Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

VR

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 568 posts

Re: VR

#521

Post by Tmmrn »

artursapek wrote: post #87
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #62

I'm not getting into VR until Linux support is there. Every major vendor promised it. It's been long enough. More than long enough.

None of them big name VR machines have Linux support? Seriously? Are they Windows-exclusive?

Oculus stopped Linux support with this blog post: https://www3.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/

Their Linux support sucked anyway. They only got their unity plugin working on Linux actually one day before they published this blog post. They never supported unreal engine on linux even though they said they were working on it before the DK2 even came out.

A Valve rep has said in an interview before the Vive release that they intended to have Linux support on launch. The preorders showed SteamOS support, but they changed it right before the actual launch: https://i.imgur.com/MA2377D.png

Valve has given a demonstration with SteamVR on Linux, but they have yet to release anything to the public.

The OSVR SDK and the OSVR HDK2 work on Linux. But only with their core SDK. Their unity plugin and their unreal engine plugin still do not work on Linux. So far I haven't found an application with OSVR SDK support that works on linux.

Re: VR

#522

Post by lightcatcher »

fryguy wrote: post #349
falcolas wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As slow as growth has become in the graphics card and general computing industry, getting to the point where we can do 120hz at 8k per eye is a lot further than 10 years off. It will require a significant change in how (where?) we're generating graphics, not just better hardware.

Assuming that it's feasible to do ~1080p per eye at 120hz today, 8k per eye is only 16 times more pixels. And considering that increasing the pixel size is embarrassingly parallel, I don't see that as a problem to be able to do in 10 years.

Looks like current technology is 1000x1000 per eye at 90Hz: http://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/oculus-rift-vs-...

8k x 8k per eye at 120Hz is 64x more pixels at 1/3rd increase in frequency ~= 85x more processing power. Making the (maybe faulty) assumption of doubling processing power every 2 years and that current setup is processor limited, this sort of processing power is ~13 years away.

Same computation but with 4k x 4k per eye predicts ~9 years of progress needed.

Re: VR

#523

Post by kayoone »

andybak wrote: post #432
fooey wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time seeing anything you're pitching as much beyond what you could get with a Wii, and that's completely dead and abandoned. How many people bought Wii fitness? Is that enough of a demographic to expect there to be an entire new ecosystem supporting it? I get that the technology is amazing, I just don't see it getting much mass market penetration.

> I have a hard time seeing anything you're pitching as much beyond what you could get with a Wii Try it. It's much more compelling than a Wii. I think the Wii had part of the jigsaw. Imagine Wii/Kinect interactions, a really vibrant indie-dev culture plus that really hard to explain thing - "presence". It's a fascinating time to be part of a technology. I can only think of a few things that came close - the original…

I think the same as someone who has waited for it a long time and purchasing a Rift with Touch, but looking at it rationally the sum of everything is a bit underwhelming if you consider a price of 2k to get started.

Many people i showed it to think its really cool, but out of maybe 15 people, only one has expressed serious interested to actually buy one and he already owns the required PC. Most were also not completely blown away, more like "yeah this is pretty cool and fun" but the expectations were higher than what actually can be experienced today.

There are cool games and experiences, but the tech needs to get a lot better (mainly resolution for me because i enjoy racing games most) and it needs to be a lot cheaper. I am still skeptical about mass market adoption beyond the same people that were interested in Kinect/PS Move.

Re: VR

#524

Post by intrasight »

erikbye wrote: post #308
kurthr wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right... But by rendering separately the high resolution and low resolution views (each at 1k, but one 4x upscaled) we could do 60Hz today. It only requires 2 FHD renders (which is less than a 4k 2eye view at UHD) so 60Hz is very reasonable... possibly 90-120Hz. It also cuts the bandwidth by 8x (2/16) without compression.

There are so many new rendering tricks popping up all the time... new APIs also give less overhead, which is nice. Either way... 580 gtx gflops: 1581 1080 gtx gflops: 8228 7 years. 420% increase in float calc perf.

And you only need high resolution and high color at the fovea. Eye tracking will be the key to making VR/AR low-power and high-quality.

Re: VR

#525

Post by janoc »

intrasight wrote: post #524
erikbye wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many new rendering tricks popping up all the time... new APIs also give less overhead, which is nice. Either way... 580 gtx gflops: 1581 1080 gtx gflops: 8228 7 years. 420% increase in float calc perf.

And you only need high resolution and high color at the fovea. Eye tracking will be the key to making VR/AR low-power and high-quality.

It won't, no worries. Eye tracking in an HMD, whether AR or VR is hugely complicated from engineering point of view. There is a reason why an HMD eye tracking kit costs several thousands of USD.

