• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

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

Krejlooc

Banned
Foveated rendering reduces rendering cost by rendering part of the image at a lower resolution, not the bandwidth required for the transmission of the resulting frame. The frame itself will be full resolution, and lossless transmission of it will take as much bandwidth as if the entire thing was rendered at native resolution.

The frame itself can be massively compressed with effectively no discernible difference. You don't need lossless transmission thanks to foveated rendering - very lossy transmission is fine provided only the small area of the fovea is clear. You can even use multiple resolutions and have a piece of compositor hardware on the headset itself piece it together for you.

You can send a single high resolution small are for your fovea, and a much lower resolution full frame, and you won't notice the difference at all.
 

Compsiox

Banned
Sure, I want that in my life, but I don't have the space for it. Not at all. Even reaching out my hand to shoot and fire is going to cause problems that even a chaperone can't solve. I know these experiences can scale down with room size but the problem is that freedom of physical mobility in that space will still be hampered. I am not sure it will be the same experience in a 7x7 foot space as it would be in a full 15x15.

There will be people who can create a comfortable space to do this and I think it will be a fantastic experience for them but it's just not something I see ever being widely utilized. I feel like, even with Room Scale being able to scale down to smaller spaces, you still have to deal with creating a specialized space to have these sorts of experiences.

Great technology and it looks fantastic but I'm not sure it will ever be adopted by a mass audience. I do hope there is enough of an audience for it to stick around in some form though and to drive developers to continue to work on Room Scale experiences and games.

I admit, I have yet to try it though but even if I am over-the-moon in love with it after using it there are still real physical limitations that I would have to deal with bringing that home.

Well remember that the Vive includes controllers so if you wanted to do it in the Oculus you have to wait 6 months and pay more money in addition to the 600 dollars. I'd bet my life savings that the touch controllers won't cost less than 200 dollars.
 

harz-marz

Member
I'm really saddened by the whole fact that every VR thread, forum, post, whatever has become "roomscale or bust". It's really taking away from the time a lot of developers have spent on these products.

Agreed. I can't do room scale and would imagine that only a small minority can afford to devote the space to it.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Yep. I don't see Oculus actually being relevant in the PC space at this rate now that they're strongly downplaying room-scale. Room-scale is here, it works perfectly with Lighthouse, room-scale experiences are ridiculously awesome and as soon as you try one you won't want to be dropping premium dollars on VR gear that can't do it.

You want this in your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIEuB7H9TOE

The end.

I think they'll be fine. They'll still do good numbers based on brand awareness, and touch looks to be pretty nice for the focus they are giving it.

Then for gen 2 they can roll in a lighthouse style tracking and an evolution of their already excellent optics, comfort and gesture supporting controllers and that will be a quality package.

And being PC, I will happily swap to them with OR2 if they do that.
 
Well remember that the Vive includes controllers so if you wanted to do it in the Oculus you have to wait 6 months and pay more money in addition to the 600 dollars. I'd bet my life savings that the touch controllers won't cost less than 200 dollars.

Oh no doubt. If you have the space and want room scale now plus proper touch control now, you should be buying a Vive.

I don't have the space right now and won't have it in the foreseeable future. Also, I kind of like the way the Oculus Touch controllers are going so I am comfortable just waiting it out for a few months.

The price will definitely be around $200. People are delusional if they think it will be less.
 

pj

Banned
They can also run off of batteries, for weeks at a time on a single battery.

I would be careful about getting people's hopes up with this. You're not running a lighthouse for multiple weeks with a 9 volt or something.

CZRWUcwVIAAhA6g.jpg


"got ours lasting 32 hours on this battery. "

https://twitter.com/ProMacGyverMan/status/690271556275077120
 
What kills me is that, due to the input limitations, most of the software looks like Wii Tech demos in VR. Which will be cool for like a couple of goes and then go stale fast.

IMO, VR has more problems than waggle did because we can't even make the player move without causing many of them to vomit.

HTC and Oculus should have pumped money into Near Light Field displays (like Nvidia is developing), which eliminate motion sickness, instead of rushing to market with something that will damage VR moving forward.

