Oculus Rift, or Bro, do you even Rift?

lacktheknack

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Corven said:
Playing horror games with this thing would be the best thing, I am very interested in the oculus rift due to this idea.
Worst*

I mean, it's a great idea. I'd just cry endlessly if I ever tried one. ;____;

OT: I don't think Oculus Rift is the best thing evar. I imagine it'll have a lot of niggling problems like the Kinect ended up having.

It would be cool if I'm wrong.
 

Genocidicles

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Make it cheap, and I'll give it a go.

Certainly seems better than bullshit like the Kinect and Wii controllers.
 

BitterLemon

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A developer from work bought one and I've tried two demos, one was a rollercoaster and the other was a Unity demo that had a empty house in a mediterranean island. It's really immersive. When you see someone else using it, it seems like they are faking it or are really high, but when you put the thing on your head, it really fools your brain, you have a very real sensation that you are there. I have fear of heights and the rollercoster one made sweat, I almost felt the G-force... my friends laughed watching me suffer. It's something way beyond common 3D glasses.

But like others said, the resolution is low, you need to setup the glasses for your vision angle and body height and is very boring to do so and you have a very strange feeling of disconnection with your body. The rollercoaster one had you "legs" when you looked down, but it was very bizarre because your brain somewhat believes that's your legs, but they don't respond and you feel like you're suffering some kind of paralysis... or like you're inside John Malkovich. The motion sickness is really a issue... I felt really nauseated and a friend that's prone to motion sickness almost threw up after 10 minutes. The eye strain is very hard too, since your eyes are glued to a LCD screen.

Another funny effect is that you perceive much more the polygonal nature of 3D graphics. The Unity demo wasn't that low poly, but because you have such a amazing depth perception, you feel like you're inside a cardboard world, specially when looking at organic things, like plants.

I think it's hard that will be a success at consumer level. It's amazing, but it's still very cubersome as a product. It's kinda like a light gun: it's cool sometimes at the arcade, but it's tiresome to have it at home.
 

Dryk

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I got to try the Rift the other day, shit's impressive. You can actually feel the first few steps you take as your body tries to adjust to the thing.

BitterLemon said:
A developer from work bought one and I've tried two demos, one was a rollercoaster and the other was a Unity demo that had a empty house in a mediterranean island. It's really immersive. When you see someone else using it, it seems like they are faking it or are really high, but when you put the thing on your head, it really fools your brain, you have a very real sensation that you are there. I have fear of heights and the rollercoster one made sweat, I almost felt the G-force... my friends laughed watching me suffer. It's something way beyond common 3D glasses.
That's because at the end of the day normal 3D is a fancy diorama.
 

GoaThief

Reinventing the Spiel
Feb 2, 2012
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Maximum Bert said:
Not hugely interested to be honest but not disinterested either. If they get the price to a reasonable level say under 100 pounds then I may give it a look but anymore than that and no way.
I was interested until I found out the price, $500 so probably around £400 delivered to the UK. That much for something that isn't even 1080p, and accentuates resolution due to the close proximity of the screen? Erm, no.
 

MysticSlayer

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Dexter111 said:
Because how you look is really important to a gaming experience, how do you think people squatting in front of their PC or TV looked at first? It became normal after a while. And I?m pretty sure once your roommates would try it out themselves they would rather ask ?What are you playing? Can I try it too?? instead of laughing. :p
My comment about how you look was really just a joke.

The Wii-Mote was a gimmick; this really, really isn?t and improves the experience a lot.
I really fail to see how this is at all different than the Wii-mote in terms of being a gimmick. Both of them are intended as new ways to play a game (well, Nintendo has tried VR in the past, but still, the idea remains). They both are advertised, both by their developers and by their fans, as ways to enhance the experience, primarily by putting you in the game. What makes one a gimmick and the other not one, outside of the fact that you happen to like one and not the other?

I'm not entirely opposed to new ways of playing a game. I think motion control, when implemented properly, is a great idea. Nintendo managed to do this with many of their Wii games, even if most games developed for the system treated the Wii-mote as a gimmick. The most the Occulus Rift looks to provide is bringing you closer to the experience and dominate more of peripheral vision with the game (i.e. increase immersion). However, I fail to see the benefit of that, as games are already excellent at immersing the player, so that makes it no more advantageous to the gamer and offering a new way to play than 3D effects. After that, the idea of "looking to aim" might sounds like a nice idea at first (I find it potentially annoying), but I fail to see how it could possibly catch on for the long run any more than the Wii-mote did, and I also see it being a pain to keep moving your head around like that..

Looking through the headset is less eye straining than looking at a TV or monitor.
As of right now, we can't confirm that, as only the developers are willing to say it, and given that they claimed there was a 2-3% motion sickness rate after demoing a group with 40% motion sickness [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-05-oculus-rift-impressions-its-amazing-until-it-makes-you-want-to-hurl], I'm not sure their word is the absolute best to go on right now (after all, they are trying to sell the product to us without any real, hard data). And, going back to the article, these are hardcore gamers they're working with, not the people who already avoid gaming because it makes them nauseated. While I understand they are working to improve on it, the fact that they also state that part of the factor regarding motion sickness is due to familiarity with the VR technology doesn't exactly make me feel comfortable with it. Not to mention, their potential solution of adding motion tracking doesn't exactly sound too pleasing either [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Xbox-360-Kinect-Standalone.png].

