Instant and absolute legitimacy. They are in for the long haul. This is going to be real stuff.
As a fanatic of 360 photography and video, this is simply fantastic to see. The oculus has the potential to challenge what we have known as TV for half a century.
I would have my doubts about 3D revolutionising TV, as TV makers and content creators don't seem to be getting the reaction they'd hoped for from consumers. A lot of 3D movies are gimmicky, and some heavyweight directors like Christopher Nolan and Michael Scorsese have said it doesn't add anything to the storytelling nature of movies (unlike say IMAX).
Gaming, on the other hand, will be simply amazing on the Rift, especially first person shooters. That's one of the reasons it's so exciting to see Carmack working on the project.
As someone with a rift, I've experienced something really cool: Youtube videos in rift format.
It's a way different experience than watching a 3D TV is, where you just get that fun little bit of pop. Just like when playing a rift game, you feel as though you're physically present in the world, and it's incredible. The thing they're missing is the ability to move your head around in the video -- it's a little bit disorienting to have to look where the recorder looked.
I'm aware of a few ways to marry traditional video entertainment and videogames with rift support (there may be more):
1 - 360 degree video with free head movement
2 - Extremely linear, story-driven games without cut-scenes
3 - Re-living movies or TV shows by being placed within them (a la in Ready Player One)
We're very close to having 2, and 3 is very similar to that but it's in the distance still. 1 is something we're not really doing yet, but I think it'll be a pretty big deal when it hits. Videogame replays and streaming are already a big deal, and they're growing fast. Being placed within them and given the ability to look around will be fantastic.
As a big fan of the movie Strange Days, the effectiveness of plain-old-mpegs to deliver recorded first-person experiences that are replayable through the Rift was a wonderful surprise for me.
Quake 3 had stereoscopic rendering in the source back before anybody really cared, and Carmack has had long involvement both in consumer 3D graphics as well as vendor relations.
Long-short is that if you look at the code the dude has shipped, he really cares about things being both technically correct and worth hacking on. This is a really good move, and if they end up picking Mike Abrash I'll be unsurprised.
From his blog, Abrash seems to be much more interested in AR than VR, and seems to lean toward VR being a parallel (but mutually supportive) path to AR, rather than a step along the way.
Also, I think Newell might offer Abrash the entire company before he lets him slip away from Valve.
Nothing new by default, but its opening up a lot of hardware potential. Its not just a screen and camera that's at eye level, its also setting new social norms that make that acceptable. Even now, Glass isn't far from Bluetooth levels of socially okay, which is say annoying to most but acceptable. Once it reaches that point, I expect AR to be a focal point of development. It only makes sense.
A simple street view overlay + wikipedia filter would be basic AR, and that doesn't seem difficult at all. Google could monetize with virtual window ads that businesses would buy for glass+streetview users.
A simple street view overlay + wikipedia filter would be basic AR, and that doesn't seem difficult at all.
It would be extremely difficult. It would use a lot of processing power to examine the camera input and attempt to extrapolate positioning for overlayed elements. I'm not sure Glass has that power.
>It would use a lot of processing power to examine the camera input and attempt to extrapolate positioning for overlayed elements.
What camera input? Why go all in such a roundabout way, processing the image to determine the location?
What he proposes just needs the GPS/compass (if Google Glass has one, else it's trivial to add one). You get relevant wikipedia articles for your location (including the direction you're looking) using Glass's GPS, and the screen displays them.
Nope. GPS isn't anywhere near accurate enough for that- believe me, I've tried. It's usually accurate to a few meters, which is fine for an overhead map, but would be horribly jarring when used for AR.
Indeed. Military applications that require the type of precision in orientation measurements and derivatives that are being discussed here use high-rate precision Inertial Navigation Systems. INS measurements are made in a coordinate system fixed to the platform. All geometry calculations happen in this coordinate system. GPS and other sensors are used to translate positions in the platform coordinate system back to a "real world" system like lat-lon or ECEF.
