Meant to be Seen

I want the virtual arcade too.
Brantlew, I was actually putting in a bowling alley when I read your post. I have no idea how complex the physics would be to implement, so this is just static objects.

I put in some arcade models I found and optimized the glass etc to make them look more realistic.
You can see I removed lots of walls to make space for 3 bowling lanes, a pool table and some arcade machines + pinball machines.

I can put in lots of other typical arcade machines and vending machines.


The space I made for it would look cool with decorations and more machines.

Found a guy who seriously has a ton of arcade models, I will ask him if I can use the models in an actual game.
I have to do some changes to them and optimize them but substantially less work than making every single one from scratch.

really great concept. what's the feasibility of actually being able to map a mame emulator to one of the screens?

I don't think thats going to be much of a challenge if I get help from the programmer I am talking to that has experience in media interfaces and directshow/direct3D,
but I have to find out how many others I need help from to get proper gesture/head tracking in the game.

Looking good!

Reminded me of the virtual arcade in Shenmue:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMl0ektrgUw[/youtube]

SEGA Super GT!!!! Loved that game.

There were some pretty cool MAME front ends that allowed you to walk around in a virtual arcade to play the vaious MAME roms you had installed. This would be pretty cool in a RIft!

Some examples:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0p39j9Txqk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfmN8PJkLTc[/youtube]

Hey, again all very exciting stuff.

How would a MAME inspired chat room work for multiple users? Would all people in the room need the emulator/roms, or would they all run from the host's hardware? or is this even know?

It would be great to be able to log in, and then just play someone who is also in the 'chatroom' in real time...not sure how far off we are from this yet though?

*must stop equating all VR discussions to 'Ready Player One' fantasies lol*

Also has anyone given any though to how we will perceive each other in these rooms, e.g. 'avatarwise'? Our view is first person, but what will we look like to each other...do we all need to create avatars, will face scanning work to make them realistic?

Will we be able to look in a virtual mirror and see our avatar's faces in real time?

Love to hear your thoughts?

Default is pre-animated normal stuff like in fps games etc, but the goal is full body tracking so we can point and goof around.
Leap Motion has a wider fov than the oculus rift, so it is promising for hand tracking

Looking gorgeous so far... but that room needs windows!

Oh yea the room definitely needs windows but I havent put much thoughts into decorations and walls yet other than removing a shitload of walls to make a large open space.
I might just remove that curved wall and put the arcade machines along the outer glass wall. After all if you want a clear view you can just take the elevator up to the upper floors.

[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcAaFAIZwH0[/youtube-hd]



Just another update, as a goodbye to unreal and hello again to unity.
This is not how it will look through the Rift, but just a demonstration of the minimum quality you can expect. (In terms of graphics)

Its bad news that all the progress made in Unreal has to be thrown out, but the good news is that I am going to be able to offer
a wide range of support. Had someone write a few plugins, and its going to be good.

*Mov, Mkv, avi, mpg; H.264, divx, xvid etc
*URL Streaming (live football, youtube clips, pro-gaming matches etc)
*Streaming capture devices and webcams into the texture.



Get yourself a capture card that has a low enough latency, and you can play old consoles, heck you can watch your vhs tapes if you want.
Even if the capture card has some latency, it only applies to the game on the virtual screen.

MAME/emulator software is looking promising too.

The head tracking etc can still be low latency even tho the game you are playing on the screen has latency equivalent to the many slow lcd and plasma tvs out there (in terms of input lag) so that is something you are not going to be too bothered about.

3D videos are possible, but that still requires special adaptions and special format. I am really hoping to have native support for 3D-videos.
I buy my bluays, can anybody tell me if there are legal downloadable 3D-movies out there?

Looks really inpressive

Great work Namielus, fantastic. There are probably a bunch of professional applications that could be derived from this: virtual conference rooms or workspaces/laboratories where folks come together to design and engineer products, or even virtual classrooms for online education...

Very nice Namielus! I was just wondering how to watch 3D SBS movies on the Rift, this is looking promising :) Keep up the good work!

I buy my bluays, can anybody tell me if there are legal downloadable 3D-movies out there?

As far as I know, there's no legit service for downloadable 3D feature films, if that's what you mean.

Looks amazing, really excited by this!

(Just need a rift now lol)

That really is awesome Namielus
It's great there's people like you and cyber and many others here that have the knowledge to create stuff like this.
I hope your going to set up a site with a pay facility for this to be downloaded from , got to get something back for all the man hours Spent on this.

I am hoping to get some return of my investment on the virtual cinema, but the multiplayer/lounge stuff later on is going to be free to play.
I had to buy a Unity4 Pro license, and also hire some programmers to help me with some of the codec stuff. I am really hoping I am not wasting my
savings for that haha.
So, I charge some money to get a Virtual Cinema/Mediaplayer with lots of features. I dont know what I should charge yet.
Its the codec stuff and programmers that have been expensive, not the models. So I can offer multiple types of cinemas.

