Oculus Rift: Bulky Thing You Put On Your Head or Gateway to Paradise?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/03/how-oculus-rift-will-change-the-world-beyond-gaming

VR Gaming is back and it's kinda cheap. Do we care?

fuck that shit.

http://www.theonion.com/video/new-wearable-computer-also-sucks-your-dick,33017/

the verge has had a bunch of coverage of this: http://www.theverge.com/tag/oculus-rift

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/07/insanity-carmack-takes-full-time-position-at-oculus/

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/365126783290445824

wat https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971

Wow. Most successful Kickstarter ever!

someone brought 2b in cash in their wallet to sxsw

oh boy.

ingognito about 5 hours ago
I'm glad i backed this so you could sellout to facebook. Nicely done!

paulie Flomar about 14 hours ago
Sellout DICKS. You should refund every dollar.

I'm guessing none of the Kickstarter backers get any cash or stock options from this sale...

Personally I think it's too early for this tech. Maybe in 5-10 years. Also I hope this is the beginning of the end for Facebook, out of some hope-against-hope.

http://whiteguyswearinoculusrifts.tumblr.com/

the complaining kickstarter backers don't seem to know much about what kickstarter is or how it works

http://25.media.tumblr.com/8e4290a5beef66b0def6a9a4340ccc07/tumblr_n2qpoc11zu1twpqixo1_1280.jpg

this is the worst thing i want

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the "social" aspects of this are complete bullshit. Video games will probably be great.

Is Zuck hoping for this to be a FB VR version of facetime/Google Hangout?
LOL

it is more bar friendly than google glass.

Is Zuck hoping for this to be a FB VR version of facetime/Google Hangout?
LOL

― the Bronski Review (Trayce), Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:09 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

business meetings! interact with avatars of your friends! Watch a movie, but in a virtual reality movie theater where you're sitting with your friends!

http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/virtual-virtual-skeeball-futurama.jpg

Someone needs to make a game where you are in a 90s arcade and walk up to the Dactyl machine and play that.

Patrick Kleppek wrote an interesting bit about it:

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/facebook-oculus-and-trust/1100-4884/

Talking about the hoopla as a violation of trust and emotional investment

imagine you could own 7.5 miguel cabreras <3

And Abrash joins the fray

rift + 3x kinect v1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgbycqb92c

http://i.imgur.com/mEycaDq.jpg

Anybody bought the cheapo cardboard version, Occulus Thrift? Quite effective for what it is.

Does anyone have one of these? I would be up for throwing down on a early version but it sounds like it isn't exactly plug-and-play. I want to be able to play any 3D game and have it automatically map camera to my head or whatever. Anybody have any luck with that?

Strangely been thinking about this today too. I would be keen to give one of these a try, I'm guessing though it's not something you can stand more than half an hour with.

I would install X-Wing and Tie Fighter ASAP

I had a DK1 on loan for a while, I was actually surprised how plug-and-play it was, as long as you're running software made specifically for it. As for getting it to work with existing games, that's also doable via middleware options like VorpX or Vireio Perception, but support isn't guaranteed (they work with specific titles rather than across the board) and will definely need some command line fiddling (plus annoying field of view tweaking etc). And even then you'll probably find you can't get far because eg menus are unreadable or something.

Can't believe I didn't wangle an invite to your office when you had it.

We've just traded it up to a DK2, I'll be borrowing that soon so when I do you'll have to come over.

⬜___⬜

this is the worst thing i want

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, March 26, 2014 2:18 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's still lapping power

I would buy so much flight sim hardware just to play TIE Fighter on one of these

just got a Google Cardboard headset this week, $30 for a fancy solid plastic version, it is INCREDIBLE

everyone I've shown it to has kind of flipped out

Yeah I love mine, what compatible apps would you rec? Definitely grab vrse if you've not tried that already.

i just built a pc capable of opening minor rifts in spacetime, partly in preparation for vr, so naturally everyone's decided to put $5 of cardboard around their smartphones that i don't have.

JEALOUS

Best apps so far:

Vrse
Sisters (had to stop halfway thru bcz it got too scary for me)
that Squarepusher app that's a music video is trippy and joyful as fuuuuuuck
VR Hell Journey is hilarious and I love it
MANA_VR is trippy and weird and cool

that's all I've really found that I love :( we have a long way to go!

