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Google Earth VR

vr.google.com

141–150 of 159 posts

Re: Google Earth VR

#141
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! I don't understand these two separate arms of Google VR. Couldn't they do the processing power on the server side if you have a fiber connection?

VR needs 90fps with only a few milliseconds of latency between moving your head and seeing the movement in your headset. Both can't be achieved by streaming from a remote server…

Yet... And once you can leverage the power of the cloud for rendering that makes VR a much more portable proposition.

Re: Google Earth VR

#142

Of course. Only available on the HTC Vive. I regret my oculus rift purchase.

It's built on SteamVR so it supports Oculus natively (edit: however Google has added a software check to Google Earth VR to block any other headset, which I imagine they'll remove once Oculus Touch launches). Since you don't need hand controllers for the guided tours it should still be a pretty good experience. And Oculus Touch in 3 weeks will allow for the full experience. As an early Touch owner I think a lot of Vi…

I haven't tried the Vive but I recently tried the Touch the Microsoft store at Stanford mall. Annoyingly enough they had a Vive in a glass display but didn't have both available to demo simultaneously.

The experience in that wizard duel game was pretty immersive, and it was cool to kind of be able to wiggle your fingers. How would you compare the oculus experience to the Vive given that it still isn't room scale VR?

Re: Google Earth VR

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks very nausea inducing, even the video gave me a little bit of an issue. Did you experience any of that?

I loved the app but I did feel a bit sick, even with their comfort mode turned on (which I really appreciate that they added). Probably won't go as wild with the flying next time but overall it was still a great experience. I should mention that I'm very perceptible to simulator sickness, even after using VR for over an hour every day for the past 2 years.

I don't have a headset yet and this is my biggest fear before investing in one. I'm quite prone to motion sickness in games.

Can you share any tips for using a VR headset without puking?

Re: Google Earth VR

#144
post #31

I played this for about 2 hours recently, and it’s so much fun! Flying around like that really gives you a perspective of your home town that you don’t usually get. For instance, I have discovered that there’s actually train tracks underneath a bridge over which I drive fairly frequently — from inside the tram, I never saw them. Notably, this is significantly better than the “liquid galaxy” installations one can find…

Is it only available on HTC Vive? Can Google Cardboard users experience it?

It's only on steam so I doubt it. It also relies very heavily on the vive controllers.

Re: Google Earth VR

#145
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR needs 90fps with only a few milliseconds of latency between moving your head and seeing the movement in your headset. Both can't be achieved by streaming from a remote server…

Yet... And once you can leverage the power of the cloud for rendering that makes VR a much more portable proposition.

This isn't really a "yet" case -- it's just physics. Even if you assume that this is all light speed and that congestion, routing latency, etc aren't a factor -- it's still impossible. You need to send your input (sensory and otherwise) to a server, then get a response, 90 times a second. That's 11ms round trip for the entire transaction. Light can only travel 2050mi in that time, meaning a maximum distance of 1025mi each way. And that's the easy part of this -- not to speak of the massive latency that video compression would add (at least 50ms), the transfer time of the data (if you go with a conservative 12Mbps bitrate and a perfect 50Mbit connection, that's another ~3ms there), etc.

This would be possible if everyone had a VR render cluster nearby (<100mi) and no network congestion ever happened. Otherwise, not a chance.

Re: Google Earth VR

#146
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR needs 90fps with only a few milliseconds of latency between moving your head and seeing the movement in your headset. Both can't be achieved by streaming from a remote server…

Yet... And once you can leverage the power of the cloud for rendering that makes VR a much more portable proposition.

90fps gives you 11ms per frame. I have a 20 ms ping to the closest internet servers to me.

Re: Google Earth VR

#147
post #31

I played this for about 2 hours recently, and it’s so much fun! Flying around like that really gives you a perspective of your home town that you don’t usually get. For instance, I have discovered that there’s actually train tracks underneath a bridge over which I drive fairly frequently — from inside the tram, I never saw them. Notably, this is significantly better than the “liquid galaxy” installations one can find…

Is it only available on HTC Vive? Can Google Cardboard users experience it?

Yeah, my first though as well, I don't understand this. Earth is a google Product, I think they could be a bit more clear on the page that it only works with completely unrelated Vive. I know 1 person with a Vive while many people have (tried) cardboard.

Re: Google Earth VR

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go to Tehran & North Korea, just need to apply for a visa.

> "You can go to Tehran & North Korea" Leaving, on the other hand... https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings... https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings...

just don't have US/Israel passport or visa stamp from there, and Iran will be one of best experiences in your life. people are amazing, culture is just WOW, whole place feels ancient even to europeans (and it is...). it is properly exotic in some parts in a way that will soon be only a thing of the past for most 'exotic' places on the earth, that look more and more like a standard copy&paste westernized locations.

most people speak OK english, very welcoming and friendly. don't trust some crap propaganda.

Re: Google Earth VR

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved the app but I did feel a bit sick, even with their comfort mode turned on (which I really appreciate that they added). Probably won't go as wild with the flying next time but overall it was still a great experience. I should mention that I'm very perceptible to simulator sickness, even after using VR for over an hour every day for the past 2 years.

I don't have a headset yet and this is my biggest fear before investing in one. I'm quite prone to motion sickness in games. Can you share any tips for using a VR headset without puking?

It really depends on the controls used for moving. I am quite sensitive too, even slow movements in VR give me nausea when I am not moving. But games that use teleportation for moving like The Lab are absolutely not nausea-inducing for me. Walking arnoud in room scale is also not a problem at all. A Vive with room scale is probably the best option at the moment for someone sensible to motion sickness.

The funny thing about Google Earth is that even though you can "fly" over the map, it is coupled with a pulling motion with the hand controllers. My brain seems to interpret this hand motion coupled with the displacement as me pulling the landscape to me instead of me flying over the landscape. Because of this, I had absolutely no motion sickness at all in Google Earth.

It is a motion scheme that I have seen in no other VR app and for me it is a very interesting achievement of the software.

Re: Google Earth VR

#150
post #40
post #5

Why only on HTC Vive? Does this require huge computing power, or is it because of the controllers? I hope it'll become available on the Google Daydream phones.

They had to do a crazy amount of optimization just to the Earth engine to make it work in 90fps VR. Here's a talk one of the devs gave at SIGGRAPH a few months ago about how they made it work: https://vimeo.com/177549565

Weird because once you get it running via the hack it runs perfectly fine. I'm running it on a DK2 and the only issue is controller emulation.
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