Without motion sickness we could freely use any type of control method and have games in every genre.
Near Light Field is nowhere near ready for consumer electronics. Even if they did invest in some exotic display tech do you think it would be ready to ship this month? Also what would the price look like? And if the price changes to a theoretical 999.99 for oculus, and 1199.99 for Vive how many people, outside of early adopters would actually purchase these devices?
 

Compsiox

Banned
Oh no doubt. If you have the space and want room scale now plus proper touch control now, you should be buying a Vive.

I don't have the space right now and won't have it in the foreseeable future. Also, I kind of like the way the Oculus Touch controllers are going so I am comfortable just waiting it out for a few months.

The price will definitely be around $200. People are delusional if they think it will be less.

You can do standing and sitting experiences with the Vive. But if you just prefer the controller, awesome enjoy :)
 

Krejlooc

Banned
I'm really saddened by the whole fact that every VR thread, forum, post, whatever has become "roomscale or bust". It's really taking away from the time a lot of developers have spent on these products.

I'm sorry, but that's on the devs. If the market is demanding a type of experience, they need to listen and work towards meeting that ideal.

Myself, I've always known roomscale was the goal. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be neat seated experiences in the interim, but they're not what the future holds. These seated experiences feel to me like software rendering solutions waiting for 3D accelerated hardware - very cool for right now, but what's coming is far more interesting to me.
 
I'm really saddened by the whole fact that every VR thread, forum, post, whatever has become "roomscale or bust". It's really taking away from the time a lot of developers have spent on these products.

Perhaps a reflection of the impact room scale is having on the VR experience than a slight to any developer.

I don't think anyone is going to pass on buying great seated games so it's not "taking away" from any developers, is it? But room scale seems to be changing gaming at its core for a lot of press and gamers that got access to a Vive Pre. As evidenced by the many youtube videos discussing VR, the majority of which seem to be in love with room scale and want more of it, not less. Again, grown ass men and women giggling like school girls. It's another one of those things that you have to try to really understand the difference in "immersion" that room scale offers that nothing else seems to. I guess people won't miss what they haven't had.

Hopefully said developers recognize that desire and Oculus gets their Touch out (whether they think it's valuable or not). And on that note, I'm pretty disappointed to see a market leader be apathetic to room scale. It's just...weird. I understand maybe it was a strength of the design of the Rift, but it can still do it and room scale is the shit according to the overwhelming majority.
 
It's not like lighthouse isn't without it's cabling problems - currently I'm trying to work out the best place to position them so I can easily get them to power sockets and it's not going to be particularly easy.

?

Vive has one cable that runs from the HMD to the PC. Then, each lighthouse requires a power cord that runs directly to an outlet -- or you can go for a battery-based solution. Most rooms have multiple power outlets, so setting them up across from each other should be trivial. The lighthouses also wirelessly sync to one another.

The theoretical Rift room-scale setup will require three cables all running back to the same source (your PC). On top of requiring even more USB ports, the second camera will need to be positioned at the opposite end of your room, requiring you to run its cable neatly around the room, so that you don't create a tripping nightmare.

Evilore said:
Yep. I don't see Oculus actually being relevant in the PC space at this rate now that they're strongly downplaying room-scale. Room-scale is here, it works perfectly with Lighthouse, room-scale experiences are ridiculously awesome and as soon as you try one you won't want to be dropping premium dollars on VR gear that can't do it.

You want this in your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIEuB7H9TOE

The end.

Agreed.

To all the people banging the "BUT I DON'T HAVE ROOM" drum, please take a moment to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NixHENChoQ4 Room-scale requires far less space than you think. As a bonus, post pictures of your PC setup. :)
 

Krejlooc

Banned
If it scales down, then what is stopping it from working with opposing cameras in Rift?

Occlusion. Ray traced visualizations of the lighting configurations for the rift, PSVR, and vive show that, even at 12' x 12', areas of the room are not fully hit with the rift's dual camera set up like they are with lighthouse, especially down low on the floor:

MBjQ0FK.jpg
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
Near Light Field is nowhere near ready for consumer electronics. Even if they did invest in some exotic display tech do you think it would be ready to ship this month? Also what would the price look like? And if the price changes to a theorhetical 999.99 for oculus, and 1199.99 for Vive how many people, outside of early adopters would actually purchase these devices?