Anyways, I really wish to see how this affects people outside of the developers and those marketing it for them. Nintendo and their hardcore fans said the 3D effects on the 3DS weren't going to be that bad (and actually lauded them), but my experience with it says differently. However, the 3DS has a slider so I can turn those effects off. The Occulus Rift is pointless and a complete waste of money if it causes excess eye strain, motion sickness, neck and back pains, etc.
 

GoaThief

Reinventing the Spiel
Feb 2, 2012
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Dexter111 said:
The Developer Kit is $300, not $500... I don't know where you got that price from.
I've seen $500 reported in quite a few places. I don't think higher resolution will come cheaper than the dev kit, surely not? Here's one saying $300-$500 and it was one of the first links on Google; http://www.netologyllc.com/2013/06/27/oculus-rift-the-tech-you-should-keep-an-eye-on/

Also isn't it going to require some serious PC hardware, 1080p for each eye? If it's going to be "fake" 1080p with the resolution shared between each eye it's still going to be fuzzy as sin.
 

Lightknight

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Nov 26, 2008
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GoaThief said:
Dexter111 said:
The Developer Kit is $300, not $500... I don't know where you got that price from.
I've seen $500 reported in quite a few places. I don't think higher resolution will come cheaper than the dev kit, surely not? Here's one saying $300-$500 and it was one of the first links on Google; http://www.netologyllc.com/2013/06/27/oculus-rift-the-tech-you-should-keep-an-eye-on/

Also isn't it going to require some serious PC hardware, 1080p for each eye? If it's going to be "fake" 1080p with the resolution shared between each eye it's still going to be fuzzy as sin.
Here, this is the Occulus Rift Dev Kit order form on the Occulus Rift website. $300 for the high-def dev kit.

https://www.oculusvr.com/pre-order/

I show that as a precursor to this interview [http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/oculus-rift-at-retail-the-road-to-a-300-price-point-secret-features-and-the] from last week with the founder, Palmer Luckey, in which he states they're shooting to keep it at the same price that it is now ($300).

Not sure where people got $500 from. Will it be more than $300? Possibly.

To the topic of the thread. I think the Occulus Rift will revolutionize some areas. Horror, rail shooter, RTS and exploration games should see immediate benefits. Some games where your face has to move really quickly like a full FPS game may not benefit from this due to the constraints that the human neck has. But we'll see along those lines.

Home movie watching appears to look extremely promising according to several reviewers as the Occulus rift can provide more realistic 3D than real theaters can. Elon Musk has been using the Occulus Rift in engineering [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqs_S-zEBY]. If you saw Iron Man where Stark would wave his hand at a glass screen and manipulate the object he's engineer, that's what Musk has created. Only instead of the glass projection thing being the end, it was merely a step before the Occulus Rift due to the benefits of feeling like the object is right in front. The medical field has also found uses for this in treating pyschological issues like phantom limb syndrome.

The Occulus Rift is already changing things across multiple areas. It's mere existence will push other companies to come up with competition. While it may not be the VR device that everyone uses, it is at least the force behind whatever is. The future will have this, or something like this as an option for those that want it. Combining it with other tech will open even more doors for it.

Remember a couple weeks back when it was announced that the first successful human to human interface was implemented in which a person was able to control someone else's hand? Imagine if that traffic can be recorded and repeated digitally by a machine. It was transmitted over the internet so next time a machine could send the recorded signal and that should cause the person to move their finger the same way. This should mean that other signals are also transmittable. What if we could record the sent of ocean air or pain or anything? Eventually even sight.
 

GoaThief

Reinventing the Spiel
Feb 2, 2012
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Dexter111 said:
From my personal experience with the DevKit that isn?t even the actual resolution of it, but the amount you get to see on the screen at any given time is actually smaller than that depending on which lenses you use:
Thanks for the additional information, good to know. What do you think is the best implementation you've personally encountered with your dev kit? Any other tidbits you can give us as an insider too? :)

Lightknight said:
Not sure where people got $500 from. Will it be more than $300? Possibly.
As I said in a previous post, it's been reported as that on some media outlets. Blame them. :p Good to know the target is $300, that said I still think that might well price a lot of potential customers out. I can't see it being accepted en masse, instead being a bit of a niche product like Track IR as an example.
 

ohnoitsabear

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I am very interested in the Rift. I don't yet know if I would actually buy one, but I want to try one out really badly. It just looks so fucking cool.
 

MysticSlayer

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Dexter111 said:
Maybe you should try it then before you judge?
If someone I know has it, I'll try it. I'm just explaining why I wouldn't risk money on it.

