I think this is a the right combinations of tech at a reasonable price, though I still wonder about the larger viability of the VR market. It's also nice this is self-contained and doesn't require a PC.
I've owned a Vive for over two years and not having to devote a good chunk of my basement to it is another plus, along with not having to maintain a really beefy gaming PC.
I would much prefer to not deal with a PC; this isn't an anti-windows thing, I work on Win10 all day writing code. However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
VR is a lot of fun though, and for most of the past 2 years was worth the hassle. Lately though I don't have the energy to fight my gaming rig and I when I occasionally play now, I just ignore whatever issues crop up. I'm ready for a simpler solution at a good price.
I agree with your point that the current VR solution are a huge burden in space and setup, too many cables, too much room needed, too many tinkering ...
However I disagree with this:
> However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
I have no idea how that could happen to you, if you have super exotic hardware or if steam vr doesn't work.
I maintain 3 "gaming" computers, and they basically never have issues. The "everything need to auto update once a week" is getting boring pretty fast sure, but nothing gets broken; sound, video, gsync, keyboard/mouse, network ... It's actually quite impressive how reliable all of it is. Hell, ever since moving to networked laser printers even the scanning/printing chain doesn't fail randomly anymore.
Compared to even ten years ago in the late XP days, windows and the modern drivers available for it have become incredibly reliable.
The frequent updates are a minor annoyance if you use the gaming computer regularly, but if used infrequently they all happen at once. It makes booting into Windows to play games feel like a chore.
This has been exacerbated for me because initially I only allocated ~20GB for the Windows boot partition, which is plenty for Ubuntu but apparently nowhere near enough for Windows. Even at ~30GB, I have to do things to reduce the amount of space Windows uses (like disable hibernation, manually compact WinSxS, etc) so that those big named updates can complete.
In short: Windows is too high maintenance for infrequent use.
To be honest, I think that's just on you for allocating too little space. 20 GB is listed as the bare minimum for a windows 10 64 bit install [0], and only 10 GB extra for apps & updates isn't much.
For those of us in an area without good broadband, it doesn't matter if you have plenty of hard drive space. If I sit down to play videogames one night a month and I have to sit through hours of updates, it's infuriating.
The frequent updates are a minor annoyance if you use the gaming computer regularly, but if used infrequently they all happen at once. It makes booting into Windows to play games feel like a chore.
Yes! I have two machines I use for VR stuff, and I face this every time I come back to VR! I even have the full hard drive allocated, not just a 20GB partition.
Same here, for a while I just kept my machine in stand-by just so I don't have to deal with all the updates and things randomly breaking. Looking forward to a solution that just always works. VR is evening after-work entertainment for me, which happens at a point when I'm done solving problems after 10 hours doing just that.
> This has been exacerbated for me because initially I only allocated ~20GB for the Windows boot partition
Ouch! Watch out for the coming Win10 fall update (October). It might brick your setup, as it needs (supposedly) minimum 20 GB free space.
Note/disclaimer: Not sure how true this is, couldn't validate it personally. That said, I'll definitely ensure all of my Win10 system boot partitions have at least 30 GB free space.
Yea I boot to Windows maybe once a month and it seems like every time, it’s: “oh you weren’t planning on gaming tonight we’re you? You have 3 updates to apply, pal!”
I think part of this is the often dual use nature of these machines. Gaming consoles have updates every couple of months, which might be more often, but the systems are also left on or left in a low-power mode where they will still check for and download (and possibly apply?) updates, depending on how the power settings are set.
If you used a gaming console the same way you are using your main computer (booting it into a separate OS for most the time, until you all of a sudden wanted to play a game) you might also find that there's updates waiting to apply, and some games require the OS update before they'll play, etc.
I feel like I'm the only one that still shuts off the PS4 after I'm done. Why would I let my console run idle for days, consuming power that I don't need? If I want to game, I turn it on, make my dinner, go to play.
Put yourself on the semi-annual targetted channel (for business) + defer updates by a few months. Then the only updates you'll really be bothered with are the occasional critical patches, and any feature updates will have been tested in the field by millions of others way before you get them.
My gaming rig is an Alienware box, I don't have the model handy. I'm not running anything other than Steam/SteamVR on it. My buddy bought the same setup and has the exact same issues I have and often txts me to find out how I fixed it on my setup.
I use an Alienware 15 R3 as my main Windows gaming machine (since I game a lot at various locations) and I don't have any of the issues you describe. Sounds like you got a lemon. Their warranty support is excellent, so you should probably ask them about it.
Just wondering, are you running steamVR and/or Vive? My hunch is it's a SteamVR thing as my other PC gaming friends have all said the same thing (aka never have any of these issues).
Well then alienware must have had major loss of quality in their component choice in the last few years, because gaming series laptop (asus rog, msi g series, alienware, ...) are usually very well supported and all pretty much include the same components.
Anyway, I maintain that this part of your experience is anecdotal and not representative of the general experience.
No. This is wrong. I have built a handful of "gaming" rigs for Windows 10 over the last couple of years, and every single one of them had egregious, stupid problems with the hardware. I hate this bullshit "Nothing is wrong with Windows" thing when there are clearly an increasingly substantial number of people hitting catastrophic issues with brand new versions of Windows and regular, everyday hardware. I have been building computers for a quarter of a century, and I know what I'm talking about. Windows 10 has problems with mundane hardware. Onboard ethernet NIC, sound, wireless adapter, and of course the GPUs. Windows 10 has had problems with all of it. Even when Windows is "working correctly" it's hosing people's setups. Or are you going to deny that MS pushed forcible updates that bricked customer machines, too?
