On Vive, the soft padding absorbs the sweat from my forehead as a sponge and becomes quite gross. I've learned to deal with the yucky feeling and can mostly ignore it, but I could see how others wouldn't.
I own an Oculus Rift and find that you only really get sweaty with very physically active games (AudioShield, Space Pirate Trainer, etc.). When it starts getting sweaty I'll usually just go do something else for a few minutes until it dries.
One solution is to buy something called "3d sleep mask" costs $7 or so on Amazon but you can get them for less than $1 on Aliexpress with free shipping. Then you just cut out the middle part and the headband.
They won't be quite as soft as the normal ones since they are thinner but the advantage of this is that it increases FOV since you are closer to the screen. In my experience they also stick quite well to the Vive.
I'm not into gaming much (I find the magic of games pretty much gone for "moar" details, "moar" movement). But for health and also bootstrapping understanding your body, I'd contribute a lot to VR.
Maybe I'm just lazy, but VR games requiring physical exertion have absolutely zero appeal to me. I want to sit back with a keyboard and controller and relax. I include any kind of room scale in that assessment, and personally, just the idea of wearing a thing on your face and having to crane your neck around to see what's going on sounds like a PITA.
I honestly and truly don't understand why people think VR is going to get any kind of mass market penetration.
Seriously, try it out the level of immersion is insane, a more classic game feel can be amazing. But something where you move around is incredibly compelling. I watched a friend try to lean on a counter while cooking in Job simulator. I have hit basically every wall in my living room with a controller at this point as well as all the lights.
On the exercise front, Not every game is a workout but at the same time even something simple like the default valve bow game from the lab can wear people out. After all, you are holding a weight at arms length for a while and simulating pulling back an arrow. Its mot a motion that many people do regularly.
Go borrow one or go to some local game meetup and try some's roomscale handset. Its amazing. I'm thinking about taking mine to the bar up the street on a weeknight hooking it up and getting everyone to try it.
When I tried all I noticed was the pixelation and had to take it off. It was such a terrible user experience. It reminded me of some student science project, instead of a marketable product.
VR isn't going to be popular until we have 8K or 16K headsets doing 120fps, and then we have to deal with the fact that it removes you from your environment.
The first generation of VR died off because they couldn't figure out how to solve the product liability issues. That problem still exists, which is why VR isn't going to be usable and is a dead-end.
The definition of Retina varies based on viewing distance. The DPI needed for Retina in VR is a heck of a lot higher than what's needed for a smartphone.
IMO we need to go through at least two resolution quadruplings on the Vive to get it to be crisp enough for the screen-dooring to not be noticeable.
It's not perfect, Valves new controller prototype is probably the closest we have to noninteusive, low latency gesture tracking with some form of feedback (the oculus Half moon prototypes were also fairly close, but iirc the gesture recognitation was neutred for what ever reason).
I let my wife, who has zero interest in games outside of Candy Crush, try on Google Cardboard (minimal immersion) on an iPhone (horrible display for VR) with the demo apps (can't even call them games really) and she was so engaged she ended up walking into one of our shoji/paper doors tearing a hole in it.
Once Vive-level VR comes down to wireless/portable size and down in cost to the $300 range it's going to be MASSIVE. Maybe the first generation ("until we get 16K 120fps headsets") will not appeal to productivity or hardcore gaming buffs, but 100 million Wiis were sold, and there was nothing technically impressive about that thing.
I have a hard time seeing anything you're pitching as much beyond what you could get with a Wii, and that's completely dead and abandoned. How many people bought Wii fitness? Is that enough of a demographic to expect there to be an entire new ecosystem supporting it?
I get that the technology is amazing, I just don't see it getting much mass market penetration.
Wii fitness was not fitness. It didn't approach anything of a challenge other possibly pushups, planks and a couple of other bodyweight exercises.
In VR you have to move a lot more for things to work and the the games are not fitness specific. It definitely gets your heart beating because you often have to hop around like your boxing or doing burpees. Burpees don't look that exhausting, but the constant floor to standing movement makes it challenging. I think this is what makes VR more physical.
At this point, I have to assume you haven't tried VR, and your point is void until you do. It blows minds. Wii was a gimmick (especially with its accuracy).
Wii was great multiplayer fun. We literally spent half days playing Wii tennis with 2 or 3 people. I assume that VR will be much better (only used DR1 and cardboard and of course they aren't too compelling), but does meaningful multiplayer VR exist yet?
Edit: And by multiplayer, I mean everyone in the same room multiplayer. Social multiplayer?
You're right - Wii's strength was local multiplayer, whereas Vive is more of a conventional online multiplayer, considering you need a separate Vive for each person. If you happen to have 2 Vives nearby with enough space, I imagine it's fun, but you're still inside your own world, so a mic+speakers/headphones is all you really need.
There are some games where another person can participate outside VR (Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes), but it's not really the same at all.
> I have a hard time seeing anything you're pitching as much beyond what you could get with a Wii
Try it. It's much more compelling than a Wii.
I think the Wii had part of the jigsaw. Imagine Wii/Kinect interactions, a really vibrant indie-dev culture plus that really hard to explain thing - "presence". It's a fascinating time to be part of a technology. I can only think of a few things that came close - the original home computing and video game boom (I was a child - so everything was wonderful), the early days of my time on the internet and the early iPhone/Android days ("I've got a proper computer in my pocket!").
I haven't been this excited about tech for a long time.
I think the same as someone who has waited for it a long time and purchasing a Rift with Touch, but looking at it rationally the sum of everything is a bit underwhelming if you consider a price of 2k to get started.
Many people i showed it to think its really cool, but out of maybe 15 people, only one has expressed serious interested to actually buy one and he already owns the required PC. Most were also not completely blown away, more like "yeah this is pretty cool and fun" but the expectations were higher than what actually can be experienced today.
There are cool games and experiences, but the tech needs to get a lot better (mainly resolution for me because i enjoy racing games most) and it needs to be a lot cheaper. I am still skeptical about mass market adoption beyond the same people that were interested in Kinect/PS Move.
Err, most people I know who bought a Wii bought it because of Wii Fit. Perhaps I'm a different demographic to you but it was pretty big when it came out.
Basically everyone who has ever tried the vive I own wants to buy one, it's just throwing 800$ after a 1500$ box is a bit steep for most people.
I equate it to using an NES back in the day. Right now it's expensive and imperfect but In The mid to long term it's a clear winner.
I have done the 15 min demo to about 40 people so far and everyone wants one. Something that you can already get on a screen like Google Earth is astounding in VR.
As an example, for most people I start with them wearing the display and hand them the controllers with them already wearing the headset. That is the first thing most people think is cool.they can see the controller as it floats into their hand perfectly. That's enough suddenly they can literally touch their computer. It seems really dumb until it happens and then holy crap is it cool.
That's sort of how VR is. In concept not that cool in execution it's amazing.
Who have you shown VR to was interested in it? My brother shows off his VR unit to everyone, but I've never seen anyone that tried VR that was interested in purchasing it. Even he doesn't use it anymore.
Using VR actually seems to cause less desire to buy it, including me. It actually turned out to be a worse experience than what I expected.
Better question is what is c0nfused showing that your brother isn't? The specific app between the two of them is important, but also everything else. From the headset hardware; at the extreme ends; Oculus vs Google Cardboard. Also important is what add-ons they both have - seeing your own hands inside the
headset is remarkably important for immersion, which is kind of the point. Also important is the level of preconfiguration - if the number of times the presenter says "wait hold on", and then goes to futz with the settings for 5 minutes isn't zero, then VR is a total turn off and, eugh, I don't want one. The cables going to the headset are critical as well - wireless isn't here for VR yet, but if there are multiple tangled cable messes rather than a single zip tied set of cables, I'm not going to want one in my living room if it's too complicated to put on and is just gonna be a mess in my living room.
It's entirely possible the two crowds being presented to differs by that much, but there are so many other variables in play too.
I tried Oculus, expecting to be amazed. I found it annoying and not immersive at all. I can see every single pixel. Doesn't feel real at all. Possibly because I"ve been using high-resolution 3D displays for point cloud editing for the science I do for years. (Nvidia 3D Vision 2 -- probably the 3rd major attempt at consumer 3D that never really caught on)
this, I work at Facebook and try out all of the demo devices over at Oculus. I keep hoping that they are going to advance the pixel density, but have gotten so disappointed by it that I've stopped testing their new equipment at all in the last few months. That and the team of folks that work on it are outrageously arrogant. Looking at you Charmaine/pedoguy.
> having to crane your neck around to see what's going on sounds like a PITA
This is a step too far in my opinion. You already have to "crane your neck around" to see what's going on in the real world, all around you, all the time.
I'm also sure there are less physically demanding games/experiences for those interested. Pick your poison.
In the real world, you look with your eyes much more than you look with your head.
As you're playing games or working, the only time you ever turn your head is when something external distracts you, and you can resolve it in a split second. If you're using VR and something external distracts you, you have to abandon whatever your doing and dismount the device.
That varies wildly by the design of the glasses. I tried rock climbing once with my glasses instead of contacts and it was intolerable. It wasn't immediately obvious how often I relied on a quick flick of the eyes to the outer edges until I tried it.
As to the original point, people adjust their head position all the time without even thinking about it. It's an unnatural and conditioned response to hear a noise on your right rear and move a joystick or mouse to look for the source of the noise.
Anecdotally, I started wearing glasses a couple months ago and have been annoyed at how often I have to adjust my ahead when I would have normally just moved my eyes. My glasses tend to slip down my nose just a tad which cuts off a non-negligible amount of FOV.
not really. ever wear a neckbrace, or pull a muscle in your neck? it really, really sucks.
i don't think physical movement will be a requirement of vr as a concept. you can sit and eat cheetos all day long if you want.
and in the future, i think we'll have instant-on instant-off see through LEDs so you can hit a button on the side and see through the headset into reality.
As a vehement supporter of VR and early Vive adopter, I agree. My Vive has been stuck in a drawer for several months now, and I'm strongly considering selling it.
Though, to be clear, most of my issues with current-gen VR is because of the state of the technology: low-res displays, bulky and heavy HMDs, clunky wires, etc. In a generation or two once this is addressed, it will be a much more enjoyable experience.
The other issue is in the software itself: there are just no must-have VR experiences yet. Technical demos, unpolished experiments, and shallow gameplay make up 90% of the current catalog. Plus there's the motion problem we haven't figured out yet, where most games rely on teleportation as primary movement mechanism, which is terrible UX.
Here's to hoping this isn't yet another failed VR attempt and that the industry will keep evolving, as the possible level of immersion is truly remarkable.
That was my stance, as well, especially after trying some of the early Oculus demos. I was converted the first time I played a game where I really had to aim a gun and reload it by grabbing a new clip and slamming it into the gun. It's a different kind of experience.
True, it isn't all that different from what you may get out of a Wii or a Kinect, but it's more immersive, and that makes a huge difference in how engaged you become.
I have a DK2, and for sitting games like Elite Dangerous I'm very happy with it hence not buying a commercial version.
But...man, this makes me want a Vive so badly. The only thing stopping me at the moment is I keep telling myself I'm hanging out for the next resolution bump (and the attendant massive HTPC I'll happily build to drive it).
> VR is going to be absolutely huge in the health/fitness space.
Totally agree, I cannot see anything bigger. I feel it will be bigger than even the medicine and hospital business and even plaxo and glaxo and klein would be out of business (or who knows maybe they will start selling medicines in VR!)
