As I write thousands of non US ( and the majority of US) Oculus Rift backers remain unaware as to when to expect their Oculus Rift Developer Kit Revision 1...
Angry Nerdz
I noted a sustained attempt to discredit thegameveda over the last month, by a small but vocal social clique of misguided or misinformed supporters of the Oculus Rift..of which I am a day 1 backer. All of this stemming from my commenting on using rival hmd and VR technology like the Cinemizer OLED headtracker, LEAP Motion, Kinect,smd ST1080 and others.
You wait for One Oculus Rift launch , and two more (don't) arrive ...but get announced
The big news for Oculus Rift backers is that their developer kit is already obsolete , with a second revision and consumer version announced before the first version has reached the majority of people who through their money facilitated the Oculus Rift project. Am I supposed to be scared as I voice further concerns re Oculus VR , that I will not get my Rift Dev Kit Revision 1, or that it will be delayed further... I have every faith in Palmer and Nate now waking up to what is going wrong at Oculus VR and as the decent human beings they are I am certain they are busy resolving these issues.. really...no really .....
Fear and Loathing... in Virtual Reality..
Some of my fellow Rift backers have raised the issue of how differently Kickstarter backers are treated to say the MTBS3D forum commentators. You may have missed the insult vs you by Palmer and Brentlew in those comments ..now you are still waiting with not a clue as to when to expect your rift ( and that is feedback Nate get a move on ) perhaps you should start to take a closer more objective look at the whole ethos of Kickstarter and Oculus VR...
At first I thought these "issues" were exceptional then I noticed it is not just me getting flamed by over zealous Oculus Rift supporters. "Fascinating" I said out loud ... then I started to look...
Through the VR Mirror darkly...
Look a little deeper at the genesis of this $300 crowd sourced VR unit and you may see a pattern of how,sometime in late 2011, movers and shakers in the games development industry cottoned onto the hmd revolution. The new breed of consumer hmds from Sony , Zeiss and siliconmicrodisplay, had one thing in common, they were/are NOT a closed platform. Silicon Valley type Gordon Gekko (Geeko?) wannabees care not for open platforms as using these devices you can view any source, console, PC, iOS app and so on..none of which could be exploited or monitised or closed off by hmd manufacturers ..they needed a closed delivery system , they need a walled garden , a locked door through which you have to pay for the key in order to open the VR world (hold that thought) behind. This was not a VR revolution , this was going to be a VR land grab, he who controls the VR Spice controls the VR universe/profits ... How then to achieve this ?
Nowhere To Be Seen 3D ...
That walled garden device is the Oculus Rift developer kit revision 1 (of 2 it seems) , mutating from Palmer Luckey's orignal DIY VR HMD on MTBS3D via what we can now see as a hard sell and blatantly false hype from John Carmack, GabeN, the guys from Unity et al at Quakecon 2012 ,through Kickstarter and enlisting ( and in some cases employing) MTBS3D cognoscenti, as backers/developers signing up and receiving their kits are rapidly discovering. I say developers ,but currently it is only close friends , MTBS3D pre Kickstarter PalmerTech followers ( who still have to dig at me ..perhaps to compensate for the reality of using the Oculus Rift developer kit).
That walled garden is the major reason Oculus will not lead the VR revolution. There are growing reasons for this version of the future where there is no Oculus VR, looking more likely with every excuse and delay and foul up that piles up... not least the 9700 or so backers including around 3000 day 1 backers still waiting on tracking info or delivery dates.
Oculus VR has broken nearly every promise made ,missed every goal , just do a quick review of all the promises on the kickstarter update , almost every goal has been missed and as stated by backers they continue to act in a most unprofessional manner, insulted backers like myself across forums , let others intimidate or insultingly dismiss them ,just go check the Kickstarter Oculus forum, you will see many backers trying to ask legitimate questions, that they expect professional answers for, only to get shut down by random troll X ... do Oculus employ these people? There is definite cross over from the MTBS3D forum members and the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and Development forums..more on that later...
Tex , Lies and Virtual Reality Tape ..
The Oculus Rift developer kit is nothing like the revelation JC was telling it from Quakecon 2012 mountain.. it's real purpose is now clear ... to gain real funding for the commercial , completely different and also completely blue sky consumer version ..sales of which already have been predictably projected by Oculus VR as 10s of millions ..what was that Top Gun quote?... when this self professed group of engineers has as of yet managed to deliver several hundred of the Oculus Rift Dev kit, mostly to US backers only and members of MTBS3D, announced a new Dev Kit revision annoying those waiting for the first and been outed chasing funds for a completely different consumer version ..
Who's zoomin who ?
It is far more likely that having started not the VR Revolution but the very first VR monopoly Oculus VR are expecting to reap millions in a buy out down the line .. hmmh you know like Sony paying $384 million for ... what was that GAIKAI ...hmmmhh connections.. GAIKAI being an excellent cloud gaming service that has yet to maintain trouble free gaming beyond 16 minute demos ..
But GAIKAI never let anyone down, never took to crowd sourcing , is a viable and excellent piece of evolving tech which Sony is clearly going to invest and take forward. Oculus VR and it's band of merry industry men /luminaries has taken $2million of public money with as yet a completely unexplained failure to deliver on it's promises or premise . All these entities have a vested interest in walled gardens , be it Steam trying to take control of the cloud gaming space ( several years too late and also already doable by anyone with an Android/iOS/Win8/OSX device ( or even smart tv) using a $2 app called Splashtop ) , or engine developers hungry to be fed by games designers well into the next gen of consoles , phones tablets and beyond to VR ...
But then if you have experience of staring into the video game development abyss long enough you can see what JC, GabeN, Palmer et al were and are doing ..looking to make money...by creating a need ..
Virtual Reality Goodfellas
Now consider : If the Oculus Rift had been an Asian , European, African , Russian , or South American launched piece of tech how the same Endgadget, Verge , MTBS3D and other AV forums together with the same industry luminaries would have slagged off its shortcomings, fed their respective troll armies with articles about how it is , too heavy , too hot , has poor optics, lack of portability, poor build quality, toilet role tube quotes ,delayed , not delivering on it's promise and of course vomit inducing etc ..oh like they have done with every rival non US based product , like the Sony HMZT series , the smd ST1080 , the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED ..like John Carmack was doing back in 2012 ..Pulling the wool over the lambs eyes .... at Beakercon..sorry Quakecon... (there go's my invite to Quakecon 2013.. what delicate egos these genii have).
Now how about some objective critique about the Rift? From someone who still has no idea ( like around 9700 other backers ) when the Rift is turning up..
It's Virtual Reality Jim ..but not as we know it ...
It is blindingly obvious that this vision of VR is not really Virtual Reality at all ..and you will not be accessing some Virtual Reality based Internet or indeed game through the Oculus Rift dev kit Revision 1 (of 2) ...well the truth is VR does not exist and if did there is no way to interface with Virtual reality in the way that people expect.... anyone telling you different is using your/our kickstarter money to create hype for a delayed and sub optimal product to gather real funds of 10s of millions from the industry for future bluesky products ..
Nameste to you in the game
We could all sit around thinking up ideas for VR .. hmmh .. I plan to launch sometime in the future when the technology has caught up to my ideas .. a wifi cloud enabled nanomite circular patch that is powered by the latent energy around us,simply stick it on to your forehead and suddenly 1000s of linked wifi enabled nanomites become your wearable computer, beaming to your optic nerve a holographic image ,whilst stimulating relevant parts of your brain making you feel you are inhabiting the Virtual Reality worlds, the nanomites having access to your limbic and nervous system directly responding to every single muscle twitch,transmitter change and hormonal or emotional change..your heart beat or the hairs standing up on the back of your arms can literally effect the game VR world...All through the nanomites ! I am going to let you my future kickstarter supporters fund it, I will then scour my social clique for ideas, engineers and trolls to hype and defend it , go on a parts shopping spree in China, see what is actually possible(and come down to Earth) have to make excuses for the changes and delay in you receiving the product whilst my multi forum embedded troll army quells all negative comment or the fact that there are any number of viable existing and future readily available alternatives... I am calling it the Brain Internet Display Interface or BiNDI for short.I plan to launch both a glitter and non glitter version... mock ups to follow.. and you guessed it a secret as yet to be announced revision 2 and consumer version both announcing (behind closed doors) before revision 1 has been delivered ...like whenever dude ... and I already have a catchy catchprase " .. Nameste to you in the game... " Side effects may include and may not be limited to someone from Anonymous hacking the nanomites and taking control over your entire brain and body function ...which over the long term may in fact prove beneficial in some instances...
The crazy thing is , just like Oculus VR with the promise of VR .. I could probably find a few thousand backers for such a project...
Your name's on the list but you are not getting in.... unless your an insider that is..
50% or more of the Oculus Rift backers are from outside the USA , yet the majority of those are still without tracking or delivery info . Millions of dollars of backers money has been used to create the Oculus Rift brand ... MTBS3D is peppered with gleeful comments of I've got mine and you haven't got yours and shouts of "Bazinga" and child like wishes of a few that some of us who found ways to combine multiple VR controls and use hmds with consoles "easily" ( me) will hopefully be waiting a long time for our Oculus Rift version 1(of 2) dev kits . It all adds up to show the MTBS3D forum , that crosses over into the Oculus Rift developer and Kickstarter forum does not represent the future of VR ..and further puts doubt on the Oculus Rift ever reaching success in the real cut throat consumer world...where your customer base,appeal and credibility as a business has to extend beyond your Internet forum social clique or now rapidly fading list of industry luminaries .. The whole sorry Oculus Rift Kickstarter affair smacks of a high school exercise with 0 professionalism, with child like intolerance to rival products and criticism ... or a simple request to update international backers..
