Virtual Reality and Muppet fans push Oculus Rift Kickstarter funding towards $2 million but is it Ultimately Doomed?

Quakecon 2012 has come and gone ...and this year Virtual Reality was the new buzzword (again)...sitting through the main keynote a shocking revelation woke me from the deep trance I had placed my mind and body in to endeavour to persevere through the geeknote sorry keynote. At the point which Mr Carmack was talking along the lines of "my other gyro is fibre optic and sits in a rocket....dude..." I had an epiphany....

John Carmack is Beaker from the Muppets ... why has nobody noticed this before? 

our hero and Quakecon Keynote presenter John Carmack

and Beaker sometime associate of Bunsen 

Why am I risking the wrath of Henson, Zenimax, Bethesda and iD ? Well firstly since John Romero left  iD I have no fear of iD or their games, the old imp jumping from a concealed closet wall trick stopped doing it for me a long time ago ...  

And secondly whilst I saved several hundred dollars/pounds in the Quakecon Steam sale,this year I ended up spending several hundred more thanks to John Carmack`s endorsement of the Oculus Rift  . And so I find my self backing the latest attempt to get the consumer HMD right. 

Not exactly because the tech is awesome but because this is the way I believe the HMD as a mass consumer device has to be developed ,the only way it can be developed and the best way it can be developed. So taking part in that process by funding the kick starter  run is well worth the $335 or so that I just pledged.

For if there was any device whose pre production and perfection was crying out for developer and enthusiast led beta testing  it is the head mounted display. Yes we know Google is on the job with project Glass ready to push those dwindling ad revenues via augmented reality whilst we jump out of planes  but for gamers the dream is virtual reality. Well it is according to game developers at the moment. But let's not get too cocky here kid, celebrity enthusiastic backing ,  millions of dollars from you and I and a pair of $335 ski goggles with head tracking gyros and 2 640 by 800 screens do not mean the Oculus Rift has solved the head mounted display design conundrum , or given you clairvoyance enough to find the location of... ok back from the 70s ... 

So far in the evolution of consumer hmds looking at the most recent generation of these devices  we know Sony have a nice cinema viewer in the HMZT-1 that has gorgeous blacks but is totally impractical for every day use and is to all intents and purposes as comfortable as attaching a toilet to your head and we have the 1080p transparent and highly versatile smd ST1080 with a 180 g weight and true portability. The tech in the ST1080 far surpasses the Oculus Rift and it was fascinating that J C so apparently clued up on HMDs missed out the ST1080 altogether in the keynote sticking largely to the international renowned sport of Sony HMZT1 bashing ..... If you want a consumer HMD right now the ST1080 is the one to go for, but you will have to get in line because the other thing we know about HMDs is that demand is incredibly high.

The new kid in town the Oculus Rift is promises to bring low latency head tracking to add to the virtual reality experience. I say it is way cooler to have full head and body tracking outside the HMD and there exist many ways to achieve this already and eliminate the latency issue altogether take the iPad for instance hooked up to a ST1080 you can use the iPads gyros to control games like Skygamblers and even ids own Rage HD and through Apple TV completely wireless.

On PC Kinect is evolving past the simple console version and you will see head tracking software and hardware exploiting faster cpus, gpus and cameras.Even on consoles I can exploit head ,body  and hand tracking in Child of Eden when using the ST1080 hmd  and go all Minority Report in Ghost Recon Future Soldier's Gun Smith. On the PS3 I can use use Move for precise control in FPS games and again a wonderful 3D version of Child of Eden that will blow your mind when using a HMD like the ST1080. These experiences involve devices that enhance game play as well as immersion, to work they need a light high res display like the ST1080. Try moving your head in a game whilst wearing the HMZT1 and its not only the picture that breaks...

Speaking of Kinect and Move the games and peripherals have hardly set the gaming world alight, with neither of these peripherals managing to move core gamers off their sofas or find themselves being essential to any core game of note. So why would lazy gamers want to move their heads when they have joypads and keyboards? With the Rift relying on you using your head as a mouse, 4 hour FPS gaming sessions are going to hurt, RTS gaming is going to make your head explode .. imagine a session of Diablo III for instance all that incessant mouse clicking around the screen is going to be added to by incessant head jerking as you move the cursor around to attack loot attack heal attack loot. I fear especially for the lives of South Korean pro Starcraft players.. 

There will thus have to be limits on the incorporation and freedom of  head tracking virtual reality in games . The majority of PC gamers right now are not playing the old iD staple FPS, so what use will the Oculus Rift be to that majority. At its current res it will not be able to throw up a Windows 8 Metro ..sorry we cannot use that word any more ...I meant Windows 8 UI or even open an App ...so it will not be of any use for productivity.  By the time it launches there will be 4k rivals from smd , Google will have Project Glass out the door as easily as it had the Nexus 7 launch this year, Sony may have taken some feedback after incinerating its mountain of returned hmzt1s.. and produced a 3D Watchman the size of a pair of shades... 

Aiming your HMD at FPS gamers is not a bad idea though, you can see from my reviews of the HMZT-1 and the ST1080 that FPS games really come alive on HMDs. But at present I use mouse or joypad control, precise control  with fast twitch movements, also ducking in and out of cover in third person games, in these games how is head tracking going to work ? And having such a large fov will mean you have to turn to look for enemies you are used to taking out without moving, this is why the fov on many HMDs is limited it is not a design flaw or shortcoming it is a design choice. And Mr Carmack's personal preference for a larger VR leaning fov is a personal preference not a revolutionary achievement. Nor is his choice of game to launch it Doom 3 ? Really? The most awesome  Virtual Reality Hyped hardware ever and to demo it we are going to have an imp jump out of a concealed closet behind you which you can turn your head round to see... 

I use both the Sony HMZT1 and siliconmicrodisplay ST1080 on a daily  basis and granted whilst I (blissfully) haven't the foggiest what our rocket launching, graphics engine pioneering hero Senior Carmack is going on about most of the time I can totally dig where he's coming from when he talks of no one nailing the virtual reality thing. 

But looking at HMDS from a users point of view, I have to take umbrage with much of negative vibes vs existing HMDs and the promises, promises re the Oculus Rift.

Virtual reality is not going to happen with any hmd in the near future, including the Oculus Rift, the HMD is still locked in the Logie Baird stage with  cognoscenti like Carmack debating which valve or cathode ray tube or gasket to go with. It is not going to happen because our media , games films, operating systems the things we look at on our PCs and consoles are not designed for virtual reality interfaces or displays..

This new HMD promises a far larger field of view than existing HMDs, but comes with a far lower res than core gamers need.What have I learnt from actually using the ST1080 and HMZT1 since their release?

With a HMD you want the highest res clearest picture and one which maintains that clarity across a limited field of view in order to keep your movie, work or game entirely in your field of view. The Rift seems to be going against this grain. The only way I can see it  being beneficial is if it came with a 4K res, let you place things like open windows, browsers , games on a giant field of view ..yes like Minority Report or even that kids room in Gamer...

Fov is irrelevant, HMD viewing is subjective some people see toilet role tubes, some people vomit ,some  read and type text across a flat 100 inch screen, the optics used and my head nose eye size mean for me I see a perfectly flat screen using the ST1080, which I can move my eyes around, without the feeling Mr Carmack described as looking at the work through toilet roll tubes, which is the feeling you get when using the HMZT1 .