This is actually a problem I have been thinking about a fair bit for the Rift. I'm not sure what the best way is to solve it in this package size. I'm thinking a first pass will need some sort of off-board reference.
For what? I remind you that we're talking about a Wikipedia filter. Wikipedia entries are so coarse grained with respect to position that you don't even need GPS-level accuracy. (Not to mention it can correct itself with the help of the built-in maps, e.g assume you walk in the sidewalk and not 4 meters across inside the buildings etc).
"That place is the Brooklyn Bridge, that thing down the road is the Katz delicatessen, further down is CBGB, stuff like that".
Where's the need for "more than a few meters accuracy"? If it can show me info of the nearby stuff (5-10-20 meters away) on my Glasses, it's perfectly good.
It doesn't have to super-impose it when I look at the specific building (that would be stupid anyway, cause it would necessitate me to keep looking straight at the building to see the info).
For me it was worth reading the whole post to understand that your idea of "forseeable future", and Abrash's idea of "a while" are really different from mine:
> Eventually we’ll get to SF-quality hard AR, but it’ll take a while. I’d be surprised if it was sooner than five years, and it could easily be more than ten before it makes it into consumer products.
I would argue that it is. I have AR apps on my phone which I never use because the startup requirements (pull phone out, turn on, unlock, start app, wait for GPS and fiddle about a bit with inaccurate accelerometer) are too high.
Reducing that requirement by having it on your face is a fantastic first step. We have no idea whether the next Glass iteration will be stereoscopic, or cover your field of vision or what. It's that market preparation I am excited to see.
>The Oculus Rift certainly won't be worn all the time.
Of course not, but "always on" is not a very useful feature for VR. It's an incredibly useful feature for AR. Oculus Rift is not a good candidate in any way for an AR platform, since camera pass through to VR is not an acceptable replacement for seeing the world with your actual eyes.
Google is putting "screen that overlays with your vision constantly", as a real thing that you can actually have, further into the public consciousness than it has ever been before. They even have a real shot at making it popular.
Without that initial step, it's hard to see any practical path to AR actually becoming a reality.
Right now your phone is as much AR as the google glass. Now if Google starts letting us use the camera for face recognition we could see some proto AR stuff.
As someone with terrible face recognition ability, I was really disappointed Google disallowed the feature. Such a device could vastly improve my life. I hope there's some open alternative to Google glass soon.
A smartphone is a better AR platform than Google Glass because you can hold it up directly in front of your field of vision and use AR apps.
Google Glass is wearable, but the display position is fixed relative to your head. You have to look up to see the screen, so unless you tilt your head down in some awkward manner to point to what you want the AR overlay on, it won't work. Not a very good AR experience.
AR is any augmentation of senses, so a wristwatch is AR for your sense of time for instance. Google glass doesn't do predator-vision, but it can augment stuff like memory or positional awareness.
Nintendo 3DS actually has basic demonstrations of AR as well. They use cards with images on it that can be replaced in real-time by simulated 3-D objects using the 3DS camera.
I was actually pretty impressed by CastAR. It's certainly the most compelling AR-esque experience I've tried.
It opens up a different set of game possibilities than a VR headset like the Rift. Think augmented multiplayer tabletop games rather than immersive worlds.
I can see a single mind-blowing tabletop demo selling pretty damn well. The audience isn't huge and mass market, but it's decent sized, and willing to drop very high amounts of money on cool stuff.
I'm not sure the market is that slim (a lot of people in my social circles are playing them these days, certainly more than 5 years ago), and these board and card games are sold at rather expensive prices (€80 for a boardgame is not rare).
That said though, when I play a boardgame, I'm just playing it on a table with some friends. I don't want the games to get any more complicated, and I certainly don't want to put on headgear or glasses and involve technology for some gimmick AR feature. You'd have to make the game concepts that require such a setup very compelling for me to consider them.
I think he is focusing on VR. Though he prefers AR, he does not consider it as productive a way to spend one's efforts in the near term.
