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

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

Post by brantlew »

android78 wrote:More great press here:
http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3226063
Seems that the standard response when people try the Rift on is "WOW".
Yeah, we've all heard Carmack talk a lot about this but not as much about the experience from the few dozen people who have tried it for the first time. I think it's worth quoting.
It's hard to convey in words the sensation of Carmack's foray into the world of HMD gaming. Ultimately, as rudimentary as his prototype was, it still worked quite well, and having no other peripheral light sensations piercing the casing helped me transport into the testbed world of Doom III.

Initially it does look quite low-res, but as John points out, this is something that will likely change before any such device with his stamp on it even makes it to market. What was most impressive though was the smooth frame-rate and responsiveness to head movement.

I started out using my thumb on the controller to move the camera, but once I realised my head could do the majority of that, it became far more natural to just move in the game-world as I would in real-life. This sensation was furthered when I started to physically react to fireballs being hurled at me from Imps. I began crouching and stiffeing up and I'm not afraid to admit my heart-rate went up as well.

A few minutes into my eyes-in session and I was moving about the game-space like a pro, peeking in and around corners and eating up the virtual 3D world around me as if I were actually there. Obviously the testbed was not nearly as challenging as the actual Doom III game, but it gave great insight into how this technology, specifically for shooters, can work. And again, the only major issue I had was in the overall resolution. It's also important to point out, for all the FPS keyboard and mouse warriors out there, twitch play with head movement coupled with controller in-hand was just as precise and far more engaging. If this technology goes mass market, honestly it's the only way I'd ever want to play a first-person shooter.
I can't wait to try it out at QuakeCon. :D Anyone else planning on going?
Last edited by brantlew on Thu Jul 12, 2012 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by mysticeti »

I can remember physically trying to duck the fireballs thrown by imps in Doom I/II and that was pretty freakin' low res.

Despite the huge increases in 3D graphics over the years I've never, ever felt the need to duck since then.

I fully expect to crap my drawers when I'm immersed in a world rendered through the Oculus Rift. At least for the first few games. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by QuasiSteve »

German wrote:Untrue, they have been steadily raising the pledge levels as the pledges get near the current max. They originally started with 5000 units and are now up to 80000.
Hah - yeah, I noticed they bumped things up.. sneaky buggers. So much for the immutability of pledge levels once a pledge has been placed :)
So, correction: $8,832,500 .. until they bump things up again. :x
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by android78 »

@Endothermic - regarding the negative comments.
I'm actually quite surprised at how overwhelmingly positive the reaction to this has been. I don't think I've see a single 'bad' review from those who have tried it out, and there seem to be at least as many positive comments on the articles I've read, compared to the negatives. This compares to what seemed to be about 90% negative responses to any article that mentioned 3D (mostly referring to TVs or movies) a couple of years ago.
It's too early to say for certain, but I can see the Rift being a big hit in kickstarter, just based on Carmacks word alone... With the positive press, I think that Palmer should brace for more orders then he expects.
We've all been waiting far too long for a decent VR experience. I'm not the only one who grew up in the 80's when the promise seemed that we would all be spending hours a day in full body VR suits by the year 2000, only to be left a couple of steps ahead of where we were in the 80's and the year is 2012!
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Endothermic »

Vaughanabe13 wrote:I find this ironic, considering the sentence is riddled with grammar mistakes. So if you remove that from the list of criteria, your point is basically "I don't like when people disagree with me". Preventing them from posting on the internet is not going to change their opinions.
No thats nothing to do with my point. I never said anything about grammar all I talked about was knowing what it is your talking about before you say something, which has nothing to do with disagreeing with me.

One person was talking about "Google Glasses, its a start". What do Google Glasses have to do with the RIFT? They are completely different and have nothing to do with each other. Some idiot might read that and think the RIFT is just another "Google Glasses" and they've seen the Google Glasses and have no interest or use for that kind of thing so think the RIFT is another useless thing they'll have no interest in and proceed to tell their friends that and so on and so on.

