Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

[Waggler]

Spinning by rotating the torso right? Good idea. That might actually work. I guess a depth camera can easily take care of that. Then again I'm not sure mapping too many controls to body movements is a good idea. Gamers generally want to move as little as possible

I just found all your Move videos by following the links you posted earlier. There was a lot of interesting stuff and thoughtful analysis in those videos. Have you made any more than the SOCOM4 video where you look at the Sharpshooter?

The reason I ask is because I got myself a Sharpshooter with the intent of using with a PC. (As I've seen other people here on the board have done.) One thing I've concluded so far is that you don't want to use a weapon to control body aim. Having to aim towards the edges to turn becomes a shore IMHO and makes it very difficult to do moves like circle strafing.

However, I think that what the Sharpshooter does best (at least in Killzone 3, which is the only compatible game I have) is when you bring up the iron-sights. This makes it possible to aim and fire pretty much as in a light gun game. I imagine that mode combined with head and gun tracking would be pretty amazing.

To control the players body I think the simplest solution could be to add a second thumbstick to something like a Sharpshooter. So you have one to control your movement and one to control your "body-aim". I'm also thinking that if you're standing up it could be neat to have completely separate head, gun and body aim. But if you're sitting down you'd probably want to have head and gun aim by relative to your body. (In that case "straight ahead" of your physical body would be the direction of your virtual body, and you'd turn using a control stick, similar to the Doom3 method.)

No, I didn't publish any other SS related videos other than the SOCOM 4 one, the reason being I hate that thing for exactly the same reasons you bring up. It's a great attachment, mind you, but operating it to control the camera is hardly convenient. It's much easier to control the camera with the wrist (that is, with just the vanilla Move) rather than with your upper body, because with the latter you have to deal with added inertia.

I think the reason why it feels better when bringing up the iron-sight is because you generally don't move the camera at all in that mode. Like you said, it works pretty much like in a lightgun game. I do still prefer using the wrist because it's faster, but yeah I agree that mode + headtracking + gun tracking would be amazing.

[hast]

No, I didn't publish any other SS related videos other than the SOCOM 4 one, the reason being I hate that thing for exactly the same reasons you bring up. It's a great attachment, mind you, but operating it to control the camera is hardly convenient. It's much easier to control the camera with the wrist (that is, with just the vanilla Move) rather than with your upper body, because with the latter you have to deal with added inertia.

Yeah, I found that when I was only walking around the Sharpshooter was very annoying and it even made my hand hurt enough that I could only play for about an hour. (The reason for this is that you have to twist the entire gun left and right to turn and this feels very unnatural.)

Ideally I think you'd want to be able to bring the weapon down across your chest when moving around as that would make it possible to relax your arms and hands. (Much like you would with a real weapon.)

[Waggler]

No, I didn't publish any other SS related videos other than the SOCOM 4 one, the reason being I hate that thing for exactly the same reasons you bring up. It's a great attachment, mind you, but operating it to control the camera is hardly convenient. It's much easier to control the camera with the wrist (that is, with just the vanilla Move) rather than with your upper body, because with the latter you have to deal with added inertia.

Yeah, I found that when I was only walking around the Sharpshooter was very annoying and it even made my hand hurt enough that I could only play for about an hour. (The reason for this is that you have to twist the entire gun left and right to turn and this feels very unnatural.)

Ideally I think you'd want to be able to bring the weapon down across your chest when moving around as that would make it possible to relax your arms and hands. (Much like you would with a real weapon.)

Yes, but you can't do that cos otherwise the camera would pitch downwards. In a VR environment, with the gun detached from view, you could totally do that

[Alkapwn]

Basically, if we could make the board a little bigger it would be no problem to get the price down to say 80US$. The components are not so expensive. It is the 6-layer PCB + 3D printed case that drives the price up. But if the board could be a little bigger we could use only two layers and therefore become much cheaper. If we knew that there is a certain number of people who are interested in this tyoe of low-cost board we could build it in no time (means, a few weeks).