At some point the completely biased Oculus Rift hype bubble is going to burst
And isn't it fascinating that no one from official name tech blogs , or print has ever criticised or questioned the direction , validity or actual aim of Oculus VR .. how about it The Verge, Endgadget, Kotaku, the New York Times et al ... how about some objective journalism... like stating the obvious ..why are backers left waiting without explanation , why talk up VR when this is a wide FOV hmd with a headtracker, why the delays, why the multiforum troll army that intimidates and insults backers ,why a founder that enables this , why the partying and not packaging , why appoint logistics managers after the launch and said partying , or the numerous usage issues ranging from discomfort to total intolerance of using the device for a sustained period..that make it not viable as a hmd or VR device ... just some of the possible questions you may not expect Jimmy Fallon to ask his brah from the Verge but perhaps some objective journalist out there ..that might piece together how thousands have been duped into bankrolling an already obsolete device , one no developer looks likely to actually be able to profit from , but which has generated $2 million worth of publicity for future blue sky products from a team of engineers that have had a jolly good time of it spending that money ..and riding the publicity campaign...
Or I could be wrong and when my Rift arrives this week , after I get an update from Nate and I turn it on I will be experiencing the beginning of Virtual Reality...
Which do you honestly think is likely to happen for me or the other 10000 or so backers ?
Privates on PaTROLL
What the trolls and fan boys seem to forget is the whole Oculus experience as a backer for 9 months of this kind of behaviour that thousands are experiencing is itself going to generate publicity of a different kind as to the reputation of Oculus VR .. hey maybe they do realise and that's why they are paTROLLing across MTBS3D ,Reddit , the Kickstarter Oculus Forum and the Dev Forums....
In the world that Oculus VR inhabit : the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many
And if you are an industry insider .. you can get your Rift within a day ... go check the twitter feed of @oculus3D and you will find at least one example of a prominent game developer's friend proxy requesting a Rift and Oculus and co responding it will be sorted that night , top priority ..they are currently enjoying playing his game ( which I have to say is excellent by the way played in 3D on an OLED hmd with headtracking and LEAP Motion here ) ,forget about getting the backers ..10000 of them theirs first.... you know the "people who made this all possible"
Oculus Springbreakers ...
Happiness hearing that people are finally getting the device , is of course tempered by the problems of getting a device if you are from Europe and Asia (and everywhere else too) , shipping details of which backers are requesting in droves now , so numerous ,that even the MTBS3D pan Kickstarter Oculus troll army cannot moderate/humiliate or scare away all of them or their concerns..with the usual " it's only $300 , why don't you build your own" (more on this later) which translates as it's spring break the guys have been partying hitting it hard pre GDC ( you did get your invite right?) and after GDC..as evidenced by recent interview video footage showing a shattered Palmer and pal Christian Slat.erhh..wait one .. it's Nate ..yep definitely Nate ).
If your'e having Logistics problems I feel bad for you son .. I got 99 problems ..and logistics ain't one...
Q : how many engineers does it take to ship a product out on time...
A : None : this should have been handled by a proper logistics department.
And yes that was some Hip Hop ..just for Palmer who find's it entertaining..
Oculus VR have known they had 10000 or so orders from the time the original Kickstarter run ended. They also famously announced that 50% or so were from outside the US..Let's say that was the beginning of September 2012.
But then at some point, some point during the entire past 9 months someone could have dared to raise the merest inkling of the tiniest iota of the possibility of the question of how they were going to handle the logistics of a world wide launch. Perhaps around the time of the old Oculus Rift prototypes appearance on Jimmy Fallon? Or at one of the many many , US printed press or online press interviews , or at the time where they announced developers could expect delivery before GDC 2013, or at the pre GDC shindig, or even for Virtual Reality's sake at the GDC itself? Or they could just wait till after the GDC in March and then work it out ..adding a delay of months ..to a delay of months ... guess which option they went for..
In fact many kickstarter backers will have asked these questions, or thought of asking them but backed out for fear of trolling..and that should tell you everything you need to know about the present state of Oculus VR ..
And that my friends is feedback , had any one at Oculus VR been bothered about the kickstarter backers , neither party would be in the situation they are in now .. with Asian buyers waiting months , European backers waiting months and even US backers waiting in line behind the MTBS3D pre kickstarter and industry luminary cliques..
The list of unhappy comments on the Kickstarter Oculus Rift forums continues ... ( not removable which might explain why when you make a critical comment over on the kickstarter Oculus forum , hordes of trolls then attack you on another forum the MTBS3D forum) perhaps it is time that Oculus Rift Kickstarter backers started posting on the MTBS3D forums , as to what the real experience of backing this project has been like...
Actual Reality starts hitting the first recipients of the Oculus Rift Dev Kit Revision 1 (of 2?) ...
After the hi five-ing and butt slapping congrats are over , cries of I cannot do anything with it and am training myself to tolerate the nausea (not gonna happen) and as a user or as developer have come to the realisation that this was never an open source project dominate the forum scuttlebutt. You were never going to develop your $2 VR app on a $300 VR HMD .. you now know you could be coughing anywhere from $1500 to $50000 to develop for less than 10000 users of this device. And even then when the digital ink is about to seal on your first pay cheque , your game is already rendered obsolete by the premature announcement ( we could use a more correct medical term here) of the Rift dev kit 2 and vastly superior ( and vapour ware ) consumer version. It is like being asked to develop for PlayStation 5 when PlayStation 4 has not even been launched... this is as they say on reality tv ...Insania...
The walled garden expensive licence is how Oculus Rift differs for me from all other hmds . And that is why it may never achieve commercial success , any more than say Nvidia 3D vision has... or Nintendo's Virtua Boy ... And no it is not a platform , it is a hmd with a head tracker .. as will be the consumer version ...with cameras , other sensors ..and you guessed it a headtracker...none of which is unique in any way shape or form or unable to be superseded by any number of companies both small and large...
Unless we the developers change this path ...but we need our Oculus Rift developer kits to do that ...
The Rift is a developer tool at the moment, if we want to see a consumer version we developers are going to have to challenge Oculus VR ..and they are going to need to engage in an adult debate. I am not interested in the res, or the panel . I am interested in taking a look at if it stands any chance at all of evolving to fulfill it's consumer potential.
Away put your trolls I mean you no harm ...
I plan to respond by doing what I do, ask questions, looking for solutions to VR issues and problems across all forms of hmds and devices, some will be simple ,some will be complex, having fun dude, you know playing games along the way say like playing Bioshock Infinite in OLED 3D with headtracking and LEAP Motion looking for VR hooks, in moments of peace when not being trolled, contemplating and unraveling the threads of what is yet to come in the world of VR..
Sensor Confusion..
The attacks on thegameveda, are basically attempts to sideline progress made by rival hmd tech through humiliation and damage followed my blogging for nearly two years now on rival headtracker and hmd technology to the Rift. Nothing of significance has been done to date on this part by those responsible.
Of late more and more people have been reading my comments on hmds and VR ... across multiple forums,youtube ,facebook etc , the majority of which seem refreshingly troll free too...
There are actually millions of potential hmd and VR leaning device customers who want an alternative to the Oculus Rift .. who are desperate for an alternative to the Oculus Rift , simply because Oculus continues to make no attempt to meet their needs. And you will find an interesting lack of comment on this subject is as if the whole hmd field has been on hold whilst we waited for this one Kickstarter project to launch , this is a ruse of course a very clever one ,with backers of the Rift taking part in the MTBS3D forum and using troll power to talk down any mention of competition .Thing is people still want to know about other options. We can't all be VR sheep ...So:
For those serious about the evolution of and cutting through the hype surrounding VR and using hmds here on one page are my collected articles on VR and HMDS : the Cinemizer OLED hmd + Headtracker , the Siliconmicrodisplay ST1080 , my current ( and hopefully not permanent)..experiences and heartbroken(boo hoo) opinion of the state of Oculus Rift and even the ancient Sony HMZT 1 ..
That page is an ongoing journey, when I started using hmds they were a novelty 3D film viewing item , today I use the Cinemizer OLED with headtracking and LEAP Motion+/-Kinect to play any PC, Xbox 360 or PS3 ,2,or 1 game ...that's with multiple VR leaning control methods, and the ST1080 with it's transparent 1080p displays has uses I still have yet to explore, if you read some of the articles you will see how I had similar fears to that I have re the Oculus Rift with the HMZT1 , the ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED but over time I found there are solutions to every problem , that is if somebody can listen. Now I am not a just a user of hmds I am looking to develop for them.. Dagnabbit I might even design my own ..
I consider every HMD and VR leaning control manufacturer has something to bring to the table for us to use HMDS in daily life, work, play and for VR.
The furture of VR is open not closed, if Carmack , GabeN , Palmer et al want to make money from VR , that will not happen by trying to create another closed platform.
Beware the iDs of March
I had hoped like around 10000 others to be messing with the Oculus Rift right now, the good news is they are shipping,without Doom 3 ..but who cares.. they are in peoples hands and there are honest none fan boy opinions too, don't be afraid to criticise though people, if you don't and Oculus VR do not adapt the Rift from that feedback it is likely you really will be building your next Rift DIY style.. Better news for me is the sdk has finally been released, we can move from being backers to developers and the real Oculus development community can start to take it's Virtual roots. I note however that moderators and members of the MTBS3D now sit over on the Oculus developer forum , so should backers and developers like myself be terrified of being trolled or insulted like I was even without my knowledge .. some contributions with very interesting strands of opinion on the contribution that African American and Indians are making to the web like those of Brantlew from Texas added to by PalmerTech ? Have fun if your attending GDC 2013 in Nasik, India..
Or will we see the birth of a new more grown up developer community one that thrives on and does not attempt to stamp out debate on VR development and where it is going. That's the thing , will the Oculus Rift , can the Oculus Rift move beyond a hobbyist developer device , or will trollmania have taken hold of the developer forum like it frequently does over on MTBS3D or Kickstarter by the summer?
Help Me Palmer Luckey you're my only hope...
I am still waiting for Palmer to confirm he has removed the racist and insulting comments made by Brentlew and defended by his actions/inaction as PalmerTech /moderator of that forum.I also still see no public apology. And will look into taking further action vs MTBS3D if this continues unchanged. Allegedly anyone can say anything on a Kickstarter forum without any recourse to moderation, which has led to death threats in one case as reported on Kotaku. This is still causing me significant grief, I am sure Palmer being the decent human being he is will resolve this as I have made clear in a further plea to him.
HMD Reality vs Virtual Reality Hype : Beware false prophets..and false prophets beware false prophecy...