The other guy saying he was an ID fan but wont buy their products again (hello RIFT isn't an ID product and even said so in the article) and that "3D is also gimmicky bullshit and a waste of money". He obviously didn't read all the article or was just unable to take in from it that the RIFT isn't a 3D display (as in thats it's main selling point, what it primarily is). Sure it displays 3D but from that comment if you just read that and not the article you would think the RIFT is just a 3D TV you stick on your head and nothing more (like the sony) when that's not at all what the RIFT is, you could have it without 3D and it would still be pretty much the same thing because 3D isn't one of the major points about it.

Other people might read stuff like that and just get the idea that like with the Google Glasses post that the RIFT is nothing more then another Sony 3D head display and well they don't like 3D and/or that Sony HMD and think its a waste of money just like him and again then proceed to tell everyone they know how RIFT is just a stupid waste of money 3D head display thats good for nothing else other then 3D.

Nothing in there has anything to do with disagreeing with me or poor grammar it is just incorrect statements made about the device based on them either not reading the whole article or just not being able to understand from it what the RIFT actually is and then bothering to find out the facts about it before posting.

They splurt out this incorrect stuff that other people may look at the article and get this idea about what it is thats completely different from what it actually is and since they don't have an interest in what they think it is they never bother to learn about the product and proceeed to spread these incorrect statements which probably get chinese whisper sydrome added to them in the end as well.

Take for example the flase perception that sometime in the future we'll have faster then light no latency internet because of Quantum Entanglement. QE can only have at best the same latency as light in a vacuum but some idiot reading about QE saw the words "instant" and "transfer" mention so then either not reading the whole thing or after reading it and not being able to understand it came to the assume that QE can instantly transfer information from one place to another and proceeded to say that when ppl talked about latency or internet speeds and now the majority of your average joe that has head of QE thinks it will some enable instant communication from one place to another when it can not.

If the people that first start spurting around that QE will enable instant FTL communication actually knew what they were talking about before they said it or checked their assumptions first then the majority of people wouldn't have this completely incorrect idea about QE and that it can enable faster then light data speeds when it can not.

That's what my point was.
Last edited by Endothermic on Thu Jul 12, 2012 8:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by German »

Endothermic wrote:QE can only have at best the same latency as light in a vacuum
I think they know more than you do...
Wikipedia wrote:Experimental results have demonstrated that effects due to entanglement travel at least thousands of times faster than the speed of light,[23][24] and that when measurements of the entangled particles are made in moving, relativistic reference frames in which each respective measurement occurs before the other, the measurement results remain correlated.[25][26]
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Endothermic »

German wrote:I think they know more than you do...
Perhaps you need to read more on QE.

Information/Data is not sent faster then light with QE. A Quantum State is instantly transfered from one particle to the other. A Quantum State however is not usefull information or data, you can not do anything with it unless you know about what the people that were sending it did (which you have to call, email or pigeon that information).

Once they have that information they can then get information out of the entangled particle but without that additional information that needs to be sent at light speed they can not do anything with the information in the entangled particle.

http://www.aip.org/png/html/teleport.htm
"Also, quantum teleportation does not allow for faster-than-light communication."

http://news.discovery.com/tech/teleport ... anics.html
"Entangled information arrives faster than the speed of light, but to read it scientists would need a key to decode the information, which would arrive using traditional communication at slower-than-light speeds."

http://www.fisica.net/teletransporte/ex ... charya.pdf
"Also quantum teleportation does not allow for faster than light communication, although the teleported particle attains the polarization value instantly."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/19 ... 062803.htm
"This does not mean that faster-than-light information transfer has occurred."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -with-ions
"Conventional (nonquantum) communication channels relay information"

or if you prefer your Wikipedia friend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
"however it does not immediately transmit classical information, and therefore cannot be used for communication at superluminal (faster than light) speed."
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Alkapwn »

Vaughanabe13 wrote:"Seriously you should need to get a licence or something to post on the internet so that you have to learn to be able to read and understand what your reading and actually know something about what your going to say before your allowed to say anything"

I find this ironic, considering the sentence is riddled with grammar mistakes. So if you remove that from the list of criteria, your point is basically "I don't like when people disagree with me". Preventing them from posting on the internet is not going to change their opinions.
I find it funny that you literally made your post an example of exactly what he was talking about. Also that people get so worked up on forums. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading Xbox Live transcripts.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by zalo »

I like how he did exactly what you described in the previous post, but we're seriously getting off topic... (GOSHDARNIT NINJA)

But while we're here: http://hypothes.is/
This aims to solve precisely the problem of garbage comments, while being a little more subtle and fair than an Internet Licensing test.