I need one of these. What's the best plastic one?

acc to r/GoogleCardboard the de facto plastic one at the moment seems to be the ViewMaster VR: http://www.amazon.com/View-Master-Virtual-Reality-Starter-Pack/dp/B011EG5HJ2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447430811&sr=8-1&keywords=viewmaster+vr

$30 (only $10 more than most ofthe cardboard kits!) and super sturdy. The only drawback is that there's no headphone port or anything so yr stuck w/ Bluetooth headphones (though I have no idea how easy it is to use corded headphones w/ the cardboard Cardboards)

But the way that it clamps in is really clever and secure (w/ no risk of it falling out, like a lot of the cardboard ones) and it's compatible with a ton of diff phones

Happy to find out that The cardboard app is also avail for iPhone

i finally played a game with the oculus rift and the way i was able to look down and see my virtual body was the most :0 moment i've had in videogames since i played the mario 64 demo at target and realized that i could lightly push the control stick to make mario tiptoe around.

i dreamed of mario 64 for weeks.

i occasionally get squicked out by violence in first-person shooters - the thought of a fully-immersive experience of killing virtual people is genuinely a bit frightening to me

adam otm; i find this cartoon game about fish terrifying

also ridic beautiful btw

this is maybe the first sensible usage of VR that I could see getting popular, but it requires a host of cameras. Maybe mall kiosks where you place holocalls?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d59O6cfaM0

the killer app is recording the conversation and playing it back whenever you want

has anyone seen this tv commercial for a phone that features lil wayne and wesley snipes? wayne is wearing some vr goggles

i was hanging out with my parents and sister and i think we all watched in silence and then went "whaaaaaat" at the end

I think it's this one, youtube not working at work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqkODlbtPQg

this one is thoroughly wtf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdrb7pepMjY

I want to work at whatever ad agency came up with these

This makes me really, really want to watch a 90's Wesley Snipes action film today

blade 1 and 2 really hold up

don't sleep on 3, it has triple h and parker posey together at last

would love to see a move like Deja Vu (Denzel) filmed for Oculus

blade 3 is horrible for many reasons, but triple h and parker posey are definitely not those reasons

agreed

i also like the scene where jessica biel pretends to be a pregnant woman in the subway so she can shoot vampires with arrows. actually the more i think about it the more like the movie. the dracula dude is so low rent tho, he's like a buffy villain

all of this is to say that i am excited for the VR fad to fade away once again

worst part of the movie is the plot, and the fact they let ryan reynolds ad lib jokes, none of which were at all funny

http://mimeacademy.net/

Double Dare Simulator: VR Slime Edition

imagine getting slimed in VR, that would be pretty rad

i all of a sudden realized what game this soon-forgotten stopgap hardware was built to have remade on it: a mind forever voyaging

i feel like people are still kinda acting like vr is gonna be a thing in a somewhat even more farfetched way than apple watch becoming a thing
if we can get through the holiday i kinda hope that will calm this down

Does anyone here have one of those google cardboard phone holders? I have an iPhone 6, which I might upgrade at some point in the near term, and was wondering if anyone had a recommendation. I watched a few VR movies on the Within app and am sold enough on the concept that I'd shell out a few bucks to get the dual-image effect

Definitely worth picking one up, in terms of recommendations though I can only recommend you don't get the one I got, which was pretty flimsy and badly put together.

I think google talked about hard plastic ones earlier this year though? Not sure whether anyone's actually making/selling those yet.

http://www.view-master.com/

oh ffs no it turns out that was their april fool shit this year. Man, if your only idea for an april fool gag is to announce an actual improvement which people actually want to an actual product you already promote, maybe best not to bother eh?

(xp to me)

That one definitely looks cool (although after tilting my phone around, I'm wondering if a head strap isn't the worst idea) but are you recommending that as one you've tried? xp

i am not tbh but it's very cheap and likely a good test of the tech.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/08/the-new-view-master-deluxe-vr-is-the-best-cheap-vr-headset-available/
My hands on VR experience has been limited to the NYT cardboard giveaway (interesting but not anything I could use for more than ten minutes) and an hour with an oculus rift which felt more or less as novel and as disposable as the 3D element of the 3DS

mh the best one to get is the viewmaster for sure but you'll need wireless speakers as it doesn't have a hole for the headphone port

I have a viewmaster and it's great (I haven't tried the cardboard ones but the VM is only like $10-15 more so why not get something way more durable, eh?)

steve, the new one will have a headphone jack; check that gizmodo link

ooh

ugh now i have to upgrade!!!

i feel like people are still kinda acting like vr is gonna be a thing in a somewhat even more farfetched way than apple watch becoming a thing]

Is this a general consensus, that mainstream interest in VR has peaked? I don't nec agree. Obviously the high cost of Oculus/Vive, and gimmicky low-quality nature of Google Cardboard is holding things back but it still seems like early days. Interested to know what people think.

