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Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

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Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#201

Post by enave »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #188
_pmf_ wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zuck gets this to the degree that I suspect he believes Facebook & VR will be synonymous within a decade (1) The vast majority of Facebook users has neither consoles nor PCs nor any interest in ever purchasing a peripheral in the targeted price range (even if it drops to 100USD). I don't doubt that they can break even regarding development costs, but it won't be a cash cow.

The Big Kahuna is going to be standalone mobile VR headsets. Expect to see a self-contained headset from Oculus for the price of a mobile phone within 5 years. Zuck knows he failed with Facebook Home. He has surveyed the landscape and he knows he'll never be more than the most-used app on someone else's phone. But he's still salivating to own a platform, so he's looking to the future. Think about this: if you're sitt…

> if you're sitting on the train, or waiting in the Doctor's office, would you rather wait in VR

Other than the added privacy, I'm having trouble imagining the advantages of that. I'm reading my facebook feed, but now nobody else can see it, oh boy!

But see, I already don't care if people see. So that doesn't help me. Being immersed might actually hurt me though. Honestly, the idea of being on a train and having no idea what's going on around me is kind of terrifying.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#202

Post by enave »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #188
_pmf_ wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zuck gets this to the degree that I suspect he believes Facebook & VR will be synonymous within a decade (1) The vast majority of Facebook users has neither consoles nor PCs nor any interest in ever purchasing a peripheral in the targeted price range (even if it drops to 100USD). I don't doubt that they can break even regarding development costs, but it won't be a cash cow.

The Big Kahuna is going to be standalone mobile VR headsets. Expect to see a self-contained headset from Oculus for the price of a mobile phone within 5 years. Zuck knows he failed with Facebook Home. He has surveyed the landscape and he knows he'll never be more than the most-used app on someone else's phone. But he's still salivating to own a platform, so he's looking to the future. Think about this: if you're sitt…

> if you're sitting on the train, or waiting in the Doctor's office, would you rather wait in VR

Other than the added privacy, I'm having trouble imagining the advantages of that. I'm reading my facebook feed, but now nobody else can see it, oh boy!

But see, I already don't care if people see. So that doesn't help me. Being immersed might actually hurt me though. Honestly, the idea of being on a train and having no idea what's going on around me is kind of terrifying.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#203

Post by mastax »

Arelius wrote: post #158
seanwilson wrote: post #134

I don't understand why there isn't more emphasis on non-realistic graphics for VR to keep the specs down. If you try to make a VR game that looks as good as current high-end games, it's always going to require massive horsepower because it must run at 60+ FPS at a high resolution so everyone but hardcore gamers are going to be left out. Mobile gaming became hugely popular without high-end graphics because of the easy…

There is a lot of emphasis on non-realistic graphics. But the consensus is that it must run at 90FPS+ with two views so that bumps the specs back up again. Especially considering that most contemporary game engines aren't build with those sort of latencies in mind.

> There is a lot of emphasis on non-realistic graphics

Yes, I've seen this a lot on mobile especially and also with things like "Job Simulator". What I'm confused about is everyone (especially on /r/oculus) being very adamant about needing a GTX 970+ for VR.

My ~$200 GTX 760 can consistently run Team Fortress 2 at upwards of 200 frames per second, and TF2 looks fine to me.

I'm sure many people will appreciate having games for VR that take advantage of their fancy hardware, but why scare people away with such high requirements? Can't the industry tighten its belt a little for the first round and live with the fact that VR games won't look quite as good as their 2D counterparts? Surely even a $700 gaming PC would deliver a better experience than GearVR, which is already quite good.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#204

Post by melted »

soared wrote: post #197
melted wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use case to justify the massive cash outlay these things require? I don't see it.

Use case? Video games,obviously. This is early-early adopter tech. Chill out with your absurdly premature predictions.

We're talking $1500 for the headset and GPU able to support the headset. Plus a pretty beefy workstation to feed that GPU. Plus the games don't actually exist yet, and they face a massive chicken-and-egg problem. No one but the most dedicated early adopters will buy this until the price comes down like 3x.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#205

Post by baby »

yathern wrote: post #78
baby wrote: post #57

Ah, between this and HTC Vive... After testing both the HTC Vive was just years better than the Oculus, but I haven't tried the new Oculus iteration with touch... So hard to choose. Anyone want to discuss setups for both? I need to buy a new machine for that.