This. I haven't got the vive because I don't want to get a gaming rig. It's too expensive, and then it comes with a lot of issues. Instead I got an occulus Go and the all-in-one experience is awesome. It just works. Coincidentally, I also bought a switch and I got the same feeling. It just works.
The Vive and Go aren't in the same market, though. It's like comparing a Tesla to Leaf. It's not that the Leaf is a bad car, it's that it can't hold a candle to the Model S.
That's the point though: imagine if you can just drive a Leaf off the lot and really enjoy it maintenance free from day 1 onwards, but you need to assemble the Tesla and do a bunch of minor maintenance every time you want to drive it.
I'll take the Leaf, or better yet, do what I've done with VR so far: wait.
The nice inbetween is grabing an eGPU and a laptop (since most are going to own at least one laptop anyway). That's how I've got my Vive rig set up. Plug the laptop in and go to town in VR; finish the session and it all breaks down and packs away easy.
Yeah, just getting it working is ...unbelievably difficult. Then again I think git is unbelievably difficult and people keep having to explain to me that it's really simple, lol.
So you turn on your computer, wait half a minute to half an hour for Steam to update, then try to launch anything (like a game) and it too has to update, so now you're just standing in the middle of your room, controller in hand, waiting for another 20 minute download. ...god, is steam downloading something else now? Okay, take off the helmet, fix steam and the three things that crashed while you were in purgatory, put the helmet back on, restart ...everything use the fraction of a percent of the UI that HTC devoted to selecting something from your library, and then your gtg.
I think I've got a good mental model of it. It seems like every action you need to do is a whole new thing to type into the command line. Maybe you could say it's like learning Chinese in that each word gets its own glyph as opposed to english where you build up words with characters (which are atomic). I have most day to day commands memorized but beyond that I have to google and possibly even do a full fledged search to get the command. That wouldn't happen if you could guess what the command might be or maybe if commands were grouped hierarchically or even better if I never have to think about version control at all, lol.
Compare that to my experience: I was working from home and it was my lunch hour, vive box came in the mail, opened it up, plugged in three cables, downloaded a steamVR update (a minute or two and then possibly a 5 minute restart for the drivers IIRC), Zip tied the lighthouses to my wall, ran the setup, put on the goggles and went "oh wow VR is actually way cooler than I ever thought"
Agree, I've used the Vive quite a bit and setting up my PC etc, is definitely a huge barrier to entry. IMO standalone VR is the way to go because it's more readily available, and the lower fidelity graphics forces designers to focus on usable UX that's simple instead of pushing the best absolute graphics.
6dof was a major holdout for these standalone units: VR without 6dof is an entirely different experience - I don't think the "VR" moniker is at all appropriate (you don't experience "presence"). This is a much needed jump and should do well for showing people what "real VR" feels like.
The only gripe I have with this is that, I assume, the controllers would stop working outside of camera FOV. It sounds like minor gripe, but it typically becomes frustrating for someone who is used to full-fidelity room-scale.
Can't overstate enough how important 6DOF headset and hands are to VR. When I got my Rift setup the 3D depth effect is cool but really what makes VR is being able to pick up and hold an object and directly interact with objects using your hands.
For anyone interested check out videos of people using Oculus Medium, something as insanely complicated and fiddly as 3D sculpting becomes instantly natural when you interact with both hands in 3D instead of a mouse or pen in 2D.
Chiming in to say no problems here on my Windows PCs. I do see where you might bump into these troubles, though.
Installing Nvidia drivers will usually set the default sound device to HDMI for your main display instead of restoring the previous default. So, it's possible to end up juggling 3-5 audio outputs after a driver update - on board, on board headphones, Vive USB, Vive HDMI, and main monitor HDMI.
I run a little Powershell script after those updates that returns everything to my settings and disable all the telemetry services/tasks, but there are a bunch of free utilities that makes audio device switching easy - Ear Trumpet, Audio Switcher, and a few others.
Also, for whatever reason, sometimes Steam just needs to be relaunched for SteamVR to work properly after a Stream client update. Very rarely I'll need to reboot for things to work properly (if the base stations don't wake up).
Finally, I strongly recommend uninstalling the advanced open VR program that's often recommended in old tips and tricks sites (it's very outdated and known to cause problems now) and run a round of "verify game integrity" on SteamVR and all Valve VR entries (from inside Stream library, right click menu).
Oh, and finally, finally, laptops/pre-built PCs will usually have some driver updater/maintenance utility adding a layer of annoyances on top of all this.
I love my Vive, but I have to admit that there can be some annoyances. OTOH, I had just as many issues with the GearVR (an Oculus product) and solutions basically boiled down to hoping it would be addressed in an update or allowing 7 constantly running background processes.
This is not meant as negative towards you at all. But I think your post demonstrates the gulf in perception between the savvy PC gamer and others. You say you have no problems, then go on to list a whole bunch of problems.
You're in a nice groove where this stuff is pretty easy to manage, but to a lot of people this stuff is an exasperating pain in the butt.
Oh, I totally agree and that was my point (besides offering up some advice for others with these issues). These are all annoyances that can be dealt with easily once you know the solutions, but you have to know how to arrive at those solutions. Most PC users would have trouble, and I would even argue many savvy users would have trouble nailing down some of the causes.
