Why the Oculus Rift is a Big Deal

[BreakfastMan]

I'm honestly shocked you are defending this. What size monitor are you watching this on? Why don't you go back to smaller 1024 x 768 resolution because I know it isn't that. Those monitors are dirt cheap and convey information well enough. it's because you are trying to create the sort of experience strapping a VR headset on creates. VISUAL immersion. Removing entirely, or in the case of monitors as much as possible, anything outside of what you want to see as the article spelled out. With a VR headset for gaming you won't have any reason to get a bigger monitor. And again as the article explained it removes some of the flat image a monitor creates. If this doesn't impress you simply have no imagination. Go back to your radial dial telephone, those fancy touch buttons are just a needless complication while doing the same thing!

If you could actually provide a counter-argument to my points, that would be great. Because right now, not really seeing anything that provides any sort of counter to what I said. You are explaining what VR does, and I already understand that.

As for whether or not it impresses me... That doesn't much matter. Motion controls impressed me. The Kinect impressed me. 3D TVs where pretty neat. The Ouya was a cool idea. And all of those devices and technologies failed to catch on in any substantial way, in the long run.

 

[samwise970]

Good article, with a few misconceptions. While VR does require 60 frames per second, adequate programmers wouldn't need to use twice the resources again to create separate images for each eye. Also, I seriously doubt LCD screens will ever be used in consumer VR, Oculus has already made the transition to OLED, which can achieve a much lower pixel switching time than any LCD screen on the market.

When I ordered my dev kit, I had to wait for a couple of months before my batch was made and shipped to me. It's a good thing that Oculus has the money to actually build inventory now, because that kind of thing would never fly with ordinary consumers. They need the ability to stock these things in Best Buys and whatnot.

I seriously doubt Facebook will just start plastering their image all over the thing. Instead, I think they're trying to become a conglomerate, a parent company that does multiple unrelated things in the tech market. It's a solid business strategy but not often seen in the computer world.

Just wondering, have the people bashing the Rift right now ever tried it? Even in all it's soon-to-be retro low res glory, the Rift makes any game (first OR third person) or movie 10x more fun, because you actually do feel inside of it, to a degree. As someone who commonly suffers from game-boredom, my Dev Kit has actually made gaming fun and new again, like it was when I was a kid. I can't wait for this technology to just become better and better.

Will VR come to dominate the market, gaining a larger share of gamers than the traditional TV/screen? I can't say. Probably not, at least not for a long time. But it is much more than a motion control gimmick already, and will certainly be a big enough hit that it'll be around for a long time to come.

EDIT: Having a Rift dev kit also makes you like the coolest person ever. It's like a teacup pig, fun enough that girls will be super interested, but won't take up all of their interest.

 

[Scorpid]

I'm honestly shocked you are defending this. What size monitor are you watching this on? Why don't you go back to smaller 1024 x 768 resolution because I know it isn't that. Those monitors are dirt cheap and convey information well enough. it's because you are trying to create the sort of experience strapping a VR headset on creates. VISUAL immersion. Removing entirely, or in the case of monitors as much as possible, anything outside of what you want to see as the article spelled out. With a VR headset for gaming you won't have any reason to get a bigger monitor. And again as the article explained it removes some of the flat image a monitor creates. If this doesn't impress you simply have no imagination. Go back to your radial dial telephone, those fancy touch buttons are just a needless complication while doing the same thing!

If you could actually provide a counter-argument to my points, that would be great. Because right now, not really seeing anything that provides any sort of counter to what I said. You are explaining what VR does, and I already understand that.

As for whether or not it impresses me... That doesn't much matter. Motion controls impressed me. The Kinect impressed me. 3D TVs where pretty neat. The Ouya was a cool idea. And all of those devices and technologies failed to catch on in any substantial way, in the long run.

The Kinect didn't work and wasn't developed enough on the Microsoft side and wasn't supported by any really skilled 3rd party developers on the game side, 3d isn't new and is just a failed attempt to do what VR headset would do, and the Ouya is a bigger bulkier subscriberless smart phone with no phone involved so you can play the games smart phones do. In short nothing new and nothing that worked. Oculus Rift is being developed by a very patient team with endless funding and the only comparable product that went to market for games with VR was the Virtual Boy which had the same problems as the Kinect. Watch some people actually play it. Their reactions should tell you what it does. It's going to be something because the technology is actually there to make it work.