Are you sure you tested the Oculus CV1? There's been many hardware iterations from Oculus and the latest one that people have been sampling has gotten very good reviews, some better than the Vive. I'm not saying that I know for a fact that one is better than the other, but I'm surprised that you think one is 'years better'.

I have actually never read a review placing the Oculus above the HTC, I haven't read reviews in a while though. Around 6 months ago the consensus was that HTC Vive was way ahead IIRC.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#206

Post by baby »

endergen wrote: post #89
baby wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried both and the HTC Vive was just years ahead. I haven't tried the new oculus touch but the simple fact that they won't ship it included tells me it's nowhere near HTC Vive.

You tried the Crescent Bay version of the Rift? I found the difference to not be that noticeable. Crescent was room scale mostly with no issues, a slight higher chance of losing site, but not much due to sensors on all sides of the headset. The hand tracking option of Vive is rad though. Honestly both are rad. Everyone here is a professional programmer, if you care about VR and all it's potential I don't see why peop…

Don't really know, but it was pretty recent: the RSA booth at blackhat US 2015

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#207

Post by purplelobster »

haydenlee wrote: post #97
baby wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried both and the HTC Vive was just years ahead. I haven't tried the new oculus touch but the simple fact that they won't ship it included tells me it's nowhere near HTC Vive.

I've tried both (and own a Vive) and the Touch definitely has better ergonomics and is more analogous to having your hand in the world whereas the Vive 'wands' feel like you are holding a stick. It's not a clear cut decision. Personally I prefer Touch.

The Vive controllers are literally a steam controller cut in half, i.e. prototype material. I think they already said that the released controllers would be updated.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#208

Post by TwoBit »

baby wrote: post #72
TranquilMarmot wrote: post #7

Now the real question- go with Facebook and buy an Oculus Rift or go with Valve/HTC and buy a Vive? The Vive has more features (like head tracking) but maybe it will be more expensive? There's been nothing but silence in terms of pricing of either of them... I do have a hard time justifying $500+ for a screen I'll strap to my head that will probably be obsolete in a year or two. I will say though, I recently bought a…

I tried both and the HTC Vive was just years ahead. I haven't tried the new oculus touch but the simple fact that they won't ship it included tells me it's nowhere near HTC Vive.

That's because you compared a vive (current) to a DK2 (old). You couldn't possibly come to that conclusion if you tested a modern Oculus headset.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#209

Post by Tmmrn »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #188
_pmf_ wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zuck gets this to the degree that I suspect he believes Facebook & VR will be synonymous within a decade (1) The vast majority of Facebook users has neither consoles nor PCs nor any interest in ever purchasing a peripheral in the targeted price range (even if it drops to 100USD). I don't doubt that they can break even regarding development costs, but it won't be a cash cow.

The Big Kahuna is going to be standalone mobile VR headsets. Expect to see a self-contained headset from Oculus for the price of a mobile phone within 5 years. Zuck knows he failed with Facebook Home. He has surveyed the landscape and he knows he'll never be more than the most-used app on someone else's phone. But he's still salivating to own a platform, so he's looking to the future. Think about this: if you're sitt…

> You don't really want your sister scrolling through the news with you when you're on the train. But you might be totally happy to have her sitting next to you in a flowery meadow in VR while you both catch up on your news feed.

You mean when she's not on the train too? That's not going to happen anytime soon, because mobile networks are far too crappy. On public transport in a major city in germany I regularly get latencies of 60+ seconds (yes, seconds) and a bandwidth of a few kilobytes/s max. There are also spots where you don't get any connection at all or you get a connection but it's so congested that you can't even make a DNS request that doesn't time out. Yes, I'm still talking about the middle of a big city. That's on the Eplus/O2 network.

Re: Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

#210

Post by TranquilMarmot »

sp332 wrote: post #166
TranquilMarmot wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for clarifying the tracking differences, didn't realize the Rift had added so much. I'm interested in room-scale tracking, but my apartment is pretty tiny so I'm not sure I would actually get to use it (so maybe the Vive would be overkill) Interesting to think about obsolescence of the headsets- I wonder if it will be tied to graphics cards getting more powerful and allowing for higher resolutions or more "…

The maximum Vive space is 15x15 feet, and I don't own one but I've heard that it handles different scales pretty gracefully.

I've tried the Vive in a smaller space and the way it handles walls is pretty intuitive (it puts a "ghost" grid where the wall is when you get close to it). I guess I'm more concerned about how developers handle small spaces- surely not every application/game out there will accommodate for a 10x10 or even a 5x5 space
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