On topic: I'm also really excited that so many people seem to be interested in VR.
Maybe industries thought it had a bad nerd stigma, and inadvertently starved the public of a product that it would really like!...

Or maybe it was all the lawsuits they were getting.
Maybe a licensing test is more appropriate for VR than it is for the Internet.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by TheRealistWord »

I'm a bit late to the party - I saw the great news the day Palmer posted it, but haven't gotten around to adding my two cents yet... until now ;)

I think it's absolutely incredible news that these top developers are showing interest in the Rift, and when the high dogs take interest in something, usually a great chunk of the market will follow. The creators of Skyrim - one of the biggest and most anticipated games of 2011! That definitely speaks for something. And of course, Valve and the rest of the list. Hopefully their interest in the Rift isn't just general curiousity, but instead plans of integrating it into future titles. I honestly think this is what's needed to get the ball rolling and people more focused on the most critical immersion factors in an HMD - FOV, head tracking, and latency. The resolution is pretty low, but like Carmack was saying, it's just a matter of time before newer panels are released with a higher PPI. It's pretty much a given (how many times a month do we hear about all these different companies working on super high resolution screens?).

About a possible successor to the Rift in 2013... it sounds incredible, but I really hope that that particular statement doesn't veer people away from supporting and purchasing the Rift being released here shortly, adopting the mindset, "Why would I buy this one, when I know that there's a high chance a better version will be out next year sometime?" I'm sure a lot of companies might gauge the consumer market's interest in low priced HMD's depending on how well this first version of the Rift sells, so let's hope people don't pass this one up just because they're expecting a better version to be released next year. And even with the big names involved, I'm sure the money made from this first initial batch is pretty crucial to the future of the Rift overall. Well, my thoughts anyway, maybe you're almost settled to the point where you'd still be financially comfortable if this first set of Rifts didn't take off as planned. I suppose only you know, Palmer ;)

Either way, I'm too anxious not to fund the kickstarter when it sets off later this month, ME WANT ME RIFT. 8-)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Alkapwn »

My assumption with all the big name developers is not only that they're looking to the future, but to all their current games as well. From the looks of the work that cybereality and Emerson have been pumping out, making the Rift native on all their current and past games would be a huge marketing plus for them. Anyone that doesn't own their games and now has a Rift, has a huge incentive to go out and buy those games that have now been made "Rift Ready" (patent pending).
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cybereality »

Well if you want to avoid idiots on the internet you could find a small, underground forum where only a bunch of geeks that know what they are talking about hang out. Wait...
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Endothermic »

Yes that was my fault and then continued to derail it with the QE stuff :? sorry.
zalo wrote:Maybe industries thought it had a bad nerd stigma, and inadvertently starved the public of a product that it would really like!...
I think in the early days it would of just been to expensive to have a proper consumer VR HMD and after that there was just no interest since VR came out and peeked interest but then not releasing any proper consumer product it just died off. You then had attampts over the years but they all fell short and never gave a proper experience. iGlasses tried t ofix it by using somewhat affordable at the time high res 640x480 screens etc but the FOV was still narrow and you wern't properly enclosed and the head tracking wasn't great and consumer wise software never got behind it so they were all aim with your head reather then look with your head aim with the mouse which most ppl I know find it really annoying and i think thats why it didn't really kick off.

I remember the first time I used one in an arcade, can't remember the came it was just a rail shooter so you stood in the thing but your guy walked around by himself all you did was look around and point the crosshair at things to shoot. The graphics were just low poly shaded and resolution was terrible (had to be less then 320x240 but hey the machines were only running a 286 so you couldn't do much more) and you could see the subpixels however there was no clear mesh effect over the image, the FOV wasn't great but still better then consumer HMDs since and you were fully enclosed with whever they used so you didn't just see the sharp edge of the screen so even though it wasn't a HUGE FOV you still felt like you were really there looking at something not just looking at a small screen. It was heavy, the tracking was slow but even with that, the low res, seeing subpixels, lower FOV etc it was fantastic. I was sure in the coming decade things would of just gotten WOW and been the same in the home.

