25 replies to this topic

[darknothing]

Read about it here,http://www.kickstart...p-into-the-game
The dev kit only cost 300$, what's there to loss? The consumer model will not be as expensive and 300$ isnt much.
The kickstarter is way over its target.
This would bring mwo to a new level in gaming.


http://oculusvr.com/
link updated.

Edited by darknothing, 14 August 2012 - 06:56 AM.

[Otto Cannon]

Having tried the dreadful old style VR headsets, I'd want to test one of those sets before buying. I'm sure they're loads better these days but they would have to be near perfect to use regularly.

[darknothing]

really? noone would care for this headset in MWO?? im shocked....

[That Guy]

links broken

[Purgatus]

This could the coolest thing to have for this game bar-none! However there are a few things about this device so far:

1) This Kickstarter is aimed at Developers only. Only Doom 3 supports it, and no other drivers exist. This is just to get it into the hands of developers as soon as posssible. I HIGHLY recomend that Piranha Games get one and look at integrating it. It would be a fantastic experience.

2) This is still an early kit. Its Resolution is still a bit low, but it will greatly improve in consumer sets. Its not resolution that creates immersion, its FoV (Field of View) and Low Latency head tracking, which the Rift has in spades!

3) Since the consumer sets will have a far greater capability, they will likely cost MORE not less, but the developer has said multiple times that he will keep it to a range gamers can afford.

TL;DR - If your a deveolper, designer, or hobbiest in VR (or like to be on the bleeding edge of new tech), this could be for you. If you are wanting a comsumer level quality set, wait just a year!

either way, if you can show your support. This could change the way we play games.

Edited by Purgatus, 05 August 2012 - 11:25 AM.

[2ane]

we had things like these before.

They are just pointless gimmicks, sorry but its true.

[Purgatus]

2ane, on 05 August 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

we had things like these before.

They are just pointless gimmicks, sorry but its true.

i think any of us that saw the attempts at VR in the 90's feel a little burned. But we have DEFINITELY not had things like the Rift before. You may think I'm just huffing glue, but John Carmack, Gabe Newell, and Cliffy B all seem to think that this is very different from before.

Don't discount it just because people have tried and failed in the past to make this work.

Edited by Purgatus, 05 August 2012 - 12:42 PM.

[Acis]

Purgatus, on 05 August 2012 - 12:41 PM, said:

i think any of us that saw the attempts at VR in the 90's feel a little burned. But we have DEFINITELY not had things like the Rift before. You may think I'm just huffing glue, but John Carmack, Gabe Newell, and Cliffy B all seem to think that this is very different from before.

Don't discount it just because people have tried and failed in the past to make this work.

The thing is what you are saying is the same thing they said about the newest 3D thing. And yes, i do believe it's a slight improvement over what they had before (both 3D and this VR thing if it's done at all.) However, that does not change the fact that both are pointless and gimmicks right now. Until we reach a point where it's not just a gimmick, and that's still what this is right now, things like this will not be worth it.

[vettie]

Link gets me a 404?

[Purgatus]

Acis, on 05 August 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

The thing is what you are saying is the same thing they said about the newest 3D thing. And yes, i do believe it's a slight improvement over what they had before (both 3D and this VR thing if it's done at all.) However, that does not change the fact that both are pointless and gimmicks right now. Until we reach a point where it's not just a gimmick, and that's still what this is right now, things like this will not be worth it.

Its true that this kind of talk has been slung around lately about this or that "revolutionizing" one field or another. And the fallout from that is that when someone comes along with a genuinely exciting idea, it is barely distinguishable from over-eager marketing executives.

All I will say is that I urge anyone even vaugly interested to go find out information for yourselves. Personally, I have never been a fan of 3D things. Not in movies or TV. It is not an immersive technology, which, to me, is the whole point. VR is a whole other ballgame. Once I read into it through various articles and forums, I'm convinced that its not just marginally better, but a possible turning point in how we experience games.

By all means, don't take my word for it, but neither should you discount it as a "gimmick."