VR gaming is so intense and immerseful that I hope that I get a chance to go out. All this fitness would make me so slim.. that I hope my family can identify me.
For what it is worth, judging from CES this year the first round in the VR war was won by the Vive and GearVR. There were zero Rift demos that I could find. Of the two, the GearVR was better even though it lacked controls, the Vive hardware just just on the wrong side of crappy and the fuzzy muddy pictures I saw were a big dealbreaker, especially when compared to the GearVR.
That said, GearVR suffered from overheating the phone and crapping out.
- Eye tracking (it already works perfectly, I've tried it myself at SIGGRAPH), this will enable a few cool things:
- Foveated Rendering - rendering only what is in the fovea view at high quality and using a lower quality method for the periphery. Reduces rendering requirement by ~75%, enabling either higher-end graphics on the desktop, or the ability to move many desktop-bound VR applications to mobile.
- Eye-assisted interactivity - SMI had a demo at SIGGRAPH where they demonstrated using where your eyes were looking to increase precision of interactions with controllers in VR (for example, grabbing very small objects in VR accurately).
- Inside-Out Tracking - using computer vision to provide 6DoF tracking for headsets without the need for external trackers. Will allow mobile headsets to have positional tracking (which is SO VERY important for VR) and will allow desktop headsets to have lower setup complexity (less important).
- note: Microsoft will likely dominate this by my guess, seeing as probably the strongest part of the Hololens is it's excellent tracking.
- Wireless adapters for existing headsets - these made a big splash at CES and apparently work pretty well. Making the existing experience un-tethered will definitely help room-scale experiences.
- Self-Contained headsets - this is vital to mass-adoption of VR imo. I think we'll see some of these this year, though probably not from HTC/Oculus yet.
AR, while definitely more the "consumer" product in the long run, is still far off as the display tech just isn't there yet. But the above advancements in VR pave a way for AR in the future, until there is no longer a distinction between them device-wise, but it rather becomes a slider of "how much reality do you want to replace?".
Hololens tracking isn't nearly good enough, in my opinion, and isn't going to get there soon. Vision algorithms + and inertial tracker could be interesting though. Appropriate tech exists, but is currently expensive.
There has been good work on eye tracking in other spaces for many years now, so that seems a much cleaner implementation path to work well.
edit: I'm going to add a caveat, I mostly care about VR and AR in decidedly non-consumer applications, so my bar may be unreasonably high for many consumer applications.
What did you find wrong with the Hololens tracking? I use it a couple times a week and have been super impressed with it so far. Seems to very solidly lock on locations, and I can walk to the far end of the office and my content is still right where I left it. You can use is in huge unbound areas and it doesn't mind at all.
The Hololens still has a lot of issues, the FOV's crappy, hand tracking needs a lot of work, occlusion isn't great, etc. but tracking is one place that they're top of the game.
It's probably fine if you just want "if I go back to my desk, this window is on the left hand side". If you want more precision and accuracy, or consistency with physical measurements/other tracking systems, it's not so good in my experience. Happy to revise/update that experience though!
That kind of precision isn't necessary for tracking position accurately for VR/AR though, Hololens' current system is pretty damn good and I'm sure internally it's improved a bunch as they roll out their own VR headsets too.
It absolutely is needed for many AR applications. VR is a bit more forgiving, particularly if you are talking consumer and games. Any time you need maintain a relationship to the physical space you are in you can run into trouble though.
Maybe it's just me but I'm much more excited about Augmented Reality than Virtual Reality.
Recently I was looking for a new place to rent, and in every place I visited I kept trying to picture in my mind how my existing furniture would fit (and look) in the new space. It was so mentally tiring. I wish AR was advanced enough such that the rental agent would simply hire me a pair of AR glasses, I could log in to an account to load my existing furniture data, and project it into the empty rooms to rotate/rearrange/etc.
It's not just you, but AR is harder than VR, and has a longer "basic" feature list. Transparent screens, world tracking, world occlusion, object recognition / classification - plus the mobile VR issues of portable computing power and battery life.
VR will pave the way for a lot of the authoring technologies, and then those techs will (I mean, they already are) get adjusted for AR.
2) As antisocial as staring at your iPhone is, VR is much worse. You can't even function in the environment you are physically in because your body thinks it's somewhere else.
I think VR is really interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's not the next app platform. Yes it suits gaming really well if you don't get sick, but Augmented Reality is the next iPhone, and we are probably many years away from doing it right. We're not even at the T-Mobile Sidekick stage yet.
I would buy a discrete AR headset like I'd buy a smartphone, but I can't see myself buying a VR headset for anything other than setting aside an hour or so to be entertained.
Selling my Vive tomorrow, before it's too late (unsellable due to something better on the market). < 50 hours use over several months. The visual quality is awful, not just resolution, but the lenses are terrible as well. Glare, very blurry except for a narrow center, the rings of the fresnel lenses are very noticeable. The glare is unbearable in any games with a lot of contrast, like space sims, that retro arcade hall game was terrible in this aspect, too, whatever it was called.
I'm not going back to try VR till the resolution is something like 8k per eye and the optical quality is far better. FOV needs to be much wider, HMD lighter and more comfortable, and of course wireless (I know you can get this now).
I have a dedicated home theater and room scale still does not work, because you will never have enough physical space in a regular home, and have to teleport around in games anyway.
The only games that really work are seated cockpit games. Racing, space sim, flight sim, etc.
Nausea was not an issue for me. Nor the "anti-social" issue, I've never been a party gamer, I like to play games alone, in a dark room with headphones on, sat at my desk staring at a monitor, or alone on the couch with a gamepad in my home theater enjoying surround sound and a 106" screen.
All made-for-VR games I've tried so far have been mediocre and more like small demos than full games. Best experiences were games not made for VR but with added VR support: Assetto Corsa and iRacing. Probably the only two games worth having VR at all for, but personally I'll wait for 6th gen or whatever will be good enough for me.
The games I like the best works better without VR. Sim racing games could be one exception, but are, for the moment, better with a triple monitor setup. Games like Pillars of Eternity have no need for VR, IMO.
Certainly VR has potential, I just think the HMDs we have now feel old and dated already. It's 2016 (when released) and it's heavy and wired, basically ski goggles with crappy monitors and crappy lenses hugging my face.
>Selling my Vive tomorrow, before it's too late (unsellable due to something better on the market).
The Vive came out like 8 months ago. I would hardly say even the craziest company (cough Apple) would rush out a new version that quickly.
>Glare, very blurry except for a narrow center, the rings of the fresnel lenses are very noticeable.
You are probably wearing it wrong. There are two adjustments you can make. There is a small knob at the right-bottom edge, turn it and it changes the lenses width (how far apart your eyes are), this is not likely the issue. The second adjustment is focal length (how far away the screen is), if you click out the left circle that attaches the strap to your headseat, you can turn it to adjust focal length.
The third adjustment is wearing it right. I know this sounds really dumb but you have to wear it much lower than you expect. I was wearing it very high up, like glasses, when the better position is like wearing goggles.
But overall, yeah, the resolution isn't great but things like blurriness can be fixed.
Maybe I'm substantially less sensitive to the aberrations you mentioned, or your lenses are not the same as mine, but my experience is much more positive.
I've given demos to probably more than 75 people at this point, and there are always some people who complain a lot and then we adjust the way they're wearing it and all is good.
Yea he's probably wearing it wrong, and just doesn't want to put in the effort to fix anything or try any games outside of the ones he's deemed "good". Everyone I've shown the Vive too has been blown away, 2 have purchased one.
> I would hardly say even the craziest company (cough Apple) would rush out a new version that quickly.
A side note: although Apple does come out with new product versions rather quickly, it's worth noting that they take a very long time to create the first version of their new products. More often than not those efforts don't even end up seeing the light of day. Now that I think about it, it's probably why Apple hasn't thrown their hat into the VR ring. Once they do decide to go to market with a brand new product category it typically has a ton of polish and iterating from that point on can be done incrementally and rapidly.
Sorry, what I meant by Apple throwing their hat into the ring was actually releasing a product. They've been working on myriad products over the years that they ended up throwing out. For a company like Apple, working on a product and releasing a product is a far greater distinction than for other companies.
I agree with this sentiment. I can't speak for the Vive, but I did get to try an Oculus headset (but not the new Touch controllers) over the holidays for an extended period of time.
The head/motion tracking was spot on and I didn't notice much lag at all. The problem was more with the resolution of the screen, FOV, and light leaks. I constantly had to trick myself in order to feel immersed. Also, if you don't have near perfect vision, the display will look even worse and its quite uncomfortable to wear the headset with glasses.
I think we're on the path, but the first generation headsets out there now are more in line with an expensive tech demo than anything else. I suppose that it is to be expected though. I look forward to future iterations.
I hope that you realize that 8k/eye at 120Hz is in the 100Gb/s range with compression, that you won't see because it's already a retina display (60ppd) at 130deg view angle.
Also there are NO GPUs that could come close to rendering a single eye today at even 60Hz (even 30Hz would be absolutely top end).
So, I think your requirements are completely unrealistic, but I agree that the current VR (1k/eye at <90Hz with 20-30ms latency) is unusable and gives me a headache. I suspect that around 2-3k/eye at 90-120Hz with 10-20ms latency will be sufficient to be usable.
Unfortunately, that almost certainly means Foveal rendering (since UHD at 60Hz is too hard and 120 is right out), which will take some time. However, it probably also means that the bandwidths might be possible to untethered mulit-Gig wireless. Having an unteathered system that used a high powered GPU would be really nice.
<edited to add>
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...
As slow as growth has become in the graphics card and general computing industry, getting to the point where we can do 120hz at 8k per eye is a lot further than 10 years off. It will require a significant change in how (where?) we're generating graphics, not just better hardware.
You're absolutely right... But by rendering separately the high resolution and low resolution views (each at 1k, but one 4x upscaled) we could do 60Hz today. It only requires 2 FHD renders (which is less than a 4k 2eye view at UHD) so 60Hz is very reasonable... possibly 90-120Hz. It also cuts the bandwidth by 8x (2/16) without compression.
It won't, no worries. Eye tracking in an HMD, whether AR or VR is hugely complicated from engineering point of view. There is a reason why an HMD eye tracking kit costs several thousands of USD.
Moreover, from the rendering point of view, foveated rendering is a fairly complex thing to integrate into a 3D engine too. It is definitelly not "free".
No panacea but another important piece of the puzzle. The software part may be complex - but it is just software, and once done, we all benefit from 10x battery life. Eye tracking hardware is complex but Lots of ongoing R&D - the outcome of which will be sensor chips which can be added to HMDs.
Assuming that it's feasible to do ~1080p per eye at 120hz today, 8k per eye is only 16 times more pixels. And considering that increasing the pixel size is embarrassingly parallel, I don't see that as a problem to be able to do in 10 years.
Also, eye-tracking + foveated rendering will severely reduce the load. Once that works reliably, you just need the cheap, super-high PPI, low-latency screens (which might almost exist today, though at high cost due to lack of a mass-market).
8k x 8k per eye at 120Hz is 64x more pixels at 1/3rd increase in frequency ~= 85x more processing power. Making the (maybe faulty) assumption of doubling processing power every 2 years and that current setup is processor limited, this sort of processing power is ~13 years away.
Same computation but with 4k x 4k per eye predicts ~9 years of progress needed.