But alas as the years went by and HMDs did come out such as VFX-1, iGlasses, VFX-3D, Phullips Scuba, eMagin basically every single one of them were..... crap.... none of them you had that feeling that you were actually there looking at it they were all just screen in an empty black room syndrome, not taking into account how good the tracking was it was still expensive to get it with it, resolution got better but that didn't really do much while keeping the low FOV and basically nothing except the VFX really did a job of immersing you in the vision of what FOV there was.

Perhaps if they made the games so you didn't aim with your head things may of taken off better and they did a good job marketing the eMagin but it still fell flat with having to head aim with every game and i think even with acurate low latency tracking that would of still killed off the whole VR thing. Basically any HMD I used I disabled the head tracking and just used it to try and feel like your really there looking at things (which again usually failed because of the FOV) which is sad since the head tracking is a big element of VR and really adds to your perception of immersion. Because of the whole head aim thing I never actually bought a proper HMD ever since everyone I tried without using tracking was just so disappointing with the immersion factor and that was the only reason I wanted one fo immersion.

I don't know if many other people felt the same way but if they did then its more a matter of the software industry was the reason consumer HMDs never really took off and got anywhere as I think if they had proper head tracking rather then just mouse emulation for head aiming (I know there were a couple of games that did but 2/100000 is nothing :cry: ) in the games then I think VR would of probably taken off years ago regardless of low resolution and FOV and hopefull the RIFT will fix that problem (but again only if people actually write the games to be able to do it instead of just mouse emulation)

Anyway I can't believe how much I just ranting on about so I think i'll stop there about that.

I'd like to know whats going to happen with the kickstarter.... all the talk was about around 100 kits and now will be purchasing the parts before the kickstarter because of the funding gotten, so having never used kickstarter before and reading aboutthe pledge limits with OUYA what happens if there's a huge flux and 100's or 1000's of ppl that want a RIFT kit? Have to get in first and all the rest can not pledge for a kit or get told they'll be waiting longer for it etc?
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cybereality »

Well I think HMDs are basically pointless without head-tracking. You can have a better experience, for cheaper, with a nice big-screen 3D TV or projector. Only when you are doing head-tracking, and virtual reality type simulations do HMDs really have a purpose.

Regarding Kickstarter: I believe Palmer said there will be 500 units available. Maybe now that things are blowing up he will try to produce more. But I honestly doubt it could be much more considering all the manual labor involved in putting these kits together. So basically the first 500 people sitting there reading this forum like hawks will win.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by WiredEarp »

IMHO, the real reason VR hasn't taken off is that virtually all consumer HMD's have been low FOV. This leads to people that buy them, try them, then go 'meh' as they just are not what they were expecting (immersion).

You look at stuff like Vuzix, even with head tracker, the FOV is too crap for anything. If they had taken their 640x480 glasses and made them 90 degree FOV, they may well have gotten much further ahead in the consumer HMD space.

I do agree that head tracking is essential, but even if a product had come out at a reasonable price in the past, with decent FOV, hobbyists would have used it to mount their own trackers and develop VR solutions. Unfortunately, the lack of high FOV HMD's have been the main barrier holding things back for quite a while.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Chriky »

I think the reason no-one made a high FOV HMD yet is that it's impossible to make them look good in adverts. It seems like manufacturers are more concerned about what it looks like from the outside not what it looks like from the inside. The Vuzix ones are the perfect example of something that looks good when someone else is using it, but not when you are.

Some of the reactions to the first Verge video were along the lines of "LOL nice duct tape idiots". It's basically like looking at the TARDIS and saying "LOL nice police box". You're like, "No really, it's much better on the inside..."

But anyone at this point it's working in our favour because, for me at least, I'm mainly concerned about getting one myself. The 2nd generation will be the make or break where we have to come up with ways to make it look amazing for people who haven't experienced it.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by PatimPatam »

Chriky wrote:I think the reason no-one made a high FOV HMD yet is that it's impossible to make them look good in adverts. It seems like manufacturers are more concerned about what it looks like from the outside not what it looks like from the inside.