Would this be something Palmer and Oculus crew could implement into the Rift?

[Mel]

Gamers generally want to move as little as possible !

Speak for yourself, man what I'd give for the ability to play FPS while doing my cardio...

I already do: I play GTA IV on my treadmill. When a new mission starts, instead of 'jacking a car, I hop on my treadmill, controller in hand (with an elastic band wrapped around it such that it depresses the 'X' button (run)), and I jog myself to the mission destination. Helluva workout.

It also helps that I have the whole thing set up in front of my 150" projector system.

[Waggler]

HD version of my Oculus Rift video is live. Hopefully there are no more typos!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJoi2A2566U[/youtube]

[brantlew]

I haven't used it, but I think the FSRK-USB-2 has a major drawback compared to our thing. It doesn't contain a magnetometer for yaw drift compensation. That means that the yaw angle measurement will drift over time. For example I would guess that if you did some fast turning movements (like we do in the second half of our demo video) with the FSRK-USB-2, the scenery would eventually not turn back to its original position. This is because the error from the gyroscope integration gradually becomes bigger which results in an offset.

I would think that having some additional heading reference (either magnetometer or optical) is unavoidable for head tracking.

While I agree that a drift compensated sensor is better than one that is not for the general case, the truth is that for most of the content that the Rift will be used for - namely first-person-shooters - yaw drift is a non-issue. For unidirectional/seated play the gamepad is used to swing the character around so a fixed reference frame is meaningless. For standing-360 play, a 1:1 turning angle is not perceptible to the player so drift also doesn't matter. It only matters in the case of cockpit simulators (where the forward direction in the virtual world has to align with the forward direction in the real world), augmented reality (where the virtual and real world overlay), and some free-movement scenarios.

[IGameArt]

Thanks Waggler, really great video

[Dycus]

Really like the video, Waggler. Much more information than most other reviews. I take it you enjoyed the demo?

[IGameArt]

@Dycus, maybe you could shed a little light on the subject, but i'm thinking i'll have to wait til my devkit arrives to get my answer, but doom 3 bfg comes with everything DOOM that id has created, from doom 1+2, to doom 3+ ressurection of evil. Now i know that D3 +ressurection will support the rift, but what about d1+2? I'd love to be immersed in those 2.5d environments that i've been modding for the past few years

[Mel]

Once comprehensive motion detection/control systems become available (and I hope the Rift is the impetus for this), there should be all kinds of possibilities in the sports gaming realm. Imagine playing football with the Rift, putting you right in the middle of the action! Too awesome!

I'm so excited for the future of VR gaming. Thanks Palmer, et el, for forging the path ahead.

[Waggler]

Really like the video, Waggler. Much more information than most other reviews. I take it you enjoyed the demo?

Oh absolutely. And that was in spite of the blurriness (due to my nearsightedness) and the lack of head position tracking. I can almost taste the awesomeness when that stuff gets fixed/implemented.

Then, it will be interesting to see how control interfaces evolve and developers adapt to this new HID.

I hope the industry as a whole embraces this as soon as possible because this is how you achieve true realism: not by increasing polygon count and texture resolution, but rather by tricking the senses so that brain believes what you are seeing is real, no matter the quality of the actual graphic content. Heck, headtracking and FOV were enough for me to believe I was there even tho it was all blurry. It felt like being in Doom III for real without my prescription glasses on basically

Come to think of it, this could actually be beneficial for the industry in terms of development budgets since you don't need to invest that much into graphics to make something believable. But I digress.

[brantlew]

Once comprehensive motion detection/control systems become available (and I hope the Rift is the impetus for this), there should be all kinds of possibilities in the sports gaming realm. Imagine playing football with the Rift, putting you right in the middle of the action! Too awesome!

I'm so excited for the future of VR gaming. Thanks Palmer, et el, for forging the path ahead.

Agreed. Sports is a really untapped area when it comes to immersive gaming. Particularly American football (quarterback position only), golf, bowling, and boxing would work amazingly well in a relatively confined space with 1:1 motion sensor technology and immersive viewing.