I guess I misspoke about being 1920x1080 which is a "2K" screen split in two. An 8K screen split in two would be ~4000x4000 per eye which is still 16x as many pixels as I said, plus the 33% increase in frame rate which I didn't include which matches your second one. Although with how embarrasingly parallel it is, I don't think it's as far off as it seems. Especially considering that it's the previous generation graphics cards that can handle current day VR fine so we're 1-2 years into the 9 years we have to wait, and with so many pixels anti-aliasing can probably be turned off completely. You could probably build something today that could do it, it just would be very expensive and I don't think 8K panels at cell-phone size exist yet.
>Certainly VR has potential, I just think the HMDs we have now feel old and dated already. It's 2016 (when released) and it's heavy and wired, basically ski goggles with crappy monitors and crappy lenses hugging my face.
While I agree with many of your sentiments, I don't think you are realizing that only 2-3 years ago an HMD meant something like a Sensics zSight or one of the Collins/Rockwell ones. Starting price $40k, FOV around 30-60 degrees, SXGA resolution and input either frame sequential signal or two VGA/DVI cables (one per eye). And no tracking whatsoever - you had to buy external tracker, either magnetic or optical one ($10k+). No controllers neither, but a professional Flystick 2 (needs external tracking) could be yours for about $2k.
And on the low end you had stuff like Vuzix VR920 for about $400 or, then brand new Sony HMZ-T1 for $800 or so, if I recall right, with terrible resolution (Vuzix), FOV (Vuzix - 20deg yay) and latency (4 entire frames - Sony). Neither had tracking nor controllers neither.
So calling the current generation of HMDs "dated" and "crappy" is a tad unfair. You have obviously never had to use the "previous gen".
8k displays in HMDs would be great but are not going to happen for quite some time yet. Not even 4k, actually. The reasons for that are several:
* HMDs are still a very niche market. So to get components to make one you either pay a large premium to get a made to measure parts you need in low volume (=> that's partly why the Sensics HMD did and still do cost so much) or you have to use parts where the economy of scale works in your favor.
Until HMDs are a mass market device, the only source where to get (relatively) cheap displays in sizes that fit the form factor are smartphones, resp. displays that were meant for them. So until there is a mass produced 4k/8k smartphone, an 8k HMD is not going to happen. And 4k on a phone is a gimmicky nonsense, 8k even more so, so not likely to happen any time soon.
Development of a custom 2k display starts to make sense only when you are planning on buying 100k+ of them, otherwise the manufacturer won't even talk to you. It just isn't profitable. And it gets only more expensive for 4k and 8k resolutions, with insane engineering problems when you are trying to stuff 4k pixels into something 5" across instead of 100" (TV ...)
* You likely don't realize how much electrical a computational power driving of a 4k display needs. Most PCs would struggle with 4k@90Hz or more and even super high end PC would have major difficulties driving an 8k display. An HMD that nobody can use is not much of a product, IMO.
* Bandwidth issues - very few 4k display panels can manage 4k@60Hz, 4k@120Hz that you would want for VR is virtually unheard of. And 8k@120Hz ... well, maybe a decade off? If ever - it is not needed for TV and phones and VR alone is way too small market to make a manufacturer produce something crazy like that.
There is also the question of how do you talk to such panel - normal HDMI tops out at 4k@30Hz, anything more and you need either the recently standardized HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort or some proprietary stuff, along with expensive cabling. Don't get me started on 8k ...
Bandwidth is also why HMDs are not wireless. Until very recently (few months) there simply were no solutions on the market that could manage to transmit the volume of data needed and keep the latency low. You cannot use heavy compression, as has been common for e.g. wireless TV streaming stuff, because it adds too much latency and/or visual artifacts. There are now some solutions coming but we have to see how good they will be. And, of course, none of that will likely work for 4k+ without (massive) changes. Oh and you trade a cable for battery life and having to lug a battery either on your head or belt now.
So, to conclude - your usability gripes about the hardware are valid, but if you want to wait until they are solved, you will hav...
I don't get why you, or the other person who replied, concluded that I thought 8k per eye was feasable now. I only said that was when I was going back to try VR. I'm positive we have at least that resolution in 10 years. I am also perfectly aware of all the challenges involved in outputting such a resolution and manufacturing such a display.
> The games I like the best works better without VR. Sim racing games could be one exception, but are, for the moment, better with a triple monitor setup. Games like Pillars of Eternity have no need for VR, IMO.
This is a very valid criticism. The current limitations of VR require developers to design different kinds of games. I found Valve's The Lab to be excellent. It's frustrating as a designer, because you may not be able to make the game you want, for VR.
I haven't actually played any games in VR yet, but is there any reason the headset couldn't display a normal game? Even if it doesn't need VR and doesn't benefit in any way from head tracking or 3D visuals, just imagining a hypothetical future situation where all 2D monitors on the face of the Earth are replaced by VR headsets, you could still play Pillars of Eternity on a VR headset and it wouldn't be any worse, right? There's no technical reason a VR headset couldn't replicate a regular monitor?
SteamVR has a theater mode. The issue is the pixel density isn't really as high as you'd like it to be. You're using 2160x1200 resolution to render over most of your field of view, so the effective resolution of a rendered TV/cinema screen is actually lower than you might like. It's like playing on a 720p or maybe even a little lower resolution. Also, how will you see your mouse? That's actually not a huge problem if all monitors were replaced there could just be mouse tracking in the simulation.
It's possible, but the resolution and pixel density has to go up before it can be an effective replacement for the amazing screens we have.
I think minecraft is a great illustration of some of the limits of vr today: it defaults to a theatre mode, but also has the option of pov gaming. The latter is terrible for moving around - but works OK for standing still and looking around.
For now simulator-like games such as Elite:Dangerous are the most interesting. I'm sure we'll Se a couple of nice "room scale" games - but "sitting in a cockpit" fixes many of the issues related to movement etc.
Then, I think a backpack rig (Pc) coupled with custom controllers (eg: a softgun with tracking hardware and trigger support) will enable vr theme park games; a typical indoor paintball range with padded corners mapped in 3d - rendered over with vr goggles. I assume the first ones would need custom tracking hw.
We need more women to get into VR. Not some SJW thing, young 20 something techy dudes just don't shop enough. Future malls will be in VR, and it'll be awesome, but right now the wrong demographics are using VR.
Kind of odd that it takes yc this long to understand such a world changing technology. And their point is that other vcs are even more pessimistic and unexcited about technology.
It really shows you how absolutely myopic and limited the current startup ecosystem is. Many thousands of people could tell VR was real this time back when Oculus did a Kickstarter. But vcs take +n years? Shows how much room for improvement there is, I suppose.
You make a good point - many investors (maybe us as well) don't start thinking a new technology is cool until they can investing in companies using or leveraging that technology... From a user perspective though, I bought Oculus Rift dk2 and thought it was horrible. The user experience has come a long way since then.
What is different now, compared to when Oculus did Kickstarter years ago, that would be the reason why you want to pay attention on VR now? Is it just that the hardware is better, or are there other reason for you to think the timing is now right as opposed to years ago when Oculus did KS
Agreed. In fact I found this post a little obnoxious. Not only is it an observation that is at least two years behind the times, it offers no new insight into everything that we've learned about VR in those last two years. Heck, we're already seeing the first round of VR startup closures (VRideo and Envelop VR among others), something we'll only see more of in 2017. It's exactly what was to be expected and not a sign of the death of VR. But nonetheless a culling will take place and there's a lot more we know now about what areas are and aren't viable in the current and near-future VR ecosystem. I would have far preferred a post from YC titled something like: "How To Think About VR Startups In 2017".
I think that AR (think magic leap) is going to be much bigger, at least in the short term.
VR is like the desktop. It will have its uses, sure, but you'll be tied to your desk/room. Gaming will probably still be the most popular VR application.
Your AR glasses will be your smartphone, on you the entire time, and you won't even need to reach for your pocket.
Hm, I think it's the opposite. VR big in the short term; AR big in the long term. I do agree that when talking about smartphone applications, as in the blog post, those will need to be AR not VR.
Google Glass was squashed right? And Hololens is focused on business use cases first. I don't see it becoming consumer focused for some time. VR is amazing _today_ and has a massive gaming audience. The business applications of AR, while high impact/potential, are a much smaller audience.
I think that VR, unless much more advanced (e.g. expand to other senses besides vision and hearing) will have trouble catching on besides gaming and maybe some business applications. And even so, I have my doubts.
And I think Google Glass was dropped because the tech wasn't there yet. It was a small square on the corner of your vision instead of a "depth aware" overlay.
Indeed, I think AR glasses will replace at least the display portion of smartphones. If I had to guess, the progression would go something like this: Initially, it will be glasses connected to the smartphone. Then, glasses connected to a watch-like device. Finally, just the glasses.
I touched on this before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12104656. Imagine waiting in an airport and browsing instagram or watching videos on a relatively large, private display via glasses. The tiny, visible-by-others smartphone display would look very primitive in comparison.
I think there's a bit too much exuberance around VR and AR at the moment. I can imagine a future where fully immersive AR is technically possible, but no one uses it because it's annoying or inconvenient. Sort of like how video calls are possible now but most people just text.
The convenience factor is being completely ignored by the enthusiasts. There is absolutely no plausible day to day use case for VR like there was for something like a smart phone.
VR games are the same sort of short term gimmicks that failed with the Wii and Kinect. The technology is amazing, it's just not very useful.
I kind of wonder if stuff like that is going to require new levels of body-computer interfaces(contact lens, eye implants, brain implants). It's hard to figure out someone's exact facial expression when they have a headset covering most of their face. And if you don't get the facial expressions perfectly, you're going to have uncanny valley and miscommunication.
Yeah, I would assume some combination of eye-tracking and facial scanning might work.
There is research into translating real facial movements onto a digital model. If you are wearing a headset already, I am sure there is something that could be done to 'scan' facial movements.
Nice to see some other people pointing out the positive effects here.
As a (room-scale only) VR developer, I've been writing about the upsides of VR and VR gaming for some time - example, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/05/three-un... . There's a lot of skepticism around this area, particularly the claim that games will actually make people fitter - but you only have to play a few rounds of Holopoint or Space Pirate Simulator to realise it's also true.
(As a side note, I'm increasingly dividing VR into "pseudo-VR" (anything where you can't walk around) and "real VR" (room-scale experiences: the Vive, in short, and some Oculus Touch setups). Harsh, possibly, but it really does feel like a different medium once you can get up and interact with your hands.
To my mind, the only interesting VR experiences are those which engage the whole body. That's something I've been trying very hard to do with Left-Hand Path (http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760) the VR game I developed - at various points, you have to crouch, dodge, crawl, duck, and draw magical symbols in a variety of ways.
I'm doing that because quite apart from the health benefits, engaging my players in actual movement creates a whole new level of immersion. Proprioception is a thing - the sense of the body's place and movement in space.
Getting tired and even "gassed" also helps immersion. I've been playing the VR boxing sim Thrill Of The Fight recently, and it's remarkable how well it simulates real-life sparring in some ways - including getting gassed, and having to spend a while just keeping your guard up whilst you recover the ability to breathe without wheezing. That's an element of immersion I'm never going to get from a PC game.
I play a lot of Dark Souls, but the phrase "in-game stamina management" means something completely different when it's your stamina you're managing.
I don't think it's fair to compare VR to Soccer, it's more equivalent to home treadmills, or something like a bowflex. An expensive niche product that usually just gets left in the corner getting dusty.