The irrelevance of fov becomes clear when you own more than one hmd. Now complex maths or simple maths for some show the HMZT1 should have a larger image than the ST1080. In actual use it does not, the higher resolution of the ST1080 means the picture that fills the 100 inch display is far more detailed than the 720p res of the HMZT1, or the sub 720p res of the Oculus Rift. So playing Crysis 2 in 1080p 3D on the ST1080 even though it has a quoted lower fov just feels bigger than the higher fov HMZT1 because there is  discernible difference in on screen detail and fx. Just like when you go up from a 720p tv to 1080p or a 1080p resolution to a 2500 by 1600 resolution on the same 30 inch monitor. There is simply more world visible on the same screen at a higher res. Don't believe me ? Get hold of these HMDs and try for yourself..

Using a HMD is dependent on fitting ,eye position, strength, near vision,head size, how is the Oculus VR handling this ? The HMZT1 is impractical to use as designers spent most of their time extolling the virtues of OLED displays and fast refresh rates. Far less time and budget was devoted to how it would actually be fitted to individuals and how long they could tolerate it.
Strapping a Ski Goggle style display to Mr Carmacks head may work for him but it could be a total fail for the head,eye,nose and face shape of a significant amount of would be customers. All HMDs face this problem post launch, no one has found a way of tailoring the design and fitting on a personal basis ..e.g. scanning head ,eye ,nose and face details for each user and tailoring a fit to them. To do so would take a military style budget..

Further one of the joys of using the ST1080 is I can look down to my keyboard or surroundings, or look through the transparent display to them.I am still connected to my surroundings, I am not entombed in my gaming world and can reach down for my drink or mouse see it and then switch my eyes back to the display. You may think that not having light blockers and a completely closed off display effects your experience , but in actual use once your eyes are focused on a 1080p 3D game or image you will forget that the real world is still there in your peripheral vision and when you need to reach for something you just look down and out of the viewer , reach for the keyboard , your phone , tea or pass port to hand to the nice Air hostess who just asked for it .

Portability is thus one of the most awesome things to look for in a HMD , the Oculus Rift does not look at all portable and with a lack of transparency you will not be able to see the air hostess coming or leaving down the aisle on your plane journey ... but then again you probably don't get out much if you are still playing Doom 3...

Resolution is paramount when reading text,working and playing. At this stage in the HMDs evolution you should not even go near  a device without a minimum 1080p res. And all this talk of 3D being limited to 720p is nonsense, it is on consoles but the ST1080 scales that 720p 3D to the 1080p sized view it gives and this looks far sharper than the 720p HMZT1 I can tell you. Also on PC you are not limited to 720p 3D , you can go beyond to true 1080p side by side, frame packed or over under all you need is the gpu, cpu and ram to do it and most gaming laptops already can. Crysis 2 ultra high res textures in 1080p 3D on your HMD right now...or Doom 3 side by side at sub console resolutions..

I know the benefit of high res  from  comparing the st1080 to hmzt1 over the last 4 months, l also know that all this talk of hz and lag are largely irrelevant when playing today's 5 or 6 console games that are 3d enabled and worth playing, further whatever your monitor refresh rate bluray 3d is locked at 24 hz and a HMD like the st1080 gives you comfortable and impressive ghost free 3d gaming on PC without the need for special software , or even AMD HD3D or nvidia 3D Vision, wait till you pump your old games through Tridef 3D!  

The sweetspot issue :  HMDs particularly low resolution ones  have sweet spot problems ,so quoting fovs ,boasting about large screen sizes or immersion is frankly misleading. When you actually use a hmd what matters is how much of that cinema sized large fov screen you can see with crystal clarity. This is where the ST1080 bests the HMZT1,I can see a crystal clear 100 inch image read all the text in a game or whilst working.The Oculus Rift claims to have a virtual reality sized fov and screen size ,now I just do not see how image clarity and coherence can be maintained across the quoted distance when a similar resolution smaller fov HMZT1 has a tiny sweetspot in which the 3d illusion and picture clarity is maintained.

The relevance of high resolution. Once you solve the sweet spot issue and assuming you can produce a clear image from corner pixel to corner pixel across the virtual reality HMD that you claim is different to all the others your users are going to notice that low res , especially if you are aiming it at the gaming crowd.

On paper looking at rival HMDs the Oculus Rift could be woefully under powered even on release. 

As an exercise in advancing the consumer HMD this is an awesome project to back,but it will be superseded before launching by rivals. Head and body tracking will have advanced in both console and PC arenas and cost will have come down by the next and third major generation of consumer HMDs. 


I would recommend senior Carmack to get a hold the ST1080 ,for me the ultimate HMD will be the 4k res version of the ST1080 or ST4K .Right now the finest HMD experience is the ST1080. Simply because it has hundreds of usage scenarios and is portable, unlike the HMZT1 and the Rift which look like one use products that cannot go outside your room.

What the developers of the Oculus Rift have to realise is that we expect to use a HMD for much more than Doom 3 or 4, limiting such a device to just games has the developers heading down the old Gunpei Yokei Virtual Boy route.

Currently I love the ability to be away from my monster LCD displays and bring up a 1080 p 100 inch display which weighs 180g , is transparent or opaque depending on the scenery behind me and my preference for that scenery ... and is powered by USB! How cool is that ..very actually this is where HMDs need to go this is where they already are with devices like the smd ST1080. 


With all these doubts why am I backing the Oculus Rift ? Well I can remember back in the day when the likes of iD and Epic were kickstarting a fledgling gpu market supporting Voodoo and a little company called Nvidia that to this day is kept on its toes by a little company once called simply ATI...

When we have the same level of competition in the hmd field then people we will finally literally see virtual reality before our very eyes. If anything the interest in the Oculus Rift should spur on rivals to improve and better their products .

Right I am off to try Doom 3 and all those iD games I just bought on the Quakecon Steam sale with tridef 3d on the ST1080 ...100 inch 3D ghost free transparent Wolfenstein 3D Spear of Destiny... more to follow... 


 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 

Oculus Rift pre orders are up now : Are you feelin Luckey Cyber Punk?

There's a quiet revolution going on virtually in front of your very eyes ... 2012 is the year of the hmd, the head mounted display. I would know, I just got rid of my third Sony HMZT1, decided not to bother with the HMZT2 and am into my 5th month of playing with the smd ST1080, just watched Prometheus on it in 1080p and 3D thanks to Tridef 3D. And who could  forget that fashion show where super models got to play with Project Glass... So all in all 2012 has been a good year for fans of consumer hmds ..

The fun of all these devices is they are the beginning of a new technology, as soon as I can  I will be comparing the Oculus Rift to the ST1080 ..  as soon as I can I may be taking bits out of one to add to the other ... baby steps ...

If all those abbreviations mean nothing to you then you probably missed out on Palmer Luckey's  Valve and iD pushed Oculus Rift .The Rift finally brings one thing the other hmds have not, namely low latency head tracking . It also promises a ridiculously vast 120 degree field of view..

