
Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game - druidsbane
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game
======
scrumper
A lot of people here are talking about how $250,000 is 'chump change' to
companies like Valve, Epic etc. The fact is, it's not. It's a quarter of a
million dollars: rent for a satellite office for half a year, two junior dev's
salaries and benefits, the art budget for a bit of DLC. Yes, it's small in the
context of these companies' overall revenues, but it's a significant piece of
cash.

Then there's the structure of the deal with a Kickstarter. A Kickstarter
campaign is emphatically not a crowd-sourced angel investment: it's a busker's
hat, with basically the same responsibilities and obligations that a street
musician has to her audience of sidewalk quarter-droppers. Palmer Luckey
clearly wants this money with the minimum of fuss. Why would iD effectively
donate 250k to a tiny hardware company? Short answer: they wouldn't. Companies
spend their money only in the expectation of a return. There is absolutely no
possibility of a return for any one of these companies, because the money is
given in exchange for nothing. There is no equity stake, there's no debt,
there's no guarantee of future exclusive rights to the headsets. It's just a
gift.

So let's say these firms consider _investing_ 250,000 with Palmer to build his
headset. That kind of decision is not made lightly nor is it made by any one
person. All of these industry figureheads are responsible to their board of
directors and their (private) shareholders. They don't have complete freedom
of access to their companies' bank accounts. Such an investment would come
with equity stakes and strings attached: strings which would likely not
benefit Palmer, since competitors are usually unwilling to co-operate, even on
something as cool as this. Then, Palmer himself may not want to sell of pieces
of his fledgling company until he's in a stronger position.

They (Carmack etc.) might well be tempted to make a _personal_ angel
investment with Oculus and indeed they may even have done so. Those deals will
be highly secret, not least to protect Palmer's interests.

All in all, the Kickstarter is a perfect way for Palmer Luckey to gain both a
pile of risk-free, no-strings-attached cash and a great deal of exposure,
without any of the dilution, influence or responsibilities of external
investment.

~~~
burke
I wouldn't normally bring this up, but this is the top comment and you say it
six times: it's Palmer, not Peter.

~~~
scrumper
Wow, that's unforgivable. Sorry. Have edited - thank you.

------
maayank
John Carmack answers comments on their kickstarter page - how cool is that?

He gives more technical information:

"Technical comments based on the prototype unit I have been using and
conversations with Palmer: The display is a single 1280x800 panel; each eye
only sees a 640x800 image stretched across the huge field of view. The
perceived resolution is therefore much lower than even previous generation
consumer HMDs. If you are looking for high resolution, this isn't for you. For
immersion, the high FOV is much, much more important, though.

It is not wireless.

The prototype was analog VGA, but I think the kickstarter versions are DVI.

Everyone commented on how light the prototype was, especially compared to the
Sony HMD.

The early prototype could not be worn with glasses. If you modify it to stand
off far enough from the face to allow glasses, the fov will be reduced a lot.
One reason it can be so light is that it has smallish lenses very close to
your eyes. With the limited resolution, you don't really need 20/20 effective
vision.

I hope someone experiments with the kits and builds a variable focus version,
but the standard system is fixed focus."

~~~
brennenHN
How far away from the eyes are the screens going to be? Would glasses really
be necessary at that distance?

~~~
wccrawford
It depends on how good your eyes are. Mine are bad enough that I expect to
have trouble seeing it. Most people's glasses aren't nearly as strong as mine.

~~~
maayank
what number of you consider as a cutoff?

~~~
wccrawford
I've never used the device. I'm just making guestimates based on past
experience with head-mounted displays with and without my glasses.

My eyes are about -6. There is about 1 inch in which I can focus clearly
without my glasses. Nearer or farther and things get blurry. Most HMDs that
I've used are at the outside of this range and are slightly blurry, but barely
usable.

They're saying this one has a lens that is closer, but they don't say how far
the screen is. I'm guessing the screen will be about the same distance, but
the lens will be stretching the screen to wrap around your vision. There's
talk about a fish-eye effect that I believe they're using to have more of the
pixels in your main vision, and fewer in your periphery, since that's where
yours are most sensitive.

Edit: A choice quote I found:

We played without our prescription glasses, so our vision was blurry enough
that it didn't affect our gameplay. However, one of our video production
members with better vision noticed the low resolution and felt it took away
from the experience.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/30/3052191/doom-3-bfg-
edition...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/30/3052191/doom-3-bfg-edition-
announced-for-the-fall-we-try-it-with-john)

------
JVIDEL
I been to the forum of this project, and it's nothing like the ouya.

Why? because the Oculus _exists_ , there are prototypes running Doom3 since
E3. Granted, those units are held together by duct tape which is not exactly
consumer-grade, but.it.works, and that's what matters here.

