168 replies to this topic

[Zaptruder]

Adridos, on 27 August 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

There might be a slight problem with compatibility, since it's developed for Unreal Engine 3 right now, but I'm all for it.

The Oculus Rift is a headset and will release with a SDK that will most likely allow for pre-warping of the visuals to accomodate the lenses (so the software warps the image, and the lenses warp them back to normal).

Developers will need to include field of view, head tracking and stereoscopic adjustments. The first two games that will be available/compatible with it include Doom 3 BFG and Hawken - with Doom 3, it took one guy (admittedly, that guy was John Carmack) 1 day to implement a fix that would allow him to start using the VR headset.

Doom 3 uses its own engine (idtech 4), while hawken uses Unreal Engine 3. Many developers have signed onto investigate and provide support for the technology already.

Lightdragon, on 27 August 2012 - 06:52 PM, said:

enough topics about this stupid thing... its starting to become as annoying as the kuratas

Not everyone is able to troll/trawl through MWO forums all day to keep upto the minute with discussions. There's going to be some inevitable repeat of popular topics.

What I find far more agitating is seeing your username in every one of the oculus threads I've visited saying the same dumb thing (while incidentally bumping the threads you're trying to keep off the boards).

Onixz, on 27 August 2012 - 07:39 PM, said:

Always wanted to try it, but the question is, how much get tired eyes in a this helmet?

It should not be tiring on the eyes. The lenses help to make light run parallel to the eyes - like it would be if the image was far off in the distance. As a result, focusing with these on is like focusing at infinity - which is neutral/relaxing for the eyes, unlike the 1-3 feet we normally use for monitors, which are less relaxing for the eyes.

cinco, on 27 August 2012 - 07:46 PM, said:

it's called a gimmick, and it's meant to exploit dumb people.

You mean people like you? Seriously, fair enough if you don't care for next-level immersion... but this device will literally allow people to be visually placed into the game world. I wouldn't recommend people buy into the kickstarter developer set, but I wouldn't be surprised if the gaming world is completely abuzz when the consumer version launches end of next year. They're going to be talking about Wii U, PS4, Xbox 720 and Occulus Rift.

To understand the difference between immersion... just imagine filming your world from your point of view... and then displaying that on your monitor. So now you see the world only via the monitor, and everything else is pitch black. When you compare that to the experience of seeing the world with your eyes, it's a pretty big deal no?

LackofCertainty, on 27 August 2012 - 07:56 PM, said:

Meh.

The devs have bigger things to worry about. Once the game's been out for a while and the community warfare is in and balanced, then maybe. In the meantime, I don't want them to waste a single second working on adding in gimmicks like VR/head tracking.

Don't get me wrong, I do find gimmicks like head tracking to be immensely fun/nifty, but I want a solid, fully functional game before I worry about adding switches and do-dads.

VR and the Rift aligns with the dev teams design intentions. What better way is there of creating the feeling of you been the actual pilot in a big *** mech than the use of a VR headset that provides headtracking and massive field of vision?

Most of the work required to make it work is already in place - they've modeled the cockpits, they've provided head look seperate from torso twist. Now it's just a matter of using the head turning data from the rift and copying that to the head/mouse look function.

Also, it's a good way of getting the game publicity - and getting people that wouldn't otherwise be interested in the game interested in it (people that care more about VR than they care about mechs).

Certainly, I know I'll be playing Hawken a lot more than I planned on doing before their announcement of Occulus support.

Dr Killinger, on 28 August 2012 - 02:09 AM, said:

The device will take loads of programming and effort to make it work with the game, and all for the benefit for the 0.1% of players who will actually buy it. I'd much rather the devs put those ours of work into shooty robots that we all can enjoy.