VR companies should have waited 5 to 10 years. They didn't HAVE to release this year.

Motion Sickness really could kill VR moving forward. Even if better tech comes people might not give it a chance because of earlier issues.
 

viveks86

Member
Yep. I don't see Oculus actually being relevant in the PC space at this rate now that they're strongly downplaying room-scale. Room-scale is here, it works perfectly with Lighthouse, room-scale experiences are ridiculously awesome and as soon as you try one you won't want to be dropping premium dollars on VR gear that can't do it.

You want this in your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIEuB7H9TOE

The end.

I think it's just their way of covering up shortcomings with their gen 1 solution. Come gen 2, I'm pretty sure they'll change tune. Meanwhile, they have the brand awareness and an adequate solution for a sizable consumer base to stay relevant.
 
VR companies should have waited 5 to 10 years. They didn't HAVE to release this year.

Motion Sickness really could kill VR moving forward. Even if better tech comes people might not give it a chance because of earlier issues.
?

Motion sickness is a game design issue, not a hardware issue. 5-10 more years wouldn't stop irresponsible developers from failing to account adequately for motion sickness. If motion sickness is your concern, talk to the developers of said sickening games. we'll have plenty of games that don't create sickness made by developers using best practices that have been developing for the last few years.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
This is not merely walking someone along the periphery of their room. It snakes them along their room in both directions several times. Which is easy to do once the player loses orientation in VR.

I understand, was just making a joke.

The problem with this method is, once again, how limited it is. You can't create a shooter or open world RPG like this :p.
 

pj

Banned
VR companies should have waited 5 to 10 years. They didn't HAVE to release this year.

Motion Sickness really could kill VR moving forward. Even if better tech comes people might not give it a chance because of earlier issues.

I don't think motion sickness is an issue with room scale games. Better quality headsets won't magically fix games that currently cause motion sickness. The fundamental problem is when your eyes see that your body is moving in the VR world but your body hasn't actually moved. A theoretically perfect VR headset wouldn't prevent nausea in games that do stuff like analog stick movement or roller coaster simulation.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
VR companies should have waited 5 to 10 years.

VR has been waiting for 35 years dude.

They didn't HAVE to release this year.

This is absolutely the right time to strike. Waiting any longer would stunt development. People developing VR need to make returns on their R&D. That goes for both developers, who are figuring out the solutions to VR software design practices, and engineers, who are figuring out hardware solutions. Without eventually releasing a product, people will leave the realm because there's no money in it. VR absolutely had to release this year, or developer support would drop sharply. Some Devs have already been waiting 3 years to try and make returns on their projects.

Motion Sickness really could kill VR moving forward. Even if better tech comes people might not give it a chance because of earlier issues.

This is why the technological diffusion curve is important. What you say is precisely why VR is not ready to be a 100 million person product. It's supposed to be low on the technological diffusion curve, because early adopters will be more forgiving while the tech works out. Progress in the diffusion curve isn't merely a component of time, it's also dependent on engineering solutions being discovered.
 
VR companies should have waited 5 to 10 years. They didn't HAVE to release this year.

Motion Sickness really could kill VR moving forward. Even if better tech comes people might not give it a chance because of earlier issues.

We don't know how widespread motion sickness will be, and more importantly, everyone has different tolerance levels. I still to this day get sick riding in the back seat of a car; I need to be in the front to avoid motion sickness. Eliminating motion sickness entirely may never happen, and Oculus believes the tech is where it needs to be to cover most circumstances.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
?

Motion sickness is a game design issue, not a hardware issue. 5-10 more years wouldn't stop irresponsible developers from failing to account adequately for motion sickness. If motion sickness is your concern, talk to the developers of said sickening games. we'll have plenty of games that don't create sickness made by developers using best practices that have been developing for the last few years.

