A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR • Hacker News Board

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#151

Post by peatmoss » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

flatline wrote: post #116

partiallypro wrote: post #94

In all of my experiencing of the new VR products, I am firmly in the position that it's not ready for public consumption yet and won't be for quite some time. The only real reason it's being pushed hard is because people have a fear of missing out. Meanwhile, if I were a company I'd be focusing on AR, because at least there you can push for enterprise customers which won't need the full immersion yet that a general c…

VR fundamentally conflicts with how the eyes focus, and it will never be solved with the current technology. For some people it's not a big problem, but a sizeable portion of the population will be unable to use VR at all or for any extended period without ending up with eye strain, headaches, nausea, and/or a general sense of malaise. It will always be something of a niche technology IMO - very cool, but of limited…

Tangential to your comment: In my experience with VR and IMAX 3D, I find VR much more palatable. For me the nearby focusing issues of VR aren't particularly physically straining / nauseating for me.

On the other hand, the entertainment value of 3D movies is greatly diminished for me because the 3D effect doesn't have realistic parallax. With 2D, my brain happily converts to 3D based on other cues. The 3D plus no parallax effect of 3D movies just gets stuck in some sort of uncanny valley for me.

This is just my anecdata for how the two technologies suffer different weaknesses as far as individuals are concerned. For someone else, I'm sure the near-focus issue would trump the fake parallax.

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#152

Post by malchow » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:26 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #67

croon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like competition as much as the next guy, but I'm happy as long as the more open platform is more popular. Wish Oculus took a different route.

My prediction: Valve VR will be the choice for hardcore games/gamers. Oculus VR will shift focus to more casual gaming (quick, fun, not graphically superior), and more importantly media consumption (think: Facebook live 360 video of major media events like E3, or ComicCon, and eventually paid subscription for viewing of live sporting events like courtside NBA games)

This. Facebook is more interested in VR for sports, messaging, telepresence, news, ads, and entertainment media than it is for games.

Downside of that strategy is that the Valve/Vive bloc could produce radically superior technology because gaming creates seductive technical barriers to overcome. FB's intended uses do not.

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#153

Post by sambe » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

randac wrote: post #86

ksec wrote: post #52

Side observation. So Valve now has an better VR Set then Oculus. And all of a sudden every news on VR seems to flowing in Valve direction. This reminds me a lot of the early days when we move from iD 's Doom to Valve's Half Life. Note: ( John Carmack = CTO of Oculus and Founder of iD )

1) Valve has always had a better VR set than Oculus. 2) id, not iD.

Is it clearly better? Most reviews I've read said - ignoring the wand things - it's about equal, with Oculus maybe a bit better on economics. The fair comparison would be once Oculus releases their wands (and verification of room scale claims). Also, what do you mean by emphasising "always"? Both devices only launched recently.

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#154

Post by pushrax » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

arielweisberg wrote: post #131

flatline wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR fundamentally conflicts with how the eyes focus, and it will never be solved with the current technology. For some people it's not a big problem, but a sizeable portion of the population will be unable to use VR at all or for any extended period without ending up with eye strain, headaches, nausea, and/or a general sense of malaise. It will always be something of a niche technology IMO - very cool, but of limited…

Do you own a CV1 or Vive? How many hours do you have in them? How many people have you demoed them to? The last pair I demoed to spent 3 hours in the Rift, with a single person spending two hours without stopping. This was their first experience ever with VR. VR sickness is a thing and it's varies from person to person and use case to use case, but I have never experienced (personally or vicariously) issues related t…

I've experimented with our own game engine and VR sickness. When the view doesn't accelerate relative to your real-world position, there is no issue. The problem starts when you're using external direct movement control, such as a mouse and keyboard. Moving forward and suddenly starting to move backwards is slightly uncomfortable. Rotating your head while rotating the mouse in the same direction is the worst for me.

It's the inverse of car sickness, and affects some people but not others. My coworker has no issue using full FPS mouse/kb controls within VR.

