Oculus Rift Will Change Your Gaming World

Post by CloakedAsh » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:03 PM UTC

cwilson wrote: post #50

I highly suggest everyone go watch the first season (or even first few episodes) of an anime called Sword Art Online. It's about what will likely be a future iteration of this hardware applied to an MMO. Addiction to being plugged in, death within the game, and which is the true reality are all themes covered. I never thought I'd suggest watching anime on Hacker News, but this topic proved to be the exception.

Post by Arelius » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

gavanwoolery wrote: post #49

I have long been a proponent of stereoscopic 3d, but there are still two major problems. One is that is our current realtime rendering methods rely heavily on screen-space operations (blurring, many shadow types, SSAO, bloom, refraction, post-process fx), which confuse the brain when rendered in stereo (I.e. will make things float when the should not). The other problem is focus. In the real world, your eyes move to…

Post by falcolas » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 7:17 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #64

falcolas wrote: post #54

Anecdote time. The last time I played with a set of VR goggles was a few years back, and the technology was certainly not up to this pace. That said, the head tracking was pretty good, particularly for the FPS we were playing. The problem wasn't in the head tracking... it was that the head tracking was pointless. Since you couldn't realistically look around more than ~120 degrees, you still needed a way to turn aroun…

I think this has a 120degree FOV but actually changes when you move your head, so it's much more natural.

Post by TrevorJ » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 7:46 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #66

antihero wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess then the next stage would be eye-tracking, so you can glance around without even moving your neck.

Which might also lower the computational requirements as the level of detail only needs to be high where you are looking. The latency would have to be very low though.

Post by wlesieutre » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 9:48 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #88

wlesieutre wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were set on using the head tracking for movement, you'd have to set it up like a controller's thumbsticks (which also have a fairly limited angle of motion). There's a dead spot in the middle, but going outside it makes you turn. Speed increasing the farther out you go. Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii (and possibly other games) used a similar control system based on the wiimote pointer. It had an adjustment period…

Gods below, I don't want to imagine the vertigo that would cause. Like being on a merry-go-round without the sensation of moving from your inner ear. It's a decent control idea, but I can't imagine being able to use it, personally.