[hast]

Oh absolutely. And that was in spite of the blurriness (due to my nearsightedness) and the lack of head position tracking. I can almost taste the awesomeness when that stuff gets fixed/implemented.

If you don't mind me asking... How nearsighted are you? I'm pretty extreme myself (about -10, -10) so I'm curious how much work would have to be done to make it useable for me. (Particularly if I'm in a situation where I'm demoing to other people.)

[Waggler]

Oh absolutely. And that was in spite of the blurriness (due to my nearsightedness) and the lack of head position tracking. I can almost taste the awesomeness when that stuff gets fixed/implemented.

If you don't mind me asking... How nearsighted are you? I'm pretty extreme myself (about -10, -10) so I'm curious how much work would have to be done to make it useable for me. (Particularly if I'm in a situation where I'm demoing to other people.)

I'm about -2 per eye, with slight astigmatism. I'm afraid you wont be able to see much with the current set up.

[Dycus]

@Dycus, maybe you could shed a little light on the subject, but i'm thinking i'll have to wait til my devkit arrives to get my answer, but doom 3 bfg comes with everything DOOM that id has created, from doom 1+2, to doom 3+ ressurection of evil. Now i know that D3 +ressurection will support the rift, but what about d1+2? I'd love to be immersed in those 2.5d environments that i've been modding for the past few years

To be honest, I know as much about that as you do. I'm gonna guess no, only because I've never heard Carmack make any mention of it.

Oh absolutely. And that was in spite of the blurriness (due to my nearsightedness) and the lack of head position tracking. I can almost taste the awesomeness when that stuff gets fixed/implemented.

Then, it will be interesting to see how control interfaces evolve and developers adapt to this new HID.

I hope the industry as a whole embraces this as soon as possible because this is how you achieve true realism: not by increasing polygon count and texture resolution, but rather by tricking the senses so that brain believes what you are seeing is real, no matter the quality of the actual graphic content. Heck, headtracking and FOV were enough for me to believe I was there even tho it was all blurry. It felt like being in Doom III for real without my prescription glasses on basically

Come to think of it, this could actually be beneficial for the industry in terms of development budgets since you don't need to invest that much into graphics to make something believable. But I digress.

I know how you feel. I'm very nearsighted myself. I was building a prototype that was gonna be shown off at Quakecon, but I accidentally made the focus wrong because I had my glasses off. It looked nice and sharp to me, but not quite so much for everybody else.

And immersion is definitely the most important thing here. It's definitely possible to see the pixel grid, but if you forget about focusing on that and just play the game, you'll find yourself not noticing it at all. It's just so natural to look at the little things in levels now, too. Your head just looks at stuff, and you don't even have to make the effort to move the analog stick and look at something.

[Waggler]

And immersion is definitely the most important thing here. It's definitely possible to see the pixel grid, but if you forget about focusing on that and just play the game, you'll find yourself not noticing it at all. It's just so natural to look at the little things in levels now, too. Your head just looks at stuff, and you don't even have to make the effort to move the analog stick and look at something.

True. It feels so natural you even tend to get closer by bending forward for further inspection. Of course nothing happens with the current set up due to the lack of position tracking, but you still get that impulse to check stuff up close.

On a related note, I also appreciated how stable and smooth the viewing experience "felt". I was worried the fast headtracking would result in spastic camera behavior (like vids recorded with a shaky cam) but that's not the case at all. I guess this is because your eyes naturally (and effortlessly) keep pointing at whatever you are looking at, sort of compensating for head movements in another direction. This, plus the large FOV of course.

[jis]

Thanks for the video Waggler, it is really helpful to quantify the details on the human perception.

[Mind]

@Dycus, maybe you could shed a little light on the subject, but i'm thinking i'll have to wait til my devkit arrives to get my answer, but doom 3 bfg comes with everything DOOM that id has created, from doom 1+2, to doom 3+ ressurection of evil. Now i know that D3 +ressurection will support the rift, but what about d1+2? I'd love to be immersed in those 2.5d environments that i've been modding for the past few years

You can be sure that Doom1 and Doom2 are without Rift support. There are to many 2d-sprites in doom1+2, like monster and weapons. Even in Doom3 there are effects in 2d that sucks with the Rift. So some effects of Doom3 are disabled when you play it with the Rift.