The 2nd generation will be the make or break where we have to come up with ways to make it look amazing for people who haven't experienced it.
I don't want to become a pain in the neck, but I think that with the 2-screen alternative the HMD could look pretty cool from the outside as well (see schematics a few pages back) :-P
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by notmuchpastnothing »

I have been lurking here longer than I care to admit. And similar, I'm sure, to many reading this thread, my bank statement has been inaccurate for the last two months showing me at least $500 richer than I actually am. A few questions, or rather a few concepts I’d like bounced off folks who understand the technology better than I do, has finally compelled me out of my lurk. Although I have never seen it expressly stated, from what I can tell the Rift will have 100% binocular overlap. Won't that give us something we can trade for even more of that ohh so luscious field of view? So lets say we slap on some 3M Press-on Fresnel Prisms, and assuming the software followed along, couldn't we, for example, square that FOV to 110 degree horizontal by 110 vertical. Although I haven't done the the trig involved, (maybe someone with more math aptitude or less laziness can chime in here) I think that should put us around 70 degree overlap. Heck, assuming the prisms can keep up (40 diopter being the highest I think 3M makes), couldn't we reach the 120 degree horizontal mark with around 60 degree overlap?

Ok, sticking with the 110x110 field of view square theme for simplicity, while each eye would, of course, still be receiving 640x800 resolution, your mind would converge the two images into a 800x800 "picture". So assuming this is possible, and I'm not missing something stupid, which I quite possibly am, what would we be giving up by decreasing the binocular overlap? Well we'd lose at least a little Stereopsis, but how much? It seems high-end, high-dollar HMDs frequently trade some overlap for more FOV. An oldie but goodie example would be the Virtual Research Flight Helmet. Now I'm not sure which it is because I've seen conflicting specs on the interwebs and I think many don't (including possibly me) quite understand the concept; but it seems to either have 120 degree horizontal FOV by default (with 100 degree horizontal FOV if made to have 100% overlap) or 100 degree horizontal FOV by default (with 80 degree horizontal FOV if made to have 100% overlap). So how do you make it have 100% overlap? Well Virtual Research offered as a separate optional accessory 3M Press-on Fresnel Prisms. You would slap those on to go the exact opposite direction of what I'm suggesting with the Rift. One gets the feeling this accessory was offered, not to achieve absolute maximum Stereopsis, but in case you wanted to use it monoscopically, where 100% overlap is a must, and field of view is probably less important. Other examples include nVision Datavisor 80 which has 50% or 60 degrees of overlap and Sensics xSight which has 53 degrees of overlap, just to name a few I've come across. I've seen 40 degrees binocular overlap stated a couple of times as a good minimum for decent Stereopsis. I've also seen 60 degrees stated. I don't have a drop of real world experience so this has thus far been purely academic. I do get the feeling that at higher overlaps you hit the law of diminishing returns as far as Stereoscopic effects go. Our vision naturally has about 200 degree field of view with 120 degrees of overlap so we don't have 100% ourselves.

Of course the elephant in the room is the software. It is doubtful if Doom 3 BFG will include an out of the box slider to adjust overlap. Heck, it's already plenty cool it supports the unmodified Rift. To make it work in software one would need to adjust the angle of the camera representing each eye. It seems that optical distortion correction would not need to be reworked but simply moved based on the level of overlap, and I'm not even sure this would be necessary. You might be able to inject the necessary changes using a driver by say rendering a higher horizontal resolution than actually needed for one eye and just cutting a bit off of one side avoiding the need to change any viewing angles, but this is just a guess, as I know little about the rendering pipeline. These seem easy enough, but there are undoubtedly complexities that I'm missing and may be approaching having my cake and eating it too. I am, after all, talking about adding support for some modification when support for the unchanged thing is already limited. But the only hardware modification necessarily, if I’m understanding this correctly, is the application of the prisms and these are designed to be removable and able to be reapplied. It is hard to imagine that being able to go on forever, but I can imagine applying them to a thin transparent plastic sheet which could be removed and reapplied quickly so there should be nothing hardware wise that would make this permanent and render you unable to use the Rift as originally intended. Maybe some of us who are creating software projects with the Rift could write stuff that includes native changeable overlap with higher field of views as an option.