Then later when its finished everybody can use my multiplayer virtual lounge for free.

And instead, people/companies can pay me to add their stuff into my office building. For example if some company wants to exhibit their stuff in an office,
I will model it and add it for them for a fee.

Its entirely up to the player if he wants to look into that office, and it will be a fun way for companies to advertise wouldn't it?

Do you guys think I could have success with this on indiegogo or kickstarter? Let's say a 40 000 dollar goal.
That's 20 bucks from 2000 people.

Namielus wrote:I am hoping to get some return of my investment on the virtual cinema, but the multiplayer/lounge stuff later on is going to be free to play. Then later when its finished everybody can use my multiplayer virtual lounge for free. And instead, people/companies can pay me to add their stuff into my office building. For example if some company wants to exhibit their stuff in an office, I will model it and add it for them for a fee. Its entirely up to the player if he wants to look into that office, and it will be a fun way for companies to advertise wouldn't it?

Sounds like a good business model... make your lounge the main virtual chatroom for the Rift (like MTBS3D is currently the forum for Rift enthusiast community) and charge for the extra's like the module for watching movies and playing games. Get people to use it first.

Do you guys think I could have success with this on indiegogo or kickstarter? Let's say a 40 000 dollar goal. That's 20 bucks from 2000 people.

I would pledge $50 just for the movie module right now (depends on release date ofcourse) - but that's because I think your project is the most interesting at the moment so it's worth supporting. And I'm well aware the resolution of the movies will not be very high. Also your frequent sharing of information makes me feel like you deserve it.

Its the codec stuff and programmers that have been expensive, not the models. So I can offer multiple types of cinemas.

Yes you need the basic features in order for people to buy it. But you could have higher reward tiers to get other types of theaters or even custom made. Even other features like customizing your avatar beyond the basics (who doesn't want hats!?)

As for raising money, don't forget about the hidden fees and taxes etc.

Namielus wrote:Do you guys think I could have success with this on indiegogo or kickstarter? Let's say a 40 000 dollar goal.
That's 20 bucks from 2000 people.

The kickstarter alone had 6000+ backers actually receiving a Rift. You've pretty much got a captive market for anything Rift specific.

Namielus wrote:Do you guys think I could have success with this on indiegogo or kickstarter? Let's say a 40 000 dollar goal.
That's 20 bucks from 2000 people.

Honestly, I think getting 2000 people to put down money upfront might be optimistic, considering the size of the intended demographic (at this point)

That said, you could always do a flexible indiegogo, which won't hold you to a goal. I'd throw in a pledge and even pimp you on my modest VR blog

How about adding a virtual shopping mall, where companies can sell online and showcase new products? (new car models, for example)

I would love to see a Kickstarter!

A flexible funding IndieGogo is a mixed bag, though. There have been some cool projects, but it moew often tends to be the place where rejected Kickstarter projects go to die. I think if you had something cool ready by about the time the Rift ships and a 30 day campaign with a deliverable as soon as the funding ends, a lot of enthusiastic new Rift owners will pick it up.

I don't think it should be underestimated how people will want to be visually perceived within these new VR chatroom environments

Maybe I am in the minority (with my zero programming skills), but certainly there is a market for the creation of avatars for people, and the subsequent pimping of said avatars.

Your virtual cinema/lounge/shopping mall seems to be a perfect place to get people up and running in that department.

Just my incoherent ramblings!

I cannot help but think about this awesome voice function in the old version of Interstellar Marines, check out this clip. Wouldn't that be awesome in a virtual chat lounge? It would mean you'd actually had to be near people to hear them, unless you use comradio :P With many people you might even get the background noise common in restaurants, haha. Question is how to normalize people's voices... urgh, flashbacks to the old ventrilo days and 40 man WoW raids.

(That video was from before the studio went bankrupt, now reformed they have swapped engines from Unreal to Unity so I'm not sure if they still employ that system. They are currently having a bad time over at Kickstarter, even with promised Oculus Rift support, oh well :P)

The location based voice chat thing is an Unreal engine feature first in UT2k4, but its turned off by default so nobody ever used it. The multiplayer Splinter Cell games also had something similar. I wish more games would move away from the magic telepathy voice chat model.

I have actually been working on something similar to a virtual lounge. It is not quite meant for movie viewing or gaming, but can be used for chatting. There are some open source projects on location based voice chat that I've been looking into, but I'm not sure how or if you can write your own plugins for Unreal. I'm working in c++ with opengl which gives me a little more freedom. I'll eventually post my project when I get something more substantial done, but for now I enjoy seeing how this project is developing. Watching movies together with friends from the net would be great.

Owen wrote:I wish more games would move away from the magic telepathy voice chat model.