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#155

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

marricks wrote: post #132

partiallypro wrote: post #94

In all of my experiencing of the new VR products, I am firmly in the position that it's not ready for public consumption yet and won't be for quite some time. The only real reason it's being pushed hard is because people have a fear of missing out. Meanwhile, if I were a company I'd be focusing on AR, because at least there you can push for enterprise customers which won't need the full immersion yet that a general c…

It's weird your comment is so far up and you haven't given any reasons as to why VR is not ready for mainstream. You have a reason for why it's being pushed, but not a reason for why it won't take. Steam sale numbers show tens of thousands of games are being bought by Vive owners, which is a pretty high percentage of the ~90k Vive units out there. Some games are as high as 50k / ~90k units. People are continuing to b…

It's kinda ironic that the Apple Watch can sell 12 million units and be deemed a failure, yet the HTC Vive can sell 90 thousand units and be deemed the next big thing...

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#156

Post by pyrophane » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:51 PM UTC

marricks wrote: post #132

partiallypro wrote: post #94

In all of my experiencing of the new VR products, I am firmly in the position that it's not ready for public consumption yet and won't be for quite some time. The only real reason it's being pushed hard is because people have a fear of missing out. Meanwhile, if I were a company I'd be focusing on AR, because at least there you can push for enterprise customers which won't need the full immersion yet that a general c…

It's weird your comment is so far up and you haven't given any reasons as to why VR is not ready for mainstream. You have a reason for why it's being pushed, but not a reason for why it won't take. Steam sale numbers show tens of thousands of games are being bought by Vive owners, which is a pretty high percentage of the ~90k Vive units out there. Some games are as high as 50k / ~90k units. People are continuing to b…

I own a Vive and love it, but I'll give a few reasons why VR may not quite be ready yet:

- The resolution needs to be higher. It is very difficult to read anything but oversized text at a hand's distance. While the low resolution doesn't kill the immersive effect of VR, it is very noticeable.

- The clear viewing angle through the headset is small. You can't look too far off of center screen before everything becomes blurry.

- They haven't found a decent solution to the problem of moving around in a VR world. Right now the best answer is teleportation, but that is an awkward solution that pointedly breaks immersion. We'll see how well that can work in a large open-world game when Fallout 4 VR comes out.

- The catalog has very few complete games at this point. Almost all of what is available is very early access or "discrete experiences" that don't last very long.

So, for the most part the Vive has convinced me of VR. Having played with it I am not sure I would enjoy a first-person gaming experience outside of VR now. Still, it is at the early-adopter stage. Better graphics hardware needs to be cheaper, and a couple of generations of headsets will likely see a drastic improvement in the quality of the experience.

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#157

Post by forthefuture » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

marricks wrote: post #132

partiallypro wrote: post #94

In all of my experiencing of the new VR products, I am firmly in the position that it's not ready for public consumption yet and won't be for quite some time. The only real reason it's being pushed hard is because people have a fear of missing out. Meanwhile, if I were a company I'd be focusing on AR, because at least there you can push for enterprise customers which won't need the full immersion yet that a general c…

It's weird your comment is so far up and you haven't given any reasons as to why VR is not ready for mainstream. You have a reason for why it's being pushed, but not a reason for why it won't take. Steam sale numbers show tens of thousands of games are being bought by Vive owners, which is a pretty high percentage of the ~90k Vive units out there. Some games are as high as 50k / ~90k units. People are continuing to b…

I personally think it's not ready for the following reasons:

* Many people are getting sick. They don't even know why it's happening; we're years away from it being fixed. VR right now is the 3d on the 3ds. It's not meant for human eyes and they're rushing it.

* No eyetracking. Your camera focuses on the direction your head is pointed. This is not how humans see. I am virtually never looking the exact direction my head is pointed. This is one of the reasons people are getting sick. Their eyes want to focus on something, and that technology is VirtualBoy level underdeveloped.

* Ouya games. The vast majority of games right now are really bad. They're definitely working on getting real games into VR, but it's going to take time, and most developers will see it as a Vita type situation where it makes more sense to wait to see if people buy it before investing developer hours into implementing an entire different display method for the game. Right now VR companies are paying people to make them games. That money will dry up.

