John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#101

Post by dougmwne » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

timleewards wrote: post #95

dougmwne wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as the other poster said, it is the best of both worlds device, especially since the USB 3 link now has several times the bandwidth of the Quest 2. I think PCVR is interesting in a supercar kind of way. It's going to provide an incredible experience at a price that will limit it to a small niche of the overall gaming industry. I purposely bought a mobile HMD because I think that will be the only way VR hits the…

Yeah I dont think vr’s future is mobile - cant be. There is only this much performance you can squeeze out of a mobile platform (even carmack himself seems to suggest that). Desktop gaming pcs are becoming cheaper by the day and gpu and cpu power are going up. My previous “gaming” pc cost less than 600 gbp and it handled oculus quite well. Now i reckon i own a quite powerful pc, cheaper than a macbook pro, and its fl…

Thanks, I hope to soon! I'm personally in your boat and would happily tether to a space heater if it got me some extra polygons. I think the data shows there are far more gamers on console, mobile, and laptops than on rigs. And that's part of Google, MS, Nvidia, and Sony's big bets on cloud gaming, that plenty more people would game on their potato laptops if they could. I think the PS VR is an interesting model as well since I can see general consumers going for a wireless headset powered by the big box under their TV. If the Quest 2 doesn't meet FB's expectations then Sony's model may win.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#102

Post by blackearl » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #92

blackearl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beat Saber is the obvious answer with the most general appeal.

Right. Beat Saber works because the virtual world does not rotate relative to the real world. That rotation is what induces nausea. The player is confined to a small box in the virtual world; they never move very far, and the virtual world is locked to the real world.[1] Games with that constraint are limited. You could do ping-pong. Shooting galleries. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV1sw4lfwFw

Ok but it's not a tech demo or some proof of concept. It's a fully fleshed out game with high profile DLC and a strong mod community. Nausea has nothing to do with this.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#103

Post by dougmwne » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

timleewards wrote: post #93

theschwa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the Quest being able to be used as both a PC VR and and standalone, why not Quest? I'm saying this as someone who owns 4 different VR headsets, and I find myself using my Quest 1 the most.

Interesting - i steered away of oculus generally speaking as it was by far the buggiest headset I owned. From what gather tho it can only play low spec games decently. For instance, how does it handle Alyx?

I think it can only play Alyx through the link on PC, unless Valve decides to port it at some point in the future, which seems unlikely since they have their own investments in VR as a platform.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#104

Post by chaostheory » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #20

This talk was such a treat. After all the carefuly crafted hype from Zuck and the gang, Carmack threw huge bucket of cold water on everything. I think it's just wonderful that he's allowed to speak so openly, about the things he's proud of, the things he thinks are failures, internal politics, the possibilities for improvement, the real hard physical limits VR is running into, and his growing pessimism for the future…

I don't understand how you equated Carmack speaking about implementation challenges with being "pessimistic about VR". He still seems very gung ho about VR

EDIT: if he's moving towards other projects, actions speak louder than words. I didn't get that from his talk, or maybe I just missed it.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#105

Post by Barrin92 » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #44

munificent wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It needs to be a game changer and the future of something or the research funding and developer ecosystem are going to dry up. I hate that we live in a world so dominated by network effects, economies of scale, corporate consolidation, and shareholder value that there are fewer and fewer realms where "small success" still exists.

Me too, but then given the complexity of this tech, I think it's much closer by order of magnitude to a moon landing worth of engineering than Pat's Sustainable Bamboo Bicycles. Big projects, big scale, big money.

Palmer lucky literally did built the first Occulus in his garage. I don't think it's fair to compare this technology to the moon landing.

You're right that some sort of ready player one metaverse thing is probably on that level, but creating genuinely interesting, fun VR experiences that may in many ways be more interesting and unique does not to me seem beyond the scope of small scale business.

In a sense VR is one of the purest versions of that sort of cyberspace idealism, it's an escape hatch away from curated, corporate products to whatever people want to make. So I'm not pessimistic that creative people find things to built.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#106

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:45 PM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #50

smusamashah wrote: post #13

Has Occulus ever tried electromagnetic motion sensors. Sixense probably did that once, thought they never went into production but they said it was super precise and has very low latency. Occulus is tracking motion with camera which is way more CPU intensive than calculating position based on electromagnetic signals. One trouble they had though that it wouldnt work well with high energy electric items nearby. So dooe…

Someone said you can’t have a PC in the same room at all while magnetometer based tracking is operating, so...