"So my personal opinion (which is not necessarily Valve’s) is that it makes sense to do VR now, and push it forward as quickly as possible, but at the same time to continue research into the problems unique to AR, with an eye to tilting more and more toward AR over time as it matures. As I said, it’s not the definitive answer we’d all like, but it’s where my thinking has led me. However, I’ve encountered intelligent opinions from one end of the spectrum to the other, and I look forward to continuing the discussion in the comments."
If you look at some of the recent demos with the Oculus you'll see that AR is not necessarily mutually exclusive with a full field of vision headset. Some of the most exciting demos in my opinion involve moving around in a real physical space while wearing the headset. The headset shows a digital re-creation of the physical space along with anything else that the developer wants to overlay onto to the scene. You're basically using the physical world as a skeleton on which you can hang the digital meat. Check out this kickstarter for example: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/62367895/atlas-virtual-r...
Wow, even with what it can do now I can imagine using it for AR/VR games of laser tag or paint ball. The only thing missing would be feedback on your body for hits you've taking.
At the right price, this might even turn out to be cheaper than proper paintball arena's. You can charge more, and there's no cleanup involved. You could even host these 'games' in real-world environments (with permission or otherwise). Imagine hosting counter-strike style games in empty buildings!
This makes me want one. This is huge news for Oculus and I wish the team the best.
I had a first glimpse of an Oculus watching someone use one on a Twitch stream the other day. He was just watching a tech demo thing of a rollercoaster ride but it was clear the tech was at or around that tipping point of interesting vs actually fun.
The difference between watching someone using it and using it is huge, using it is literally unbelievable. One of the few things that shifted my perception of what is actually possible with technology.
"Please be careful when playing this demo," Lipowitz warned players on the Oculus developer forums, "lots of people try to support themselves on the crates when they try to stand up or when leaning up against a column, but find there is nothing there." http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/6/4595062/new-oculus-rift-cov... (The original forum is down right now)
I haven't seen a truly "killer app" just yet, but if I wasn't totally sold on the concept when I backed the project, I certainly was the first time I strapped the Rift on.
It is certainly most of the way there now - the sensors are fantastic - and will be absolutely revolutionary with a higher-resolution screen and the addition of some yet-to-be-invented control schemes.
Actually, who says you need complicated control schemes and traditional video games?
Bizarre idea: strap on a Rift headset, instead of a treadmill you've now got some kind of thingamabob rigged to tilt and turn an exercise bike. The exercise bike has a few simple buttons for game input on it. You now play something simple that can really take advantage of immersion and graphics quality like Pokemon Snap, while riding the exercise bike.
I mean, sure, you could make this game with the treadmill version and walk down the safari trails, but that wouldn't be a very good workout.
We've had one at our house for a few days now--even the relatively rough devkit delivers on the promise, in spades. The only thing it needs to is to be completely USB powered (probably not possible given the power envelope, or at least have a way of powering it from a battery pack for portability reasons).
People using it (we had a party recently, showed it off) do feel disorientation, mostly due to a lack of seeing where there real body is. Our hope is to integrate the point cloud from a kinect to help with that.
Oh, also, after a few drinks the impedance mismatch between what you're seeing and what you're doing is imperceptible. :)
Right, right, you can tie a second USB together and rig up something like they do with some external drives. It'd be nice if the next devkits shipped with something like that.
He doesn't necessarily have to. When Alicia Keys joined Blackberry as their Creative Director, she still kept touring ;-) (More seriously, Matz joined Heroku but I think is still at Rakuten as well?)
He will be "in the office" though:
John will be working from the new Oculus Dallas office that we’re opening soon.
.. so the likelihood of him spending a lot less time at id, if he stays on there, seems high to me.
He talked in his Quakecon keynote about being too uninvolved in Armadillo because he was working at id/Bethesda. Splitting his time three ways would only seem to exacerbate the problem.
It's been four years since id was purchased. Maybe he's just moving on.