Everything I have heard is that no matter how well you develop your game, a theoretical fast paced shooter (Say COD VR) played with a joystick to move forward, back, and strafe right to left will cause motion sickness even if you allow the user to turn on their own (which, with cords could be bad).

Add in turning with another joystick and it gets worse.


I used to play arma 2 with track IR. That is the kind of experience I would like to see in VR only with games at the speed of quake 3.

We don't know how widespread motion sickness will be, and more importantly, everyone has different tolerance levels. I still to this day get sick riding in the back seat of a car; I need to be in the front to avoid motion sickness. Eliminating motion sickness entirely may never happen, and Oculus believes the tech is where it needs to be to cover most circumstances.

I get car sick too. Which is why I am kinda bummed about VR (even if I just bought a psvr to "try it out".) :p
 

Krejlooc

Banned
I would be careful about getting people's hopes up with this. You're not running a lighthouse for multiple weeks with a 9 volt or something.

CZRWUcwVIAAhA6g.jpg


"got ours lasting 32 hours on this battery. "

https://twitter.com/ProMacGyverMan/status/690271556275077120

I have personally seen lighthouse running on normal batteries.

That doesn't look like final retail model.

It isn't, the ones with the pre are much smaller and sleeker, and slot in normal batteries. That's from the early dev kits, the ones that also had Vive controllers that only lasted like an hour on a full charge.
 
?

Vive has one cable that runs from the HMD to the PC. Then, each lighthouse requires a power cord that runs directly to an outlet -- or you can go for a battery-based solution. Most rooms have multiple power outlets, so setting them up across from each other should be trivial. The lighthouses also wirelessly sync to one another.

The theoretical Rift room-scale setup will require three cables all running back to the same source (your PC). On top of requiring even more USB ports, the second camera will need to be positioned at the opposite end of your room, requiring you to run its cable neatly around the room, so that you don't create a tripping nightmare.

I'm just talking about powering the lighthouses here. My power sockets just aren't in ideal positions to place them, so I'm going to have to deal with extension cords, and hopefully I can find some fairly slim ones so I can fix them to the walls tidily.
For setting up opposing rift cameras, I'll just need to run the cable under a rug in front of my PC and then up to a shelf in the back of the room.


Agreed.

To all the people banging the "BUT I DON'T HAVE ROOM" drum, please take a moment to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NixHENChoQ4 Room-scale requires far less space than you think. As a bonus, post pictures of your PC setup. :)

Once you get it down to that size of space, it's well within what Rift opposing cameras will allow. It's the larger size of room scale that only Vive will allow that's going to be tricky for most people.
 

pj

Banned
I have personally seen lighthouse running on normal batteries.



It isn't, the ones with the pre are much smaller and sleeker, and slot in normal batteries. That's from the early dev kits, the ones that also had Vive controllers that only lasted like an hour on a full charge.

What batteries? You said single before

How many hours of active use before they have to be replaced?
 

vermadas

Member
I'm really saddened by the whole fact that every VR thread, forum, post, whatever has become "roomscale or bust". It's really taking away from the time a lot of developers have spent on these products.

I agree.

It's a testament to how well the Vive/room-scale demos and the surge of positive press and coverage from youtubers, etc... Oculus has been extremely quiet by comparison. I'm not sure if room-scale is the VR revelation some are claiming; I have yet to try it. My primitive brain has only been fantasizing about playing the sort of games I already know and love (cockpit racing, 3rd person action, etc.) with my head immersed in the world but still controlling everything seated with a controller or racing wheel.

When I see Vive demos that are focused on room scale, I think, "wow, I'd love to try that!" or "wow, I'd love to show this experience to friends/family and see their reactions". But the games themselves seem kind of shallow, for the most part. I have no doubt that the games utilizing room-scale will grow into deeper and better experiences, but I think by then Oculus will have their own solution ready.

Plus there's the Facebook vs. Valve thing. If you asked computer gaming enthusiasts to put these companies on a Love/Hate scale they would be on completely opposite ends.
 