Let's be clear the Oculus Rift does not represent the creation of Virtual Reality. In 2013 Virtual Reality does not exist any more than does Kim Jong Un's pet Unicorn. In 2014 Virtual Reality will not exist any more than it looks likely will the Peoples Democratic Republic of North Korea...
Virtual Reality is not just a closed off game running on a server with your friends , or the exploitation of those friends to make profits for money hungry game delivery monopolies. VR is an evolution in the human computer interface and requires an exponential leap not in technology but the entire restructuring of the Internet, re-education of users, and how they access and use computer information moving from a 2D screen to ultra high res 3D with user re-active computer code and truly portable and wearable hardware. Software and hardware that judges your facial expression, mood , tone of voice as well as your body movements ,reacts and anticipates learning from your patterns of behaviour .A true Ghost In the Machine .. That's not even touching on the problem of how we interface with it or power it.
We are years from that point at the very least. For this to happen new open source visual programming languages have to be created and prior coding monopolies have to rendered obsolete . It's no surprise why Google went the AR route and not the VR route and I also don't find it surprising at all that an ailing PC computer games dev industry always looking for the first foot in the door of the next video games monopoly is hyping up Palmer.
VR happens if governments and science can be persuaded to invest billions, not game devs, indie level budgets , not from me playing with Unity code with the moral support of my pet Goldfish Woz and Jobbo and of course the burgeoning community of like minded VR pioneers over on the Oculus Dev forum...
Will I have fun trying ? Hell yes I am certain people will create impressive games and demos with the development kit.. absolutely .. I hope to as well.. but developers need to be prepared for the honest truth this is not VR though it is a great achievement :
The Oculus Rift is a $300 development tool : taken apart :a low cost , low res , wide FOV hmd , non OLED panel ( suboptimal for VR or FPS games) , with a 7 inch LCD ( which makes it weight more than the heaviest current gen consumer HMD) , using a single split screen ,warped side by side 3D solution that is magnified to give you your wide FOV hmd ( that eats high end CPU and GPU time leading to latency issues not present in other hmds)... with a headtracker that cannot be removed .. Wide field of view hmd + headtracker+low res slow response LCD panel does not equal VR ..it like other hmds and VR inputs are VR leaning ... until someone connects all the pieces of the puzzle together this is not VR...
The Rift needs to be powered with state of the art GPUS , and CPUS . Something which I do not understand as it is an extremely low res display any Intel HD3000 powered laptop upwards should easily handle side by side 3D at that split res .. how do I know ..well all the videos to date I have made with hmds testing 3D gaming on PC are at 1280 by 720 sbs , over under using tridef and that hardware. For the last 3 months I have been testing with LEAP Motion and Zeiss headtracking thrown into the mix and I still cannot find the phantom latency that Carmack, Abrash and Oculus VR talk of. Commenting on this on the Kickstarter Oculus forum of course started all this off ... Using gaming hardware like my dormant gaming rig I can push 1080p 3D for Crysis 3 and others ..so what is the issue is there sensor confusion.. ?
This is not the Virtual Reality you were looking for ... move along
I can see clear flaws in the Rift ,so can anyone who may be a potential future customer, people are out there commenting on them , this is what Palmer needs, not people telling them off or shutting them down. I saw the flaws in other hmds , it's not rocket science ( no that was not another John Carmack Quakecon 2012 joke ..or was it?) just give a user a hmd they will tell you in seconds that it does not fit , it weighs too much or the screen is blurred...or they need an upchuck bag . But I can point those flaws out to other hmd manufacturers and receive a professional response. I am hoping once the delivery phase is over that Palmer , Nate and Oculus VR are sincere in taking feedback and concerns on board.
Or just tell us they do not give a damn and to come back and buy the consumer version ... work's for Apple...and I still buy a new iPad every year..though have you ever tried criticising an Apple product over on Endgadget .. that would you make your MTBS3D trolls run back into their mancaves..pretty sharpish..
Not all companies look for success this way : What Oculus VR should do in my humble opinion...is follow:
The Google GLASS way
Google famously took Google GLASS to the masses for testing with it's #ifIhadglass this of course gave rise to a tsunami of brown nosing sycophants clambering over each other to win the opportunity to gain access..just like those Zombies in Mr Pitt's new cinematic soon to release masterpiece... But if you read the Google GLASS comments re the results of this "competition" re who they are looking for
"With #ifihadglass we set out to find a truly diverse group of Explorers, and that’s certainly what we’ve gotten. We need honest feedback from people who are not only enthralled and excited by Glass, but also people who are skeptical and critical of it. That said, it’s become clear that a few applications that don’t comply with our terms have slipped through the cracks, and we’re going to have to disqualify applications like these. As for the rest of you, please keep that feedback coming -- it’s all in the Explorer program spirit!"
There's an awesome statement of intent in that paragraph let me repeat it for the edification of the fanboy generation "We need honest feedback from people who are not only enthralled and excited by Glass, but also people who are skeptical and critical of it" If Oculus can take criticsm , without hordes of forum trolls rising enraged by the smallest of doubts raised by Oculus Rift users ..then I will take it as very good sign...
Not such a bad pilot myself ...
Each backer's $300 was to support both Palmer and their (the backer's) shared vision of VR not just to purchase $300 of VR viewer components. If you want to, you can follow one of the many online guides and build your own VR device following the guidelines here at the USC MXR page. The way this brand of VR imaging works , is an optical illusion , warping the fov after splitting it to give stereoscopic 3D and using optics to magnify it . The guides to build them unlike the Riders of Rohan ...are many.. and it is something to do whilst Oculus start to wake up to 10000 backers still waiting... especially if you are fed up with all the MTBS3D trolls like so many Smaeogols shouting about their Precious Oculus Rift ... or Thorins sitting around the camp fire singing about their gold Rift?
There's in good in him ... I've seen it...
I can see positives too but Oculus VR unlike other hmd manufacturers Oculus VR really have no system of taking feedback on a normal adult professional level.. proof in point : they have not taken any in 9 months..that is ..without taking it personally...with even their founder resorting to insults in my case .. which he has yet to publicly apologise for. Let's see how I get treated as an Oculus developer...
Good against remotes..
The release of the sdk is great news , I have been comparing it with other headtracker sdks I have been working with , or should have been if I had not wasted so much time rebuilding my blog for making a simple comment on the major flaw of the Oculus Rift ..
Q: It only does TF2... what about my 1000s of other games and Minecraft?
It has 0 full game launch titles ..whereas rival hmds , whilst costing more have access to 1000s across PC,iOS , Android , next gen , present gen , retro consoles.
Does it work with game X maybe something that Oculus can say no to now at a hobbyist developer stage , but at a consumer stage they will find developers and gamers as well as serious application consumers are going to expect a resounding YES out of the box , pas problem.. A way has to be found to give rudimentary rift support to legacy non Rift games ... and apps
Gaming industry legend Gunpei Yoki had a vision of VR too and had the likes of Mario and Nintendo's might to support his Virtual Boy ..today ..well ... you know what happened..
A: We need to persuade Oculus VR :The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few : HMD legacy gaming is no threat to true VR gaming
Take Vireo using it there are already Rift users playing Skyrim this way. And Palmer and co are missing out on what millions of users want , access to their games without waiting on the Virtual Reality monopoly to be enacted...or enforced. There may be several thousand VR fans at the moment but there are 10s of millions of every day users , Gates succeeded by making it an aim to put his software on EVERY desk , not just the social clique that was interested in OS development.
VorpX also promises to give legacy non VR Rift gaming support..
I wouldn't be surprised if Tridef 3D was updated to have a rift fov warping component , then people the Rift would really become a mass gaming device. With not only Nvidia or ATI GPU owners joining the VR Revolution but also any one , including the increasing percentage of new Windows 8 tablets and laptops that are using IGPUS ..
Q: Oculus Emitus/Prostratus ...how long before the Rift upchuck and fainting videos start posting...?
There are serious health issues that every HMD maker has to address, counter and inform it's users of. The heavier your HMD , the greater the inevitably of short term and long term health issues.
Look round the comments from users of the Rift and you will see a great deal of concern for tolerance to the device . These are there for other devices , but a device like a Cinemizer OLED or smd ST1080 let you stay in your real world you can look through the ST1080 display ,they also take seconds , like your shades to take off .They also replace flat screen displays and not your entire vision. Locked in a VR world , what are the long term and short term side effects on people ? Well currently there are examples of people using the Rift 5 mins at a time to up their tolerance , clearly experiencing some sort of discomfort.
A: Sensor Fusion Triggered Emergency Venting and Rescue
Maybe auto releasing smelling salts should be included as standard just under the nose guard..activated by the sensor fusions gravitational sensor,magnetometer ,accelerometer which running at 1000hz should be able to pick up the user is falling to the ground , or moving their head around erratically , or even the users head slumping as they begin to faint... recognising the user's health is in peril could also trigger a webcam to instantly capture video of the Rift user meeting the carpet , the web cam or entering into jaw aghast projectile vomiting at their expensive gear and finally redecorating their man cave. Of course said sensor fusion emergency rescue routine would also dial ,mom, 911 or 999 and update the users Twitter and Facebook status accordingly as Oculus Emitus or Oculus Prostratus , social network badges which not only could be displayed with honour but provide Oculus VR with valuable feedback data on improving the consumer version of the Oculus Rift . Valuable data could be gathered on size, weight, age, sex, height, usage time, headtracker usage leading up to the emesis or syncope that could be used to build a more tolerable or even nausea free VR device. These things I joke about , but really make a hmd something you can use as opposed to something you can pose with ...
More immediately though I would use a Rift warning message , like the one that threatens to shut down the Sony HMZT1 after several minutes, sorry hours of use..or is it minutes? The headtracker too should measure how long and hard someone is shaking their head around , gamers tend to game...for long periods at some point doing so in a VR hmd using constant head and neck movements is going to have a detrimental or permanent effect..
The Oculus Rift method of producing a wide field of view approximation of VR raises serious health issues
Gamers have been known to game to their deaths using 2D traditional monitors , the
temptation of a VR version of their favourite MMO may prove fatal in some cases .. as it has done for several Internet cafe MMO gamers ... currently of course even criticizing the Oculus Rift can prove hazardous to your health,business and reputation..
