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

[zbandito]

Nice sunglasses, but, any pictures of them actually turned on?

[Jamesac]

According to a Yak tweet from yesterday, the new game is at Play Expo in October. Don't know if it's going to be announced before then but at least there's a target.

Could be could not be, we have to plan definitely something with Sony, I think they want "something in advance" before we put it out ourselves so I guess before that date maybe we'll do this "annoucement".

You definitely should be, if you can, at Manchester and/or keep a very close eye at what's going to happen/be .. this .. is going to be "the NEW LS thing" ...".

I wish! Sadly, a trans-Atlantic plane ticket, sorting out a passport, and related travel expenses mean I'll only get to post whatever the trailer looks like rather than going hands-on. I'm still trying to figure out how to fit the PS VR into the fall budget.

[gilesgoat]

Doing some final "before to go bed" testing, very satisfied of the stuff so far .. this game is TRULY "ZONEY" .. puts you "in a zone" like it or not .. weird I think I just discovered a new "VR phenomenon" about spatial orientation and "some thing you see" ..

I was playing a level I was convinced I was going "reverse" and my brain was like "no no, you aren't, it's just a LITTLE different" yet I "miserably failed" insisting in going left when I should have gone right and vice versa, something subtle was totally messing with my orientation and visual cues.

Interesting, never seen something like that before.

Now other thing I heard it "a number of times in certain literature" I never experienced it for real but I don't know if you could call this "syanesthesia" or what .. there's a level where "a particular thing happens" if you don't shoot some stuff .. "nothing too weird" but "designed to confuse you a bit" ..

What is WEIRD is that - it's a pure visual issue so literally speaking "it's only graphics" - yet EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS I feel like a shiver of cold down my spine I think "I feel cold".

WTF ?

And no it's NOT like "a ice of cube or something blue" coming at you, it's a totally different thing that happens.

"Heck knows" what's going on in the brain in that moment .. weird ..

The effect, the moment, triggers "a strange brain associative thing" and makes me feel "cold" ..

Mah ...

There's so much yet to discover about VR ..

Goes without saying that "you really get into THE ZONE" .. whatever that is for you .. but you'll get there .. at some point is really "you are Jedi" you go on "seeing/feeling things in a different way", it's like your brain enters "a stream of stuff" and you move, shoot, do stuff .. almost "without thinking" but "by knowing already what you have to do before it even happens".

.. don't go into the trance guys .. don't go into the trance .. (*)


[edit] - and "just to tease more" or better to say "no I've not been slacking" I do have a "70% working" PC / DK2 ( soon to be CV1 ) working version .. and to be fair at least so far as now with missing various 'tuning' and fixing .. on the DK2 and at 75 Hz .. it's NOT exactly the same thing ..

Those 120 FPS of the PSVR "really do a lot" for the whole overall feeling .. plus you really see "how grainy/screendoor" the DK2 is you don't realize "how bad it is" until you see things side by side running the same identical stuff ..

But yeah looking forward to check how much wonderful ( hopefully ) the CV1 is going to look compared to DK2 and thanks to its 90 Hz, that should be better.



(*) actually NO, DO GO into the trance !

[Bod]

How is the Rift exe update going Giles?

[Dio]

What is WEIRD is that - it's a pure visual issue so literally speaking "it's only graphics" - yet EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS I feel like a shiver of cold down my spine I think "I feel cold".

Sounds very like what I get when I get a bit of vertigo. I used to be very bad with heights, I'm not so much now but if I go near the edge of a big drop I still get this feeling where my brain shifts into some panic mode and I get some internal chemical rush. It's not just me, I transfer it to other things and people as well, so watching someone stood near the edge is just as bad as being there myself.

I can occasionally get it if I'm mostly in tall buildings and it can follow me around for days. I had a bit of a mare in the Luxor because my brain couldn't let go of the idea of there being a shitload of nothing a couple of floors below my room, and I've had a similar problem a couple of times in skyscraper hotels in SF.

[tenshi_alpha]

Hmm, Play Expo is tempting but I kind of haven't made significant money this year and I have that PS VR preordered.... I guess I will just have to wait X years for the full thing to come out.

What is WEIRD is that - it's a pure visual issue so literally speaking "it's only graphics" - yet EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS I feel like a shiver of cold down my spine I think "I feel cold".

This is interesting.

Cold like temperature, like walking into an air conditioned building on a hot day? (....might be useful on hot days)

Or cold like menthol?

Or cold like someone walked over your grave?

