Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 157 posts

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#121

Post by the_rosentotter »

reustle wrote: post #70
symlinkk wrote: post #6

> The headset doesn’t always fit quite right, and the experience can be straight up exhausting I agree, moving your head around all the time to look at things does get really tiring after a while. I hope - and believe - that as game devs get more experience with VR, they'll design VR games differently to take into account its strengths and weaknesses. This is actually one of the reasons I think Oculus has a good chan…

> I agree, moving your head around all the time to look at things does get really tiring after a while Is this really the day and age we live in where needing to mov e your head around is considered a con? You move your head around all the time while walking around, driving, etc and nobody complains about that

The problem is that these devices limit your field of view a lot. So, like when wearing a mask, you have to turn your head quite a lot to get stuff into the center of vision field, which quickly gets very annoying and tiring.

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#122

Post by greenspot »

Not sure but the current and next VR gen might be the next smartwatch. Overhyped.

Why =>

1. You need an highres screen which must be pixel-free. Even if you throw Samsung's ppi front runners Note 5 or S7 into a Google cardboard you definitely see pixels; it's not crisp, it's not clear, it's just annoying and those monster phones have already 500-600ppi, more than any Oculus. So we need screens with 1000 ppi minimum because they sit so close in front of your eyes. We are used to crispy Retina noteboks and even higher res smartphone screens for years and shall now go back?

2. People are annoyed by Androids micro stuttering here and there, even the mainstream users and now we believe some milliseconds latency and stutter won't hurt VR? So here we need minimum 60 fps and even more since head movements can be quite quick and morever, even subtle movements which happen with your head all the time must be reflected with same sensivity. Didn't see this yet.

3. 1000ppi at 60fps? Ok, let's try to get hardware for this; you need hardware with the best avail GPUs, coolers, heatpipes, and fat cables to your lovely headset since batteries won't help. So we talk about a non-mobile product, something with cables keeping you at one position. And a price tag far away for the mainstream user.

Once this thing can be sold next to the Playstation for few hundred bucks at the quality mentioned in 1 and 2 + killer apps we are ready to go and we can talk again about mainstream adoption. To get there I assume that we need min. 10 years if not more.

And even then, if we are there and have 1+2+3 fulfilled I come up with my 4th point:

4. Great about games is that I sit on my sofa and can conquer the world without moving at all. All is done with my fingertips on my controller. Moving is exhausting--and thats the point of video games: to not run yourself and climb mountains like you do in Uncharted 4 for days--even moving my head can get exhausting after a while and anyway head movements are also much faster done with my controller's right analogue stick. So, what's the point? Why do I need an headset when a large screen and my proven Playstation controller can do the same? Better immersion?

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#123

Post by return0 »

newhouseb wrote: post #81

To me, the most exciting thing about VR (particularly on the Vive) is not anything gaming related but the possibilities around creation and collaboration that are opened up by being able to program in "the real world." If you've played with Tiltbrush at all you can see a glimpse of this. Your brain's implicit understanding of your presence in 3D space is incredibly vital to understanding the shapes and structure that…

I await for the current hype to calm down for the same reason. I see it as the natural evolution of monitors.

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#124

Post by k__ »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #120
k__ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the vive was superior in tech (full room, good controllers, steam), but inferior in hardware-ux (to heavy) Luckily I have huge traps from lifting, haha.

It's a lot easier for HTC to update the Vive hardware than for the Oculus to get a whole new stack. Vive has already been a hit with the early adopters. But HTC needs to concentrate on making the hardware better and cheaper if it wants to break into the mainstream commodity market. The biggest problem is pitching VR as gaming++, because gaming on its own is not a killer app - especially at the current price point. I…

I think replacing Workstations with multiple displays would be the killer APP.

Finally I would look like the hackers from the movies

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#125

Post by purplelobster »

madaxe_again wrote: post #110
newhouseb wrote: post #81

To me, the most exciting thing about VR (particularly on the Vive) is not anything gaming related but the possibilities around creation and collaboration that are opened up by being able to program in "the real world." If you've played with Tiltbrush at all you can see a glimpse of this. Your brain's implicit understanding of your presence in 3D space is incredibly vital to understanding the shapes and structure that…

Yup. There's a lot going on right now with people making tools for sculpture, for design, and even stuff like minecraft is a blast on the vive. I've had mine three weeks and managed to spend 6 hours in it solidly on Saturday - 30 minutes and you need a nap? Please. Better make some ovaltine and put your slippers on. On the other hand, I can't take more than 30 minutes of holopoint - it's physically intense and leaves…

Spot on. I'm so surprised so see so many close minded tech geeks here on HN. Is it really so difficult to extrapolate from the current of VR tech to a few years out? My guess is most negative people on here hasn't actually tried the Vive.