"Although Carmack will take on a new role with Oculus, the game designer will remain with id. "John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project," reads a statement from video game publisher Bethesda Softworks, whose parent company ZeniMax acquired id Software in 2009. "The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected." [1]
I don't think John Carmack is doing what he does for the money at this stage..
That said, he did say during his Quakecon keynote that he needs more "crazy money" to put into Armadillo Aerospace, so perhaps this is his play for that funding..
I don't think it is. From what I understand, John Carmack has decided to put all developments with Armadillo Aerospace on hold, until he can get more investors (besides himself) to support this company.
The best news I have heard all day.Carmack was one of the reasons I choose computer Science .Now I will start taking Oculus rift seriously ,I always thought of it as a niche product.
Carmack will put some of his awesome in Rift to make it more awesome.
Update: Bethesda Softworks (parent company to id Software) responded with the following statement to today's news: "John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project. The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected." We've followed up for clarification as to what that means for Carmack's efforts at id. In the note from Oculus, Carmack is said to be heading up and working out of newly created Dallas offices for Oculus.
They've updated it, now looks like he's supposedly still involved with Bethesda/Zenimax. Which at least to me seems weird, since last I knew he did at least a LOT of the work on any new engines himself. Hard to do that if he's busy with being CTO of another company working on the Rift.
Carmack is a workaholic of legendary productivity. If there are truly 10x programmers out there, he is undoubtedly one.
Another important point is that it's not games he develops, it's game engines. Other people do most of the game logic and design. Working on a 3d display for those engines doesn't seem so far removed from that, and of potential value to future id/ZeniMax work.
Lately it seems like this work has been more pre-engine research and crunch time follow-up, so I can't say I'm too worried for id.
He has made it pretty clear over the last few years that there really isn't a lot for him to do there, at least on interesting stuff. Writing rendering engines has become more incremental than revolutionary and I get the feeling that, for him, stuff like mega texture was about as interesting as writing a new zip program.
Good to hear. I hope they will finish id Tech 6 some day. I've been sold on sparse voxel octrees since I first heard about them, and I think the super-scalable level of detail would be great for VR as well.
I think I read it based off the same recommendation.
After reading that book I don't think there's any way you can come away without seeing him as one of the top 25 programmers in the world. Mad genius for sure.
Well the things he has worked on and pioneered arent a result of just hard work, as computer graphics is one of the most complex fields in our industry. There is no doubt that he is a super smart guy with an unparalleled work ethic.
This stands in stark contrast to the "other John" from iD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero) that went on to flame out in the most spectacular manner because he'd waffle between not shipping at all, or shipping half-baked games.
Masters of Doom is an absolutely brilliant book that rekindled my interest in game development. I'd heard of Carmack before reading it, but this news is so much more impactful knowing just how integral he was to making gaming what it is today.
It is one of the few titles that hits the sweet spot of things like Pirates of Silicon Valley or The Social Network. It tells a gripping story of a successful underdog in tech that is accessible and entertaining. Kushner did a great job, though I wonder how much artistic license he took with the D&D campaign stuff.
I would say Masters of Doom is one of the best startup related books anywhere. A team of incredibly passionate people that just wanted to make awesome shit and focused on that. Very inspiring.
Carmack has been edging towards this for a while now (not Oculus, but the concept), and I foresee great things.
OTOH, considering I played all of id's games up to Doom 3 (which I found a tad too creepy), I hope they strike a good balance between display smoothness and sheer unmitigated fun. I miss a good Q3A CTF.
You can see that one is still a very early prototype held together with duct tape. It's not specifically stated, but it sounds like he will be leaving id for this. I'm fine with that since there is only so much you can do in the game engine world these days. Seeing him try to advance gaming and immersion in a different way seems like it will fit him very well.
The dev kit is not yet consumer ready, but it does show a glimpse of the future.
The (low) resolution of the screen on the dev kit is really distracting, but more importantly we are still learning about the control schemes. Right now, it is very hard/disorienting to play FPSs on the rift (IMNSHO).