Realistically, though, most of these aren't VR problems as much as they're general PC gaming problems with Nvidia and Steam. I accept that price for the flexibility I get in return.
Contrast that to having no control over the various background processes and apps always loaded in memory when using a GearVR, though. Like most consumer-friendly tech, it just works until it doesn't. Then there are only three solutions possible: reboot phone, uninstall updates and reinstall them, and hope the bug is addressed in the next update, whenever that will be. (I'm assuming Oculus with lock down the OS similar to what Samsung does with Android, which means major compromises if you want to try rooting it.)
I do realize I'm in the minority that spends a few hours fixing or working around a problem, rather than shelve the unit and play update roulette in random short increments. But, with VR still in its infancy, are we/they really ready for those types of consumers? I mean, there is a severe lack of standards across the board, making handholding really difficult. Everyone threw up their hands at tablet UIs and decided to just make them bigger phones and I'd hate to see VR suffer the same fate of being dragged down by the lowest common denominator.
It reminded me of the old days when I had a big library of AUTOEXEC.BAT files, one for each game, to set things up exactly the way they needed to be set up for that game. That was great for me, but it was a sign of just how unapproachable PC gaming could be for the average person back then.
> This is not meant as negative towards you at all. But I think your post demonstrates the gulf in perception between the savvy PC gamer and others. You say you have no problems, then go on to list a whole bunch of problems.
These are issues that occur rarely. I have less troubles using my PC than some friends do with their consoles.
It helps that Steam truly does update things in the background, and that it is possible to bandwidth throttle updates.
In comparison, a rarely played console will want to potentially spent hours on updates.
A PC has advantages because it is most likely used daily, so the updates have already happened in the background.
Honestly, both consoles and PCs are about an equal pain to keep running now days. PCs have gotten better over the years, and consoles got worse, and they have kind of met in the middle.
I've got no VR and no problems. Game infrequently, computer off for weeks at a time. Yes, Steam or Battle.NET will need to install updates but that's just like any console.
Holy crap! I have never experienced ANYTHING like that. Even updating my AMD video drivers is a painless experience.
Occasionally I've kept Firefox tabs open four 3 weeks or something "feels a little off" so I restart more than the once a month necessary to install Windows updates, but other than that, I feel confident that I can hit the VR button on steam and have the dashboard in the helmet ready to boot a game by the time I've put the strap on.
My absolute worst experience was a game crashing VR over and over in one spot and a restart fixing it
I feel you with all of the same struggles except my situation is a bit trickier. I like playing with my GF so that means allowing her to watch and hear as I play too. So now, not only am I running cables to another room, I am also connecting steam link to stream the VR instance as well. Getting sound to come through is a hassle sometimes since SteamVR audio settings seems to reset my split audio feeds.
I am looking forward to this but also a much more streamlined future iteration that will still let me take advantage of my PC power.
This is interesting. My PC is in a little office; if I want to play things sprawled out, I've got a Steamlink (after they went on sale for $5) attached to my TV in the other room. If I wanted to use VR, I'd need to move the PC into the TV room and clear some space.
... or, I could run some long cables. Out of interest, how long are the cables in your setup, and how well does it work?
I'm running 25ft cables along the trim. I have some sticky cable tie mount pads + zip ties that I use to keep them in place. Not very sightly but it works quite well. Apparently you need some pretty specific HDMI and USB cables that can handle the signal.
> I could run some long cables. Out of interest, how long are the cables in your setup, and how well does it work?
I don't use my setup for VR, but I've got my gaming rig in the office extended to the living room TV.
USB and HDMI over 30 meters, with one active USB hub/HDMI extender connecting two 15 meter cables in the middle. The HDMI extender needed some fine-tuning, but after that everything just works as it should. Just need to remember to turn the hub/extender off when not in use or else it's quite a pointless electricity drain.
Tho I'm not sure how well a setup like that would work for VR, with latency being such an important issue and the VR setup introducing even more cable length to it all.
Yeah, it's the VR part that throws me for a twist. I had a 30m HDMI cable once; my video card/TV were only capable of 720p@30Hz over it, which obviously isn't a good match for VR. Apparently active cables are the way to go.
I don't use VR. However, I do have a scratch-built gaming PC, and other than having to buy a new part every couple years or so, I haven't had any maintenance issues with it.
I agree with less hassle generally being better, but the PC gamer in me just can't transition to "mobile" like that because that what it would feel like to me.
The hardware in the OC Quest is probably some kind of Nvidia Tegra style SoC, at least that's what I'd expect in terms of performance out of it. Ideally, I'd want the future of VR to be in eye candy popping UHD with super high refresh rates, tho I doubt mobile computing will be up for that task in the next decade.
I was hoping for them to announce a higher dpi, wider fov unit for use with Elite Dangerous and DCS World. Alas, I shall keep on waiting. 95hz 3440x1440 34" 21:9 curved monitor with TrackIR is pretty good meanwhile.
Key point is that my monitor has a far better DPI much thanks to having to only render a much smaller viewport. TrackIR works great with that, until VR display tech hits that next gen level.
I don't really see how this frees up much space in the basement compared to a Vive. Room scale VR will still require a large empty space to operate in, as I imagine the technology to make the user phase through solid matter is still at few years out.