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#126

Post by chj »

jobigoud wrote: post #96
chj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My two cents on Vive after a short experience: 1. Video quality is better than google cardboard, but not much. Yeah, I am surprised too. 2. Headset and Control don't fit very well, at least for me. 3. You need a large empty room. Otherwise I can see myself running into things. Bottom line: no way I am going to buy this.

The problem with video quality (if you are referring to stereoscopic 360 video) is coming from the content, not the headset. To make a video that leverages the GearVR pixel density for example, you need 6000x1500px. Per eye. Videos are usually a far cry from that. H.264 encoders won't even let you encode it.

I am referring to games. I only tried two though.

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#127

Post by taneq »

argonaut wrote: post #54
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #5

Apparently I can't read this article due to using adblock. Neither visiting the article nor the "web" workaround work. http://i.imgur.com/8LN6ec0r.png Fascinating. I wonder what the web will look like in a decade. On-topic: I was one of the original backers of Oculus, but missed the opportunity to get a free Rift. I guess it didn't matter much. It seems like what happened to the Oculus is what happened to many platfo…

I thought this Sam Altman tweet is relevant: "not enough of us are willing to pay for news, so we get the click-bait ad-driven news we deserve." ( https://twitter.com/sama/status/736579483923156992 ). It comes off (in tone) as a bit entitled when I see people complaining about how they aren't able to view free (free!) ad-supported content for free because they are using an adblocker. I use ad block. I recognize that…

I have to agree with you here. I usually don't use an archive link or other shenanigans to circumvent anti-ad-blocking measures, if a site would rather lose a reader than allow ads to be blocked then I'll just not read the article.

This one, with ads, was unreadable anyway so it's a moot point really.

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#128

Post by aub3bhat »

madaxe_again wrote: post #110
newhouseb wrote: post #81

To me, the most exciting thing about VR (particularly on the Vive) is not anything gaming related but the possibilities around creation and collaboration that are opened up by being able to program in "the real world." If you've played with Tiltbrush at all you can see a glimpse of this. Your brain's implicit understanding of your presence in 3D space is incredibly vital to understanding the shapes and structure that…

Yup. There's a lot going on right now with people making tools for sculpture, for design, and even stuff like minecraft is a blast on the vive. I've had mine three weeks and managed to spend 6 hours in it solidly on Saturday - 30 minutes and you need a nap? Please. Better make some ovaltine and put your slippers on. On the other hand, I can't take more than 30 minutes of holopoint - it's physically intense and leaves…

If you think Vive is awesome just check out HoloLens its brilliant. Forget all the issues with limited FOV. HoloLens changes how you interact with real world.

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#129

Post by fsloth »

exodust wrote: post #108
fsloth wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much HTC vive

Unless Vive is an actual room you strap to your head, then no.

But it is, sans the tactile feedback. By which I mean, once worn, the experience is indistinguishable from being in a room. This is from experience. I've experimented with Oculus, Hololens and Vive and by far Vive has the most compelling experience from the point of view of generating a perception of an alternative reality - and your description is actually pretty good in explaining the experience.

Re: I've Been Waiting For The Oculus Rift, But Now It's Sitting In My Closet

#130

Post by SimonPStevens »

pen2l wrote: post #41
ARCarr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HTC Vive has a camera on the front you can turn on to see around your environment.

Oh wow, I did not know that. So basically, Vive is a potential AR device as well. Speaking of which, I have the mattel view-master headset that I use with an iphone 6. If you use the default mattel app, the device looks through the camera, and when it sees the disc that comes along it (this one: http://www8.pcmag.com/media/images/488976-mattel-view-master... ) -- it renders a rocket spinning on top of it. So even the…

No, not quite.

It's a single camera mounted in the centre. So it can't do stereoscopic 3d and although the resolution is OK, it's not great. Currently you can bring the camera up as a floating window attached to you controller that lets you look out into the real world. It's kind of like looking at the world on a tablet screen in your hand.

I believe they recently have provided access to the camera stream via the API, so we might see developers start integrating it into things, but it's never going to be like AR.

Post reply on HN