If you missed out on the Kickstarter run, then hurry up and pre order your Oculus Rift for $300 .. shipping Jan 2013... 

Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game from Oculus on Vimeo.

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 

Why is the founder of the Oculus Rift insulting backers like me on forums ? Will Arrogance and the VR Troll army kill off Palmer's and their own VR dream ?

This post is going to be a bit Yin and Yang ... it is intended to inform and educate young Grasshopper ..sorry Palmer Luckey...and also attempt to make the whippersnapper chuckle a might ...as he finds me lacking in the hillarity department...  my brand of English sarcasm and lack of wit befuddling his neurons as might one of those humorous observations made by   Penny every week or so to Sheldon on the Big Bang theory...

From my experience as a Kickstarter Oculus Rift backer I do not see the birth of the Oculus Rift or it's impact on VR going further than this first batch release of developer kits ..unless something changes drastically and I do not mean the hardware or software... the company's attitude to the backers has to change.

I have held off commenting on the Oculus as I do not want to jinx my delivery (hopefully in a couple of weeks ), but I am starting to get worried re the nature of comments on the Kickstarter message board ... could arrogance and  blog trolls do for Palmer's VR dream ..?

So there was I about to write how I am picking up signs of the descent of the Oculus Kickstarter forum into all out troll war when I think I found an example of the creator Palmer Luckey himself vs little old me! ..and a very recent comment too, quite different to the "offical " response he gave me on the "official" kickstarter Oculus Rift dev forum  ... in another respected forum...as his alleged alter ego PalmerTech 

I was recently asked to post some videos onto MTSB3D , having managed to combine headtracking , LEAP Motion and Kinect Voice Recognition to show VR control methods can work together without latency issues even on 10 year old hardware and games  here.. I may not be Carmack or Abrash ... but it's not like they managed to right? According to them we need a super quantum user interface..sorry going a bit Gibson again...  Further I showed how this is  something anyone can achieve with existing commercially available hardware.

Searching through Google to see if the comments and videos I posted  showed up I found an insulting comment  from a nice wise MTSB3D forum member, quite insulting but who cares right ? What was interesting was the follow up comment and who made it...

On Fri Jan 04 2013 3:00pm brantlew  from Austin Texas , Golden Eyed Wiseman! Or Woman " posted

 "Bah...the Kickstarter forums are weak. I noticed that thegameveda just posted his comments on the tracker update. Need I say more? Maybe the Hip Hop Gamer and thegameveda can join forces to make the least insightful forum on the web."

I do not care for the insult and I am honoured to be mentioned in the same sentence as anyone called The Hip Hop Gamer  ..But this shows you the contempt that these people hold the WHOLE cadre of  Kickstarter backers of the Oculus Rift in ..and what's more the founder of Oculus allegedly agrees:


On Fri Jan 04 2013 3:14pm  Palmertech 3D Angel Eyes (Moderator)  responded 

At least HipHopGamer is entertaining! 

Now here is the original comment I made on the Kickstarter forum : 

On the same day would you believe! 
"

thegameveda on January 4

Great to have some news , I have been testing a prototype of the Zeiss headtracker herehttp://tinyurl.com/ax327r2 and here http://tinyurl.com/atlv5d6 . I can perceive no latency when using this device . I have several thousand PC and console games to test at present with the head tracker.All the videos are recordings of actual gameplay using the headtracker alone. I find the ability to hold an on screen cursor dead ..as dead as a mouse left alone on a desk..using the head tracker is vital .check my aiming in FPS ,TPS and sim games using headtracking . I never expected to be able to play games with a headtracker before the Zeiss ..which requires 0 drivers or calibration . I hope Palmer and co are not lost in endless upping of tech specs that all us gamers get lost in .. The Rift needs to release to have an effect .I cannot wait to test the Rift but I am worried it will be superseded by competitors , you must find a way to emulate mouse control driver free like the Zeiss and allow other hmd uses that do not require games or apps to be Rift enabled .. Other hmds are plug and play and portable too and here right now .Sometimes the simplest solutions are best . It may be cool in house to compare tech site scores for latency , but I think for commercial success perceived latency by joe public is more relevant , as a gamer I perceive 0 latency using the Zeiss headtracker and I am able to state that as fact because I have the device on my head right now .We are all rooting for you guys to succeed so please get those dev kits out soon so we can spread the word and get back to you with real world use outside tech labs.."

to which Palmer replied 

" 

Creator Oculus on January 4

Hi thegameveda,

The tracker in the Rift is actually 5x faster than the Cinemizer sensor, so it should be up to your performance standards. Note, however, that being able to hold a view as stable as an unmoving mouse is not a desirable characteristic for a VR device. The only way to achieve that is to heavily filter the data and add a deadzone for movement, which increases the latency and reduces the sensitivity of the tracking. If a particular game needs that ability, they can certainly add it, but we are going to provide the highest performance we possible can.

Mouse emulation is not something we plan on doing, mainly because it cannot provide an experience even close to natively integrated head tracking. Mouse emulation is higher latency, drifts, and it cannot provide any roll to the camera. The only way to get a great VR experience is for the game to be designed with VR in mind.

-Palmer

to which I replied 
"

thegameveda on January 5

@ Palmer : many thanks for your reply , this is what I love about HMDS , in my adventures I have been in touch with the CEO of smd , the people at Zeiss and now yourself. This is a field where developers are genuinely interested in customer input. The reason we need to hold a view stable with the head tracker is primarily to aim through scopes in FPS games (eghttp://tinyurl.com/azbqrqt)or maintain a bead on a target, be it Doom 3 or Far Cry 3, in the comments to my videos cursor jitter (technical term) is one of the main concerns. The other use is to navigate Windows , icons tiles and apps , select switches etc in cockpits , or track a stationary object while moving at speed around it ..circle strafing in an FPS or maintaining a lock on a target in a flight sim ..like when I paint targets in my Arma 2 flight videohttp://tinyurl.com/ak4zbpr. Getting games designed with VR in mind is key when you release the dev kits into the wild ..that's when we should start seeing (!) the true potential of the Rift ..(and yes that was another vain attempt to push the release forward)..many thanks for getting back to me"

well we can all see what Palmer really thinks about me in his alleged above comment on Jan 4th in the MTBS3D forum post ... 

What I take away from this is that perhaps Oculus has an unhealthy level of contempt for it's backers, of which I am one of the first ,and that contempt  begins with it's founder Palmer Luckey. 

What I also take is that Oculus see competition and feedback  as a threat, in fact any time I have begged to differ with the comments made by Abrash, Carmack or Palmer it feels like my comments have been shut down or will be, there is no room for discussion, our way or the high way ...go check my comments on the Kickstarter Oculus Rift Forum and the responses to them .. This is what will cause the Rift to fail. It is not always the best hardware that succeeds, it is the hardware with the most uptake by consumers .. yes we can all cite the Betamax vs VHS example (Google it young Palmer) ... oh my ... I feel some of that contempt rubbing off on me.. must be contagious ...