If your plan with this is sitting or standing VR, well, the HTC Vive already supports that configuration as well.
> Lately though I don't have the energy to fight my gaming rig and I when I occasionally play now, I just ignore whatever issues crop up. I'm ready for a simpler solution at a good price.
you sound like you should be a console gamer. Cheap(er) and simple is what they do/market. And PS4 has PSVR too.
On the other hand, I want the most realistic graphics, no noticeable lag, superb quality first. Convenience second, after vr immersion feels real. Premature optimization is the root of all evil!
$400, no need for a computer, no need for all of the external tracking cameras that the Rift uses. I'm pretty interested in this, especially with the upward trend in GPU prices. RTX makes for some very pretty games yes, but it's another incremental step in ever increasing graphics.
The stuff happening in VR feels like a more interesting direction, and can probably extend across a broad market because the hand controls are more approachable than console game controllers.
I haven't actually used a headset newer than a DK1 though. Fingers crossed these get demo setups at Best Buy or something.
Well, except maybe for actual system performance. No need for a computer is great, but shoehorning in enough CPU and GPU power for this in a $400 budget that also includes all the hardware, combined with the promo videos all being third person views and the items held all being shown as wire frame and single color means there's quite a bit unknown about what it will actually be like (unless there is more info I'm missing).
I've read the screen's refresh rate is 72 Hz, lower than the 90 Hz that Oculus/Valve have been pushing as a minimum for immersive VR. Did this seem like a problem, or does it feel good enough?
I know the Go already runs at 72 or 60 Hz, but without positional tracking it was never going to be particularly immersive no matter what framerate it had.
In Carmack’s talk today he said many people find 60hz uncomfortable, but far fewer need 80hz to feel comfort. And 72hz is 3x 24fps which most videos play in so it helps for smooth video playback. And 96hz would be a substantial performance hit.
For me, it's not a problem. The go runs 72, but most apps don't take advantage of that But it's true that some people are more sensitive to lower refresh rates. As another user said here, Carmack said that with 72 Hz, almost every person should feel fine, so there is almost no upside in bringing it further up.
Fair point, but it's kinda hard to make full use of PC's graphical capabilities when the hardware caps you to a resolution of 640 x 800 per eye and 60 fps.
If the Oculus Go is anything to go by, I suspect most games built for the Quest will match up fairly well graphically against experiences originally built for the DK1.
Oculus Go runs a Snapdragon 821, Oculus Quest has a Snapdragon 835 [1]. Android Central calls it 27% faster at 40% less energy [2]. GPU in the 835 goes from an Adreno 530 to Adreno 540, which looks like a good step up but nothing monumental.
In terms of large scenes with high res textures and detailed models, probably not going to do much better than the Go. It's really all about the resolution increase and 6dof tracking, more than trying to get anywhere near the Rift's visuals.
Yeah, the DK1 I tried was leftover from some research project and ended up at the local maker space for a while. I assume the tracking quality on that is about on par with Google Cardboard.
I don’t have a space for a real “room scale” setup with Rift cameras or Vive beacons, so I’ve been waiting on Santa Cruz’s inside-out tracking to look at VR more seriously.
Pleasantly surprised by price. They’ve confirmed it’s based on a Snapdragon 835, which isn’t a top end SoC, and I think that’s a smart move to get it down to this range. At $500 they’d have a much harder sell, and this is where PS4 and Xbox One started (once they dropped Kinekt, anyway).
I couldn't say for sure, but I'd bet that it's because they priced the Xbox One at $500 against the PS4's $400 and between the two options a lot of people would just buy the cheaper one (especuially Santa). Dropping the included Kinekt was a way to get the cost competitive.
I didn't see anything specifically on this, but I think it would be fair to assume the screen will be significantly higher than the DK1. Even the resolution of the Oculus Go is far better.
Absolutely! I don’t have the numbers handy but I ran them earlier and it’s about 1.7x the pixel count of the CV1, which was already better than the DK1.
Things that real time ray tracing enables like good dynamic ambient occlusion for contact shadows and more accurate shadowing and lighting are actually more important for VR than for non VR. They make VR a better and more immersive experience rather than just being eye candy. For me the most exciting applications of real time ray tracing are for VR.
These are all fantastic things but there's multiple workarounds - from entirely baked lighting to clever realtime shortcuts in the hands of a good artist. I think great art direction is more important for VR than GPU advances.
Some effects can be faked well with pre-computation but important cues for dynamic object interaction like high quality dynamic ambient occlusion are not easy to fake. Other tricks designed for 2D displays don't hold up as well in VR. I see a lot of object interaction difficulties with novice VR users that I think can be helped by better rendering, although there are issues that will also need better display technologies to resolve.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not diminishing the benefits of a powerful GPU.
However - I think great artistry trumps great hardware. Some of the most compelling VR experiences I've seen have been more about the art direction than about the rendering power.
1. High refresh rate (DK1 had this. So does the Go). The world feels "solid and out there"...
2. 6DOF head tracking (a huge difference - to the extent that I tend to use the term "real VR" and "sort of VR" to distinguish the two). The world continues to feel solid when your head moves even by small amounts...
3. 6DOF controllers (depends on the experience. 3DOF controllers suck but there's plenty of incredibly immersive experiences that get round this - basically by not using the controllers much. Trickier for games but for narrative and artsy things - it's totally doable)
This is it people! VR for the mainstream. As a developer this makes me excited. Been waiting for this since I got the first Rift and was half amazed and half totally deflated. $399 should finally mean a wider audience.
