Cheesemeister
Member
One million dollars!
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Oculus Rift Kickstarter [Ended, $2.4 million funded]
- Thread starter Lord Error
- Start date
One million dollars!
This is NOT a consumer device.
- This is meant for VR enthusiasts who want to get in on the early floor and play a role in its development.
- It's meant for guys who want to help solve problems.
- It's the beginning of VR finally becoming the dream it was sold as. But it's not there yet. It's going to take at least a couple more years to truly break all the remaining barriers down.
- Even if you just want to ignore that and play it, realize that screen is not high quality. It's an older LCD in there. 20ms response time. This is more in line with the smeary LCDs of yesterday. And as for resolution, Carmack didn't just mention pixel grids, he mentioned that people with clear vision have been able to make out the pixel make-ups.
- He makes a very good point: people who have worn a head mount/VR before will be blown away by the advancements they've made. People who've never worn one and have Hollywood-esque visions, are going to be really disappointed.
The future of this thing is amazing. And I look forward to owning one when that time comes. But this thing is truly for the garage tinkerers ATM. And still needs a little more time in the oven for everyone else.
- This is meant for VR enthusiasts who want to get in on the early floor and play a role in its development.
- It's meant for guys who want to help solve problems.
- It's the beginning of VR finally becoming the dream it was sold as. But it's not there yet. It's going to take at least a couple more years to truly break all the remaining barriers down.
- Even if you just want to ignore that and play it, realize that screen is not high quality. It's an older LCD in there. 20ms response time. This is more in line with the smeary LCDs of yesterday. And as for resolution, Carmack didn't just mention pixel grids, he mentioned that people with clear vision have been able to make out the pixel make-ups.
- He makes a very good point: people who have worn a head mount/VR before will be blown away by the advancements they've made. People who've never worn one and have Hollywood-esque visions, are going to be really disappointed.
The future of this thing is amazing. And I look forward to owning one when that time comes. But this thing is truly for the garage tinkerers ATM. And still needs a little more time in the oven for everyone else.
BlueTsunami
there is joy in sucking dick
The gamers and developers have voted. We want a VR future!
Hopefully they will include some kind of diopter adjustment for those of us with glasses. The Carl Zeiss cinemizer has +\-3 diopters of adjustment it can manage, but I noticed the HMZ has none.
Comparatively stylish as fuck but you've got to wonder how well they isolate vision
More importantly, 30° FoV.
Yeah, I was well aware of that when I made my pledge, but some people may be disappointed.
Right. I just want it really pointed out because it's pretty obvious some in this thread have set their expectations way too high.
With an average pledge of $246.69. People really want this thing.
Based on this, I think it is smart of them to use a relatively crappy screen. Keeps the cost down low enough for a bunch of people to jump on, and the screen is arguably the least important - you can increase resolution but what you need feedback on is the tracking, ergonomics, and how do you properly address separate head movement and mouse/controller movement. How applicable to games other than fps will it be? Having enough people trying this out and hopefully answering some of the questions before the consumer device is finalised will be really valuable
The reason for the screen is that there really isn't much choice. It has to be the right form factor, easily and quickly sourced in (relatively, it looks like now) low quantities, and -- and this is a killer -- it has to be possible to drive it using DVI with no added input latency.
That's over 3000 beta units being shipped out. Crazy
I'd like to get one once the bugs are ironed out, but that res in such a wide view is going to be pixel city.
Haint
Member
Palmer just addressed this on MTBS:
Yes, we are adding that soon. Don't worry, I am a glasses user myself, so it is very important.The final decision has to be made if we will have adjustable optics, or something like thin lens inserts to adjust the diopter. I am leaning towards the second one for the dev kit Rift, it is cheap, easy, and lets the stock Rift be as mechanically durable as possible.
Also of interest, the DIY kit will probably be the black box prototype Carmack had at E3. The Dev kit should have the molded plastic design from the KS video.
One more thing, if anyone happens to have a 720p FPJ, are my calculations correct in that you should be able to get some approximation of the visible pixel structure of the rift by viewing a ~100" screen from ~3.5'? If so I'd be interested in hearing people's impressions.
Cheesemeister
Member
I can imagine the consumer version will be available in several resolutions at different price points. If I were to venture a guess, that is.
AlberichMX
Member
I really like the idea, but come on playing this with a kb/mouse or even a controller that's cool, but for me is not VR, is only a good looking head-mounted display with FOV, the VR is possible but they need to partner or support the use of something like kinect or leapmotion (for control) and then we can talk of something near to our VR dreams.
It should be technically possible - just double up on the same image instead of rendering two slightly different images.
But at the same time, I have a feeling that the 3D sensation with this will be much more natural feeling than just stereoscopy alone - With head parallax motion 3D helping to congeal the whole feeling of 3Dness that you get from looking at stuff in the real world.
You know... this would be a pretty alright way to do it. Give consumers a base model with an ok res to get it into their hands at a low enough price point that game developers everywhere start to recognize this as the peripheral to support... but also make a version that's expensive, but with as little compromise as possible.
I'd pay 1.5k for a no compromise version with a resolution that's as high as possible.
Uhh.. Does real life give you headaches?
Kinect is as bad as using a controller or mouse. If its very immersive VR, you need a flexible input device that can simulate what you're using in game. Eg for an fps, a PS move sharpshooter would be a decent accessory. Doesn't need to look good but needs to feel natural and support blind usage
Unknown Soldier
Member
I don't get why this guy needs a Kickstarter for this. Doesn't he have VC people breaking his door down at this point trying to give him money?
Are you being serious?
Yes. Real life is 3d. I was making fun of him saying 3d causing him headaches.
Anyway. the 3d method being implemented here different than what is used by 3d tvs. It is a more natural method because each of your eyes gets a different image without relying on shutter or polarized glass. Those methods (especially shutter) causes headaches and eye strain for some people.
