Thread: Virtual Reality - Oculus Rift

My uni is thinking of getting in a bunch of Oculus Rift dev kits for us to use should we chose to take on a project of such scope.
Personally, I want to get my hands on a kit as soon as I have the money, but either way, I WILL be developing for it. And more importantly, I can't fucking wait to play a game with it. Skyrim would be pretty fucking badass, but TF2 would be just plain fun. God damn it just makes gaming 10x more exciting, no matter the game.

Only problem is it doesn't yet do position tracking, only orientation. But I'm sure that'll come in the relatively near future.
Imagine playing with this, a kinect and an omni-directional treadmill; of which I've seen a few combinations of. Complete freedom in a world? (Although lets be realistic here, we just want to laze in our chair and be immersed in a world, with our controller or whatever)

All-in-all, I'm very excited about the future of gaming, seeing this.

I've just gotten a Razer Hydra from my brothers, and it's a great gaming tool. It really immerses you in the game you are playing, and it's really precise. I am quite excited to try out the Rift with it, especially because it can also be used to hack positional tracking into the Rift.

It's a shame you can't order a dev kit now slash. The wait time is pretty much 2 months, and the number of orders they get a day is probably only rising

Ahh awesome. Dude I'd love to do something cool integrating Hydra with Oculus. People have done some cool stuff with Kinect and Oculus, but Hyrdra would be way easier, in terms of development (and better gameplay too probably).
But that'll probably be a couple years down the line for me, it sounds like a good Honours year project. Which I suppose isn't too bad, it gives the technology time to perfect, and decent SDKs to come out for them.

The cofounder got killed....

Abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/orange_county&id=9122999

Techcrunch.com/2013/06/01/oculus-vr-co-founder-andrew-scott-reisse-killed-at-33-the-victim-of-a-hit-and-run/

Wow. WTF.

Yeah it really sucks, guy studies and works for his entire life, finally realising his dreams, people are lining up to buy and praise, and he just dies to a stupid hit and run. This guy did a lot of work on software support behind the scenes, working together with Unity, Valve and other companies to bring Rift compatibility. Quite a blow to their team.

It really is a shame. My condolences to to his family, friends and coworkers. Was anyone able to find a list of games he contributed to and or awards he may have recieved? I'm having no luck finding anything, and all the articles about the news pretty much say the same thing, and tell nothing of his accomplishments.

On a brighter note: 1080p Rift made its debut at E3!

Oculus Rift HD prototype VR headset appears at E3, we go hands (and eyes) on (update: video)

I'd heard resolution was the main let down in current models. At the rate display technology is progressing, it seems unlikely that that'll be an issue even by release. What is the actual resolution of this thing, though? Per eye, what was it and what is it? "1080p"; does that mean 1080p per eye? The previous version was 600*800 I think.

If they're really waiting a year before releasing the consumer version, I wouldn't be surprised to see even higher resolutions. I think my Rift should arrive sometime in the next month's time, at least I really hope so.

The vertical resolution is 1080, horizontal is 1920/2, which is 960.

So I actually have this thing now, and it's pretty amazing. I can't even play games at 60 FPS, which means the experience is terrible, but even then I'm very impressed. I have a new PC coming in tomorrow, going to have a blast. I have like 7 games I want to check out with the rift!

I've never used an Oculus Rift, but I don't really see the big deal. I mean, it's cool that it looks like you're actually there, and it's a great technological advancement, but it's nowhere near true virtual reality. It's basically a glorified right analog stick, if you ask me.

Originally Posted by TimeDragon97

I've never used an Oculus Rift, but I don't really see the big deal. I mean, it's cool that it looks like you're actually there, and it's a great technological advancement, but it's nowhere near true virtual reality. It's basically a glorified right analog stick, if you ask me.