[Acis]

it is a gimmick though. it's a head mounted display system, which has been around for a while integrated with head tracking, which has also been around for a bit, not as long but still around for a bit. The only thing that they did was combine the two and call it "revolutionary". And the thing is while the combination is slightly cool, it's not impressive, nor is it anything that hasn't been done before. Slapping displays to your face with built in head tracking is also hardly VR, it's just gimmicky and speaks of laziness to call it "revolutionary."

[Purgatus]

If you say so.

Head tracking has been along for quite some time, but the latency has been far too poor to support an immersive environment. Usually in excess of 50-100 milliseconds. The Rift is getting very low latency, somewhere in the realm of 30 - 50 milliseconds. Still not quite s good as it could be, but getting there.

HMD's (Head Mounted Displays) have been around for quite some time, but the FoV has been limited to 45 degrees on average. Some have gotten slightly high FoV's like 60 many are lower at 30. The Rift has 90 degree horizontal FoV and 110 degree Vertical. There sets that can get this high FoV, but they are many tens of thousands of dollars.

Its these two things, FoV and Low Latency head tracking, that have kept VR from being what is could be. And makes the Rift a new experience.

By his own admission, the creator of the rift has said that all these technologies have been around, but its taken someone to apply himself to making it. Not only that, he is trying to make this for gamers, making sure he can make it at a price that is affordable to average gamers. You don't see that as revolutionary. Thats cool. I could try and debat it, but it doesn't really matter. Its still freakin awesome!

[Shai tan]

"You don't see that as revolutionary."

The Revolution has come and gone 10 years ago. What we need is more of an Evolution. The odd part is that the Occulus is geared towards a truly immersive 1st person experience. And atm and near future, really cool 1st person games are not as incoming as they once were. We NEED the games to push the Tech.

We have vid cards now that can tear the azz off a charging Rhino at 50 paces..... but where are the truly edge pushing titles????? Carmack is doing his DOOM III BFG Edition. Which still looks pretty bad incomparison to the DOOM III SikkMod etc. This sorta reminds me of that Mech game that came out with a big buck controller that only worked FOR that game... ChromeHounds.

What happened to that controller??? It still only works for Chromehounds.

For the Occulus to really be worth it, it needs to be supported by MANY game devs out there. All the Big Players need to jump on the bandwagon so that Buyers are not stuck with just a 1 Hit Wonder Headset. And... Carmack needs to make the Occulus to be of a pretty substantial quality... much like the Sony Playstation 3. The best parts he can put in, and he needs to initially take a loss on it LIKE Sony did with the PS3.

Because we already had our fill of the VR headset marketing, with HMD screen pixelated h e l l. This has to be an evolutionary step in the right direction. If not, why bother?

[Purgatus]

So.....

Shai tan, on 05 August 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

"You don't see that as revolutionary."

The Revolution has come and gone 10 years ago. What we need is more of an Evolution. The odd part is that the Occulus is geared towards a truly immersive 1st person experience. And atm and near future, really cool 1st person games are not as incoming as they once were. We NEED the games to push the Tech.

The revolution never materialized. We just did not have the technology at the time to make it work. I don't know about you, but I see FPS games are all over the market. They are the obvious first candidates for tech like this. Also any other heavily thematic game , such as Amnesia: Dark Descent, and simulator games could make great use of this tech. But the really exciting thing is to start seeing games of brand new genres using this tech.

Shai tan, on 05 August 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

We have vid cards now that can tear the azz off a charging Rhino at 50 paces..... but where are the truly edge pushing titles????? Carmack is doing his DOOM III BFG Edition. Which still looks pretty bad incomparison to the DOOM III SikkMod etc. This sorta reminds me of that Mech game that came out with a big buck controller that only worked FOR that game... ChromeHounds.

What happened to that controller??? It still only works for Chromehounds.

Carmack is using this a vehicle to stir up press for the re-release of Doom 3 by his own admission. Much of the reasons are simply that he was trying to convince his company to let him work on it outside of a pet project.

Also the game you are thinking of was not Chromehounds but Steel Battalion.

