Deckard wrote:Yeah and all the reviews I have read so far say the games could be done on a normal display.............Isn't there a balls out flagship experience to be had here yet ? Seems like a lot of money if there isn't.
Well you can play Elite on a screen or you can sit in the cockpit of your ship and play Elite.
The difference is huge.
Elite and Eve are must play for me and any other cockpit type games. I didn't get much time with the DK2. But what time I had in Elite makes it a must have for me.
Deckard wrote:Yeah and all the reviews I have read so far say the games could be done on a normal display.............Isn't there a balls out flagship experience to be had here yet ? Seems like a lot of money if there isn't.
Well you can play Elite on a screen or you can sit in the cockpit of your ship and play Elite.
The difference is huge.
Elite and Eve are must play for me and any other cockpit type games. I didn't get much time with the DK2. But what time I had in Elite makes it a must have for me.
Just thought I'd offer my thoughts on the VR sickness thing since I spent nearly a year developing for the Rift DK1 and DK2 before Facebook / Oculus going Windows-only forced my department to drop it. And yes I'm still annoyed about that.
So, VR is going to need radically different gametypes to combat sickness. Basically, you can't accelerate or decelerate the player quickly. Also, you can't swivel the player *at* *all*. First person shooters are a non-starter. Forget it.
The weird thing about VR sickness is it gets worse every time you play. So if you've tried VR a little bit and are like "I didn't feel sick", either a) you were doing things which didn't swivel or accelerate you or b) you've not used it enough. I experienced no sickness at all for weeks. But slowly it crept in until I could barely stand to use VR. It's potentially a complete, 100% dealbreaker, and I suspect Facebook / Oculus and other manufacturers know this.
Cockpit games can work as long as the acceleration is gentle. But cockpit games generally feel underwhelming in terms of immersion because a) The player tends to look in one direction most of the time b) The player is looking into the middle distance most of the time, which exacerbates resolution problems, and c) the player is separated from the game environment by the cockpit; i.e. why not just get a big 3D monitor?
Things which work best in VR are: Inducing vertigo, a sense of scale, and atmosphere. Looking around big rooms and over big drops feels great. Being moved at a constant slow-ish velocity through environments feels great. Looking closely at details and objects around you feels great. Scares and shocks work great. I expect the first VR killer app, if there is one, will be a bit like Myst or something.
But yeah, VR needs very odd gametypes and devs are going to have to take big leaps of faith. It's just not possible the shovel existing gametypes onto HMDs and have people play them heavily. It will kill the platform. It might end up being a great opportunity for indy gamers, artists and academics. However in that case the loss of Mac and Linux support may be a problem. It was for us. I hope either Facebook / Oculus remedy the problem, as they've vaguely alluded they might, or Vive really does have out-of-the-box multiplatform support. I actually suspect Oculus dropped Mac and Linux in return for MS investment, but we'll see I guess. They certainly screwed us over royally.
BTW, IMO Oculus counting out Macs because of graphics card specs is a bogus argument. In terms of experience and sickness, gametype and execution matter much more than pure graphics hardware throughput. And in any case you can simplify environments until the required latency and framerate are achieved. The cleaner architecture of both OSX and Linux can potentially outperform Windows on the latency front anyway.
I too think they should support a wider range of graphics hardware. Not every game needs PS4 or even PS3 quality graphics. It’s not that long ago that the top selling console was the Wii. Right now, as VR is just getting started, most developers will be wary of putting all their eggs in one basket so will be targeting two or more VR platforms, and so aiming for a lowest common denominator, not bleeding edge performance.
I think there’s more going on with the Mac though. Something like a driver for Rift is not going to happen without Apple’s active involvement, and they have in recent years been very reluctant to open up their code enough to let other people add theirs. The OS has become more and more locked down, things that used to be user installable such as graphics drivers are now built in. I would not be surprised if Apple are blocking it for security reasons, to keep third party code out. Or they might not want the Mac associated with the nausea and disorientation users can experience. They might even be working on their own VR device – nothing has been announced or even hinted at but they have got some relevant patents which they would only have if they were working on something.
pogo wrote:I too think they should support a wider range of graphics hardware. Not every game needs PS4 or even PS3 quality graphics. It’s not that long ago that the top selling console was the Wii. Right now, as VR is just getting started, most developers will be wary of putting all their eggs in one basket so will be targeting two or more VR platforms, and so aiming for a lowest common denominator, not bleeding edge performance.