And you've shown somewhere, I assume, that "that reason" is definitively and primarily that physical exertion doesn't work for people and necessarily prevents mass market appeal?
The problem with "room scale" is very few people have a (near empty) room in their households which they can dedicate to a single-user VR experience. Every user in the household would need their own room (hmm - will new homes be advertised with these as "upgrades"?)...
Yeah, it is. I am hesitant to buy a couch for this reason. I live in a studio by myself and basically my entire living room is a VR space and it is still pretty small.
I have a 2m x 2m area in the basement I use. I wish I had a little more space but it works well most of the time. The low ceiling is the problem - your brain is so convinced that there is sky or a high ceiling above you that you try to throw something over your head and smash the controller into the ceiling. I have marks on the walls and drywall dust embedded in my controllers. The chaperone boundaries can't do anything to warn you about that and those mistakes happen too quickly anyway.
The challenges for VR today can be summed up in a few points:
- The price point (a high-end VR experience costs around $2800 ($800 HTC Vive + a $2000 PC)
- Resolution (even the best VR is too low-res today)
- Inside-out tracking (explained below)
- Content – there are great games and other immersive content today, but it's just scratching the surface
Apart from content, all of these challenges will be handily solved by Moore's Law in the next 24 months. We will have inside-out, high-end, high-resolution virtual reality that will cost a consumer less than $500-$1000 all-in.
The chicken-and-egg problem of content vs. consumer adoption is already being solved. Enough new headsets shipped last year for the market to support substantial investment in VR content over these next 24 months, and newer, better content + cheaper hardware will lead to increase in consumer adoption, which will lead to even more investment in content, and so on.
The only question then is: will everyday people want to use VR regularly? I have yet to meet someone who has spent a decent amount of time (more than a quick demo) in a high-end VR experience and still doubts this. Certain activities (gaming) will be adopted more easily, while others (watching a movie with your family) might feel a bit strange – but that will feel more natural when VR and AR converge on a 5-10 year timeline.
It's exciting!
* Regarding "inside out" tracking above: Today, the most advanced consumer headset (HTC Vive) gives a glimpse of this potential with "room-scale" VR that allows a user 6 degrees of freedom – meaning the ability to walk around in an environment. But, the Vive requires sensors on the walls that draw lines around a playspace – this is "outside-in" tracking. Inside out tracking requires a headset that can draw a volumetric map of its environment in real-time – so you could walk from room to room in VR and see walls and obstacles before you crash into them. (the closest thing we have to this today is the Microsoft Hololens) This is important because it reduces the need for a large physical space, a complex rig, a constrained environment area. It might not be necessary for mainstream adoption, but it is a challenge that needs to be faced.
Re: inside out tracking - have you seen Bridge? It's a mobile, spatially aware headset for IOS. It uses an onboard Structure Sensor to power positionally tracked VR + high end MR. All on an iphone (no remote processing), and < $400 :)
We've been working on it in secret for a couple of years, and just launched it in December.
You left out one huge area: weight/comfort, which includes being untethered because having a wire sticking out the back affects comfort by pulling on your head. VR won't take off without this area being tackled as well even if all of the areas you mention are addressed.
I spent the afternoon with friends playing on a vive in a dedicated room. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't leave the experience wanting to own my own setup.
Partly the newness of the tech is to blame, and the games were retrofits of things that existed. I think as a new generation of games come around that are conceived for the hardware it'll come around.
Let's not forget the zen-like simplicity of (Google) Cardboard VR apps. They are a lot of fun and use your phone plus a 15-20 dollar holder. I think these apps will be quicker to innovate as all of the hardware is so cheap and plentiful for developer and consumers.
HTC Vive supports the OpenVR "standard" - and I believe the HMD from Razer (yep, they make one - yet you never hear a peep about it) is the same.
The Rift doesn't have Linux support (anymore - the original DK1 did), and probably never will. There are some 3rd party reverse-engineered drivers for it, but they are limited in only allowing for the display to turn on, and view the output, plus a couple of other minor things. Tracking isn't supported, from what I recall.
For what its worth, I'm not even sure whether the Vive or the Razer offering even fully supports Linux; oftentimes you see things like "support for openwidget" actually meaning "Windows and Mac version of openwidget only".
The best way to get Linux HMD/VR support is the old-school, homebrew PC VR way (you know, the way Palmer did it before Occulus) - hack it yourself.
Their Linux support sucked anyway. They only got their unity plugin working on Linux actually one day before they published this blog post. They never supported unreal engine on linux even though they said they were working on it before the DK2 even came out.
A Valve rep has said in an interview before the Vive release that they intended to have Linux support on launch. The preorders showed SteamOS support, but they changed it right before the actual launch: https://i.imgur.com/MA2377D.png
Valve has given a demonstration with SteamVR on Linux, but they have yet to release anything to the public.
The OSVR SDK and the OSVR HDK2 work on Linux. But only with their core SDK. Their unity plugin and their unreal engine plugin still do not work on Linux. So far I haven't found an application with OSVR SDK support that works on linux.
Why do you think that VR requires Linux support to succeed?
I'm long past the mentality of software having to run on each and every platform, especially Linux. I love my Mac for work with software development, my Linux to deploy my servers to, and my Windows to play the latest games. Best of ALL worlds.
>Why do you think that VR requires Linux support to succeed?
I never said it does. I simply expect companies to uphold the promises they make, especially the promises they make to Kickstarter backers - many of whom would never have bought into the Oculus Rift if they know Oculus would break their promises on Linux - what use is backing hardware you can't use when it comes out?
It is essential that we as computer programmers work towards making virtual reality systems respect people's freedom.
This is a problem of basic ethics and morality. You can say "I don't care" all you want and buy into the proprietary systems, that just means you are literally paying money to build out the surveillance police state infrastructure.
I bought a Vive back in August. I loved the shit out of it for months, but gradually stopped using it, although I still think it's an amazing piece of hardware and a big piece of the future.
But, when I play games, I frequently want a very relaxing activity, and the Vive doesn't do that. So, interesting.
But! As a (former?) AR professional, holy shit the non-gaming applications for AR/VR. There's overlap and synergy for applications in both mediums, and then there's the overlap on the technologies (particularly authoring tech - I'm looking at you, Unity) that go into them.
Basically, if I wanted to be a "real" AR developer when AR is ready, I'd start by becoming a real VR developer now.
Seperate comment because it's a separate topic: if I was looking to make money from VR as a primary consideration (as opposed to my current cascade of story first, money second) I'd be ignoring games altogether and looking at creativity / design / conferencing apps, probably for enterprise.
VR is incredible for creation and design, and can easily be collaborative too.
"OK, how many times do you send your designers away to have a meeting with their colleagues in other offices? And how much do the flights and hotel cost?
Well, you could eliminate 9/10 of those flights, hotel, travel time costs, and the rest by buying this one headset and upgrading their PCs - oh, and buying my proprietory design app..."
By the looks of it, Autodesk have had much the same thought.
I don't want to share anything that goes on my face with anyone in the office I work with. Just passing one around the conference room to each of the execs during your pitch should make that obvious pretty quickly.
I don't see VR as a useful replacement for video conferencing. You don't get any more body language and arguably less facial cues than standard video conferencing. If an engineer is getting sent somewhere, it's typically because they need to physically interact with something, which you also don't get with VR. For designers, I suspect the low resolution and inability to import and (especially) edit whatever designs they're looking at would prevent VR from being useful also.
I think I'd focus on the education/simulation training and medical market; there's already a bit in there, but nothing crazy big that I am aware of. Think:
Welding/training simulators (or tool training period)
Job training (perhaps heavy equipment simulation?)
Psychological/medical treatment (for instance, treating fear of heights - which has already been experimented with)
Virtual Design (VR CAD/CAM, interior decorating, real estate, etc)
I'm sure there are ton of these kinds of apps just waiting to be built or expanded on. Some of these could even enter into the home or consumer use areas.
Yes, training is another area where there's clearly a lot of potential to address pain points and make a great deal of money.
I was discussing VR with an ex-military colleague recently, and he got quite excited about the potential of the technology to enhance and extend early-stage simulator training. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy a Vive than a tank simulator.
And the therapy applications are incredibly exciting. Early days for those still research-wise, though.
I've been reading "Ready Player One" over the past few weeks and it's description of a VR-filled future is blowing my mind. It's really a great look into the possibilities for VR in the next 30 years. Highly recommended!
RP1 It's not any sort of world you would hope for. I'd rather the technology be banned than end up with that kind of world. But the story itself was fun.
567 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 336 ms ] threadI remember reading similar sentiment two years ago, back when the Oculus started getting massive attention after their successful Kickstarter.
There are counter arguments to the rise of VR. As mentioned, price and hardware are too high for casual use, but that will be fixed in time.
What can't easily be fixed is that fact that it is not conveient. VR tethers you one spot, and using VR in public looks ridiculous/antisocial to outside observers. In contrast, an AR approach can avoids both issues by embedding an immersive context with subtlety. (in theory anyways; Google Glass looked ridiculous too.)
It's unlikely people will even feel comfortable walking through the room, since they have no idea when the VR user is going to freak out and blindly start flailing body parts around reacting to something only they can see. This means the entire living room is off limits, which is also very inconvenient when compared to someone just sitting on the couch watching Netflix.
There are a lot of social hurdles that VR will need to overcome, in addition to each of the technical ones.
I think VR has a real future - which certainly will depend largely on falling hardware costs and increased software funding - and while I'm sure the next consumer device version will be significantly improved and appreciably cheaper I'm glad I was able to make a small contribution to the bootstrapping efforts.
The first impression/experience is powerful and most people are impressed by it. The Rift prior to touch controls was unusable in comparison to the room scale, touch control Vive (to the point that I sold it). Maybe it's better now with the new touch controls, but I think they still lack room scale and the ability to walk around is a big deal. The Vive headset also fully blocks external light which is nicer (but these are relatively minor things that can be fixed).
VR in its current early adopter state is a lonely experience - more so than playing a one player game on the couch, you're completely isolated. While this makes for strong immersion - I think it increases the barrier to entry for most people. I suspect FB is right about the importance of social interaction getting people to actually use VR for longer than just showing it off to people.
I suspect finding the "Doom for VR" - the application that really takes advantage of the medium hasn't happened yet, maybe when it does it'll be obvious in hindsight. As for the comparisons to AR - I think Michael Abrash's points still stand: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
Some solutions to this have been asymmetric games/experiences where there are people in VR and on normal PC interfaces interacting with each other. The most popular example by far is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes[1], whereby the VR player is a bomb defuser and the other player is the one with the bomb defusing instruction manual.
Another example is Mass Exodus[2], where a VR player must try to "catch" a PC player trying to blend in to a crowd of lookalike robots.
[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/
[2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/566530/
Portable personal avatars is going to be a huge undertaking. I'm really looking forward to the results, though!
The room scale works really well but is limited because of only two cameras. But adding a third camera would make it full room scale (which Oculus has announced)[1]. Combine that with new wireless hdmi/usb adapters for VR [2], full room scale VR is almost here.
[1] http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-touch-support-room-scale-360-...
[2] http://uploadvr.com/tpcast-wireless-vive-kit-works/
I do run two Inateck PCI-E USB cards so I don't run into capacity issues. There are many reports of issues running > 2 sensors and difficulty getting the Inateck cards working correctly due to driver version issues, USB power management etc.
If VR is to become popularized i feel like it needs to be more seamlessly integrated into our daily lives.
