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Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

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Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#51

Post by delfinom »

pjc50 wrote: post #18
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching a baseball/soccer/basketball game virtually from the stadium should be a pretty big market (?)

This misses all the physicality of being there while taking away the benefits of varying camera positions chosen for you by the TV coverage. If someone could manage the point cloud reconstruction techniques that would let you watch from positions in the middle of the game while there is no camera, they'd be on to something. Oh, and it's a bad business model - the sports IP owner would want almost all the money.

>This misses all the physicality of being there while taking away the benefits of varying camera positions chosen for you by the TV coverage.

What are you missing? The ability to pay $20 for a water bottle?

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#52

Post by _red »

Theodores wrote: post #40
pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

It just needs a generational reboot. In the late 1990's I had seen the Virtuality VR headset on various Orbital album covers, when I got to have a go with the headset I was quite taken by it and didn't even notice that the '3D' wasn't ever stereo. At around the same time I saw Virtual I/O's iglasses and thought the experience was compelling. Had it not been a trade show I would have bought them there and then. I have…

The same happens with 3D. Every 15-20 years, manufacturers and content producers seem to think "this is the year people will want to watch X in 3D".

I'm a little skeptical that either will become mainstream daily-use technologies.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#53

Post by nadam »

xroche wrote: post #12
pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

I have an Oculus (DK2, development version though, so please take my opinion with a grain of salt), and while it is great, there are some show-stoppers: • Games needs to be reinvented for VR, which basically makes adoption much harder - playing a FPS in VR will get you dizzy very quickly, even for people that are not very motion-sickness sensitive • Quality is still not good enough, you can feel the pixels, and it br…

" which means that we need also graphic cards that can deliver two 3D scenes combined at 4K or 8K, and these cards aren't there yet"

Hopefully we will have quality eye tracking and foveated rendering in a few years, so we will not need to render the whole screen in high resolution ever.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#54

Post by zeristor »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #13
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching a baseball/soccer/basketball game virtually from the stadium should be a pretty big market (?)

Who wants regularly wear headgear to enjoy a sports game? I can see it being a novelty but not a normal situation.

Apart from the people actually playing the sport, they tend to wear a lot of head gear.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#56

Post by lm28469 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

VR is like AI.

It's a constant hype/disappointment cycle, albeit it's getting better at every iteration; it's far from delivering on their promises though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality#History

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#57

Post by leemailll »

throwaway66666 wrote: post #14
pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

I have spent quite sometime with Vive, Rift and PSVR. (rift, psvr at home, vive at my office) PSVR is unironically the hope for VR right now, even though it has by far the lowest quality. It has some very good games (Astrobot, Wipeout, RE7, Ace Combat 7, Moss, Beat Saber). It's cheap, easy to set up (aimed towards couch VR instead of room scale), cool helmet design, and the fact that the headset works as a regular mo…

Is gran tourismo vr ready?

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#58

Post by 7952 »

mojomark wrote: post #45
jobigoud wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. I believe in AR but not short-term. I think AR will go into a "winter" soon and will be picked up by the mainstream some years later after key technology challenges are solved. I think AR (glasses) is at where VR was in the nineties. Currently AR has two form factors, phone and glasses. Phone-based AR is gimmicky. It can be fun and can work in some scenarios but it's monoscopic, has a ridiculous field of vie…

> I don't. I believe in AR but not short-term. I think AR will go into a "winter" soon and will be picked up by the mainstream some years later after key technology challenges are solved. I think AR (glasses) is at where VR was in the nineties. > Currently AR has two form factors, phone and glasses. > Phone-based AR is gimmicky. It can be fun and can work in some scenarios but it's monoscopic, has a ridiculous field…

My company is trying to push use of VR in engineering, and I have been a bit confused by the desire. We have had 3D models for years that could be viewed on a normal desktop, and peoe usually prefer 2d plans. The improved UI seems to be very attractive to people though.

I wonder if a major benefit of VR is that it forces us to create visualisations that are responsive. It is easy to get away with slow rendering on a desktop, but you can't on a headset. The software has to be realtime, and the model optimised for that.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#59

Post by wlll »

xroche wrote: post #12
pmoriarty wrote: post #5

How's the market for VR doing in general? Is it growing or shrinking? Around the time the first Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Microsoft's HoloLens were released some years back seemed to be high water mark of media stories about VR. Since then it seems to be pretty quiet. Is VR dying on the vine?

I have an Oculus (DK2, development version though, so please take my opinion with a grain of salt), and while it is great, there are some show-stoppers: • Games needs to be reinvented for VR, which basically makes adoption much harder - playing a FPS in VR will get you dizzy very quickly, even for people that are not very motion-sickness sensitive • Quality is still not good enough, you can feel the pixels, and it br…

I had a DK2, I now have a Vive. I highly recommend the upgrade, it's like night and day. It's still not perfect and suffers from the same issues you mentioned, but being able to wander around my living room in a VR world, and at a much higher resolution/framerate is fantastic.

Re: Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio

#60

Post by michaelbuckbee »

baud147258 wrote: post #37
andybak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree in several areas. 1. It's surprising how well flat screen games work in VR with minimal changes. 3rd person RTS, retro top-down shooters, casual puzzle games. I personally would love to see more "low-effort" ports to VR of existing content as just adding stereoscopy, 6DOF and 360 to a game can make it visually stunning. 2. I wouldn't turn my nose up at more resolution but even first gen Vive and R…

Honestly, I'd envisage buying a VR device if I could play games like XCOM or Supreme Commander. I'm not really interested in the games currently offered

Have you seen Brass Tactics? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95rgdaN25t0
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