85 replies to this topic

[Anais Opal]

Yes this SO MUCH YES PLEASE WANTITNOW PLSPLSPLSKPLSTHXPLSSSSSSSSSSSS

[Matta]

We don't need Oculus Rift for immersion.

We have 3PV.





/sarcasm

Edited by Matta, 02 August 2013 - 08:38 AM.

[AttackRabbit]

I've got the Oculus Rift dev kit and have set it up to work with MWO.
This is awesome!
I've attached some screenshots of the Rift-distorted view.
The way I got this working was using the IZ3D drivers to create a side-by-side stereo view and then using Oculus Overlay to create the distortion for the Rift. By holding down control, I'm able to look around the cockpit of my Jenner and then race around the map, jump-jetting like mad. It's much easier to judge your jumps in 3D. You really get a sense of how fast these mechs move (the Jen is absolutely insane - it's like a low-flying helicopter) as well as the scale of the mechs (they're huge! PPC bolts are massive, too). At the Rift's resolution you're able to read all of the necessary HUD info, though if you're interested in sniping you'll be out of luck - there just aren't enough pixels on the display to see more than ~500-600 meters with any resolution.

Now the bad news: the game cannot be played competitively with the Rift.
- the crosshairs and target boxes are at screen depth, which means that it feels like they're mounted on your nose. You really have to cross your eyes to get the images to merge and when you do that your target is just a blurry mess. This makes accurate targeting impossible. I doubt you could even get a lock with LRMs. Splatcats will still work, though.
- the lack of head-tracking really hurts the experience. I want to be able to naturally look around the cockpit, but I'm limited by the movement of the mechs arms and the need to hold down control and use the mouse to move.
- shadows are rendered wrong (this is a problem with most games when viewed in 3d)
- some of the cockpit screens are too far on the edge to be seen easily on the Rift. These interface elements would need to be shifted towards the center of the screen.
- My current solution makes the interface appear doubled - you have to remove the Rift and guess at where the buttons are to navigate the interface.

It would take a bit of work for PGI to implement the Rift correctly. We've already got head movement in the cockpit and gorgeous looking interiors, they would need to get TrackIR or similar functionality. The HUD would need to be rendered more like a real HUD - floating at infinity rather than on your nose. Some 3D rendering methods would need to be added, but at this point the problems of doing SBS rendering and then providing the barrel distortion have been solved elsewhere.
When the commercial Rift launches sometime next year, it would be wonderful if PGI could support it. Cockpit games like MWO are a perfect fit for this technology.

EDIT: sorry, I'm not sure how to add items to My Media to attach them here.

Edited by AttackRabbit, 04 August 2013 - 10:13 AM.

[Bhael Fire]

AttackRabbit, on 04 August 2013 - 10:09 AM, said:

It would take a bit of work for PGI to implement the Rift correctly. We've already got head movement in the cockpit and gorgeous looking interiors, they would need to get TrackIR or similar functionality. The HUD would need to be rendered more like a real HUD - floating at infinity rather than on your nose. Some 3D rendering methods would need to be added, but at this point the problems of doing SBS rendering and then providing the barrel distortion have been solved elsewhere.
When the commercial Rift launches sometime next year, it would be wonderful if PGI could support it. Cockpit games like MWO are a perfect fit for this technology.

Yeah, there's no way it's gonna work right out of the box...that's why I suggested they start developing support for it now.

It really wouldn't take much to link head tracking to "free look" while at the same time allowing mouse input to "steer" the mech's head and arms around as usual. Basically it would have free look controlled by the player's head movement and the mech's head/arm movement controlled by mouse input. And of course, mech movement would still be controlled by WASD.

The HUD would be the biggest challenge, simply because the targeting reticle would need to be re-designed to allow it to be used effectively with DOF objects (like mechs) in the game.

However, it's 100% feasible and within their ability to implement this if they wanted to.