The hmd and VR are evolving as I type, my use of hmds evolves every day, the headtracker, display,control interface ,in the Rift are already surpassed, , sdks are already out there for devices like the Zeiss headtracker that do not require $1500 to develop for , the myriad uses for hmds and VR are not dependent on my buying or developing exclusively for Rift . I can play any game in 3D,on OLED or LCOS hmds I can carry in my pocket, I do not need to read tech jargon on prototype components only available to a few industry insiders  ,I play any console and or tablet game with hand tracking, head tracking combined. As a developer will I chose to invest time in a single platform device on hardware the final specs of which are going to change by the time I have my engine up and running .. as happened to Carmack fi?  If my input is not needed , in fact if you are going to insult me acting like a teenager on a blog then more power to you  .. what you say is out there for everyone to see .. what goes around comes around .. this is hardly the behaviour you expect from the founder of a company ... that has yet to release it's first consumer product..and is interested in fostering a community of devs.. 

I was expecting to write a piece on waiting for the Oculus Rift and recent positive developments ..spurred on by a flurry of recent updates..

I thought the point of being an Oculus Rift dev was to be able to comment and improve the development of the product , that is not going to happen if the founder of Oculus Rift is out there on private forums insulting backers by name. 

As the founder of a company and community you need to be inspirational ,not insulting for your backers..

Fascinating that a simple consumer /developer from across the pond can cause such a reaction. By reaction I mean treating me with contempt ...there is a wonderful feelgood video of Palmer thanking backers up on the Kickstarter site , maybe the sincerity is virtual too...

I talk to and communicate with other hmd and VR leaning developers all the time , people ask for my input ,send me hardware, people come to see me ..yeah go figure playing games for 35 years plus had it's value, that is why I have been using headtracking now for 3 months on PC and console games with multiple hmds... whilst experts comment and hypothesise on hardware that may be released in 1 to 2 years with VR software to follow and a phantom mass user base ready to tune in and drop out of reality . Talking about problems that simply do not exist or impact the end user on hardware that has yet to exist ..

Frankly I do not understand why he (Palmer) says one thing on the Kickstarter Oculus forum to backers like myself and then allegedly  goes and insults me on the MTBS3D forums .. the birthing pool for what we VR fans are waiting on as the Rift .. 

Who knows perhaps it was my original pamphlet entitled ..Virtual Reality and Muppet fans push Oculus Rift Kickstarter funding towards $2 Million but is it Ultimately Doomed?. In which I a great Muppet fan, came to the conclusion  that John Carmack (whom I sometimes refer to as Senior Carmack in my best High Chaparal Manalito accent) as Beaker from the Muppets ..  Beaker ..we know has this week let down a lot of Oculus backers by not having Doom 3 ( a game almost as old as Palmer ) Rift ready .... I never saw Doom 3 as a good launch title for the dev kit and have commented on this often , based on my experience of hmds and how they handle black , the fact that Doom 3 was bad even back when it was released and more recently the backlash against non OLED hmds by consumers expecting high FPS and jet black , abyss like black reproduction from their devices  ..just go check the ST1080 forums....

you tell me who is Beaker and who is Carmack ?

our hero and Quakecon Keynote presenter John Carmack

and Beaker sometime associate of Bunsen 

Now Palmer ...if only you'd asked John Romero ..for an Oculus Rift launch title ... VR Daikatan...

The birthing of the of the Oculus Rift has been chronicled on many a blog , blogs which are usually littered with trolls extolling pillars of flaming angst on any who dare to differ in any way to their perception, they having been part of the "scene" longer than others, you can find  some of the trolling on MTSB3D by and various other reputed AV blogs re myself.

I find it flattering, being trolled by the great Palmer Luckey himself...  

Back to my original purpose for this post the increasing Troll like commenting on the Kicksarter Oculus Rift forum. I backed Palmer and Oculus as soon as I could, at a time when I was just getting into the swing of things with hmds, dumping the HMZT series, facing off the AV blog troll army who were adamant that as I had two smd ST1080s ( I have 4 now .. and a fifth hmd the Cinemizer OLED ..granted nowhere near the 50 or so Palmer has! ) arriving with perfect screens which the AV blog trolls ( google thegameveda and there are sure to be some results) must mean I work for smd ... I wish .. I am a user like you, what I picked up from writing about the hmds I OWN and use every day is that the internet is full of trolls ready to commit tech seppiku just to get their negative vibes across. Often these are the people who claim to be most interested in such technology being successful .. they actually just need to keep it to themselves and their small blog cliques and through the trolling the interweb end up talking it into failure ( often without ever experiencing it) ..

What we the people must remember and young fledgling developers,like smd, Oculus VR or even larger developers like Carl Zeiss and Sony and must take heed of is this is only a a vocal minority. What I don't expect is to find Palmer bad mouthing his backers and enabling this behaviour.. Seems  a little nihilistic ..no?

The hmd and VR are still niche, yet to go consumer in a major way. It would be a disaster if a new troll army ,fed by comments like Palmer's vs me for instance,took down young Palmer's Rift before it has even arrived in developers hands. The hmd is evolving , with developers taking feedback from users , users who themselves like myself , are moving into development for those hmds or looking for the answer that really clouds the hmds and VRs future .. no not latency Mr Carmack... but the simple question of what is it for?

Just now I used my LEAP Motion, through the unity sandbox demo to reach into pseudo Augmented Reality space through the 3D transparent LCOS display of one of my smd ST1080s ,powered by 1 USB cable , displaying 1080p native res 3D from my Intel HD3000 powered laptop... I reached in and through the magic of LEAP I grabbed hold of a virtual object ...seeing my actual hand through the transparent AR ready LCOS display , with headtracking I could look around it thanks to the Zeiss headtracker . Shutting the Unity sandbox down , looking through my transparent hmd to the laptop screen behind, I pulled up a few minutes of The Hobbit running in 1080p 3D ...watching whilst looking at and thinking about composing this blog post as I could see through the picture back to my laptop screen , bored I watched some Wreck It Ralph in 3D , whilst I worked on this sermon...and then switched to playing some AntiChamber with LEAP Motion in 3D and a little System Shock 2 in 1080p 3D ...

Well I have to counter all these negative vibes somehow....

A year or so after the release of the smd ST1080 there is still no hmd that can touch it's native resolution , or allow you to do the things combined that I just wrote about ...or indeed type this text in a high enough resolution to be able to replace your desktop display at a native 1080p res ...

Also this week I  have been playing EVERY PS3 and Xbox 360 game in OLED 3D where possible, with LEAP Motion combined with Zeiss Headtracking and even Kinect voice recognition using the Cinemizer OLED hmd. With the ability to do away with legacy controller/joypad altogether...

Come Monday I will be playing Bioshock Infinite in OLED 3D with hand tracking , voice recog , headtracking and on a display that weighs less than some shades and has sharper colours and blacks than your 80 inch LED tv monstrosity ..try taking that on the train ...using what people will tell you is non gaming hardware..because I can ..

I doubt many people out there have done of any of this or are aware they can do any of this ..

The tragedy is that very few of you are going to be able to experience or replicate this , because of the constant negative diatribes against fledgling companies like smd , Oculus VR and even larger companies like Carl Zeiss by the blog troll armies out there ..

The hmd and VR field is the most exciting field in tech at the moment , it is the reason my 30 inch LCDs sit dormant and the only reason I go near a Plasma is to film demos ... so Palmer help us get on board and maybe we will help solve some of the many problems and answer the questions that need to answered for us to be in the Matrix this time next year... 

