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

[zbandito]

Well, yes, piping two displays down one channel will do that to things. Maybe there is another way?

Threadrippers are half the price of an Intel and faster in multithreaded, will be interesting to see if they can push multithreading into greater adoption. The bus bandwidth is interesting anyway, especially considering the ATI factor, but I see a few basic things in SDK land that are still nVidia only..

Should have an HP headset to test here in a while. Entry price on WMR being what it is, I expect they will gain significant marketshare shortly.

[gilesgoat]

Will Threadripper force Intel to support 64 lanes by way of making SLI cost effective? SLI is said to not be very effective in VR, but it seems like this is down to software and bus saturation. AMD of course has big incentives to increase the number of GPU sold per CPU.

It's more complicated than it seems. Vlachos' presentation at GDC a couple of years ago covers most of the major bases, but roughly:
- Two GPUs doesn't quite halve your basic rendering time anyway, because a certain amount of work (shadows, etc.) has to be done on both GPUs.
- Then you have to transfer the data across to the other GPU
- Then you have to do the asynchronous timewarp on only one GPU

So although MGPU looks like a simple one-GPU-per-eye option works great, in actuality to get huge improvements you really need to be able to drive the headset from both GPUs rather than only one to make the best of this and that's not currently possible.

Hi Dio, two quick questions about this.

Ok one of the two is probably/definitely NOT "the optimised solution" BUT ..

1. You mean it would need a "VR graphic card" where let's say you have a special architecture designed with 2 GPUs in parallel but that also has some HW/SW
"support" to allow the sharing of what needs to be shared "flawlessly" ?

2. In the hypothesis that you would really have not one but TWO video inputs from a headset, one per eye, or let's say some invents some HW malarkey that gets two HDMI outputs and "combines" them into one - theorectically possible if two signals are in synch - so to literally drive 1/2 display at time ( or one eye per input ) and using two separate video cards that drive each eye with a common data set and such.

Would it work ?

What could be "the optimal VR GPU/CPU configuration" ?

[Dio]

Yes. Those are amongst the interesting ideas.

[zbandito]

The question is whether design idealism will ever overcome inertia and market forces.

The structure of the human retina suggests the answer is possibly no. It's a bit backwards from how it could or should be. But is what it is because of how everything came about, it is what we have, it works and we can be thankful.

[zbandito]

https://www.roadtovr.com/exclusive-nvid ... vr-part-2/

[Rhythm]

OK, so got to a false start with a dead headset but after Amazon replaced it I finally got a chance to try WMR.

Really impressed! No trackers to set up, the whole setup process takes less than 5 minutes including pairing controllers and setting up boundaries.

The tracking seems top notch, the headset is responsive, it's 100% compatible with Steam VR. Hell, the controllers look and feel like (cheaper) Vive controllers. The resolution is higher than the OR I tried earlier this year but the FOV is a fair bit narrower. That said it's a million times easier to use whilst wearing glasses.

Played a bit of Google Earth (wowza) then sunk an hour into Rec Room which is downright brilliant

Super chuffed at the mo, really happy with it. It being suitable to package with my gaming laptop to keep me entertained on evenings during my business trips is bloody fantastic too.

[Whiteball]

One of the main things that need improving currently is FOV so if these MR headsets have narrower FOV then I won't be looking at getting one any time soon. Bit of a shame really as I was hearing and hoping for good things here to help move things forward a bit.

[RiK]

Vive are raising the bar...

https://gizmodo.com/vr-takes-the-next-s ... 1821881550

[Barney]

Bought a Rift for xmas, and was ... disappointed with it compared to the GearVR which is just awesome. The FOV is so bloody narrow compared to the GearVR. Aside from that though, the extra processing power in the laptop I'm running it on makes for some genuinely jaw-dropping VR. I didn't notice any screen door effect tbh, but text could do with being a little sharper in the rift - but it didn't seem overly lowres compared to the insane resolution that the GearVR runs at.

And the touch controllers are awesome - Robo Recall being my current favourite game.

