Sony, Facebook, Google, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft Now All Have a Hand In VR 61
An anonymous reader writes The Oculus Kickstarter breathed new life into consumer virtual reality when it raised more than $2.4 million just three years ago. Now, at the onset of 2015, some of the world's biggest tech companies have a vested interest in the growing consumer virtual reality industry. Road to VR takes a look back at VR in 2014 and the path that lead these tech giants to start taking it seriously.
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To be fair, they give you a choice between Headcrab and Facehugger models.
Personally, I don't want anything that restricts my vision. I like my coffee mug not knocked over, and to not whack my love in the face because I didn't see her.
3D is best done in booths where the environment is protected from the 3Dee.
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I like my coffee mug not knocked over, and to not whack my love in the face because I didn't see her.
If your love doesn't notice the big black box strapped across your face, perhaps a whack or 2 will help her pay a bit of attention to you?
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In your mother's basement, nobody can hear you scream.
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It will be great for the 3d porn industry. Hopefully some interesting applications will evolve.
No thanks. (Score:3)
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It's about more than stereoscopic vision. The fact my head moves and the environment perfectly tracks my head movement is the real significant chunk. If you don't have stereoscopic vision in real life, then no you don't have stereoscopic inside a VR headset. Either way you judge 3d by head movements and that is very much helped in a VR context.
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Close one eye. Move your head left or right. Congratulations, you perceived 3d information by parallax. Same thing works in reality and VR. If you can't see it in reality, then of course you can't see it in VR, but your perception of reality continues to have you understanding depth.
Two eyes provides depth information without head movement for a few meters. Moving the head provides the information over greater range and works with one eye or two.
What's different from 20 years ago? (Score:1)
You know, when VR was in the spotlight the first time?
Re:What's different from 20 years ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, when VR was in the spotlight the first time?
The headsets are slightly smaller. Not much, but slightly. Maybe the name should be changed as with client-server becoming cloud! With a name change everything old is new again.
Re:What's different from 20 years ago? (Score:5, Informative)
Displays that can be refreshed 75 times a second? Displays that can turn off between refreshes? GPU and software stack that can provide reasonable detail at high resolutions and high FOV? When VR was in the spotlight, 3dfx hadn't even released the voodoo 1, n64 and ps1 didn't even exist. Given that utterly primitive GPU technology by our standards today was beyond their grasp, it is pretty obvious a great deal has changed.
Also, the proliferation of high quality mobile devices with accelerometers has provided the core pieces from evolved mass-market components. 20 years ago, it was all specialty equipment from the ground up.
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Home computers weren't ubiquitous in the 80s, but they did have a substantial footprint. However, they could do highly useful things. They could do spreadsheets, be glorified word processors, and play 2D games and players wouldn't be tortured that it wasn't remotely realistic.
The problem in the 90s was that VR was frankly unworkable at all. Spend 20-30 thousand (about 10 times more than a PC of the time), and you had an experience that wasn't remotely adequate (low field of view, origami looking models,
Almost, but not really (Score:2, Interesting)
I built 3 VR systems for a large defense contractor running SGI Infinite graphics. Later we added Linux (RH ES3) 5 node clusters, so you could say I built 6 labs. We had projectors and monitors that ran at 120 Hz even 20 years ago. It was rarely used except to test, because the human eye has difficulty seeing more than 60hz. "Optimal" display rate was 48 Hz per eye, which was 96Hz graphics rate if you used a single card (which was not an issue).
While motion tracking has improved due to the proliferation
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I won't notice better than 48 hz, except how it impacts my head tracking. 60 fps versus 75 fps when head tracking is involved at least appears very different. There could be an issue with some factors not being done perfectly right or an unfortunate interaction with the motion sampling frequency that could change, but at least for now it looks night and day to me.
I/O on a server that can process that many inbound channels is a biggie to overcome without a massive back plane.
I guess I'm a bit perplexed at this statement. The current DK2 uses two USB 2 ports (for camera data and motion tracking). A tiny fraction of
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I/O on a server that can process that many inbound channels is a biggie to overcome without a massive back plane.
I guess I'm a bit perplexed at this statement. The current DK2 uses two USB 2 ports (for camera data and motion tracking). A tiny fraction of modern IO capabilities, and it seems to do just fine. Sure it only tracks the head, but technology adding more tracking seems content with USB as a bus. I'm not sure what IO load you are referring to that would be infeasible with modern systems.