There are few other tidbits I can see as negatives such as the prisms may create some effects themselves, namely faint vertical lines which may become more apparent as diopter increases. (Anyone know if that is accurate? I've never seen one in person.) Another is you may want to get a higher diopter than your desired overlap will imply because if the Rift has a 5.6" screen (I've also seen it represented a 6") that gives you a 4.48" edge. And if the average space between human eyes are 65mm or 2.56" then your already a little off (~0.16" for each eye, yeah for math I can do!) as far as converging two screens at 100% overlap forcing you to be a small bit cross-eyed. (Which, I think, will be less of a problem, and maybe even a good thing, while focusing on something near to you in the virtual world?) There are surely more negatives I'm not considering.

It's a bit of armature hour with me so I'm hoping for corrections or thoughts or even total shoot-downs if I'm barking up an unrealistic tree.

Oh yeah... and many thanks to Palmer and John C!
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by spyro »

TheRealistWord wrote:so let's hope people don't pass this one up just because they're expecting a better version to be released next year.
This should not be the case if there is a bold statement that the RIFT v1 will be upgradeable with the hires displays of the second version (which is in fact the only real critical point).

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

Post by Endothermic »

spyro wrote:This should not be the case if there is a bold statement that the RIFT v1 will be upgradeable with the hires displays of the second version (which is in fact the only real critical point).
Or since Palmer will still be doing it and isn't just selling it to whatever company to develope it, perhaps those who purchased the RIFT v1 kit could be offered a discount on the RIFT v2 commerical product or a trade-in etc?
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Vaughanabe13 »

Alkapwn wrote:
Vaughanabe13 wrote:"Seriously you should need to get a licence or something to post on the internet so that you have to learn to be able to read and understand what your reading and actually know something about what your going to say before your allowed to say anything"

I find this ironic, considering the sentence is riddled with grammar mistakes. So if you remove that from the list of criteria, your point is basically "I don't like when people disagree with me". Preventing them from posting on the internet is not going to change their opinions.
I find it funny that you literally made your post an example of exactly what he was talking about. Also that people get so worked up on forums. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading Xbox Live transcripts.
You are mistaken. His point was about people who make blind statements about things in which they know nothing about. He just posted an essay talking about how people are comparing rift to google glass. Therefore what I said is not "ironic" because I didn't spout incorrect information or misread his point. What it reduces to is that he is getting upset over the GP's general lack of understanding, which occurs everywhere on the internet, all the time, over every subject. Just go to youtube comments and you will see some of the worst examples of ignorance. And I was simply suggesting that they have the right to post their ignorance and you have the right not to read it. Claiming that they should not be allowed to post on the internet unless they're at an arbitrary level of knowledge is just asinine. The solution to all of your problems is to not get so upset over people posting garbage on the internet. It doesn't affect you, because you already know enough about the rift to understand the inaccuracies in the first place. And it doesn't affect the casual observer who had no plans of getting a rift. And it doesn't affect the curiosity of the other casual observer who wants to go find out more about the rift. When's the last time you heard about something that interested you on the internet and decided not to do any additional research and just stop there?
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by zalo »

Notmuchpastnothing: It's all right, most of us are amateurs with just a hobby interest in VR.

That said, you wrote quite a bit. Try to shorten it down a bit. I think you're asking the feasibility of trading binocular overlap for more FOV. I agree that it will take both hardware and software modifications, but you shouldnt worry too much about those as id's software in the past has been very moddable, and the rift was designed to be moddable.

One problem I foresee that you hadn't mentioned is the boundaries between the images in the overlaps. Everything would have to be calibrated just right to let half of each side of the screen overlap with eachother while avoiding a line of discontinuity due to the distortions and brightness not matching up. This will always be a problem, but it will be exacerbated since the transition is right in the middle of your vision.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Alkapwn »

