
Oculus VR’s New “Crystal Cove” Prototype Is Kind of Amazing - kirtijthorat
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/09/oculus-vr-crystal-cove/
======
daenz
Awhile ago I made this image
[http://i.imgur.com/yaIpP2r.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/yaIpP2r.jpg) describing an
arena where virtual combat could take place with Oculus Rifts. I used some
hand-wavy idea of tracking user position via wifi (dumb idea), but with Oculus
positional tracking, I wonder if this arena concept becomes closer to reality?

Edit>> link to original thread
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1fxpqb/xpost_from_rc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1fxpqb/xpost_from_rcrazyideas_airsoftlike_arenas_with/)

~~~
mey
People run into each other all the time with laser tag and people can actually
see each other in that case. I would be concerned about people running into
each other and into physical objects because of their lack of visual feedback
on their reality.

Say for example, two people facing each other with a virtual wall between
them. If both accidentally try to walk "though" the wall they would simply
collide with each other, potentially causing injury or damage to equipment.

Not to be a buzzkill, I'd love a system that actually could support this, in
theory a large room with many freedom of movement devices (like what Virtuix
Omni is working on) would allow this idea in a much smaller space and no risk
of players colliding.

~~~
salient
This is the Virtuix Omni, if others haven't seen it yet (second version):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5UTkLIh76U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5UTkLIh76U)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H75BT43uT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H75BT43uT0)

~~~
daenz
I saw the Omni when it was announced, but I was never convinced of it's
potential. A few things about it bother me:

1) Strafing is extremely unnatural. It involves standing still in the center,
lifting one leg to the edge, and "swiping" it down towards the center. It's a
very impractical move for any type of game where strafing is strategic.

2) Backwards motion is extremely difficult. Try to find a video of someone
doing it effectively. It's rarely shown because it's not easy to do. This
removes this movement as well from any game where backwards movement is
strategic.

3) [http://i.imgur.com/tsccO4H.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/tsccO4H.jpg) Not trying
to be mean, but the visual of an adult using the Omni looks very much like a
baby using a walker. I believe this limits the Omni to a product you'll only
want to use by yourself, when nobody is around, because it looks silly.

4) The current version looks flimsy. Maybe they've beefed up the structure of
the thing, but any video that I've watched has shown serious strain on the
upright portions of the Omni itself.

5) The fact that you have to wear special shoes, and perform a procedure to
get the Omni within reaching distance of a keyboard/mouse, and lock yourself
in to the mechanism... seems like quite a bit of overhead to play a game
essentially handicapped in terms of movement.

My prediction is that some people are going to be excited about Omni, buy it,
try it a few times, and realize how limiting it is in actual gameplay, how
limited they are in using their computer, the fact that they look silly to
others, and the overhead involved in getting dressed and locked, and realize
it isn't worth it. They'll push it to the side to collect dust, or try to sell
it on craigslist.

~~~
andrewfong
(1) The way you strafe is to run in one direction but turn your torso (and the
gun and the Oculus) to look to the side. You may have to tweak the game's
control schemes to accomodate this, but it seems doable.

(2) I don't disagree, but it's basically going to be awkward to handle any in-
game motion that isn't realistic, whether it's backwards motion or unlimited
running and six-foot jumps. I suspect that you'll need to specifically design
your game for the Omni in order for it to work well.

------
prawn
Tested have an interview/hands-on where they discuss why Oculus have used an
optical approach with the external camera to track head movements. They note
that it was superior to various other methods they tried. Wonder if eventually
it could work with typical laptop web cams?

[http://www.tested.com/tech/459692-ces-2014-hands-oculus-
vrs-...](http://www.tested.com/tech/459692-ces-2014-hands-oculus-vrs-crystal-
cove-prototype/)

Also worth watching that video to hear about the switch to an OLED screen and
the latency advantage there. Employees at that company must have so much fun
trying all the alternatives to build the best product.