And my personal opinion on the device: VR goggles are still not viable, will end up being a gimmick or an expensive plaything for showing off purposes that will be turned off at the first sight of proper gaming.
</opinion>

I don't think you know what you're talking about mate. Any self respecting developer worth their salt would and should be instantly enthralled by the idea of functional and useful VR for the first time ever. VR like this thing does (at least if the impressions of hundreds of people that have tested it so far is anything to go off) has been the holy grail for a long time - and it's been a strong cultural element to the hacker/gaming underground from which many developers emerged.

The idea that with our rapidly progressing technology that we'd still be playing on 2D monitors and keyboard and mice in the decades to come is akin to the idea that we'd still be turning ***** and dials to control a little space ship (or lines that kinda acted like paddles) on phosphorescent tubes.

Edited by Zaptruder, 28 August 2012 - 02:46 AM.

[Kon19]

Very well said Zaptruder.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

Sounds about as exciting as 3D movies, which are pretty exciting, until you actually see one.
I don't want to curb anyone's enthusiasm, but i'm in the gimmic crowd, and certainly hope that PGI waits until this technology is mature before investing time and resources supporting it.

[Zaptruder]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 28 August 2012 - 09:11 AM, said:

Sounds about as exciting as 3D movies, which are pretty exciting, until you actually see one.
I don't want to curb anyone's enthusiasm, but i'm in the gimmic crowd, and certainly hope that PGI waits until this technology is mature before investing time and resources supporting it.

Personally, I hope PGI has developers that are enthusiastic about technology that would happily put down 300 between the lot of them to pick up a dev kit and try to have a crack at it - even if those results aren't released immediately until a while down the track.

I'd be extremely wary of investing much more time and money into a game where I thought the developers were as clueless about technology as some of the nay-sayers seem to be.

[Exilyth]

If they had put forth an open standard for VR, I'd be all over this.

As is, looks promising... but we'll have to wait and see how it does.

[sancus]

This is a seriously awesome device, and it's supported by Carmack. He wouldn't be interested in it if it was a cheap gimmick, if you've ever listened to him talk about VR. He takes things like quality, latency, etc very seriously.

Despite its limitations, Hawken is going to be a competitor to MWO. While they're different games, and people who know Mechwarrior know that Hawken isn't really a true mech game, they're still competitors to most gamers. Piranha would be making a serious mistake to not support this: Mechwarrior and VR are something that have a history going back to the 90s with battletech centers and Mech VR pods. It makes all the sense in the world for them to put some effort into supporting this if they can spare the effort. There's no reason to leave this feature to a pseudo-mech game when we all know that serious VR belongs in Mechwarrior.

With any luck, they're already aware of it and have plans they haven't shared yet

Edited by sancus, 28 August 2012 - 12:10 PM.

[driveandkill]

I wish they would support it but im almost sure they wont :/

[Perfecto Oviedo]

Withhold judgment until you see it in action, or until it's been released for a but. At least, that's what I'm doing. I don't have any particular attachment to or interest in the whole 3D craze, but this looks like an interesting idea, at the very least. So just sit on the sidelines and wait until it's been out for a bit. Then make up your mind.

[Tannhauser Gate]

Yes to Rift.

I used to work with vr equipment for W-Industries back in 1993 with harness mounted vr goggles and controls. Once geared up, you felt fully immersed and transported 1st hand into the environment. It was cool THEN! and Im sure it will be 100 times cooler now for obvious reasons.

I would definitely use this if the price was reasonable because Im all about immersion.

As for Hawken itself. All the trailers Ive seen, it looks twitchy and not realistic with what appears to be a frame-dropped effect. It looks more animated than realistic with a lack of realistic lighting, textures, and motion. Reminds me of a java-based shooter. The environment looks indulgently over-techy like anime or manga. Thats not a bad look and could be lots of fun but I am an immersion guy who likes realistic textures and grit. I will try Hawken but..

[ScrapIron Prime]

If they cannot commit to a price range, that means that either this is vaporware or that the price is going to be rather steep. I will wait and see, and I dont' want PGI's devs spending resources coding for this until a price tag is announced.