Moreover, from the rendering point of view, foveated rendering is a fairly complex thing to integrate into a 3D engine too. It is definitelly not "free".

Foveated rendering is certainly no panacea.

Re: VR

#526

Post by awfgylbcxhrey »

wtallis wrote: post #510
cbhl wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the real world, you look with your eyes much more than you look with your head. Unless you wear glasses.

Unless you wear bifocals . Single-vision lenses have a usable field of view that is as large as the comfortable range of movement of the eyes.

That varies wildly by the design of the glasses. I tried rock climbing once with my glasses instead of contacts and it was intolerable. It wasn't immediately obvious how often I relied on a quick flick of the eyes to the outer edges until I tried it.

As to the original point, people adjust their head position all the time without even thinking about it. It's an unnatural and conditioned response to hear a noise on your right rear and move a joystick or mouse to look for the source of the noise.

Re: VR

#527

Post by TillE »

Filligree wrote: post #341
twsted wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrible graphics. I'm not up-to-date but are we still at this level?

It's just barely good enough to be a compelling experience. VR games are a lot of fun, but this is going to drive GPU development for a long time to come.

This is exactly why I'm not jumping into VR right now. Once we have hi-res VR headsets and GPUs that can handle it comfortably, then I'll be interested. Give it five years or so, probably.

Re: VR

#528

Post by archon810 »

rwmj wrote: post #474
archon810 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I have to assume you haven't tried VR, and your point is void until you do. It blows minds. Wii was a gimmick (especially with its accuracy).

Wii was great multiplayer fun. We literally spent half days playing Wii tennis with 2 or 3 people. I assume that VR will be much better (only used DR1 and cardboard and of course they aren't too compelling), but does meaningful multiplayer VR exist yet? Edit: And by multiplayer, I mean everyone in the same room multiplayer. Social multiplayer?

You're right - Wii's strength was local multiplayer, whereas Vive is more of a conventional online multiplayer, considering you need a separate Vive for each person. If you happen to have 2 Vives nearby with enough space, I imagine it's fun, but you're still inside your own world, so a mic+speakers/headphones is all you really need.

There are some games where another person can participate outside VR (Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes), but it's not really the same at all.

Re: VR

#529

Post by fragmede »

mozumder wrote: post #457
c0nfused wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big issue on the adoption front is cost. Basically everyone who has ever tried the vive I own wants to buy one, it's just throwing 800$ after a 1500$ box is a bit steep for most people. I equate it to using an NES back in the day. Right now it's expensive and imperfect but In The mid to long term it's a clear winner. I have done the 15 min demo to about 40 people so far and everyone wants one. Something that you…

Who have you shown VR to was interested in it? My brother shows off his VR unit to everyone, but I've never seen anyone that tried VR that was interested in purchasing it. Even he doesn't use it anymore. Using VR actually seems to cause less desire to buy it, including me. It actually turned out to be a worse experience than what I expected.

Better question is what is c0nfused showing that your brother isn't? The specific app between the two of them is important, but also everything else. From the headset hardware; at the extreme ends; Oculus vs Google Cardboard. Also important is what add-ons they both have - seeing your own hands inside the headset is remarkably important for immersion, which is kind of the point. Also important is the level of preconfiguration - if the number of times the presenter says "wait hold on", and then goes to futz with the settings for 5 minutes isn't zero, then VR is a total turn off and, eugh, I don't want one. The cables going to the headset are critical as well - wireless isn't here for VR yet, but if there are multiple tangled cable messes rather than a single zip tied set of cables, I'm not going to want one in my living room if it's too complicated to put on and is just gonna be a mess in my living room.

It's entirely possible the two crowds being presented to differs by that much, but there are so many other variables in play too.

Re: VR

#530

Post by richard___ »

thenomad wrote: post #197
evo_9 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mostly use Blender to create the actual environments? I've started to do a little reading on this stuff too and it's a daunting hill to climb coming from primary a web-dev background (at least I know C# like the back of my Left Hand haha couldn't resist...).

I'm mostly using the Unity level editor, in actual fact, although I use 3D Studio Max for my detailed 3D modeling when I need to. The Unity editor's very powerful, and you can extend it with tools like ProBuilder and Gaia, which are all available in the Unity Asset Store. (I heartily recommend both of those for simple geometry creation and landscape creation, respectively.) I've been coming at it the other way - I kn…

Just wondering what tools or techniques should you specifically learn to make VR games in Unity? I can make desktop games in Unity, is a VR game just like a FPS with different physical controls?
Post reply on HN