 

[BreakfastMan]

The Kinect didn't work and wasn't developed enough on the Microsoft side and wasn't supported by any really skilled 3rd party developers on the game side, 3d isn't new and is just a failed attempt to do what VR headset would do, and the Ouya is a bigger bulkier subscriberless smart phone with no phone involved so you can play the games smart phones do. In short nothing new and nothing that worked. Oculus Rift is being developed by a very patient team with endless funding and the only comparable product that went to market for games with VR was the Virtual Boy which had the same problems as the Kinect. Watch some people actually play it. Their reactions should tell you what it does. It's going to be something because the technology is actually there to make it work.

Yeah... I don't go by the reactions of people experiencing something at a trade show, using best software to show off how the product functions. Remember how amazed everyone was with the Wii after the E3 2006 Wii Sports demos and all the hype around motion controls from those demos? I do.

Also, have they showed off people playing something like Civ V on it? Super Mario 3D World? Super Meat Boy? Diablo? Catherine? Gears of War? Devil May Cry? Tekken? No, the demos are for (mostly) heavily-atmospheric first-person games. The uses of the systems are limited at best.

 

[SpinFusor]

Now to sit with my popcorn and watch all the people who haven't used it pontificate on why it won't catch on.

You are sounding like the people who tried Wii Sports at E3 2006...

And you sound like someone who hasn't tried the rift, and isn't aware that their comparison to motion controls is laughable.

I do agree on one point, though. The VR experience isn't for every game, and I don't think it will completely replace conventional types of gaming, by any means. Some games are gonna be more fun/functional on a monitor/TV (or at least won't be enhanced by VR).

However, VR itself has massive potential in gaming, and in applications outside of gaming. The ability to place yourself in a virtual world is more compelling than some seem able to imagine, and will inspire a host of games that a monitor/TV just won't be able to do justice.

 

[RandV80]

The question nobody answers for me is what's so good about VR? Immersion needs limits, or else I'd feel cheated that I had to sleep for 1/3 of the time I was playing Skyrim.

Different strokes for different folks. Like some people well spend thousands of $$$ setting up elaborate surround sound systems in their home theaters and buy their music in Full Lossless Audio... hell I don't know exactly what its called, but anyways these people refer to themselves as audiophiles. But for me personally? Give me the most expensive surround sound theater setup or a basic TV mono speaker and it has zero impact on my enjoyment of the movie/show/music.

I'm the exact opposite when it comes to visuals though. Absolutely love scenery porn, and will often use the walk command in RPG's and the like to take it all in. I just know without even having to try it that this tech will be perfect for me and blow the experience out of the water, just like how I loved Avatar for the visual spectacle in what was otherwise a mediocre movie. Speaking of Avatar that's a good litmus test for people who are 'visual blind' in the same way that I'm 'tone deaf' with audio.

Difference is I recognize it as a matter of personal taste and preference and don't go around saying that surround sound is a useless gimmick.

 

[RandV80]

In the long term? I don't know. Facebook is seen as a leering, overbearing creep of a company. They're not so much evil as a pushy, prying gossip salesman with a wobbly moral compass. What happens if they try to use their headset to push their social network? (Assuming such a thing is even feasible.) The thing is, being the first to market with a new product is a mixed blessing. Sure, you get those juicy early-adopter sales. But you also get to pay for all the R&D. You get to make the mistakes that everyone else can learn from. Sure, Apple was the first to introduce the modern smartphone paradigm, but that didn't let them lock down the market. Other people copied the features that people liked and dumped the ones they didn't. We quickly had phones that were nearly as good as an iPhone, but for a fraction of the price. If VR takes off and Facebook tries to leverage it in a way consumers don't like, they'll just be giving a boost to the copycats that will follow a year or so down the line.

