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Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

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Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#351

Post by Reedx »

horsecaptin wrote: post #174
vocatus_gate wrote: post #157

I think the biggest risk to adoption is real-world interest. I get that VR is a fun tech, and has some potentially cool possibilities. But to me and seemingly many other people, it's just not that interesting. I don't know why, maybe I'm not geek enough, but I just have zero interest. And frankly it feels kind of like a gimmick. I'm especially averse to the idea of strapping on a clumsy headset every time I want to u…

I bet opinions like yours were prevalent when 3D games first came out. "This 3D thing is nice, but why don't you just concentrate on making a better videogames?".

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted, but it's true. Hardcore gamers complained about 3D all the time in the early days. They felt 3D games often ran poorly, were more buggy and had less features than the 2D games before them.

Sometimes they were just curmudgeons who don't like change, sometimes they were right on all counts.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#352

Post by Reedx »

vegabook wrote: post #266
moron4hire wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As also someone old enough to remember that time, lots of SNES and Sega Genesis owners were saying that. And people were getting sick from Doom at far greater rates than they are today from Oculus Rifts.

"Sick from Doom"?? I don't remember anybody getting sick from Wolfenstein or Doom. Controversy around (for the time) violent graphic realism? Sure. Seasickness? No.

People getting nauseous from first person games was and still is fairly common.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#354

Post by bloaf »

LesZedCB wrote: post #292
bloaf wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only thing that could really torpedo the VR industry is if the Oculus experience isn't pleasant for the early adopters. If their system requirements are accurate, and they have built a decent piece of hardware, then I don't think initial pricing is a problem for the entire VR industry. That being said, there are currently not a lot of options between their recommended specs (gtx 970) and the current "top…

They aren't accepting submissions to the oculus platform unless they are able to drive 90 FPS on a GTX970.

Yes, but the set of things people expect to do with the Oculus is likely larger than the set of things in the Oculus platform store.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#355

Post by mastax »

neuromute wrote: post #254
RRRA wrote: post #202

All I want for christmas is a Portal 3 and a VR headset for Linux (that actually is using a standrad like VGA was)... ;)

I was surprised to discover that Oculus have dropped support for Linux and OSX, at least for the time being. I'm sure you can still run the headsets, but it seems like a somewhat risky purchase as long as there is no official support. I'd love to hear about other Linux users' experience with a consumer unit though. I'm really excited about VR and would love to pick up a headset at some point soon. I hope Oculus start…

>Linux support is on the roadmap post-launch, Mac support is on the roadmap post-decent Apple hardware release, whenever that is.

https://mobile.twitter.com/palmerluckey/status/6743118650239...

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#356

Post by Alupis »

moistgorilla wrote: post #306
paulmd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the $599 price is close to double their "ballpark price" of $350. It also comes just days after they announced they're giving away ~7,000 free Rift units as a special thank-you to those who Kickstarted the devkits. Right now they have a serious expectation management problem with their price - they're turning off customers because they nearly doubled their asking price overnight. Those free units would translat…

> sizeable discount for their paying retail customers I think you are wrong on that. I honestly doubt the 6500 free units they are giving out would actually affect the price at all. Think about this, what would have been worse, your 6500 most loyal and vocal customers being pissed because the price of an oculus rift was doubled overnight or goodwill from dropping the price of a rift 10 dollars?

We need to consider how many Rifts are actually going to be sold at this price point. It's surely many, but it's not going to be millions of devices (this is a very expensive niche product being marketed to a relatively small slice of the market with even fewer supporting games to use it with).

With that in mind, 7k free units may very well indeed be sizable.

Regardless, they already pissed off most of their original backers during the sudden-no-forementioned sale to Facebook (which to this day remains a bizarre marriage). Sure, it may make some folks feel better, but it's unlikely to tip the scales in any sizable manner (or effect the eventual outcome of bringing this product to market).

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#357

Post by Alupis »

pera wrote: post #227
mortenjorck wrote: post #49

$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at, but right now, Oculus faces a much bigger risk than low sales volume: Poor reception. If this was the MSRP required to ensure a comfortable, nausea-free experience, it's far better to have a killer product at a high price point than a "don't buy the first generation" product at the price point people were expecting. The former can lead to a cheaper gen 2, but t…

>$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at $599 is nothing for their target: a Dell "Gaming Monitor" is $699.99 (S2716DG) for instance.

Unlike a "gaming" monitor (don't buy the hype), the Rift can only be used for a few tasks (namely, gaming)... the monitor is a general purpose product and will get a lot more mileage out of it for the price. It's an "apples and oranges" thing.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#358

Post by usrusr »

jameshart wrote: post #155
matwood wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Rift will not run on your laptop, this rule does not change! IMHO, this is the biggest issue. The computer landscape has shifted towards laptops/mobile and now this device requires a device whose marketshare is shrinking.

Yes, it feels like a big mistake. An external box containing the necessary graphics hardware should probably be a part of the Oculus package - it seems to be setting itself up for failure by pretending to be a display, rather than a graphics pipeline.

Assuming that box would add 300$ more to the package price, you would be close to sinking four digits when it turns out that VR is more immersion than you like. In that case, a regular GPU upgrade will happily drive your conventional screens, whereas an Oculus box would likely be dead weight causing or at least cause all kinds of compatibility headaches when repurposed for conventional display use.

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#359

Post by Animats »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #349
Animats wrote: post #318

It's been available as a "development version" for almost two years.[1] The price was $1000, and anyone could buy it on Amazon. This is a 40% price cut, which is nice, but not a mainstream price. Is there a killer app for this yet? The roller coaster simulators are fun for about ten minutes. Second Life now works with the Oculus Rift [3] but few people care. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGIIQf3krMM [2] http://…

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is pretty damn good. I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but people are more than happy to put scores of hours on that game. And the VR really improves it.

The only reason that game needs VR is so you can see your right side mirrors without changing viewpoint.[1]

(Also, it really needs a steering wheel. Trying to drive a realistic vehicle with a game pad/joystick is awful.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56G2jSw4JHs

Re: Oculus Rift: Available for pre-order

#360

Post by ihuman »

uptown wrote: post #299
ihuman wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use a MacBook Pro from 2011 with the DK1, and it worked just fine.

Did you Bootcamp to Windows 7, or is there something that runs natively on OS X?

I used Windows, because the rest of the hackathon team I was on was using Windows. We were using Unity, but we didn't want there to be any problems getting the code to run on multiple OSs. I know that Unity makes it easy to do that, but we didn't want to risk it.

Edit: Also remembered that we used as Kinect, which requires Windows

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