Shai tan, on 05 August 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

For the Occulus to really be worth it, it needs to be supported by MANY game devs out there. All the Big Players need to jump on the bandwagon so that Buyers are not stuck with just a 1 Hit Wonder Headset. And... Carmack needs to make the Occulus to be of a pretty substantial quality... much like the Sony Playstation 3. The best parts he can put in, and he needs to initially take a loss on it LIKE Sony did with the PS3.

So, Carmack is not making the Oculus Rift. He just supports it. A man named Palmer Luckey is the one who is making it, and getting software support is the whole reason behind his kickstarter campaign. Get it into the hands of developers so that when a consumer product does come out, companies are already familiar with the tech, and may even be actively supporting it. So far, Epic Games (Unreal), Valve (Source), and Unity are all backing the project and are integrating it with their systems. That right there is a huge chunk of the gaming market.

Shai tan, on 05 August 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

Because we already had our fill of the VR headset marketing, with HMD screen pixelated h e l l. This has to be an evolutionary step in the right direction. If not, why bother?

This system is a giant leap in consumer VR. It still has problems, resolution being the most glaring at the moment, but the biggest ones have already been worked out. Again, I suggest looking into it yourself.

Edited by Purgatus, 05 August 2012 - 03:22 PM.

[ORIGINAL SteelWolf]

I had to go to Google. and then paste in the link. "http://www.kickstart...p-into-the-game" Then the page came up. Clicking the provided link gave a 404 error.
http://www.kickstart...p-into-the-game
http://oculusvr.com/ has a link to the Kickstarter page.

Edited by ORIGINAL SteelWolf, 05 August 2012 - 03:58 PM.

[Hesh]

If this gets built properly into a consumer device with proper support, it is going to be something special.

The gentleman behind this, Palmer, is one of us. A hardcore gamer that always envisioned playing games as immersively as possible. He agrees with the posts in this thread about previous iterations of HMD's being mediocre, the difference is, he is doing something about it.

So far he's doing everything right IMO. He's not even pitching this device to consumers 1st. He's getting all the right major players on-board software wise and trying to get these devices into dev and media hands.

He's not over promising either. Anyone interested should watch Carmacks Quakecon 2012 keynote. Carmack is known to be very upfront about technology and it's limitations, and he sees the big potential in this offering after it hits some key inflection points. This won't be an immediate payoff, but if it gets the right support and coverage, this is the next stage of gaming.

I can't even imagine 1:1 110 degree fov 6dof tracking in a Mech cockpit; looking around properly at the battle or watching a hive of LRM's streak to your head from directly above. We would have all new variables we could obsess over: cockpit viewing area, weapon placement blocking views, etc.

How can any fan of the genre not be excited for this.

It's worth your time to check this out.

Edited by Hesh, 05 August 2012 - 04:47 PM.

[darknothing]

its worth checking out guys, the device wont cost much on launch if the dev kit cost ONLY 300$,

[Blue Footed Booby]

The funny thing about big developments in hardware is that no devs will make use of them until there's wide adoption, but no one will buy the hardware. Graphics cards got past this chicken and egg problem because their effect is purely cosmetic, and because they provided such a colossal benefit that everyone wanted one. Anything that can't do both of these things is stuck relying on happy thoughts and unicorn farts. In other words, anything that isn't a blatantly obvious big-time game changer has to make headway from blind optimism alone until it hits the critical point where it's here to stay. Head mounted displays like this really can provide an amazing experience*, and the technology is actually here to make it not horrible this time around. The question is whether anyone will fricking buy it.

I think the best chance this tech has is if it can be jerry rigged to work with games that aren't specifically designed to make use of it. That would remove the chicken and egg problem and make it a normal 'convince people to buy it' scenario.


* You may not like it. That's cool, but if you think it's totally pointless then I think you need to consider whether everyone plays games for the same reasons you do.

[Fugu]

Blue Footed Booby, on 06 August 2012 - 04:21 PM, said:

I think the best chance this tech has is if it can be jerry rigged to work with games that aren't specifically designed to make use of it. That would remove the chicken and egg problem and make it a normal 'convince people to buy it' scenario.

This mostly. If I can play pretty much any new game with it, I'd buy it. If I have to look for a "supports Oculus" sticker everytime and won't find it I don't care.

[darknothing]

Simplicity cockpit look around is all i want.