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

[Mqark]

Ok, we've got 3 VR threads and a AR thread now... so I'm posting this in this thread (rather than making yet another one).

Vive pre-orders coming soon:

http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-vive- ... ce=twitter

Let the price guessing begin!

[benedictw]

Hmm. Vive, $650 (including controllers).

That would put the cat among the pigeons as it might be a little cheaper than an oculus+2 controllers.

PSVR - $400 (same as PS4).

[Misfit]

Not sure splitting the threads works.

Vive's got extra boxes of tricks and a camera. At least $700...

Sold my DK2 as a buy it now on eBay for £350 in very little time, with no pics. So that didn't take long to backtrack and pre-order! Had I thought more about it not taking cash until it was sent, I'd have ordered day one and thought about it later...

[pogo]

Pass me the barf bag !

Apparently Alton Towers have a new ride where they strap a Samsung Gear to you, strap you into a roller coaster, then the combination of the roller coaster’s motion and sci-fi visuals make you think you are in space. Two things known for making people nauseous, combined like this? Definitely keep the clean-up crews busy.

[Dio]

That's really clever actually, as long as the sensors have high enough dynamic range to keep head tracking precision while under significant G.

Don't see any particular reason it should be more vomit-inducing as long as the sensor fusion is sufficiently accurate. It could even be better by giving the brain real motion to concentrate on.

[gilesgoat]

I would like to point out, not even sure if I should allow to say this, that Sony spent CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT of time& such into studying physiology of VR and especially make sure that USERS WILL NOT GET SICK using VR experiences.

They are very very sensible about the subject, LAST thing one wants to see is someone barfing or feeling unhappy of the VR experience.

I say so because I listened more than 1 hour of someone talking on the subject and there are various TRCs and such about DON'T do this, DON'T do that, DON'T make the user feel bad, etc.

They collect/are collecting lot of feedback about experiences/impressions/etc.

The thing is "test it and re-test it" with different people, if it makes you feel "wrong" then something has to be adjusted.

[edit] I am a bit 'sensitve' on the subject as well because I've seen quite A NUMBER of things "completely disregarding some DON'T DO in VR principles" .. some people still categorically ignore the "camera free to move non attached to your actual view" that is probably the guaranteed way to vomit.

Or things like "this thing is TOO MUCH IN MY FACE" or "this point of view is so close I could never possibly look at this thing more than 10 seconds" or such ..

And THERE ARE "known solution" for this kind of stuff but I've seen so far quite a bit of VR stuff that seems to completely ignore "what not to do"

[gumboot]

Speaking of "too much in my face", I've always worried about where the vomit goes when people do throw up. Doesn't it get all over other people on the ride?

[techno12]

I've had a Oculus DK2 for well over a year and feel nauseous when using most of the current demos/apps.

I'm one of those people who was always travel sick when a passenger in a car as a child, and always nearly/almost threw up after going on a rollercoaster, so I've largely avoided them. (I also remember feeling sick back in the 80s on the 'haunted swing', and that huge hemispherical cinema screen where you lied down on the ground and copter footage of canyons etc was shown)

It's fascinating how running one of the coaster simulators on the DK2 can make me feel sick for hours, shaky limbs, white face etc! Lava Inc being the main culprit (bleargh!)

I'm probably not their target market

[tenshi_alpha]

"Frontier has confirmed Elite: Dangerous does not currently officially support virtual reality headset Oculus Rift.
The developer is focusing, instead, on SteamVR."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... culus-rift?

I wonder if this is going to cost Oculus dearly. Most people I know who are really wanting an Oculus Rift want it for Elite.

[Misfit]

And Frontier have responded:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=226300

Hi everyone,

A news article has emerged which talks about Elite Dangerous and Oculus Rift. The article can be seen here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...or-oculus-rift

In case people are alarmed by the headline or confused on the details, we thought it best to reiterate what we've been saying since the release of the Oculus 0.6 SDK. As quoted in the story, we are actively working with Oculus and will keep the community updated as soon as we are able to do so.

We are keen to support VR in all its forms and we are proud to be leading the way in VR gaming.

Thanks,

Zac

[Misfit]

Kotaku have spun this to say they have a deal with HTC to release on that first.

To which they have replied in the same thread:

I certainly can. I can confirm that there is no deal to release Elite on HTC first. Valve released a stable driver before Oculus but we remain in close contact with Oculus.

Neither headset is out yet. I think it will all be fine.

[Mqark]

A sudden switch in support to Valve would be strange (unless they struck a deal) as Rift was as well supported as it could be from the days of the beta. I certainly got E.D. because of it's rift support and I'm hoping it will be the best possible experience it can be when I get my pre-order.

To be honest, I gave up playing E.D. for quite a while now because the rift support was a little broken for me (although improved by some mods).

[Muttley]

A sudden switch in support to Valve would be strange (unless they struck a deal) as Rift was as well supported as it could be from the days of the beta. I certainly got E.D. because of it's rift support and I'm hoping it will be the best possible experience it can be when I get my pre-order.

To be honest, I gave up playing E.D. for quite a while now because the rift support was a little broken for me (although improved by some mods).

Broken in what way? Works perfectly fine for me.

As to the story, it's a load of click-bait bollocks. Frontier were waiting for the 1.0 stable SDK (which was only released a couple of days before xmas) as Oculus said they wouldn't guarantee backwards compatibility between versions until 1.0 was released, and there's no sense chasing a moving target with limited development resources. This is also something they've made abundantly clear since 0.7 was released last August.

[Whiteball]

I thought the Oculus SDK v1.0 was only given to developers who had a title that was signed up to be ready at launch (or pretty close to ready) AND was going into THEIR store.
Everyone else supposedly, has to make do with SDK v0.8 for now?

Surely though, Frontier with ED must be a big showcase for the VR experience done right, so why have they not moved forward quicker with helping each other?

I think ED will sell the rift to a lot of people and the rift will in turn also sell a lot of copies of ED....It's practically a match made in heaven.

[KlaxonCow]

Surely though, Frontier with ED must be a big showcase for the VR experience done right, so why have they not moved forward quicker with helping each other?

Because, unfortunately, corporations are often many-headed hydra where the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing - likely made worse when a company is bought up, as it was by Facebook, so you've got all the natural reorganising and change of management that comes with that on top of it all as well - so they end up missing a trick or two, and sometimes doing silly things that, from a distance, seem rather obviously a bit stupid.

Well, you know the saying, I'm sure. "Never attribute to malice that which can be more than adequately explained by sheer incompetence".

It is, indeed, a bit stupid. As it would seem to be win / win for everyone otherwise. So it's highly doubtful that it's being done deliberately or even consciously. They've just gone and "done goofed", as the meme would have it, by not thinking things through properly.