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

[Whiteball]

But it isn't going to give you the 'proper' VR experience is it? You know, presence and all that?

They say it will work with ANY game, so is it just like having a large screen in a dark room or being at the cinema when the lights go down?
While that could/would still be good, it doesn't sound like what the other VR people are promising.

The way I read it is that it will do both.

Well they mention this, but I'm not sure that's the same thing as 'proper' VR either...

GAME

1.If the game itself has an option for stereoscopic 3D viewing, no problem. Just turn it on, throw on the ANTVR Kit and enjoy.

2. If the game is 3D without an option for stereoscopic 3D, it can be transformed to stereoscopic 3D through third-party software. You can use ANTVR Kit to experience it with stereoscopic 3D after it's converted.

3. If the game is only 2D, then wear the headset to play as a 2D game on a large virtual screen.

Like Yak and Giles say, there is a lot of different programming techniques needed to make this stuff work correctly. I think that kickstarter page is quite vague really.
I don't believe they are trying to fool people or anything but some may misconstrue it and think they are getting the full on VR experience when, well, I'm not so sure...

[gilesgoat]

I think in the end "results will speak for themselves".

There are things that work .. things that kinda seems to work .. and things that just do not.

I am sure there will be "VR of a certain type" and "VR of another type" .. you choose where you want to put your money at.

[Whiteball]

My money will be at Llamasoft - VR done right!

[gumboot]

To be fair, the problem of putting the right pictures into the display should be orthogonal to what the hardware needs to provide. It's not necessarily a failing of the hardware if they don't have content. That's for software developers to take care of.

To say "that hardware is rubbish so it's not worth developing content for" where the grounds for calling it rubbish is its lack of dedicated content is entirely unfair.

[gilesgoat]

I just re-tried 4 other demos "to see how it goes with more experience" ..

I feel totally a wreck, I really feel ILL .. I want to puke all out

I .. really .. cannot .. see .. *ANY* .. FPS lasting more than 30 seconds .. the nausea feeling begins after 15 .. 20 seconds or so .. "try as you can" you won't pass over 50 .. 60 sec max ..

And "the more immersive it is, the worse it goes".

If they ever invented something that can become "a perfect vomit machine" VR gets definitely very close to it ..

But yes I insist once more on the fact that "you can't just get a FPS thing and put it in there" .. "something must be changed".

[Darkflame]

You can't just automagically make it work with any game. The rendering sequence is different for a VR game and a "normal" game. A normal game renders one view from the in-game "camera", projecting it on a plane that is what is displayed on your monitor. A VR game has to render the scene twice slightly offset - this is what makes the view stereoscopic, one slightly different view for each eye. There is usually a further pass with a shader that corrects for the distortion of the optics and optionally for any chromatic aberration introduced by the optics.

The double-rendering pass *must* be done in the internal game logic. It can't be grafted on to any game afterwards. You can't just magically make any existing game work properly in VR - you can hook up the headset orientation to work like mouselook or whatever, but without generating the stereo view the game will not look like proper VR.

Surely if a game is rendered via, say, Direct X, then the new camera view can be rendered even without the game being programmed for it. The drivers/gpu have enough information?

I assume this is how my old eDimensional shutter glasses worked with NVidias (old) Stero Drivers. Any DirectX game could work with them - and did so.
To be sure, most looked shit. But it wasn't the 3D elements itself looking shit normally, but rather the use of 3d, the clashing 2d interface elements, and the now-obvious 2D sprites used for various things.

[Dio]

Surely if a game is rendered via, say, Direct X, then the new camera view can be rendered even without the game being programmed for it. The drivers/gpu have enough information?

I assume this is how my old eDimensional shutter glasses worked with NVidias (old) Stero Drivers. Any DirectX game could work with them - and did so.

You can make a decent stab at it, if you can manage to isolate the projection matrix and the software's using one of the familiar canonical forms. But it is only a guess. And it tends to go extraordinarily wrong with things like HUD elements.

[pogo]

Seems it's going to be quite a challenge to launch one of these things, because of nausea. As I understand it.

* Some people are going to find in nauseous whatever and shouldn't buy one ever.
* Some people are going to be OK with some software but not others.

Separating these two groups of people is going to be the first problem; offering them good advice and the ability to try the device before buying. Otherwise there will be a lot of angry customers demanding refunds.

But even customers that aren't automatically nauseous might find themselves getting sick with some software. Initially that might be most software as it could take a while for developers to learn what works with VR and what induces nausea. So again lots of angry customers after their money back.

It's going to be quite a challenge navigating this, working out how to write software and identify the people who won't be made sick by it. Depending on how long it takes there could a few casualties among both hardware and software companies, or at least a few VR platforms and games that are killed or pulled due to poor sales and negative reviews.

[gravy]

You can't just automagically make it work with any game. The rendering sequence is different for a VR game and a "normal" game. A normal game renders one view from the in-game "camera", projecting it on a plane that is what is displayed on your monitor. A VR game has to render the scene twice slightly offset - this is what makes the view stereoscopic, one slightly different view for each eye. There is usually a further pass with a shader that corrects for the distortion of the optics and optionally for any chromatic aberration introduced by the optics.

The double-rendering pass *must* be done in the internal game logic. It can't be grafted on to any game afterwards. You can't just magically make any existing game work properly in VR - you can hook up the headset orientation to work like mouselook or whatever, but without generating the stereo view the game will not look like proper VR.