Think multiple players/viewers, etc.. In our Linux clusters we could handle a max of 32 objects being tracked. Again, consider HFE where you were tracking feet, hands, head. The more complex the model the faster this number dropped, so in reality 2 people in a vehicle was maximum. These were custom built 4CPU motherboards with 512GB memory, Infiniband connections (low latency), and graphics cards that you can't purchase in the normal market. Models were loaded into Ramdisk for faster access, and of co
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Perhaps you reacted a bit strongly. Keeping in mind the thread was oversimplifying to imply nothing has changed in 20 years tech wise, I naturally presumed you were supprting that argument by saying the high end 20 years ago had everything that the consumer level is offering, which isn't so.
When I say huge, I mean huge compared to looking at the same environment on a monitor with no tracking. When you say it is nothing next to high-cost solutions, that's almost certainly true, but not relevant to the cons
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Perhaps you reacted a bit strongly. Keeping in mind the thread was oversimplifying to imply nothing has changed in 20 years tech wise, I naturally presumed you were supprting that argument by saying the high end 20 years ago had everything that the consumer level is offering, which isn't so.
Perhaps you were the one over reacting and claiming that technology today was so much better than 20 years ago out of ignorance, and my post was a correction based on knowledge. You attempted to claim that 75hz was a huge difference, then later claimed that you could not notice anything over 60hz. Boggling that was.
When I say huge, I mean huge compared to looking at the same environment on a monitor with no tracking.
So you mean "no VR" vs. "VR" is a huge difference? Motion tracking a single point is useless, again actually work with the technology and you will find out. If you are trying to claim that the
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> the human eye has difficulty seeing more than 60hz.
Not true. And, a broad claim like that conflates many different concepts. Flicker fusion can require 85 Hz to not cause headaches for some people (especially with the low persistence needed for non-blurry VR), and smooth motion continues to feel smoother up to at least 120 Hz.
In addition, lower frame rates generally mean increased latency, and latency is probably the biggest cause of VR nausea.
But don't take my word for it. This blog post does a great
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VR (Score:4, Insightful)
3 years ago and, apart from some prototypes and some old games converted to "use" it, what do we actually have?
90's-style VR with upgraded graphics?
Sorry, but VR needs to find some kind of use case. Gaming, apparently, just isn't enough on its own to justify it.
Three years and many millions of dollars to basically strap two screens to your head like we did back in the days of VRML and flat-shaded polygons.
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Gaming, apparently, just isn't enough on its own to justify it.
Given that this time around the designs are generally based around slightly tweaked mass-market products, the price is in the neighborhood of a game console or high end desktop GPU. Gaming is enough to sustain those markets (yes, gaming consoles can do more now, but people would buy a sub-50 dollar product if they didn't care about games, and yes higher end desktop GPUs can be used in professional graphics, but that's usually a distinct product family).
That said, I do enjoy the experiences that are more me
Re:VR (Score:5, Interesting)
While I don't know whether "rebirth of VR" is hype or not I can say this.
Elite Dangerous through the Oculus Rift is mindblowing. VR that came before simply doesn't compare, it's like trying to compare a modern Lamborghini with a model T.
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I wanted to try it at E3 last year (even met Dave Braben in person too :D -- http://aqfl.net/node/11029 [aqfl.net] for my blog and blurry photo(graph)s!), but someone was hogging it so I just played in 2D (can't see 3D anyways and my bone conduction hearing aid would get in the way with the VR headset :P).
Depends on the person.. (Score:2)
I personally spend most of my time in it watching video. It allows me to have an impossibly large screen, without being intrusive to my family. It also allows me to watch content and play computer games that my daughter shouldn't be seeing/hearing.
Simulator gaming is certainly a big one, but I would like more FPS and even third-person perspective gaming as well. I'm utterly immune to being simulator sick, so I'm eager for experiences that might not work for everyone.
I also enjoy the more laid back experi
Augmented reality is what will win (Score:1)
Go to a huge field with friends, put on your augmented helmet (VR with cameras)
- Your friends become avatars
- You see a three story cyclops, or whatever
- You run around waving your arms to create shields, shoot fireballs with hand motions, etc...
THIS is what I want.