I think you could be on to something- I kinda agree this could be the "iPad" of VR. The Oculus Go is already pretty awesome, but it is hampered by a still somewhat limited library and the lack of 6DOF is definitely frustrating- Since this new headset will probably have the full Rift AND Go game catalog at launch, as well as a normie-friendly setup (without base stations or PC) this device could see some mainstream adoption and could be a milestone in VR.
Sadly the Quest is not powerful enough to run regular Rift titles without heavy optimizations. They even mentioned that for "Superhot" it took multiple weeks for porting it to the Quest.
This isn't necessarily awful. Having a known baseline hardware (even if not quite state of the art) can really help optimization efforts. I'm thinking of the gaming consoles, which are all behind a modern PC in terms of performance, but have really quite good graphics and performance as it's so tuned.
A big part of that is the different architecture of consoles though - the graphics and CPU are highly integrated and share RAM so you don't have to do everything over PCI.
This is almost certainly based on an Android phone so I expect it to have the same performance limitations as those.
You're assuming we need photo realistic games to make VR worthwhile. This isn't true of games in general so why would it be true of VR?
Look at consoles like the Wii/Switch/Gameboy and how well they did. Gameplay is what makes a great game and VR gives you a whole new set of gameplay tools.
The first iPhone and iPad had very different types of games to mainstream consoles but those games were tailored to that type of experience - Angry Birds would have been a pretty dull console game but the touch input made it fun. Pokemon go couldn't even have worked as a console game.
VR is about a new way to experience and interact with a game (it's also awesome how they have standardised the touch controller so that can be properly explored).
Now it's up to developers to experiment and make games people love with this new set of tools.
Remember how crap the original iPad was (looking back on it). It had awful resolution and was super chunky, but it was enough to get consumers buying and developers making stuff. It set everything in motion by getting content on there, making the next version of the iPad even better. Made more investment worthwhile both in hardware and software and consumer $$$.
I feel like this could be the thing that gets that back and forth ball rolling.
What I think will be an iPhone moment for VR is literally when we can drop our phones in a VR goggle that is socially acceptable.
I mean we convinced people that listening to music by sticking a speaker in their ear canals is healthy and safe. Why can't we do this for our eyes? The "Samsung Galaxy" moment will be when they start shipping disposable contact lenses with AR functionalities....but this requires a cross industry expertise and highly proprietary nanotech which Pentagon needs to fully test out before approving it for consumer usage, as with many of our major technological innovations owing to the military-defense complex.
You're assuming that people will make zero compromises to use VR- I think this is wrong, given the utility of a VR system. I could have just as easily have said when the original iPhone came out "It will look too nerdy to be staring at a smartphone- Regular people won't adopt smartphones until they can build them into a contact lens."
It's still weird to carry around an iPad, my point being the bar will be much higher for VR if it wants to become mainstream and while it will win over gamers or other dedicated users, becoming a widespread VR everyday consumer electronic is a much further away
I don't think VR is ever going to reach that point, just because our eyes are too important. Very few people would be comfortable putting a VR headset on while commuting on a subway or bus - because you lose all awareness of your surroundings. With sound you are losing one sense, with VR you are losing two.
AR is the only one with a hope of becoming socially acceptable in public, but it will have its own hurdles (Namely the fact that you will always be pointing a camera at someone just by looking around.)
Buses and trains absolutely, missing your stop because you're too engaged in something is a real possibility.
That same ability to transport you to some other world was an absolute godsend on a recent 12+ hour flight from SFO to Beijing. My Oculus Go has been added to my list of long haul flight must haves in addition to my QC IIs.
FWIW you cant see the haters staring when you've got it on LOL.
If you live your life by that principle then you can't leave your house. Heck, there's probably an asshole in the management of the company that built your house.
Most PC based VR games I've seen already use greatly cut down graphics compared to traditional games, even while running at current headset resolutions where the screen door effect is fairly noticeable. But VR can be so much fun that you might stop noticing the graphics in games that don't try to go for realism in their presentation. But if that's the best available on a desktop PC with a recent high end GPU, I'm having a hard time imagining how a portable could be powerful enough that its graphical limitations won't also be a drag on the fun.
Oculus Go is pretty fun even though its specs are well below the Quest, so I'd imagine it will be fine. People also have different expectations for different units, e.g. PC rigs vs hand-held gaming units.
Little bit of HN distorted reality there I think; not many people have rigs, most play games on cheap Android phones. Go to big gaming countries like China but also India is growing there; no rigs for by far most, all mobile, small screens, shitty perf and graphics. People do not care as long as they can play.
I am more wondering who they are targetting; me for sure but I would also pay $1000 for it, not gaming fanatics who care about resolution, fps and amazing graphics and not people who play games on cheap Android devices. Looks to me they are going for the kind of people who bought the Wii when it came out. Is Carmack still involved as at least then we know it will be a good gaming experience if nothing else?
Yeah, I'm rather skeptical that the experience will be good enough, even for that price. And it's not just the graphics I'm worried about, but also the accuracy of the tracking and whether it will be jittery/laggy at all. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. But I worry that too much hype over an inferior product will harm perceptions of the VR industry.