(My dev kit in Australia is for sale if anyone is interested. Email in
profile. It's amazing, but I'm curious more than I am a software developer so
it might be more useful to someone else.)

~~~
YZF
A similar approach could be used with a typical webcam. In their case it's
probably a camera with a filter so they can isolate their IR LEDs. That's kind
of a nice to have but it's not absolutely necessary. It's neat how they can
get by with a single camera. Note the pattern of LEDs, as you move around they
can use the pattern to locate you in 3d space.

IMO the downside of using a camera is that you automatically get some latency
as part of the deal. A full frame has to be read out, digitized and the 3d
position derived. Some other systems could have better real time
characteristics. The cost of this system is presumably a factor.

~~~
cma
You can use sensor fusion to combine it with acceleromters, which have
terrible drift double integrating from acceleration to position, but can
actually manage it in the few-milliseconds time scale between
frames/signaling/processing of the camera.

~~~
YZF
Yes. That should work... I'll add it to the patent ;-)

------
lhl
I've been following the Oculus CES coverage somewhat and by far the most in-
depth interview/coverage has been by the Tested folks. Here's their video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpNQHNkJY1g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpNQHNkJY1g)

The most in-depth discussions probably happen on the Oculus Developer Forums
and the Oculus Subreddit. RoadtoVR is good for general coverage on HMDs and
peripherals.

~~~
canadev
That was quite informative, but I have to say that the guy who did the
interview really disoriented me. He kept jumping on everyone's words and it
felt like he was way over caffeinated. I watched it almost 10 minutes ago and
I still feel kind of jittery.

------
YZF
Awesome. The golden age of VR may finally be upon us. It's been talked about
for probably 20 years but now all the technology to support this at a
reasonable cost seems to be converging. I think in 10 years we'll look back at
this in a similar way to how we look at Wolfenstein 3d, when everything
changed.

------
bane
Did I hear him say "gaze detection" near the end of the video? _that 's_ also
a big deal I haven't heard anything about anywhere else.

~~~
MBCook
I haven't seen that anywhere else, so he probably misspoke. Eye-tracking seems
like it would be an obvious future enhancement. In the EVE spaceship demo, it
seemed a little odd that you locked missiles based on where your head was
pointing and not where your eyes were looking.

~~~
sillysaurus2
Unfortunately, eye tracking is only possible in broad strokes, not fine
detail, and certainly not for tracking fast-moving small targets across the
screen in a realtime action game. There's pretty much no such thing as a
smooth eye movement; your brain tricks you into thinking your eyes are moving
smoothly when they're not.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade)

I wanted to use my eyes to create 3D models via eye tracking. Looked into it
for about a week before concluding it was probably impossible, or at least way
less accurate than good old-fashioned hand movements.

Dunno what the Oculus guys are doing with gaze detection, but I doubt they're
doing fine-grained detection such as being able to pick out a particular
target with your eyes. (I would _love_ to be wrong about this! That'd be an
awesome feature. I just doubt whether it's technically possible.)

~~~
anologwintermut
From eye tracking can you infer where the user thinks they are looking? I.e.
recover the illusory smooth eye motion I perceive when tracking a moving cat.

~~~
sillysaurus2
I think it'd be impossible because when you think you move your eye, your
brain is essentially just moving a bitmap image of what you're looking at
around the center of your vision. E.g. look at the word "sillysaurus2" above
my comment. Look at the 's', then look at the 'y' \-- keep looking back and
forth. Your eye likely isn't moving at all, even though your focus of vision
does. It happens mentally rather than physically.

~~~
yackob03
I tried what you said and I could definitely feel my eye moving. Is that being
synthesized by my brain?

~~~
sillysaurus2
Indeed, it is. Strange but true.

The way to convince yourself your eyeball isn't moving is to touch your actual
eyeball with your fingertip -- like press lightly against the left corner side
of your left eyeball with your left index finger -- and then switch your gaze
back and forth between the two letters. As long as your viewing distance is
correct, you won't feel any movement. (You may have to back your head away
from the screen. I'm viewing from a distance of arm's length.)