Valve and Epic support probably (I hope) means they are going to use the
Oculus SDK so that most Source and Unreal-based PC games could be patched and
thus used with the Oculus.

Now consoles, the problem with MSFT/Sony using this for the Durango/PS4 is
that they would have to include one with each console sold, else you have the
chicken and the egg situation where developers don't support it because it
lacks an installed base and gamers don't buy it because it only has a few
games.

The Wiimote for example was meant to be an accessory for the Gamecube, but
Nintendo knew that was a possibility so they decided to wait and launch it
with the Wii instead.

------
a1k0n
Wow. I've never seen a more impressive set of testimonials in a commercial in
my life: John Carmack, CliffyB, Michael Abrash, Gabe Newell.

------
sciurus
Here's a video interview of John Carmack discussing this headset at E3.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyuMVazQPos>

------
bones6
Cue transhumanist/Ray Kurzweil checklist watchers. You can mark off 'fully
immersive virtual reality available to the masses' at the end of this
kickstarter.

Regardless of singularity thoughts, I really enjoy watching new tech become
possible due to price drops in components. This would not have been possible
just a few short years ago as the price(and size/weight) of LCDs and sensors
have fallen significantly. I'd say the smartphone boom has been responsible
for most of this advancement. This device is not much more than two phone-
sized LCDs strapped to your head. Of course it's the code that makes the magic
happen with low latency head tracking.

Commoditization of hardware components will continue to open new doors for
developers. "No one would have bought a $10,000 iPod" - as the saying goes.

~~~
granfalloon
is this really what kurzweil meant by "fully immersive virtual reality,"
though? only involves the senses of sight and hearing...

~~~
bones6
Too true. He did write about suits or other methods that appeal to the other
senses. That seems much farther off. Though, once environments have been
created for this headset, I would imagine quite a few people spending a large
portion of time "plugged in".

I also think a controller gives a bit of touch sense to the experience. Using
your hands and feet for full controls of a plane stick and rudder or car wheel
and pedals lacks only the feedback from acceleration and weather. Looking down
to see the pedals and "feeling" your vehicle react to your foot pressing could
be more psychosomatic than we really know yet.

~~~
sigkill
A large part of our FPS experience revolves around manipulating the player
camera. Since the Rift would essentially put the function of the mouse on our
heads, we could free the right hand with just a trigger or two triggers (one
for alt-fire). The left hand can now comfortably use a WiiMote like remote, or
a nun-chuck like controller. This setup would NOT break the previous control-
model that the player is used to, since you can always switch back to
disabling head tracking and using the mouse/keyboard combo. I'm pretty sure
that this would increase immersion.

------
incision
How many Kickstarter projects have actually shipped a finished product?

A serious question, not a jab. It seems "success" in the world of Kickstarter
is defined by achieving a funding goal, not necessarily producing anything.

I'm very tempted to sign on for this one, but I've already kicked into a
handful of projects, none of which are anywhere near shipping or this price.

~~~
tibbon
Its a good question that I think lacks good statistics. Kickstarter is trying
to encourage people to actually ship/finish projects with little things, like
the "expected ship date" on backer rewards to give people a little pressure.

It also all depends why you back projects. I back them for the same reason
that I'm a trustee of the Awesome Foundation- I want to encourage amazing
things to happen in the world. Sometimes, this involves a lot of failures or
false starts. Some people are ok with that, others aren't.

How many Y-Combinator companies have actually shipped a finished product? Same
thing.

~~~
alttab
I agree with this. Giving money to a kickstarter is like Angel investment.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. The running idea is here "if its a bad
idea, it won't get funded." Clearly in our industry that isn't true.

And if you ask me, if a bunch of Kickstarter projects fail to deliver and the
money is simply squandered, that says more about the "kickerstarters" than
Kickstarter itself.

~~~
tibbon
Yes. People need to not think of Kickstarter as a store- because it isn't. At
a store you buy something and then own it. With Kickstarter you back a
project, and then hopefully have one sent to you.

Of note, money is often squandered in startups too :)

------
evo
I've been hacking on an intercept driver layer to retrofit existing games for
this platform.

[http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=15086](http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=15086)

It'll be great to actually get some hardware to play with.

~~~
Sottilde
This is great, thanks for posting! I would love to see a generalized driver,
either from the OSS community or even AMD/NV (we can dream). It's a little
more complicated than existing 3D implementations, as you know, but if the
Rift becomes popular enough, anything's possible.

------
losvedir
Very excited about this! I'm in for the $300 package. I've been eagerly
following the progress on the original thread:
[http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=14777&...](http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=14777&sid=7db746c4f7fc949f126603db8047ac6e)
. Carmack comes in and posts periodically.

------
zephjc
Having been interested in VR since the early 90s, I have to say I am more than
ready for _any_ kind of good, hi-res, low-latency VR system - this definitely
looks promising, given all the high praise from Gaben and Carmack.

------
pwny
There is something to be done here by combining this with a Kinect or by by
finding a way to point a camera at where the user is looking and going the
Augmented Reality way.

I have to admit I'm a little turned off by the way those big players are only
symbolically endorsing it but might very well get myself a dev kit anyways.

------
Reltair
How well would this work for people who wear glasses? I'm assuming I would
have to wear contacts to use the devkit version at least.