a lot of art/creativity festival things I follow were really into augmented reality four or five years ago, and while google glass seemed like a misfire, the stuff that people were using for projects -- geotagging, images and animation overlaid on live pictures on cell phones, are big now even if gimmicky. the pokemon go and snapchat stuff is cheesy but widespread

all the same festivals have had VR art tracks over the last year or two

i tried Google Tilt Brush. That shit fuckin rules

xp: clearly the business side doesn't think it's peaked and zuckerberg's long game interest suggests everyone genuinely believe this is a whole new form of media. i remain deeply deeply doubtful.

it's interesting because it's the convergence of several pieces of technology that have been independently developed but work in concert for the consumer devices. you have the use of goggles or screens to provide an immersive perspective rather than a single screen with a fixed view. then there's the human interface devices -- motion and orientation detection in phones makes things like google cardboard and its peers possible and has driven the device accuracy while driving the price point down. there's also the acceptance of things like the Nintendo Wii's remote, which isn't used for VR in its original incarnation, but has made people familiar with motion control.

when I was in college, way back around the turn of the century, a few universities had immersive virtual reality but it was mostly a room you stood in with relatively low-resolution projectors illuminating the surrounding walls and pretty rudimentary control schemes. even then, a handful of companies were very interested and would provide funding in return for time using the equipment for specific purposes. I think one of the big ones was a manufacturer of large machines who would take advantage of the tech to walk around and look at a 3d model of proposed new projects

VR is obviously going to be a thing ~eventually~ but i wouldn't count on anything too incredible coming out of the first couple generations, esp with the barrier to entry being so high - the audience is tiny for now

I'd qualify that to say direct-to-consumer, motion-sensing VR headsets? Even with consumer VR we're already a bunch of generations in, it just depends if you define "VR" as what oculus rift is capable of. If we exclude some of the prior art, we might as well exclude oculus in a few years when we talk about "real VR"

i don't want to put on a VR headset until i don't have to ever take it off

http://zeissvrone.tumblr.com

hmm!

dude in that video has terrible roommates

Just passed up an opportunity to have a go on one of these in a large "win a holiday to Dubai" booth in the middle of waterloo station. No matter how amazing the experience it couldn't be worth having to deal with what would certainly have been a highly invasive specimen of salespersonicus arseholicus.

My PSVR arrived yesterday, only managed an hour with it last night and my original plan was just to flip it for an ebay profit given how short stock seems to be but damnit I flipping love it and I'm going to end up keeping it LIKE AN IDIOT.

Only thing I tried so far was The Playroom VR and there's a little platformer in there where you control your dude like any other 3d platformer but the camera is your own big head (pretty much a Luckey's Tale clone I'm guessing, though I haven't played that) and it's really lovely. Hardware feels nicer and is more practical than Vive or Rift (though it still has too many wires), I actually prefer the lenses too (they're not fresnel like the rift and vive, which means they're smearing less on high contrast peripheral vision imagery, that improvement more than makes up for the slightly softer resolution imo). Seeing complaints about tracking accuracy but mine's been fine, probably does hurt that my current gaming room has no natural light so I'm not having to deal with rogue IR bouncing around.

Will hopefully get to try Driveclub and the Batman thing tonight.

I'm interested in Rez VR!

Oh me too, except it's £25 and this will be the fourth time I've bought that game so...we'll see.

https://twitter.com/BigSportGB/status/789164293870661633

lol

the applications for horror style games is thick and tbh kind of scary. my heart is already racing when i'm in a particularly tense game of hide and seek in a Metal Gear Solid and I get spotted. with the added immersion of VR and inability to just look away it's likely there will be people having heart attacks while in VR. at that point the traditional self-regulation that video games have worked with for 20-or-so years would no longer be enough. we will have to invent a new kind of criteria that doesn't apply to movies, which can get an R for simply having curse words or nudity. in VR you could make a G-rated jump scare game that is by all appearances cute and harmless in still images yet is actually a public hazard due to immersion and intensity. figuring out how to test and judge these games as they get more and more sophisticated is going to be a doozy.

just tried one of these things for the first time and these were pretty much my thoughts exactly. one of the games was this alien planet thing where these two-legged mutant giraffes would walk all around, I think they were meant to be cute but I felt such weird feelings of anxiety as they approached me, especially since the controls were garbage (you couldn't walk, just warp to certain points). when the graphics for these things get better and less hologrammy then a dedicated horror game could inspire the sort of panic that could make someone run through a wall. these things do fuck with your head, a bit. anyway that's my 2 cents!

seems like the hardware is finally getting there and the cost is becoming more reasonable. now they just need the killer app?

https://kotaku.com/the-oculus-quest-is-how-virtual-reality-should-work-1835246896