* Price. Most people can't justify spending $300 on a video game console they can hook up to their TV. The market for a $500 head TV for that $300 console (or a $1000 computer) is comically small.

* Version. It's too easy to wait for the next one. At some point they'll make a headset with eyetracking, that doesn't make people sick, that has 4k in each eye, that weighs less, that attaches to your head more comfortably, and it will cost less.

* VersionS. Right now it looks like certain games won't work on every headset. This immediately tells consumers to wait for standardization. It's a fucking monitor. You don't get to have exclusives for your monitor.

* FOV. Human FOV is around 180. We have binocular vision for 114 of that. Oculus and Vive fovs are at 110. That's literally horse blinders.

As an aside, I like moving my focus with my mouse. It's incomparably more accurate than hoping my deviated septim is pointing exactly where I want to look. If you can't disable headtracking that's an immediate red flag for me.

I really like VR, but (like basic income) it is going to lose credibility because of how early it is proposed.

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#158

Post by marricks » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #155

marricks wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird your comment is so far up and you haven't given any reasons as to why VR is not ready for mainstream. You have a reason for why it's being pushed, but not a reason for why it won't take. Steam sale numbers show tens of thousands of games are being bought by Vive owners, which is a pretty high percentage of the ~90k Vive units out there. Some games are as high as 50k / ~90k units. People are continuing to b…

It's kinda ironic that the Apple Watch can sell 12 million units and be deemed a failure, yet the HTC Vive can sell 90 thousand units and be deemed the next big thing...

That's a big apples to oranges comparison, but breaking it down anyways... for an apple watch all you need is a smartphone which the majority of people have. For one of these VR HMDs you need a 300 dollar graphics card and a capable computer, which is a much smaller market segment for a device which has only been out a handful of months.

So, how will this change? Well GPU's are getting increasingly powerful, Nvidia will likely debut a GPU that is powerful enough for a Rift/Vive on a laptop this year, and AMD will release a graphics card powerful enough for VR on desktop at a price point less than 200 bucks.

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#159

Post by roninb » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #148

intrasight wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As was the case with early personal computers - until some "killer apps" arrived. For businesses, the killer app was Lotus 1-2-3 and/or WordPerfect. Rest assured that some clever young things are actively working on the killer apps for VR headsets. I assume there will be at least one, and I assume that it won't be a FPS game.

No. You're seeing a low adoption rate and imagining that it's just the typical adoption cycle taught in Business 101. VR has been the next big thing for twenty years. It's not a niche technology because of Luddites, it is a niche technology because it works against human physiology and only a lucky few are totally unaffected by it. You're targeting an audience of people who find your product merely tolerable. And sin…

I may be too young to recall, but I seem to remember 30+ year olds complaining about how touch screens would never catch on around 2005-06. Something about the masses never accepting a product that's "merely tolerable."

I recall the same about the size of a phone in hand a few years after that and we haven't seen a sub-5" phone really sell well in how long?

Re: A Third of Valve Is Now Working on VR

#160

Post by progressive_dad » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

pyrophane wrote: post #156

marricks wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird your comment is so far up and you haven't given any reasons as to why VR is not ready for mainstream. You have a reason for why it's being pushed, but not a reason for why it won't take. Steam sale numbers show tens of thousands of games are being bought by Vive owners, which is a pretty high percentage of the ~90k Vive units out there. Some games are as high as 50k / ~90k units. People are continuing to b…

I own a Vive and love it, but I'll give a few reasons why VR may not quite be ready yet: - The resolution needs to be higher. It is very difficult to read anything but oversized text at a hand's distance. While the low resolution doesn't kill the immersive effect of VR, it is very noticeable. - The clear viewing angle through the headset is small. You can't look too far off of center screen before everything becomes…

My 8 year old son knows more about the Rift from watching his youtube buddies than I did. That's when I realized its gonna stick this time. He had a chance to use it at his summer camp and now he's saving his allowance so he can ask Santa for one and buy a Kinect to make VR experiences at home (Luckily his superhero dad is a PHP and C# programmer by day)

Little kids love even the simplest buggy broken demos. They go wild for it.