Yes but when the iPhone came out Steve Jobbs hadn't been burned by that lawsuit yet hadn't started building an army of lawyers with a budget greater than the R&D while applying for patents on every little thing they do.

I've chosen to take the wait and see approach with Facebook's ownership of Occulus Rift, but what worries me is we don't know what's in that patent portfolio and what kind of damage they could do with it. You could console yourself with the idea that if Facebook screws it up for gaming then we can just have Sony or Valve or whoever bring their own version to market, but in the worst case scenario what if they not only screw it up but then patent block anyone else from doing it right? Or a lesser evil they could do it right but still use those patents to block competitors with other new ideas from entering the market. We just don't know what they hold really, but I suspect the $2 billion price tag may have been as much about the patent portfolio as it was the name brand and talent.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

First and foremost, I am sad that I was wrong about this being an elaborate April Fool's prank, c'mon, it had all the makings of one.

Notch was upset the they sold out to Facebook, now all the Minecraft payers hate the Rift. All Gabe has to say is "Half Life 3 on Oculus." and BAM! They're all back on board with it. Personally, I think it will turn out to be a good thing, Facebook has the cash to move this thing forwards at triple speed, and they have something of a reputation when acquiring outside products; They leave them alone to do their thing.

So what if it has a Facebook logo on the outside of the hardware, who cares? It's not like you are going to walk around outside with them on.

 

[Kolyarut]

Also, have they showed off people playing something like Civ V on it? Super Mario 3D World? Super Meat Boy? Diablo? Catherine? Gears of War? Devil May Cry? Tekken? No, the demos are for (mostly) heavily-atmospheric first-person games. The uses of the systems are limited at best.

This is the key bit, for me. Rather than comparing it to motion controls, though, I'd compare it to the swish steering wheel setups people buy for racing games - a hugely expensive immersion aid for a single genre of games which can be played well enough with regular hardware instead.

For strategy games and MMOs in particular, I tend to run the game on my main monitor, a web browser on the other, and sometimes the TV on the other side, and that experience is definitely not replicable with goggles. Heck, even with headphones, I tend to keep them off of one ear, so I can still hear what's going on in the world around me. I don't especially ever want to be so immersed I don't hear my phone, or the doorbell, or my girlfriend.

Around 12% of people can't see 3D images at all via traditional methods, I don't know if the Rift addresses that or not?

 

[BreakfastMan]

Also, have they showed off people playing something like Civ V on it? Super Mario 3D World? Super Meat Boy? Diablo? Catherine? Gears of War? Devil May Cry? Tekken? No, the demos are for (mostly) heavily-atmospheric first-person games. The uses of the systems are limited at best.

This is the key bit, for me. Rather than comparing it to motion controls, though, I'd compare it to the swish steering wheel setups people buy for racing games - a hugely expensive immersion aid for a single genre of games which can be played well enough with regular hardware instead.

Yeah, I was thinking last night that is the best comparison at this point. Motion controls aren't the best comparison overall, but they are a handy comparison for the hype the Occulus is receiving (though I would argue that motion controls add to the immersion of sports games). And I think that is why the hype sounds so silly to me; it sounds like people claiming that racing wheels will revolutionize the gaming industry. :\

 

[Alterego-X]

And, quite frankly, not every game has to be "immersive". I don't really want to be in Mario's world. I don't really want to be in Solid Snake's world. The tech could be an interesting toy to play around with in first-person games (especially ones like Gone Home, STALKER, Amnesia, or Kairo), but... That seems to be the extent of the system's usefulness. :\

Not *every* game needs to be immersive, but the general appeal of being immersed in virtual worlds can be AT LEAST as big as current gaming, probably bigger.

100 years ago, as people proposed that cinema will be future media's biggest thing instead of literature, you could have said that "not every story has to be presented in an audiovisual play". And technically, you would have been right, people kept writing books too, but motion picture was still a big enough deal that it became the centerpiece of pop-culture.

Maybe VR will only be useful for first person exploration-adventure stories. But if that's the case, the future of gaming and the future of pop media in general will be littered with first person exploration-adventure stories, with everything else from the Marios to the MGSes and from the Minecrafts to Call of Dutys being sidelined as an old-fashioned niche, a remnant of "the traditional medium".

