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The High-end VR Discussion Thread (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Playstation VR)

UnrealEck

UnrealEck

Member
Zalusithix said:
This first gen of VR certainly leads to a lot of "if only" thoughts. Combine the best aspects of each unit and ditch the rest. Take a Rift with Vive tracking's and FOV. Touch controllers (also with Vive tracking) but with a haptic pad instead of analogs. (Gestures FTW) Oh, and as long as I'm dreaming, a unified VR API.
Click to expand...

From what I can tell, Oculus Touch actually offers possibly better/more natural hand gestures because of its physical ergonomics and capacitive buttons and sticks.
I think it also has the ability to track finger movement within the loop that goes around your fingers. So if you do a finger point, it recognises it.
I'm not clear on Vive's controller in the same way but it appears to have capacitive buttons on the sides of the wands which tend to be used as a gripping/squeezing action.

If Oculus don't start pushing for more standing, 360 degrees and moving around (Vive-esque) games, I think it's going to have a negative impact on the future of the Rift for a more full-VR experience.
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
Sleeping Lesson said:
That's pretty much just the Vive. Maybe take the optics from the Rift though.
Click to expand...

KingSnake said:
That sounds like the second generation of Vive. Or a slightly improved Vive.
Click to expand...

I'd say it's pretty much a halfway house. Headset wise, it's combining Vive tracking with Rift optics and build elegance. Keep the Vive's auxiliary USB and headphone port though. The Rift is a bit too streamlined with the removal of those things. Controller wise it's taking Rift ergonomics & grip trigger (trend here?) and merging it with Vive's tracking and analog -> trackpad swap.

You could call it an improved Vive about as much as you could call it an improved Rift depending on your perspective. The sets are ultimately more similar than they are dissimilar.
 
W

Wrestlemania

Banned
I wouldn't want to give up both analogue sticks from the Touch. Maybe keep the left one and swap the right one for a trackpad, best of both worlds.
I'm not even entirely sure what the benefit of a touchpad is when you've got two pointing devices through hand tracking.
 
D

Durante

Member
I would say the benefit of a touchpad (with haptic feedback) is far more clear than the benefit of an analog stick. In the context of a tracked VR setting that is.

An analog stick is basically only useful as an abstraction of movement, but analog stick movement is terrible in VR.
 
UnrealEck

UnrealEck

Member
Wrestlemania said:
I wouldn't want to give up both analogue sticks from the Touch. Maybe keep the left one and swap the right one for a trackpad, best of both worlds.
I'm not even entirely sure what the benefit of a touchpad is when you've got two pointing devices through hand tracking.
Click to expand...

The problem with having one of each is with things like symmetry in games. So for example two revolver pistols. In Hover Junkers you swirl your finger around the trackpads to spin the bullet chamber.
In theory you could have a rotation of the Oculus Touch's sticks to turn the revolver chamber in Dead and Buried.
But if you have one stick and one pad, it kind of breaks that a bit.
 
V

Vyse The Legend

Member
Vive Retail Packaging:

ODx841l.jpg


gnHL6mm.jpg
Click to expand...

Source
 
D

Durante

Member
Sweet.

I have to say, you can tell me all you want about mass markets and userbases and ergonomics and shit, but as a science fiction geek the front of the Vive is what VR should look like goddamit :p
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
UnrealEck said:
I think it also has the ability to track finger movement within the loop that goes around your fingers. So if you do a finger point, it recognises it.
I'm not clear on Vive's controller in the same way but it appears to have capacitive buttons on the sides of the wands which tend to be used as a gripping/squeezing action.
Click to expand...
Vive's grip sensors are physical, not capacitive AFAIK. Also I don't know about the whole spacial sensing of fingers within the Touch loops. I'll believe it when I see it. Nothing like that has been done before that I'm aware of.

Wrestlemania said:
I wouldn't want to give up both analogue sticks from the Touch. Maybe keep the left one and swap the right one for a trackpad, best of both worlds.
I'm not even entirely sure what the benefit of a touchpad is when you've got two pointing devices through hand tracking.
Click to expand...

If you're using the touch controllers, you're probably not going to be using analog stick based locomotion. They're more suited for situations where you'd be using teleportation and such instead. With locomotion out of the picture, you're dealing with situations where they have to provide other functions such as selection, actions, etc. Having the ability to perform gestures is more useful and natural in this case. The haptics also give feedback allowing you to feel virtual movement/resistance. Kind of hard to explain unless you've used the Steam controller.
 