@Dycus

I heard that many testers got "motionsick" while testing the Rift.
Do you mean that it is possible to play complete through Doom3 with the Rift without to puke?

I understand that this sickness comes because your visual input differs from the other imputs - mainly your sense of balcance. Is it clear that a near future fix will get the latency, Headtracking and other things so good that you will not get sick?
Or it is possible that you need to avoid many movements while beeing in the VR for a forseeable future? Is the max 20ms latency with good headtracking that carmack mentioned, the expected breakingpoint for longer pukefree sessions?

[Krisper]

We recently came up with a demo for this: http://www.lp-research.com/lpms-head-tracking-demo/
The 3D graphics is a bit old-schoolish (+ a few bugs), though. But the main thing is that latency is low and here is no drift (thanks to the magnetometer). Anyway we combined the system with an optical tracker as well: http://www.lp-research.com/simultaneous ... -tracking/

Could make it really cheap, too. So it might be interesting for low cost VR.

That is a really nice tracker. I'd certainly be interested in one if the price was right. I was wondering, if you shake the tracker, does that translate to rotation from the accelerometers, or have you compensated for that. That was what was so nice about the InterTrax2, you could shake it as much as you like and all it delivered was the correct rotation.

While I agree that a drift compensated sensor is better than one that is not for the general case, the truth is that for most of the content that the Rift will be used for - namely first-person-shooters - yaw drift is a non-issue. For unidirectional/seated play the gamepad is used to swing the character around so a fixed reference frame is meaningless. For standing-360 play, a 1:1 turning angle is not perceptible to the player so drift also doesn't matter. It only matters in the case of cockpit simulators (where the forward direction in the virtual world has to align with the forward direction in the real world), augmented reality (where the virtual and real world overlay), and some free-movement scenarios.

I think the reason the drift was being discussed as a negative issue was when it is coupled with hand tracking. But if that can be tracked relative to the headtracker, then the drift won't matter either.

[Krenzo]

You can be sure that Doom1 and Doom2 are without Rift support. There are to many 2d-sprites in doom1+2, like monster and weapons. Even in Doom3 there are effects in 2d that sucks with the Rift. So some effects of Doom3 are disabled when you play it with the Rift.

There are mods for Doom that have redone all sprites in 3D. It might be worth trying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKz2VRCkz-s

[Mind]

You can be sure that Doom1 and Doom2 are without Rift support. There are to many 2d-sprites in doom1+2, like monster and weapons. Even in Doom3 there are effects in 2d that sucks with the Rift. So some effects of Doom3 are disabled when you play it with the Rift.

There are mods for Doom that have redone all sprites in 3D. It might be worth trying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKz2VRCkz-s

Yes, but i understand that ID-Software did not try it. I think that takes away the spirit of the game. In such a compilation doom 1 is ment to be seen like it was in the old days.

But i am pretty sure that someone will hack Rift-Support for doom1. But don't think that doom1+2 are good games for the Rift. In Doom3 you move like a human, while you went through Doom1+2 with superfast movement. I think that is not a good thing to do in VR.

[android78]

... Not to mention that they used ray casting for rendering, not polygons. So all the perspective would be totally wrong, particularly if you were to introduce head tracking for looking up and down. Has anyone tried playing the original duke nukem recently and realized why that game used to make me so sick? Due to ray casting, there is no vertical perspective - when you look up at a wall, it is still a vertical line!
Maybe using a totally new, polygon-based engine that could use the original maps and resources, then it could work.

[Dycus]

@Dycus

I heard that many testers got "motionsick" while testing the Rift.
Do you mean that it is possible to play complete through Doom3 with the Rift without to puke?