For designers of HMDs it is time to get serious about these issues, proper scientific and medical tests have to be performed to look at the forces exerted , the effects of long term use of a 7 inch LCD display placed that close to your eyes , with rival hmds the screens are tiny ,less than 1 inch on the ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED , extremely low powered using optics that raise the fov to the point where you see a 40 to 100 inch flat screen . In the Oculus Rifts case you are magnifying a warped image from a 7 inch LCD.
Here at thegameveda I am looking forward to clinically researching this .. and comparing all current hmds in this manner.
Lets apply some very basic Sesame Street Physics ,anatomy and maths .. this episode is brought to you by the letters F=Ma as a great genius figured out ...
You are wearing a 397g device ,playing your TF2 , when you move though , that 397 g is multiplied by the acceleration of your head , this simple math should tell you how the force on your head and neck can change and how heavy the device "feels " after hours of such exertion is quite different to using a static hmd like the 397 g Sony HMZT2 or the even heavier HMZT1. Will this lead to a whole new disease of Oculus Rift neck ? Where our neck muscles grow stronger as our thumbs have with console gaming ? Will you be able to spot a Rift gamer by their pumped up Sternocleidomastoids .. will we all start to go Cardassian ( no not the Kanye type)
Then consider , when you game , you are constantly moving your controller which in this case you may think is your head .. but that is not all , the head and neck are a complex system of muscles and tendons , that constant use of a 397 g device strapped to the front of your face is going to have effects on.. not to mention where you spine meets your skull ( I am not going to quote Latin anatomical names for these structures at you)
These movements also effect your vestibular system .. the one that handles your balance .. shake that fluid around enough and you will feel dizziness ..and nausea
The worrying thing is users of the Oculus Rift Developer Kit Revision 1 (of 2) are feeling this in 5 minutes of use...
Every moving object of mass has momentum , once set in motion it requires a force to stop it too .. so the heavier object you set in motion , the more force you require to set in motion , the greater the momentum when it is set in motion and the greater the force require to stop it . With a hmd you will do this 100s if not 1000s of times in a game ..that you WILL spend hours in..and people cannot tolerate 5 minutes of wide FOV hmd usage.
Headtracking what's the point ?
Relying on headtracking in a fast twitch game like a FPS game ..oh say DOOM 3 is courting disaster .. you cannot head aim at speed with imps jumping out behind you ...with a mouse and keyboard you can turn around near instantly(or with a 180g hmd) ,with the Oculus Rift you have to turn 397g at speed , exert a force to twist your neck , exert an opposite force to stop the onscreen cursor and have your head and neck muscles exert a different force to hold it steady to stop and aim, you have to get this just right or you under or overshoot your target ,which will require further corrective force exertion and if by skill or luck you get the first closet jumping imp what happens when you hear another door click open behind you and another one jumps out... This why a game like Doom 3 was doomed and is doomed on the Oculus Rift...
But what to do I know right ? I have only been playing every game genre known to gamekind with headtracking for the last 3 months and on hmds for the last 2 years ?
So with the Oculus Rift your nausea is not being generated by sub optimal refreshing blurry LCD screen updates alone, or the meagre power of your 3rd gen i7 and dual 7970s being tested by a low res warp of an Unreal Engine 3 mock up of side by side 3D , or your perceived lack of a built up tolerance to the devices ergonomics , the momentum of the hmd +headtracker comes into play.. And that is caused by the weight of the thing ...
Back in the Quakecon 2012 keynote ..during which I had my Carmack/ Beaker epiphany , there was much talk by JC of the flaws in other hmds ......His comments seemed to refer mostly to the over 600g HMZT 1 , which I wholeheartedly concur as an owner of 3 of them was not a device a device anyone could use on a daily basis. The point of the Rift was to improve optics , FOV and ergonomics , the famous toilet role tubes comment comes to mind . The smd ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED which are next gen hmds had slipped his radar completely , both of which give clear flat fovs ..no toilet role tube fx ..go on try one.. or both...
Oculus Rift was supposed to be comfortable .. a ski mask holding it to your head ... a single strap ..now we have device that is 379g , the ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED are around 180g including headphones... and the headtracker . Furthermore the HMZT2 is actually lighter than the Oculus Rift.
The truth is I could if I were crazy ( my mom had me tested and I am not ) , wear both the the Cinemizer OLED + the smd ST1080 hmds together and they would weigh less than 1 Oculus Rift developer kit revision 1 (of 2)...
Going from the HMZT 1 to the smd ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED was a revelation for me in terms of comfort and the lack of nausea due to improved optics and extreme light weight. I can easily use the Zeiss headtracker with either hmd and combine it with LEAP Motion , Kinect and legacy control without any of the nausea effects being reported by current Oculus Rift Developer Kit revision 1 (of 2) users..
And anyone can do this on a 3 year old non gaming laptop as well as their gaming rig ..without having to upgrade the entire thing...developers don't need to do anything either your game works out of the box...
Virtual Reality isn't free..
Well yes it is , like the Internet we must fight to keep the way we access that code and garbage free .. If the Rift is a device that is creating Virtual Reality , it is also only A device for viewing that Virtual Reality, it should not become an exclusive method to access or use VR . I think W Gibson and co would be disgusted to learn that the only way to get to VR is through one exclusive device and then only to experience limited exclusive APPs on exclusive hardware. So the whole idea of Rift ready games, Rift coded games comes with a sinister walled garden tinge .
The possibilities are endless and obvious but Oculus VR appear oblivious
Do I think VR can be closed off like iTunes ... no , if they follow this route the Rift will fail as a consumer product simply because people want the freedom to do what they do with it , how for instance can you integrate social networking or conversations that take place in MMOS ? What about surfing the web , operating a desktop , molecular design ,engineering . The possibilities are indeed both endless and obvious but Oculus VR appear oblivious to them. Right now some of the very first Rift users are attempting to get legacy games working , like Skyrim. There are already Rift wrappers ( that is not a Hip Hop reference ) to get Rift support for all legacy games working , what will follow are wrappers to get Windows 8 desktops and browsers working ... People will expect to do what they want with this device or buy one which lets them...
Resolution, Resolution , Resolution... will it do 1080p?
Palmer and co keep getting asked resolution and display questions, this is unfair .
In using hmds , even smaller FOV ones the wow factor of having your own personal wearable display trumps resolution issues. This is why you will find people happy with low res Vuzix hmds and tolerating Sony HMZT1 and T2 weight. These are often sold out devices whatever their res or FOV..
With the developer kit Rift , the wow of the FOV is for now as a developer tool going to trump resolution issues , I for one also look forward to seeing if we can warp cloud content and how the screen scales larger resolutions.
The Cinemizer OLED for instance uses a small pixel size and screen ratio with optics to scale 1080p input amazingly well onto 872 by 500 screens. : The screen ratio mimics the golden movie and 1080p game ratio 16:9 . With excellent optics you get your 1080p game or film in 3D on what you would think would be an impossible resolution to do this with. And on this device the ergonomics, optics, OLED refresh and colour trumps the smaller FOV ..
The smd ST1080s raw 1080p resolution on each of it's displays is still unmatched and if anyone is going to make the first 4K consumer hmd it will be the brothers Jin.. ( just have better sound this time please)
These devices maintain screen ratios that are used by games developers, operating systems , phones , tablets and film makers . With no overhead re software or hardware usage required to warp or distort the image. The fact that you can in seconds be playing Metal Gear Solid 4 with headtracking , handtracking , switch to watching a preview of Metal Gear Solid V by browsing with the PS3 take off your hmd with one finger and carry on typing this blog post on the monitors behind sometimes trumps the larger FOV locked in VR at a screen ratio of 4:5 .. sometimes you need to just game or view through a window , especially if use multiple PCs , laptops , tablets and consoles.. or are in a real world situation on a building site, serving your country or solving some engineering puzzle..or minecrafting..
Look at the size of that thing : When 1080p does not equal 1080p..
You also have to consider whilst other hmds have true screen resolutions , per screen , the Oculus Rift resolution is split . A true 1080p Oculus Rift , needs to have a 1920 by 1080 pixels x2 that is a panel resolution of 3840 by 1080 .. that's a custom 4K res panel.. and the way the LCD panel industry works that's going to be a phone panel, we are a year to two years away from seeing those reach phones, at the very least. By that time though OLED , Graphene , and flexible displays will emerge. And the design of the Oculus may be radically different.
However risking troll rage I also have to point out that , the 1080p that Oculus is constantly being questioned on is misleading , because it is actually a single 1920 by 1080 screen , which means using the Oculus way the true resolution ( which is also going to be warped to include more central fov pixels and less going outwards) is actually 960 by 1080.
It is important to note that native 4K hmds from the likes of smd have been hinted at as far back as early 2012 , before the Oculus Rift was even announced...
A true 1080p OLED hmd and beyond are the most desirable goals for hmd makers , and that has to be a twin screen option . If anyone will do it , it will be Zeiss , Sony or smd or all of them.. These are high cost devices...
There are so many possibilities , what if you took the 1080p ST1080 displays added additional optics + software and warped the image ala Oculus...would you then get an increased FOV ...at true 1080p compatible with all existing PC , console games and future ones too...? Time for some experimentation..
Has delay cost Oculus VR the VR and hmd mass market?
The first thing to note is there is no VR market , secondly Oculus do not even begin to compete with consumer hmds from Sony , Zeiss and smd .. those are true multipurpose , multi use , 0 dev cost and open devices .. working with consoles , PCs ,tablets , phones , anything... With multiple forms of 3D generation , screen and ergonomics benefits ..even the HMZT2 is lighter than the Oculus Rift... but all are high cost .. but then again they are not THAT high a cost that people have not bought them .. I believe when it comes to optics and vision people will pay for quality... and ..as consumers they are going to expect VR ..not just the promise of VR..
The Rift is a dev tool to compare it to those devices is unfair to both Oculus and those manufacturers who have invested in , designed and brought to commercial fruition those hmds ...