E

Exuro

Member
Zalusithix said:
I'd say it's pretty much a halfway house. Headset wise, it's combining Vive tracking with Rift optics and build elegance. Keep the Vive's auxiliary USB and headphone port though. The Rift is a bit too streamlined with the removal of those things. Controller wise it's taking Rift ergonomics & grip trigger (trend here?) and merging it with Vive's tracking and analog -> trackpad swap.

You could call it an improved Vive about as much as you could call it an improved Rift depending on your perspective. The sets are ultimately more similar than they are dissimilar.
Click to expand...
Yep. That's my current issue with the rift. If for some reason I want my own headphones I'd have to add another wire running to the pc. Same thing if I want to use a 3rd party usb peripheral like leap motion. That and I like the touchpads on the Vive controllers more than sticks, but like the ergonomics of the touch controllers more than the Vive's(though I haven't tried either so that may change).

Both devices have things I do like and don't like. I'm going to wait until later in the year to decide what I want though, seeing as I only have a gtx 770 and don't want to upgrade until pascal at the earliest. Going to be a hard decision.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Zalusithix said:
This first gen of VR certainly leads to a lot of "if only" thoughts. Combine the best aspects of each unit and ditch the rest. Take a Rift with Vive tracking's and FOV. Touch controllers (also with Vive tracking) but with a haptic pad instead of analogs. (Gestures FTW) Oh, and as long as I'm dreaming, a unified VR API.
Click to expand...

that sounds about right. But then both will learn from each other and hopefully take best practices into the next versions - and there will be other players too.

I like the tracking of the Vive but the touch controller design, and the way your hand sits in them seems good. And the capacitive touch for showing where your fingers are and for gesture recognition too (although I think the Vive trackpads are capacitive?)
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
Exuro said:
Yep. That's my current issue with the rift. If for some reason I want my own headphones I'd have to add another wire running to the pc. Same thing if I want to use a 3rd party usb peripheral like leap motion. That and I like the touchpads on the Vive controllers more than sticks, but like the ergonomics of the touch controllers more than the Vive's(though I haven't tried either so that may change).

Both devices have things I do like and don't like. I'm going to wait until later in the year to decide what I want though, seeing as I only have a gtx 770 and don't want to upgrade until pascal at the earliest. Going to be a hard decision.
Click to expand...

I love the idea of integrated headphones on paper. I'm hoping I'll join in on the chorus of high praise for them. Being able to use the exact same sound output as the person doing all the sound design is a massive plus, if indeed the audio drivers are fairly decent.

Open ear is my preference for a VR headset too, as I genuinely prefer being able to hear things from the real environment around me than not...

It all falls apart if they aren't good though.

I really like ILM's approach of not using headphones and instead using multiple speakers around the player... though obviously that runs into more practicality issues.
 
UnrealEck

UnrealEck

Member
Zalusithix said:
Vive's grip sensors are physical, not capacitive AFAIK. Also I don't know about the whole spacial sensing of fingers within the Touch loops. I'll believe it when I see it. Nothing like that has been done before that I'm aware of.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think I'm mistaken. It's just the stick and some buttons/triggers that are capacitive and those are used for finger gestures.
 
M

Melchettsmoustache

Member
libertytoast said:
My friends and I talked about this a good deal, and we think the best thing to call it is VRcade. Got pretty in-depth, in terms of pricing, promotions, and more, but we never could come up with a name better than that.
Click to expand...

Yeah that was the name I had come up with too however it's unsurpsirng to note that someone is already running a VR business using the name.
It's probably worth me putting my name down for a vive preorder whilst I look into a plan.

It would likely be May before I would be charged anyway I think?
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
mrklaw said:
And the capacitive touch for showing where your fingers are and for gesture recognition too (although I think the Vive trackpads are capacitive?)
Click to expand...

Trackpads are inherently capacitive in nature. So yeah, it could tell when your thumb is removed from it, but I don't see too much use from that. You'll be more interested in what the thumb is doing, not whether it's down or up.

plagiarize said:
I love the idea of integrated headphones on paper. I'm hoping I'll join in on the chorus of high praise for them. Being able to use the exact same sound output as the person doing all the sound design is a massive plus, if indeed the audio drivers are fairly decent.