Vaughanabe13 wrote:You are mistaken. His point was about people who make blind statements about things in which they know nothing about. He just posted an essay talking about how people are comparing rift to google glass. Therefore what I said is not "ironic" because I didn't spout incorrect information or misread his point. What it reduces to is that he is getting upset over the GP's general lack of understanding, which occurs everywhere on the internet, all the time, over every subject. Just go to youtube comments and you will see some of the worst examples of ignorance. And I was simply suggesting that they have the right to post their ignorance and you have the right not to read it. Claiming that they should not be allowed to post on the internet unless they're at an arbitrary level of knowledge is just asinine. The solution to all of your problems is to not get so upset over people posting garbage on the internet. It doesn't affect you, because you already know enough about the rift to understand the inaccuracies in the first place. And it doesn't affect the casual observer who had no plans of getting a rift. And it doesn't affect the curiosity of the other casual observer who wants to go find out more about the rift. When's the last time you heard about something that interested you on the internet and decided not to do any additional research and just stop there?
Too funny. I really don't like getting into these things, unless it's comical online gaming trash talk. But alas here we are doing exactly what I deem both childish and hilarious.
1. Never said your post was ironic.
2. You did misread his post.
3. His post was not about not liking people that don't agree with him.
4. His point was people commenting without fully reading or understanding what they read/are talking about.
5. His comment about having a license to post online was probably a joke, as the ability to do this is extremely comical/impossible
6. Lists in online forum battles offer a 68% chance of victory
7. 84% of all statistics are false. Including this one.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by German »

Alkapwn wrote: Too funny. I really don't like getting into these things, unless it's comical online gaming trash talk. But alas here we are doing exactly what I deem both childish and hilarious.
1. Never said your post was ironic.
2. You did misread his post.
3. His post was not about not liking people that don't agree with him.
4. His point was people commenting without fully reading or understanding what they read/are talking about.
5. His comment about having a license to post online was probably a joke, as the ability to do this is extremely comical/impossible
6. Lists in online forum battles offer a 68% chance of victory
7. 84% of all statistics are false. Including this one.
Wow, we're all really, really bored to drop to all this backbiting and nitpicking. :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by zalo »

German wrote:Wow, we're all really, really bored to drop to all this backbiting and nitpicking. :)
It's because we keep checking the thread every couple of minutes for an update from Palmer, and instead we get this, ao we have to vent our excitement elsewhere. Just goes to show that this project is popular enough to attract all kinds of people (even before the kick starter!)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by notmuchpastnothing »

zalo wrote:Notmuchpastnothing: It's all right, most of us are amateurs with just a hobby interest in VR.

That said, you wrote quite a bit. Try to shorten it down a bit. I think you're asking the feasibility of trading binocular overlap for more FOV. I agree that it will take both hardware and software modifications, but you shouldnt worry too much about those as id's software in the past has been very moddable, and the rift was designed to be moddable.

One problem I foresee that you hadn't mentioned is the boundaries between the images in the overlaps. Everything would have to be calibrated just right to let half of each side of the screen overlap with eachother while avoiding a line of discontinuity due to the distortions and brightness not matching up. This will always be a problem, but it will be exacerbated since the transition is right in the middle of your vision.
Your right. If the optical distortion correction isn’t just right, not to mention the variable acuity resolution, then you would have image mismatch. I didn’t think of this, thanks zalo. Seems like it could be a deal breaker. I might have to experiment anyway. I am hoping for some decent Unity 3D integration which was hinted at by Palmer.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cybereality »

In terms of stereo overlap, you should be able to do this with my DIY driver when its ready. Some bugs still right now, but I can probably fix it this weekend.

In terms of the Rift 2, please, lets not get ahead of ourselves. The Rift itself is a HUGE leap forward compared to what we have had in the past. There is nothing on the consumer market that even comes close in terms of immersion. Resolution is not as important as you might think for the overall experience. Of course, higher quality screens are better. But things could always get better. And if the Rift 2 eventually does come out, its more than 1 year away so its not really worth getting too hyped up over (and we don't even know for sure its coming out). But right now its important that the Rift one is a HUGE success as this will set the stage for a Rift 2 or for other companies like Sony, Vuzix, SMD, etc. to step up their game. Even if you can't afford the full kit, or miss the first 500 spots, you can donate anyway to the Kickstarter so Palmer will have incentive to continue this work.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by zalo »

Seeing how tight Abrash and Carmack are (wrote Quake together), and how Abrash is now leading/a part of Valve's wearable computing division and how Carmack is cofounder of id, I daresay that extraneous donations will not be hugely neccessary if they see the RIFT's quota max out in the first 10 minutes.

But by all means donate! I know I will!

Heck, maybe Valve and id will partner up with Oculus to make an HMD for the entire industry if all goes well. I hope Palmer doesn't get left behind when they run wild with the whole thing.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by AntiCatalyst »

Wow, this seems to be coming together nicely!