I've done work to translate familiar 2d fps aim views to 3d and it feels very natural. I had tons of people at QuakeCon jumping right in a fragging just as well as they do in 2d. If you have a rift you can try it -
https://github.com/swax/Quakespasm-Rift
The big problem with swords in VR is physical feedback. If I strike at you with a saber, the saber will stop moving, sooner or later - either because you parry, or because the resistance of your bones and muscle eventually slows the thing down. Either way, it's a key component of a realistic swordfight.
And it's bloody difficult to do in VR. You're not just talking about force feedback, you're talking about enough force to stop a 3 foot long piece of metal being swung with intent by a 200lb man, with the same speed and solidity of collision with another piece of metal - without interfering with the movement of that metal at any other time, risking injuring the person moving the metal, or generally screwing up.
Can you use gyroscopes to provide resistive force. Keep a heavy one running at low speed in the sword in a gimble. when you are about to hit something predictively rotate it to the correct orientation and accelerate it to high speed. Not totally sure this would work but if there is anything that can provide counteracting force without physical contact, a gyroscope is it.
You don't even have to make a heavy sword, the gyroscope itself could simulate the force required to overcome the momentum of a heavy broadsword.
You'd have to apply a couple hundred newton metres of torque, which would probably require a 50kg gyroscope, (expensive, heavy!) and if you want it to be at all compact you'd have to make the reaction wheel out of tungsten. (even more expensive!)
Dungeon Segway Challenge sounds like it could become a "viral" hit just like QWOP and similar nonsense. Might be worth pursing if only for the publicity. Make videos of people falling over when you secretly slowly adjust the floor angle while they are leaning forward to drive. "You thought people on Segways looked silly but have you seen these nerd-goggled freaks on wii boards?"
Oh, believe me, we're pursuing it. I'm slightly distracted right now by the RiftJam (Oculus Rift gamejam), which doesn't allow external input devices like this, but in the long term, I Have A Plan...
While the control schemes can be a little jarring, I've not had a major issue with them. For me, it's games that have you accelerate at an incredible pace -- I tried playing HL2 Episode 1, for instance, and have found that to be the most jarring/motion-sickness inducing experience so far.
So much so that I went out and got a Razer Hydra to give myself manual control of the acceleration (well, this was a convenient excuse, anyway!).
I've had the chance to try an oculus dev kit at work and it is VERY impressive. It's so immersive that the only problem I can see with it are with people who suffer from motion sickness. I can also see pixels if I pay attention but that should be fixed in the 1080p version.
If you don't want to do any dev on it, I recommend you wait until there is a killer app that comes out to get one (so far there's half life 2, portal, etc.). By that time, the 1080p version will probably be out.
I plan to do some dev so I will be ordering one for personal use soon. It's some really awesome tech.
I seem to recall the US Air Force did a study that indicated that 20% of their pilots suffered from motion sickness, and that the level in the general population is higher... has anything changed, that would let the Rift have higher acceptance than the old VR stuff from the 90s?
I was actually just thinking recently that John Carmack was past his prime. Or, more accurately, that he was no longer sitting in the right sweet spot in the industry that he once was. But with this move it looks like that may change. He's a one of a kind genius, and if there's anywhere that could see his skills used to effect more I can't think of it.
Yeah the sweet spot (or interesting spot at least) was clearly moving. Gaming has been stagnating for the last few game cycles (oh look, Gears of War 7). Obviously the lack of new console hardware was holding back a jump forward in various aspects, but that's just evolution rather than a technology inflection.
VR of course is the inflection. Carmack will add a lot of fuel to the fire. It's truly appropriate that he have a ground floor role in pushing this all forward. So much better than his abilities being used for Quake N.
web programming is not the entirety of programming. They're making virtual reality actually happen, and you're effectively complaining that a poster fell down.
209 comments
[ 9.7 ms ] story [ 216 ms ] threadInstant and absolute legitimacy. They are in for the long haul. This is going to be real stuff.
As a fanatic of 360 photography and video, this is simply fantastic to see. The oculus has the potential to challenge what we have known as TV for half a century.