Wouldn't be a problem if homebrew gamer PCs were FCC compliant and didn't have gaping RF holes in them.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#107

Post by chaostheory » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

timleewards wrote: post #61

dougmwne wrote: post #20

This talk was such a treat. After all the carefuly crafted hype from Zuck and the gang, Carmack threw huge bucket of cold water on everything. I think it's just wonderful that he's allowed to speak so openly, about the things he's proud of, the things he thinks are failures, internal politics, the possibilities for improvement, the real hard physical limits VR is running into, and his growing pessimism for the future…

I sure hope you want for a pc vr headset and not the oculus quest. HTC Vive Pro and Valve Index are simply stunning and can see them become the future of gaming.

As an owner of both, it's hard to see them as the future because they are not accessible or democratized unlike the Quest product line.

Let's start with cost. Both headsets alone run around $1000 - $1200. If you build your VR ready PC, it's about $1500. If you pay Dell or HP, then it costs about $2000. We're already at $2500 minimum and we haven't even added the costs for Vive's wireless option which runs at an extra $350, so with wireless the cost is $2850 minimum; for the non-technical it could skyrocket to $3250 vs the Quest's $299.

Now let's talk about the "initial hill to climb" that most techies forget about. If you must deal with wires, then you have to do ceiling based wire control, where you mangle your room with ceiling hooks. For base stations, unless you have the perfect room with perfect furniture and you don't mind drilling into walls, it's a pain to set it up just right. It took me a lot of trial and error before I got it working flawlessly all the time. Let's also not forget that you need to install a wireless card for Vive's wireless accessory. Not everyone has both the skill and patience to deal with these time consuming annoying things.

Sure, there's no option for full body tracking, visual fidelity isn't as good, and nothing beats external tracking performance; but with Quest, it's $299. You put it on your head and you can play. I can buy a Quest for my mom.

Don't get me wrong, I really love both the Index and Vive Pro, but I am not forgetting about the work and costs associated with either platform

EDIT: I forgot the ritual I have to go through to get Vive and Index to work

1. Turn on computer

2. Put wires on ceiling

3. Turn on each base station

4. Turn on VR HMD

5. Turn on controllers.

vs

1. Turn on Oculus

2. Turn on controllers

It's bad enough where my SO "doesn't want to hassle" me just to play VR.

https://youtu.be/sXmY26pOE-Y?t=3830

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#108

Post by xnx » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #82

koiz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games. We are far past tech demos and concept games.

But it's clearly not a mass market thing either— mass market is mobile games raking in millions, Switches selling out during quarantine, the upcoming PS5 launch, and Epic having splashy platform wars with Apple and Valve. Those are billion dollar gaming events which all have nothing to do with VR. There's no non-nerd out there who thinks "maybe I'll try VR", and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home t…

Agree. Compare the popularity of Beat Saber to what Wii Sports was and you have a measure for how far out of the mainstream VR still is.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#109

Post by jonny_wonny » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #104

dougmwne wrote: post #20

This talk was such a treat. After all the carefuly crafted hype from Zuck and the gang, Carmack threw huge bucket of cold water on everything. I think it's just wonderful that he's allowed to speak so openly, about the things he's proud of, the things he thinks are failures, internal politics, the possibilities for improvement, the real hard physical limits VR is running into, and his growing pessimism for the future…

I don't understand how you equated Carmack speaking about implementation challenges with being "pessimistic about VR". He still seems very gung ho about VR EDIT: if he's moving towards other projects, actions speak louder than words. I didn't get that from his talk, or maybe I just missed it.

Yeah, that dude definitely didn’t comprehend Carmack’s talk very well. Carmack wasn’t in any way pessimistic about VR, he’s just disappointed with the pace that things are moving in. As he said, he always wants things to move faster.

But if anything, Carmack expressed overall optimism. He said that we pretty much have everything we need to implement his ideal vision of VR. It’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together.

Re: John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]

#110

Post by jonny_wonny » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 8:04 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #68

olau wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched the whole thing and I don't understand how you arrived at him having a growing pessimism for the future of VR? I had the opposite impression. He did seem to care about VR as a general purpose system (alternative to traditional monitors), even if it's not quite there yet, both due to hardware and software limitations. He also seemed proud that they were actually shipping stuff.

Yes, I do think he was very proud of the shipping product and saw that there were many more achievable gains. My impression of pessimism came from his skepticism that Moore's law would continue long enough to get them to where they really wanted to be on mobile VR, his struggles with latency probably making cloud rendering a poor experience for most, recognition that they were already at the ceiling of their heat and…

I mean, I think the last thing he said regarding Moore’s Law was the comment about what that AMD exec said, which was basically that they still have tons of room for future improvements.