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

[gilesgoat]

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.

If this "shop software" works SO WELL the way I am seeing it NOW .. I think they are starting to collapse before to even start

/me hears INTENSE SWEARING coming from the other room ...

... be sure you have not any VERY SMALL problem/thing about your order because it looks like you may get in a "limbo situation" ... ... .. .. and you won't be able to easily cancel an order ...

[edit] .. fooking hell "people" (*) ... DO YOU EVER TEST the SW you do in various conditions ? EVER ? or is it NEVER as in "just throw it out the first shit that kinda works ?".

How in the .. you want "respect and credibility" when there's an SW that deals with ( quite some ) money and works in such in a shitty way that is beyond belief ?

(*) whoever wrote that SW, whoever approved it, whoever tested it.


Oculus FFS WHAT ARE YOU DOING ? WHAT ARE YOU DOING ?

[edit2] - "ok" .. ( NO OK ) .. after all I just saw the conclusion is that the SW that handles orders and payments of OR is a piece of crap, the UI is a piece of crap, the way it handles things is even more crap.

Let's hope that the SW that handles the "support tickets" and the people behind it are better.

Being used to at least a place when where "shit happens" there's a clear contact and/or even a phone number to call this stuff definitely looks pretty poor and buggy and "we don't want to deal with people".

Overall "gives the feeling" that "ok yes, CV1 and such is probably a really nice piece of HW" .. "Facebook and the rest .. " .. well .. "NO Comments" I don't think anything more needs to be said.

One thing is making lovely HW, it's all another "running a whole system of things that works fine".

[Jamesac]

I really couldn't be much happier with my Rift, but the Oculus store doesn't have my credit card info. I won't be spending any money there, and if a game is store-exclusive I'll just play something else. I just don't want to be bothered with it, honestly.

[gilesgoat]

I really couldn't be much happier with my Rift, but the Oculus store doesn't have my credit card info. I won't be spending any money there, and if a game is store-exclusive I'll just play something else. I just don't want to be bothered with it, honestly.

Unfortunately the handling of VISA cards and all the rest is a pain in the arse for the restrictions and costs VISA puts you on to have them.

Otherwise you would be able to buy stuff from XYZ just entering your Visa when you needed and such, to be honest I too like only the places where you say "ok checkout, data, end" rather than those that want to hold your data "for you to simplify things".

However whoever designed that UI and such "did not know a shit about how to design clear ui to use", it makes no sense an UI where you do something, you click a button and then is completely UNclear if something actually did happen or not .. a simple "thank you for updating XYZ" or "ok you did not do a shit" would suffice but "click this, page refresh and then you are ON THE SAME page of before with no apparent changes" it's quite daft.

Anyway the problem with VISA is they are a monopoly they can do whatever they want as there are almost no alternatives.

[gilesgoat]

"Update" .. still "beyond belief" .. yes the support contacted us and .. "they can't fix the thing their own side" they asked us to try this and that none of which yet worked/solved the situation.

So everything is still "in a state of limbo" where it cannot be cancelled but it cannot go further and we still don't know where the thing is being "locked".

What happened is during an order placement someone realized that meanwhile some data was expired/need to be changed and did change the data according during checkout by inserting at that moment the new data, everything seemed went ok until "something started not to work".

At this point the situation turns out as : cannot cancel the order, cannot update the data, cannot cancel the old data and put in a new one, cannot add a new one .. basically "all in a state of does not work" and it seems nor us nor them at the moment can find a way to fix it.

I guess maybe the only solution at some point would be to pick up the phone and try to get in touch with the card provider, their SW anyway seems to be "completely stuck" into something they can't get out of it nor tell us what's going on.

[Portland]

Freebie Gear VRs with new phones. Should use them rather than ebay I guess. Any good droid toys for them? believe the gear VR is basically Oculus lite...

[Yak]

I must say I'm having a jolly peculiar time trying to order a CV1. Basically the CC on file expires tomorrow, upon placing my order yesterday I *thought* I'd updated the expiry date and sec code to the ones for the new card (big number still the same), but the order stalled with something about needing to update the CC details...

Which I absolutely cannot do. Trying from the website generates an "error removing old card details" message. Most mystifying of all is the behaviour of Oculus Home, which is where it says to go to delete your old card details. Selecting and confirming the delete flashes up the "add a payment message" prompt for a fraction of a second before it is replaced by the reappearance of the old details that should have been deleted. They simply will not go away no matter what I do.