I understand that this sickness comes because your visual input differs from the other imputs - mainly your sense of balcance. Is it clear that a near future fix will get the latency, Headtracking and other things so good that you will not get sick?
Or it is possible that you need to avoid many movements while beeing in the VR for a forseeable future? Is the max 20ms latency with good headtracking that carmack mentioned, the expected breakingpoint for longer pukefree sessions?

At Quakecon, we had only three people report feeling sick - two of them said they get motion sickness. There were maybe a couple more who said they were a bit dizzy afterwards. Out of the few hundred people who tried it, I'd say that's not bad.

The most likely problem is that their brain thought they were moving forward, but their ears told them otherwise. That's the classic cause of motion sickness; discrepancies between senses. It seems to be a non-issue with most people, though. Also, because the headset does not track position in space, if you sway back and forth with it on, your view in the headset will not change, and that can be a problem too. Latency isn't the issue, really, it's lateral motion. I don't know if we're going to support spatial tracking in the future or not.

I've never used VR headsets before, and I had no problem playing the demo for about an hour. Just for the record, I don't get motion sickness (planes, rollercoasters, reading in the car, etc. all do not bother me).

[IGameArt]

well the main reason why i was asking is because they ported the classic doom series to next generation consoles, and my thoughts were if they made it polygonal instead of raycasting, which would give a boost in perf as well as visual quality. If thats the case, then it could easily be adjusted to work with the rift. If they didnt do that, then I suppose it up to the guys over at zdoom to get that support into gzdoom. Shouldnt be too hard really Hopefully anyways

[niall]

We recently came up with a demo for this: http://www.lp-research.com/lpms-head-tracking-demo/
The 3D graphics is a bit old-schoolish (+ a few bugs), though. But the main thing is that latency is low and here is no drift (thanks to the magnetometer). Anyway we combined the system with an optical tracker as well: http://www.lp-research.com/simultaneous ... -tracking/

Could make it really cheap, too. So it might be interesting for low cost VR.

Putting those onto gloves like these:

http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com.au/2010/ ... s-for.html

and getting relative positioning going between the HMD and the gloves (and relative finger positions, and pressure sensitve finger/palm sensors down the road)...... I'd buy it!

What really excites me about all of this is that we're getting closer to the point where we'll be able to to "see" our hands through the HMD - with relatively accurate position, orientation, fingers etc. Any kind of gun or device in the game could be overlayed on that virtual hand, using your finger sensors for control e.g. index finger trigger movement fires, thumbs up does something else, ... think multi-touch but in 3 dimensions so 1 and 2 hand gestures, say send a Street Figher II fireball with the appropriate wrists together gesture.

Forget keyboards, mice, joypads, guns... we've got to head in the direction that Apple is going and just use what we have - our hands and body. Maybe Kinect will get there one day, but you'd want to be surrounded by sensors in a cave like environment. If we can just put on a pair of gloves, which talk back to the base station/HMD via Bluetooth, then it's just a matter of time for the HMD to go wireless also and we can use these tools in any environment outdoors or indoors, alone or in groups, sitting or standing, blah blah blah

[Waggler]

We recently came up with a demo for this: http://www.lp-research.com/lpms-head-tracking-demo/
The 3D graphics is a bit old-schoolish (+ a few bugs), though. But the main thing is that latency is low and here is no drift (thanks to the magnetometer). Anyway we combined the system with an optical tracker as well: http://www.lp-research.com/simultaneous ... -tracking/

Could make it really cheap, too. So it might be interesting for low cost VR.

Putting those onto gloves like these:

http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com.au/2010/ ... s-for.html

and getting relative positioning going between the HMD and the gloves (and relative finger positions, and pressure sensitve finger/palm sensors down the road)...... I'd buy it!

What really excites me about all of this is that we're getting closer to the point where we'll be able to to "see" our hands through the HMD - with relatively accurate position, orientation, fingers etc. Any kind of gun or device in the game could be overlayed on that virtual hand, using your finger sensors for control e.g. index finger trigger movement fires, thumbs up does something else, ... think multi-touch but in 3 dimensions so 1 and 2 hand gestures, say send a Street Figher II fireball with the appropriate wrists together gesture.