Any swedes around who'd like to try and help me hype this thing up on the SweClockers forums? I created this thread last night but it's just not getting any kind of attention. (CyberVillain, I've seen you over there ;)) I may have pitched it all wrong, I wrote it from "our" perspective rather than focusing on how it could improve people's gaming.

Right now though, the one thing that's really hyped around those forums is high resolution screens, so this will be a toughie.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cybereality »

@zalo: Yes, I can see what you are saying in that he might not *need* the money. However, if there is a monster response, for example getting over a million dollars, then this will send a big message to any companies in the industry that consumer VR is a viable market.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by notmuchpastnothing »

cybereality wrote:In terms of stereo overlap, you should be able to do this with my DIY driver when its ready. Some bugs still right now, but I can probably fix it this weekend..
Thanks great cybereality! Do you have any thoughts if less than 100% overlap will cause problems at the edges (the line between stereoscopic and monoscopic images) considering between optical distortion correction and variable acuity resolution, the images may not converge quite right.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by AntiCatalyst »

Zalo:
I'm sure there are plenty of companies trying to hand Palmer a wad of cash or just hire him, but the kickstarter really needs to happen for the Rift to remain as open as possible. Oculus needs to stand on its own!

Worst case scenario is it getting locked up to a certain game corporation.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by hast »

AntiCatalyst wrote:Any swedes around who'd like to try and help me hype this thing up on the SweClockers forums? I created this thread last night but it's just not getting any kind of attention. ...
Sure, I'll take a look at it as well later on. I figure it will probably be easier to get interest going when the Kickstarter launches and it becomes more obvious what the goals are. Right now it's probably a bit too abstract for a lot of people to wrap their heads around it.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by zino »

hast wrote:
AntiCatalyst wrote:Any swedes around who'd like to try and help me hype this thing up on the SweClockers forums? I created this thread last night but it's just not getting any kind of attention. ...
Sure, I'll take a look at it as well later on. I figure it will probably be easier to get interest going when the Kickstarter launches and it becomes more obvious what the goals are. Right now it's probably a bit too abstract for a lot of people to wrap their heads around it.
I'm worried about over hyping the Rift. I'm OK with something glitchy/ugly/uncool-looking that I patch up with duct tape and start writing my own code for. Most people (even on a special interest site like sweclockers) are not. The push-back if too many consumers get the initial version could kill following models.

Here's hoping I'm just a pessimist.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by Endothermic »

Alkapwn wrote:Too funny. I really don't like getting into these things, unless it's comical online gaming trash talk. But alas here we are doing exactly what I deem both childish and hilarious.
1. Never said your post was ironic.
2. You did misread his post.
3. His post was not about not liking people that don't agree with him.
4. His point was people commenting without fully reading or understanding what they read/are talking about.
5. His comment about having a license to post online was probably a joke, as the ability to do this is extremely comical/impossible
6. Lists in online forum battles offer a 68% chance of victory
7. 84% of all statistics are false. Including this one.
I think maybe the "seriously" I put at the start of it was taken the wrong way so it wasn't seen as the light hearted comment it was. I guess thats still one of the major issues with text conversions and not being able to convey sarcsim or tone properly without explicitly indicating your doing it by saying so.

Anyway this is all completely off topic and under the bridge now and no need to keep going on with it so lets just end it there and get back to the RIFT :)
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by C3DPO »

Most of you may have found this already. I just found this really lengthy interview with Carmack and the R&D he did on the Rift

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... lity-uncut
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by cybereality »

C3DPO wrote:Most of you may have found this already. I just found this really lengthy interview with Carmack and the R&D he did on the Rift

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... lity-uncut
Thanks for posting this link. Getting late now, but I will be sure to check it out tomorrow.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by brantlew »

It's an excellent interview. A must-read.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by ido »

I am pretty happy to see Palmer making this come true. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these as I know Palmer does good work.

I'm down to ZERO HMDs now, and I've had everything from i-glasses to a V8 to a modded MRG2.2. I need my fix.
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Re: Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by coresnake »

Sweet interview, once again though all the comments are way off. 'Only Carmack could pull this off', 'Carmack is a genius' etc...

I hope when the Rift comes out officially Palmer gets the credit he deserves :evil:
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