Also, here's a hilarious vid of one gamers reaction the roller-coaster demo.

https://www.youtube....oQ0OXJCbaE&t=54

[Zplayer]

Hawken's already on the band wagon with Occulus. I would love to see this on MWO

[Azurus Malakar]

It's looking more now like the Oculus Rift will be aimed at about $300.00 upon release, along with the statement that a $1000 headset would pretty much sink them; the developers realize that an overly expensive headset won't take off. That being said, MWO can sell the Rift FOR them with a bit of marketing, very much like what was seen with the sponsoring from Razer at the launch event. Launch event too much of an investment? Throw in free downloadable cockpit items with Oculus logo for a start. Just as well as many are claiming that VR is the new generation of gaming, there's also a lot of folks from the old crowd of Battletech who would maximize the "simulator" feeling, particularly now that there is enhanced joystick support, and easy to use joystick emulators like UJR (props to evilC). Both Oculus and PGI have their hands full in their respective fields of development, but they would certainly only benefit if they paired up together. There is without question enough of a market for it within the MWO community.

[Bhael Fire]

Azurus Malakar, on 10 October 2013 - 11:28 AM, said:

It's looking more now like the Oculus Rift will be aimed at about $300.00 upon release

The dev kit for it has always been $300 and that's been their target entry price from the beginning. Where did the $1000 quote come from?

[Suko]

I haven't played Hawken since last year, but when I heard it supported Oculus Rift, I booted it up to check it out. OMG, so amazing. However, the entire time I was playing I kept thinking "This would be SO much better for MWO". The cockpits in MWO are way more details and the motion of the mechs in MWO is far less twitchy, which is perfect for something like Oculus Rift.

Seriously PGI, please get on this!

[SirLANsalot]

I have heard about this a while back, and was a bit skeptical about it back then. Now it looks like this thing is going to be a reality, and the first baby steps into VR for computers and gaming are finally being taken seriously. VR back in the 80s (as there vids show) was....fringe, never was something that a normal Joe could buy. If this thing truely catches on, you can kiss console gaming goodbye (yes it works for them too).

[Quincy McAllister]

Oculus Rift was clearly one of the top shows on CES 2014. PGI has other top priorities liek getting Community Warfare up and running. However it will probably awesome to run MWO with Oculus Rift. I hope you take the suggestion to support Ocukus Rift in the future seriously.

[Roland]

I actually have an Oculus Rift Dev kit, and have integrated it into Unity3D simulations.

While it's definitely neat, I think folks are really just setting themselves up for disappointment right now. It's going to be a while before this thing is ready for prime time.

I have the second gen one, which has better resolution than the original, but I believe currently they have a bit higher resolution than the one I have... But folks, as it stands, you would NEVER want to wear one of these things for actual gaming.

For a short demo, it's super duper awesome cool... but you couldn't really wear one for extended gaming sessions. Even ignoring the motion sickness issues stemming from the latency, the low resolution results in an image which isn't really what you expect in a modern game. Unless you wear one yourself, you don't really understand what I mean here, because when you see the demonstrations they're also piping the image to a regular monitor.. and you are watching that display, which has none of the resolution issues. But in the oculus itself you're forced to run very high AA to get it to look even remotely reasonable (without high AA, it looks like you are playing on an old Gameboy Color), and even then it's still low resolution and blurry.

I have to admit, when I got the kit, I was impressed with how good it was.. I honestly expected it to be ALL hype, which it's not.. but it's still a few years, at least, from something which you would want to wear while playing a real game for any length of time.

Oh, also.... if you have framerate issues in MWO at all now, then wearing an Occulus Rift while playing it will basically make you throw up. So keep that in mind... The lowest latency numbers for the Rift, which are at the top of acceptable, are for perfectly optimized scenarios... which real games really aren't gonna be.

Again, it's better than I originally expected it to be, but it's not really where a lot of you guys seem to think it is.

[d3d3y3]

I own a Rift. And Roland is correct in that framerate could be an issue... But Rift is meant for 60 fps, not a difficult task. If you look at the overall opinion of Warriors... most of which don't own or haven't tried it, it's still very clear that this is something that is wanted. Yes, this will be more work for PGI, and yes, we have come to expect that that will almost certainly mean that it will be "something to be looked at"... But really, it's not that monumental of a task. I read a post stating that only 1% of people would be able to afford a Rift SDK, let alone the commercial version. I say that's bunk. Most of us have paid close to that if not more for in game content, with the real hope that we are keeping this game alive and competitave in the market. If PGI wants to keep this franchise alive then they have to keep pace with dev's that are taking this technology seriously (Hawkin?)
Are you ready to compete?