How is it nowhere near virtual reality? What you are saying makes no sense, if it's "cool that it looks like you're actually there" then it is most certainly a virtual reality. In terms of unprecedented latency, fov and resolution this device is pretty much the closest you will ever visually reach in the world of virtual reality before Neural Interfaces are properly made. The very sentence I've heard every owner repeat so far, is that coupled with a good headset the Oculus Rift allows for the ultimate immersive experience.
There might not be a threadmill, or haptic feedback but people very rarely miss them, not to mention that they are fairly inaccurate. Virtual reality is a computer simulated environment that can simulate physical presence. Hearing and seeing are undeniably the two largest senses involved in forming the sensation of presence, hence when you can perfectly simulate both senses you come close to a perfect virtual reality

Originally Posted by TimeDragon97

I've never used an Oculus Rift, but I don't really see the big deal. I mean, it's cool that it looks like you're actually there, and it's a great technological advancement, but it's nowhere near true virtual reality. It's basically a glorified right analog stick, if you ask me.

You'd be wrong. The Rift does two things; it turns your head into a very accurate, low latency 3DOF analog stick (pitch, yaw and roll), where a normal analog stick only has 2DOF (pitch and roll). On top of that, it also puts a 90° horizontal FOV display on your face, allowing you to effectively look anywhere in a game, and really feel like you're in a game. Combined with simple motion tracking, like with the Razer Hydra, you get a very compelling experience. On it's own, with keyboard+mouse or a controller, the Rift is less interesting, at least from the perspective of first person shooters, as in, games where you run around on foot.

The Rift has certainly proven to me, that seeing stuff makes you believe it's actually there. I can hold a gun in a game, with my real life hands, turn it around, point it at my face, and then insert it in my head, and I get this incredibly weird sensation of something actually phasing through my head, like a ghost or something. It's there, but it's not.

If we can simply get a decent motion tracking solution to launch with the 1080p (or higher) consumer Rift, it will completely disrupt the market. Motion tracked VR makes for absolutely amazing experiences, it's hard to describe.

That said, another important part is how realistic the game you are in looks. I've tried a few hyperrealistic tech demos (near photorealistic), and they were extremely interesting. Mind you, they have to be very simple, otherwise they couldn't run on any ordinary computer, but it's incredibly interesting.
You have to think of the Oculus Rift as the first step in the direction of fully fledged virtual reality. Sounds and visuals are the most important aspects, and we finally nearly have those down. Motion tracking is already very well developed. Force feedback is pretty much the last piece of the puzzle, and definitely the most challenging, but we already have promising prototypes popping up. If things go well with the consumer release in 2014 of the Rift, this technology could very well fundamentally change our world, more so than the advent of smartphones or even television did. I'm being brutally honest here.

Marvo, I'd love to see some demo vids, if you're able to capture some of your experiences. It seems like a lot of young devs are getting some pretty good YouTube exposure by doing this. Do you have the capability (or the interest)?

I have my new rig now, so yeah, for the most part I should be able to do a bit of recording. I've sort of been thinking of the angle though, as basically just releasing a stereoscopic warped video, with me going "well this is cool" the whole way through is kind of boring, I guess. Could just do it for you guys I guess :p

Originally Posted by Marvo

I have my new rig now, so yeah, for the most part I should be able to do a bit of recording. I've sort of been thinking of the angle though, as basically just releasing a stereoscopic warped video, with me going "well this is cool" the whole way through is kind of boring, I guess. Could just do it for you guys I guess :p

Haha. Yeah, I hear you on that. Well, the main thing I've seen being done is just kind of documenting the issues that you find with different software, and maybe providing some insight on how it may be fixed? It's a good way to take us through your experience (and show us a lot of cool gameplay stuff, too), and I hear the makers are being really responsive about some of the issues that these indy developers (or hobbyists) have been able to find. So, everybody wins. I think there are couple of good youtube user links in the previous vids in this thread, if you'd like to get an idea of how people are setting up their channels and what types of topics they are including in their videos.

Who knows? Could be a fun project for yourself.

I don't see what is so amazing about this thing.... why would I want that..... if I want to be in some virtual reality then it's lucid dreaming or OBE's which actually can develop some skills and bring to some brain development and to spiritual growth

Originally Posted by Karloky

I don't see what is so amazing about this thing.... why would I want that..... if I want to be in some virtual reality then it's lucid dreaming or OBE's which actually can develop some skills and bring to some brain development and to spiritual growth

It's just a different approach to playing video games. There doesn't have to be anything spiritual or enlightened about it

That said, there's no reason you can't learn something from VR applications. VR is already being used to educate pilots and surgeons.

My God...this looks insane.