Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable • Hacker News Board

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#81

Post by GFischer » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 3:06 AM UTC

metasean wrote: post #73

ryandamm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content is precisely the problem. Carmack even admits as much here: http://uploadvr.com/john-carmack-talks-difficulty-mobile-pos... That guy's pretty outspoken. (And yes, he's referring to live action content; I presume mobile VR will be tilted more toward video streaming etc than gaming, but I could be wrong.)

I'm not a sports person, but your "live action content" made me wonder how awesome it would be to be a sports fan who could view 'the game' from the sideline, or an aerial cam, and to be able to turn and zoom a camera or to switch cameras – as desired! Better yet, to be able 'be the athlete'. Cameras aren't there yet , but imagine being able to watch the scenery as an Olympic down-hill skier as flying downhill - AWES…

Cameras are here, the software is here too, I've actually toyed around with some implementations and they're definitely good enough.

The big problem that scares me is sports licensing and all the legal stuff attached.

VR will allow lots of cool stuff like that :) . One possibility I was thinking about was putting the cameras on the referees instead of the players themselves (for sports such as soccer).

But I think it'll happen as soon as there's a critical mass of people buying VR headsets.

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#82

Post by dperfect » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 3:34 AM UTC

julianpye wrote: post #17

From OC2, but semi-offtopic - What did people think about the Michael Abrash lecture "These are the good old days"? For me it was one of the most inspiring lectures on engineering solutions for HCI solutions. The cool part was that it positions Oculus as a technology company supporting senses far beyond vision.

Inspiring, yes - but it's also disheartening with respect to how far away we are from highly-convincing VR.

It's not even a matter of engineering the solutions; we have yet to fully understand so many of the problems, and we'll need years (decades?) of research before beginning to think about some of the solutions. That's not to say it can't be an overall positive technology/experience in the meantime, but it'll likely be many years before it's free of certain side effects (e.g., nausea, discomfort) that bother people.

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#83

Post by fr0styMatt2 » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 4:07 AM UTC

nadams wrote: post #62

My only question is have they fixed the whole driver problem yet? The Oculus Rift DK2 was a complete disaster. I understand it's a "dev kit" but if they are to release it for general use they will need to drastically change the way the driver installs, the way it communicates error messages and issues with the connection. It took me several hours to release I needed to move the Oculus Rift "monitor" to the right. And…

The latest Oculus SDK (0.7.0.0) on Windows _absolutely_ fixes this mess. I have nothing but praise for the latest software and this is coming from someone who couldn't use his Rift since around November last year when the AMD drivers and the Rift's extended mode stopped working together.

Basically now the Rift is considered a proper HMD as a category of its' own and not a bastardized monitor. There is no more extended mode. Everything compiled with Oculus SDK 0.6.0.0 and above now works in Direct Mode only. The latency is noticeably better. With the latest AMD/Nvidia drivers, you just plug the headset in and there's no monitor-type configuration at all.

Note this is with Windows 10; I don't have first-hand experience with 8.1 but think it'd be much the same. It really is that much better.

Also, if you haven't checked out the latest VR Desktop (http://www.vrdesktop.net), you need to do this too. In addition to giving you a giant screen to see your desktop on, you can now play full-screen games in it, watch YouTube 360 videos properly in it and watch 3D movies encoded in side-by-side or top/bottom encoding. It's really really awesome :)

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#84

Post by ryanSrich » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 5:00 AM UTC

Is there any reason this is getting a lot of press now? I've seen it all over twitter. This thing has been out for a WHILE. I used one a Toms store in Portland. It was neat but I'd much prefer something with a higher resolution. VR is all about resolution imo.

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#85

Post by lhl » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 5:13 AM UTC

dperfect wrote: post #82

julianpye wrote: post #17

From OC2, but semi-offtopic - What did people think about the Michael Abrash lecture "These are the good old days"? For me it was one of the most inspiring lectures on engineering solutions for HCI solutions. The cool part was that it positions Oculus as a technology company supporting senses far beyond vision.

Inspiring, yes - but it's also disheartening with respect to how far away we are from highly-convincing VR. It's not even a matter of engineering the solutions; we have yet to fully understand so many of the problems, and we'll need years (decades?) of research before beginning to think about some of the solutions. That's not to say it can't be an overall positive technology/experience in the meantime, but it'll like…

In a few months you'll be able to easily try the consumer Rift, the HTC Vive and see for yourself how convincing the VR is. I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

While the road toward "perfect" VR is just getting started, these first-gen consumer sets have crossed the starting line, and are qualitatively different from earlier VR experiences.

