
Pinc: Oculus Rift for the iPhone - sunnynagra
http://hellopinc.com/
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netcan
I don't get the online shopping thing. What does VR contribute here? I'm sure
if VR really gets going, retail will be a part of it but going there at the
demo stage seems really weird.

BTW, what _are_ the basic applications of VR headsets.

IE, a smartphone's basic jobs are text based communication (SMS, whatsapp,
twitter, email etc), calls, camera, web browser, media players, games… There
are an unlimited number of the jobs and different people use different things,
but… well, online shopping isn't one of the big ones.

What are VR headsets for? Do we have any better understanding of this now than
we did ten years ogo?

I'm not sure if this is practical, but my mind goes to 3d movies. IE, there's
a movie that you watch by walking around and listening to different
conversations and seeing different things.

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soylentcola
Granted a lot of this is just speculation based on following more recent
developments and projects on the Oculus forums/subreddit but I think along
with the 3d movie idea, telepresence would be a big one.

There are already a few teams working on prototypes that make use of one or
more Kinect depth cameras to "record" a room in 3D so you can put yourself
back in these recorded 3d scenes later on. Others have been experimenting with
encoding and compressing this data for transmission over networks and decoding
at the other end to provide a sort of real-time 3d telepresence.

Obviously it's limited by using Kinect depth cameras, current consumer
computers, and standard broadband networks but the way I see it, my first Treo
smartphone was limited by the SoC and touchscreen tech of the time as well as
the wireless data networks of the time. Still, it eventually evolved into the
iPhones and Nexuses of today.

I think that at some point, the head-mounted hardware will become more
ergonomic and more functional at costs that allow them to be sold to average
users. Likewise, the hardware and software to capture and encode 3d video
models of a room or "scene" will become more commonplace. Right now it's games
and demos...parlor tricks like the first motion picture reels that eventually
led to IMAX movies.

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netcan
Telepresence is a "who knows" I think. Communication is all nuance. Who would
have expected IM will be more popular than video calling? The only way to know
is to get it out there, I guess.

Gaming seems like a good place to experiment though.

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kape
Interested to see how this compares to Samsung Gear VR
([http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/index.html](http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/index.html))
which combines Galaxy Note 4 and Oculus Rift and is made by Samsung & Oculus
together.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Having watched the John Carmack technical presentation on Gear VR, and the
importance of a low-persistance display, which only AMOLED can do, I'd say the
Gear VR should be superior.

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matthewmacleod
I think that's probably a bit of a reach – the Note's screen only has a 60Hz
refresh rate, for one!

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erikpukinskis
60hz is generally considered "good enought" for presence, the the improvement
at 90hz is perceptable. Particularly with the low-persistence displays, frame
rate is less important than you'd think.

Latency is a bigger problem.

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ztratar
This is extremely interesting. Pretty impressive, actually. I wasn't expecting
this level of quality.

I see this as a great opportunity and industry in the future. I'm surprised
Oculus themselves and Facebook haven't teased any sort of OS layer on top of
the VR environment.

~~~
atmosx
The experience seems a little bit _heavy_ for me. People might get tired
quickly of operating a similar flow, but I'm sure it has many other uses (than
browsing youtube videos).

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jimrandomh
Reusing phones as VR displays, as in this project and in Google Cardboard, is
nice from a cost perspective. But from a quality perspective I think it's a
step wrong direction. VR that's a little bit wrong or inferior is not almost
as good; it's VR that some people can't use because it'll make them sick. This
might match the current generation (if the latency is good enough), but the
current generation isn't quite good enough, and the next iterations of VR are
heading in directions that phone-in-a-box setups can't realistically follow.

~~~
fuzzywalrus
Agreed, watching the video, it looked very disorienting. These mostly seem to
be a stop-gap until hard launches of products that actually can cope with the
ultra-low latency and orientation accuracy that is required for VR headsets.

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fsloth
The presentation looks impressive. How well does the optical control system
for fingers work for interaction and typing?

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gambiting
It's interesting that they are using the Polish "Ć" character in their logo.
Reading it out with the "Ć" character pronounced correctly makes it sound a
bit funny.

This is how it should sound:
[http://www.forvo.com/word/%C4%87/](http://www.forvo.com/word/%C4%87/)

~~~
inaccessible
Yeah, if you use the Serbian pronunciation, and the Hungarian meaning of the
word then it's a kind of bird:
[https://translate.google.com/#hu/en/pinty](https://translate.google.com/#hu/en/pinty)

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rdrey
I would like to understand what advantage their ring-controllers offer over a
wide-angle Leap Motion. Text input by pinching two fingers together seems a
bit clumsy, for example.

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micheljansen
Really interesting to see this coming from a digital agency / consultancy.

What I would really like to know, is how far along development of this thing
really is at the moment. The "preorder" button leads to an IndieGogo page
which mentions expected delivery in June 2015 and aside from a really well
executed landing page with impressive videos and interface shots, there is
little detail about the state of the project.

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mikemajzoub
I wonder how this system will do with arm fatigue (commonly called "gorilla
arm"). This problem plagues touch screens, and based off of Pinc's demo, I
worry about it here as well. Still though, I'm rooting for the team - I've
been dreaming of something like this for a long time!

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codeshaman
Can't wait to see wives and husbands coming back home to their kids after work
and instead of twitting whatsapping and facebooking at the table during family
dinner, the whole merry family puts on these headsets and dissolve into VR,
eating soylent green
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green)),
rendered as roasted chicken in full 3D splendor.

So what if the weather is insane outside, no big deal if we have to wear masks
to breathe, we can always buy clean water at the supermarket and outside
reality will be just fine. We'll spend our life inside these programmed
virtual worlds, were we can be Gods instead. Fuck reality, we're going
Virtual.

I know it's not the most popular idea, but I'm just saying... What is the
purpose of this, except really cool entertainment ?

Why is it that so many extremely smart people work on entertainment instead of
some real save-the-world-because-we're-fucked kind of problems ?

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bottled_poe
Perhaps they have lost faith in this world and wish to create an better,
virtual world instead. Which save-the-world problems are you talking about
exactly? It seems to me that most of the "save the world" problems are
political problems that require a human solution as opposed to a technical
one.

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gress
By 'lost faith in this world', you mean they don't understand how to solve the
problems they see.

If they don't understand how the solve the problems of this world, what makes
them think they'll be able solve the problems of the virtual world they
create?

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TuringTest
You can change the rules of physics in a virtual world. That may help a lot in
finding ways to solve problems.

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gress
Are human conflicts solvable by changing the laws of physics?

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TuringTest
Haven't you seen Cinderella?

This is what Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo does!

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steeve
As a long time Oculus owner, I like that they put the screendoor effect on the
video

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jimrandomh
The shopping/gallery angle is unlikely to work out, because Apple bans third-
party stores of all kinds from their App store, and blocks end users from
installing native apps from anywhere other than the App store.

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CmonDev
Single phone vendor tech is a bit 2012-style. Time to catch up.

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supercoder
I suspect there's a few people out there with iPhones, they'll be ok.