Hale-XF11

Member
Yep. I don't see Oculus actually being relevant in the PC space at this rate now that they're strongly downplaying room-scale. Room-scale is here, it works perfectly with Lighthouse, room-scale experiences are ridiculously awesome and as soon as you try one you won't want to be dropping premium dollars on VR gear that can't do it.

You want this in your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIEuB7H9TOE

The end.

It really amazes me how stubborn and bullish Oculus (and Palmer in particular) are being about downplaying and writing off room scale experiences, when it's clearly the end-game for VR. They screwed up by not going that route and are now doubling down on poo-pooing it. Being short-sighted is only gonna end up biting them in the ass in the end (is that redundant?).
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Agreed. I can't do room scale and would imagine that only a small minority can afford to devote the space to it.

I'm really saddened by the whole fact that every VR thread, forum, post, whatever has become "roomscale or bust". It's really taking away from the time a lot of developers have spent on these products.

For me at least, it isn't so much 'room scale or bust', as it is 'room scale features + seated features' > 'seated only features'. Why wouldn't you want the one with more capability, including pretty transformative experiences?

I do think a 180 degree touch experience will be good, and most developers will support it because Rift+PSVR volumes are likely to be significantly higher than Vive, so devs can't ignore that configuration. But there are too many question marks for me, and I think Oculus should have spent at least some time at GDC to settle peoples' minds about what touch will or won't do.

A large factor is simply that Oculus seem to have been very quiet over recent months (other than the launch preview event), whereas Vive have been on a media blitz. So it shouldn't be unexpected that Vive is getting the lion's share of chatter right now. What is surprising is that Oculus aren't reacting at all, right before their launch.


And you don't need a ton of space. Standing up and spinning your arms about would be enough for most things.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
Everything I have heard is that no matter how well you develop your game, a theoretical fast paced shooter (Say COD VR) played with a joystick to move forward, back, and strafe right to left will cause motion sickness even if you allow the user to turn on their own (which, with cords could be bad).

Add in turning with another joystick and it gets worse.


I used to play arma 2 with track IR. That is the kind of experience I would like to see in VR only with games at the speed of quake 3.

well, suffice to say you're not going to be getting COD any time soon, if ever. But VR's adoption doesn't hinge on how well it can run unrealistic military shooters. Many of the reasons games like COD don't work in VR boils down to the unrealistic way the game handles locomotion. We're talking games where you move at like 30 miles per hour.

With some outside the box thinking, you can conceive a realistic military shooter that could play nicely in a room-scale tracked place. Would it be exactly like COD? No, but by virtue of it being VR, it shouldn't be.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I'm really saddened by the whole fact that every VR thread, forum, post, whatever has become "roomscale or bust". It's really taking away from the time a lot of developers have spent on these products.

I've tried dozens of VR experiences on every VR hardware and, well, room-scale ones are so much more exciting than everything else that there really is no comparison, so get used to it.

When I got out of trying Real Virtuality: Space Traveller I described it to Colin Trevorrow, how I was 1:1 mapped with a girl's virtual body and handing off objects to my co-op partner seamlessly, and traversing a labyrinth that effectively utilized the space to mimic forward traversal, and having my brain react to avoiding stepping on the empty tiles in the floor, and I'm not sure I've seen a human being quite as excited as Colin was in those moments at the prospect of something resembling Version 1 of a Holodeck existing right now in real life.

Just how it goes.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
I don't think motion sickness is an issue with room scale games. Better quality headsets won't magically fix games that currently cause motion sickness. The fundamental problem is when your eyes see that your body is moving in the VR world but your body hasn't actually moved. A theoretically perfect VR headset wouldn't prevent nausea in games that do stuff like analog stick movement or roller coaster simulation.

Room scale is a quick fix, it will have to be phased out for mainstream titles so VR can succeed. Unless are rooms are going to get city sized soon or something. LOL.

well, suffice to say you're not going to be getting COD any time soon, if ever. But VR's adoption doesn't hinge on how well it can run unrealistic military shooters. Many of the reasons games like COD don't work in VR boils down to the unrealistic way the game handles locomotion. We're talking games where you move at like 30 miles per hour.