So in a week where Oculus announced Doom 3 BFG has been dropped ( a very good thing ) , people are waking up to the idea that the Oculus is a serious developers tool and that means paying $1500 for a Unity Pro license ( which you would expect to do any way if you are a serious developer) , I say great things are in motion on the Oculus front. But arrogance will be your downfall... Very few people realize that all hmds are alpha , the very use and purpose of which there are many .. from FPV, commercial , consumer to even fashion accessories ( Project Glass famously wearing supermodels last year) ...is undecided. We owners , users, investors , backers and developers are the alpha testers... just think how much the Rift has changed since last August..

If you want the Matrix ...go watch a movie ... otherwise developers and consumers alike stop trolling or the VR revolution will end again ...just like the machines taking out Zion ..again...and again... all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again...If that Geek ref emesis doesn't entertain Palmer ...

I  expect to see some great news re Oculus Rift at the GDC this week and come on people it is time to praise Palmer and Co for what they achieved in such a short time whilst reminding them that it will be the community that makes the Rift commercial and that community deserves your utmost respect irrespective of how lame you find their jokes and Muppet/Carmack comparisons ..


So here's a deal for you Palmer , you endeavour to get my Rift out to me on time  and be a little more considerate of what backers who put their money and time into coming up with hilarious blog posts like this and long minutes of research into matching Muppets with games and hardware developers, oh as well as backing the Rift , supporting it , taking part in your Kickstarter Oculus Rift developer forum and I will endeavor to be more entertaining for you ... oh and I might just be coding that one VR app that elevates the Rift beyond a Jimmy Fallon crotch gazing joke... it's not like Carmack came through for you or the backers  now is it? Perhaps this is just another sign of contempt .. It tasks me why great luminaries the likes of Carmack , Abrash even the evergreen and ever late Chris Roberts ( we will be waiting till 2017 for Star Citizen , remember Freelancer's gestation ? It took more than half your life Palmer! ) would be bothered seeking funding on Kickstarter when they can get millions elsewhere ...

This is the whole worry re Kickstarter ... do these great and powerful people really care what we backers think.. or is it just the latest fad way to get publicity ... 

But Oculus beware if you act in this way towards backers and feed those expert blog trolls they will come back and bite you , currently the Kickstarter Oculus Rift forum is a place which is nowhere near the developer mentality needed to take the Rift to consumer level .. that is something I totally agree with . Insulting developers may win you kudos with blog trolls but will also lose you developers..

I had originally intended to post on the forum to ask devs to calm down and let Palmer carry on ...before I came across the above insulting comment from Palmer himself.. now I know  how V'jer felt when let down by it's creator...


And for those younger than the Internet ... some of this is sarcasm ... but perhaps so too is the whole Kickstarter run by Oculus VR and the Rift.... that's the yin and the yang of it !  Mr Luckey you are the founder of an allegedly very grown up company ... not a blog troll ...aren't you ?

I don't expect an apology ...just get me my Rift on time Palmer...and I will answer you with cold hard facts and solutions to many of the problems with VR and hmd use on the MTB3D forums and as an Oculus dev, just like I have the makers of the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED, Silicon Micro Display ST1080 ... and they find me very entertaining I might add... and without insulting me on major tech forums or my having to resort to my Elvis impression...

Thank You Very Much ... huhuhuhuhuh ....huh.. 

oh that left a bad taste ... almost as much as reading that comment on MTBS3D... 

It is going to be fascinating being a member of the MTBS3D forum, there is so much conjecture about VR and hmds and so little comment from actual users that any one listens to .. the company that brings VR to the masses is going to be the company that listens to the masses and does not insult them or treat them with contempt. 

The reason why no one has done VR to date is that companies look for walled garden solutions , every VR leaning device however good it is , be it the LEAP or the Rift will fail if it tries to dictate use and control application delivery . This tech cannot be sold the way our GPUS were back in the days of 3DFX or Voodoo or the way iTunes runs. Oculus was meant to be open source , developer and consumer led according to the original MTBS3D thread .. how far has the dream moved from it's original course and can you Palmer set it back on course .. or are the major investors in the Rift now dictating it's course? 

See you in the game Palmer ... !! How about a Zeiss headtracker vs Oculus Headtracker  Cinemizer or ST1080 vs Rift game of Hawken sometime? Or when I get my Rift an intercontinental game of Hawken my Rift vs yours ...is anybody real outside name tech blogs and devs actually playing anything real on the Rift ...


there ..now.. Did that not entertain you or do I need to do a History of Hip Hop gaming routine with Jimmy Fallon and my esteemed colleague The Hip Hop Gamer to get you going .. 

Good luck to all the Oculus VR team at GDC ,stay hungry,stay foolish but stay respectful...there's only one Steve Jobs! Well there's actually his reincarnation....but that's for another time Grasshopper ... Got to go now I can feel the Sun starting to harden my skin...


More tails of an Oculus Rift backer from thegameveda to follow... 

Could someone tell me who The Hip Hop Gamer is and what is VR for?

update far from ending the saga continues : 

Why is the founder of Oculus Rift Allowing Backers to insult and defame me on the Kickstarter forum after apologizing ?And why single out an African American and an Indian?

and 9 months after backing the Rift :

A funny thing happened on the way to the Oculus Rift Developer Forum: Or everything you wanted to know about VR as an Oculus Rift backer but were afraid to ask...

this content is © and originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/  if you are reading it from any other site thU at has not provided a link back it has been leached 

Why is the founder of Oculus Rift Allowing Backers to insult and defame me on the Kickstarter forum after apologizing ?And why single out an African American and an Indian?

Dear Palmer Luckey .....

I continue to be subjected to negative derogatory and in cases defamatory comments the result of which is causing unjustifiable damage to my online reputation and business.

Damage that stemmed as explained from the actions and in actions of yourself Palmer Luckey. Damage that you could have prevented, could prevent if you chose to ..in light of the fact that Oculus VR's claims of considering it's developers as close friends .. 

This has totally destroyed my piece of mind. I tried to touch base with Oculus VR with some as I explained required taste humour in my last post and an email to you, humour is of course subjective and does not always cross borders. As always I tried to offer some advice , posted on the Kickstarter dev forum and have contacted and received a response from Palmer Luckey (in a private email), that I do not consider sufficient as it has not halted the torrent of trolls on the kickstarter forum or addressed the damage being done, but seeing as I am getting nowhere let's delve a little deeper into why and how I feel slighted and how I believe a small group of Oculus Rift supporters enabled by Palmer Luckey and his actions and inaction in this matter continue to damage me.

This post is going to contain no intentional humour ... really ..almost .. and absolutely no Hip Hop (I have 0 Hip Hop cred) 

And now for the serious stuff...

Consider my  blog/Youtube is part of how I earn my living, where I relax, where I comment,for me , the name TheGameVeda is something I have worked very hard to even begin to establish reaching a point where people and I mean companies actually are asking me for solutions to VR , tech and game development problems ..or bothered what I write about.