Looks like the new Vive won't have a better FOV at all, but will come with 2 cameras for AR. It's also (According to the linked article above) not that great if you don't get the headset sitting properly on your head. And the extra resolution didn't seem to be that much of a payoff according to the article either.

Wireless is a good move, the wire on the rift is a total PITA at times.

[Jamesac]

I was a little excited about Vive v.2 until I realized it's actually Vive v1.2 instead. I'll be happy to upgrade when it's more than baby-steps to the future, but right now it looks like going from Good Enough to Slightly Better Than Good Enough.

[Whiteball]

I was a little excited about Vive v.2 until I realized it's actually Vive v1.2 instead. I'll be happy to upgrade when it's more than baby-steps to the future, but right now it looks like going from Good Enough to Slightly Better Than Good Enough.

Agreed. I wouldn't exactly say the new vive is 'raising the bar'.

I'm just disappointed that they all seem to be focusing on non essential (imho) features such as wireless, motion controls etc when they really want to get the resolution up and the FOV improved which would make a world of difference.

[Jamesac]

Have to disagree with you on order of importance. Freedom of movement and interaction are right on the same level of importance as FOV and resolution. VR has a lot of moving parts, and I've been pulled out of the experience just as often by having to reset the cord as I've been by not being able to read text due to headset resolution. Multiple problems of roughly equal impact being worked on in parallel is what we need here. On the plus side, I'm more than happy with the motion controller solution, aside from Oculus' mystifying decision to put the "pull player from game" button right below the joystick.

[gilesgoat]

Have to disagree with you on order of importance. Freedom of movement and interaction are right on the same level of importance as FOV and resolution. VR has a lot of moving parts, and I've been pulled out of the experience just as often by having to reset the cord as I've been by not being able to read text due to headset resolution. Multiple problems of roughly equal impact being worked on in parallel is what we need here. On the plus side, I'm more than happy with the motion controller solution, aside from Oculus' mystifying decision to put the "pull player from game" button right below the joystick.

Each one his/her own ..

But I have to disagree here

Especially after played *MANY* ( too many ) hours of Skyrim VR

FIRST : Resolution/Fov
SECOND : tracking speed/frame rate
THIRD : comfort
FOURTH : the rest

I can very well live with second/fourth "not so super good" but I CAN NOT live without the first.

To me "what gets into the eyes is the uttermost importance", it has to be a "super clean effortless no strain vision".

If we are not there "everything else does not matter" because the experience is BAD anyway

So far VR is around 1920x1080 or such .. it NEEDS to be at least 3840x2160 so there's at least 1920x1080 PER EYE.

It's doable, there are now video cards that can ( or should hold ) that res at 120Fps or such and SW that should be
able to deal with it, HDMI 2.0 or Video Port or such too.

From my understanding about how VR works also this should be "a perfect candidate" for "Freesynch" of "G-synch"
because "you can apply correction more frequently than within a frame rate", in theory, if your HW/SW can do it
then IT MUST do it.

VR is definitely a case where "you want more granularity than a frame rate", there were RUMORS time ago that
OR manage to do that on a 8x8 block basis and/or that was the goal and/or at least on a scanline basis
( IIRC isn't OR sensors been "polled" around 3 Khz ? Theorectically this means you could do 27 corrections
per frame per 120 Hz ).

Resolution and tracking and overall "image quality" is *EVERYTHING* for me, all the rest of cables/fancy smancy controllers/etc.
"is nothing" if "FIRST" is not "the best it can be or should be".

I am tried of seeing the world through dirty and defocused glasses

[Rhythm]

Windows MR is already 1440x1440 per eye and works really well. I can comfortably read game lists even in the standard desktop Steam view. The FoV is a little narrower than the Oculus so you never quite get away from that "I'm looking at the world through goggles" feeling but it's pretty damn decent given the cost benefit of the system.

The cord thing.... I reckon that's something that needs to change. Not sure if I need/want wireless but something with the flex/softness of a decent guitar cable would be nice

[Bod]

Whats the augmented reality like, or has this funtion not been made available yet?