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Oculus Rift

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271–280 of 378 posts

Re: Oculus Rift

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, it looks like it will be wireless, which currently isn't possible with the PC. The Xbox One controller is only wireless for Xbox, the drivers/wireless receiver aren't available for PC. I wonder if they partnered with Microsoft to make it wireless?

Microsoft announced a wireless adapter for PC a couple of days ago http://www.anandtech.com/show/9358/microsoft-launches-update...

It'll be Windows 10 only (which has a lot of people speculating that Oculus Rift may be Windows 10 only).

Re: Oculus Rift

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your use case is particularly apt for frequent fliers. I've almost had a tray table-supported laptop destroyed on more than one occasion by a reclining passenger in front of me. It would be amazing to just set up a small keyboard+trackpad on my lap and not have to even pull the computer out of its bag. If I could do this, I wouldn't even care how ridiculous I looked.

You won't be able to see the keyboard though. So, how confident are you in your touch-typing skills?

Are you serious? Hiding the keyboard is like the first step you do when you start practicing touch typing.

Re: Oculus Rift

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

That people's reaction to essentially the same comment would vary vastly with the form of self-identification. I suspect people are downvoting my comment just because it contains the word "audiophile." The point is that the topic is subject to a lot of unthinking prejudice in forums like this.

Re: Oculus Rift

#274
Somebody shoot the graphic designer for laziness. If you are making promotional artwork for a VR headset, try not to have the view in each eyepiece being the same picture slid horizontally. Surely it wouldn't hurt to do two renders.

Re: Oculus Rift

#275
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why reinvent the wheel? The xbox controller is widely considered the gold standard.

The gold standard is Nintendo's controllers, not Microsoft's.

Nintendo controllers are god tier in quality, reliability, and unique integration with games. When I see the Xbox controllers all I can think of are Microsoft Sidewinders.

Re: Oculus Rift

#276
post #249
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the perceptual resolution available for a virtual monitor would probably be less than VGA It's a shame we weren't able to program on VGA monitors. :(

VGA had 480 scanlines. When was the last time anyone seriously programmed on a display worse than that? My guess would be Commodore 64 with an NTSC TV for display. That's pretty close to the text fidelity you can reproduce on a "virtual monitor" in a current-generation VR environment. (I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of resolution lost due to lens correction -- the rendered screen image is heavily di…

I recall being my most productive on an old IBM 3151 terminal (probably because of the keyboard, but also fewer distractions). It was only 80x24 characters. And 80x24 is easily represented in a 640x480 screen. Now add in head tracking, and you can have the screen move up and down and scroll the text in the opposite direction, making it appear as if you are moving a virtual picture frame over a bigger sheet of paper.

Even today, most of my (C / Bash) programming is done in an 80x24 xterm, although I'll typically have documentation open in another window. However web and GUI app development requires enough room to see the resulting product.

Re: Oculus Rift

#277

Somebody shoot the graphic designer for laziness. If you are making promotional artwork for a VR headset, try not to have the view in each eyepiece being the same picture slid horizontally. Surely it wouldn't hurt to do two renders.

It's a well-done site. I had to go back and look carefully to even notice that the views in the eyepieces were not rendered in proper perspective.

Re: Oculus Rift

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resolution is the main concern. Is oculus detailed enough to do programming on a virtual monitor?

A few people are experimenting with that over at http://www.reddit.com/r/HMDprogramming/ Right now, the resolution is clearly not high enough for a straightforward implementation. I've got some ideas I'd like to play with around green-on-black text rendered directly in the post-lens-warp buffer, but I haven't had time to try it out yet.

Didn't SDK 0.6.0 remove some of the ability to do that stuff?

> Removed support for application-based distortion rendering. Removed functions include ovrHmd_CreateDistortionMesh, ovrHmd_GetRenderScaleAndOffset, and so on. If you feel that you require application-based distortion rendering, please contact Oculus Developer Relations.

https://developer.oculus.com/history/

Re: Oculus Rift

#279
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR definitely needs a reinvented wheel in this case. Being able to move your head in virtual space but not your hands is clearly suboptimal, and the motion sensors in that generation of controllers are not up to the task. My take: this a bandaid, so they can get the headset out in Q1, ahead of the proper controllers in Q2. Not what they wanted to do, but Vive forced their hand on timing.

I'm curious as to why you think that freedom of hand motion is essential for VR. Certainly I can think of many VR experiences where it would be useful, but I can think of just as many where having discreet inputs (buttons) would be preferable. For example, a spaceship piloting game that allows the players head to rotate and look out the windows could very easily be controlled with a traditional gamepad.

I definitely agree with you that the "cockpit" games (racing, space combat, et al.), and things like Lucky's Tale are well served by the current controller, but I don't think it's going serve VR well outside of those niches. Which isn't what you want from the default, bundled controller.

Even just a few years ago most people were thinking that game genre popularity would just map into VR - i.e. Witchers and CoDs would be king. What's becoming more and more apparent is that VR is such a different medium that we need a whole new set game genres and mechanics.

For instance: locomotion with the left controller stick, head movement with the right (which the current controllers are brilliantly adapted for) is such a core controller "idiom" right now, but when applied to VR it's just horrible - a recipe for nausea and disorientation.

If you look at the kinds of experiences that are being developed around Valve's controllers, they're all huge departures from the games we currently play, and the reason is that Valve, as game designers, realized from an early point just how far back to the drawing board we need to go. VR is just too different, with different objectives (immersion), possible modes of interaction, and human weaknesses to address.

Re: Oculus Rift

#280

Somebody shoot the graphic designer for laziness. If you are making promotional artwork for a VR headset, try not to have the view in each eyepiece being the same picture slid horizontally. Surely it wouldn't hurt to do two renders.

It's a well-done site. I had to go back and look carefully to even notice that the views in the eyepieces were not rendered in proper perspective.

Perhaps I stare at 3d graphics too much, was the first thing I noticed.
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