Degree of reality (Score:2)
Every "first-person" game is essentially a virtual reality, it's just the experience is limited and requires a minimum of imagination. A total immersion experience in a virtual reality will be very cool, and the technology behind it will be very cool, but the limits of the existing 'technology', or even the technology 10 or 15 years ago, don't seem to bother people that much. Rather like how movies in the 50s and 60s did not have 'realistic' special effects, but people enjoyed them all the same, maybe bet
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The limitations of the technology have historically been terrible.
Ever been to Disney World? They have an arcade building with a bunch of old games and new in there.
One of the rides is an Aladdin Magic Carpet VR ride. Possibly the cause of the most horrible motion sickness of my life.
I'm not prone to motion sickness. I was born in a coastal town. Ships pitching in the ocean are part of my natural environment. I play FPS and sim games without problems. I love most rollercoasters. This thing left me pale and
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Oculus made the first big pubic thrust
that has got to be a freudian slip right there
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Apparently that's what she was wearing at the time.
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good... (Score:2)
So you wouldn't watch any movies because you can't feel anything? You wouldn't play any sort of game because none of them provide perfect immersion?
We are talking about a rather *large* step in progressing immersion. Going from text adventure to side scrolling/overhead games to wolfenstein 3d to doom to quake, etc. Each step has added a new dimension to immersion, and this is just another step. It's not the last step but why bother waiting for the last step while settling for lesser immersion than is po
Oh boy! More crap to push at us. (Score:2)
Yup! VR is The Next Big Thing!
It's going to change the world!
Like...touchscreens..
Like...tablets...
Like...webcams...
Like...sixteen different branded "social media" attempts by everybody and their brother...
*Sigh*
Don't get me wrong. Technically, I think VR is cool.
As an end-user, and one who's getting older and less tolerant of bullshit, the current and even upcoming additions to VR a just nowhere even CLOSE.
Honestly, it's really 10+ years from market ready. And even further from "widespread adoption".
Mai
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Which of those cases didn't have an impact on the world?
It sounds like you're arguing FOR VR but don't realize it.
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Which of those cases didn't have an impact on the world?
I didn't say "had an impact".
I said "changed".
While you may think of it as splitting hairs, the difference is quite real.
Each of the technologies talked about brought about an evolution in the market.
I'm talking about a world-wide revolution brought about by the tech. All the crazy shit they always promise and pie-in-the-sky about and never actually deliver.
It sounds like you're arguing FOR VR but don't realize it.
You apparently missed the part where I said I'm a fan of VR, as a concept. It's just that the current implementation is far, FAR behind where it needs
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Touchscreens are great. I don't know wtf will happen if I touch a playing full screen youtube video on someone's huge 4" phone. Will it pause instantly?, or offer controls? How do you get out of full screen? Basic "DJ ethics" forbid from interrupting the music so I refuse to try out. I'm no longer "the computer guy" when people are playing with their computer-phones around. I jokingly ask where is the keyboard and/or tell I don't know how to use it without the Escape key.
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Like most technologies, it does change the world when it reaches a certain point.
The first touchscreens (resistive) didn't change the world because the technology wasn't good enough. Capacitive touchscreens, on the other hand, changed smartphones in less than a decade.
Tablet really changed things. For casual Web browsing, instant messaging, email and video calls they're more useful than stationary desktops or laptops.
Ev
Still not going to become main stream (Score:2)
Have you tried it? (Score:2)
So I don't use mass transit. If I did, I would be looking harder at GearVR to watch movies on my commute, no problem. This is something that really should be tried before going out of your way to dismiss it as having any market at all. It really isn't a bad idea for a significant chunk of people.
no one will sit extended periods of time wearing that thing on their head when your still basically playing a FPS
I have absolutely no issues playing for a long time. At least no problems unique to VR (as a husband and a father, binge gaming is usually off the table). I have played for hours on end while my family went out
Apple and Microsoft? (Score:2)
I didn't RTFA, but I also never heard about anything VR-related from either Apple or Microsoft.
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Apple always keep their cards close to their chest until they're ready to do a big launch event. The article mentions they hired some people to work on VR a couple of months ago.
p.s. Is "lead" valid for past tense in American English? We spell it "led" in the Old Country.
Linden Labs, OpenSimulator still leading (Score:1)