I've been developing for the Mirage and it's a great device (if you ignore the controllers). You have to make graphical compromises but there's multiple ways to create similar effects to PC VR. In terms of raw triangle throughput it's surprisingly capable.
My guess is that the frame rate will be capped at 60fps. In terms of graphics most games will probably be forced to use forward rendering with low resolution meshes and textures.
Yup. Non starter. Hopefully Nvidia wakes up and creates a console with a packaged GPU of theirs. I'll happily buy an appliance but I'm not spending anything on a machine that requires me to actively participate in the Facebook ecosystem.
Oculus is owned by Facebook and will never change that. It's a completely useless hardware platform, IMO. Even buying one requires monetarily supporting Facebook, which is unethical in my view.
yes. If you watch any adult movies or play any adult games Facebook sucks all that up and adds it to your profile. Have had this confirmed by friends at Oculus.
Wont be buying any more Oculus equipment until I can be sure there is no data collection period
Yep, even if they'd be offering it for free, after adding the privacy tax for all the data they siphon, I certainly wouldn't touch it. Exactly the reason why I went with HTC Vive.
This was also my reason. I'm glad I made it too, because even though the oculus was $100 cheaper, my understanding is that it doesn't do room scale as well.
Though I wish valve would stop with their stupid trackpads.
In the US, do privacy policies have any backing in law? Is there any penalty for a company for violating its stated privacy policy?
I guess a company might include a penalty clause in its EULA that would promise customers remunerations for violations, and give customers rights to investigate such violations.
I'd be skeptical. The author of these charts is a staunch Oculus fan, and seems to spend his time doing little else than posting positive Oculus stories to reddit.
I don't think he's a shill, just over-committed. At one point the the founder of Oculus Palmer Luckey even called him out as an "insufferable fanboy". [1]
I don't say this just be a detractor or mean-spirited, but I would advise caution as there's likely bias in these charts.
The contents of that chart are purely factual. There's very little room for bias unless you want to nitpick on trivial things like what shade of green he used for the font on the price figures.
The bias the parent refers to is implicit, I believe, in the selection of information to convey. That is, the choice of which columns and rows to include in the graph in the first place.
They could have included a row for "Open platform for games", or "Has finger detection", etc. Alternatively, they could have included columns for Vive, or Vive+Wireless, and so on.
This kind of implicit bias is very difficult to avoid, however; in general, viewers of ANY online media should already be assuming the viewpoints they're consuming are biased in the first place.
In particular, since the source is the /r/oculus subreddit, anyone viewing this information there (1) already assumes this implicit bias, and (2) is likely to share it.
This particular chart is comprised only of Oculus products. The bias is much more evident when comparing a Vive or other third-party headset. Little emphasis is put on their advantages - only disadvantages.
If you're familiar with P-Hacking, then you know how even "factual information" can be misrepresented.
1. No wires (easy to move around, can use anywhere)
2. No setup (no cameras to attach, drivers to install, etc)
3. 2 hands and positional tracking
I have a Vive, but having to setup all the components and deal with the wires is pretty annoying. I also have a daydream, but having to pop in my phone, drain my battery and install all that crap on my phone is also annoying. This is the perfect middle ground. Now I'm curious to see if Google announces something similar in a few weeks.
The Go is pretty cool, but the lack of 6DOF and the limited game catalog really limit its viability. This new device addresses both of these issues (since many Rift games can now be ported over pretty easily)
I suspect that the developers of the top 100 rift games (i.e. the games that are actually pretty good and have made some money) will be enormously incentivized to find ways to scale down the visuals a bit because of the easy money they would make. The important part is that no changes in the game mechanics are necessary, given the identical controllers and similar 6DOF capabilities.
Of course mobile requires less power, but they mention Moss among the launch titles which is in no way a mobile experience.
I'm thinking they are going to port and downgrade everything then?
Moss is one of the most beautiful VR titles out there. I'm very interested to see how it translates to a GPU a couple of orders of magnitude less powerful.
You need quite a powerful GPU to do VR on a PC. But mobile phones (Gear VR, Google Cardboard) can do VR with much less graphics horsepower because the entire hardware stack can be controlled. The path from the motion sensors to rendering the VR scene on a phone is very fast.
You still need a powerful mobile GPU to do good 3D graphics but actually rendering but the VR part doesn't require as much.
> But mobile phones (Gear VR, Google Cardboard) can do VR with much less graphics horsepower because the entire hardware stack can be controlled.
No, they just generally have a much lower expectation to meet of the graphics fidelity produced.
> The path from the motion sensors to rendering the VR scene on a phone is very fast.
What would you say slows this down on a modern PC? Is it the connections to the headset? Is it the OS?
> You still need a powerful mobile GPU to do good 3D graphics but actually rendering but the VR part doesn't require as much.
Why would this be different between mobile and a normal PC? Both need to render a image at 60fps (or probably 90), for two viewpoints, regardless of if it is driven by a PC or a mobile. What is different?
The killer issue for VR is latency. If you have a lot of latency between the motion and the rendering people will throw up. And it's much easier to control that latency on a mobile phone platform than on a PC.
John Carmack has written extensively on this subject if you are interested. One example he gives is that graphics card drivers will aggressively buffer draw commands to increase performance and image fidelity at the cost of latency. In a normal game that's no problem but that is terrible for VR. Even a little bit of delay between movement and the display reflecting your new position is nauseating.
On mobile, the latency can be highly controlled from the driver, OS, and custom hardware even while sacrificing other performance.