Some people have asked why I feel slighted by you Palmer Luckey but from your recent apology and additional comments on the Rift forum I can see that you can see perfectly well how... this is how 

1. He Palmer through action/inaction has

i.failed in his duty as a MTBS3D forum moderator and in his attitude towards backers who have made the Oculus Rift possible:
ii.done nothing to stop the ongoing damage to my blog/company name.
iii.Palmer has sent a private email, which I really fail to see the sincerity of or use of as it is totally private ..  Something I would have expected him to do in public to the world as he was man enough to insult me in the public domain on the MTBS3D, failed to defend me and the backers of the Rift and allowed the "Hip Hop Gamer" to be insulted too.
iv.Oculus VR and Palmer Luckey continue to do nothing about those that continue to insult me on the Kickstarter forum

2. This entire incident stemmed from my simply commenting as a Rift developer on the Kickstarter forum a serious comment re the headtracker, as we all know the Rift which was to launch before December 2012 had been delayed. Some Oculus supporters seem to see any form of competition as a threat as you can see from their comments. None of my detractors are people who have actually discussed the development of VR with me on the official Kickstarter forum for developers of the Oculus VR device .. though they have not stopped insulting or defaming me even after Palmer has privately apologized...



I tried to resolve this with apologetic humour in my last blog post which was about the troll war kicking off on the dev forum , but that doesn't seem to have worked , though recent comments do prove my point,  go check the Kickstarter Oculus Rift forum for @thegameveda comments. 

Thank you for those who have had the decency to see both sides .. 

This (again for some)  is the sequence of events  but now with a detailed explanation of why I take offence and where the damage lies . I expect this to be answered in full not by cliques of Oculus devs raging against me or for me , but by employees of Oculus VR and Palmer publicly..

Original comments ( on the Kickstarter Blog) 

thegameveda on January 4

Great to have some news , I have been testing a prototype of the Zeiss headtracker herehttp://tinyurl.com/ax327r2 and here http://tinyurl.com/atlv5d6 . I can perceive no latency when using this device . I have several thousand PC and console games to test at present with the head tracker.All the videos are recordings of actual gameplay using the headtracker alone. I find the ability to hold an on screen cursor dead ..as dead as a mouse left alone on a desk..using the head tracker is vital .check my aiming in FPS ,TPS and sim games using headtracking . I never expected to be able to play games with a headtracker before the Zeiss ..which requires 0 drivers or calibration . I hope Palmer and co are not lost in endless upping of tech specs that all us gamers get lost in .. The Rift needs to release to have an effect .I cannot wait to test the Rift but I am worried it will be superseded by competitors , you must find a way to emulate mouse control driver free like the Zeiss and allow other hmd uses that do not require games or apps to be Rift enabled .. Other hmds are plug and play and portable too and here right now .Sometimes the simplest solutions are best . It may be cool in house to compare tech site scores for latency , but I think for commercial success perceived latency by joe public is more relevant , as a gamer I perceive 0 latency using the Zeiss headtracker and I am able to state that as fact because I have the device on my head right now .We are all rooting for you guys to succeed so please get those dev kits out soon so we can spread the word and get back to you with real world use outside tech labs.."

to which Palmer replied 

" 

Creator Oculus on January 4

Hi thegameveda,

The tracker in the Rift is actually 5x faster than the Cinemizer sensor, so it should be up to your performance standards. Note, however, that being able to hold a view as stable as an unmoving mouse is not a desirable characteristic for a VR device. The only way to achieve that is to heavily filter the data and add a deadzone for movement, which increases the latency and reduces the sensitivity of the tracking. If a particular game needs that ability, they can certainly add it, but we are going to provide the highest performance we possible can.

Mouse emulation is not something we plan on doing, mainly because it cannot provide an experience even close to natively integrated head tracking. Mouse emulation is higher latency, drifts, and it cannot provide any roll to the camera. The only way to get a great VR experience is for the game to be designed with VR in mind.

-Palmer

 
to which I replied 
"

thegameveda on January 5

@ Palmer : many thanks for your reply , this is what I love about HMDS , in my adventures I have been in touch with the CEO of smd , the people at Zeiss and now yourself. This is a field where developers are genuinely interested in customer input. The reason we need to hold a view stable with the head tracker is primarily to aim through scopes in FPS games (eghttp://tinyurl.com/azbqrqt)or maintain a bead on a target, be it Doom 3 or Far Cry 3, in the comments to my videos cursor jitter (technical term) is one of the main concerns. The other use is to navigate Windows , icons tiles and apps , select switches etc in cockpits , or track a stationary object while moving at speed around it ..circle strafing in an FPS or maintaining a lock on a target in a flight sim ..like when I paint targets in my Arma 2 flight videohttp://tinyurl.com/ak4zbpr. Getting games designed with VR in mind is key when you release the dev kits into the wild ..that's when we should start seeing (!) the true potential of the Rift ..(and yes that was another vain attempt to push the release forward)..many thanks for getting back to me"

these are all quite serious comments , serious questions and answers. No one reading them is going to come to the conclusion I am insane, psycho or a web comedian like the Hip Hop Gamer ..more on that later. But what I did not realize is that it did not matter what I wrote as a backer of the Rift. There is complete contempt towards us from Oculus...The existence of technology , headtracker technology that did not have perceived latency , that could emulate a mouse which gave it access to 1000s of games and apps across PCs and consoles ( see my videos ..no Hip Hop involved .. I'm more Heavy Metal ) and allowed for degrees of freedom tracking without drivers on basic hardware ..namely the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED headtracker (check my reviews ) clearly enraged Palmer and still has the Rift trolls commenting ...he went from considering me as a developer and close friend as he says in his email of all developers .. to ridiculing me and helping to in the most heinous way ...not to my face ..but on another forum altogether the MTBS3D forum:


by chance I came across insulting and defamatory comment that followed on from the above after posting this video on the MTBS3D forum



on the MTBS3D forums you can find the post there here GOOGLING for my post though revealed the following comments i was otherwise oblivious of:


On Fri Jan 04 2013 3:00pm brantlew  from Austin Texas , Golden Eyed Wiseman! Or Woman " posted

 "Bah...the Kickstarter forums are weak. I noticed that thegameveda just posted his comments on the tracker update. Need I say more? Maybe the Hip Hop Gamer and thegameveda can join forces to make the least insightful forum on the web."

