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Oculus Rift

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51–60 of 378 posts

Re: Oculus Rift

#51

Going to a page and the first thing I see is someone with their mouth gaping open and looking up. Horrible design.

And it's supposed to be intuitive the black oval in the top left is somehow the "Home" button?

Re: Oculus Rift

#52
post #10

What do the rings on the controllers offer that could not be put into the base of the handle?

The ring serves 3 functions as I understand.

-Tracking of the controller: There are leds on it that emmit IR light so the tracker can accurately track the controller. This accuracy is not achievable at the moment with just internal sensors (although the controller has these, presumably for even better accuracy)

-The inside of the ring has sensors to track your finger gestures. I can imagine this would not be possible with just the internals of the controller.

-The ring acts as a sort of extra handle. Imagine opening your hand totally (as in waving). This is a gesture you would maybe like to do in VR. The ring will hang between your thumb and index finger while you do this. Other more traditional tracked controllers would fall out of your hand.

Re: Oculus Rift

#53

I'm a bit of a sound nerd, but the on-ear headphones are really underwhelming. No noise isolation, most likely low quality drivers... this would make for a pretty terrible VR experience. Simply upgrading them to closed back, over the ear headphones would make a big difference - you'd be able to use lower volumes (at which point even cheap drivers aren't oto bad), and you'd be more isolated from the environment, simil…

Palmer claims the headphones are very high quality. If you don't like them you can replace them with your own.

Re: Oculus Rift

#54
post #42

Does anyone know of a list of PCs that meet (or exceed) the recommended hardware specs for the Rift? Not that I'm going to run out and buy one of these machines in anticipation of the Rift's release next year, but I'm interested in knowing roughly what a premium VR experience costs today (excluding the headset, obviously) Edit: To rephrase my question, can anyone point me to a list of PCs manufactured by companies li…

This is likely going to be the biggest turn-off. People don't have those big PCs any more. Most people have just laptops/MacBook. I guess nobody would want to bring back those beasts in their living rooms again just to use Oculus Rift. They should have really considered full device experience where you get everything you need and hardware is exactly designed to give optimal Oculus experience. World has long moved on…

The entire PC gaming industry would beg to differ, which is likely the initial target market. Of course that will change. Also I wouldn't exactly consider my desktop a beast. Form factors are pretty small these days.

Re: Oculus Rift

#55

I'm a bit of a sound nerd, but the on-ear headphones are really underwhelming. No noise isolation, most likely low quality drivers... this would make for a pretty terrible VR experience. Simply upgrading them to closed back, over the ear headphones would make a big difference - you'd be able to use lower volumes (at which point even cheap drivers aren't oto bad), and you'd be more isolated from the environment, simil…

So the way to signal that one is an evidence based aficionado of sound is to call yourself a "sound nerd?" In today's parlance, "audiophiles" are all deluded woo-woo proponents who are deserving of ridicule. (I find that to be a form of shallow prejudice: One can simply evaluate the science behind what someone is saying.)

Re: Oculus Rift

#56

Going to a page and the first thing I see is someone with their mouth gaping open and looking up. Horrible design.

That was my immediate thought as well. Their choice of a scruffy looking guy (nothing wrong with it in and of itself) says a lot about their intended audience.

Hard to imagine Apple or Google marketing a product with that kind of imaging.

Re: Oculus Rift

#57
post #53

I'm a bit of a sound nerd, but the on-ear headphones are really underwhelming. No noise isolation, most likely low quality drivers... this would make for a pretty terrible VR experience. Simply upgrading them to closed back, over the ear headphones would make a big difference - you'd be able to use lower volumes (at which point even cheap drivers aren't oto bad), and you'd be more isolated from the environment, simil…

Palmer claims the headphones are very high quality. If you don't like them you can replace them with your own.

Oh yeah? I can't find where it says you can replace them with their own. That'd be cool though.

Re: Oculus Rift

#58
post #28

The Xbox controller is really surprising to me. Years in development and it will ship with an Xbox controller. Oculus Touch didn't even get demonstrated and "prototype" was mentioned time and again.

Since OR is under Facebook, and Facebook has been fairly Microsoft friendly in the past (opting for bing maps and some office docs stuff etc), it doesn't seem like a huge surprise, especially since Sony/PS4 has their own thing in development (Morpheus)

I guess this also explains the earlier announcement dropping OSX and Linux support.

Re: Oculus Rift

#59
post #32
post #7

I am still not sold on VR, but I feel that AR (Augmented Reality) really is the future. 1) AR seems to help in real world situations vs VR which actually makes you feel vulnerable due to lack of vision and impaired hearing of what is around you. 2) VR also has the issue with physical issues with nausea and 10% of people with lazy eyes or other optical issues that make them unable to see 3D clearly. 3) Star Trek Holos…

I equate VR -> movies and AR -> smartphones. VR is a medium for immersion but AR really shines as a tool.

I'm with you on your second statement, not on the first.

VR will be clearly more than just movies. And AR is far from just for smartphones. Granted HoloLens isn't ready and might not be that great, but it has so much more potential than just smartphone gimmicks. A good set of AR can completely replace my work setup, I wouldn't have the need for monitors anymore. I'm excited by that idea, a new way to interact with the world.

Re: Oculus Rift

#60

I'm a bit of a sound nerd, but the on-ear headphones are really underwhelming. No noise isolation, most likely low quality drivers... this would make for a pretty terrible VR experience. Simply upgrading them to closed back, over the ear headphones would make a big difference - you'd be able to use lower volumes (at which point even cheap drivers aren't oto bad), and you'd be more isolated from the environment, simil…

The earphones are detachable and you can use your own audio headphones. As I understand the quality of these are actually pretty good, and definitely better than "gamer" headphones that the target audience might have. The reason they are on there is because they want to be sure everyone who has the rift has a decent audio solution, because positional audio helps so much with tricking your brain into being immersed.
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