Namielus Guide On How to Showcase Your Rift

[Namielus]

Hi!

I am going to use this thread spesifically to share my experiences in showcasing Rift to strangers.
My experience is already pretty vast, I just counted around 70 people that have tried my DIY-Rifts,
and I have actually showed the real Oculus Rift Dev-kit to 150+ people this weekend.

I don't have time to make illustrations right now but I will make an attempt to describe in detail how it should be put on,
adjusted and optimized for each individual. I will also explain why.
Try to picture it in your head.

1) Keep babywipes for each person so you can encourage them to wipe their faces. Sanitary reasons both for protecting your rift, and
the next in line. Believe me, strangers can be dirty and sweaty as hell unfortunately and you dont want to single out people.

2) Tell the user to put the rift straight onto his face first, then pull the strap over his head.
- Most users will start by putting the strap at the back of their head pulling the rift down in front.
This will result in them smearing the lenses on their foreheads; greasing it up and even scratching it.
You will have tanning lotions and grease and all kinds of poop in your rift after no time at all.
Its hard to explain, but have them hold the part of the rift that is attached to the foam-rim.
Pushing and pulling the rifts front part will violently rip it around its adjustments.

3) Pay attention to new users at all times if they are standing up (standing up significantly enhances the experience in the Hydra Tuscany demo)
It may seem like they are in balance, but I had a person fall badly and faceplant while walking up the stairs in the Hydra Demo smashing her head
(and the rift) straight into a wall beam. Its not common, but if you are going to showcase it publically keep this in mind.

4) Explain to the user how important it is that its as close to their eyes as possible. Use a coin to adjust one side at a time, and tell them to listen for the clicks and let you know when its too close. You then adjust one click back.

5) Downplay the rifts resolution and motion blur before you show it to each person while explaining this will improve in the consumer version.
In my experience this will make them go at it with a positive angle, not the opposite

6) If you are using the Hydra Tuscany demo, line the hydra up with the wires out the back of the base station (wires away from the user) and have the user straight in front of it, but far enough so he wont hit his hands on the table if he reaches down for something. I put a x-cross on the floor for people to stand on.

7) If you want to cater for the near sighted, bring a large clear plastic bag. Never under any circumstance must you replace the lenses outside this bag.
Put the rift inside the bag, and twist the lenses off while holding it inside. Put the new lenses on and make sure they are tight. Put the previous lenses in a smaller plastic container and only remove the rift when the lenses are secured.
If you fail to do this, you will have dust inside it. Unless you are inside an Intel manufacturing plant - there is no place on earth without dust.
If you only have one rift, its a good idea to bulk the near sighted together to save time. This of course only applies if you are showcasing on a larger scale.

8) Remind people that if they are wearing lenses that correct their vision, they should not count themselves in the near-sighted group.
This might seem obvious, but I encountered this problem several times.

9) Also regarding the Hydra Tuscany demo, its important that you explain that the right thumbstick controls body rotation and where you look is not where you walk. Enabling the crosshair helps, and its also a cool demo in itself. Users hit the "pointy finger button", and push the menu inside the game with a real
life motion. The crosshair also helps reduce motion sickness.




Also, if you have a large group gathered: Show them all while holding the rift in front of a monitor how it tracks rotation but not position. As you shift the rift up down, side to side and forward -remind them that they should try to keep that in mind while easing into the demo. This reduces the risk of motion sickness. This is especially important with the razer hydra demo, as they will reach for things on the ground and eventually bend down towards it.

[Oneironaut]

Awesome tips, gonna make good use of this. So, how has the response been so far? What percentage of the people fall into the "blown away" category, as opposed to "generally positive", compared to "not impressed"? You can use other qualifiers if you like.

[TheHolyChicken]

Great tips - I'm probably going to end up demoing my rift to over 75 people (my current job, my old job, my friends/family, demo-a-rift strangers) so this is very helpful. Did you have any issues with ladies and makeup vs the facewipes? I don't imagine many would be happy scrubbing their makeup off with babywipes!