~~~
epaik
From Carmack's post in the comments of the Kickstarter:

 _The early prototype could not be worn with glasses. If you modify it to
stand off far enough from the face to allow glasses, the fov will be reduced a
lot. One reason it can be so light is that it has smallish lenses very close
to your eyes. With the limited resolution, you don't really need 20/20
effective vision. I hope someone experiments with the kits and builds a
variable focus version, but the standard system is fixed focus._

------
ghostfish
This sounds really interesting, but there's a distinct lack of specifications,
especially when this is targeted at the developer/early adopter community. How
high is "high resolution"? Some display glasses companies (Vuzix) consider
852x480 high resolution, which differs greatly from what I'd consider an
acceptable resolution for anything but old/SD TV shows. More details are
needed.

~~~
Cushman
Carmack answered this in a comment:

 _The display is a single 1280x800 panel; each eye only sees a 640x800 image
stretched across the huge field of view. The perceived resolution is therefore
much lower than even previous generation consumer HMDs. If you are looking for
high resolution, this isn't for you. For immersion, the high FOV is much, much
more important, though._

Those are the prototype specs, mind.

~~~
Karunamon
Ouch.. that kind of torpedoed any interest I had in this thing. I'll stand
back and let everyone else take the jump :)

~~~
druidsbane
I think the key difference is FOV not resolution on this which will basically
put you in there, albeit not as sharp as you'd like.

There was a good point on one of the boards that HD will be hard to achieve on
regular hardware just because you'd need to render at a minimum 60fps for each
eye, and at 1080p few recent games will render at a smooth 120fps which this
implies :) Maybe using 2 graphics cards?

------
gnarbarian
I've been a big proponent of stereo 3d gaming for about 10 years. ever since I
got a pair of the eDimensional shutter glasses. The first time I played quake
3 in 3d it instantly made me twice as good. I was actually able to see the
vectors of the rockets flying through the air and gauge exactly when and where
they would hit. I was able to hit people in mid air with rockets and grenades
way more.

Sadly Nvidia stopped including 3d support in the drivers for their new cards
beyond the 7900. LCD monitors also became popular and didn't support the
higher refresh rates needed for shutter glasses to work. so my glasses went
into a box and eventually broke.

I am extremely excited about the Oculus Rift. I pledged $335 and anticipate
including support for a space combat game I've been working on for the past
few years.

I'm also super stoked that the biggest rock stars of game dev are pledging
their support in upcoming games.

------
spiffistan
Holy crap, I started watching the video at $188,000. Before I finished it had
incremented to $190,000...$192,300..$195,490. This has some serious momentum
right now.

~~~
sillysaurus
Historical note: this kickstarter has now achieved $360,000 in less than two
hours after your comment.

------
derekja
This plus the leap motion could be really amazing. Imagine wearing the headset
and having it track where you look while the leap tracks your hand holding the
gun.

~~~
natep
I've been thinking about this ever since reading Snow Crash. But then how
would your character walk if both hands are occupied by holding a gun? Some
sort of 360-degree treadmill? And then how would the game provide physical
feedback (say, your character runs into a wall)?

~~~
sbierwagen
A grid of trackballs that you walk on, essentially, with slightly higher
rolling resistance so there's some ground friction. The "wall problem" is
mostly intractable, barring utility fog.

------
gavanwoolery
Just bought a devkit...hopefully this thing performs well enough to bring VR
into the mainstream. :)

~~~
wccrawford
At this point, I'm willing to settle for "A lot of fun to play with as a
developer for only $300." ;)

But if it could bring VR gaming into the mainstream, that would be awesome.

Maybe people will start making games use the Razer Hydra natively, too. The
only game so far to do that is Portal 2, and it was amazing. Everything else
is emulating a standard gamepad, and it's horrible.

(There's an indie game using Unity that uses the Hydra and it's showing
promise, but it's not ready yet.)

~~~
tchock23
I'm approaching this project with the same mindset...

For $300, even if it just turns into a toy to develop with I will still be
happy about funding it (assuming, of course, it reaches its funding goal and
is delivered - still big "ifs" with Kickstarter campaigns).

------
msprague
This seems awesome, but I'm not sure why they would need a kickstarter
project. With the people interviewed in this video, it seems like they would
have no problem getting the funding that they needed. The reason in the video
is that so they could "get it to developers as fast as possible", but I'm not
sure how kickstarter would help speed the development process to get it an SDK
released any sooner than if it was funded a more traditional way.

~~~
Cushman
I can never understand why this comment pops up about every Kickstarter. Why
on earth would you take out a loan when you can take pre-orders instead?