There's no debating the fact that the Rift is late and in the tech world this can be critical , people are no longer expecting dev kits post this launch , they are going to expect a consumer version , I cannot see this happening till 2014 . I see the consumer version as a high quality product closer to the price of a high end iPad , or even more just south of $1000 , that is the only way Oculus can ensure entry into what is going to be an extremely busy space ...iPad 5 , Google Nexus successors, PS4 and Xbox 720 , PC rigs finally shrinking not growing in size ,the dominance of Intel and AMD iGPUS in home computers , may be an intro of the credits to Star Citizen...launching in 2021...(only joking Chris) . The consumer Rift is going to launch in a cloud dominated world , the first question people will ask is does it work with X ,Y or Z ...followed by many of the questions asked here ... if the answer to any of those is a no... by that point both the DIY VR scene, the manufacturer led VR and HMD scene will have surpassed Oculus VRs vision and the user themselves will have outgrown this attempt at VR altogether. By that time there will be 1 year of data on Oculus VR as a company and the Oculus Rift .
What do developers need to know about how headtracking changes gaming ?
Right now developers , every game you are developing works with head tracking on a 3D OLED hmd that weighs around 180g , fits in your pocket and is easier to wear than some shades ... the Cinemizer OLED hmd .. No patches, no coding, no license fee ..
If you are a PlayStation 3 or 4 developer all you need to do is turn on mouse and keyboard control from your UDK or other dev environment and then like DUST 514 , Unreal Tournament 3 , Counter Strike GO your game works with headtracking.
And as of course I showed any Xbox 360 and PS3 game can be played with headtracking , and hand tracking combined..
If you want to code 3 dof axes you can do that too ..but this is pointless for mainstream gaming and suboptimal ..consider ... the average gamer can barely use a joypad, they balk at using mice and keyboards, yet you want to spend time and money adding and tweaking code to give 3dof axes control to achieve what? To aim ? With your head? I am serious gamer , obsessive not about playing through a game , but how we play those games , how that has evolved from Pong paddles , to arcade joysticks through to Zeiss headtracking , Kinect Voice recog and Leap Motion combined...It takes immense skill to head aim, in an FPS you need to aim quickly there is no better way to do this than using a mouse and a headtracker that can ALSO emulate a mouse is the fastest way you can aim in an FPS ..I know I have been doing it for 3 months... Headtracking works far better in third person games , yes that is not very VR but consider by replacing mouse look , or the right thumbstick that we use to look round a character you actually make playing the game simpler , removing one physical controller altogether... as FOV movement in a third person game is not always constant ,as is head aiming , the user does not feel nausea , in fact most of the time if you are playing for Nate's sake Dark Souls you will tend to move your head in the direction that you want your character to look , or look around them ...with headtracking mapped to this , you just moved the FOV without thinking about it ..
So why waist dev time , money or thought on an in game action that 90 % of gamers won't even notice the difference for?
Let me clear a few things up for Palmer .. there is no drift when using the mouse emulation mode with the Zeiss headtracker .. You will all be able to try and buy them very soon . There is nothing to stop you using it with the Oculus Rift. I am going to use it with mine...
There is a place for proper 3 dof axes use and that is in the corporate, scientific, academic or medical field . Core gamers want their 500 fps on Crysis 5 ... they spend thousands getting there , usually to find a driver isn't ready yet .. but that is another story ... they spend thousands getting max FPS ..using sensor fusion combined with a high latency LCD is not going to appeal .. aiming must therefore be by mouse ...leaving the headtracker to accomplish separate FOV movement..
Or you could play the same game in seconds on the ST1080s 100 inch screen at 1080p native res with the Zeiss headtracker attached , or the Cinemizer OLED hmd taking advantage of it's OLED refresh rate and see your entire normal FPS FOV without having to turn which is quite handy in FPS gaming..oh and you can do this now , on a train , plain , under the stars at night that shine so bright deep in the heart of Texas...
without running any additional frame sucking code or being locked in some walled garden...
is it VR ...no.. but then neither is a wide FOV hmd with a headtracker...speaking of which
"Release the Oculus Rift Killer App "
Right now Oculus VR have not one but two killer products, yes the hmd , but also the headtracker. You could argue releasing it separately and releasing the sensor fusion code if that is possible would do more to kickstart the VR revolution . From the first time I started using the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED headtracker it was a revelation , it changes the way you use your desktop or game or experience or interface with computers altogether. The most awesome factor about that device is it detaches and can attach to any device with a USB port , comes with both mouse emulation and the usual magnetometer, gravitational axes, with both abilities available .
We must remember the Oculus Rift is intended to evolve into a consumer device , not just feed the obsessions of quaternion equation crunching , gravitational force and latency measuring pedants...
Your customer and developer wants to move the FOV around Lara ,Snake or look through Prophet's nanosuit visor .. they do no care if it is done at 1000 hz sensor fusion or if it is done through driverless mouse emulation, VR hobbyists do .. and that is the disconnect ..between Oculus and the consumer sits an army of VR scene hobbyists .. For the Rift to go commercial , they Oculus VR have to transcend the "scene" and get to what the customer and developer wants and do it now .
That joke I always make about someone telling me what VR is for , is actually a serious question ..if no body needs it ...nobody needs you...
Release the headtracker ( before it is superseded) and you get a return on all the hard work you have invested time and money in... you will also see people use it in scenarios you never thought possible , there is no way I thought I would be playing console games with headtracking (of what ever kind) with hand tracking combined with voice recognition too.. but I am ...because Zeiss made their headtracker detachable ..
With HMDs you know people are going to obsesses with the display, ergonomics and optics, which you can explain away for now as this is a dev tool , so why not therefore release two killer products , the hmd and the headtracker ... thus exponentially increasing Oculus VRs presence.
Sensor Confusion..
The attacks on thegameveda, are basically attempts to sideline progress made by rival hmd tech through humiliation and damage followed my blogging for nearly two years now on rival headtracker and hmd technology to the Rift. Nothing of significance has been done to date on this part by those responsible.
Of late more and more people have been reading my comments on hmds and VR ... across multiple forums,youtube ,facebook etc , the majority of which seem refreshingly troll free too...
There are actually millions of potential hmd and VR leaning device customers who want an alternative to the Oculus Rift .. who are desperate for an alternative to the Oculus Rift , simply because Oculus continues to make no attempt to meet their needs. And you will find an interesting lack of comment on this subject is as if the whole hmd field has been on hold whilst we waited for this one Kickstarter project to launch , this is a ruse of course a very clever one ,with backers of the Rift taking part in the MTBS3D forum and using troll power to talk down any mention of competition .Thing is people still want to know about other options. We can't all be VR sheep ...So:
For those serious about the evolution of and cutting through the hype surrounding VR and using hmds here on one page are my collected articles on VR and HMDS : the Cinemizer OLED hmd + Headtracker , the Siliconmicrodisplay ST1080 , my current ( and hopefully not permanent)..experiences and heartbroken(boo hoo) opinion of the state of Oculus Rift and even the ancient Sony HMZT 1 ..
That page is an ongoing journey, when I started using hmds they were a novelty 3D film viewing item , today I use the Cinemizer OLED with headtracking and LEAP Motion+/-Kinect to play any PC, Xbox 360 or PS3 ,2,or 1 game ...that's with multiple VR leaning control methods, and the ST1080 with it's transparent 1080p displays has uses I still have yet to explore, if you read some of the articles you will see how I had similar fears to that I have re the Oculus Rift with the HMZT1 , the ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED but over time I found there are solutions to every problem , that is if somebody can listen. Now I am not a just a user of hmds I am looking to develop for them.. Dagnabbit I might even design my own ..
I consider every HMD and VR leaning control manufacturer has something to bring to the table for us to use HMDS in daily life, work, play and for VR.
The furture of VR is open not closed, if Carmack , GabeN , Palmer et al want to make money from VR , that will not happen by trying to create another closed platform.
Beware the iDs of March
I had hoped like around 10000 others to be messing with the Oculus Rift right now, the good news is they are shipping,without Doom 3 ..but who cares.. they are in peoples hands and there are honest none fan boy opinions too, don't be afraid to criticise though people, if you don't and Oculus VR do not adapt the Rift from that feedback it is likely you really will be building your next Rift DIY style.. Better news for me is the sdk has finally been released, we can move from being backers to developers and the real Oculus development community can start to take it's Virtual roots. I note however that moderators and members of the MTBS3D now sit over on the Oculus developer forum , so should backers and developers like myself be terrified of being trolled or insulted like I was even without my knowledge .. some contributions with very interesting strands of opinion on the contribution that African American and Indians are making to the web like those of Brantlew from Texas added to by PalmerTech ? Have fun if your attending GDC 2013 in Nasik, India..
Or will we see the birth of a new more grown up developer community one that thrives on and does not attempt to stamp out debate on VR development and where it is going. That's the thing , will the Oculus Rift , can the Oculus Rift move beyond a hobbyist developer device , or will trollmania have taken hold of the developer forum like it frequently does over on MTBS3D or Kickstarter by the summer?
Help Me Palmer Luckey you're my only hope...
I am still waiting for Palmer to confirm he has removed the racist and insulting comments made by Brentlew and defended by his actions/inaction as PalmerTech /moderator of that forum.I also still see no public apology. And will look into taking further action vs MTBS3D if this continues unchanged. Allegedly anyone can say anything on a Kickstarter forum without any recourse to moderation, which has led to death threats in one case as reported on Kotaku. This is still causing me significant grief, I am sure Palmer being the decent human being he is will resolve this as I have made clear in a further plea to him.
HMD Reality vs Virtual Reality Hype : Beware false prophets..and false prophets beware false prophecy...
Let's be clear the Oculus Rift does not represent the creation of Virtual Reality. In 2013 Virtual Reality does not exist any more than does Kim Jong Un's pet Unicorn. In 2014 Virtual Reality will not exist any more than it looks likely will the Peoples Democratic Republic of North Korea...
Virtual Reality is not just a closed off game running on a server with your friends , or the exploitation of those friends to make profits for money hungry game delivery monopolies. VR is an evolution in the human computer interface and requires an exponential leap not in technology but the entire restructuring of the Internet, re-education of users, and how they access and use computer information moving from a 2D screen to ultra high res 3D with user re-active computer code and truly portable and wearable hardware. Software and hardware that judges your facial expression, mood , tone of voice as well as your body movements ,reacts and anticipates learning from your patterns of behaviour .A true Ghost In the Machine .. That's not even touching on the problem of how we interface with it or power it.