I think you might have stumbled upon an exploit in your brain. Watch out!

[gilesgoat]

Hmm, Play Expo is tempting but I kind of haven't made significant money this year and I have that PS VR preordered.... I guess I will just have to wait X years for the full thing to come out.

What is WEIRD is that - it's a pure visual issue so literally speaking "it's only graphics" - yet EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS I feel like a shiver of cold down my spine I think "I feel cold".

This is interesting.

Cold like temperature, like walking into an air conditioned building on a hot day? (....might be useful on hot days)

Or cold like menthol?

Or cold like someone walked over your grave?

I think you might have stumbled upon an exploit in your brain. Watch out!

I would say cold like cold temperature air conditioning.

I already noticed VR can in various situations put your brain into certain stimulation you really can't get in the real world ( or maybe you'd get it in very unusual situations ).

The power of images is really great, it's odd like your body can feel certain stuff really STRONG even if it's temporary and basically "just an optical illusion" if we could say so.

Speaking of other things "all went very OK" .. so at this points we are also planning/organizing all "properly" for "the big reveal".

You are in for quite something this time

[Darkflame]

Wasn't sure if to post this here or in the AR stuff, because it fits both.

I'm a big advocate of standard protocols in this space, and think Microsofts in a good position to push it. HMDs should be as interchangeable as monitors if there's any hope for true mass adoption.

BUT by good this video is cheesy and pretty darn poorly made in places;


https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperi ... next-year/

[pogo]

I'm a big advocate of standard protocols in this space, and think Microsofts in a good position to push it. HMDs should be as interchangeable as monitors if there's any hope for true mass adoption.

I don’t see that. We have two separate healthy phone platforms (along with a few marginal one). There is no single standard. Ditto PCs, game consoles. These devices are going to become more like phones, both technically and marketwise. Which means AR, as you have to be able to put them on and keep functioning, not be cut off from the world, for them to be acceptable for most people most of the time. It also means self-contained units as you need to be able to move about.

And phones don’t have a single standard. They have a lot in common but the way you approach them is radically different, with e.g. Objective C on iPhone, Java on Android. What they both are is open, and you can use a variety of tools to develop for them which take care of the differences, such as Unreal Engine, Unity.

AR and VR need the same: to be open. Not to try and restrict what can run on their devices, or restrict what other devices apps can run on. MS has an advantage here, as they are traditionally very open. Developers are used to making apps for Windows and other platforms without restriction. Other vendors can achieve the same by e.g. adopting Android for their VR/AR devices. Or a brand new OS: there’s still plenty of time as consumer AR devices are still a way off.

[Darkflame]

I don’t see that. We have two separate healthy phone platforms (along with a few marginal one). There is no single standard. Ditto PCs, game consoles. These devices are going to become more like phones, both technically and marketwise. Which means AR, as you have to be able to put them on and keep functioning, not be cut off from the world, for them to be acceptable for most people most of the time. It also means self-contained units as you need to be able to move about.

You can have self-contained units if you like. But none of the VR HMDs are self-contained right now.
Self-contained, decent, AR is still pretty far away for outdoor use. Devices like the Hololens, Meta and very likely MagicLeap are for home use - and even if standalone are designed also to be used with other things (Microsoft has already demos holelens working in tandem with CAD software running on a PC).
So I think any smartphone analogy is a long way off right now, and the PC is a better track.

PCs are nothing but standards. I can use any mouse I like, any keyboard I like, any monitor I like. Its not perfect, but its pretty darn good.
But imagine if every time you wanted to update your monitor you had to worry about game compatibility.
Thats the HMD market right now.
I am the ideal early adopted for this shit and this is the EXACT reason I haven't bought anything yet. I want the freedom to switch from Holoelens, to Meta, to MagicLeap to whatever. Or from Rift to Vive.
A new shiny thing comes out, I should be able to have it!! I want to be sold on a upgrade.

And at this point at least, this would be great for the industry and (if the money comes in) theres rapid iterations possible on these things - lots of vectors to improve upon and market. But I am not going to buy it if I lose my games/apps. If its a "platform switch" rather then a "upgrade"
And the average mass consumer will only be worse. These things are expensive, they don't want to faff about worrying about compatibility - they want plug and play.

Its simply asking for a minimum compatible spec. Resolution, speed, FOV....every can be improved and iterated on. OS handles drivers, same as anything else on the PC.