In my experience, the best VR experiences are sit down. Sony's approach fully embraces this. Room scale is great, but I've had much more enjoyable experiences with the likes of Euro Truck and Elite than Showdown.
VR demos amazingly well, you're excited to try it out and it is genuinely breath taking the first time you look around your cockpit in outer space. But the isolation and cumbersome nature of it kills everyday use.
This will be as subjective as which non-VR games consumers prefer. I have a friend that can (and has!) happily spent hours playing Fruit Ninja VR, which can be quite the workout. I personally really enjoy AudioShield and The Lab's Longbow game, which are also fairly active.
Honestly I think the biggest impediments to "active VR" are the cable and the buildup of sweat in the headset's padding.
Closed my eye by reflex to aim with the iron sights on a rifle, then had one of those "oh my god I just did that" VR experiences.
When it feels real it feels very real.
I doubt this will happen, simply because physics and optics won't allow it (unfortunately - because I'd love VR contact lenses myself!)...
I wasn't expecting much and yet I was still underwhelmed. There is zero immersion, primarily due to the poor resolution, the screen door effect, and the crippled field of view. It felt like watching a scene through a pair of binoculars, but that's not a fair comparison either, as physical binoculars are more immersive than any of these devices.
I feel like I the only one that feels such disappointment!
One person, like you, can have a much worse view and experience than someone else.
When you describe the binocular effect, I know what you mean, however my experience is that all those issues fade away once your brain "accepts" the inputs and starts filtering out the noise. How long did you get to demo the Vive? In my experience (and those I've demonstrated to) it takes a bit. These days, if I'm in an engaging game, I'll lose the peripheral darkness on an unconscious level in the same way I'll lose the world outside a monitor when playing an engaging PC game.
The best analogy I have heard is that VR is experienced in layers, and the time it takes to settle into deeper and deeper levels is different for everyone.
Personally, as someone who owned and purchased some of the early HMDs of the 1990s - these kind of comments look "interesting" to me. I mean, people are complaining about the "low FOV and resolution" - when they clearly never had to use HMDs with 20 degree FOV and 320 x 240 resolutions...
Today's HMDs are things we only dreamed about (and those who could get close to this - well, those HMDs cost more than an automobile.
Regarding the "filtering out the noise" - we used to call this "seeing past or beyond the pixels". It was purely psychological or something going on (I think there were studies done on the effect). There came a point where you stopped noticing the pixels, and/or the low FOV - and it all just started looking much better than it did. The key, though, was to stop focusing on the issue - which some people couldn't.
Being better than what they had in the 90's doesn't mean it's good. It's still too low - like trying to view 4k content on a 720p display.
> The key, though, was to stop focusing on the issue - which some people couldn't.
Or the low resolution is thrown in your face. For example, attempting to view a virtual poster on a somewhat distant virtual wall. It's large enough that you should be able to read it, but the resolution is so low you can't.
Nothing pops you out of that immersion faster than having the fact you're looking at low resolution display thrown in your face.
If VR can't render readable posters then good artists will stop putting posters in VR.
My experience was the opposite of yours: I expected a lot, and was still happily surprised by the results. Head tracking is excellent, no motion sickness at all, and consistently high framerates made the experience extraordinary immersive for me. I love just spending time in Windlands and Robinson.
Like you, though, I look forward to higher resolutions and field of view, but I'm a very happy customer with the current setup. I guess we'll see how I feel in a few months!
I'm really bored of those.
That gives me:
1. SuperHot
2. Arizona Sunshine
3. The Unspoken
4. Dead and Buried
Looking through Steam sorted by user reviews: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&t...
Gives me another easy set. I'll stick to things I own or I've heard almost universally good things about:
5. Smashbox Arena
6. Sairento
7. QuivR
8. Distance
9. Bullet Sorrow
10. Vertigo
11. Serious Sam: TFE
12: Bullet Sorrow
13: Werewolves Within
14: ROM Extraction
There's more but I got bored. I can personally vouch for the excellence of at least 5 of those.
I can't imagine how the game works not in VR.
I read once that in VR "geometry matters more than textures" and I totally agree with that. Some of the most immersive moments I've had in VR are when I was peeking around a corner. The graphics were all simple, but the geometry of the corner and connecting corridor are what gave me such a great sense of presence.
I've written software for nearly 20 years now and I don't want to do anything other than VR development. It's the new frontier.
The Vive seems harder to rationalize because it seems like a really expensive toy with only a few crappy games for it. Am I wrong about this? Is the VR really worth it? I keep reading awful things about the resolution and about motion sickness issues - I care very much about those things.
I'd have an easier time with it if the resolution was doubled and it was closer to a $500 price point. But as is it just seems crazy to pay that much to have a way lower resolution screen than my current monitor strapped an inch from my eyes.
This reminds me of the Nintendo Wii and Wii Tennis and all those other Wii sports games that were really fun.
VR = immersion.
The gear, resolution, tech is all details.
Given my loose definition, we've had VR for years. Dr Dan Bricklin once asked me (rhetorically): where are you during a (deep) phone conversation? Here? There? Both?
AR is when the gear matters as much as than the story.
Source: Gadfly during the first VR hype cycle.
I find Valve's the Lab demos to be very, very good. If you're looking for pixels, then the experience isn't fun enough.
Everything you mention are very (very) simple technical limitations on what are basically proof-of-concept devices. If you think we don't have the technical capability to put higher-resolution screens in there, or to make better graphics, or to extend the FOV... the only problem right now is cost. The reason for these limitations is cost. They're solving the hard problems before tackling the easy ones because we already know how to solve the easy problems. Solving easy problems doesn't get you hundreds of millions of dollars worth of startup investment. And screen resolution is definitively an "easy" problem to solve.
The YC post didn't say "VR is perfect today", it said "VR is going to get a lot better". You have to be able to see into the future and determine what problems are solvable and what problems may never be solved. All of the problems you see with current VR are ones that are easily solvable (except maybe immersion, but you'd have to actually define what that actually means).
HoloLens are the biggest let down. That FOV was unusable.
Maybe mercurial MagicLeap is doing AR the right way.
Magic Leap has an augmented reality device that does that, although not launched yet.
My feeling is that light field displays will massively increase sense of reality - and reports of people using Magic Leap back that up.
However, I don't think it's necessary for lots of use of VR or AR.
Nope. We were blown away.
Even knowing full well we'd eventually have real-time photorealistically rendered worlds to explore, surgery to perform, molecules to inspect... The early advances were exciting.
"Everything you mention are very (very) simple technical limitations on what are basically proof-of-concept devices."
VR has some thorny non-gear problems to solve. Human physiology ain't simple.
The big problem with VR is the product liability issues.
The same thing might have been said about the commodore 64. Hardware being accessible to the (rich) consumer vs only to research labs and businesses is enough of a difference to create new industries!
So - which is it?
Go up to using a rift or vice for Elite with my hotas and i can see it being awesome. Planning to get either a rift or vive this year.
The limitations you mention are absolutely issues, but they start to fade away and the feeling of immersion rises the longer you are in it. YMMV though.
1. Medium, a sculpting program[1]. This tool lets you build 3D sculptures. The intuitiveness of the controls and the ease with which you can make these gigantic sculptures feels amazing. I think things like this are going to have a huge effect on how art is made. It's such an empowering experience to be able to so easily make these huge pieces of art.
2. RiftSketch[2]. This is just a simple demo, but it puts you in an open plane where you can modify the world around you by writing Javascript in an in-world console. Again, the feeling of empowerment in being able to alter your world so easily was really cool.
3. The Unspoken[3]. This is a game where you're a wizard and shoot fireballs and things at other wizards. Not sure what to say about it but it was really fun.
[1]: https://youtu.be/KX-UyFCUfa8?t=1406 [2]: https://github.com/brianpeiris/RiftSketch [3]: http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/
Everyone has had different experiences with VR. To call another person's personal experience a hyperbole is disingenuous.
Something like the Ghostbusters Experience[1] is what people want in their own homes.
Also, maybe it's because I've been gaming my whole life, but the resolution in VR is still not good enough to "blow" me away, like I keep reading about. How people are so amazed at current gen VR confuses me.
[1] https://ghostbusters.madametussauds.com/
There's also the more expensive idea of an "infinite 2D treadmill" - which was first implemented by a guy named Rudy Darken; iirc, he did it for the "dismounted soldier" VR/AR training project for DARPA:
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1246853
I've added exactly that - scaled movement - as an option into my VR game, Left-Hand Path, and so far most of my users are very positive about it. I love it personally - it feels very much like it doubles my available play area.
One of my playtesters hated it and found it made him nauseous, though, so like many VR locomotion options it's a YMMV situation.
I'm actually about to start doing more writing or videos on the topic of VR development and my experiences in it, so keep an eye on my Twitter, blog or YouTube if you like - they'll be up there starting in the next few weeks.
Exciting times for VR after decades of false starts.
You can buy additional base stations right now[1], mostly for replacement purposes, but the biggest limitation to using more than 2 has been in the software simply not supporting them.
[1] https://www.vive.com/us/accessory/
[1] http://www.roadtovr.com/new-unlimited-corridor-video-shows-m...
Right now, I also think the costs are still too prohibitive for most people whose Kinect sensor or Wii-motes have been long idle.
I think Microsoft's strategy of marketing VR/AR as a productivity tool is interesting.
Instead I could see a lot of VR arcades popping up once the technology is more polished. You go to a large warehouse space, don a VR suit of sorts and with your group of friends can battle pirates/aliens/whatever in a large enough environment that it doesn't matter that it's still physically confined. There's obviously an appetite for this sort of thing,(see the explosion of "escape rooms" or higher end laser tag/paintball places).
https://thevoid.com/
For the record I was hugely bearish on the Wii, Kinect, 3D tv and movies, and rightly so. But there is no question in my mind that VR will be huge.
http://vrlfg.net/ also shows Onward as being very popular - also very movement based.
(one thing worth noting in that page is how low current play counts are relative to other games. Currently there's not enough people in VR to support more than a handful of multiplayer games)
I typically play Space Pirate Trainer first; once I get around level 15-20 things are so hectic I'm moving a ton and often going to one, or both knees. My abs and back can feel it big-time. I start with this game because it's not quite so intense at the start and is a good VR warmup.
More impressive is Holopoint - a bow and arrow game. That is easily the most physically demanding VR activity that I've found so far. I'm usually sweeting pretty solidly when I complete 8-10 games of Holopoint. I'm also noticeably fatigued in my arms, back, legs, hips, all over. And just to be clear most would classify me as extremely fit (regularly skate with/against NHL bound Junior players, the minimum pull-ups I do in my workout are 30 consecutive, body fat <10% etc).
Lastly I find I am no longer interested in 'regular games'... such as Madden, NHL 16, Gran Turismo, etc (on PS4), or even my all time favorite Dark Souls (series). I simply can't go back to not being physically engaged the way VR games are.
VR is going to be absolutely huge in the health/fitness space.
That's currently my biggest beef with these VR headsets, you have to wear some bulky thing on your head.
You do need to remember to rinse the padding tho, just like a sponge in the sink. Super easy.
Can't be all that different than sweat itself. If we're not supposed to be getting these wet, then we shouldn't be doing VR workouts at all.
I do have to take the headgear off every few games, towel off head/forehead, and clean up the lens.
