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Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

developer.oculus.com

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Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#41

Post by alexcroox »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #22
latchkey wrote: post #10

Oh nice! I just bought Quest over the weekend from a guy off craigslist who was selling them at cost and still wrapped in plastic. Fantastically impressed with things. Totally worth the $500. The games are amazing, but what is really impressing me is all the vr video content. The ability to "stand" on a stage while the orchestra plays Mozart all around you is mind blowing. It is neat to see them pushing the boundarie…

The Quest is probably the first thing I've bought in a long time that has given me that "Christmas morning" feeling. It's such an impressive piece of tech, and VR without wires is so much more immersive, even if it limits the graphical capabilities

Don’t forget if you install Virtual Desktop you can play all your PCVR games wirelessly on it too. I play HL Alyx like this and it’s flawless.

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#42

Post by Sevaris »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #11
Impossible wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal company politics and prioritization of Quest. It's possible that hand tracking will come to Rift S, but it might be a side effect of wanting to support it with the Quest link cable.

Just the reality that headsets like Quest are the true future of VR, PCVR is an evolutionary dead end a very small percentage of people who can afford them want a gaming PC tower in their home, PCVR is a fraction of a fraction of percentage. I own both and demoing my Rift on a high spec system my friends were blown away and the first question was "Can it run on my macbook?" Then thats where the idea of owning VR died…

> PCVR is an evolutionary dead end a very small percentage of people who can afford them want a gaming PC tower in their home, PCVR is a fraction of a fraction of percentage.

PCVR is no more niche than the demographics for Far Cry 5. If you have the hardware to run a modern AAA game on PC, all you're really missing at that point is the headset. And I don't see Ubisoft refusing to make games for PC because there are too few people with powerful enough PCs. As GPU tech continues to develop and higher performance reaches lower price points, it'll also become more accessible to more people. Though you can already pay 200-250 Euros for a decent GPU now and it'll be more than sufficient for VR gaming.

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#43

Post by rubicon33 »

saurik wrote: post #18
rubicon33 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely looking more and more true. Consider the fact that the Rift-S has been out of stock for months. Oculus continues to re-stock the Quest (which sells out within 24h), but we haven't seen a restock of the Rift-S in probably 3 months? Their "Del Mar" which is coming up, is very likely not going to be a tethered headset. My money is it will be standalone like the Quest. Oculus is trying to get the masse…

I mean, going forward, given the existence of Link (and that Link surprisingly actually works), there is very little reason for the Rift S to exist at all; it sucks that they sold it to people and then so quickly obsoleted it by another product that came out at the same time and cost the same amount, but other than the feeling of responsibility for those customers I can't imagine any reason for them to spend any time…

Linus Tech Tips did a pretty damn good review of the Quest + Link solution. At the time he did the review, it looked like it had some very strange black bar artifacts when turning your head quickly, which the Rift-S did not. He also described it having a slight lag in the controls.

These kinds of things are likely non-issues for your average gamer who isn't moving really fast, and isn't requiring ultra precise controls. For some people though, it's a huge deal breaker.

I'm personally very grateful for both Valve and Oculus. Oculus is serving the mass market, and doing a great job of it. I just hope in the process, we don't lose the high end consumer gear like Valve Index.

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#44

Post by rubicon33 »

latchkey wrote: post #39
rubicon33 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Props to the guy selling them at cost. Easily could have made an additional $50-$100 if he wanted to.

Yea, I was surprised. He had them in boxes that were clearly shipped from Best Buy. I asked if he got them cheaper and he said no. Didn't ask why he was selling them at cost, but I thought it was nice.

Kinda makes you wonder if they were stolen :)

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#45

Post by joeskyyy »

alexcroox wrote: post #41
Rebelgecko wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Quest is probably the first thing I've bought in a long time that has given me that "Christmas morning" feeling. It's such an impressive piece of tech, and VR without wires is so much more immersive, even if it limits the graphical capabilities

Don’t forget if you install Virtual Desktop you can play all your PCVR games wirelessly on it too. I play HL Alyx like this and it’s flawless.