The general public will always move for the more intuitive and detailed immersion as soon as it is available, just as they dropped literature and theatre for movies, and tabletop games and TV shows for video games, and 2D animation for CGI, and turn-based games for real time ones, etc.

 

[BreakfastMan]

And, quite frankly, not every game has to be "immersive". I don't really want to be in Mario's world. I don't really want to be in Solid Snake's world. The tech could be an interesting toy to play around with in first-person games (especially ones like Gone Home, STALKER, Amnesia, or Kairo), but... That seems to be the extent of the system's usefulness. :\

Not *every* game needs to be immersive, but the general appeal of being immersed in virtual worlds can be AT LEAST as big as current gaming, probably bigger.

100 years ago, as people proposed that cinema will be future media's biggest thing instead of literature, you could have said that "not every story has to be presented in an audiovisual play". And technically, you would have been right, people kept writing books too, but motion picture was still a big enough deal that it became the centerpiece of pop-culture.

Maybe VR will only be useful for first person exploration-adventure stories. But if that's the case, the future of gaming and the future of pop media in general will be littered with first person exploration-adventure stories, with everything else from the Marios to the MGSes and from the Minecrafts to Call of Dutys being sidelined as an old-fashioned niche, a remnant of "the traditional medium".

The general public will always move for the more intuitive and detailed immersion as soon as it is available, just as they dropped literature and theatre for movies, and tabletop games and TV shows for video games, and 2D animation for CGI, and turn-based games for real time ones, etc.

Yeah... Not convinced that the Occulus Rift is an inherently new medium. It is just a different way of presenting an old one. Even if it is a new medium, that doesn't mean it completely supersedes the old one, and the assumption that it would just because "it is so cool, you guys!" boggles my mind.

Also... The public never dropped literature, TV, turn-based games, or 2D animation. Books and TV have actually experienced a resurgence in recent years, and 2D animation is still the dominant form of animation for everything except big-budget films.

 

[Vegosiux]

Yeah... Not convinced that the Occulus Rift is an inherently new medium. It is just a different way of presenting an old one. Even if it is a new medium, that doesn't mean it completely supersedes the old one, and the assumption that it would just because "it is so cool, you guys!" boggles my mind.

Yeah, there's a lot of "If you don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread, then you just don't get it, man" going on around here.

Oh, and about FB acquiring it? Well, can you say, "Advertising...IN YOUR FACE!"?

 

[lacktheknack]

The general public will always move for the more intuitive and detailed immersion as soon as it is available, just as they dropped literature and theatre for movies, and tabletop games and TV shows for video games, and 2D animation for CGI, and turn-based games for real time ones, etc.

Nothing has ever not happened as much as the above did not happen.

None of the above was dropped. Hell, a lot of it has become MORE popular since their supposed "replacements" came around, because more people in general are consuming entertainment products.

 

[Blackbird71]

The only reason we don't all have one yet is because they are fine-tuning issues with motion-sickness and headaches.

As someone prone to both motion sickness and headaches, this is exactly why I will be steering clear of any VR for the foreseeable future. I just think that there are too many biological and neurological hurdles to overcome before anything like this can become truly mainstream.

Of course, the only way to really know if I would suffer any ill effects from this technology would be to try it out first. A few minutes in a demo environment would be insufficient; I'd have to strap into it for at least a few hours with different types of games and environments. Considering that the price tag on these is going to be fairly significant, if I'm ever going to try this technology out then it is going to have to come with a very customer-friendly return policy. Until then, it's just not worth the risk of purchase.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I think that that the people that "don't get it" are mostly people that don't play the genres that this sort of device most enhances. While it could be useful in FPS games to a certain extent(and of course the immersion factor could be a draw as well), what the primary advantage that the Rift and like devices would bring to a game is awareness. Being able to look around as you would in real life(this means head movement, not body movement) is a great boon in vehicular games such as racing, flight, space and mecha sims. I could also see such capability bringing a new evolution to the old point & click adventure games or any other type of game where exploration is a major focus.