Objective C on iPhone, Java on Android. What they both are is open....
AR and VR need the same: to be open

Id agree with the second statement there, if it wasn't for the fact you seem to count the iOS platform as "open".
iOS is a console. Which is fine, it has advantages. But its not "open", its end-to-end controlled and that's exactly what I don't want the VR/AR market to become; competing end-to-end controlled platforms with consumers locked into A or B.

. Or a brand new OS: there’s still plenty of time as consumer AR devices are still a way off.

Both Microsoft and Meta are claiming to be making "true" AR OS's with their products.
Microsoft seems closer from what they have demo'd but theres still glaring missing features from what I see.
(selectively sharing artibary windows with other users should be OS level imho - "here look at this! [passes a augmentation of some document to another hololens user]" should be possible. ATM there is shared spaces, but only via specific apps. I also have yet to see two active 3d apps run at the same time, only 2d+2d or 2d+3d. The video does show that dog though, so clearly its a intention).

I think Microsoft does have the right approach dumping all intensive room scanning/sycning calculations on a dedicated processor "hpu" for the purpose. That frees up developers from needing to worry about reserving power for that. I am not sure about the rest though, and how many compromises are made from having it a output option of W10, rather then a OS unto itself.
Personally, in AR at least, I think multitasking 3d apps are essential - and should be treated like layers the user can toggle on and off at will. For privacy reasons, the apps shouldn't even know the others are running, and thus I think ideally the mixing both with the real world and eachother(occlusions,shadows etc) should be handled on the gpu before display.
VR it maters less I think, as the point tends to be "all encompassing" experiences. Still, I guess its still useful to have the option of popping up your email or GameFAQ at the same time.

[pogo]

Id agree with the second statement there, if it wasn't for the fact you seem to count the iOS platform as "open".
iOS is a console. Which is fine, it has advantages. But its not "open", its end-to-end controlled and that's exactly what I don't want the VR/AR market to become; competing end-to-end controlled platforms with consumers locked into A or B.

It’s open in the sense that anyone can develop for it. You pay your $100, and as long as the app does something, works as advertised and is not illegal then Apple will put it in the app store. That’s a very low bar to clear.

That‘s the sort of openness that’s important. It means there are no restrictions as to how you make apps. You can code directly to Apple’s APIs. Or you can use third party libraries and frameworks to take care of the differences between platforms. Users get apps optimised for their platforms, developers can write their code once to deploy to many platforms.

Consumers aren’t locked in. People switch from iOS to Android, from Mac to PC, from Xbox to Playstation all the time. In theory there’s an advantage to being able to bring across all your apps, but this has not proved that important – consoles without backwards compatibility have not done worse than those with. This is even more true on mobile devices where most people invest little or nothing in apps, minimising any switching cost.

[Jamesac]

That's not what Darkflame means, though. If you buy an iOS game you're only playing it on iOS, not Android. If I buy a VR game I should be able to play it on a VR headset, assuming one of the manufacturers gets off its butt and finally releases the controllers necessary to allow full compatibility. Controller requirements aside, though, when you buy a VR game on PC the platform should be PC, not Vive, Rift, or whoever else may join in. It makes sense that I can't play a PC game on PS4. It doesn't make sense that I can play a PC game on one piece of $X00.00 hardware but not the other.

[pogo]

I was thinking not so much of the current devices but the ones that will come after them, like the ones that will run the software Microsoft are previewing in that video. The market will be totally transformed by then. In particular I think the market will demand two features in devices for them to go mainstream: untethered operation and AR.

One feature of that market is it will be much bigger, many times bigger than the VR-as-a-PC-peripheral market. And the larger the market the less you need to worry about making sure you run on every device. Or, if you want to run across multiple platforms, a large market means many third parties come up with porting solutions and frameworks.

[gumboot]

It doesn't make sense that I can play a PC game on one piece of $X00.00 hardware but not the other.

It makes sense to people who know that making a lot of money works best with walled gardens or monopolies.

An awful lot of current development in software is geared towards user lock-in of various sorts, presented as a "one-stop shop" but with the primary motivator being to stop anybody else getting any traction. VR's hardware dongles are hardly going to discourage the behavior, are they.

[Jamesac]

The thing I love best about walled gardens is seeing them die time after time. Unless the name associated with one is "Apple" they tend to wither pretty quickly. Win10 store? A bad joke. Rift Home? No point seeing as most games can be bought on Steam. Steam? Technically walled but the walls are so low you could practically stub your toe on them, which is how it got to its current prominence in gaming sales. The success rate of walled gardens is pathetically low.