Right, so the "fight" is between more raw power on on a PC vs more direct driver access on mobile.
Except that only holds up if you consider the headset a primary gaming device.
Usually people expect a certain graphical fidelity from PC or console games, so either we have a world with only consoles (which have standardized hw/sw stacks like mobile) and mobiles are gaming devices or we have one that is just like it has been for the last 10-15 years. Which do you think is more likely?
>But mobile phones (Gear VR, Google Cardboard) can do VR with much less graphics horsepower
I'd say mobile phones can do much less VR with much less graphics horsepower. I tried both Oculus, Vive and Cardboard, and the last was terribly underwhelming after seeing proper VR solutions.
> This innovative system uses four ultra wide-angle sensors and computer vision algorithms to track your exact position in real time without any external sensors.
I'd be really curious at what FPS they are able to accomplish that and still have enough resources available to actually run applications.
Even with hardware dedicated to "computer vision" tracking it'd be quite the accomplishment to do this with a high enough FPS to not induce motion sickness in some people.
To be fair, John Carmack almost certainly would need to sign off on any tracking solution that Oculus releases, and he takes FPS and latency issues very very seriously. Keep in mind Oculus has had a "stand alone" headset available earlier than pretty much everyone and is one of the last to release a 6DOF solution, so there's no reason (on the surface at least) to suggest that they didn't take the time necessary to make sure their solution performs well.
The Oculus Go is basically a GearVR that’s not constrained by the having its core in the form factor of a phone. So, it has much better thermal design and overheats much less. The Quest is an improved Go.
Now that I think about it, it makes sense that you’d be able to squeeze more performance and have reduced throttling with the larger form factor of a headset.
Then they’re able to use cheaper parts and keep the price lower, which is pretty exciting.
The Oculus Go lasts around 2 hours. Then you have to load batteries for 4 hours. Although they don't recommend it - you can buy a long usb-cable and plug it into your PC to get around this (for apps where the cable doesn't get in the way).
If it had a camera to allow switching to the "real world" without taking it off, then it would be perfect. Having to take off the headset, put it back on, adjust it on your face, calibrate orientation, then get back into your app so you can answer the phone or grab a drink is annoying.
Wait, how does that work? Is there a visible light camera packaged with the IR sensor? Or does the IR sensor also detect visible light at a high enough resolution to be used as a normal camera? Or am I misunderstanding completely?
This would certainly seem to set the stage for VR’s mass-market inflection point. Current VR early adopters have been using Treos and Windows CE phones, so to speak, and this has the right positioning be the iPhone.
The deciding factor is naturally the same one any promising platform has: The question of a killer app. The iPhone shipped with its own killer app, Mobile Safari. Can Oculus or Facebook build the killer app for the Quest? Will a third party? What would a killer app for VR look like?
This is a great price point and excellent feature set for mainstream VR. I have almost no interest in it, but would be comfortable recommending it to less tech savvy friends and relatives.
Having a Vive and GearVR had taught me that I don't like the helplessness that comes from Oculus's mobile VR design philosophy. I like a little more control over my devices, but I totally see the appeal of an "It just works" setup.
The thing I am struggling with is how they will determine play space. Not the sensors, and cameras, etc. If I start a game in a large open room then later continue in a smaller space, how will the games handle that? Right now you can see that a game requires a certain amount of space for roomscale and games are generally divided into seated, standing, and roomscale options. Will devs be expected to support all modes and all reasonable levels of roomscale for every title, since the room layout can change at every launch?
I'm really looking forward to full 6DOF, untethered VR, but it seems like this might be a bit premature and better suited for AR (environment variation would be to AR as 6DOF tracking was for VR). It's a convenience feature before other unresolved and non-standardized core MR features, like eye tracking, balance, simulation sickness, full body tracking, etc. I'm very interested to see how they handle the inside out tracking, but I fully expect it to be a little watered down (but hopefully better that the Windows MR implementation, which isn't terrible).
The Quest seems like a marketing decision taking precedence over a raw technological development path, but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing here. VR hype is waning in the public eye and this is a very noticeable improvement for average consumers. It may have been a smart decision that will keep the conversation going, and the investment dollars flowing to devs.
I do wonder why this wasn't introduced with a GearVR 2, though. Charge $200 for a pair of controllers and the headset and it's salt the same system. It makes me wonder if they found dealing with varied hardware and an OS not under their complete control too burdensome, or if they just didn't see the numbers they were expecting.
An analysis of great VR suggests it needs approximately a peta-op of computing power for sufficient temporal and spatial resolution and motion tracking. Merely a factor of a hundred over current systems and achievable in 6-7 years according to Moores Law. Just be patient. In the meantime figure out how to generate content.
Does the technology exist to wirelessly stream video from a PC to a (hypothetical) VR headset at the resolution and framerate of the regular Rift/Vive with low latency? That's what I really want.
Interesting how HTC went the high end (and very expensive) route with their Pro headset + wireless adapter, while Oculus went low-mid with a standalone device.
I think the form factor is the key selling point. Even with wireless you are still effectively tethered to a PC and the hard mounted tracking space which is still dangling wires everywhere. In comparison the Quest works in larger spaces with zero setup (unless you want a safety barrier rendered) and they don’t fight with one another. Due to that you can just sling it in your bag and take it anywhere, won’t need a dedicated space at home and can just stick it on a shelf when not in use without having to break down the tracking space or leave unsightly stuff in place.
