Oculus Rift - Dev Kit Discussion [Orders Arriving]

I'd be mad, but my laptop can barely handle the current devkit. If they release another one, it seems unlikely that it won't be similar to Crystal Cove and I won't have access to a machine that can handle that for at least 6 months.

Definitely plan on buying a DK2/the consumer version though. Living in a dorm with the Rift has been endlessly entertaining.
 
Been a bit since I've really spent time with the rift, what are the most interesting things from the past few months? Looking forward to the next kit, feels great getting into such things early.
 
Blizzard said:
How is the lag with Oculus CE3 compared to UE3/Unity? I don't think I've played any Oculus CE3 demos.
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We will know it when Star Citizen gets Oculus Rift support for it´s alpha.


And new news:

This could involve new Oculus Rift Games??

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...to_62M_development_contracts_for_Frontier.php

Elite: Dangerous company Frontier Developments has signed two new development contracts valued at a total of £3.75 million ($6.25 million), thanks to an in-house game jam.

Cambridge-based Frontier runs an in-house competition called "Game of the Week" every so often, in which the studio's designers are asked to create small game prototypes based around specific limits. 2008 Wii game LostWinds originally came from a "Game of the Week" competition.

Now the company says that two more games created during these jams have been given the go-ahead, and "a major new global publishing partner" has splashed cash on making them happen.

Frontier notes that these two games, yet to be revealed, "will drive support for the partner's own hardware and technology eco-system," suggesting the unnamed publishing partner is also a hardware manufacturer.
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This sounds alot like Oculus. The only other new publisher with hardware in my mind would be Amazon, if they really release a android console.
 
Feep said:
Went into Valve today.

Tried their VR.

Thread incoming tomorrow.

Short edition: omg
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I can't wait to read your write up.


BTW, I'll be building my first gaming PC in years for the consumer version of the Rift. What range of PC should I be looking to build to get a quality VR experience?
 
Just picked up my rift yesterday (I know, I know, DK2 and all that). The one thing that has really blown me away so far was Half Life 2 surprisingly. When a guard hit me I flinched IRL.

I find that I'm having trouble adjusting my brain when I'm no longer using the rift, it takes a while to shift back into the real world. Didn't anticipate that.
 
epmode said:
Star Citizen now has preliminary Rift support in the alpha module. According to Cloud Imperium, the latency is an issue compared to other Rift games. It's currently around 40ms.
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I'm hoping to post impressions and latency tester results tonight after updating the hangar module.
 
epmode said:
Star Citizen now has preliminary Rift support in the alpha module. According to Cloud Imperium, the latency is an issue compared to other Rift games. It's currently around 40ms.
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Yeahe, latency and stereo rendering are not (saw a video) good but it´s still alpha, i hope they can make it better.
Can you even achieve rock solid 90fps in a cry engine 3 game?
 
Ttried the dev kit (that was bought about 2 month ago, so should be "new hardware") which my lucky colleagues work with and got mixed feelings.

I didn't play actual game though, so maybe when gaming it is quite a bit different.

First thing that I tried was roller-coaster demo. And oh wow, it felt so natural, as if the ordinary chair in which I sat was also moving/falling/turning.

But... resolution of that thing sucked. Pixelated like PS2 graphics and clearly visible black grid.

Next thing I've tried was a virtual room. Being able to look around by just turning head was fun. I also tested how precise the thing was, rotating head very slowly. Sensitivity of the OC was not perfect, but quite acceptable, probably more than enough for gaming.

And then I tried a bobsleigh emulator where you can control the bob (it was called "skeleton..." something). And a bad thing happened, we didn't close previous demo, just minimized it, so OC didn't respond to head rotations (it took me a while to realize what's going on as I was in a "fast moving bob"). Oh boy, that was harsh.I felt sick for about 2 hours.

My personal verdict: very promising tech, that still needs quite a bit of work. For me personally it is basically unusable "as is", they'd need to at least double the resolution to get it to my personal acceptable levels.

Getting sick so quickly is probably caused by extreme conditions (roller coaster / bobsleigh + not reacting to head movements are hardly normal scenarios) but I suspect jumping in games will still be hard on your brain. Some people would probably not be able to use this at all. (one of my colleagues felt sick for 2 days after trying these demos) .
 