~~~
nooneelse
Low commitment pre-orders at that. The reasoning seems pretty simple and
clear. Even if you plan on or think you might need to take a loan/investment
later, since you already have the pitch ready, why not do the Kickstarter too?

------
Apocryphon
Imagine this as a future game system package: an OUYA console library with
graphics tailor-made for the Oculus and CLANG integration- brought to you by
Kickstarter.

------
tripzilch
_You put on the videohelmet, and you quickly realize that this is not just
another videogame ... Your entire field of vision fills with another worldly
scene--You're in the game! One day will come as you enter the cyberspace and
you never ever want to get out because reality is shit and cyberspace is gone:
DELETE YOURSELF, you've got no chance to win!_ ;-)

------
canttestthis
I'm not really interested in gaming, but I'm really looking forward to other
applications of this headset. Like multiple screens. Having multiple virtual
screens around you to simulate a multi-monitor setup would be awesome. Same
productivity, in a fraction of the space required.

EDIT: It doesn't look like it will be possible with this though. The
resolution is very limited.

~~~
eostyx
Don't worry dreamer! I bet in a year or two (if this is mainstream that is) we
will be seeing Super HD coming in. Imagine Retina HMD. All in good time we
will be transcend the confines of our mere monitors and reach for the realm of
<insert dream>.

------
mtgx
If Sony is smart, they would get this to compete with Kinect, and use it as a
default accessory for PS4. The Gaikai guy seemed to like it, and Sony bought
Gaikai recently, so I assume they've already heard about it. I also think Sony
was already working on VR headsets, but it probably didn't work as well, and
cost like $700 or more.

------
sandGorgon
I wonder what is the processing power needed to make a true-immersive game. I
am not sure how the FPS requirements of a large HD monitor translate to the
Oculus, but does anybody know if this is something that can be powered by the
Tegra 4 ?

If yes, then the next generation of games will be incredible, social and
mobile.

------
baggachipz
I don't get it. Why do people want to pay for a dev kit? They should be paying
developers to take it and use it.

"I've been thinking of buying a new car. Pledge to give me $500 to help me buy
my car and I'll send you a t-shirt with my car's picture on it."

~~~
rufus_t
The dev kit isn't just an SDK - like console dev kits, it includes the
hardware. Giving them away to anyone who says "yeah, I'll totally make
software for that" doesn't sound like a brilliant business plan.

~~~
wccrawford
Actually, that is a valid tactic, if you are having trouble getting your
hardware to gain mindshare.

For this, though... Well, it's already over 3x its initial goal and shows no
signs of slowing. They absolutely made the right decision to charge for the
devkits. At least, to the plebs, like me.

Higher level developers (i.e. famous names) probably will get a kit or 2 for
free still. If Carmack wasn't already part of it, he'd be one of the names I'd
expect to get a free kit.

------
ben0x539
I'll be surprised if notch doesn't drop a few thousand on this before it's
over.

~~~
druidsbane
He's already a backer...

------
JabavuAdams
Is there any SDK information available now? I want to start hacking now so I
have some software by the time I get my unit.

------
JonoW
I think something like this in combination with Kinect/Leap would be an
incredibly immersive experience.

------
Lewisham
The video sets off all sorts of alarm bells. Something about this is very,
very wrong. Why would all these game developers agree to be in a video
endorsing the product, but not actually front money for it?

iD/Zenimax, Epic and Valve would all see the hoped for $250 000 as chump
change for a dev kit. Split between the three and it's essentially nothing. My
guess is Microsoft or Sony would love nothing more than to tie up an exclusive
peripheral for their next-gen consoles, and buy the company outright (as MS
did with Kinect). This would be a true differentiator.

That they're looking to Kickstarter to sell $300 dev kits makes me think
something very bad is going unsaid. My wild guess is that they still give
people headaches as with previous VR attempts, and no-one is willing to put
money in the pot with the expectation that it is unsolvable.

People putting money into this are as crazy as those who put money into the
OUYA.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Wow.

So the guy goes out and gets endorsements, on video, from the biggest names in
the field. The absolute biggest. And they are unreservedly enthusiastic.

And to you, that's a negative sign.

Wow.

I'm seriously starting to wonder about the HN culture that produces such
conclusions at the top comment.

First of all, how do you know they didn't front money? Answer- you don't know
that. It's likely some or all them have done so.

There are very good reasons not to make this a Valve product or an id product
or what have you. Can you think of them?

The conclusion that something is wrong here may well be a jump-the-shark
moment for HN comments.

~~~
bobds
If Valve et al have already invested in the project, Kickstarter could be more
about marketing than funding.