[DustySkunk]

As an avid Rift follower, engineer, and enthusiast, I just wanted to set some things straight in this thread so that everyone has the correct information about the Rift. I'm not ripping on anyone who's posted before, but there's a lot of misleading/wrong things that have been said here. They are easy mistakes to make, but I would like to set the record straight for anyone who is interested in the Rift in relation to MWO.

*****************************************************************************************************************************

Just to be clear, no one outside of the company and a few select individuals has the second gen rift yet. The development kit one (DK1) is just that: a development kit. There is some confusion regarding original Kickstarter DK1s and the subsequent DK1s (as the subsequent version is sometimes referred to as "second gen"). There are minor hardware differences but performance was the same. It's an easy mistake to make, because people often make a distinction between the two when in fact there was no noticeable difference. Both suffered from the screen door effect and blurry visuals due to the low res display as well as bad "motion blur" (really its a phenomenon called persistence, as it is not tied to refresh rate alone) and the lack of positional tracking. All of these things contribute to motion sickness as well.

The actual second generation Rift, the development kit 2 (DK2), will ship in July of 2014. It has 1080p, low persistence pentile display, and positional tracking in addition to the original orientation tracking. It's also much smaller.

To get a good idea of the difference, check out this link:

http://vr.mkeblx.net/oculus-sim/

It's an Oculus Rift simulator. To select which Rift you're using, click on the buttons on the top right of the screen. The DK2 is the 1080p option with low persistence. It should do much to show what a huge improvement there is between the versions. The CV1 option is what they are looking to release.

The consumer version doesn't have a release date, but is to be an improvement over the DK2 with the final release specs being nailed down now. With FB's recent acquisition of Oculus, and Sony revealing their VR offering, it is almost guaranteed to not be a niche piece of hardware. Furthermore the CV has the potential to even break the target specifications now that Oculus can approach hardware manufacturers directly with big capital and ask for custom made components...

Mechwarrior is is a perfect fit for VR. To pilot a battlemech in VR that isn't some craptastic-motion-sickness-inducing-piece-of-crud that we saw in the 90's... It can't come fast enough for me. That your cue, PGI.


Best,

-Dusty

Edited by DustySkunk, 31 March 2014 - 08:19 PM.

[Roland]

Sorry, you're only gonna be able to play Farmville on the Rift from now on.

Better luck next time.

[Bagheera]

Zplayer, on 03 October 2013 - 03:56 AM, said:

Hawken's already on the band wagon with Occulus. I would love to see this on MWO

NPR did a story about OculusVR being purchased by Zuckerberg.

The correspondent played Hawken during the interview with the OculusVR people to learn what the device did. That *could* have been free press for MW:O, but it wasn't.

[DustySkunk]

Roland, on 31 March 2014 - 08:43 PM, said:

Sorry, you're only gonna be able to play Farmville on the Rift from now on.

Better luck next time.

That was my initial reaction too. I was raging when I found out about the buyout TBH.

Check out the first 3:16 seconds of this video though.



He has a lot of really good points to consider, and I tend to agree.

Also, there are certainly competitors to the Oculus being developed, that will take advantage of a similar (if not the same) API to make their platform as easily integrated into games as possible so it still makes sense to support the Rift.

As for the Rift itself, let's wait to see what sort of negative impact the FB acquisition has before dismissing the Oculus as just being "Farmville VR." I'm not convinced yet that this is where it's going.

Just to be clear, I totally do understand that sentiment and people have every right to feel that way. I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong. FB has never proven itself to be trustworthy. I'm just saying Oculus Rift support for MWO is a good thing.

[Khobai]

Quote

Trust me, this device is going to be HUGE once it's on the market and people actually get to experience it.

]

Not really. VR failed in the 90s... they had VR headsets for MW2. VR will fail again.

[DustySkunk]

Khobai, on 01 April 2014 - 04:56 PM, said:

]

Not really. VR failed in the 90s... they had VR headsets for MW2. VR will fail again.

<sarcasm>Like computers. They had those in the 90's too. Totally the same as today </sarcasm>

For real, there's no comparison.

Edited by DustySkunk, 01 April 2014 - 05:29 PM.

[Bagheera]

[Moromillas]

No, it doesn't work that way. Big capital doesn't equal big success. Why not have McDonald's buy it next, the FB acquisition is ridiculous.