Edit: I'm mostly curious about the "leather" ones as they sounded uncomfortable for other usage, but specifically aimed at physical exertion.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZZ3M8B/ref=oh_aui_deta...
https://vrcover.com/product/htc-vive-memory-foam-padding-cot...
https://vrcover.com/product/htc-vive-memory-foam-padding-cot...
https://vrcover.com/product/htc-vive-pre-vr-cover-waterproof...
What's the story with that, if you don't mind?
Alberto Manguel narrates the history of 10 of his favourite libraries. One of them, the Vijećnica library in Sarajevo, had a particularly striking history from the civil war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vije%C4%87nica
That got to me.
I haven't seen Holoball, sounds awesome thanks!
https://existentialquandary.wordpress.com/hockey-heaven/
This is before I setup the VIVE so basically I hung the sensors around the 'blue line area' and put all my computer gear on the desk in the corner.
Watch the pullups. I fried my elbows by doing too many. Doing them on rings is much better (if you don't do them that way already, I don't know).
Interesting that you are taking PQQ. I've been meaning to research this stuff. I also noticed no creatine was listed. It probably belongs in your anti-aging stack as it has neuroprotective properties, along with its other well-established effects on muscle power output.
I've been developing with my living room as my VR space for months now - as well as getting other people in to playtest a physically intense, scare-heavy game requiring fast movement - and to date we've only had one even moderately close call with a controller nearly whacking my TV. And that was my fault for setting the chaperone bounds a bit optimistically.
I learned that the hard way.
They need to add a note to SteamVR: Don't make the edges directly against obstacles.
You might also enjoy Climbey (http://store.steampowered.com/app/520010/ ) - it doesn't look particularly physical at first but it uses a decent amount of slow muscle movement. I was surprised at how sore I was the morning after a long play session with it.
(Oh, and given you love Dark Souls - you have heard of Left-Hand Path ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 ), which keeps getting described by users as "Dark Souls VR", right? If not, I seriously need to work on my marketing. It's also at least somewhat physical, particularly if you decide to use the dodging mechanics a lot. Full disclosure: I'm the developer of that one.)
Climbly is good too but it's tough because you still have to move around with their locomotion technique and I find it quite vomit-y unfortunately the way it currently works.
Thrill of the Fight is on my list to check out this weekend... new release, looks great :)
If you'd like to either email me (email in my HN profile), reply here, or put up a post on the Steam forums (http://steamcommunity.com/app/488760/discussions/0/) I'd be more than happy to help you past that, as there's lots of good stuff beyond!
Climbey - yeah, the locomotion does get a little nausea-inducing :( I'm bulletproofed to it after months of VR development!
And please do! We'll get you on the path through the Well again...
(I'm actually the guy who coined the word "Machinima", with a colleague, because we needed a better way to describe what we did than "Quake Movie".)
So I had a lot of game engine experience before I jumped in.
As for beginners getting started: Unity, Unity, Unity. Grab Unity and start learning - you can get a simple VR experience going in a fairly minimal timeframe.
The Unity editor's very powerful, and you can extend it with tools like ProBuilder and Gaia, which are all available in the Unity Asset Store.
(I heartily recommend both of those for simple geometry creation and landscape creation, respectively.)
I've been coming at it the other way - I know game engine graphics and assembly like the back of my sinister hand, but I've been on a rapid C# learning curve :)
And when you call the graphics "terrible" do you mean they actually look bad to you from inside a VR headset, or just looking at the screenshot on some other device?
Because what looks amazing in a traditional game can look cartoony and fake within VR, and incredibly simple things can look startlingly real.
[0] https://youtu.be/G-2dQoeqVVo?t=14m30s
VR games are a lot of fun, but this is going to drive GPU development for a long time to come.
But I am also behind an escalation of the chipset manufacturers duelling it out. Some market impetus would surely bring about some great new engineering.
Also - there's a tendency towards flat shading as an aesthetic choice - it actually looks great in VR and frame rate is king.
However - check out something like Valve's "The Lab" to see how skilled devs can produce stunning graphics that run really smoothly in VR. It shows it's possible...
On reflection I don't think VR graphics are looking bad at all...
I've skated with guys that didn't make the NHL cut and they were extremely fast to me. All most no effort it seemed like.
That's really shocking to me that you could get a workout from VR. Fog has to be an issue, no?
All great athletes seem like they're barely exerting effort when in reality they are way above average peak performance. Just running back and forth on a football pitch for a whole game is something that would bring most of us to our knees.
The Vive, for me anyway, is more a overall body workout that strains muscles I don't seem to hit from hockey, snowboarding and/or other such activities I do regularly. I would say it's a) a great overall, full body workout, but not super aerobic, and b) extremely good at training for tracking/responding to multiple 'threats' from multiple angles. Or sharpening my focus, or indirect focus skills. For example I often de-focus my vision and think about the "Inner Game" and just get out of the way of my body; I often will hit two targets with each hand independently from each other spread out 20ft or so apart. I've noticed on the ice I'm picking up players on my side/other team earlier and it's giving me an edge in just being ready a second earlier with the puck.
We're aware of the concept of a difficulty level in games. But we now need to consider the concept of a "fitness level".
That's not so much a problem for my current game, Left-Hand Path, because whilst it's physical it's not focused on physical exertion (except in the "suddenly elevated heartrate" area :) ).
But for the next game I'm working on, which is currently roughed out as a more conventional combat-focused RPG with a heavy physical focus, I really need to consider how I can make something that'll be physically intense and challenging for someone like evo_9, whilst also not making it completely impenetrable for someone who's unfit.
Just another interesting challenge in a VR dev's day :)
I'd actually compare the cost to the cost of hiring a personal trainer. Both solve two problems: exercising, and the motivation to exercise.
Looked at in that light, the Vive's way cheaper.
Have you tried soundboxing? I'm on OSX so can't try it, but I really want to give it a shot - it seems awesome, and a good workout. Bringing back the glory days of DDR in the arcade...
[0] - https://www.soundboxing.co/
The first DOTA or Counterstrike equivalent for VR that also rewards fitness with increased game ability will unleash a legion of very, very fit competitive gamers on the world.
Bearing in mind - 7 hr a week is more or less the minimum to be at all competitive at DOTA, for example. 7 hr of intense exercise a week will get you pretty fit.
But yes. If you want to be actually competitive at a tournament level, you're dead on.
We’re developing an FPS game, and are researching walking and jogging in place to drive character locomotion. The new Vive trackers are an exciting announcement, because that means we can have ankle tracking. In-game hands and feet.
I could also see another way of using it that is similar to the teleport mechanic where you clear an area, make a big jump, and when you land you clear that next area before taking another jump. But it would be an interesting thing, almost like a angry birds pulling the slingshot back thing, where the accuracy of the jump is also put to the test.
If I recall correctly, low gravity often made me want to avoid jumping due to the lack of air control compared to ground running.
But moon jumping would be a fun game concept :)
That doesn't sound appealing in many cases. As a game critic once wrote about the limits of realism: I am not a ninja.
But in particular competitive gaming and esports would get a lot more interesting this way.
There are SO many exciting possibilities that'll unlock.
Also, I want my Thrill Of The Fight-equivalent Muay Thai simulator.
https://vrcover.com/product/htc-vive-pre-vr-cover/
Overall it's pretty manageable if you are prepared but pretty gross if you are using it out of box
They won't be quite as soft as the normal ones since they are thinner but the advantage of this is that it increases FOV since you are closer to the screen. In my experience they also stick quite well to the Vive.
Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4gezog/8_sleep_mask_m...
I'm not into gaming much (I find the magic of games pretty much gone for "moar" details, "moar" movement). But for health and also bootstrapping understanding your body, I'd contribute a lot to VR.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/546650/
Full disclaimer: I am one of the developers.
(Supposing you care, and surgical replacement won't be trivial by then.)
I honestly and truly don't understand why people think VR is going to get any kind of mass market penetration.
Seriously, try it out the level of immersion is insane, a more classic game feel can be amazing. But something where you move around is incredibly compelling. I watched a friend try to lean on a counter while cooking in Job simulator. I have hit basically every wall in my living room with a controller at this point as well as all the lights.
On the exercise front, Not every game is a workout but at the same time even something simple like the default valve bow game from the lab can wear people out. After all, you are holding a weight at arms length for a while and simulating pulling back an arrow. Its mot a motion that many people do regularly.
Go borrow one or go to some local game meetup and try some's roomscale handset. Its amazing. I'm thinking about taking mine to the bar up the street on a weeknight hooking it up and getting everyone to try it.
VR isn't going to be popular until we have 8K or 16K headsets doing 120fps, and then we have to deal with the fact that it removes you from your environment.
The first generation of VR died off because they couldn't figure out how to solve the product liability issues. That problem still exists, which is why VR isn't going to be usable and is a dead-end.
Also 6dof tracking with hand gesture tracking under 10ms is still a challenge. I think it's possible but needs serious hardware advancements.
I love my bridge though. No hanging cables is definitely a good thing
IMO we need to go through at least two resolution quadruplings on the Vive to get it to be crisp enough for the screen-dooring to not be noticeable.
http://www.roadtovr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/valve-vr-...
Once Vive-level VR comes down to wireless/portable size and down in cost to the $300 range it's going to be MASSIVE. Maybe the first generation ("until we get 16K 120fps headsets") will not appeal to productivity or hardcore gaming buffs, but 100 million Wiis were sold, and there was nothing technically impressive about that thing.
I get that the technology is amazing, I just don't see it getting much mass market penetration.
In VR you have to move a lot more for things to work and the the games are not fitness specific. It definitely gets your heart beating because you often have to hop around like your boxing or doing burpees. Burpees don't look that exhausting, but the constant floor to standing movement makes it challenging. I think this is what makes VR more physical.
Edit: And by multiplayer, I mean everyone in the same room multiplayer. Social multiplayer?
There are some games where another person can participate outside VR (Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes), but it's not really the same at all.
Try it. It's much more compelling than a Wii.
I think the Wii had part of the jigsaw. Imagine Wii/Kinect interactions, a really vibrant indie-dev culture plus that really hard to explain thing - "presence". It's a fascinating time to be part of a technology. I can only think of a few things that came close - the original home computing and video game boom (I was a child - so everything was wonderful), the early days of my time on the internet and the early iPhone/Android days ("I've got a proper computer in my pocket!").
I haven't been this excited about tech for a long time.
Many people i showed it to think its really cool, but out of maybe 15 people, only one has expressed serious interested to actually buy one and he already owns the required PC. Most were also not completely blown away, more like "yeah this is pretty cool and fun" but the expectations were higher than what actually can be experienced today.
There are cool games and experiences, but the tech needs to get a lot better (mainly resolution for me because i enjoy racing games most) and it needs to be a lot cheaper. I am still skeptical about mass market adoption beyond the same people that were interested in Kinect/PS Move.
The balance board sold 32 million units, so it was a pretty major success. That is as many units as Nintendo64 consoles sold. See http://www.gamesradar.com/holy-crap-look-how-many-wii-balanc...
Basically everyone who has ever tried the vive I own wants to buy one, it's just throwing 800$ after a 1500$ box is a bit steep for most people.
I equate it to using an NES back in the day. Right now it's expensive and imperfect but In The mid to long term it's a clear winner.
I have done the 15 min demo to about 40 people so far and everyone wants one. Something that you can already get on a screen like Google Earth is astounding in VR.
As an example, for most people I start with them wearing the display and hand them the controllers with them already wearing the headset. That is the first thing most people think is cool.they can see the controller as it floats into their hand perfectly. That's enough suddenly they can literally touch their computer. It seems really dumb until it happens and then holy crap is it cool.