On the other hand, if you look back and forth between adjacent words, then you
can feel physical eye movement.

------
devindotcom
Tried it out yesterday. Really a major improvement, and they're listening to
feedback. The method of producing 'low persistence' is quite interesting, and
only works becuase of the move to OLED. Really smart guys there.

~~~
salient
Carmack has been talking about OLED for VR headsets for quite some time, and
I'm sure Palmer and the rest were considering it, too. But I think it wasn't
very accessible to them until recently. They're a start-up so they can't
exactly go an order a few thousand 1080p OLED panels. This may have been
possible now due to Samsung making the Galaxy S4 with a 1080p panel last year,
and perhaps other launched some, too, and it pushed the prices down for such a
panel, enough to make it viable for Oculus Rift.

~~~
bigtones
They have over $90 Million in venture funding. They can order pretty much
anything they want.

------
kirtijthorat
Does anyone know when this will be released? It says Prototype Model and then
there is a developer kit. I am not a big fan of Developer Kit as they tend to
be far from ready to be a consumer product. Also add the price factor. Ditto
goes to Google Glass which has a developer edition for $1500 (of course only
for selected/invited ones) but if it ever becomes a reality i.e. meaning a
real consumer product and drops the price to $300 then I will not be happy
since it cost me $1200 more and the latest model may have better h/w
components.

~~~
modeless
They are likely to release a consumer product late this year or early next
year, with an updated dev kit coming some time before that. Always subject to
change of course since this is bleeding edge tech, but they can't delay too
much or they risk Microsoft or Sony beating them to the punch.

~~~
blah32497
"they risk Microsoft or Sony beating them to the punch"

I very curious what the competition is doing. They're obviously working on
competing products, but nothing has been made public.

~~~
modeless
Sony has a head-tracking HMD at CES, but it's nowhere close to competing with
the Rift. Yet.
[http://www.tested.com/tech/tvs/459687-ces-2014-impressions-s...](http://www.tested.com/tech/tvs/459687-ces-2014-impressions-
sonys-head-tracking-hmd-prototype/)

------
ChuckMcM
Every time I see these guys I think they are the next game console. Basically
something that doesn't connect to your TV at all except perhaps if other
people want to see what you are doing.

------
JonSkeptic
Hrm.....I have to say that the technology is really cool, but the video makes
it look like nothing more than a gimmick. Notice "makes it look".

They picked a tower defense game to demo this? Really? Who's gonna want to
have full upper body motion (lean in, out, sideways, up, down) to play a tower
defense game? A few people, for the novelty of it.

This type of marketing is very unfortunate. It's a technology with a lot of
really cool potential and this video made it look like a gimmick.

------
salient
I saw a video of some of the Verge guys trying it out at CES, and pretty much
all of them were like "I don't want to take this off" at the end. It sounds
like Oculus Rift will change gaming forever, and not just gaming.

There could also be done a lot of revolutionary new things with movies, like
seeing through a character's eyes, etc (cameras mounted to the main character
Google Glass style?). Even watching a normal movie on Oculus Rift is probably
going to be a better experience than going to the cinema, because you could
virtualize the cinema in front of you, and recreate that atmosphere.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I suspect the Rift will force an interesting battle between pre-rendered and
realtime graphics in film. Because of parallax effects, there is no way to
pre-render footage for the Rift while still maintaining the level of geometric
correctness the Rift provides. I suspect we'll see some pre-rendered 3d movies
for the Rift, but they'll feel pretty weird.... It will be pseudo 3d, like
current 3d films, not the true binocular, immersive, persistent-world effect
that Rift games provide.

With realtime rendering, however, you will get the complete, geometrically
correct 3d images with head tracking. I suspect what this means is we'll start
to see 3d films that are rendered in realtime. Essentially like the cutscenes
we see for AAA video games, except they'd be feature length without any
gameplay in between. If VR really takes off, we might even see companies like
Pixar re-release their films for realtime viewing.

I would love to see a company like Pixar produce new realtime 3d films for the
Rift, but it seems unlikely that would make financial sense for them. I
suspect what we'll see instead is indie shorts first, followed by larger and
larger budget films. The same trajectory that CG films took in the first
place.

An interesting implication of this is that live footage will be basically
impossible to incorporate into a true VR setting. As video resolution gets
higher we may see multiple angles of scenes being recorded in ultra-high-def,
and then digitally combined into a voxel scene. Probably data from something
like the Kinect would have to be mixed in too, to resolve all of the voxels.
That could be replayed on a Rift, but the director would have to really
constrain the kind of lighting, materials, and motion for that to work well.
It would be extraordinarily difficult, and I suspect you'd still have a lot of
strange artifacts.

This could actually be a big shot in the arm for pure digital film production!

