And yet when the camera angle tipped, we all grabbed the handrails and moaned in surprise at the feeling of our stomachs bottoming out. If you can feel it in your stomach, it’s got your lizard brain.
Did you at any point int he experience think you were in some place other than in a Disney adventure ride surrounded by screens?
Yes, with the right application you don’t feel like you’re surrounded by screens - you feel like you’re there. The key is the 3D, along with a field of view wide enough to trigger your peripheral vision, coupled with head tracking so you can look around. You really do feel like you’re there. You don’t perceive the edges of a screen.
Perhaps a good analogy would be looking at the world through a SCUBA mask, or even a pair of sunglasses. There’s no sense at all that you’re looking at an image projected onto some surface - it just feels like the real world. With the Oculus dev kit, the only impediment to full immersion is the low resolution and the slight amount of latency which still exists.
As for motion sickness, I’m sure latency is part of it, but I’m also pretty sure that it’s partly a disconnect between what your eyes are telling your brain and what your semicircular canals are telling it. I get motion sick playing first person shooters as well. Heck, I get motion sick just watching youtube videos of oculus demos where I’m not doing any input at all, so latency wouldn’t be the issue.
I think part of the solution is going to require game developers to be sensitive to this issue. For example, demos that allow you to swing the view around with the mouse are guaranteed to make me motion sick very quickly. On the other hand, demos that lock the motion to head tracking only are much more tolerable. Likewise, in first person shooters, the ‘head bobbing’ while you walk or run really gets to me, and I always have to turn that off. There’s going to be a learning curve for game developers as well as users and hardware makers.
I’ve also heard that you eventually acclimate if you just keep at it, but I don’t know if the market would tolerate that. That’s an awful lot of sickness and discomfort to go through if you’re going to be required to do it for hours before the feeling goes away.
I’m having difficulty imagining what this motion sickness is all about. I’ve been on rollercoasters, planes, ships, Disneyland attractions etc. I can’t remember feeling sick. I could make myself dizzy and nauseous if I sat in the middle of a kids’ merry go round for awhile, or took up Sufi whirling or something. Is it like that? Why does VR cause that, assuming what you’re seeing isn’t the world spinning around you really fast?
Yeah, that sounds like motion sickness. You can’t stand and are going to vomit. I get it from strobe lights sometimes.
It’s because your visual cues are out of sync with the feedback from your inner ear and your internal sense of body positioning.
I’ve tried out the Oculus as well as some other recent VR prototypes and I didn’t find them substantially better than the research VR rigs I used in grad school in the 90’s. Of course, those were $10,000+ devices hooked up to mainframes, not consumer devices, but the quality of the experience was about the same.
VR definitely is NOT the Next Big Thing. Even the best headsets are still really intrusive. The fixed focal distance gives you eyestrain after a while. And it’s still really easy to make yourself sick by turning or tilting your head quickly.
It’s going to be a niche market that’s good for delivering novelty experiences. But people will quickly realize that for most sorts of games it’s inferior to staring at a normal flat screen.
I’m not sure I agree with that. I found the experience quite amazing, and assuming they can solve the motion sickness and resolution issues, I think it’s pretty transformative.
For example, there’s an application that creates a virtual movie theater, and you sit in one of the seats and watch a movie on a virtual big screen. I know that sounds stupid when you could simply watch on your monitor, but it turns home movie watching into a social experience. With multi-player over the net, you can join your friends in the virtual theater and watch movies together. That can definitely enhance the experience. If the resolution of the headset was high enough, the movie on the virtual screen could still be in HD resolution.
Another application allows you to take photos and instead of creating a ‘gallery’ on a web page, you can put them in a virtual art gallery and people can just walk around and look at them.
These are just early tech demos, but it’s a hint of things to come. It’s not just the VR hardware that’s finally hitting the mainstream - graphics processing can now do lifelike faces, kinect and similar technologies can track your movements with millimeter resolution, etc. We’re truly on the verge of having digital avatars that look like us, show our facial expressions as we express them, and which are fully articulated and respond to our movements. Add in the VR hardware and microphones, and we’re very near the ability to create online virtual worlds that feel ‘real’ and allow us to interact with each other in much more realistic ways.
And the games we’ve seen so far are mostly just ports of non-VR games. We’ll really start to see what we can create once a market builds up and publishers start creating games and other apps designed from the ground up for VR. And as usual, porn is probably going to break some of this ground.