We are years from that point at the very least. For this to happen new open source visual programming languages have to be created and prior coding monopolies have to rendered obsolete . It's no surprise why Google went the AR route and not the VR route and I also don't find it surprising at all that an ailing PC computer games dev industry always looking for the first foot in the door of the next video games monopoly is hyping up Palmer.
Will I have fun trying ? Hell yes I am certain people will create impressive games and demos with the development kit.. absolutely .. I hope to as well.. but developers need to be prepared for the honest truth this is not VR though it is a great achievement :
The Oculus Rift is a $300 development tool : taken apart :a low cost , low res , wide FOV hmd , non OLED panel ( suboptimal for VR or FPS games) , with a 7 inch LCD ( which makes it weight more than the heaviest current gen consumer HMD) , using a single split screen ,warped side by side 3D solution that is magnified to give you your wide FOV hmd ( that eats high end CPU and GPU time leading to latency issues not present in other hmds)... with a headtracker that cannot be removed .. Wide field of view hmd + headtracker+low res slow response LCD panel does not equal VR ..it like other hmds and VR inputs are VR leaning ... until someone connects all the pieces of the puzzle together this is not VR...
The Rift needs to be powered with state of the art GPUS , and CPUS . Something which I do not understand as it is an extremely low res display any Intel HD3000 powered laptop upwards should easily handle side by side 3D at that split res .. how do I know ..well all the videos to date I have made with hmds testing 3D gaming on PC are at 1280 by 720 sbs , over under using tridef and that hardware. For the last 3 months I have been testing with LEAP Motion and Zeiss headtracking thrown into the mix and I still cannot find the phantom latency that Carmack, Abrash and Oculus VR talk of. Commenting on this on the Kickstarter Oculus forum of course started all this off ... Using gaming hardware like my dormant gaming rig I can push 1080p 3D for Crysis 3 and others ..so what is the issue is there sensor confusion.. ?
This is not the Virtual Reality you were looking for ... move along
I can see clear flaws in the Rift ,so can anyone who may be a potential future customer, people are out there commenting on them , this is what Palmer needs, not people telling them off or shutting them down. I saw the flaws in other hmds , it's not rocket science ( no that was not another John Carmack Quakecon 2012 joke ..or was it?) just give a user a hmd they will tell you in seconds that it does not fit , it weighs too much or the screen is blurred...or they need an upchuck bag . But I can point those flaws out to other hmd manufacturers and receive a professional response. I am hoping once the delivery phase is over that Palmer , Nate and Oculus VR are sincere in taking feedback and concerns on board.
Or just tell us they do not give a damn and to come back and buy the consumer version ... work's for Apple...and I still buy a new iPad every year..though have you ever tried criticising an Apple product over on Endgadget .. that would you make your MTBS3D trolls run back into their mancaves..pretty sharpish..
Not all companies look for success this way : What Oculus VR should do in my humble opinion...is follow:
The Google GLASS way
Google famously took Google GLASS to the masses for testing with it's #ifIhadglass this of course gave rise to a tsunami of brown nosing sycophants clambering over each other to win the opportunity to gain access..just like those Zombies in Mr Pitt's new cinematic soon to release masterpiece... But if you read the Google GLASS comments re the results of this "competition" re who they are looking for
"With #ifihadglass we set out to find a truly diverse group of Explorers, and that’s certainly what we’ve gotten. We need honest feedback from people who are not only enthralled and excited by Glass, but also people who are skeptical and critical of it. That said, it’s become clear that a few applications that don’t comply with our terms have slipped through the cracks, and we’re going to have to disqualify applications like these. As for the rest of you, please keep that feedback coming -- it’s all in the Explorer program spirit!"
There's an awesome statement of intent in that paragraph let me repeat it for the edification of the fanboy generation "We need honest feedback from people who are not only enthralled and excited by Glass, but also people who are skeptical and critical of it" If Oculus can take criticsm , without hordes of forum trolls rising enraged by the smallest of doubts raised by Oculus Rift users ..then I will take it as very good sign...
Not such a bad pilot myself ...
Each backer's $300 was to support both Palmer and their (the backer's) shared vision of VR not just to purchase $300 of VR viewer components. If you want to, you can follow one of the many online guides and build your own VR device following the guidelines here at the USC MXR page. The way this brand of VR imaging works , is an optical illusion , warping the fov after splitting it to give stereoscopic 3D and using optics to magnify it . The guides to build them unlike the Riders of Rohan ...are many.. and it is something to do whilst Oculus start to wake up to 10000 backers still waiting... especially if you are fed up with all the MTBS3D trolls like so many Smaeogols shouting about their Precious Oculus Rift ... or Thorins sitting around the camp fire singing about their gold Rift?
There's in good in him ... I've seen it...
I can see positives too but Oculus VR unlike other hmd manufacturers Oculus VR really have no system of taking feedback on a normal adult professional level.. proof in point : they have not taken any in 9 months..that is ..without taking it personally...with even their founder resorting to insults in my case .. which he has yet to publicly apologise for. Let's see how I get treated as an Oculus developer...
Good against remotes..
The release of the sdk is great news , I have been comparing it with other headtracker sdks I have been working with , or should have been if I had not wasted so much time rebuilding my blog for making a simple comment on the major flaw of the Oculus Rift ..
Q: It only does TF2... what about my 1000s of other games and Minecraft?
It has 0 full game launch titles ..whereas rival hmds , whilst costing more have access to 1000s across PC,iOS , Android , next gen , present gen , retro consoles.
Gaming industry legend Gunpei Yoki had a vision of VR too and had the likes of Mario and Nintendo's might to support his Virtual Boy ..today ..well ... you know what happened..
A: We need to persuade Oculus VR :The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few : HMD legacy gaming is no threat to true VR gaming
Take Vireo using it there are already Rift users playing Skyrim this way. And Palmer and co are missing out on what millions of users want , access to their games without waiting on the Virtual Reality monopoly to be enacted...or enforced. There may be several thousand VR fans at the moment but there are 10s of millions of every day users , Gates succeeded by making it an aim to put his software on EVERY desk , not just the social clique that was interested in OS development.
VorpX also promises to give legacy non VR Rift gaming support..
I wouldn't be surprised if Tridef 3D was updated to have a rift fov warping component , then people the Rift would really become a mass gaming device. With not only Nvidia or ATI GPU owners joining the VR Revolution but also any one , including the increasing percentage of new Windows 8 tablets and laptops that are using IGPUS ..
Q: Oculus Emitus/Prostratus ...how long before the Rift upchuck and fainting videos start posting...?
There are serious health issues that every HMD maker has to address, counter and inform it's users of. The heavier your HMD , the greater the inevitably of short term and long term health issues.
Look round the comments from users of the Rift and you will see a great deal of concern for tolerance to the device . These are there for other devices , but a device like a Cinemizer OLED or smd ST1080 let you stay in your real world you can look through the ST1080 display ,they also take seconds , like your shades to take off .They also replace flat screen displays and not your entire vision. Locked in a VR world , what are the long term and short term side effects on people ? Well currently there are examples of people using the Rift 5 mins at a time to up their tolerance , clearly experiencing some sort of discomfort.
A: Sensor Fusion Triggered Emergency Venting and Rescue
Maybe auto releasing smelling salts should be included as standard just under the nose guard..activated by the sensor fusions gravitational sensor,magnetometer ,accelerometer which running at 1000hz should be able to pick up the user is falling to the ground , or moving their head around erratically , or even the users head slumping as they begin to faint... recognising the user's health is in peril could also trigger a webcam to instantly capture video of the Rift user meeting the carpet , the web cam or entering into jaw aghast projectile vomiting at their expensive gear and finally redecorating their man cave. Of course said sensor fusion emergency rescue routine would also dial ,mom, 911 or 999 and update the users Twitter and Facebook status accordingly as Oculus Emitus or Oculus Prostratus , social network badges which not only could be displayed with honour but provide Oculus VR with valuable feedback data on improving the consumer version of the Oculus Rift . Valuable data could be gathered on size, weight, age, sex, height, usage time, headtracker usage leading up to the emesis or syncope that could be used to build a more tolerable or even nausea free VR device. These things I joke about , but really make a hmd something you can use as opposed to something you can pose with ...
More immediately though I would use a Rift warning message , like the one that threatens to shut down the Sony HMZT1 after several minutes, sorry hours of use..or is it minutes? The headtracker too should measure how long and hard someone is shaking their head around , gamers tend to game...for long periods at some point doing so in a VR hmd using constant head and neck movements is going to have a detrimental or permanent effect..
The Oculus Rift method of producing a wide field of view approximation of VR raises serious health issues
Gamers have been known to game to their deaths using 2D traditional monitors , the
temptation of a VR version of their favourite MMO may prove fatal in some cases .. as it has done for several Internet cafe MMO gamers ... currently of course even criticizing the Oculus Rift can prove hazardous to your health,business and reputation..
For designers of HMDs it is time to get serious about these issues, proper scientific and medical tests have to be performed to look at the forces exerted , the effects of long term use of a 7 inch LCD display placed that close to your eyes , with rival hmds the screens are tiny ,less than 1 inch on the ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED , extremely low powered using optics that raise the fov to the point where you see a 40 to 100 inch flat screen . In the Oculus Rifts case you are magnifying a warped image from a 7 inch LCD.
Here at thegameveda I am looking forward to clinically researching this .. and comparing all current hmds in this manner.
Lets apply some very basic Sesame Street Physics ,anatomy and maths .. this episode is brought to you by the letters F=Ma as a great genius figured out ...
You are wearing a 397g device ,playing your TF2 , when you move though , that 397 g is multiplied by the acceleration of your head , this simple math should tell you how the force on your head and neck can change and how heavy the device "feels " after hours of such exertion is quite different to using a static hmd like the 397 g Sony HMZT2 or the even heavier HMZT1. Will this lead to a whole new disease of Oculus Rift neck ? Where our neck muscles grow stronger as our thumbs have with console gaming ? Will you be able to spot a Rift gamer by their pumped up Sternocleidomastoids .. will we all start to go Cardassian ( no not the Kanye type)
Then consider , when you game , you are constantly moving your controller which in this case you may think is your head .. but that is not all , the head and neck are a complex system of muscles and tendons , that constant use of a 397 g device strapped to the front of your face is going to have effects on.. not to mention where you spine meets your skull ( I am not going to quote Latin anatomical names for these structures at you)
These movements also effect your vestibular system .. the one that handles your balance .. shake that fluid around enough and you will feel dizziness ..and nausea
The worrying thing is users of the Oculus Rift Developer Kit Revision 1 (of 2) are feeling this in 5 minutes of use...
