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

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.

uh so quake 1 on this.

please kill me

wow, is there a better use case?

You can use this to ... simulate going to the arcade? for some reason?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odnUK_n1Thg

not the same without the smell

or the chance to get beaten up and have your 10 pence pieces nicked by bigger kids hopped up on glue

uh so quake 1 on this.

― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, December 29, 2015 10:39 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh so elite dangerous on this

and now uh morrowind. can't really recommend it to anyone unless like me putting your head inside morrowind is something you have Always Wanted.

so far the oculus is really only "immersive" in games about sitting in chairs -- elite, euro truck simulator, that kind of thing. (elite really is something -- probably best in show so far, rly plays to the thing's strengths. if only it were a slightly funner, less numbingly repetitive game in general. tentative excitement for no man's sky.) quake is a terrific novelty and i bet if i had a second dk2 that deathmatch would approach the sublime, but having multiple the matrix wires coming out of your head doesn't really go well with a lot of frantic, bodily turning in place. (i am very interested in the vive, which is whispering to me about some kind of platonic, full-body, true-cyberspace deathmatch experience, though i'm not sure how you fix the problem where the limits of your irl space are not the same as the limits of your imaginary space.)

2016 is being hyped as vr's Year but i don't actually see these popping up in every home until the video hardware necessary to run something besides tech demos is a lot cheaper. (so, 2017.) also there will need to be a lot more software that uses vr's quirks/limitations natively; for the oculus that means a lot of games about sitting in chairs and/or a lot of more abstract stuff where the primary interface is your gaze itself. (one thing the oculus is an ideal medium for is something like russian ark.) for the vive (or for "augmented reality" stuff like magic leap) that means something entirely different, which is gonna make for a pretty fractured and slow market i think.

i don't know what zuckerberg thinks we're gonna do with these btw. reading people's horrible political opinions is not going to be more fun with a bag on your head.

reading people's horrible political opinions is not going to be more fun with a bag on your head.

actually

yeah i didn't think that through really

the horrible political opinions are coming from inside the bag, is the thing, obv -- like, how do you look at people using their phones at lunch, in the bathroom, on the subway, at funerals, while DRIVING, and think, what these people really want is to completely enclose their head in plastic? this time, let go your conscious self, and act on instinct.

feel like we're still 5-10 years off from these being an actual mindblowing experience and not just the equivalent of a 3d movie for games

fewer than that i think, but yeah it's not really ready. play 15 minutes of elite dangerous any way you can, tho.

really it's a software question tho and vr won't be totally hampered on that front the way 3d was. (people liked avatar! then they never really got more.) 3d movies are such a lumbering corporate investment that they never managed to be anything except "normal movies, but in 3D". on the other hand it's really easy to download unity and make something.

there'll be plenty of "call of duty, but in 3d" and "skyrim, but in 3d" but really the thing needs, and will get, whole new genres.

yeah space sim is the #1 thing i think of for VR-friendly existing genres. #2 probably racing/driving games. beyond that there's not a lot

space sim is the only one so far where when you play it you think "how did i play these before? how did i fly the ship?"

launch: march 28

i've been paying little attention to the entire thing but i hope a friend picks one up so i can mess around with it for a while. i've never really tried VR (at least not since the Virtual Boy), not even the Google Cardboard thing.

tbh i am really interested in VR as a way to create really weird virtual spaces. i would be really into software geared for beginners that lets you make your own simple rooms, walls, lighting, sounds, etc, save them and share them with others. i have a pile of really terrible installation ideas saved in a really terrible google doc from way back when that i would love to try to replicate in VR and send to unsuspecting soon-to-be-former friends and acquaintances

i think that kind of thing is the major reason to get one of these

and the main way to create such a thing would be...to get a developer's kit somehow and do it in Unity?

i want to get one of these just so i can make it flash strobe lights with different colors and frequencies in each eye

it would be fun to send my dad (if we ever communicated) a room with only Trump mouths as doors, and every time you step through the door it adds another looping Trump audio clip to the soundtrack. while you're dealing with this in VR someone gorilla glues the headset to your face and steals your wallet, for example

i want to get one of these just so i can make it flash strobe lights with different colors and frequencies in each eye

exactly

friend of mine is working on some sort of VR music video project, seems like there's some space for non-interactive things like that specifically developed for the format

that's really neat. i'll have to look into that. if anyone knows of any good starting points for VR rookies trying to make shit feel free to post them here, i'd be very appreciative!

yeah Unity is really easy to learn and there are tons of tutorials online. here's one on the oculus developer site for a simple VR game. works in mobile/Gear VR as well:

https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/game-engines/latest/concepts/unity-tutorial-rollaball-intro/

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