It’ll be interesting to see where we are with this stuff five years from now.
Think so? No. Feel it? My stomach certainly did. We would all look down (focus on railings and other participants - come out of feeling) and back up (back into the feeling) at least several times to play with the sensation. In - Out - In - Out.
You didn’t get pulled all the way in unless there was significant camera movement, especially tilts or direction changes. And the beginning of the show was slow. So it was surprising when it first happened.
I am more than willing to believe that VR gives a much stronger, more complete feeling of being elsewhere. And that there’s less opportunity to shift your perception back out and no way to use vision to shift out. And I know I’m being pedantic. But I believe that the kernel of the experience was there. If VR becomes available, I’m definitely going to check it out. If I was wrong, I’ll post to the zombie.
Aye, there’s no fucking way I’m not gonna be a part of this; I’ll pre-order as soon as they put up the website.
Any idea what the equipment is going to cost for the first wave?
I believe Oculus is claiming they’re going to be able to go to market with a device that is vaguely affordable to the average consumer. I think they’re saying around $300, but I’m too lazy to look for a cite right now, so take that for what it’s worth.
My guess is that it’ll be pricey when it comes out, and I don’t mean just the device itself but the PC that will be required to get the best experience. My guess is $300-$400 for the device and (assuming end of 2015 release) at least a $200 GPU and $100 CPU driving the experience.
Those numbers should go down as time goes on.
It looks like they’re expected to be using a 1920x1080 screen, split in two with half used for each eye, so it would be 960x1080 per eye. That’s fewer pixels than 1280x1024.
I think that’s what OR was targeting for their next update (and achieved, IIRC), but I don’t think that’s what Valve is saying they need to target for a retail release - more pixels!
For those who are keeping up, Oculus VR is now accepting preorders for the DevKit 2, which according to Kotaku, is a substantial improvement.
Thanks for the update, AF! That’s a pretty cool article. Well-written with a heavy emphasis on specs; I like that.
I was about to order a DevKit last year when I decided that paint or plumbing or light fixtures or something equally stupid for my house came first. Now I see that waiting was prolly okay as the DK2 is much improved from v1. Sure looks like a hoot. I just started playing Planetary Explorers and I can see where a VR version of this or a similar e game (Rust, etc.) would completely lose people (prolly me included) for hours and hours at a time.
I pre-ordered mine earlier today. I think this is probably the time to jump in if you’re an early adopter. It’s still not ready for prime time, but I like the improvements and the price point.
It was $350.
Over DK1 it has a higher FOV, higher resolution (1080p panel so 960x1080p per eye), a 75 Hz OLED panel with low persistence! Which is supposed to make a big difference as well and lower latency. It also comes with a camera and hidden IR receivers which helps track the device in a volume of 3D space.
Really excited for this!
On related news also, Sony unveiled it’s own VR prototype called Morpheus. According to people comparing with a DK2, they say it’s got quite a bits to go to catch up to it, but that it still offers a good experience. It’s also got the move motion control going for it.
It really looks like VR is happening sooner rather than later.
You’ll have to report back when you get it!
I’m on the fence about getting DK2. I want to try it now now now and there’s only a limited number of preorders, but a) while I know how to do some software coding, I’m nowhere in the league with developers and modders, and b) I’m wondering if the consumer model will be better still and cheaper. Any thoughts about this, Kinthalis?
THey are targeting a $300 price point for the consumer version, possibly cheaper if subsidized/bundled maybe with new GPU’s/systems, etc.
And the consumer one will absolutely be better. This has a 1080p panel, they are aiming for 1440p/1600p for the consumer version. This panel is 75hz while the consumer will be 95hz and with lower latency and persistence. Also the form factor is likely to be further optimized.
I would definitely recommend waiting. This is also still not a plug an play device. I fully expect to have to mess around with ini profiles and trying buggy demos. It’s not for everyone, for sure.
Plus, if you want to have the best experience you’re going to have to be able to push 95 FPS at 1440p/1600p. Save your money and upgrade your GPU when this baby comes out!
To be honest the only reason I picked it up is because I might be collaborating with some folks in a video game project and VR sounds like an interesting possibility. Also my wife doesn’t know. When she sees the kit, I fully expect to be yelled at.
Has no one tried the VR machines at DisneyQuestin Florida? They’ve had them since the late 90s.
Basic helmet with periphery views and motion sensors. Turn your head left and right to look left and right. Joystick to move about your environment.
It’s not as great as you’d think.