Surely if a game is rendered via, say, Direct X, then the new camera view can be rendered even without the game being programmed for it. The drivers/gpu have enough information?

If the game's not culling anything then you could.

Otherwise you're going to be looking behind you and not seeing anything

[Darkflame]

Oh, sure, the huds were the #1 thing making most games unplayable. Any 2D element not at the right depth level really destroys any illusion.
Even a basic weapon sight would fuck it up. (to be fair, nvidas drivers did have some provision to remove them on a game-by-game bases, but it was pretty hit and miss).
I was only talking about the 3D rendering itself.
From what I remember Half Life2 worked pretty decently on it.
---
gravy - I was only talking about the stereoscopicness, not the 360 view, which I assume youd need to emulate a mouse/head thing for.

[OX mkII]

The fear here is that VR could be killed off for another generation due to the Oculus' potentially nauseating technology having the head start and all the interest and backers in the market up to now, if only the retina image casting Avegant Glyph got off to such a start which I believe doesn't make the user suffer any nausea effect. I know the Glyph technology is the more costly option but the nausea thing with the Oculus is looking more like a potential project killer, hope they find a solution.

[gilesgoat]

Two quick thingies.

For "proper VR" you cannot fake projections/3D simulate .. that thing simply does not work, you NEED TWO proper projections and two separate renderings with 2 different sets of params, "all the rest is a fake".

The nausea .. it's a complex issue, I don't think Glyph or any other device is magically going to remove it, maybe make it less MAYBE .. but it's all about "what you really see".

It's all in the design of the VR world, how the controls are, the experience itself and the device as well.

I've been recently read quite a bit of PDFs/docs/research about "how to make 3D thing" ( for VR/3D vision ) and so far almost all I've seen to begin with "simply does NOT respect the basic rules".

Some stuff is "intrinsically there" for the simple fact you are trying to strap two monitor to two eyes and this is NOT EXACTLY how the human eyes work, already that causes a number of problems/limitations that can be worked around IFF you do things "in certain ways".

Other things are still "into research" but it's clear that "some stuff is ok to be done, and some NOT".

Put your thing on, try this & that, see what works and what does not, take away what does not.

Maybe with proper retinal projection and eye tracking and fast computation and really low close to 0 latency MAYBE you'll have a thing "closer to nausea free", it still
remains the fact that "I can make you see things but I CANNOT physically make you perceive ALL that you eyes can see".

If I make you see that you are moving "but the gravity is not there" .. it does not matter latency, resolution or such .. your brain is going to tell a thing, your body is going to tell you another that does not agree .. you'll start to feel crap .. unless I find a way to give you "extra info" to make you understand that "actually something else is going on your brain can accept this".

This is a mix of science and art and a lot of "horse sense" ..

[zip accident]

Two quick thingies.

For "proper VR" you cannot fake projections/3D simulate .. that thing simply does not work, you NEED TWO proper projections and two separate renderings with 2 different sets of params, "all the rest is a fake".

The nausea .. it's a complex issue, I don't think Glyph or any other device is magically going to remove it, maybe make it less MAYBE .. but it's all about "what you really see".

It's all in the design of the VR world, how the controls are, the experience itself and the device as well.

I've been recently read quite a bit of PDFs/docs/research about "how to make 3D thing" ( for VR/3D vision ) and so far almost all I've seen to begin with "simply does NOT respect the basic rules".

Some stuff is "intrinsically there" for the simple fact you are trying to strap two monitor to two eyes and this is NOT EXACTLY how the human eyes work, already that causes a number of problems/limitations that can be worked around IFF you do things "in certain ways".

Other things are still "into research" but it's clear that "some stuff is ok to be done, and some NOT".

Put your thing on, try this & that, see what works and what does not, take away what does not.

Maybe with proper retinal projection and eye tracking and fast computation and really low close to 0 latency MAYBE you'll have a thing "closer to nausea free", it still
remains the fact that "I can make you see things but I CANNOT physically make you perceive ALL that you eyes can see".

If I make you see that you are moving "but the gravity is not there" .. it does not matter latency, resolution or such .. your brain is going to tell a thing, your body is going to tell you another that does not agree .. you'll start to feel crap .. unless I find a way to give you "extra info" to make you understand that "actually something else is going on your brain can accept this".

This is a mix of science and art and a lot of "horse sense" ..

I don't think it's an issue of faulty or not good enough hardware, the "vomit comet" gets the same result for a lot of people, and the images there are as perfect as eyes can see, because it's all real.

In fact, I suspect making people remember it's being faked may be a way of lessening this, then it's just a matter of people making up their minds to keep up their suspension of disbelief while sort of knowing it's fake.

[gumboot]

In fact, I suspect making people remember it's being faked may be a way of lessening this, then it's just a matter of people making up their minds to keep up their suspension of disbelief while sort of knowing it's fake.

What? Like how knowing that you're on a boat cures seasickness?

[zip accident]

In fact, I suspect making people remember it's being faked may be a way of lessening this, then it's just a matter of people making up their minds to keep up their suspension of disbelief while sort of knowing it's fake.

What? Like how knowing that you're on a boat cures seasickness?

Yeah. Works for me. You have to watch the horizon to keep a grip on what the boat is actually doing. The horizon is quadrillions (or more, I don't know exactly) of tons of the earth, and it's not moving, all motion is relative to that, once you sort that out in your head, it all works, for me. There are people who just don't get seasick, and there are some who can't avoid it, I'm sort of in the middle, and knowing what's going on works for me.