HTC Vive is $799, ships early April 2016

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From the latest backer update from cloudhead games


So HTC are going to have their own storefront? I hope it's more like a VR customised front end for steam, filtering VR only games/apps that work on vive - not a fully fledged store with separate payment etc

There is a lot more to VR than just games. I wouldn't expect Steam to have all those things.
 
If we're talking X rated content, there's go guarantee the HTC storefront would allow it either. That's a can of worms for any general storefront to deal with, and given it's supposedly for the Chinese market, such content would be banned there.

You're right, there's no guarantee it'll be there, but there's certainly a higher chance it would show up there than on the Steam store. But honestly, I'm not sure what the hell the point of the HTC marketplace is for, if Steam is going to have it's own VR storefront.
 
You're right, there's no guarantee it'll be there, but there's certainly a higher chance it would show up there than on the Steam store. But honestly, I'm not sure what the hell the point of the HTC marketplace is for, if Steam is going to have it's own VR storefront.

My understanding is they need it for China. For legal reasons iirc.
 
A couple questions for those who have tried both Oculus Rift (DK2 or newer) and Gear VR:

1. How much better experience if Oculus Rift over Gear VR when it comes to immersion and video quality?

2. For those who have been using Oculus Rift or Gear VR now for awhile, have you gotten bored of the tech yet? Has it started to feel gimmicky or has the novelty worn off at all?

---

I tried Gear VR for about 5 minutes and was fairly impressed but I did notice the "screen door" effect and it was easily noticing the sides of the goggles which limited the field of view. I liked what I've experience but also felt like some serious improvements could be made to the tech and I was just curious if the Oculus Rift improves much in either of these areas. Some information from those who have experiences both would be greatly appreciated.
 
What do you mean? How do you know exactly where the guy in the video has his eyes placed in the first place


eye tracking is some years out.

I don't mean eye tracking. I mean the little tiny movements that our heads make which translates into VR gameplay.

You can kinda see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWproPHhHd0&t=5m35s

When he moves quickly you can see the jitter of his head in the game.

If I flip something in real life my view remains stable. Just wondering if that would be possible to do in VR. Eliminate the tiny jitters for a smoother experience or if that would cause problems.
 
I don't mean eye tracking. I mean the little tiny movements that our heads make which translates into VR gameplay.

You can kinda see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWproPHhHd0&t=5m35s

When he moves quickly you can see the jitter of his head in the game.

If I flip something in real life my view remains stable. Just wondering if that would be possible to do in VR. Eliminate the tiny jitters for a smoother experience or if that would cause problems.

Eliminating the tiny jitters in camera movement that are part of natural head motion would cause a visual-vestibular motion disconnect that would lead to or exacerbate motion sickness issues.

Similarly, it looks bad to you, because you're watching it on a stationary screen, and you're getting some of the visual motion without the accompanying vestibular motion.
 
Shouldn't we compensate for head movement in VR like our eyes do naturally? The little movements look bad and kinda induce motion sickness.

You do. Small head movements look jittery in an external monitor but they are fine to the person wearing the headset
 
I don't mean eye tracking. I mean the little tiny movements that our heads make which translates into VR gameplay.

You can kinda see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWproPHhHd0&t=5m35s

When he moves quickly you can see the jitter of his head in the game.

If I flip something in real life my view remains stable. Just wondering if that would be possible to do in VR. Eliminate the tiny jitters for a smoother experience or if that would cause problems.

Your brain will smooth out the jitters in VR in exactly the same way that it does in reality. If a game tried to do this for you it would make you extremely disoriented.
 
I tried Gear VR for about 5 minutes and was fairly impressed but I did notice the "screen door" effect and it was easily noticing the sides of the goggles which limited the field of view. I liked what I've experience but also felt like some serious improvements could be made to the tech and I was just curious if the Oculus Rift improves much in either of these areas. Some information from those who have experiences both would be greatly appreciated.

I wonder how much of this is down to a limited demo time? Maybe you were looking at it too analytically - 'will I notice screen door?', 'what's the fov like?' - which makes you more likely to notice them. If you actually had one for a longer time I would hope you would tune those out when you're focusing on the game or app.
 
Eliminating the tiny jitters in camera movement that are part of natural head motion would cause a visual-vestibular motion disconnect that would lead to or exacerbate motion sickness issues.

Similarly, it looks bad to you, because you're watching it on a stationary screen, and you're getting some of the visual motion without the accompanying vestibular motion.

Exactly the type of response I was looking for, thank you.
 
Are the consumer lighthouses totally wireless? No power cables nothing? If so how do you charge them? I'm guessing take them off the wall or whatever to get to the back of them...
 
I was really considering buying a Vive but I got the GearVR with the S7 and while it truly is impressive, immersive and full of potential, the screen door effect (2560x1440 screen) was more than noticable. It felt like a 480p 50" screen. So I'll wait for a 4k or higher iteration. I heard the sweet spot for "Retina" is along the lines of 32k x 16k, so 16k x 16k per eye. There's a lot of work before us. :)
 
I don't mean eye tracking. I mean the little tiny movements that our heads make which translates into VR gameplay.

You can kinda see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWproPHhHd0&t=5m35s

When he moves quickly you can see the jitter of his head in the game.

If I flip something in real life my view remains stable. Just wondering if that would be possible to do in VR. Eliminate the tiny jitters for a smoother experience or if that would cause problems.

if we would stick a camera in your face we would see the same jitters. You dont notice it because your brain stabilizes the image for you but your never hold your head completely still. You wouldn't notice it in VR just like you don't notice it in real life.
 