Headtracking what's the point ?
Relying on headtracking in a fast twitch game like a FPS game ..oh say DOOM 3 is courting disaster .. you cannot head aim at speed with imps jumping out behind you ...with a mouse and keyboard you can turn around near instantly(or with a 180g hmd) ,with the Oculus Rift you have to turn 397g at speed , exert a force to twist your neck , exert an opposite force to stop the onscreen cursor and have your head and neck muscles exert a different force to hold it steady to stop and aim, you have to get this just right or you under or overshoot your target ,which will require further corrective force exertion and if by skill or luck you get the first closet jumping imp what happens when you hear another door click open behind you and another one jumps out... This why a game like Doom 3 was doomed and is doomed on the Oculus Rift...
But what to do I know right ? I have only been playing every game genre known to gamekind with headtracking for the last 3 months and on hmds for the last 2 years ?
So with the Oculus Rift your nausea is not being generated by sub optimal refreshing blurry LCD screen updates alone, or the meagre power of your 3rd gen i7 and dual 7970s being tested by a low res warp of an Unreal Engine 3 mock up of side by side 3D , or your perceived lack of a built up tolerance to the devices ergonomics , the momentum of the hmd +headtracker comes into play.. And that is caused by the weight of the thing ...
Back in the Quakecon 2012 keynote ..during which I had my Carmack/ Beaker epiphany , there was much talk by JC of the flaws in other hmds ......His comments seemed to refer mostly to the over 600g HMZT 1 , which I wholeheartedly concur as an owner of 3 of them was not a device a device anyone could use on a daily basis. The point of the Rift was to improve optics , FOV and ergonomics , the famous toilet role tubes comment comes to mind . The smd ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED which are next gen hmds had slipped his radar completely , both of which give clear flat fovs ..no toilet role tube fx ..go on try one.. or both...
Oculus Rift was supposed to be comfortable .. a ski mask holding it to your head ... a single strap ..now we have device that is 379g , the ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED are around 180g including headphones... and the headtracker . Furthermore the HMZT2 is actually lighter than the Oculus Rift.
The truth is I could if I were crazy ( my mom had me tested and I am not ) , wear both the the Cinemizer OLED + the smd ST1080 hmds together and they would weigh less than 1 Oculus Rift developer kit revision 1 (of 2)...
Going from the HMZT 1 to the smd ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED was a revelation for me in terms of comfort and the lack of nausea due to improved optics and extreme light weight. I can easily use the Zeiss headtracker with either hmd and combine it with LEAP Motion , Kinect and legacy control without any of the nausea effects being reported by current Oculus Rift Developer Kit revision 1 (of 2) users..
And anyone can do this on a 3 year old non gaming laptop as well as their gaming rig ..without having to upgrade the entire thing...developers don't need to do anything either your game works out of the box...
Virtual Reality isn't free..
Well yes it is , like the Internet we must fight to keep the way we access that code and garbage free .. If the Rift is a device that is creating Virtual Reality , it is also only A device for viewing that Virtual Reality, it should not become an exclusive method to access or use VR . I think W Gibson and co would be disgusted to learn that the only way to get to VR is through one exclusive device and then only to experience limited exclusive APPs on exclusive hardware. So the whole idea of Rift ready games, Rift coded games comes with a sinister walled garden tinge .
The possibilities are endless and obvious but Oculus VR appear oblivious
Do I think VR can be closed off like iTunes ... no , if they follow this route the Rift will fail as a consumer product simply because people want the freedom to do what they do with it , how for instance can you integrate social networking or conversations that take place in MMOS ? What about surfing the web , operating a desktop , molecular design ,engineering . The possibilities are indeed both endless and obvious but Oculus VR appear oblivious to them. Right now some of the very first Rift users are attempting to get legacy games working , like Skyrim. There are already Rift wrappers ( that is not a Hip Hop reference ) to get Rift support for all legacy games working , what will follow are wrappers to get Windows 8 desktops and browsers working ... People will expect to do what they want with this device or buy one which lets them...
Resolution, Resolution , Resolution... will it do 1080p?
Palmer and co keep getting asked resolution and display questions, this is unfair .
In using hmds , even smaller FOV ones the wow factor of having your own personal wearable display trumps resolution issues. This is why you will find people happy with low res Vuzix hmds and tolerating Sony HMZT1 and T2 weight. These are often sold out devices whatever their res or FOV..
With the developer kit Rift , the wow of the FOV is for now as a developer tool going to trump resolution issues , I for one also look forward to seeing if we can warp cloud content and how the screen scales larger resolutions.
The Cinemizer OLED for instance uses a small pixel size and screen ratio with optics to scale 1080p input amazingly well onto 872 by 500 screens. : The screen ratio mimics the golden movie and 1080p game ratio 16:9 . With excellent optics you get your 1080p game or film in 3D on what you would think would be an impossible resolution to do this with. And on this device the ergonomics, optics, OLED refresh and colour trumps the smaller FOV ..
The smd ST1080s raw 1080p resolution on each of it's displays is still unmatched and if anyone is going to make the first 4K consumer hmd it will be the brothers Jin.. ( just have better sound this time please)
These devices maintain screen ratios that are used by games developers, operating systems , phones , tablets and film makers . With no overhead re software or hardware usage required to warp or distort the image. The fact that you can in seconds be playing Metal Gear Solid 4 with headtracking , handtracking , switch to watching a preview of Metal Gear Solid V by browsing with the PS3 take off your hmd with one finger and carry on typing this blog post on the monitors behind sometimes trumps the larger FOV locked in VR at a screen ratio of 4:5 .. sometimes you need to just game or view through a window , especially if use multiple PCs , laptops , tablets and consoles.. or are in a real world situation on a building site, serving your country or solving some engineering puzzle..or minecrafting..
Look at the size of that thing : When 1080p does not equal 1080p..
You also have to consider whilst other hmds have true screen resolutions , per screen , the Oculus Rift resolution is split . A true 1080p Oculus Rift , needs to have a 1920 by 1080 pixels x2 that is a panel resolution of 3840 by 1080 .. that's a custom 4K res panel.. and the way the LCD panel industry works that's going to be a phone panel, we are a year to two years away from seeing those reach phones, at the very least. By that time though OLED , Graphene , and flexible displays will emerge. And the design of the Oculus may be radically different.
However risking troll rage I also have to point out that , the 1080p that Oculus is constantly being questioned on is misleading , because it is actually a single 1920 by 1080 screen , which means using the Oculus way the true resolution ( which is also going to be warped to include more central fov pixels and less going outwards) is actually 960 by 1080.
It is important to note that native 4K hmds from the likes of smd have been hinted at as far back as early 2012 , before the Oculus Rift was even announced...
A true 1080p OLED hmd and beyond are the most desirable goals for hmd makers , and that has to be a twin screen option . If anyone will do it , it will be Zeiss , Sony or smd or all of them.. These are high cost devices...
There are so many possibilities , what if you took the 1080p ST1080 displays added additional optics + software and warped the image ala Oculus...would you then get an increased FOV ...at true 1080p compatible with all existing PC , console games and future ones too...? Time for some experimentation..
Has delay cost Oculus VR the VR and hmd mass market?
The first thing to note is there is no VR market , secondly Oculus do not even begin to compete with consumer hmds from Sony , Zeiss and smd .. those are true multipurpose , multi use , 0 dev cost and open devices .. working with consoles , PCs ,tablets , phones , anything... With multiple forms of 3D generation , screen and ergonomics benefits ..even the HMZT2 is lighter than the Oculus Rift... but all are high cost .. but then again they are not THAT high a cost that people have not bought them .. I believe when it comes to optics and vision people will pay for quality... and ..as consumers they are going to expect VR ..not just the promise of VR..
The Rift is a dev tool to compare it to those devices is unfair to both Oculus and those manufacturers who have invested in , designed and brought to commercial fruition those hmds ...
There's no debating the fact that the Rift is late and in the tech world this can be critical , people are no longer expecting dev kits post this launch , they are going to expect a consumer version , I cannot see this happening till 2014 . I see the consumer version as a high quality product closer to the price of a high end iPad , or even more just south of $1000 , that is the only way Oculus can ensure entry into what is going to be an extremely busy space ...iPad 5 , Google Nexus successors, PS4 and Xbox 720 , PC rigs finally shrinking not growing in size ,the dominance of Intel and AMD iGPUS in home computers , may be an intro of the credits to Star Citizen...launching in 2021...(only joking Chris) . The consumer Rift is going to launch in a cloud dominated world , the first question people will ask is does it work with X ,Y or Z ...followed by many of the questions asked here ... if the answer to any of those is a no... by that point both the DIY VR scene, the manufacturer led VR and HMD scene will have surpassed Oculus VRs vision and the user themselves will have outgrown this attempt at VR altogether. By that time there will be 1 year of data on Oculus VR as a company and the Oculus Rift .
What do developers need to know about how headtracking changes gaming ?
Right now developers , every game you are developing works with head tracking on a 3D OLED hmd that weighs around 180g , fits in your pocket and is easier to wear than some shades ... the Cinemizer OLED hmd .. No patches, no coding, no license fee ..
If you are a PlayStation 3 or 4 developer all you need to do is turn on mouse and keyboard control from your UDK or other dev environment and then like DUST 514 , Unreal Tournament 3 , Counter Strike GO your game works with headtracking.
And as of course I showed any Xbox 360 and PS3 game can be played with headtracking , and hand tracking combined..