I also think this will help push VR onto office desktops. Companies I’ve visited tend to keep their VR gear in one central location or worse in a store. Use is sporadic so adoption is really low. Having a simple unit on your own desk is much more accessible and much less embarrassing to experiment with.
Also given the way the tracking works it should be reasonable to share data between devices and take part in shared VR in person. I believe there is a demo at OC5 where they are doing this already in a big hall.
Oculus is seemingly trying to avoid incremental updates, from what they've been saying they're holding off on Rift 2 until they can ship with variable focal [0].
In the end I think this is the right play, as much as some of us love PC Gaming it's pretty much niche compared to the audience Oculus are trying to get. I've blown some minds when I showed my friends my PCVR setup but none of them were willing to buy tower PCs to get it at home, $400 stand alone headset though? Definitely.
- high enough resolution to read text comfortably and without eye strain
- VR gloves to simulate keyboard with haptic feedback and mouse/touchpad virtual device
- VR/AR mixed reality so that it can map close objects into view, like the coffee on your desk
- Work with external cameras to map bodies and put into VR, i.e conference calls / meetings with actual presence.
I think we'll start to see a shift and interestingly enough, none of these are difficult to do. I would say, give it 10 years and we'll probably be there.
When people think of computers (or, more broadly, devices), they mainly think of the screen and the inputs. If VR or AR can significantly improve on the experience of using a 2D screen + mouse, keyboard, or swipe/tap gestures, people will migrate to that superior user experience.
There are plenty of other factors at play, but ultimately usability will determine if VR/AR, which are mainly new interfaces for standard computing, become the standard for computer use.
Depends what's your definition of the future. Personally, I have no doubt that it'll soon be connected inside our brain so "monitors" will be useless.. anything will be a "monitor" if that's what you want it to be. But it'll be much cooler than that.. I.e. if you're thinking about "What will be the weather tomorrow?", the whole sky could start "virtually raining" to show it to you with AR. It's scary and exciting at the same time.
My 7yo daughter and I have the Oculus Go headsets and are able to find quite a few fun multiplayer games- This new headset will at minimum support the Go library.
Maybe around 5% of games have multiplayer support, so out of the 200 or so decent games for the Go around 10 are multiplayer.
This is more dependent upon what's released for this specific device. There's lots of different apps/services that do this already for other devices, examples:
Snapdragon 835 apparently. The 845 would have pushed the price point up considerably. If so I think they made the right call. The price point was my biggest concern with this thing.
Two calibrated cameras and, more importantly, calibrated accelerometers and gyroscopes. Cameras alone aren't fast enough, and visual feature detaction not accurate enough, to provide a good experience.
All of this is within reach of anyone who is making their own hardware, though.
Oculus Quest dev kits will be hard to get for a while, but if you're a small developer, the easiest place to start developing VR is on the PC/Rift. The SDKs are the same! Unity and Unreal will definitely be supported.
Definitely not, unless they do some amazing magic with restricting resource usage by people's avatars. I can literally put a raytracer inside a shader and upload it. There are worlds that drop down to 30fps on my overclocked water-cooled i7-6700k & 1080ti gaming pc. VRChat's performance demands entirely depend on the world you're in and the amount of optimisation work people have put into their avatars.
Great. Now that the whole pack is $399, and fairly complete bundle at that - when it fails, and it will - finally everyone will get how much of a failure VR is.
(disc: in its current iteration, for mainstream, excluding special cases like architercture or medicine: it certainly is the future, somewhere)
It sounds like it uses the same optics as the existing Oculus Go device- These are arguably quite good (i.e. you can watch an HD movie quite well and get the full experience) but certainly they are still short of matching "Actual Reality" in terms of resolution.
All mobile computers of small form factor are gimped by energy storage and heat dissipation limits. This will not be able to do high fidelity VR and it'll only be doing it's low quality extrapolation-based frame doubling to meet VR framerates for a limited time on any reasonable bettery.
Really? It does 2k+ pixel 90 FPS renders for more than a minute? I think your 'proving me wrong' is just not understanding, or ignoring, what I said about heat dissipation and frame reuse.
"Expecting Rift-level performance from a self-contained mobile headset like the quest isn't realistic, Carmack said, partly for simple electrical reasons. While a high-end gaming PC often draws up to 500 watts of power, Carmack said the Quest only uses about 5W, a tidbit that should be of benefit to the Quest's still unconfirmed battery-life statistics."
Announcing, not introducing. Shipments in 2019. They're missing this holiday season.
The $399 price isn't real until it ships. I'll bet it ships only as some "bundle" that costs well over $500. The Microsoft HoloLens has comparable hardware and that's several thousand dollars.
How is this hardware remotely comparable to the hololens? This an Android phone with two magnifying glasses and some cameras attached, and they're already selling a $200 version without the cameras. The expensive part of hololens is the AR optics/display.
I've owned a Vive for over two years and not having to devote a good chunk of my basement to it is another plus, along with not having to maintain a really beefy gaming PC.
I would much prefer to not deal with a PC; this isn't an anti-windows thing, I work on Win10 all day writing code. However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
VR is a lot of fun though, and for most of the past 2 years was worth the hassle. Lately though I don't have the energy to fight my gaming rig and I when I occasionally play now, I just ignore whatever issues crop up. I'm ready for a simpler solution at a good price.