Wait really?! I was wondering why I would want to fork over so much money for the app, but having this as a possibility changes everything. Thanks for the heads up :D

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#46

Post by Impossible »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36
Impossible wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mean handtracking. Oculus touch is a tracked controller, which means the controller is tracked and the tracking system has no concept of a hand. You could put the controller on your foot, or the floor or on your dog and it would track in the same way as your hand. Hand tracking uses computer vision to recognize hands, for most humans fingers are included in that

And Quest has that proper hand tracking already (had it for something like 5 months now), it's just been an experimental feature until now. I haven't used it much; for some reason the tracked hands seem to be placed lower than the fake hands when I'm using controllers, which makes the latter a better experience for me.

Increased latency due to using complex, deep learning based, entirely computer vision driven hand tracking vs. tracked controllers which partially use accelerometer data to correct drift and account for latency, and use a much faster classic computer vision algorithm for position tracking (https://developer.oculus.com/blog/tracking-technology-explai...)

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#47

Post by aylmao »

shafyy wrote: post #33
gegtik wrote: post #5

I really want to know why this is feasible for the Quest but not the Rift S, given that both have Inside-Out tracking (ie. IR cameras mounted on the headset). In fact, the Rift S has 5 cameras to the Quests's 4 so it should be at least as capable shouldn't it?

I would be suprised if it's primarily a technological reason. My thinking is: The Rift S is 99.99% used for "serious" gaming and PCVR will always be that way. For serious gaming you'll probably need some kind of controllers for the near future, since you want that fidelity and haptic feedback. Now, controllers could be replaced some day by braceletes or what not, but this is not going to happen next year. The Quest a…

+1. Also worth noting, the implementation would be fundamentally different. On the Quest it's running on-device on specific chips, whereas on the Rift S this processing would be done on the user's PC.

It's doable, but you probably can't just drop the implementation for hand-tracking on one platform and have it work on the other.

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#48

Post by bsanr2 »

At the risk of being a downer: I'll be so happy once we move past the "preschool playset" era of hand-tracked software.

I wonder what it is that's keeping us from moving past these dull tech demos. Is the issue the interaction design being too simplistic ("Look, I can pick [thing] up!")? Or perhaps the opposite: that, without suitable haptics, too much energy has to be devoted to a very unnatural way of interacting (essentially with phantoms). It seems that games like BeatSaber and apps like TiltBrush have cracked the code, but you have to wonder how.

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#49

Post by kbenson »

rubicon33 wrote: post #43
saurik wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, going forward, given the existence of Link (and that Link surprisingly actually works), there is very little reason for the Rift S to exist at all; it sucks that they sold it to people and then so quickly obsoleted it by another product that came out at the same time and cost the same amount, but other than the feeling of responsibility for those customers I can't imagine any reason for them to spend any time…

Linus Tech Tips did a pretty damn good review of the Quest + Link solution. At the time he did the review, it looked like it had some very strange black bar artifacts when turning your head quickly, which the Rift-S did not. He also described it having a slight lag in the controls. These kinds of things are likely non-issues for your average gamer who isn't moving really fast, and isn't requiring ultra precise contro…

How long ago was that? The Quest link cable stuff is still in flux. Not only did they just announce a few days ago that any USB 2.0 cable should now work[1], but they note in that article that Carmack is hoping to add a new mode to take advantage of the higher bandwidth of USB 3.1.

It's entirely possible if that Linux Tech Tips review was more than a month or two ago, things might look considerably different now.

1: https://uploadvr.com/oculus-link-usb-2-update/

Re: Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

#50

Post by latchkey »

rubicon33 wrote: post #44
latchkey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I was surprised. He had them in boxes that were clearly shipped from Best Buy. I asked if he got them cheaper and he said no. Didn't ask why he was selling them at cost, but I thought it was nice.

Kinda makes you wonder if they were stolen :)

Good point. It had his name and home address on the Best Buy label outside of the box. I couldn't confirm the address, but the name was the same.
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