~~~
potatolicious
I have a Rift and I'm bullish about its prospects for gaming, but I'm pretty
skeptical about using this for non-interactive entertainment.

What would be the point of allow the user to move around (in a limited fashion
anyhow) inside the movie? It doesn't improve storytelling (as games can by
adding interactivity and perspective) - it strikes me as a gimmick, much like
3D films in general.

You get the whiz-bang coolness of "OMG I'm in this thing!", but ultimately
it's a lot more gear than a straight-up television/movie screen for next to no
gain. 3D movies had a few years of glory but is now deeply unpopular - I
foresee the same for VR-movies.

~~~
andrewfong
I suspect there'd be a niche but viable market for non-interactive or semi-
interactive content. Off the top of my head, I can see a handful of use-cases
where immersive VR would be a huge plus over a two-dimensional image:

* Being able to view complex choreography (martial arts, dancing, etc.) from different angles

* Conveying a sense of size and scale -- e.g. Pacific Rim, Godzilla

* Recreating some emotion or feeling imparted by the surrounding environment -- e.g. the franticness of a war zone, the claustrophobia of a submarine

~~~
simias
Porn is also an obvious use case. And porn could drive the market much more
than anything else.

------
scrabble
They gained a huge asset with Carmack working full time for Oculus. I'd never
have been interested in this, but now I am. It's progressing very nicely.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I don't disagree that Carmack was a huge win, but it's a little insulting to
Palmer and the rest of the team to suggest that he's the reason for their
progress. He's only been on the team for a few months. A lot of what they're
doing has been in the works for a long time.

Plus, all I've heard about what Carmack has been doing is that he was working
on Android stuff in the beginning.

~~~
cwyers
Carmack is a late add to the Occulus team, but he's been doing real work in
reducing latency:

[http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/02/22/latency-
mitigation-...](http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/02/22/latency-mitigation-
strategies/)

~~~
benched
And for anyone who didn't know, Carmack has long been obsessively, arduously
interested in latency problems.

------
ansible
Now I'm thinking I ought to start thinking about a 3-D desktop environment. I
know it sounds nuts to use this technology to just render a browser and a
bunch of terminal windows, but that could be an awesome working environment.

It is neat to have bigger and higher resolution screens, but I can only read
the text at one point in space anyway.

------
chenster
This is the future of gaming. I wonder if it uses some sort gyroscope to track
position like the iPhone does.

~~~
kgabis
You can't track position using a gyroscope. What you can track are changes in
orientation.

------
sukuriant
So,

Where can I buy one?

------
salient
I hope that while they're putting the finishing touches on the current
product, and work on deploying it soon, they will also keep in mind what the
guys at Avegant are doing, and either do their own R&D with this type of
technology for future products, to completely eliminate the screen and the
need to use UHD or higher resolutions in the future (or at least not for
sometime), while making it easier for the eyes, or they buy them out.

The technology does have some major disadvantages like a smaller field of view
compared to Oculus, but perhaps they can fix that. After all, VR headsets like
Oculus also had very small field of views before, too.

To me, having the image projected onto your retina seems like a technology
that has greater potential for virtual reality, even if it starts with a
slightly bigger handicap than Oculus did.

[http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-
glyph/4505-349...](http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-
glyph/4505-34900_7-35833856.html)