Forget keyboards, mice, joypads, guns... we've got to head in the direction that Apple is going and just use what we have - our hands and body. Maybe Kinect will get there one day, but you'd want to be surrounded by sensors in a cave like environment. If we can just put on a pair of gloves, which talk back to the base station/HMD via Bluetooth, then it's just a matter of time for the HMD to go wireless also and we can use these tools in any environment outdoors or indoors, alone or in groups, sitting or standing, blah blah blah

I don't know. I still like the feeling of pressing a physical button or squeezing a physical trigger.

[Trilion99]

While I agree that a drift compensated sensor is better than one that is not for the general case, the truth is that for most of the content that the Rift will be used for - namely first-person-shooters - yaw drift is a non-issue. For unidirectional/seated play the gamepad is used to swing the character around so a fixed reference frame is meaningless. For standing-360 play, a 1:1 turning angle is not perceptible to the player so drift also doesn't matter. It only matters in the case of cockpit simulators (where the forward direction in the virtual world has to align with the forward direction in the real world), augmented reality (where the virtual and real world overlay), and some free-movement scenarios.

Hmm, agreed. If you use the game controller to adjust the yaw position, there is no problem to compensate for slight drifts. On the other hand, there might also be the case that the player just stands in one place for some time and just looks around by turning his head. Depending on the amount of the drift the player will turn his head back and look at a different place each time (i mean shifted by a few degrees). This of course also depends very much on the quality of the used gyro.

Another problem might be the drift of the zero offset of the gyro. After playing a few minutes the gyroscope zero offset (the average of the gyroscope output when the unit is not moving) will slightly change. After longer playing time this will result in not only having a certain angle offset (which can be compensated by the joypad), but also a constant rotation into one direction. This rotating motion can be removed by recalibrating the gyroscope, for which the player would have to interrupt game for a few seconds.

[Myuria]

I hope the industry as a whole embraces this as soon as possible because this is how you achieve true realism: not by increasing polygon count and texture resolution, but rather by tricking the senses so that brain believes what you are seeing is real, no matter the quality of the actual graphic content.

Haha, this reminded me of watching the TV series ReBoot. Its graphics were simple and unusual even for the time it was made, but because the visual theme was uniform and all the designs meshed together, the world became believable.

I wonder if there's a market for "retro VR graphics" games, sort of like all the pixelated 2D indie games. Same sort of thing - artful and intentionally offbeat. It would be interesting to see what sort of trippy universes could be made to feel real.

[Trilion99]

That is a really nice tracker. I'd certainly be interested in one if the price was right. I was wondering, if you shake the tracker, does that translate to rotation from the accelerometers, or have you compensated for that. That was what was so nice about the InterTrax2, you could shake it as much as you like and all it delivered was the correct rotation.

Thanks. I put a low-pass filter on the acceleromter data to remove the linear acceleration. That works quite well. I also calculate the linear acceleration itself by generating a gravity vector from the orientation data of the sensor and subtracting that from the raw accelerometer data.

[Vujagig]

@Dycus

I heard that many testers got "motionsick" while testing the Rift.
Do you mean that it is possible to play complete through Doom3 with the Rift without to puke?

I understand that this sickness comes because your visual input differs from the other imputs - mainly your sense of balcance. Is it clear that a near future fix will get the latency, Headtracking and other things so good that you will not get sick?
Or it is possible that you need to avoid many movements while beeing in the VR for a forseeable future? Is the max 20ms latency with good headtracking that carmack mentioned, the expected breakingpoint for longer pukefree sessions?

At Quakecon, we had only three people report feeling sick - two of them said they get motion sickness. There were maybe a couple more who said they were a bit dizzy afterwards. Out of the few hundred people who tried it, I'd say that's not bad.