I am going to separate and take apart this insulting and racist comment.

a)"Bah...the Kickstarter forums are weak"
i.The reader will note this is vs the entire Kickstarter Oculus Rift developer community that post on the forum Now  although Brantlew is insultingly calling us weak he seems to have  missed the fact that Oculus has missed its launch in November/ December 2012 so it may be more accurate to say that the forums are weak because we have nothing but vapour to comment on. No one even now in March 2013 can actually comment on the Rift other than their hopes for it . There is no Rift , it missed its launch ergo the forums are indeed weak because of the delay by Oculus not because of who is on that forum or the contribution they are trying to make in the total absence of product to further the cause of VR..or as we will see their race , sense of humour or taste in music...

b) " I noticed that thegameveda just posted his comments on the tracker update. Need I say more?"
i. Brantlew is someone who has chased and followed my comments on other forums, I am usually very quick with seeing trends in tech and therefore I get to tech before most people hear about it. Companies , international companies ask me for advice. So you will find me on forums like the siliconmicrodisplay forum  , you will also find Brantlew . You will also find the CEO of smd having to defend me for being an early user of his product the smd ST1080 . Brantlew has a bone to pick as I get there before him every time... Why is Palmer talking to me ,why is Paul Jin talking to me why are Zeiss talking to me? Who am I ? Well I seem to be someone rising in prominence in the field of VR and hmds ..which some people do not like as you can see from the comments on various forums..Wise companies might chose to benefit from this experience... but Brantlew isn't happy that Oculus is now talking to me...
ii. With total lack of release of the Rift at this point in time , there was only one Oculus developer outside the actual team that was at this time using a headtracker of the kind intended for the Rift .me..in this case the  Zeiss Cinemizer OLED headtracker . So I made what I think are quite valid arguments , what Palmer missed in his rush to impress me with the Rift trackers 5 x faster speed ( although how we define that we will see in a couple of weeks when my Rift ships) is that the Zeiss tracker also does all the degrees of freedom axes movement. And that some of  the questions people always ask me about headtracking in games like can you aim steady or can I play game X with it , which I attempted to explain have  been answered through mouse emulation. Which can be used in addition to dof axes. So ok agree to disagree .. this is a serious grown up developer discussion I thought I was having on a grown up forum ...forum for developers and people interested in VR leaning control like headtrackers..
iii.This is a prejudical direct insult against me by someone who does not know me other than being in envy of how I seem to find myself in contact with or sought after by various tech luminaries or the fact that I am not minded to shy away from telling them where they could do better ...He Brantlew has absolutely nothing to contribute on headtracking or VR tech in his comment.  He is annoyed he has found me on smd forums ,communicating with Palmer, read my blog on hmds and opinions on the Rift .. , which I have had concerns over since it's inception .. the same concerns that around 10000 backers and a couple of millionaire backers will have had too .. 


c:)"Maybe the Hip Hop Gamer and thegameveda can join forces" to make the least insightful forum on the web."

iv. Brantlew from Texas is making a racist comment on the MTBS3D forum

From my blog name and my videos you will be able to pick up that I am indeed Indian , actually a British Indian .. of the subcontinent variety. And the great Hip Hop Gamer is African American I believe .. as you can see here

i.This comment insults  two ethnic minority people ( who have never met : myself and the great Hip Hop Gamer )
ii. who rely on technology to make their living, but in entirely different ways , which Brentlew clearly has a problem with
iii.he is linking two members of tech community on the basis of their race. Two he holds in low esteem and who are not aware of his comments.
iv. it is clearly disparaging and defamatory to both and racist . Both Hip Hop Gamer and myself being ethnic minorities are well aware when someone is trying to make a sly racist comment and someone follows that up too. 

d)"to make the least insightful forum on the web."

i. this is ridiculous  ok , I have nothing to do with The Hip Hop Gamer , I do not write or publish in his style , I am British he is American we have little in common except for our love of games .  What we do have in common is we a have a good time writing and making videos and in my case even developing games. AND WE ARE BOTH ETHNIC MINORITIES with a Texan insulting us and linking us with no connection other than that skin colour ..
ii. yet right now I am being linked to someone I have never met or have any idea of .. 
iii. This is done to insult us both .. as to Brantlew it is clearly a problem that an African American and a British Indian are having an impact on the Internet. 
iv. This is done to trivialize and insult  racially stereotype..like an errant child trying to get away with a sly racist comment.

So we have an individual  who has insulted the entire Kickstar Oculus Rift forum ( that includes all y`all who are currently insulting me too on the forum ..), who has made derogatory and racist comments , yes I mean that , towards an African American and a British Indian and insulted them further re a forum that is void of content not because of the meager and humble contributions made by TheGameVeda or The Hip Hop Gamer , but by the simple fact that at this point and even today Oculus VR has no product for forum members to experience or comment on. 

V. Palmer Luckey  founder of Oculus Rift and allegedly my dear friend and every other developers ( including the Hip Hop Gamer After I complained and someone picked up we are both black)  allowed and added to this comment

At this point I expected the moderator of the MTSB3D forum namely Palmer Luckey founder of Oculus VR known as PalmerTech to remove this comment and admonish the comment maker.

Instead he enabled this behaviour with his comment : 


On Fri Jan 04 2013 3:14pm  Palmertech 3D Angel Eyes (Moderator)  responded 

At least HipHopGamer is entertaining! 

i. I had a serious discussion with Palmer re headtracking , at least I thought I did , in fact why don't you look through all my comments on the Kickstarter forum , I have been there since the beginning . 
ii. Palmer did not defend the Kickstarter Oculus Rift backers : he does not say hold on these are like my valued dear close friends ( which he does say in an email to me ) and who are you Brantlew to insult them . 
iii. He does not pick up that Brantlew is a troll , present on other VR and AV forums chasing my comments and none to happy that I am gaining prominence in the VR and hmd field
iv. He enables and facilitates  the racist connotations of linking the presence of an African American and a British Indian on the Kickstarter/MTBS3D forums with the cause for the detriment of those forums and also the entire Web, when the actual fact is there nothing to comment on to date as there is no product to date and there is no way a non racist  person would make that connection or indeed support it or by their inaction allow it to be supported . No debate this is racism and  so is it it's defense  and persistence.
v . This not the behaviour you expect from the founder of a company
vi. It is not excusable and not something a private email that no one is going to see can even begin to address
vii. Palmer claims that developers like myself are treated as close friends ( yes trolls even me who dared to comment on a headtracker alternative) as well as The Hip Hop Gamer being considered a friend (after my complaint )  But Brentlew is clearly disparaging his "friends" , his developer community of "friends" but Palmer is not shutting him down.. 
viii. In no way does this  qualify as adequate defense of  either me or Hip Hop Gamer from the blatant racist Texan Blantrew's comments.
ix. An adequate defense from a moderator of a forum would be to remove the comment , prevent the spiral of damage and preserve the integrity of MTSB3D by admonishing Brantlew.. which Palmetech /Palmer Luckey has not done to date..


What I want from Palmer Luckey and Oculus VR is to recognise the damage they have allowed to and are allowing to occur to my reputation and business . What I want is as a British Indian to be treated with equal respect as the other Oculus developers . And for Hip Hop Gamer to be shown some respect too .. on the web .. Fear of a Black Planet ..or is this Fear of a Black Web... indeed

What I expect is Palmer and the CEO of Oculus to deal with the harassment that is continuing. It is only by chance that I discovered this happened , this  blog is how I earn my living .  I am looking forward to seeing you in the game Palmer ,along with my soon to be new friend the Hip Hop Gamer , but I have growing doubts about your sincerity , since the original comment which I have clearly explained is damaging to me and I believe the Hip Hop Gamer and ultimately Oculus VR itself in this post, you have not acted to halt this damage. Explaining or excusing it or shirking it aside in a private email  does not imbue confidence in how Oculus is doing. 

We are here to help you as developers , that was the purpose of my original post to you on headtracking, your forums are littered with social cliques taking on any one who dares to differ.At this rate people will stop posting altogether leaving trolls and no one else. I do not accept that you as such an influential person were not fully aware of the damage you can cause to someone like me. You can see the results on your own forum(s) .. 