Gaming, on the other hand, will be simply amazing on the Rift, especially first person shooters. That's one of the reasons it's so exciting to see Carmack working on the project.
It's a way different experience than watching a 3D TV is, where you just get that fun little bit of pop. Just like when playing a rift game, you feel as though you're physically present in the world, and it's incredible. The thing they're missing is the ability to move your head around in the video -- it's a little bit disorienting to have to look where the recorder looked.
I'm aware of a few ways to marry traditional video entertainment and videogames with rift support (there may be more):
1 - 360 degree video with free head movement 2 - Extremely linear, story-driven games without cut-scenes 3 - Re-living movies or TV shows by being placed within them (a la in Ready Player One)
We're very close to having 2, and 3 is very similar to that but it's in the distance still. 1 is something we're not really doing yet, but I think it'll be a pretty big deal when it hits. Videogame replays and streaming are already a big deal, and they're growing fast. Being placed within them and given the ability to look around will be fantastic.
Here's my list of favorites so far:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eByvt8he58U&t=1m10s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXaxVLNMIxU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zaYrd0LvI
http://vimeo.com/64769947 NSFW
Quake 3 had stereoscopic rendering in the source back before anybody really cared, and Carmack has had long involvement both in consumer 3D graphics as well as vendor relations.
Long-short is that if you look at the code the dude has shipped, he really cares about things being both technically correct and worth hacking on. This is a really good move, and if they end up picking Mike Abrash I'll be unsurprised.
Also, I think Newell might offer Abrash the entire company before he lets him slip away from Valve.
Virtual Reality - Oculus Rift
Augmented Reality - Google Glass
AR sits on top of/alongside the real world, where VR tries to replace it.
It's just a small screen in your vision, it doesn't analyze or enhance your existing viewpoint in any way (unless I am mistaken).
Cast AR is a better example:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/18/cast-ar-hands-on-with-jer...
A simple street view overlay + wikipedia filter would be basic AR, and that doesn't seem difficult at all. Google could monetize with virtual window ads that businesses would buy for glass+streetview users.
It would be extremely difficult. It would use a lot of processing power to examine the camera input and attempt to extrapolate positioning for overlayed elements. I'm not sure Glass has that power.
What camera input? Why go all in such a roundabout way, processing the image to determine the location?
What he proposes just needs the GPS/compass (if Google Glass has one, else it's trivial to add one). You get relevant wikipedia articles for your location (including the direction you're looking) using Glass's GPS, and the screen displays them.
This is actually a problem I have been thinking about a fair bit for the Rift. I'm not sure what the best way is to solve it in this package size. I'm thinking a first pass will need some sort of off-board reference.
For what? I remind you that we're talking about a Wikipedia filter. Wikipedia entries are so coarse grained with respect to position that you don't even need GPS-level accuracy. (Not to mention it can correct itself with the help of the built-in maps, e.g assume you walk in the sidewalk and not 4 meters across inside the buildings etc).
"That place is the Brooklyn Bridge, that thing down the road is the Katz delicatessen, further down is CBGB, stuff like that".
Where's the need for "more than a few meters accuracy"? If it can show me info of the nearby stuff (5-10-20 meters away) on my Glasses, it's perfectly good.
It doesn't have to super-impose it when I look at the specific building (that would be stupid anyway, cause it would necessitate me to keep looking straight at the building to see the info).
Conversely I'd happily install an app that put art over billboards. It would be nice to go to Times Square and feel like you're in the Louvre.
That's not going to happen for the foreseeable future. See http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
> Eventually we’ll get to SF-quality hard AR, but it’ll take a while. I’d be surprised if it was sooner than five years, and it could easily be more than ten before it makes it into consumer products.
Reducing that requirement by having it on your face is a fantastic first step. We have no idea whether the next Glass iteration will be stereoscopic, or cover your field of vision or what. It's that market preparation I am excited to see.