(BTW, while comfort isn't a totally solved problem, for 1:1 motion, these sets (and PSVR) are pretty good and I think for most people, won't make them sick.)

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#86

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 5:16 AM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #84

Is there any reason this is getting a lot of press now? I've seen it all over twitter. This thing has been out for a WHILE. I used one a Toms store in Portland. It was neat but I'd much prefer something with a higher resolution. VR is all about resolution imo.

[deleted]

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#87

Post by pedrosorio » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 5:22 AM UTC

metasean wrote: post #73

ryandamm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content is precisely the problem. Carmack even admits as much here: http://uploadvr.com/john-carmack-talks-difficulty-mobile-pos... That guy's pretty outspoken. (And yes, he's referring to live action content; I presume mobile VR will be tilted more toward video streaming etc than gaming, but I could be wrong.)

I'm not a sports person, but your "live action content" made me wonder how awesome it would be to be a sports fan who could view 'the game' from the sideline, or an aerial cam, and to be able to turn and zoom a camera or to switch cameras – as desired! Better yet, to be able 'be the athlete'. Cameras aren't there yet , but imagine being able to watch the scenery as an Olympic down-hill skier as flying downhill - AWES…

http://www.sporttechie.com/2015/09/24/portuguese-soccer-leag...

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#88

Post by lhl » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 5:23 AM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #84

Is there any reason this is getting a lot of press now? I've seen it all over twitter. This thing has been out for a WHILE. I used one a Toms store in Portland. It was neat but I'd much prefer something with a higher resolution. VR is all about resolution imo.

This is a new version and the first non-"Innovator Edition" (read: enthusiasts/devs) - the big deal I think is that presumably as a true consumer product, it'll be getting a lot more distribution, and moving forward will probably a big part of Samsung's pitch for differentiation of their flagship mobile products.

More resolution would be nice, but it's not everything. The biggest issue for VR geeks is probably the lack of positional tracking. A close second (or first, depending on how sensitive you are) is the relatively low refresh rate (60Hz) causes noticeable strobing for a lot of people. At that refresh rate you don't get the temporal super-resolution bonuses you get at higher rates. Fill factor is as important (if not moreso) for screen-door effect - the CV1 and Vive screens are lower-res, but look much better. AFAIK, the S6/N5 screens don't support global refresh (although there is direct front-buffer access). Lack of physical IPD adjustment is a big deal, and it's hard to solve w/ a single screen w/o sacrifices. Oh, and of course, running the devices comfortably w/o overheating.

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#89

Post by sciguy77 » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 5:28 AM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #5

I wonder how effective this VR actually is. It seems that VR heavily depends on high quality screens, with very high resolution, and low latency and persistence. However this works with a screen that isn't optimised for those attributes. $99 may be good, but it seems likely that it will be much worse than the Oculus Rift, I think is targeting ~$400-500, and could be far better. Is it worth it?

I owned the Note 4 Innovator Edition. Its better than you'd think. Very low latency, excellent tracking, solid design. But a noticeable Screen Door Effect is a downside, more so than resolution IMO. You may not get full presence, but undoubtably its worth a mere $99.

Re: Oculus’ New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable

#90

Post by lhl » Fri, Sep 25, 2015, 5:35 AM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #5

I wonder how effective this VR actually is. It seems that VR heavily depends on high quality screens, with very high resolution, and low latency and persistence. However this works with a screen that isn't optimised for those attributes. $99 may be good, but it seems likely that it will be much worse than the Oculus Rift, I think is targeting ~$400-500, and could be far better. Is it worth it?

The GearVR actually has a fair amount higher resolution (and arc-resolution) than the first-gen wired headsets. It also has a bit more SDE and lower FOV so there's a trade-off.

In terms of rendering pipeline, even w/ the latest Gameworks VR / Liquid VR drivers and WDDM 2.0, the GearVR may still beat out the PC's latency - Carmack's OC keynote from last year is worth watching for some of those details. Since the GearVR has both a direct kernel driver for the sensors and front-buffer access to the GPU, he quoted something eyepopping, like 4ms M2P latency.

IMO, the killer app for GearVR is watching movies on long trips, and the really compelling 360 photo/video content that's starting to get made. If you're getting an Android phone anyway, the extra $99 seems like a no-brainer and is a compelling reason to buy a Samsung device over the competition.