With some outside the box thinking, you can conceive a realistic military shooter that could play nicely in a room-scale tracked place. Would it be exactly like COD? No, but by virtue of it being VR, it shouldn't be.

I guess this is my question: How are you going to get mainstream to adopt a technology that can never be used to venture outside of a 10x10 (or whatever dimension space you have) square?

I actually think room scale would be cool but could start to feel kind of like a cage (particularly with the chaperone popping up and reminding you "Hey, this is VR and your room is only 5x5. Step back please".

To me it seems like this should be the thing; Oculus + some controller + 360 degree tracking = great experience. You shouldn't need room scale, just a movement joystick on a controller and turning your physical body to orient the movement.

Apparently the above isn't possible which is why the "teleportation method" seems to be showing up all over the place.

Now I hear that oculus is focusing on forward only experiences? I mean, what?
 
I don't see how "oh i want to walk over there, shit my wall is in the way. now i have to use some weird locomotion method (teleportation) to get around that issue" will ever stop being annoying.

It works fine for stuff where the scene can realistically be constrained to an area that small, but I wan't to play open world stuff.
 

harSon

Banned
Yep. I don't see Oculus actually being relevant in the PC space at this rate now that they're strongly downplaying room-scale. Room-scale is here, it works perfectly with Lighthouse, room-scale experiences are ridiculously awesome and as soon as you try one you won't want to be dropping premium dollars on VR gear that can't do it.

You want this in your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIEuB7H9TOE

The end.

I think you're severely overestimating the potential install base of those who have a PC setup that could accommodate room-scale. With VR, you're looking at an install base (those who can afford a $600-800 VR setup) of an install base (those who have a PC that can power your typical VR experience) - which is already somewhat niche in the grand scheme of gaming. And now you're looking at all of that on top of people who have the necessary space within proximity of their existing gaming room to take advantage of room space? I'm not going to say that there's not a large number of people who can satisfy all of those bullet points, because there is, but to suggest that they won't be relevant within the PC space due to not having a feature set targeting a niche aspect of the overall potential VR consumer base in the first generation of technology's present existence is... sort of weird.

I do agree that it'd be nice to have that option, and in not doing so, they're probably losing some customers - but I don't think you can draw anything long term from the omission.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
What batteries? You said single before

How many hours of active use before they have to be replaced?

It was a single NiMH battery (well, single per lighthouse, so two total).

We began demoing at 5 pm. We ran until well after midnight. The batteries weren't charged for the event at all.

Also, when they demoed at Rice University, the battery they had lasted the entire week for demoing.
 

Zalusithix

Member
The frame itself can be massively compressed with effectively no discernible difference. You don't need lossless transmission thanks to foveated rendering - very lossy transmission is fine provided only the small area of the fovea is clear. You can even use multiple resolutions and have a piece of compositor hardware on the headset itself piece it together for you.

You can send a single high resolution small are for your fovea, and a much lower resolution full frame, and you won't notice the difference at all.

Compression and foveated rendering are two separate things. You could compress the hell out of a natively rendered frame if you wanted to except in the area where you're looking. Not that I'm aware of any compression being a VESA standard aside from DSC, and that's not targeted to my knowledge.

Sending multiple frames with differing resolutions per frame isn't something that I'm aware of as being supported by VESA standards. Theoretically you could have them both rendered at the same resolution with double the framerate and stretch one and overlay the other. Re-compositing the frame with proper blending isn't a free action though so it'll add latency. Latency that could be an issue when coupled with wireless.

Mind you, anything that reduces bandwidth requirements to the point where wireless is feasible can equally be used by wired transmission for even higher fidelity.
 

pj

Banned
Room scale is a quick fix, it will have to be phased out for mainstream titles so VR can succeed. Unless are rooms are going to get city sized soon or something. LOL.

Unless someone develops a pill that prevents motion sickness, room scale is the only option until we have shit that connects directly to your brain.

There are ways to increase the perceived size of a space, namely "redirection". In general it requires a fairly large space to work effectively, but I think we will see some miniaturization that creates seamless VR spaces much larger than your actual play area.
 