I'm not sure which games it would actually make sense for, it feels like actual voice positioning would be best for intimate scenarios like in a sneak game or a virtual chat room (on topic! uh). Perhaps not in an adrenaline pumping action shooter :3 Hmm... isn't it possible to hear enemy radio communication in Counter Strike? Ages since I played that so not sure.

Audio sure is an important part of virtual reality though, or any audio/visual experience. Just think about this, what would you rather watch, a movie with a crappy image but great sound, or a movie with a great image but crappy sound?

Great work Namielus, good to see you are making progress!

If you have DirectShow input working already you could try this WDM screen-capture driver:

http://www.splitmedialabs.com/media-too ... en-capture

Just as quick way to get a desktop up on the big screen.

I think the virtual cinema is really cool! One question that has probably been answered somewhere but how likely is it that we'll see something along the line of a "virtual monitor screen" which could potentially replace regular desktop/laptop screens?

For example, if anyone has played League of Legends, this game is obviously not meant for the Oculus Rift but it would be cool if we could still use the rift with it where the rift's screen acts as a replacement for a regular monitor.

Frenchie wrote:I think the virtual cinema is really cool! One question that has probably been answered somewhere but how likely is it that we'll see something along the line of a "virtual monitor screen" which could potentially replace regular desktop/laptop screens?

For example, if anyone has played League of Legends, this game is obviously not meant for the Oculus Rift but it would be cool if we could still use the rift with it where the rift's screen acts as a replacement for a regular monitor.

Almost guaranteed. If not from me, definitely from someone else.

druidsbane is working on this.
Only problem is the very low resolution of the virtual monitor.

You can check out this thread and my sig http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=15088, but a few people are working on it and there are 3 being worked on I believe, 2 for Linux and 1 for Windows though performance on the latter might still be an issue. Not much is being done on my side at least as I'm just waiting for a Rift and a Leap Motion to play with. It pretty much works, though how useful it will be with current resolution is up to debate ATM.

Awesome project. When I was long distance dating my girlfriend (now wife) we used to watch the same Netflix movies together, this bring it to a whole new level, lol.

druidsbane wrote:You can check out this thread and my sig http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=15088, but a few people are working on it and there are 3 being worked on I believe, 2 for Linux and 1 for Windows though performance on the latter might still be an issue. Not much is being done on my side at least as I'm just waiting for a Rift and a Leap Motion to play with. It pretty much works, though how useful it will be with current resolution is up to debate ATM.

I'm working on a Windows VR desktop, and performance is definitely a big issue. It's basically one giant hack the way I'm doing it. I'm also having to implement a lot of windowing things myself which is kind of a bummer. I'll be posting about the project eventually, maybe early January. You should all be extremely excited.

This all looks excellent (and yes, I'm waiting for the windows VR desktop, cos I got no choice about the OS at work )

ANyway - one (hopefully) minor request - can you add an option to disable the barrel distortion required for the Rift? That way, these 3D WMs should also be perfectly usable with other HMDs (such as Sony HMZ, ST1080, etc) with the higher resolutions...

Easy peasy

logicalChimp wrote:This all looks excellent (and yes, I'm waiting for the windows VR desktop, cos I got no choice about the OS at work )

ANyway - one (hopefully) minor request - can you add an option to disable the barrel distortion required for the Rift? That way, these 3D WMs should also be perfectly usable with other HMDs (such as Sony HMZ, ST1080, etc) with the higher resolutions...

Don't other HMDs have a widescreen view? Meaning the change requires an aspect ratio change to 32x9, split between both eyes. This is not hard to do either, but since I have no experience with other HMDs I was wondering if they accept SBS 3D output. On a similar note, does anyone know if when you connect the rift (or any other HMD) to the pc if it is treated as a secondary display? Basically if we can keep the main display free, with the rift app or game fullscreen in the HMD display.

can't speak for all the other HMDs, but the Sony HMZ-T2 supports side-by-side rendering (and from what i've read, I *think* the ST1080 does too)

Hopefully the 3D WMs support different resolutions, if only so they support early DIY, Dev, and Consumer rifts

As for the second question - yes, they connect as additional displays, and in windows the desktop can either be mirrored or extended (I use an extended setup. by removing the lower light blockers from the HMZ, I can look 'under' the HMZ, and see the main monitor )

logicalChimp wrote:can't speak for all the other HMDs, but the Sony HMZ-T2 supports side-by-side rendering (and from what i've read, I *think* the ST1080 does too)

Hopefully the 3D WMs support different resolutions, if only so they support early DIY, Dev, and Consumer rifts

As for the second question - yes, they connect as additional displays, and in windows the desktop can either be mirrored or extended (I use an extended setup. by removing the lower light blockers from the HMZ, I can look 'under' the HMZ, and see the main monitor )

Thanks for the info. The way things are going in Windows, I might have to use the main display for some things all while you're wearing the Rift. For some reason, the thought of multiple resolutions never crossed my mind, but I see now it's an obviously necessary feature.