I think there’s more going on with the Mac though. Something like a driver for Rift is not going to happen without Apple’s active involvement, and they have in recent years been very reluctant to open up their code enough to let other people add theirs. The OS has become more and more locked down, things that used to be user installable such as graphics drivers are now built in. I would not be surprised if Apple are blocking it for security reasons, to keep third party code out. Or they might not want the Mac associated with the nausea and disorientation users can experience. They might even be working on their own VR device – nothing has been announced or even hinted at but they have got some relevant patents which they would only have if they were working on something.
On Windows the Rift now hooks directly into the nVidia drivers. Since they're built from the same source tree on Windows and Linux it would be trivial for Oculus to do Linux drivers, but they're not, for whatever reason. Probably a lack of demand, which is understandable, but they did promise Linux support and we spent a year working with the DKs on the basis of that promise.
So, I've just checked and although Apple do ship Macs with graphics drivers of unclear origin, nVidia do offer replacement 'alternative' drivers, which I feel pretty safe assuming are built from the same source tree as the Windows and Linux drivers. So again, there's no *technical* reason for Oculus not to support Mac. There may be a political, or a making-sure-first-impressions-aren't-compromised-by-substandard-hardware reason. Or even a MS-paid-us-to-drop-Linux-and-Mac reason.
Deckard wrote:Yeah and all the reviews I have read so far say the games could be done on a normal display.............Isn't there a balls out flagship experience to be had here yet ? Seems like a lot of money if there isn't.
Well you can play Elite on a screen or you can sit in the cockpit of your ship and play Elite.
The difference is huge.
Elite and Eve are must play for me and any other cockpit type games. I didn't get much time with the DK2. But what time I had in Elite makes it a must have for me.
Elite Dangerous is by far and away the best VR experience bar none. I played Elite on my (top spec) monitor and really enjoyed it but once I got my DK2 there was no going back.
I ended up actually selling my DK2 because I was spending so much time with Elite I wasn't getting other things done I needed too.
Once sold though I didn't play Elite because it just wasn't the same going back to a monitor, despite it originally being great on said monitor before the DK2.
seibu wrote:So, I've just checked and although Apple do ship Macs with graphics drivers of unclear origin, nVidia do offer replacement 'alternative' drivers, which I feel pretty safe assuming are built from the same source tree as the Windows and Linux drivers. So again, there's no *technical* reason for Oculus not to support Mac.
That's a bit of a leap. The OS is far more than just a graphics driver.
gumboot wrote:
That's a bit of a leap. The OS is far more than just a graphics driver.
Sure, but the point of the post-0.5 Rift drivers is to bypass the OS as much as possible and just plug directly into the nvidia driver. You don't render to the desktop or anything - just say 'rift mode' to the nvidia driver, send your directx / openGL to it and it'll do the rest. Ironically it's when the Rift driver became more OS agnostic than ever before that they locked it down to Windows!
OSX as you know is just UNIX under the hood so you have as low level access as you need to USB for the accelerometers and camera.
We know you're anxious to receive your Oculus Rift and apologize for not updating your order status sooner. We've been working through an unexpected component shortage, and unfortunately, that issue has impacted the original shipping estimates for some early customers.
We're working hard to get up-to-date ship windows, and you should expect to see your order status updated on oculus.com by Tuesday, April 12. Although many Rifts will be arriving on schedule and in line with original estimates, we'll be covering shipping and handling costs for all orders placed through today.
We're shipping rifts everyday. Don't hesitate to reach out to the Oculus support team if you have additional questions.
I may have no control over the length of my life, but the depth & width is entirely up to me.