In the coming months we two are personally  going to disagree re the Rift on many occasions you should not take this personally or to heart to the point where this sort of situation repeats and you should be vehemently defending your developers , listening to your critics on or off the Kickstarter forums  ..sometimes good comes out of it 

In future I expect Oculus to enforce some form of moderation  anyone who does not treat another member with respect should lose their Rift  I do not know what should happen in your case...please read peoples comments you do know this reflects on your company too? The developer Forums should be for people who are serious about taking VR forwards not the art of trolling..across forums too!

I expect you to let people know in much nicer way than those that have commented on me that enough is enough , I expect to see you in the Game Palmer.. I also expect you to remove the offending comments from the MTBS3D forums  as should have happened in the first place and the Kickstarter forums. Ongoing defamation will be treated as such from whomever it comes from. 

I have been a serious comment maker on your forums , but I have been treated like a joke , this smacks of fear and frustration , your developers are not responsible for the delays and state of play of the Oculus , they will be for it's success. 

My experience is that as an Asian or African American in the world of tech we are perceived as threats, you do well to consider the contribution we are able to make and not continue to facilitate or allow such behaviour to continue or go unchallenged as an individual or a company. I expect under the circumstances to see a statement to this effect from Oculus VR. Clearly Brentlew from Texas was trying to discredit me and The Hip Hop Gamer based on race and every other Kickstarter Oculus Rift developer ( some of whom have yet to comprehend his insult) , people who have spent over $2 million supporting your vision.

All this because I happened to be testing a latency free headtracker when the Rift had been delayed..another piece of kit Brentlew had not gotten hold of...that is clear competition for the Oculus Rift..

If you want to ask a serious question or funny question re VR , headracking , LEAP motion , development ,combining multiple forms of VR control or even the state of racial prejudice in today's tech industry find me on the Oculus Kickstarter, Youtube , or MTBS3D forums ..

and if you want a laugh then feel free to check out the Great Hip Hop Gamer but he has nothing to do with me  as I am sure his lawyers will let you know too if this carries on the Kickstarter and MTBS3D forum.

as for my detractors on the Oculus Kickstarter Forum as a great man once said 

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.

Right I am off to see how headtracking (non mouse emulation ) , hand tracking , voice recog can be incorporated into Cryengine 3 .. Still looking for that phantom latency Mr Carmack .. 

I look forward to receiving my Oculus Rift Dev Kit and developing for it ...creating a Popfly style  SDK interests me very much...

I also look forwards to  Oculus and Palmer's public apology if you are man enough to insult me on some distant forum and then have trolls follow it up on the Kickstarter forum , surely you are man enough to see the wisdom of apologising publicly and addressing adequate reparation. Even then you will not be able to undo the damage or stem it , a quote to young Peter Parker comes to mind .  TheGameVeda is a name I  intend to grow in all tech fields , you have insulted me and damaged the potential of that , a private email with a pseuodo private apology via personal email is clearly not enough especially in the light of the harassment I continue to experience on the Oculus Rift forums , the defamation that still exists and continues to harm me personally, online and my earning/developing potential .

no more to follow on this @thegameveda  .. ?

Fight the Power ...  not the developers ..Palmer! 

OK so there was a little Hip Hop in that post... 


UPDATE :

Re the comment Palmer Luckey made on the Cinemizer Head Tracker .. he was in no position to comment on the Rift tracker being faster or more sensitive than the Cinemizer Tracker..  Only I had a prototype outside Zeiss , only I had any experience of the head tracker  ..yet you see him talking down a product that he has never used at the time .. fascinating..  

It is a fact that I have more experience of head tracking in games across consoles, tablets and PCs than almost anyone ...including everyone currently sitting employed by Oculus VR  including 13 months of time time with the Zeiss Tracker and 9 months with the Rift tracker . What's more I have over that time tested gaming across more devices and platforms than anyone sitting at OVR at present right up to Mr Luckey and JC.. on 1000s of people over the last year .. 

Re mouse emulation : headtracking using software mouse emulation now is a vital part of the Rift and other HMDs futures.. just like I predicted in the above statement. It is however completely useless compared to the hardware mouse emulation that is used in the Zeiss head tracker .. Rift tracking also has a tendency to randomly drift .. and this includes the DOF axes head tracking.. which makes the Rift commercially useless in mission critical environments , what happens if you military drone, parrot or architectural presentation is wrecked by a wobbly head tracker , or in a clinical situation .. the truth is the Rift head tracker at present and the time these comments were being made like the optical and display design of the Rift were not viable in commercial applications.. the least of of which is VR gaming..

Re head tracking : as I  predicted in other articles , the weight, momentum and bulk of the Rift HMD all play a role in altering the efficacy of the Rift head tracker in comparison to other solutions like the Zeiss headtracker .. designing a head tracker is not a simple matter of picking the fastest sensor ..  other companies may chose to benefit from what I know , derived from experience..

Above all it scares OVR and their Reddit and MTBS3D troll armies silly that someone may have more experience or differing opinions to OVR ..none of the responses I get from them bare any semblance of the kind of the response you expect from a $100 million dollar company.. 

You can bet thegameveda interview with OVR ..would be quite different to the sycophantic  norm you have been reading up till now .. promising you the future ... in the future...sometime in the future ...

Re paid for Oculus Trolling to discredit critics..

It has also recently come to my attention that the person "Brantlew" following me around various forums and disparaging myself and others with differing views and experience to OVR on HMDS  is actually employed by Oculus VR..to promote the Oculus Rift  i.e. Oculus VR employ professional trolls to discredit  critics. Apparently this is no secret.  This is also what I referred to jokingly as the Pro Rift Trolling circuit in another article .. but it's no joke it's real!

I had as you can see from the above always thought this was just some random troll who happened to follow me around .. sometimes commenting on the Rift in forum posts completely unrelated to or about the Rift ..go check the truth is out there!

This fact actually came to light when another troll inadvertently revealed the employment status of said professional  troll ..  DOH!

Why do Oculus VR feel the need to employ such individuals or control every comment on the Rift? Well that's no secret either..

What is more significant is that this occurred several months after Palmer Luckey apologizing to me .. an email which did not mention the person involved was/is an actual employee of Oculus VR . 

And even more bizarre he did not mention this at all at E3 when I met him several weeks later , getting my Oculus VR backers T Shirt signed ... and exhibiting at the show .. over the entire 3 days .. 

Maybe he forgot.. He did come round to see me ..but I was busy showing some Sony execs drift and lag free head tracking on an OLED HMD with Killzone 3 in 3D on PS3.. 
A fact so shocking that John Carmack still cannot accept it is objectively and verifiably correct... even though 1000s of people have experienced it..

Still like I told Palmer .. peace .. 

We all want to see VR happen ..after all ..  but employing people to discredit your critics is probably not going to prove as effective as taking on board some criticism from people who backed you with their money .. and time ..

The real OVR once you meet them in person are much nicer than the pro troll and tagger , Reddit and MTBS3D armies 

I am sure John Carmack is absolutely charming in person also .. just like the 30 odd Oculus gray shirts I came across at E3 ..

and so Team Oculus ...see you in the game !! 

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