Open ear is my preference for a VR headset too, as I genuinely prefer being able to hear things from the real environment around me than not...

It all falls apart if they aren't good though.

I really like ILM's approach of not using headphones and instead using multiple speakers around the player... though obviously that runs into more practicality issues.
Click to expand...
I've spent thousands on headphones. "Quality" on built in stuff is still guaranteed to be far inferior than my existing options. There's no good reason to not have options for external headphones.
 
W

Wrestlemania

Banned
Zalusithix said:
If you're using the touch controllers, you're probably not going to be using analog stick based locomotion. They're more suited for situations where you'd be using teleportation and such instead. With locomotion out of the picture, you're dealing with situations where they have to provide other functions such as selection, actions, etc. Having the ability to perform gestures is more useful and natural in this case. The haptics also give feedback allowing you to feel virtual movement/resistance. Kind of hard to explain unless you've used the Steam controller.
Click to expand...

Having used a Steam controller, there are still plenty of scenarios where a stick is preferable, even if it's not for movement. In fact the only thing I've found them to be better for is camera movement and cursor control, neither of which will really be necessary.
Anyway, it's a preference thing more than one be clearly better than the other.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Zalusithix said:
Trackpads are inherently capacitive in nature. So yeah, it could tell when your thumb is removed from it, but I don't see too much use from that. You'll be more interested in what the thumb is doing, not whether it's down or up.
Click to expand...

well its already useful to see where your thumb is on the trackpad - eg choosing the colour of the balloons in the Steam loading area.

I've spent thousands on headphones. "Quality" on built in stuff is still guaranteed to be far inferior than my existing options. There's no good reason to not have options for external headphones.
Click to expand...

Sure. But there are also benefits of convenience by having them included - one less cable to get snagged on things, one less thing to put on.

I think I might go with wireless headphones. If the Sony Gold headphones work from the USB port on the Vive, I'll try that first.
 
M

Monger

Member
plagiarize said:
I really like ILM's approach of not using headphones and instead using multiple speakers around the player... though obviously that runs into more practicality issues.
Click to expand...

I was wondering about this. If you could use the sensors/controllers to let the software know the location of your speakers for positional audio that would be really awesome.
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
Wrestlemania said:
Having used a Steam controller, there are still plenty of scenarios where a stick is preferable, even if it's not for movement. In fact the only thing I've found them to be better for is camera movement and cursor control, neither of which will really be necessary.
Anyway, it's a preference thing more than one be clearly better than the other.
Click to expand...
Like I said, gestures alone make the pad extremely flexible. Trace around the pad. Make an L, reverse L, etc. None of which require moving a stick off center first. Sure there's an element of preference, but sticks aren't really flexible input devices.

mrklaw said:
well its already useful to see where your thumb is on the trackpad - eg choosing the colour of the balloons in the Steam loading area.



Sure. But there are also benefits of convenience by having them included - one less cable to get snagged on things, one less thing to put on.

I think I might go with wireless headphones. If the Sony Gold headphones work from the USB port on the Vive, I'll try that first.
Click to expand...
Well yeah, you want to know where the thumb is on the trackpad. That's kind of the point of them! ;) As for the headphones, the Vive does have them included. They're just small earbuds. Nothing fancy, but you can substitute your own easily enough. Shouldn't take much money to surpass whatever they stuck on the Rift either. There's no way they spent that much of the BoM on the headphones.
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
Zalusithix said:
I've spent thousands on headphones. "Quality" on built in stuff is still guaranteed to be far inferior than my existing options. There's no good reason to not have options for external headphones.
Click to expand...
Unless you are using the same reference headphones as the sound designer, there is no guarantee that your incredibly high quality headphones are producing the end results the sound designer wanted. That's the benefit of decent built in headphones.

Obviously in many ways they will be inferior, but that is what I like about going built in and since small differences in drivers can reportedly impact binaural sound, I think Oculus made the right choice... again with the caveat that the drivers are at least decent.

Think of it like playing a game designed for a CRT on a high end 4K flat panel. It looks better on the CRT because the characteristics of the displays are so different. It doesn't look as good as 4K content made for your type of display. But that game looks worse on your hugely expensive TV over an old CRT.