People have been using different ways to try to gain that awareness and immersion for years and years. Multi-monitor solutions, semi-spherical projection screens, collimated displays, fresnel lenses, TrackIR... All of these have drawbacks, either in technical limitations or in cost. The Oculus Rift also has drawbacks, but blows everything in its price range out of the water. For the sim enthusiast, this is huge, because it finally brings a fully immersive experience down to an affordable level. Sure, it will never match having an 1:1 F-16 cockpit replica sitting on a motion platform and surrounded by a collimated display, but it also won't cost my annual salary.

I wouldn't use the Rift for every game, but I certainly plan to get one for certain types(ooh, I wonder if someone will code in Rift support for Freespace 2).

 

[RicoADF]

The question nobody answers for me is what's so good about VR? Immersion needs limits, or else I'd feel cheated that I had to sleep for 1/3 of the time I was playing Skyrim.

Not to mention that, I don't know about others, but personally I have no issues getting fully immersed in a game as it is, heck the amount of times I've only noticed time has passed was due to my stomach growling or hearing birds chirping (started gaming at 7pm) and realising the sun is coming up. Last thing I need is VR to make me disappear into the game completely.

 

[Alterego-X]

Also... The public never dropped literature, TV, turn-based games, or 2D animation. Books and TV have actually experienced a resurgence in recent years, and 2D animation is still the dominant form of animation for everything except big-budget films.

My point exactly. VR doesn't need to literally destroy every example of traditional gaming either. If it would be just as popular as movies or video games themselves became compared to their rival mediums, people would be rightfully calling it "a big deal", that "changed gaming".

Yeah... Not convinced that the Occulus Rift is an inherently new medium. It is just a different way of presenting an old one. Even if it is a new medium, that doesn't mean it completely supersedes the old one, and the assumption that it would just because "it is so cool, you guys!" boggles my mind.

The definition of a medium is always rather arbitrary. You might declare that you consider "digital interactive entertainment" to be a single medium and VR only a "peripheral" inside of it, in that case, but ultimately these are decided by how they are treated by the public.

I'm not saying that VR will be popular because it will be a medium, I'm saying that it will become a medium because it will be popular.

You can compare it to steering wheels or motion controllers, but no one has been making sci-fi movies about *those* through the decades, portraying them as a groundbreaking new way to interact with virtuality, and no reviewer claimed after trying them that they will change the world.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Yeah... Not convinced that the Occulus Rift is an inherently new medium. It is just a different way of presenting an old one. Even if it is a new medium, that doesn't mean it completely supersedes the old one, and the assumption that it would just because "it is so cool, you guys!" boggles my mind.

The definition of a medium is always rather arbitrary. You might declare that you consider "digital interactive entertainment" to be a single medium and VR only a "peripheral" inside of it, in that case, but ultimately these are decided by how they are treated by the public.

I'm not saying that VR will be popular because it will be a medium, I'm saying that it will become a medium because it will be popular.

You can compare it to steering wheels or motion controllers, but no one has been making sci-fi movies about *those* through the decades, portraying them as a groundbreaking new way to interact with virtuality, and no reviewer claimed after trying them that they will change the world.

Reviewers said the same thing about the Wii, actually. And none of the Wii's innovations stuck for very long.

And people haven't been making films about VR headsets. They have been making films about complete virtual realities, holodecks, and neural interfaces. The occulus rift is not any more of a step towards those than the Wii, Kinect, or 3D TVs were.

And how can you be so certain it will blow up and become this huge thing? Such a statement seems fairly incredulous, considering most people are moving away from consoles and PCs for gaming.

 

[zvate]

I'm also one of those people made nauseous by a first person perspective and the idea of there being a new gaming revolution on something I am inherently unable to enjoy is both depressing and slightly offensive. If people want to innovate around a new peripheral more the power to them but if they want make it the foundation of the 'future of gaming' then that's really upsetting. Last I checked the majority of games (and definitely the majority of games I actually enjoy) were not from a first person perspective so why is an innovation based around that supposed to be such a big freaken deal?

It's a nice gimmick for a small subset of games... be happy with that and slow down the hype mobile.