Glassboy

Member
So I have a i5 2500k over clocked to 4.2 ghz. Is this thing gonna work at all with oculus and vive or should I be looking to buy a new cpu before these headsets arrive? I did the steam VR test and passed but I don't want to be stuck with something that is not gonna work on day one. Anyone else in the same boat?
 

Krejlooc

Banned
Room scale is a quick fix, it will have to be phased out for mainstream titles so VR can succeed. Unless are rooms are going to get city sized soon or something. LOL.

You don't need a city sized room. You can create endless walking paths through natural, undetectable redirected walking in an area about 18' x 18'. And you can do the same with hard, 90 degree pivots in an area as small as about 6' x 6'.

Redirected walking is clearly where things will move in the near future.
 

pj

Banned
It isn't, the ones with the pre are much smaller and sleeker, and slot in normal batteries. That's from the early dev kits, the ones that also had Vive controllers that only lasted like an hour on a full charge.

Sorry, can you show me the battery slot on a vive pre lighthouse?
 
So I have a i5 2500k over clocked to 4.2 ghz. Is this thing gonna work at all with oculus and vive or should I be looking to buy a new cpu before these headsets arrive? I did the steam VR test and passed but I don't want to be stuck with something that is not gonna work on day one. Anyone else in the same boat?


Go download the benchmark tool from each manufacturer. Should tell you right away if you're ready or not
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
You don't need a city sized room. You can create endless walking paths through natural, undetectable redirected walking in an area about 18' x 18'. And you can do the same with hard, 90 degree pivots in an area as small as about 6' x 6'.

Redirected walking is clearly where things will move in the near future.

Please explain to me how I will be able to walk through a free range open world (think Witcher 3 or Skyrim) inside a 18x18 room ( who has a room that size just for VR?).
 

Krejlooc

Banned
Compression and foveated rendering are two separate things. You could compress the hell out of a natively rendered frame if you wanted to except in the area where you're looking. Not that I'm aware of any compression being a VESA standard aside from DSC, and that's not targeted to my knowledge.

Sending multiple frames with differing resolutions per frame isn't something that I'm aware of as being supported by VESA standards. Theoretically you could have them both rendered at the same resolution with double the framerate and stretch one and overlay the other. Re-compositing the frame with proper blending isn't a free action though so it'll add latency. Latency that could be an issue when coupled with wireless.

Mind you, anything that reduces bandwidth requirements to the point where wireless is feasible can equally be used by wired transmission for even higher fidelity.

You don't need to adhere to VESA standards thanks to the earlier mentioned compositor. The compositor will build a VESA-compatible frame at the headset itself.

The process is simple - you wind up sending two tiny frames simultaneously be composited at the headset. You already have the framework worked out in your post. One tiny frame is for everything besides the fovea area of the image - this could be theoretically something tiny, like 320x240 resolution or comparable. You blit this to the compositor using a scaling algorithm - even something as simple as doubling or quadrupling up the pixel resolution, then blit the second tiny frame at it's native resolution on top of the scaled image, at the position the fovea rests.

No, of course this is not free, but blitting is hardly an expensive operation, and the gains made by sending a few tiny frames and composing the image at the headset is going to be way smaller than the cost of transmitting a full-resolution frame.
 

Cyriades

Member
So I have a i5 2500k over clocked to 4.2 ghz. Is this thing gonna work at all with oculus and vive or should I be looking to buy a new cpu before these headsets arrive? I did the steam VR test and passed but I don't want to be stuck with something that is not gonna work on day one. Anyone else in the same boat?

Steam_VR_test_v1.jpg
 

Soi-Fong

Member
So I have a i5 2500k over clocked to 4.2 ghz. Is this thing gonna work at all with oculus and vive or should I be looking to buy a new cpu before these headsets arrive? I did the steam VR test and passed but I don't want to be stuck with something that is not gonna work on day one. Anyone else in the same boat?

It'll be fine with both. I've been using my 2600k w/ the Vive Pre at my house and have had no problems with that paired up with my 780 Ti.
 
Top Bottom