I was really considering buying a Vive but I got the GearVR with the S7 and while it truly is impressive, immersive and full of potential, the screen door effect (2560x1440 screen) was more than noticable. It felt like a 480p 50" screen. So I'll wait for a 4k or higher iteration. I heard the sweet spot for "Retina" is along the lines of 32k x 16k, so 16k x 16k per eye. There's a lot of work before us. :)

Although I'm sticking with my pre-order after getting to use a Vive for the first time recently, there's still a long way to go and the screen door effect was still more immediately noticeable than I expected based on some of the comments I'd read in impressions.
It becomes less noticeable over time as you become more immersed though.
 
I was really considering buying a Vive but I got the GearVR with the S7 and while it truly is impressive, immersive and full of potential, the screen door effect (2560x1440 screen) was more than noticable. It felt like a 480p 50" screen. So I'll wait for a 4k or higher iteration. I heard the sweet spot for "Retina" is along the lines of 32k x 16k, so 16k x 16k per eye. There's a lot of work before us. :)

SDE and resolution aren't completely tied together. SDE comes from the gap between pixel elements. You can have a high resolution display (lots of very small pixels / subpixels) with a fairly pronounced SDE (comparatively large gap between them). Likewise you can have a low resolution display where each pixel is much larger, but the gaps between them are smaller. The first display would have a clearer picture with more SDE. The second would be lower fidelity, but with less SDE.

As for the absurdly high resolution displays.... They're not going to happen until we get foveated rendering, eye tracking, and some compression on the video stream - even if the screen tech exists. The GPU power needed to render at those resolutions will require foveated rendering to get any decent framerate. Eye tracking compliments the foveated rendering by keeping the highest resolution portion of the image dead center, and compression is needed to pass that large of a video feed to the headset with the framerates VR requires. So yeah, a few hurdles aside from the screens themselves.
 
So, someone was able to get Oculus software working on Google Cardboard -- head tracking and all. Yes, real PC Oculus games... on cardboard.

This bodes well for the community figuring out how to get Oculus exclusive games to work with the Vive, not that there was ever any doubt.
 
Today's Penny Arcade strip is about the Vive.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/03/11/vr-triptych

Guess that's their Tilt Brush drawing on the TV in the background of the second panel, heh. (minor perspective issue with the art there - the HMD's sitting too deep)

They talked a bit about the user experience here:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/03/09/membrane (starting with the third paragraph)
The "Limbo" concept for the Steam interface inside VR sounds pretty good.

They have a link in their article to a presentation by owlchemy labs (job simulator) which is worth a watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8mku0JvuLI

i like the part where someone tried leaning on a virtual countertop and nearly fell over, and why a ceiling mounted tethering system probably isn't a good idea.
 
Fantastic Contraption guys are working on a "seated scale" experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdr-Jdpv53s

Video also shows that the Vive works perfectly well whilst seated (not that there was any real doubt but people in here were asking), and this bodes well for this coming to Oculus when Touch is released.

I'd like to know if that was using a larger lighthouse setup and he just sat down, or if they set the lighthouses up closer in. And did they have to recalibrate for seating? Thatd something I've read and would be a pita if you switch regularly between room scale and seated games - which many of us will do.

I'm sure that would just be a software fix with allowing two stored calibrations - here are my virtual walls, and this is where I would sit - but I hope that is done by launch

Fantastic contraption always seemed suited to sitting/forward facing standing though. Other games like The Gallery may be more difficult to adapt to such a setup
 
I'd like to know if that was using a larger lighthouse setup and he just sat down, or if they set the lighthouses up closer in. And did they have to recalibrate for seating? Thatd something I've read and would be a pita if you switch regularly between room scale and seated games - which many of us will do.

I'm sure that would just be a software fix with allowing two stored calibrations - here are my virtual walls, and this is where I would sit - but I hope that is done by launch

Fantastic contraption always seemed suited to sitting/forward facing standing though. Other games like The Gallery may be more difficult to adapt to such a setup

Can we stop regurgitating Notch's BS comments? His setup was an occulsion-riddled mess. If you set up the light houses right, you won't need to move them and recalibrate to switch between seated and standing.
 
Can we stop regurgitating Notch's BS comments? His setup was an occulsion-riddled mess. If you set up the light houses right, you won't need to move them and recalibrate to switch between seated and standing.

I'm asking, not regurgitating. I didn't hear it being fully debunked which is why I'm mentioning it now. Good to hear if it isn't an issue.
 
Notch is the one person who said he had to rearrange his lighthouses for sit-down experiences, and if you see a picture of Notch's setup, you'll understand his problem:

Qa24OEJ.jpg


He setup the lighthouses so that the carpeted area is where they are aimed - that carpet is his room-scale zone - but his computer is outside of that facing the other direction, so if he wants to sit at the computer he needs to rearrange his lighthouse setup and recalibrate.
 
oh dear.

So if he'd just put one of the lighthouses further back covering both areas, he'd be fine?

Yes -- or any number of alternate solutions.

The lighthouses are just dumb units that shoot out lasers. That's it. They don't care if you're sitting, standing, sleeping, planking, etc. They'll track you all the same as long as they can see you. No need to recalibrate or move them if you understand the basic concept of occlusion, which Notch did not.
 
Yes -- or any number of alternate solutions.

The lighthouses are just dumb units that shoot out lasers. That's it. They don't care if you're sitting, standing, sleeping, planking, etc. They'll track you all the same as long as they can see you. No need to recalibrate or move them if you understand the basic concept of occlusion, which Notch did not.
Yeah, the idea that Lighthouse somehow works worse when sitting than when jumping around was always a bit silly.

Man, the new Vive controllers are amazing to use. Way better than the previous versions.
How so?
 
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