Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#41

Post by bayofpigs » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #34

noir_lord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For gaming it required the shuffling of furniture. Depends on the type of game, I play flight sims, elite dangerous, no mans sky and project cars 2 - no need to shuffle furniture with those.

There are actually no quality games that really require you to stand. I have a dream that we'll see a good quality dungeon crawler I can play coop locally with the kids, that's immersive enough to warrant standing, but I don't see it happening.

Haha, no. Half Life Alyx, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Thrill of the Fight, Beat Saber, Audica, Dance Central VR, Fallout 4 VR, Superhot VR, and so many more.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#42

Post by Macha » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

mathgeek wrote: post #29

Macha wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do require glasses for VR, for anyone who wants to stick with it, I strongly recommend getting prescription lenses for your headset. The most common form is just another lens that clips on top of the VR lens so it's not something that will require disassembling your expensive VR headset. This solves the fogging up problem in my experience, along with light leak from thicker arms on glasses pushing foam covers…

Alternatively: look into contacts if you want a more general purpose solution.

Fair, I've my own reasons for not wearing contacts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#43

Post by spywaregorilla » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #17

jmartin2683 wrote: post #10

No, because the devices are awful at rendering text.

Can it even render people well?

Text needs to be really clearly defined and rapidly updated to accommodate head motion without being blurry. Slight offsets make it unreadable.

Rendering people has a different set of challenges. Skin and hair and eyes have weird textures. Facial animations are difficult to capture. But its more of a solved problem than text.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#44

Post by telesilla » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

kylecordes wrote: post #4

It's not particularly practical for this at the current oculus display resolution. Sure, there are tools discussed in the thread here with virtual monitors etc, but we'll have to wait for a future generation of hardware for those virtual monitors to have anywhere near the resolution of an actual monitor.

Our tests concluded the same and we gave up for now. Works pretty well while tethered but you have to drop quality for wireless support, and what's the fun wearing one while sitting down? Looking forward for future iterations.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#45

Post by dougmwne » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

I am very interested in this use case since I travel frequently and would love a portable multi-monitor setup. The weight does not bother me and I have watched full movies before in comfort.

2 issues hold it back:

1. Typing and mousing require high res color passthrough cameras or high accuracy low latency hand and keyboard tracking. Neither is there yet.

2. The lenses have too much distortion and not a large enough sweet spot. Fine for gaming, they really don’t cut it when trying to work.

I would happily use a VR headset for a few hours of standing desk time a day if it were just a little more refined. The upcoming Quest Pro might have the needed features to make this a real option.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#46

Post by danschuller » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

It might be a bit of "faster horse" desire but I'd love to have a VR library if the fidelity was good enough. I mean virtual 1:1 representations of books, that I can make margin notes in etc.

Then when I move I don't have to get rid of a load of books or back up heavy boxes and when I die it can be easily passed on and not a burden to those I leave it to.

Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series of sci-fi books have this concept of an imago machine, where a person has an implant that allows a compatible "not-quite-sentient" predecessor to live inside their head and give advice. And that predecessor would also have had an imago machine.

It would be neat to have access to the libraries of my ancestors (or anyone I guess) once they become digital and are almost costless to store and duplicate. All the books they read and wanted to read, the notes they made, when in their life they read them etc.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#47

Post by mbreese » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

jbellis wrote: post #33

asiachick wrote: post #23

this person said they love it https://medium.com/immersedteam/working-from-orbit-39bf95a6d...

How does this reconcile with the other comments saying that the Oculus resolution isn't high enough?

I tried it a few times with an Oculus 1 and 2. The lower resolution isn’t terrible. You can zoom to a level where the size of text is quite readable. But that’s the trade off. Nearly infinite screen sizes, but zoomed in to make it legible.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#48

Post by noir_lord » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #34

noir_lord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For gaming it required the shuffling of furniture. Depends on the type of game, I play flight sims, elite dangerous, no mans sky and project cars 2 - no need to shuffle furniture with those.

There are actually no quality games that really require you to stand. I have a dream that we'll see a good quality dungeon crawler I can play coop locally with the kids, that's immersive enough to warrant standing, but I don't see it happening.

Honestly that's true, the closest I've found is PavlovVR which is a lot of fun but it's not an AAA quality game.

That said as someone who loves space/flight and driving games VR is an unalloyed win for me.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#49

Post by xkfm » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

I tried, but am waiting for a resolution bump to do VR monitor stuff. The screen is large but ends up really low res. Its like working on a 1080p movie screen (or three) from the audience at a movie theater. Its better than working from a laptop screen, but not better than having multiple real-life monitors.

In theory, I should be able to have a laptop and headset and get good multiple monitors wherever I am located.

edit:

I like the separation between VR and irl that a lot of people are complaining about. It makes it hard to multitask between computers and real life, so you have to choose what you are doing instead of pretending to do both.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

#50

Post by amelius » Sun, Aug 07, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #43

amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it even render people well?

Text needs to be really clearly defined and rapidly updated to accommodate head motion without being blurry. Slight offsets make it unreadable. Rendering people has a different set of challenges. Skin and hair and eyes have weird textures. Facial animations are difficult to capture. But its more of a solved problem than text.

I've looked around for images of Oculus rendering people, and perhaps I'm not looking in the right places, but so far I couldn't find anything that looks any better than the average window-dressing mannequin. Based on this, I wouldn't call it a solved problem.