Everyone having known drivers is fantastic for the sound designer.
 
artsi

artsi

Member
DOT DASH DOT said:
That's pretty good tbh, at least it can accommodate some pretty serious glasses, mine are way smaller than that, and arnt a small pair. Vive should be similar.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was surprised how large ones fit there. Too bad the interface wasn't available at GDC, as some people had trouble with their glasses.
 
D

DOT DASH DOT

Member
Qassim said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4bcsly/europe_how_to_know_your_shippment_wave/

How to check what shipping wave you're in for your Vive order.

Just checked mine - I'm in the first wave UK :D

Now I just need to see how I fared for Oculus (I suspect not that well, unfortunately, took me ages to get my order through).
Click to expand...

That's 3 times today I've had part 1 confirmed, can't get enough of it! Hopefully by next week I can get confirmation from the entire HTC staff! ;)
 
D

Durante

Member
Qassim said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4bcsly/europe_how_to_know_your_shippment_wave/

How to check what shipping wave you're in for your Vive order.

Just checked mine - I'm in the first wave UK :D

Now I just need to see how I fared for Oculus (I suspect not that well, unfortunately, took me ages to get my order through).
Click to expand...
VIVE Kit - April Shipment - Austria - Part 1
Click to expand...

Mwahahaha.

On the other hand, checking my Oculus Order (generated from KS) refuses to work :/
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
Zalusithix said:
I've spent thousands on headphones. "Quality" on built in stuff is still guaranteed to be far inferior than my existing options. There's no good reason to not have options for external headphones.
Click to expand...

From that leaking developer on reddit:

Q: I believe that the Vive comes with a standard set of earbuds, which were also shipped with the Pre. Is your dev team fine tuning the experience based on those earbuds? Also, I know that the Vive comes with a jack to plug in external headphones, but is there also a jack for an external mic? My MMX 300 has a separate plug for the mic and for the audio.


A: No mic jack. We try to work with the included IEMs whenever possible to make sure it will sound on your end once you get a Vive exactly like we meant it to sound. Over-Ears like the MMX 300 might be an issue with the Vive though. Positional audio is fine-tuned to sound right on the included IEMs, not on over-ears where the driver is much further away.
Click to expand...
 
artsi

artsi

Member
plagiarize said:
From that leaking developer on reddit:
Click to expand...

That makes sense, Oculus Audio SDK documentation also says that IEM's behave differently regarding binaural audio and would require specific fine-tuning.

https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/audiosdk/latest/concepts/audio-intro-devices/

In-ear monitors offer superior isolation from your environment, are very lightweight, and have excellent frequency response over the entire range. They remove the effects of the listener's pinnae from sound (unlike on-ear headphones). They have the downside of requiring insertion into the ear canal, which eliminates the effects of the ear canal from sound reproduction entirely (since most HRTFs are captured with microphones right outside the ear canal).
Click to expand...
 
artsi

artsi

Member
pj said:
If over ear headphones are a problem, why has literally every public vive demo been done with them?
Click to expand...

Hygiene? I wouldn't want to plug someone else's IEM's to my ears.

But they're not necessarily bad, just not as accurate regarding binaural audio as the integrated solution is (just like with the Rift).
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
pj said:
If over ear headphones are a problem, why has literally every public vive demo been done with them?
Click to expand...

You misunderstand. This developer is targeting the IEMs that come with the Vive for their audio tuning, as such over the ears in this game may cause a problem. If the game was tuned for over the ear type of headphones then IEMs would cause problems. The benefit of the Rift is that everyone will have the same decent quality headphones and the positional audio in every game will be tuned for that one set of hardware.

That's a huge plus.

Now if every Vive came a set of identical high quality over the ear cans, the Vive would beat out the rift in the audio department, but there is a lot to be said for everyone having the same exact headphones.

Audio designers generally tune for whatever the most common setup is. They can do better if they know everyone will have a uniform output.
 
VlaudTheImpaler

VlaudTheImpaler

tl;dr
Qassim said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4bcsly/europe_how_to_know_your_shippment_wave/

How to check what shipping wave you're in for your Vive order.

Just checked mine - I'm in the first wave UK :D

Now I just need to see how I fared for Oculus (I suspect not that well, unfortunately, took me ages to get my order through).
Click to expand...

This is only for Europe.

The US version is here,

https://store.digitalriver.com/store/htcus/en_US/contact/ThemeID.38736100#bottomForm

Though they seem to be slower with the US version.
 
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