That's sort of how VR is. In concept not that cool in execution it's amazing.
Using VR actually seems to cause less desire to buy it, including me. It actually turned out to be a worse experience than what I expected.
It's entirely possible the two crowds being presented to differs by that much, but there are so many other variables in play too.
This is a step too far in my opinion. You already have to "crane your neck around" to see what's going on in the real world, all around you, all the time.
I'm also sure there are less physically demanding games/experiences for those interested. Pick your poison.
As you're playing games or working, the only time you ever turn your head is when something external distracts you, and you can resolve it in a split second. If you're using VR and something external distracts you, you have to abandon whatever your doing and dismount the device.
Unless you wear glasses.
As to the original point, people adjust their head position all the time without even thinking about it. It's an unnatural and conditioned response to hear a noise on your right rear and move a joystick or mouse to look for the source of the noise.
i don't think physical movement will be a requirement of vr as a concept. you can sit and eat cheetos all day long if you want.
and in the future, i think we'll have instant-on instant-off see through LEDs so you can hit a button on the side and see through the headset into reality.
Though, to be clear, most of my issues with current-gen VR is because of the state of the technology: low-res displays, bulky and heavy HMDs, clunky wires, etc. In a generation or two once this is addressed, it will be a much more enjoyable experience.
The other issue is in the software itself: there are just no must-have VR experiences yet. Technical demos, unpolished experiments, and shallow gameplay make up 90% of the current catalog. Plus there's the motion problem we haven't figured out yet, where most games rely on teleportation as primary movement mechanism, which is terrible UX.
Here's to hoping this isn't yet another failed VR attempt and that the industry will keep evolving, as the possible level of immersion is truly remarkable.
True, it isn't all that different from what you may get out of a Wii or a Kinect, but it's more immersive, and that makes a huge difference in how engaged you become.
But...man, this makes me want a Vive so badly. The only thing stopping me at the moment is I keep telling myself I'm hanging out for the next resolution bump (and the attendant massive HTPC I'll happily build to drive it).
Totally agree, I cannot see anything bigger. I feel it will be bigger than even the medicine and hospital business and even plaxo and glaxo and klein would be out of business (or who knows maybe they will start selling medicines in VR!)
VR gaming is so intense and immerseful that I hope that I get a chance to go out. All this fitness would make me so slim.. that I hope my family can identify me.
That said, GearVR suffered from overheating the phone and crapping out.
- Eye tracking (it already works perfectly, I've tried it myself at SIGGRAPH), this will enable a few cool things:
- Inside-Out Tracking - using computer vision to provide 6DoF tracking for headsets without the need for external trackers. Will allow mobile headsets to have positional tracking (which is SO VERY important for VR) and will allow desktop headsets to have lower setup complexity (less important). - note: Microsoft will likely dominate this by my guess, seeing as probably the strongest part of the Hololens is it's excellent tracking.- Wireless adapters for existing headsets - these made a big splash at CES and apparently work pretty well. Making the existing experience un-tethered will definitely help room-scale experiences.
- Self-Contained headsets - this is vital to mass-adoption of VR imo. I think we'll see some of these this year, though probably not from HTC/Oculus yet.
AR, while definitely more the "consumer" product in the long run, is still far off as the display tech just isn't there yet. But the above advancements in VR pave a way for AR in the future, until there is no longer a distinction between them device-wise, but it rather becomes a slider of "how much reality do you want to replace?".
(Last time I tried a bunch of eye tracking, the desk-mounted was amazing and the head-mounted wasn't)
There has been good work on eye tracking in other spaces for many years now, so that seems a much cleaner implementation path to work well.
edit: I'm going to add a caveat, I mostly care about VR and AR in decidedly non-consumer applications, so my bar may be unreasonably high for many consumer applications.
The Hololens still has a lot of issues, the FOV's crappy, hand tracking needs a lot of work, occlusion isn't great, etc. but tracking is one place that they're top of the game.
Recently I was looking for a new place to rent, and in every place I visited I kept trying to picture in my mind how my existing furniture would fit (and look) in the new space. It was so mentally tiring. I wish AR was advanced enough such that the rental agent would simply hire me a pair of AR glasses, I could log in to an account to load my existing furniture data, and project it into the empty rooms to rotate/rearrange/etc.
VR will pave the way for a lot of the authoring technologies, and then those techs will (I mean, they already are) get adjusted for AR.
1) Spending a couple of hours in VR messes with your body, many feel motion sickness and other effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness
2) As antisocial as staring at your iPhone is, VR is much worse. You can't even function in the environment you are physically in because your body thinks it's somewhere else.
I think VR is really interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's not the next app platform. Yes it suits gaming really well if you don't get sick, but Augmented Reality is the next iPhone, and we are probably many years away from doing it right. We're not even at the T-Mobile Sidekick stage yet.
I would buy a discrete AR headset like I'd buy a smartphone, but I can't see myself buying a VR headset for anything other than setting aside an hour or so to be entertained.
I'm not going back to try VR till the resolution is something like 8k per eye and the optical quality is far better. FOV needs to be much wider, HMD lighter and more comfortable, and of course wireless (I know you can get this now).
I have a dedicated home theater and room scale still does not work, because you will never have enough physical space in a regular home, and have to teleport around in games anyway.
The only games that really work are seated cockpit games. Racing, space sim, flight sim, etc.
Nausea was not an issue for me. Nor the "anti-social" issue, I've never been a party gamer, I like to play games alone, in a dark room with headphones on, sat at my desk staring at a monitor, or alone on the couch with a gamepad in my home theater enjoying surround sound and a 106" screen.
All made-for-VR games I've tried so far have been mediocre and more like small demos than full games. Best experiences were games not made for VR but with added VR support: Assetto Corsa and iRacing. Probably the only two games worth having VR at all for, but personally I'll wait for 6th gen or whatever will be good enough for me.
The games I like the best works better without VR. Sim racing games could be one exception, but are, for the moment, better with a triple monitor setup. Games like Pillars of Eternity have no need for VR, IMO.
Certainly VR has potential, I just think the HMDs we have now feel old and dated already. It's 2016 (when released) and it's heavy and wired, basically ski goggles with crappy monitors and crappy lenses hugging my face.
The Vive came out like 8 months ago. I would hardly say even the craziest company (cough Apple) would rush out a new version that quickly.
>Glare, very blurry except for a narrow center, the rings of the fresnel lenses are very noticeable.
You are probably wearing it wrong. There are two adjustments you can make. There is a small knob at the right-bottom edge, turn it and it changes the lenses width (how far apart your eyes are), this is not likely the issue. The second adjustment is focal length (how far away the screen is), if you click out the left circle that attaches the strap to your headseat, you can turn it to adjust focal length.
The third adjustment is wearing it right. I know this sounds really dumb but you have to wear it much lower than you expect. I was wearing it very high up, like glasses, when the better position is like wearing goggles.
But overall, yeah, the resolution isn't great but things like blurriness can be fixed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4i8ogs/am_i_the_only_...
https://forums.oculus.com/vip/discussion/33085/halo-effect-g...
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/252662-Vive-hor...
Maybe I'm substantially less sensitive to the aberrations you mentioned, or your lenses are not the same as mine, but my experience is much more positive.
I've given demos to probably more than 75 people at this point, and there are always some people who complain a lot and then we adjust the way they're wearing it and all is good.
A side note: although Apple does come out with new product versions rather quickly, it's worth noting that they take a very long time to create the first version of their new products. More often than not those efforts don't even end up seeing the light of day. Now that I think about it, it's probably why Apple hasn't thrown their hat into the VR ring. Once they do decide to go to market with a brand new product category it typically has a ton of polish and iterating from that point on can be done incrementally and rapidly.
They're working on AR
The head/motion tracking was spot on and I didn't notice much lag at all. The problem was more with the resolution of the screen, FOV, and light leaks. I constantly had to trick myself in order to feel immersed. Also, if you don't have near perfect vision, the display will look even worse and its quite uncomfortable to wear the headset with glasses.
I think we're on the path, but the first generation headsets out there now are more in line with an expensive tech demo than anything else. I suppose that it is to be expected though. I look forward to future iterations.
EDIT, in case it changes:
Positive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13393449
Negative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13393606
So, I think your requirements are completely unrealistic, but I agree that the current VR (1k/eye at <90Hz with 20-30ms latency) is unusable and gives me a headache. I suspect that around 2-3k/eye at 90-120Hz with 10-20ms latency will be sufficient to be usable.
Unfortunately, that almost certainly means Foveal rendering (since UHD at 60Hz is too hard and 120 is right out), which will take some time. However, it probably also means that the bandwidths might be possible to untethered mulit-Gig wireless. Having an unteathered system that used a high powered GPU would be really nice. <edited to add> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...
Either way...
580 gtx gflops: 1581
1080 gtx gflops: 8228
7 years. 420% increase in float calc perf.
Moreover, from the rendering point of view, foveated rendering is a fairly complex thing to integrate into a 3D engine too. It is definitelly not "free".
Foveated rendering is certainly no panacea.
8k x 8k per eye at 120Hz is 64x more pixels at 1/3rd increase in frequency ~= 85x more processing power. Making the (maybe faulty) assumption of doubling processing power every 2 years and that current setup is processor limited, this sort of processing power is ~13 years away.
Same computation but with 4k x 4k per eye predicts ~9 years of progress needed.
While I agree with many of your sentiments, I don't think you are realizing that only 2-3 years ago an HMD meant something like a Sensics zSight or one of the Collins/Rockwell ones. Starting price $40k, FOV around 30-60 degrees, SXGA resolution and input either frame sequential signal or two VGA/DVI cables (one per eye). And no tracking whatsoever - you had to buy external tracker, either magnetic or optical one ($10k+). No controllers neither, but a professional Flystick 2 (needs external tracking) could be yours for about $2k.
And on the low end you had stuff like Vuzix VR920 for about $400 or, then brand new Sony HMZ-T1 for $800 or so, if I recall right, with terrible resolution (Vuzix), FOV (Vuzix - 20deg yay) and latency (4 entire frames - Sony). Neither had tracking nor controllers neither.
So calling the current generation of HMDs "dated" and "crappy" is a tad unfair. You have obviously never had to use the "previous gen".
8k displays in HMDs would be great but are not going to happen for quite some time yet. Not even 4k, actually. The reasons for that are several:
* HMDs are still a very niche market. So to get components to make one you either pay a large premium to get a made to measure parts you need in low volume (=> that's partly why the Sensics HMD did and still do cost so much) or you have to use parts where the economy of scale works in your favor.
Until HMDs are a mass market device, the only source where to get (relatively) cheap displays in sizes that fit the form factor are smartphones, resp. displays that were meant for them. So until there is a mass produced 4k/8k smartphone, an 8k HMD is not going to happen. And 4k on a phone is a gimmicky nonsense, 8k even more so, so not likely to happen any time soon.
Development of a custom 2k display starts to make sense only when you are planning on buying 100k+ of them, otherwise the manufacturer won't even talk to you. It just isn't profitable. And it gets only more expensive for 4k and 8k resolutions, with insane engineering problems when you are trying to stuff 4k pixels into something 5" across instead of 100" (TV ...)
* You likely don't realize how much electrical a computational power driving of a 4k display needs. Most PCs would struggle with 4k@90Hz or more and even super high end PC would have major difficulties driving an 8k display. An HMD that nobody can use is not much of a product, IMO.
