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Ask HN: Anyone tried development using an Oculus?

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61–70 of 87 posts

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

#61

No. And I sold all the VR devices I had over time rather quickly again. Once the novelty wears off, they just became supremely impractical. For gaming it required the shuffling of furniture. For anything else, neither the resolution nor comfort are there. Even worse if you wear glasses. And in the summer time... think diving goggles, only inverted.

> 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 is also VTOL VR which is a flight sim/game that uses the VR controllers and put all controls in the VR space so no need to have an HOTAS lying around.

For other sims I have to set up the HOTAS on my desk which leads to a little bit of shuffling around.

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

#63

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.

Beat Saber?

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

#64

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…

Why do you need high res color pass through for the keyboard and mouse? I don’t need to see them while working with a monitor so why with VR?

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

#65

I got an Oculus Rift CV1 In 2016 and started developing VR interactive sims using the Unity Engine and found the dev process tedious. There are many times you need to wear the HMD and take it off, look at code, then into unity UI and back to 3D modelling app etc. It's a slow repetitive pattern. As others have mentioned, the eyes / camera motion sensors and telemetry tracking HMD felt like invasion of my privacy too.…

Did the same in 2016 - 2019 using libovr and qt with opengl and had the same experience. We worked mostly in the viewport however and only did vr sessions as needed as for the most part it was the same when iterating. I also believe it messed up my eyes a bit as it can be quite straining for prolonged periods.

I owned quite a few headsets but I got rid of them over time, the novelty wears off quickly and it's a good way to captivate people new to it but the setup quickly gets cumbersome and impractical for day to day use unless you have a dedicated space for it.

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

#67
post #22

No. And I sold all the VR devices I had over time rather quickly again. Once the novelty wears off, they just became supremely impractical. For gaming it required the shuffling of furniture. For anything else, neither the resolution nor comfort are there. Even worse if you wear glasses. And in the summer time... think diving goggles, only inverted.

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…

Is anyone actually making those? A Google search doesn’t come up with anything you can buy…

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

#68

One headset I’ve heard of that is aimed at more office focused usage is the SimulaVR[1]. However, it’s still a work in progress and you’d have to preorder. [1]: https://simulavr.com/

It's hard to really see a significant value add here for work efficiency. The screen(s) and mouse/kb aren't the current productivity bottleneck for people.

We made a post arguing for some of the benefits of VR computers in our weekly update blog.[1]

TLDR: they provide unlimited screens of any size, improve work focus & immersion, are usable outdoors (no laptop glare), improve privacy (no one around you can snoop your screen), and their compact design frees up desk space. They also promote better posture and freedom of movement: with a VR computer you can change positions, sit up, lean back, stand, lie down, or even walk while you compute.

[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/why-vrcs-are-better-than-pcs-and-l...

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

#69
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…

Is anyone actually making those? A Google search doesn’t come up with anything you can buy…

https://vr-lens-lab.com/ is where I got mine.

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

#70

One headset I’ve heard of that is aimed at more office focused usage is the SimulaVR[1]. However, it’s still a work in progress and you’d have to preorder. [1]: https://simulavr.com/

Thanks for the shout-out :] It's true the Simula One is a work in progress, but we try to be transparent about our progress in the form of weekly blog updates.

Our headset boards were recently assembled, so we're expecting review units within days or weeks.[1] Our software is also demoable on GitHub for HTC Vive & Valve Index platforms.[2]

[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/first-batch-of-boards/

[2] https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula

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