The most likely problem is that their brain thought they were moving forward, but their ears told them otherwise. That's the classic cause of motion sickness; discrepancies between senses. It seems to be a non-issue with most people, though. Also, because the headset does not track position in space, if you sway back and forth with it on, your view in the headset will not change, and that can be a problem too. Latency isn't the issue, really, it's lateral motion. I don't know if we're going to support spatial tracking in the future or not.

I've never used VR headsets before, and I had no problem playing the demo for about an hour. Just for the record, I don't get motion sickness (planes, rollercoasters, reading in the car, etc. all do not bother me).

Well, this presentations had been performed with an earlier prototype of the rift.
On the kickstarter page oculus mentions "Head tracking: 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) ultra low latency".
As I understand it this should refer to 3 axis in translation and 3 in rotation, what the shown prototype can't provide.
So I think most cases of motion sickness should not appear with the rift developer kit.
But I am wondering that I haven't found anything from Palmer or John mentioning this improvement.

Did I get something wrong here?

[jis]

Free to move in a direction does not mean that we know your precise position.
I suspect the sensors described as only relative for translations.

[Trilion99]

Free to move in a direction does not mean that we know your precise position.
I suspect the sensors described as only relative for translations.

Calculating the translation from an accelerometer like the one contained in the Rift is very difficult. Inprinciple translation can be calculated from the linear acceleration of the sensor. The data you receive from such a sensor is acceleration + gravity. So you have to calculate the direction of the gravity from the orientation of the sensor and then subtract that from the accelerometer data. In practice the resulting data is very noisy. To get the actual translation you have to integrate this acceleration values two times. That means that with each integration step you also integrate the noise and that about a hundred times per second (depending on the sampling frequency), which results in a huge offset that is really hard to separate from the actual translation information. And you can't even use a Kalman filter because you have no correction values like for the orientation (except maybe air pressure for height, but that also with low resolution).
Probably best to rely on an external optical / magnetic reference system. Another way might be to attach cameras to the HMD to measure optical flow and supplement the accelerometer data.

[IGameArt]

Will you guys be attending PAX this year?

[weisgarb]

Will you guys be attending PAX this year?

http://oculusvr.com/events/

They're currently at Unite in Amsterdam and will be attending Pax Prime. After that Palmer will be spending several weeks in a hospital being treated for exhaustion.

[IGameArt]

I don't doubt it. Guy's have been super busy lately. Really excited to have Oculus so close to home, it's just a shame i couldnt get my hands on some PAX tickets before they sold out. I live literally less than an hour away from seattle.

[PalmerTech]

Busier than you can imagine! We did three days of showing at Gamescom in a meeting room, 30 minute block for each group of press/developers. 24 sessions per day, 12 hours straight, no time for lunch breaks, so we just scheduled people at noon who would not mind us scarfing down some food while they went through the demo.

When I get back from Unite, I have to transport a carload of gear on a 12 hour road trip, sleep overnight, drive another 18 hours to Seattle, do PAX, then drive all the gear back to Los Angeles in a final 22 hour drive. Yes, someone else could do it, but I want to personally make sure all my prototypes are well taken care of, and I have more experience with road tripping than any sane person should. I plan on staying with European time for all the driving so I can drive at night (less traffic) and sleep in the day, run off energy drinks so I can stay awake during the day at PAX, then go home and go into some kind of jetlagged coma for a few days.

Doing a startup is no joke!

[bobv5]

Be careful Palmer, I really don't think a 22 hour drive is safe. Can't you get someone to split the driving time with you?

[PalmerTech]

22 hours is definitely not safe to do alone. I will have a driving partner for the 18 and 22 hour segments of the trip, my wonderful girlfriend is going to be switching out with me. I am doing the trip in my 2001 Honda Insight, the most fuel efficient car you can find! I could do the driving faster, but I plan on staying at 55-60mph in the slow lane, behind a semi or something. When I did the same thing on my last trip, I got 76.4mpg over 842 miles.

[brantlew]

@PalmerTech: C'mon, live a little. Pay the extra $20 bucks, get home three hours earlier, and get some rest. You deserve it.