Fool me, this is real good shit ! [the VR thread]

[Dvorak]

Guru words on VR - Mike Abrash weighs in.

Ha, good Michael Abrash.
Still as inspiring and uplifting as back in the 90s, when his column on Quake development in Dr. Dobb's went ahead my own tentative steps into realtime 3D/VR...

[Firefox]

Michael Abrash is an awesome geezer!

[gravy]

With him and Bruce Dawson Valve have hoovered up some absolute superstar talent.

Dunno how all of this sits with Jeri Elsworth getting the boot last year. Didn't she say that Valve had stopped doing work in VR which was the reason for her leaving?

[Firefox]

Ironically her castAR system can now do VR as well as AR, complete with the full head displacement tracking that Rift has only just got.

[Mqark]

So how long before we get VR Movies and TV?

Imagine being right in the middle of a scene!

I know there are 360 degree video's already out for Rift, they can only get better (before most of us have even tried them!) Pie in the sky stuff?

[Firefox]

So how long before we get VR Movies and TV?

Imagine being right in the middle of a scene!

Pornographic potential!

[KlaxonCow]

This looks like a lot of fun, mixing the Rift with a Razer Hydra:

[Jamesac]

So much want!

James

[Orangy Tang]

Dunno how all of this sits with Jeri Elsworth getting the boot last year. Didn't she say that Valve had stopped doing work in VR which was the reason for her leaving?

Word was that she was working on AR hardware, which Valve decided not to pursue. Abrash is doing VR work. From the sounds of it they were completely separate projects.

Tellingly, Abrash has a blog post up sometime last year that he expects VR to be practical in the next few years, but AR will take another 10 or so. So it's not too surprising that they want to focus on something with more immediate chance of success. Of course he was also talking about 'hard' AR (ie. seamlessly replacing a real world object with a fake one, with pure image processing and no markers). CastAR is more limited in scope IIRC, to something more immediately practical.

[gilesgoat]

Beware if you buy a can of clean compressed air to dust it ..

I just bought one two days ago ..

Came in a pretty big box, surrounded by lot of padding, sealed with extra strength fiberglass tape, marked like it would be an explosive, delivered by hand .. open it .. found 10 pages or so of safety certificates and issues in German and English and "safety notes" ..

Contents ... "dust free air" ... that's all it is ..

[zip accident]

Beware if you buy a can of clean compressed air to dust it ..

I just bought one two days ago ..

Came in a pretty big box, surrounded by lot of padding, sealed with extra strength fiberglass tape, marked like it would be an explosive, delivered by hand .. open it .. found 10 pages or so of safety certificates and issues in German and English and "safety notes" ..

Contents ... "dust free air" ... that's all it is ..

Most of that sort of stuff is propane or butane, or a mix of those two, because they liquidise under pressure, so they can store a lot in a small volume at relatively low pressure. They are flammable, so there's that risk if the can is burnt, but generally they're fairly safe. Real air compressed would have to be at much higher pressure, it sounds as if that's what you've got, it would have been expensive too.

[gilesgoat]

Beware if you buy a can of clean compressed air to dust it ..

I just bought one two days ago ..

Came in a pretty big box, surrounded by lot of padding, sealed with extra strength fiberglass tape, marked like it would be an explosive, delivered by hand .. open it .. found 10 pages or so of safety certificates and issues in German and English and "safety notes" ..

Contents ... "dust free air" ... that's all it is ..

Most of that sort of stuff is propane or butane, or a mix of those two, because they liquidise under pressure, so they can store a lot in a small volume at relatively low pressure. They are flammable, so there's that risk if the can is burnt, but generally they're fairly safe. Real air compressed would have to be at much higher pressure, it sounds as if that's what you've got, it would have been expensive too.

Yes this one costs a bit more than "normal" BUT it's "specifically for OPTICS and DELICATE stuff" and should contain NO dust, NO lubricants, NO strange things .. it's also is 400g of air which is quite a quantity made by CRC , RS code 780-5307 , hopefully this will remove some speckles of dust.

[Bod]

Just given in to temptation & ordered the dev 2 rift.
What would be a good GFX card for use with it? I doubt somehow the one I have is up to the job!

[gilesgoat]

Just given in to temptation & ordered the dev 2 rift.
What would be a good GFX card for use with it? I doubt somehow the one I have is up to the job!

"The bigger the better"

Really, you need some grunt.

[edit] - and possibly a fast cpu/usb too.

[Dio]

HD at rock-solid 75Hz? You certainly want to be playing in the £100+ market.

The good news that the entire market is reasonably linear on price performance nowadays, much more so than in days of old, although the halo cards still do merit a premium price.

Tom Forsyth's talk on it yesterday was fascinating. My concern is that if the games need to be THAT different to be very comfortable, VR needs to build a million-plus userbase for the games to be properly viable. Big ask. (Far from impossible, but far from assured too).