
Oculus Rift - Dev Kit Review - dsaber
http://devmaster.net/posts/23835/oculus-rift-dev-kit-review
======
mentos
> You cannot play first person games.

As an Oculus Rift owner I've been able to play HL2 for three hours straight
with zero breaks. It was hands down the best gaming experience of my life and
this is coming from someone who really doesn't appreciate single player games.

People don't believe it but you DO have to gain your 'vr legs' before diving
into fast paced games like FPS.

You have to gradually work your way through games that are just at your limit
until you find yourself able to handle something fast paced like FPS. For me
it went roughly Blue Marble,Alone in the Dark,VR Helicopter,War Thunder (for 2
weeks), DoD:Source, HL2.

I think what may have been key to my transition was when I played DoD:Source,
I just treated the Rift like a big screen in front of my face and used my
mouse to look around the world rather than my head (DoD currently does not
have separate head look/mouse look so where your head moves your cursor moves
and vise versa). When I finally got around to playing HL2 (which has separate
mouse look/head look so you can look up a flight of stairs, and than bring
your cursor up to shoot) it was a small enough jump from DoD that I was able
to play a half hour my first night, an hour my second and 3rd nights, and 3
straight hours on my last when I beat the game.

I think the greater issue Oculus Rift faces is that, even if you are careful
to slowly acclimate yourself as I did, over time you will build a slight
aversion to the Oculus Rift as your brain associates the odd glitch of nausea
that are inevitable in any game with the Rift. So while I did say that HL2 was
the best gaming experience of my life, I do admit that I haven't been back to
it since. I don't know if thats a function of me beating the game or nausea,
but I'd probably put it at 80/20 respectively.

I think that it will just be a matter of how compelling a game is to overcome
the nausea/aversion. I suspect that if GTAV releases for the PC that I'll find
myself logging multiple hour session in the Rift again.

~~~
jvrossb
My first time with Oculus demos I got very nauseated. The next day I tried
playing HL2, I got a little queasy for sure. The next day it was totally fine.
I'm sure that your mileage will vary, but it is entirely possible to feel sick
the first couple times you use it and then get used to it over a couple days.

------
devx
> I think the tech will shine if they ever manage to fit 4K resolution in
> there.

That's probably going to take a few generations, and they might do it faster
and with better results if they used this technology instead, which apparently
doesn't give eye-strain like LCD's do, too:

[http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-virtual-
retina...](http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-virtual-retinal-
display/4505-34900_7-35828603.html)

By the way, check out this Redditor's crazy story about falling asleep with
the Oculus Rift, and waking up feeling like he was actually in there for the
first couple of minutes:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1oe33h/so_i_fell_asl...](http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1oe33h/so_i_fell_asleep_wearing_the_riftand_woke_up_to_a/)

Sounds like we'll be on one hell of a ride in the next 10 years, if Oculus
Rift gets so immersive, and hundred of millions of people have them, all
preferring to be in their high quality virtual realities over real life, most
of the time, and feeling "disconnected" when they aren't there, just like we
feel now without the Internet.

~~~
dualogy
> if Oculus Rift gets so immersive, and hundred of millions of people have
> them, all preferring to be in their high quality virtual realities over real
> life, most of the time

Much as dislike this outlook, it might actually make a lot of currently
somewhat "overpopulated" physical real places (with traffic jams etc.) a lot
more pleasant, so yeah, let's see :D

------
rheide
Interesting. I had a very similar initial experience [1]. I got sick from Half
Life 2 the first two times playing it, but the third time I managed to do a
40-minute session without feeling any serious nausea. It's definitely
something you can train yourself to tolerate.

But srsly, 4K resolution is an absolute must.

[1] [http://www.colorfulwolf.com/blog/2013/10/02/oculus-rift-
dev-...](http://www.colorfulwolf.com/blog/2013/10/02/oculus-rift-dev-kit-
first-impressions/)

~~~
FLUX-YOU
I wonder if you can take some Dramamine and still get used to it without
having to endure the initial nausea.

------
petercooper
_You cannot play first person games. As cool as they are for the first minute,
beyond that motion sickness kicks in._

It's only one data point but I've not had any nausea with extensive playing of
Minecraft and HL2. Indeed, the biggest problems by far are the lenses steaming
up and the gigantic pixels/low resolution (I'm not even sure 1080 would
improve this significantly since it's already 720, isn't it? It feels like it
needs a doubling, at a minimum.) However, every other (adult) person I've
tried it on _has_ indeed felt quite nauseous very quickly.

Like others though, I think the big initial wins won't be in FPS games since
they also encourage you to run around and interact with an environment that
doesn't exist. Flight sims, space sims, underwater sims, racing sims.. this
could be a huge deal.

~~~
ravingraven
It 100% will be a huge deal with flight sims. The Rift is ideal for that. In a
few years, playing a sim without some kind of high immersion device like the
Rift will be like playing a flight sim without a joystick today.

------
beloch
I wonder if, for those who experience it, the motion sickness would be as bad
if running around on an omni-directional treadmill. While your body would be
moving to match your avatar, your inner ear might still sense that you are
stationary and cause you to feel nauseous.

~~~
TheEzEzz
My experience:

5 minutes with Occulus and a game pad resulted in about 10 minutes of mild
nausea.

5 minutes with Occulus and Omni resulted in about 30 minutes of moderate but
not debilitating nausea.

Complicating factors: tried the Omni test first, perhaps increasing my
tolerance for the next test. Also used the lower resolution Occulus devkit
with the Omni.

~~~
tocomment
How does the omni control the game? Just curious.

~~~
TheEzEzz
It detects your forward walking motion and translates it to pressing forward
on the keyboard (roughly).

~~~
tocomment
How does turning work? I've been curious if I could build my own omni?

------
AUmrysh
I never really felt much motion sickness from it, even in TF2. I didn't really
enjoy playing that way, as I felt like I lost some of the control mouse+kb
gives, but it's certainly immersive.

petercooper hit on the big problems: the lenses fog up quickly and the low
resolution in the dev kit is distracting.

Also, in some games like surgeon simulator 2013, there is drift which means
you're spinning slowly in a circle to keep looking at the same spot. It's
horribly frustrating, and ruined the (already frustrating) experience for me.

Unreal works very well with it, however. I think any game which doesn't rely
on fast transformations to the perspective will benefit greatly from the
immersion the retail Rift brings.

------
acron0
I agree with the points about FPS games. I played a couple of the demos
without any nausea and then tried HL2 and my stomach was almost instantly in
my throat. On reflection, there was something about the first two demos that
made the difference, I think. In one, you're underwater in a pod, which means
even though you're in first-person, there remains the concept that it's not
_you_ moving, but the pod, and you therefore have a relatively static near-
plane environment which moves subtly, whilst the 'outside world' moves more
freely. In the second demo, a sky-diving simulator, you're free falling, so
there's very little rotation involved.

------
rwmj
I did not get sick at all.

I would definitely try the demos which were written with the Rift in mind, not
general games. RiftCoaster for example is superb (be even better if I could
get it to work under Wine ...).

------
wazoox
So far the main problem I had with the demo system is that I can't set it up
to my very myopic sight; none of the sets of lenses did it, and you can't wear
glasses with it.

~~~
danielbln
It depends on your frame. I can wear glasses with mine no problem.

------
neotek
If anyone in Adelaide, South Australia wants to check out the rift, I have a
dev kit I'm willing to lend out.

------
kybernetyk
When I played around with the Rift I got sick. But taking pills against travel
sickness helped.

