31–40 of 126 posts
"Another big-picture VR problem: It’s boring to be around people who are using it." This sentence is pretty emblematic of the product the author of this article was expecting vs the Rift that Oculus pitched in their kickstarter video.
I think one of the most relevant parallells - for now, at this stage of development - is with a projetor. Relatively high cost of entry, takes effort and space for setup, and for basic day-to-day entertainment, kind of overkill. Sure it's great from time to time to take a projector and game rig outside and play Forza on a two-car garage door with a screen so big landing planes can probably see it, no doubt. It's actually nice to have one when other people are over, so it's a more engaging device, unlike putting on a headset.
Honestly I think about the time VR will be considered 'mainstream' is when the more customary (and accessible) entertainment forms start generating in-demand content. Think major motion picture studios, TV networks, and concert-type footage (Rolling Stones in Cuba probably in development as I type this). Or, as one more comparison, once the VR platform is as dynamic and simple as the iPhone environment (games, communication, media) then more people will adopt in turn and the market will diversify in beneficial ways (serious vs. casual gamers, etc).
I'm really excited to see what the 'traditional' creative platforms like music and storytelling are going to do in the environment over time.
>There’s already another VR rig that doesn’t have a tether—and it costs a fraction of the Rift. Samsung’s $100 Gear VR, made in partnership with Oculus, is powered by a smartphone that you physically insert in front of two lenses. The extra costs of the Rift (monetary and otherwise) would be justified if its image quality were dramatically better than the Gear’s, but it isn’t. I already got the sense that the author…
Can't you attach your phone to a computer and grid power with a USB cable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is ~50 million people "mainstream"? Considering he complained about downloading drivers this must be very easy to setup. Gaming PC's used to be ~2,000$, this is 600 + 950PC = 1550$. https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/ Which is not free but hardly going to break most people. Don't forget this is just a mid-range gaming PC which many people are going to get anyway which drops this down to the cost of a high…
World of Warcraft went mainstream because it didn't require a gaming PC to play in 2004.
Sure, a mid to low end PC could play WoW in 2004, but it only broke 2.5 million subscribers in late 2005. http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/wow-sub... And 10m in 2008.
Give it 4 years and a GTX 970 will be a very low end graphics card.
The review read like he was expecting it to be the iphone version of VR. Complaints about using an expensive computer, the cord, having to use muscle memory, etc. come off like the type of person who wouldn't be interested in the Oculus in the first place. While I agree that it looks clunky, really it's the performance that most would-be buyers are interested in.
and unfortunately i think will only start to be addressed when the number of people who spend more time with the device increases,
the headset is one size fits all
the center of the split screen, the stationary lenses, and i'm assuming the stereo render all presume everyone's eyes are the same distance apart and perfectly level
which is simply untrue, and without configurable variables those minute discrepancies will result in peoples' brains working much harder to compensate
my eyes went cross for an hour after taking off the headset the last time i ever used my dk2, i wonder if i will be reading someone else's similar story in the near future
I always think about the people developing such groundbreaking technology, sweating for years to craft something revolutionary, putting everything you got into a product, just to get some guy from the Wall Street Journal declare that it's not ready for mainstream. A guy that knows nothing of the challenges, the hurdles and quite frankly, nothing of the actual success the produt will actually have. But just because Wa…
"Another big-picture VR problem: It’s boring to be around people who are using it." This sentence is pretty emblematic of the product the author of this article was expecting vs the Rift that Oculus pitched in their kickstarter video.
I also find it's boring to be around people who are Google Searching, or using Facebook.
my main complaint with the rift is often overlooked, (edit: this is simply untrue, it appears since i walked away from the stereoscopic vr world the issue of ipd has certainly been addressed and efforts have been made to assuage the problem) and unfortunately i think will only start to be addressed when the number of people who spend more time with the device increases, the headset is one size fits all the center of…
http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-says-consumer-rift-has-ipd-ad...