I got a Wii Motion+ controller here and it plainly doesn?t really work very well.
It my experience, it was generally crap, but I never fully upgraded to Wii Motion+ (only game I would have played was Skyward Sword). Some games managed to work, such as the Mario platformers and Metroid Prime 3 (the one good FPS on the system), but pretty much all third-party games, and even some of Nintendo's games, were ruined by it. Twilight Princess was a prime example of a great game ruined by broken controls.

So believe me that I didn't come to this belief lightly and as I said Sony is jumping into the VR fray with their own device for the PS4: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-09-06-can-the-vr-dream-go-mainstream
You mean like Sony jumped on the Wii-Mote idea [http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/191247-playstation-move-2_original.jpg], which you've already called a gimmick. :p

In general I wouldn't consider things that are able to improve your experience markedly and actually tend to make things easier (like removing the abstraction of having to use something like a mouse to look around and move in a 3D space) instead of harder (like for instance by replacing a simple button press with waving your arms around or voice commands) a "gimmick". It's generally not a problem people have been asking to solve too much.
On the other hand, Nintendo used the Wii-mote to simplify some controls (ex. shake the Wii-mote to spin Mario instead of twirling the control-stick 360 degrees) or make things easier to do, such as aiming in Metroid Prime 3 compared to using an analog stick. Again, some people abused it. I don't see what makes the Occulus Rift so sacred that it won't suffer the same fate as the Wii where developers abuse it (i.e. use it as a gimmick), no matter how much potential it may have.

I?m not sure why you think you will be ?looking to aim? or that this somehow has something to do with the Rift. You will be able to look around 360° to see the entire world around you. More often than not I don?t think you will be aiming where you look.
I'm not sure if development has changed at all, but some early FPS games being changed for the system allowed you to aim by looking around (and from the looks of it, Skyrim still has that). I believe one of the articles I linked to earlier covered this idea. I know some games are probably going to move away from this (from what I've seen of TF2, you aim independently of where you look), but it's one of those "abuse" concerns I have.

You can move your mouse independent from your head or view since in a lot of cases you wouldn't even want your looking around to influence the direction you are heading in. In car/plane/starship/helicopter simulators/games for instance you mainly want to be able to freely look around and be able to manipulate instruments without changing the direction of your craft.
I'm aware of that. Like I said, I know some games will move away from "look to aim", but I'd imagine most will just abuse it (I guess we'll see).

Eye strain doesn?t really have much of anything to do with nausea
Yeah, I sort of deviated from my point there, sorry, but there wasn't much more to say about eye strain specifically except that the developer's claims shouldn't be taken as totally accurate without any data to back it up (which they don't have).

Although I expect this to improve with added resolution and positional tracking (I don?t think their solution for this has anything to do with Kinect so I?m not sure why you brought it up. :p) as well as developers consciously designing some games to prevent it from happening.
I read that they wanted to simulate movement as well (i.e. you kneel down to make your character kneel down). That's why I brought up the Kinect. Of course, they may not do it if other methods prove to solve the problems, but still, I can't pass up any potential jab at the Kinect I can make. :)
 

Yuuki

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Dexter111 said:
They will likely use another solution (like some sort of sensor that also measures relative positioning).
For now developers are (ab)using the Razer Hydra to do/simulate this:
That looks really good, I'm impressed.

However I can't help but feel that as far as the actual game goes, it's a step backwards. The primary challenge of that game (and similar games) won't be "shoot the enemy and clear the levels". It will be "shoot the enemy and clear the levels with this control scheme".
After about 30 minutes of playing that I'm almost sure my arms and legs would start aching and I would REALLY find myself wanting to get back to a comfy chair, WASD movement and an ultra-precise mouse.
 

Remaiki

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Jan 2, 2013
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Look, I can only say this about the Oculus Rift:
If these mods weren't the ones we know, I'd just post "GET HYPE" and my day would be done.

Ah well. At any rate, for me this looks rather cool, if ridiculously impractical. Once you feel like you're literally in the world, spatial problems between you and the world around you arise. That's quite worrying, but hey, I haven't looked up on this much. They've probably fixed this already.
 

josemlopes

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Chimpzy said:
Lilani said:
I would love to see it succeed, but anybody who thinks it's somehow going to replace regular controllers is just kidding themselves.
From what I can tell, it only really replaces your tv/monitor and the mouse/right analog stick. You'll still need some other control input for everything else.
It seems that a lot of people still dont understand what the Oculus Rift does, it really is just a replacement for a tv/moniter at its basic level like you said, the part of it replacing the controls even only comes as an option since you can play without headtracking.

Most people do want to use with headtracking but that part changes from person to person, for example, I want to use the headtracking for the looking, I still want the mouse or the right analog stick to control the arm/weapon/aim. Some prefer to have it all bundled together like the gun is glued to the head.

Thats basicly why TF2 has so many control options for the Rift, and yet a lot of other people still dont really get it.
 

Gearhead mk2

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Right now I don't really care about. Anything to do with VR drives me away really, for two reasons:
1) It's always gonna be overpriced and gimmicky and never live up to the hype.
2) If it ever does live up to the hype, then the human race will go extinct because everyone will just spend every waking second plugged into the thing.