Support have suggested that they cancel the order and I retry it, but without updating the card details it'll surely fail again for the same reason it did before, and anyway the card expires *tomorrow*, so I absolutely need to be able to enter new details, which I cannot do without deleting the old details, which I *also* cannot do.

It's this kind of stuff that has inspired my deep loathing of flaky online forms and approval systems. Of course it's second behind my attempt to get a credit card onto the Three website, which took five years and several phone calls.

Come to think of it it's the same card. Which expires tomorrow.

Oh fuck

[Jamesac]

Oof, that really sounds unpleasant. My comment above about not giving Oculus my credit card info? I thought you meant the store to pick up a few games from, not actually ordering the unit itself. I'd have thought Oculus would be setting developers up with units to work with, honestly.

Good luck getting it sorted out, both because it sucks to have to prod at broken web sites and diagnose other companies' problems for them and also because I can't wait to see a full-release Llamasoft game running on my Rift.

[gilesgoat]

Oof, that really sounds unpleasant. My comment above about not giving Oculus my credit card info? I thought you meant the store to pick up a few games from, not actually ordering the unit itself. I'd have thought Oculus would be setting developers up with units to work with, honestly.

Good luck getting it sorted out, both because it sucks to have to prod at broken web sites and diagnose other companies' problems for them and also because I can't wait to see a full-release Llamasoft game running on my Rift.

I can't wait either .. because I am starting to get a bit worried .. I mean for quite some time I tough "yeah, it has some limits but DK2 is awesome" .. until I started to port "this" and I can see side by side DK2 vs PSVR ..

The difference is night and day, despite the running graphics/etc. is "similar" the screendor effect of the DK2 is absolutely "ruining it all", I recently re-saw an OLDER prototype of PSVR where there still was A BIT of screendoor is still is LOT LESS than DK2.

Oddly enough "the more abstract graphics you go the worse it gets" ( on the DK2 ).

I am at this point very very curious ( and a bit worried ) to see how CV1 is really going to look I hope it improves quite a bit.

[Dio]

CV1 has miles less screendoor.

[Bod]

Just been sent a Unity Pro code from Oculus.
No good to me. Am I allowed to offer it do you reckon?

[gilesgoat]

Just been sent a Unity Pro code from Oculus.
No good to me. Am I allowed to offer it do you reckon?

.. a code .. for what ?

[Misfit]

Just been sent a Unity Pro code from Oculus.
No good to me. Am I allowed to offer it do you reckon?

.. a code .. for what ?

A code to have Unity Pro free until 31st Dec

I have one too if anyone wants it.

[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.

Like this ?:

Qualcomm plots cheaper VR with all-in-one headset

Qualcomm has unveiled a new reference platform for standalone virtual reality headsets, which it hopes will dramatically reduce their cost.

Dubbed the VR820, the reference device pairs the mobile chip maker's now ubiquitous Snapdragon 820 SoC with an eye-tracker, six-axis motion tracker, and a pair of AMOLED displays at resolutions up to 1440x1440 pixels each—a big jump over the 1080x1200 resolution displays of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, albeit running at 70Hz rather than 90Hz.

Not too shabby. And the lower refresh rate might not be as much of an issue on an all-in-one unit as latency should be minimised. Front-facing cameras for AR too.

It is though a reference platform, from Qualcomm who mostly make chips. It will be up to other companies to turn it into a mass-market commercial product. They have time on their side though as each generation of chips gives them more performance per Watt and $, letting them e.g. up the refresh rate or lower the cost, or both.

[Dio]

The problem with all the smartphone-class devices is that they're basically going to be for very simple abstract games (Candy Crush et.al.) or VR cinema players only. There's big problems with positional head tracking too.

[pogo]

It has a six DOF motion tracker, like the Rift. They also suggest the cameras could be used for motion tracking.

Performance is the big question, but I think time and the technology is on their side. Phones and tablets have been catching up with PCs in recent years. the iPad Pro in particular on release offered performance comparable to PCs released only 12 months before. Apple are a year or two ahead of other ARM chip makers, but they are catching up quickly. Plus in such a device their is less need to fit everything in so small a packet, so chips can run hotter or be larger.

And anyway, Candy Crush is very popular. The biggest game launch in recent months? Pokémon Go, an AR game even though the devices it runs on offer pretty poor AR. You don’t need cutting edge graphics for great game experiences.

And film?

Jesus VR: The Story of Christ review – virtual reality cinema gains disciples

4 / 5 stars

Bad acting, clunky camerawork and overheating headsets … VR’s first feature-length 360-degree movie is no miracle – but the medium might be a blessing