* Bandwidth issues - very few 4k display panels can manage 4k@60Hz, 4k@120Hz that you would want for VR is virtually unheard of. And 8k@120Hz ... well, maybe a decade off? If ever - it is not needed for TV and phones and VR alone is way too small market to make a manufacturer produce something crazy like that.
There is also the question of how do you talk to such panel - normal HDMI tops out at 4k@30Hz, anything more and you need either the recently standardized HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort or some proprietary stuff, along with expensive cabling. Don't get me started on 8k ...
Bandwidth is also why HMDs are not wireless. Until very recently (few months) there simply were no solutions on the market that could manage to transmit the volume of data needed and keep the latency low. You cannot use heavy compression, as has been common for e.g. wireless TV streaming stuff, because it adds too much latency and/or visual artifacts. There are now some solutions coming but we have to see how good they will be. And, of course, none of that will likely work for 4k+ without (massive) changes. Oh and you trade a cable for battery life and having to lug a battery either on your head or belt now.
So, to conclude - your usability gripes about the hardware are valid, but if you want to wait until they are solved, you will hav...
As for the history lesson, I played the SU2000.
This is a very valid criticism. The current limitations of VR require developers to design different kinds of games. I found Valve's The Lab to be excellent. It's frustrating as a designer, because you may not be able to make the game you want, for VR.
It's possible, but the resolution and pixel density has to go up before it can be an effective replacement for the amazing screens we have.
For now simulator-like games such as Elite:Dangerous are the most interesting. I'm sure we'll Se a couple of nice "room scale" games - but "sitting in a cockpit" fixes many of the issues related to movement etc.
Then, I think a backpack rig (Pc) coupled with custom controllers (eg: a softgun with tracking hardware and trigger support) will enable vr theme park games; a typical indoor paintball range with padded corners mapped in 3d - rendered over with vr goggles. I assume the first ones would need custom tracking hw.
Personally, as someone who has issues in crowds, I would shop so much if I could try things in AR.
It really shows you how absolutely myopic and limited the current startup ecosystem is. Many thousands of people could tell VR was real this time back when Oculus did a Kickstarter. But vcs take +n years? Shows how much room for improvement there is, I suppose.
VR is like the desktop. It will have its uses, sure, but you'll be tied to your desk/room. Gaming will probably still be the most popular VR application.
Your AR glasses will be your smartphone, on you the entire time, and you won't even need to reach for your pocket.
Google Glass was squashed right? And Hololens is focused on business use cases first. I don't see it becoming consumer focused for some time. VR is amazing _today_ and has a massive gaming audience. The business applications of AR, while high impact/potential, are a much smaller audience.
And I think Google Glass was dropped because the tech wasn't there yet. It was a small square on the corner of your vision instead of a "depth aware" overlay.
I touched on this before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12104656. Imagine waiting in an airport and browsing instagram or watching videos on a relatively large, private display via glasses. The tiny, visible-by-others smartphone display would look very primitive in comparison.
VR games are the same sort of short term gimmicks that failed with the Wii and Kinect. The technology is amazing, it's just not very useful.
Once that happens, there will be strong forces could tip:
* Offices/meetings
* Learning institutions
* Socializing with friends who aren't close by
* ...
There is research into translating real facial movements onto a digital model. If you are wearing a headset already, I am sure there is something that could be done to 'scan' facial movements.
As a (room-scale only) VR developer, I've been writing about the upsides of VR and VR gaming for some time - example, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/05/three-un... . There's a lot of skepticism around this area, particularly the claim that games will actually make people fitter - but you only have to play a few rounds of Holopoint or Space Pirate Simulator to realise it's also true.
(As a side note, I'm increasingly dividing VR into "pseudo-VR" (anything where you can't walk around) and "real VR" (room-scale experiences: the Vive, in short, and some Oculus Touch setups). Harsh, possibly, but it really does feel like a different medium once you can get up and interact with your hands.
To my mind, the only interesting VR experiences are those which engage the whole body. That's something I've been trying very hard to do with Left-Hand Path (http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760) the VR game I developed - at various points, you have to crouch, dodge, crawl, duck, and draw magical symbols in a variety of ways.
I'm doing that because quite apart from the health benefits, engaging my players in actual movement creates a whole new level of immersion. Proprioception is a thing - the sense of the body's place and movement in space.
Getting tired and even "gassed" also helps immersion. I've been playing the VR boxing sim Thrill Of The Fight recently, and it's remarkable how well it simulates real-life sparring in some ways - including getting gassed, and having to spend a while just keeping your guard up whilst you recover the ability to breathe without wheezing. That's an element of immersion I'm never going to get from a PC game.
I play a lot of Dark Souls, but the phrase "in-game stamina management" means something completely different when it's your stamina you're managing.
There's a reason why the Wii and the Kinect were cute and cool, but both failed to get any real market traction.
VR as a fitness device might be a thing, but that's nothing like the market of gaming consoles or pc's.
Soccer, for example, has 270 million active players. That's quite a few people who don't mind physical exertion.
And a VR headset is considerably more interesting, convenient, and flexible than a treadmill.
And soon there will be wireless adapters.
TP-Link has one coming very soon indeed, I believe: http://vrscout.com/news/htc-tether-less-vive-upgrade/
- The price point (a high-end VR experience costs around $2800 ($800 HTC Vive + a $2000 PC)
- Resolution (even the best VR is too low-res today)
- Inside-out tracking (explained below)
- Content – there are great games and other immersive content today, but it's just scratching the surface
Apart from content, all of these challenges will be handily solved by Moore's Law in the next 24 months. We will have inside-out, high-end, high-resolution virtual reality that will cost a consumer less than $500-$1000 all-in.
The chicken-and-egg problem of content vs. consumer adoption is already being solved. Enough new headsets shipped last year for the market to support substantial investment in VR content over these next 24 months, and newer, better content + cheaper hardware will lead to increase in consumer adoption, which will lead to even more investment in content, and so on.
The only question then is: will everyday people want to use VR regularly? I have yet to meet someone who has spent a decent amount of time (more than a quick demo) in a high-end VR experience and still doubts this. Certain activities (gaming) will be adopted more easily, while others (watching a movie with your family) might feel a bit strange – but that will feel more natural when VR and AR converge on a 5-10 year timeline.
It's exciting!
* Regarding "inside out" tracking above: Today, the most advanced consumer headset (HTC Vive) gives a glimpse of this potential with "room-scale" VR that allows a user 6 degrees of freedom – meaning the ability to walk around in an environment. But, the Vive requires sensors on the walls that draw lines around a playspace – this is "outside-in" tracking. Inside out tracking requires a headset that can draw a volumetric map of its environment in real-time – so you could walk from room to room in VR and see walls and obstacles before you crash into them. (the closest thing we have to this today is the Microsoft Hololens) This is important because it reduces the need for a large physical space, a complex rig, a constrained environment area. It might not be necessary for mainstream adoption, but it is a challenge that needs to be faced.
We've been working on it in secret for a couple of years, and just launched it in December.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iys8yo0sjYg
Partly the newness of the tech is to blame, and the games were retrofits of things that existed. I think as a new generation of games come around that are conceived for the hardware it'll come around.
Let's not forget the zen-like simplicity of (Google) Cardboard VR apps. They are a lot of fun and use your phone plus a 15-20 dollar holder. I think these apps will be quicker to innovate as all of the hardware is so cheap and plentiful for developer and consumers.
The Rift doesn't have Linux support (anymore - the original DK1 did), and probably never will. There are some 3rd party reverse-engineered drivers for it, but they are limited in only allowing for the display to turn on, and view the output, plus a couple of other minor things. Tracking isn't supported, from what I recall.
For what its worth, I'm not even sure whether the Vive or the Razer offering even fully supports Linux; oftentimes you see things like "support for openwidget" actually meaning "Windows and Mac version of openwidget only".
The best way to get Linux HMD/VR support is the old-school, homebrew PC VR way (you know, the way Palmer did it before Occulus) - hack it yourself.
Their Linux support sucked anyway. They only got their unity plugin working on Linux actually one day before they published this blog post. They never supported unreal engine on linux even though they said they were working on it before the DK2 even came out.
A Valve rep has said in an interview before the Vive release that they intended to have Linux support on launch. The preorders showed SteamOS support, but they changed it right before the actual launch: https://i.imgur.com/MA2377D.png
Valve has given a demonstration with SteamVR on Linux, but they have yet to release anything to the public.
The OSVR SDK and the OSVR HDK2 work on Linux. But only with their core SDK. Their unity plugin and their unreal engine plugin still do not work on Linux. So far I haven't found an application with OSVR SDK support that works on linux.
I'm long past the mentality of software having to run on each and every platform, especially Linux. I love my Mac for work with software development, my Linux to deploy my servers to, and my Windows to play the latest games. Best of ALL worlds.
I never said it does. I simply expect companies to uphold the promises they make, especially the promises they make to Kickstarter backers - many of whom would never have bought into the Oculus Rift if they know Oculus would break their promises on Linux - what use is backing hardware you can't use when it comes out?
Virtual Reality systems need to support Linux because they need to be built around Free Software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor...
It is essential that we as computer programmers work towards making virtual reality systems respect people's freedom.
This is a problem of basic ethics and morality. You can say "I don't care" all you want and buy into the proprietary systems, that just means you are literally paying money to build out the surveillance police state infrastructure.
Buying a windows device specifically for the VR toy? No ability to use VR for real work on non-Windows machine (if possible)? No thanks
But, when I play games, I frequently want a very relaxing activity, and the Vive doesn't do that. So, interesting.
But! As a (former?) AR professional, holy shit the non-gaming applications for AR/VR. There's overlap and synergy for applications in both mediums, and then there's the overlap on the technologies (particularly authoring tech - I'm looking at you, Unity) that go into them.
Basically, if I wanted to be a "real" AR developer when AR is ready, I'd start by becoming a real VR developer now.
VR is incredible for creation and design, and can easily be collaborative too.
I would too except for the fact headsets cost $800 and the computers to run them cost thousands.
Once price drops and it gets wide use, it will be a goldmine for early developers.
"OK, how many times do you send your designers away to have a meeting with their colleagues in other offices? And how much do the flights and hotel cost?
Well, you could eliminate 9/10 of those flights, hotel, travel time costs, and the rest by buying this one headset and upgrading their PCs - oh, and buying my proprietory design app..."
By the looks of it, Autodesk have had much the same thought.
I don't want to share anything that goes on my face with anyone in the office I work with. Just passing one around the conference room to each of the execs during your pitch should make that obvious pretty quickly.
I don't see VR as a useful replacement for video conferencing. You don't get any more body language and arguably less facial cues than standard video conferencing. If an engineer is getting sent somewhere, it's typically because they need to physically interact with something, which you also don't get with VR. For designers, I suspect the low resolution and inability to import and (especially) edit whatever designs they're looking at would prevent VR from being useful also.
Welding/training simulators (or tool training period)
Job training (perhaps heavy equipment simulation?)
Psychological/medical treatment (for instance, treating fear of heights - which has already been experimented with)
Virtual Design (VR CAD/CAM, interior decorating, real estate, etc)
I'm sure there are ton of these kinds of apps just waiting to be built or expanded on. Some of these could even enter into the home or consumer use areas.
I was discussing VR with an ex-military colleague recently, and he got quite excited about the potential of the technology to enhance and extend early-stage simulator training. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy a Vive than a tank simulator.
And the therapy applications are incredibly exciting. Early days for those still research-wise, though.