Of course not, but "always on" is not a very useful feature for VR. It's an incredibly useful feature for AR. Oculus Rift is not a good candidate in any way for an AR platform, since camera pass through to VR is not an acceptable replacement for seeing the world with your actual eyes.
Without that initial step, it's hard to see any practical path to AR actually becoming a reality.
Only if you consider AR to be something that is 'always on'. There are a ton of applications that do not require that.
Google Glass is wearable, but the display position is fixed relative to your head. You have to look up to see the screen, so unless you tilt your head down in some awkward manner to point to what you want the AR overlay on, it won't work. Not a very good AR experience.
A wristwatch and Google Glass are no more AR than a piece of paper with a map on it is.
The Toxic Avenger feat. Orelsan - N'importe Comment (French hip hop/electronic/dance) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEolW1x9O3k
I thought they were shifting focus away from that for now..
If they had been doing Oculus Rift type stuff I'm sure they'd still be at Valve.
It opens up a different set of game possibilities than a VR headset like the Rift. Think augmented multiplayer tabletop games rather than immersive worlds.
The tabletop market is already small and the only reason they can turn a profit is because their costs are low.
AR tabletop games would have an even smaller market and also be more expensive to produce.
It's bigger than ever and steadily rising.
Blocks for building dungeons made 2 million on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dwarvenforge/dwarven-for...
I can see a single mind-blowing tabletop demo selling pretty damn well. The audience isn't huge and mass market, but it's decent sized, and willing to drop very high amounts of money on cool stuff.
That said though, when I play a boardgame, I'm just playing it on a table with some friends. I don't want the games to get any more complicated, and I certainly don't want to put on headgear or glasses and involve technology for some gimmick AR feature. You'd have to make the game concepts that require such a setup very compelling for me to consider them.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrWV4Hemfio
"So my personal opinion (which is not necessarily Valve’s) is that it makes sense to do VR now, and push it forward as quickly as possible, but at the same time to continue research into the problems unique to AR, with an eye to tilting more and more toward AR over time as it matures. As I said, it’s not the definitive answer we’d all like, but it’s where my thinking has led me. However, I’ve encountered intelligent opinions from one end of the spectrum to the other, and I look forward to continuing the discussion in the comments."
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/two-possible-paths-int...
At the right price, this might even turn out to be cheaper than proper paintball arena's. You can charge more, and there's no cleanup involved. You could even host these 'games' in real-world environments (with permission or otherwise). Imagine hosting counter-strike style games in empty buildings!
Abrash is working at Valve on AR &VR, I'd say that's unlikely though not impossible.
I had a first glimpse of an Oculus watching someone use one on a Twitch stream the other day. He was just watching a tech demo thing of a rollercoaster ride but it was clear the tech was at or around that tipping point of interesting vs actually fun.
I haven't seen a truly "killer app" just yet, but if I wasn't totally sold on the concept when I backed the project, I certainly was the first time I strapped the Rift on.
Bizarre idea: strap on a Rift headset, instead of a treadmill you've now got some kind of thingamabob rigged to tilt and turn an exercise bike. The exercise bike has a few simple buttons for game input on it. You now play something simple that can really take advantage of immersion and graphics quality like Pokemon Snap, while riding the exercise bike.
I mean, sure, you could make this game with the treadmill version and walk down the safari trails, but that wouldn't be a very good workout.
People using it (we had a party recently, showed it off) do feel disorientation, mostly due to a lack of seeing where there real body is. Our hope is to integrate the point cloud from a kinect to help with that.
Oh, also, after a few drinks the impedance mismatch between what you're seeing and what you're doing is imperceptible. :)
He will be "in the office" though:
John will be working from the new Oculus Dallas office that we’re opening soon.
.. so the likelihood of him spending a lot less time at id, if he stays on there, seems high to me.
It's been four years since id was purchased. Maybe he's just moving on.
Four ways. The man has a wife and two children in whose lives he's quite active.
I strongly suspect he's managed to obviate the need for sleep.