The good news is that plenty of people who reported similar reactions to the devkit have said that the newer hardware (Crystal Cove and the Valve demo) eliminates these problems. Things like the "dropping stomach" when jumping or making sharp ascents/descents are what VR experience designers are going to have to take into account.
 
I hope I'm not breaking any rules here, but I just read a good article about VR immersion and how this differentiates from a game you play on a monitor:

vr-design-splash-screen-shutdown

It's interesting to see how you can not just implement VR into an existing game but that the game really has to be build for VR from the ground up. I still have difficulties to explain this to people and this article does a good deal at explaining this.
 
Al13n said:
I hope I'm not breaking any rules here, but I just read a good article about VR immersion and how this differentiates from a game you play on a monitor:

vr-design-splash-screen-shutdown

It's interesting to see how you can not just implement VR into an existing game but that the game really has to be build for VR from the ground up. I still have difficulties to explain this to people and this article does a good deal at explaining this.
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Yeah, I had a really bad feeling when I was watching one of the recent Amnesia Fortnight documentaries, and one of the Mnemonic devs said, "Oh yeah we're building in Oculus support." And at least from what's been shown, they don't seem to be designing around it, they're just making a normal prototype.
 
I'd been meaning to mention; I tried the Oculus Rift for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Just a few basic "look around" tech demos to get a sense of space and presence in a virtual environment.

Incredible technology, but was also comforting for my decision to skip on the devkits. The screen door effect of low resolution LCD was really, really insanely obvious to me. Pretty easy to put in the back of your head temporarily as you looked around, but just as easy for me to zone in on. The feeling of presence in a game world was incredible, but yeah, glad I skipped on a kit and am waiting for a consumer model. Higher resolution will be so much more important to me.

Latency requirements will totally fuck me though. I like cranking my graphics settings even if I drop below 60fps. Knowing this will need ~90fps for full, smooth latency is scary :/.
 
EatChildren said:
I'd been meaning to mention; I tried the Oculus Rift for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Just a few basic "look around" tech demos to get a sense of space and presence in a virtual environment.

Incredible technology, but was also comforting for my decision to skip on the devkits. The screen door effect of low resolution LCD was really, really insanely obvious to me. Pretty easy to put in the back of your head temporarily as you looked around, but just as easy for me to zone in on. The feeling of presence in a game world was incredible, but yeah, glad I skipped on a kit and am waiting for a consumer model. Higher resolution will be so much more important to me.

Latency requirements will totally fuck me though. I like cranking my graphics settings even if I drop below 60fps. Knowing this will need ~90fps for full, smooth latency is scary :/.
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If 60fps was fine for your on DK1, you may be able to just create a custom resolution for it that sets the refresh rate to 60hz and it should be as smooth as DK1 except also with low persistence mode to get rid of all of that blur.
 
Alo81 said:
If 60fps was fine for your on DK1, you may be able to just create a custom resolution for it that sets the refresh rate to 60hz and it should be as smooth as DK1 except also with low persistence mode to get rid of all of that blur.
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Low persistence requires higher than 60hz, per OVR (that lack of persistence would become more and more noticeable), but you could still lock the games framerate via drivers or in the game settings, though I don't know how repeated frames would feel or if the hardware would deal with that appropriately. If that were to feel anything like the processing some TVs do to make video "120hz!" it would likely feel very bad. Best course would just be to make sure you're hitting standard hz
 
MrBig said:
Low persistence requires higher than 60hz, per OVR (that lack of persistence would become more and more noticeable), but you could still lock the games framerate via drivers or in the game settings, though I don't know how repeated frames would feel or if the hardware would deal with that appropriately. Best course would just be to make sure you're hitting standard hz
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Oh duh, that totally makes sense.

I'm guessing it's similar to lightboost on 120hz monitors?
 
Alo81 said:
Oh duh, that totally makes sense.

I'm guessing it's similar to lightboost on 120hz monitors?
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Low persistence is similar to lightboost - the difference is that lightboost is meant to hide the pixel switching (which is relatively slow), so the backlight only pulses once the pixels have switched. With low persistence, the OLED screen pulses right after it receives the new frame (since pixel switching on OLED screens is really, really fast). So lightboost is sort of the same, but it adds extra latency (since you have to wait for the pixels to switch).

I'm pretty sure that's all correct, but if I'm wrong, please do correct me :)
 
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