[tvih]

It definitely seems interesting. I really hope it becomes a success and widely supported. I don't think it should be that much more difficult to support than something like TrackIR. Sure, motion tracking is about all the two have in common, but motion tracking is an important factor. A lot of the rest could possibly be done in the drivers? I'm just guessing there, though. But even if not that simple, probably not more difficult than the combination of supporting 3D glasses and motion tracking in the same game, since that includes a wide variety of stuff already.

Regardless, as said I hope it catches on. It'd be about time to get some proper VR stuff in this day and age.

I do wonder how well these things work with glasses though, or if you'll have to have diopter corrections in the headset itself, sort of like what SLR camera viewfinders can have.

[bikerbass77]

My stepfather played about with motion tracking in the early 90's and had it working as a joystick type of device (with which the major problem was the lack of centering). He didn't persue it because another similar device came on the market about the same time, but I know it can work. The controllers for various games consoles and tablets also show this.

I would suspect a lot will be down to how the drivers are implemented for this device. If the left/right/up/down are set to work like a joystick via the windows Game Controller menu, I expect most games will be able to use it.

If they decide not to do this, however, it will take writing support into the software of each individual game and/or gaming engine.

Personally, to me, the first option makes a lot more sense as it would allow a lot more market penetration.

I am concerned though, that it could end up making the use of headphones uncomfortable because of the strap. The one in the pictures is as low profile as they could possibly be, but until you can put them on you do not know for sure.

Edited by Hans Davion, 02 September 2012 - 08:39 AM.

[Widow0Maker]

The one thing I'm worried about is disorientation, which I have heard is a big problem with VR glasses. With a shooter, you can have "instantaneous" turning, or at the least as fast as a human neck can twist. 'Mechs have a limited twist speed, which is both realistic and desired, but could cause extreme disorientation, when everything you see is not keeping up with your head movement.

It seems to make more sense to me that it would run as a really cool, immersive, 3D environment, *without* the head tracking.

However, my guess is no better than anyone else's, so we'll just have to wait and see.

[Broceratops]

it would be really hard to convince a girl to sleep with me if she saw this on my desk and i explained to her what it was

[Draxtier]

Since it's using Cryengine 3, whatever work needs to be done to make the engine function well with the Oculus Rift is work which will be done by Crytek.

[Monkeystador]

I will get a dev version. Its only 300$ and the immersion will be awesome for this game.
The coding can not be that hard to do. Since look around in the cockpit already exists, even i could attack that to the oculus head tracker.
The picture distortion for the rift headset is probably a bit hard to do.

[ciller]

Broceratops, on 20 December 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

it would be really hard to convince a girl to sleep with me if she saw this on my desk and i explained to her what it was

I wouldn't care, the Oculus Rift is AMAZING.

Star Citizen is implementing it, ready for launch (so maybe end of 2014) but if MWO supported Oculus Rift it would be beyond awesome.


SC/Oculus Rift videos






PGI - you must implement Oculus Rift!

[Noth]

ciller, on 13 March 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

I wouldn't care, the Oculus Rift is AMAZING.

Star Citizen is implementing it, ready for launch (so maybe end of 2014) but if MWO supported Oculus Rift it would be beyond awesome.

PGI - you must implement Oculus Rift!

Start Citizen says a lot of things. Hawken was supposed to implement it as well on release. They have since dropped the plans. As cool as it would be, it likely would not be worth the dev time to put it in.

[Oy of MidWorld]

We need this. Actually, if it turns out as good as promised, there's no way around this, without falling way behind the competition.

I use TrackIR, would love to have it in MWO. But the rift is going to be a whole new level.

Edited by Oy of MidWorld, 13 March 2013 - 04:58 PM.

[ciller]

Noth, on 13 March 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:

Start Citizen says a lot of things. Hawken was supposed to implement it as well on release. They have since dropped the plans. As cool as it would be, it likely would not be worth the dev time to put it in.

Nay sayer say your nays, i however have hopes and dreams of a future of immersive household 3D VR, where I can look around my cockpit naturally and feel like I am really inside a mech!