If you want to code 3 dof axes you can do that too ..but this is pointless for mainstream gaming and suboptimal ..consider ... the average gamer can barely use a joypad, they balk at using mice and keyboards, yet you want to spend time and money adding and tweaking code to give 3dof axes control to achieve what? To aim ? With your head? I am serious gamer , obsessive not about playing through a game , but how we play those games , how that has evolved from Pong paddles , to arcade joysticks through to Zeiss headtracking , Kinect Voice recog and Leap Motion combined...It takes immense skill to head aim, in an FPS you need to aim quickly there is no better way to do this than using a mouse and a headtracker that can ALSO emulate a mouse is the fastest way you can aim in an FPS ..I know I have been doing it for 3 months... Headtracking works far better in third person games , yes that is not very VR but consider by replacing mouse look , or the right thumbstick that we use to look round a character you actually make playing the game simpler , removing one physical controller altogether... as FOV movement in a third person game is not always constant ,as is head aiming , the user does not feel nausea , in fact most of the time if you are playing for Nate's sake Dark Souls you will tend to move your head in the direction that you want your character to look , or look around them ...with headtracking mapped to this , you just moved the FOV without thinking about it ..
So why waist dev time , money or thought on an in game action that 90 % of gamers won't even notice the difference for?
Let me clear a few things up for Palmer .. there is no drift when using the mouse emulation mode with the Zeiss headtracker .. You will all be able to try and buy them very soon . There is nothing to stop you using it with the Oculus Rift. I am going to use it with mine...
There is a place for proper 3 dof axes use and that is in the corporate, scientific, academic or medical field . Core gamers want their 500 fps on Crysis 5 ... they spend thousands getting there , usually to find a driver isn't ready yet .. but that is another story ... they spend thousands getting max FPS ..using sensor fusion combined with a high latency LCD is not going to appeal .. aiming must therefore be by mouse ...leaving the headtracker to accomplish separate FOV movement..
Or you could play the same game in seconds on the ST1080s 100 inch screen at 1080p native res with the Zeiss headtracker attached , or the Cinemizer OLED hmd taking advantage of it's OLED refresh rate and see your entire normal FPS FOV without having to turn which is quite handy in FPS gaming..oh and you can do this now , on a train , plain , under the stars at night that shine so bright deep in the heart of Texas...
without running any additional frame sucking code or being locked in some walled garden...
is it VR ...no.. but then neither is a wide FOV hmd with a headtracker...speaking of which
"Release the Oculus Rift Killer App "
Right now Oculus VR have not one but two killer products, yes the hmd , but also the headtracker. You could argue releasing it separately and releasing the sensor fusion code if that is possible would do more to kickstart the VR revolution . From the first time I started using the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED headtracker it was a revelation , it changes the way you use your desktop or game or experience or interface with computers altogether. The most awesome factor about that device is it detaches and can attach to any device with a USB port , comes with both mouse emulation and the usual magnetometer, gravitational axes, with both abilities available .
We must remember the Oculus Rift is intended to evolve into a consumer device , not just feed the obsessions of quaternion equation crunching , gravitational force and latency measuring pedants...
Your customer and developer wants to move the FOV around Lara ,Snake or look through Prophet's nanosuit visor .. they do no care if it is done at 1000 hz sensor fusion or if it is done through driverless mouse emulation, VR hobbyists do .. and that is the disconnect ..between Oculus and the consumer sits an army of VR scene hobbyists .. For the Rift to go commercial , they Oculus VR have to transcend the "scene" and get to what the customer and developer wants and do it now .
That joke I always make about someone telling me what VR is for , is actually a serious question ..if no body needs it ...nobody needs you...
Release the headtracker ( before it is superseded) and you get a return on all the hard work you have invested time and money in... you will also see people use it in scenarios you never thought possible , there is no way I thought I would be playing console games with headtracking (of what ever kind) with hand tracking combined with voice recognition too.. but I am ...because Zeiss made their headtracker detachable ..
With HMDs you know people are going to obsesses with the display, ergonomics and optics, which you can explain away for now as this is a dev tool , so why not therefore release two killer products , the hmd and the headtracker ... thus exponentially increasing Oculus VRs presence.
"Ask not what others have done for VR ask what Oculus is doing"
Competition is essential , but so is the realization that today's consumers and developers are far more clued up than they used to be . Being popular on a forum is not going to cut it in the consumer world..
There are excellent consumer hmd solutions out there , the Cinemizer OLED , the smd ST1080, there are even die hard HMZT fans and Vuzix fans. You can combine Zeiss headtracking mouse and dof axes, with LEAP motion to have VR leaning controls. You can build a more powerful Rift like device right now and it will play Cryisis 3 .. . For too long , actually since last August Oculus VR and many fan boys often who have not even used rival hardware have criticised the contribution to the HMD and VR scene of these rival devices.
With the release of the developer kit, we ,the people Oculus VR has yet to completely win over ,can finally ask the question what is the Oculus Rift and Oculus VR doing for VR and here at thegameveda I intend to do that with vigor ,bad humour and detail through actual use of the device and in direct comparison with use of and development for rival devices .. ...
Assuming Palmer gets me mine ..before I build my own...
Seriously congrats on the launch to Palmer and all the Oculus team , I am sure I will be screaming praises and criticisms with equal measure as soon as my Rift arrives..
If you are a Rift backer here is the Rift Order Tracker sheet , note you have to update it with your status, but it should give you an idea of how the deliveries are going if it too has not been trolled...and to look at it too long is to risk utter oblivion...
I see no way that the current Oculus VR team will prove successful in a commercial field ,the tech patents of which reside with billion dollar companies for displays, motion sensing , VR leaning control interfaces , cpus and GPUS as well as ownership of development software .
Greater companies have failed to bring VR to fruition , you could argue greater companies like Sony have failed to bring the hmd to mass market . There are solid reasons for this , that to be honest more talented teams and experienced teams of engineers with better support and feedback from real world critics have failed to find solutions for.
Based on my 9 month of experience of dealing with as a backer and observing Oculus VR they will not be leading the VR revolution , not unless something drastic happens .
To transcend from forum trolling fanboyism to a commercial enterprise Palmer , Nate , GabeN , Carmack et al are going to have to stop partying sit down and deflate a few very powerful egos and get real about what they have achieved and can realistically achieve.
The Rift is supposed to solve many of the problems with hmd design , VR control, end user cost , development etc , all of which you can find reams of text and hours of video of Oculus VR and supporters promising ..
ln the immortal words of the Hip Hop Bards Public Enemy ...
DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE ..
more tails of an Oculus Rift developer ...to follow ..
Namaste to you in the game....
Credits :
of course heartfelt and sincere thanks to Oculus VR , Nate, JC , GabeN and Palmertech/Palmer Luckey and my detractors over on MTBS3D and the Kickstarter Oculus Rift forum ...without you none of this post would have been possible
this content is © and originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/ if you are reading it from any other site that has not provided a link back it has been leached
Competition is essential , but so is the realization that today's consumers and developers are far more clued up than they used to be . Being popular on a forum is not going to cut it in the consumer world..
There are excellent consumer hmd solutions out there , the Cinemizer OLED , the smd ST1080, there are even die hard HMZT fans and Vuzix fans. You can combine Zeiss headtracking mouse and dof axes, with LEAP motion to have VR leaning controls. You can build a more powerful Rift like device right now and it will play Cryisis 3 .. . For too long , actually since last August Oculus VR and many fan boys often who have not even used rival hardware have criticised the contribution to the HMD and VR scene of these rival devices.
With the release of the developer kit, we ,the people Oculus VR has yet to completely win over ,can finally ask the question what is the Oculus Rift and Oculus VR doing for VR and here at thegameveda I intend to do that with vigor ,bad humour and detail through actual use of the device and in direct comparison with use of and development for rival devices .. ...
Assuming Palmer gets me mine ..before I build my own...
Seriously congrats on the launch to Palmer and all the Oculus team , I am sure I will be screaming praises and criticisms with equal measure as soon as my Rift arrives..
If you are a Rift backer here is the Rift Order Tracker sheet , note you have to update it with your status, but it should give you an idea of how the deliveries are going if it too has not been trolled...and to look at it too long is to risk utter oblivion...
I see no way that the current Oculus VR team will prove successful in a commercial field ,the tech patents of which reside with billion dollar companies for displays, motion sensing , VR leaning control interfaces , cpus and GPUS as well as ownership of development software .
Greater companies have failed to bring VR to fruition , you could argue greater companies like Sony have failed to bring the hmd to mass market . There are solid reasons for this , that to be honest more talented teams and experienced teams of engineers with better support and feedback from real world critics have failed to find solutions for.
Based on my 9 month of experience of dealing with as a backer and observing Oculus VR they will not be leading the VR revolution , not unless something drastic happens .
To transcend from forum trolling fanboyism to a commercial enterprise Palmer , Nate , GabeN , Carmack et al are going to have to stop partying sit down and deflate a few very powerful egos and get real about what they have achieved and can realistically achieve.
The Rift is supposed to solve many of the problems with hmd design , VR control, end user cost , development etc , all of which you can find reams of text and hours of video of Oculus VR and supporters promising ..
We are now approaching the third week of April 2013 ,kept waiting on the most basic information ..delivery dates for a device ... some may come to the conclusion they might as well build their own version of (some of us will) .. others have been misled into believing is the beginning of a viable and lucrative VR development .
As I write Oculus VR has both failed to deliver physically and failed to deliver on the premise of it's mission statement..something they do not seem worried about at all to explain to the people that made all this possible,growing numbers of whom are waking up to the fact that they are not the top priority of Oculus VR, something perhaps future major name backers should perhaps take heed of along with the complete history of the Kickstarter Oculus Rift story...
As I write Oculus VR has both failed to deliver physically and failed to deliver on the premise of it's mission statement..something they do not seem worried about at all to explain to the people that made all this possible,growing numbers of whom are waking up to the fact that they are not the top priority of Oculus VR, something perhaps future major name backers should perhaps take heed of along with the complete history of the Kickstarter Oculus Rift story...
ln the immortal words of the Hip Hop Bards Public Enemy ...
DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE ..
more tails of an Oculus Rift developer ...to follow ..
Namaste to you in the game....
Credits :
of course heartfelt and sincere thanks to Oculus VR , Nate, JC , GabeN and Palmertech/Palmer Luckey and my detractors over on MTBS3D and the Kickstarter Oculus Rift forum ...without you none of this post would have been possible
this content is © and originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/ if you are reading it from any other site that has not provided a link back it has been leached
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