This is pretty similar to how we see things in real life.
He probably doesn't need kickstarter at this point, but he's doing it for a variety of reasons:
- he promised the hardcore community a kickstarter for months, it would be very disappointing for them (us) to wait any longer
- he's using the kickstarter to distribute units to developers (and enthusiasts with coding skills) at or near cost, so that there is already some software infrastructure in place when the consumer device launches
- he's getting a ton of media exposure for free. There are over 80 news posts about the Rift in the past 24 hours in English, and over a dozen just in German.
All of those are great reasons, I really see no drawback to doing the kickstarter.
By the way, Palmer made a really long post answering tons of questions at mtbs3d, many of which were also asked here. I think everyone interested should read it.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Why the hell not, for $300 it seems like a decent bit of hobbyist kit. I'm in.
Someone should be talking to Nvidia to try and get 3D Vision support for the Rift. Most games are already compatible with 3D Vision so that would immediately make many games playable.
Someone should be talking to Nvidia to try and get 3D Vision support for the Rift. Most games are already compatible with 3D Vision so that would immediately make many games playable.
Nvidia and AMD driver support of this would be the ultimate step on the PC front.
For now, he's basically doing the next best thing by talking to developers and getting them to implement it individually.
But with that said, Nvidia and AMD can really only solve the fish-eye lens correction side of the VR equation - you'd still need to approach developers to get them to include full head tracking (and not just mouse to head tracking) - because the head includes full 6 DOF - moving the head forward, backward, side to side, tilting it back and forward - are all things that you can't emulate with simple mouse look.
On the developer side, it's a pretty substantial task if they want to implement this seriously.
Most games are coded and designed for the existing mouselook paradigm - depending on how they coded the engine, it might be trivial or a lot of work to implement 6DOF for head look - and get the player character's body to operate independently of head look.
At the upper scale of integration, you might get developers marrying up the functionality from the Leap Motion controller and or Kinect - although that's a shit load of work, for a very small market. I'd expect initially anyway, you'd largely have to rely on very enthusiastic indie developers and modders to implement this sort of functionality - as the inability to financially justify this makes it a difficult sell for other professional developers to work on it.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Yeah, the Rift only has rotation. There won't be any leaning around corners to check what's down that hallway just yet.
Even if all Nvidia did was implement 3D Vision support at the driver level for output and you were still required to use a mouse to look, it would still WORK and give you the VR experience. The Rift isn't even using true alternate-frame stereoscopy yet, which you need to get full resolution images in both eyes. It's just side-by-side with half resolution to each eye. 3D Vision support would be trivial to implement. Head tracking to look can be implemented later on as developers port old games or add Rift support to new games.
Even if all Nvidia did was implement 3D Vision support at the driver level for output and you were still required to use a mouse to look, it would still WORK and give you the VR experience. The Rift isn't even using true alternate-frame stereoscopy yet, which you need to get full resolution images in both eyes. It's just side-by-side with half resolution to each eye. 3D Vision support would be trivial to implement. Head tracking to look can be implemented later on as developers port old games or add Rift support to new games.
GreggTheGrimReaper
Member
Sounds fair, people all over the world are paying that ammount of money for high end headphones. So please give us our consumer friendly high end HMDs.
Really? Damn. From the way Carmack talked about 6DOF, I thought the Rift came with 6DOF.
Is it really that difficult though? You just have to use 2 accelerometers (unless I'm not quite understanding how accelerometers work) to provide you with the additional information that can determine pitch, yaw and translation.
Accelerometers are kind of dodgy for good tracking past a few seconds. Even still I think (?)
There's a project that's attempting to put together a VR/holodeck-style experience using consumer hardware. They're using a rift with a ps move or two attached to it, tracked by a kinect - presumably to overcome this very problem and give absolute positioning and translation tracking.
I'd pay $1000.
Hmmm... fair enough. Well, shit has me excited as all get out anyway.
Do you have a link to that project ?
There was a thread about it here: http://stage.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=483526
I probably have some of the details wrong, but the gist was that you do need some more 'stuff' to get good translation tracking... i.e. external observer(s)/cameras
Unknown Soldier
Member
The Rift is just a proof-of-concept product, made for developers or hobbyists. It seems to be literally the first product of it's kind. Assuming it is successful and this guy who started out working in his garage in Long Beach gets a lot of interest, he might be Gaben-rich in just a few years. You'll get your consumer-friendly HMDs then I'm sure.
I thought so too, but:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_freedom
Sweet potato pies! Yes!
same. Looks absolutely impressive even at this early stage. I can imagine the racing games. Drool.
I think I can clear up some confusion.
The sensor in the Rift does track 3 angles (roll/pitch/yaw) and 3 translations (x/y/z), however, only the rotation information is reliable over longer periods of time and can be used in games as-is. Stuff like leaning is still possible based on the roll value, but head movement tracking is not reliable enough with just the tracker (you'd need an additional optical system).
The sensor in the Rift does track 3 angles (roll/pitch/yaw) and 3 translations (x/y/z), however, only the rotation information is reliable over longer periods of time and can be used in games as-is. Stuff like leaning is still possible based on the roll value, but head movement tracking is not reliable enough with just the tracker (you'd need an additional optical system).
It seemed like he spent a good 20 minutes talking about that specific issue during the Quakecon keynote. If you really want technical info, watch that (and the VR roundtable they're hosting tonight).
Will that be streamed somewhere?
It's really amazing if you've followed this project from the start, when it was just Palmer planning a kickstarter to build a few dozen/hundred units in his garage.
http://www.own3d.tv/QuakeCon
It's where they streamed the keynote and other events. Barring technical problems, it should be streamed live.
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