"Although Carmack will take on a new role with Oculus, the game designer will remain with id. "John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project," reads a statement from video game publisher Bethesda Softworks, whose parent company ZeniMax acquired id Software in 2009. "The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected." [1]
1. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/08/07/john-ca...
That said, he did say during his Quakecon keynote that he needs more "crazy money" to put into Armadillo Aerospace, so perhaps this is his play for that funding..
Update: Bethesda Softworks (parent company to id Software) responded with the following statement to today's news: "John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project. The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected." We've followed up for clarification as to what that means for Carmack's efforts at id. In the note from Oculus, Carmack is said to be heading up and working out of newly created Dallas offices for Oculus.
he used to be id first, armadillo airpspace second. now he's occulus first, id second.
it'll only preclude him from doing much programming.
Another important point is that it's not games he develops, it's game engines. Other people do most of the game logic and design. Working on a 3d display for those engines doesn't seem so far removed from that, and of potential value to future id/ZeniMax work.
He has made it pretty clear over the last few years that there really isn't a lot for him to do there, at least on interesting stuff. Writing rendering engines has become more incremental than revolutionary and I get the feeling that, for him, stuff like mega texture was about as interesting as writing a new zip program.
EDIT: He still works at Id http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/16593/article/john-carmac...
Don't quote me on that though because a lot of those talks did go over my head.
(I recently read "masters of doom" after a HN recommendation, so a couple of months ago I'd have been like "what? who?".)
After reading that book I don't think there's any way you can come away without seeing him as one of the top 25 programmers in the world. Mad genius for sure.
OTOH, considering I played all of id's games up to Doom 3 (which I found a tad too creepy), I hope they strike a good balance between display smoothness and sheer unmitigated fun. I miss a good Q3A CTF.
He has basically been with them since the beginning in some capacity, here is a video of him demoing a unit at E3 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw-DlWwlXHo
You can see that one is still a very early prototype held together with duct tape. It's not specifically stated, but it sounds like he will be leaving id for this. I'm fine with that since there is only so much you can do in the game engine world these days. Seeing him try to advance gaming and immersion in a different way seems like it will fit him very well.
Congrats to everyone at Oculus.
The (low) resolution of the screen on the dev kit is really distracting, but more importantly we are still learning about the control schemes. Right now, it is very hard/disorienting to play FPSs on the rift (IMNSHO).
Personally, I've been testing the Wii Balance Board as a useful input device for the Rift - and it's showing some promise.
One tester did describe my test game as "Dungeon Segway Challenge", but we're getting there slowly...
The big problem with swords in VR is physical feedback. If I strike at you with a saber, the saber will stop moving, sooner or later - either because you parry, or because the resistance of your bones and muscle eventually slows the thing down. Either way, it's a key component of a realistic swordfight.
And it's bloody difficult to do in VR. You're not just talking about force feedback, you're talking about enough force to stop a 3 foot long piece of metal being swung with intent by a 200lb man, with the same speed and solidity of collision with another piece of metal - without interfering with the movement of that metal at any other time, risking injuring the person moving the metal, or generally screwing up.
Guns, on the other hand, are much more doable.
I've tried this a couple of times at the local VR meetups. It's hard to describe, but it works better than you'd think.
You don't even have to make a heavy sword, the gyroscope itself could simulate the force required to overcome the momentum of a heavy broadsword.
Good idea - I shall store that one away for future reference...
[1]: http://www.vrcade.com/
So much so that I went out and got a Razer Hydra to give myself manual control of the acceleration (well, this was a convenient excuse, anyway!).
"My time division is now Oculus over Id over Armadillo. Busy busy busy!" https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/365126783290445824
If you don't want to do any dev on it, I recommend you wait until there is a killer app that comes out to get one (so far there's half life 2, portal, etc.). By that time, the 1080p version will probably be out.
I plan to do some dev so I will be ordering one for personal use soon. It's some really awesome tech.
VR of course is the inflection. Carmack will add a lot of fuel to the fire. It's truly appropriate that he have a ground floor role in pushing this all forward. So much better than his abilities being used for Quake N.