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Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

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Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#221

Post by zardo »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #157

I think the biggest risk to adoption is real-world interest. I get that VR is a fun tech, and has some potentially cool possibilities. But to me and seemingly many other people, it's just not that interesting. I don't know why, maybe I'm not geek enough, but I just have zero interest. And frankly it feels kind of like a gimmick. I'm especially averse to the idea of strapping on a clumsy headset every time I want to u…

I think this is a bit like a "pocket PC" in the early 2000's. It was just a toy for nerds, then they got more and more useful, then they got re-branded as smartphones and made it big.

You're looking at the Palm Pilot of VR. VR, and mixed reality, is going to get more compelling.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#222

Post by DiabloD3 »

moron4hire wrote: post #166
Someone1234 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think consumers will care who is really to blame, they'll only come away with a bad experience, word will spread, and demand will drop. To use a food analogy: You sell pizza, it is the best pizza in town, but the delivery driver sucks and food is constantly arriving cold or smashed. Your patrons aren't going to care that you always blame the delivery driver for the problems, or that the pizza COULD be good if…

Except in this shitty analogy, I hire the driver, so if the pizza is bad because of the driver, it is my fault. Oculus doesn't hire most of the VR game developers in the world. I absolutely would not blame the restaurant if my GrubHub delivery guy ruined the order. And regardless, what the mythical "average consumer" does or doesn't do is immaterial. You should know better.

Except in that shitty analogy, the way I understood it, Ocolus is the delivery guy. The Rift is not the product, its just the delivery mechanism: the games are the product.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#223

Post by Strom »

gknoy wrote: post #208
lifeformed wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120hz+ is super important for pro gaming, much more than the other stats. 100hz is pretty good already though.

Why is 100+hz so important?

In reflex based games, given two otherwise equal setups with players having equal reflexes, the one who gets the stimulus first due to higher refresh rate will win. The standard 60 Hz means new data is sent every 17ms. With 144 Hz you cut it down to 7ms. With equal reflexes, the player who receives the stimulus 10ms earlier will execute the necessary actions 10ms earlier.

In practice no two players are that equal, but it's still beneficial to accumulate every advantage you can.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#224

Post by rnernento »

chaostheory wrote: post #214
rnernento wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that price (and this being a high one) could just as easily lead to ruin. The quality of a user's experience with the Oculus is going to be directly correlated to the quantity and quality of games/experiences available for the device. Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem. Quantity/quality are even mor…

> Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base The problem is that you're associating quality with only AAA titles. There are have been plenty of quality indie titles for years now. > Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours ther…

I agree that there have been plenty of quality indie titles but I think the 3D / recreating reality aspects of VR are somewhat limiting here. 2D games (some of my favorite recent indies) are out of the question in VR. A major goal of VR is to recreate reality or some "reality", which requires well designed 3D models and animations. That being said I think there will be great indie experiences available, but they'll also be up against a limited user base when it comes to making money.

Another way to look at it is that the Oculus isn't just a peripheral, it's a platform. Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base, which in turn draws developers and subsequently a larger library which leads to more platform purchases.

Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR. The best experiences, and the ones that will drive sales will be designed specifically for VR.

Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#225

Post by dandelany »

moron4hire wrote: post #100
dandelany wrote: post #75

Unlike a lot of people, I don't think $600 is an insane price to pay for a good piece of good VR kit... The insane part is the fact that they don't even list basic technical specs on the marketing site?! Am I missing something obvious? I'm supposed to drop $600 on a piece of hardware that relies on a high-resolution screen to work well, without knowing the screen's resolution? They know they're selling mostly to nerd…

They give you a validation tool and link to the documentation where they spell out the specs explicitly.

As I said, I don't see a documentation link with specs anywhere, can you link us to it? Are you talking about this docs site: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation ? Because I don't see any hardware specs on there either. Are you saying I have to run the validation tool (.exe) to get it?

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#227

Post by pera »

mortenjorck wrote: post #49

$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at, but right now, Oculus faces a much bigger risk than low sales volume: Poor reception. If this was the MSRP required to ensure a comfortable, nausea-free experience, it's far better to have a killer product at a high price point than a "don't buy the first generation" product at the price point people were expecting. The former can lead to a cheaper gen 2, but t…

>$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at

$599 is nothing for their target: a Dell "Gaming Monitor" is $699.99 (S2716DG) for instance.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#228

Post by AndrewKemendo »

strictnein wrote: post #83
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This costs as much as a full blown PC. Except you'll also need a killer desktop PC that can run it [1]: - NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater - Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater - 8GB+ RAM - Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output - 2x USB 3.0 ports - Windows 7 SP1 or newer The Oculus Touch is stated to need 4 USB ports [2], not just two, so better plan for that as well So in total you are probably looking at c…

Kind of like saying to buy a car you need a $300k house with a garage, when in fact many of the people buying a car already have a house with a garage. That's also not a "killer" desktop. The 290 is a a 2.5 year old card. The GTX 970 is equivalent to a 680 or 780. The 680 came out almost four years ago. If you had no computer at all, you could build that system for ~$700 - $750 ($200 CPU, $100 Mobo, $200 Used GPU, $5…

Actually, as an addendum to my other comment, I think a more accurate metaphor would be like buying a Tesla S.

You have to have a house that you can add a charging station to, in order to buy it, which most people don't have.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#229

Post by cloudwalking »

darkxanthos wrote: post #205

In a world where hard core gamers will pay >$500 for a graphics card, this price will work fine for a 1st gen. It'll be a smaller audience at first but that will also help them out as they need to focus on their customer support for issues they find in the wild.

I don't think $600 is unreasonable for a brand-new platform's low-production volume v1. The PS3 launched at $499-$599.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#230

Post by cookiecaper »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #157

I think the biggest risk to adoption is real-world interest. I get that VR is a fun tech, and has some potentially cool possibilities. But to me and seemingly many other people, it's just not that interesting. I don't know why, maybe I'm not geek enough, but I just have zero interest. And frankly it feels kind of like a gimmick. I'm especially averse to the idea of strapping on a clumsy headset every time I want to u…

I think you're right. I have a DK-1 and I think it's a cool novelty, but in terms of mass market appeal and everyday uses, I don't really see it. You look weird with the thing on your head, it's heavy and fatigues your neck, you still have to use a kb/mouse input device to control anything other than where your avatar is looking, you can't see anything else around you without pulling the HMD away from your face (bigger annoyance than it sounds), and nobody else can see your screen (in fact, when I used the DK-1, I would often clone the output onto the main monitor so my wife could see what I was seeing and vice-versa). It kills the limited real-life social interaction people can have with video gaming now.

3D TV was very similar in that it worked great for one person, but once you got more than that, you had to make sure everyone had their own pair of glasses, everyone was sitting at an appropriate angle, etc. You couldn't just walk in and out and have a casual social TV experience, because for people without the glasses or sitting at the wrong angle, the image is blurry and unwatchable.

I think there is a market for VR, but I don't think it's the mass market. That doesn't mean VR won't eventually get there, but it's not there now.

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