I would be very interested in ANY more tips or advice you can give. Have you used a variety of demos? Which did you feel worked best? I've thought about disallowing access to a gamepad/hydra for quite a LONG time to force people to get used to the headtracking; I've seen too many videos where the person is over-eager and grabs the gamepad without "learning" they can look around, and then uses the gamepad almost exclusively while keeping their head still!

[Namielus]

In my experience, the hydras did not seem to interfere at all with how they looked around. I had a crosshair enabled that indicated walk direction and it was independent of headlook.

I did a routine saying "look straight up, straight down, put your head on your shoulder and turn 180"
Really I had the same worry as you did, but in practice it seemed really like a non issue.

I chose the Hydra Tuscany demo for its simplicity and intuitive interaction thus being the most accesible for the non-gamers.
It's slow paced and every single person picked up the hand control pretty fast. Ages so far have ranged from 12 to 85.
Out of 150 people, not a single person had motion sickness to the point where they had to stop before the demo was over!!
This was not my previous experience, and I think the way I set it up and the demo I chose had significant impact.

Seriously you should try the crosshair on/off and compare.

I had a guy around 70 years old that had never played a single game in his life stacking barrels like a boss using the hydras.

Gamers where asking for Team Fortress, Skyrim etc - but I guess you have to evaluate what will make up the major portion of your "audience".

The makeup question is a good one, but I think its safe to safe if you cant wash your face before putting on something that others will also have directly on their face after you- maybe you should pass? It's hard turning people down tho so what I did was encourage them to use the wipes, not force them.

BTW: I really enjoyed asking people to pick up the basketball, hold it in front of their face and rotate it around to look at it.
The major thing the tuscany demo lacks is just one NPC. I had fun changing peoples height, and it would be good if they had a person to compare to.

[TheHolyChicken]

Great replies. I don't have my Rift yet (~next month) OR my hydra (1-2 days away!) so I haven't been able to experiment with demos too much! I've installed some and tested they run, but that's about it.

As far as what demo to choose, I was already heavily leaning towards the hydra tuscany - it seems to me that it best shows off the possibilities of the tech, and should be appealing to gamers and non-gamers alike. I hadn't considered the npc's... would it be possible/easy to get an NPC in there?

[MrGreen]

It may seem like they are in balance, but I had a person fall badly and faceplant while walking up the stairs in the Hydra Demo smashing her head
(and the rift) straight into a wall beam.

Schadenfreude! Is it bad that I chuckled?

I hope your Rift is okay.

*ahem* Moving on...

I don't plan to show my Rift to strangers but this is still very good advice anyway. Great thread Namielus!

[TheHolyChicken]

I hope your Rift is okay.

You do know what you are supposed to say in that situation is "I hope she was okay!", right?
.... but I think we were all thinking the same thing!

[pizzy00]

I have demo my Rift to about 30 people friends and coworkers another tip I recommend is if they are extra sensitive to the motion just to take them out of it. You really want to ease them into VR.

[Flassan]

These are really useful tips, thanks Namielus
Good to hear the demo was better standing up. I realise it wasn't a game demo but did anyone feel the need to walk backwards or strafe?
I suspect if you are stood there you are more likely to try to do things as you would in reality so it would be interesting to know if there were any surprises.
Cheers,
Julian

[Namielus]

These are really useful tips, thanks Namielus
Good to hear the demo was better standing up. I realise it wasn't a game demo but did anyone feel the need to walk backwards or strafe?
I suspect if you are stood there you are more likely to try to do things as you would in reality so it would be interesting to know if there were any surprises.
Cheers,
Julian

Not a single person mentioned that they missed strafing, but people where walking backwards.
I missed an ODT because people tended to walk off the sweetspot even while telling them they had to stay put.

The most requested feature of the demo (other than people wanting to try their favorite games) was to be able to jump, burn more things - and shoot

[maboo63]

It may seem like they are in balance, but I had a person fall badly and faceplant while walking up the stairs in the Hydra Demo smashing her head
(and the rift) straight into a wall beam.

Schadenfreude! Is it bad that I chuckled?

I hope your Rift is okay.

*ahem* Moving on...

I don't plan to show my Rift to strangers but this is still very good advice anyway. Great thread Namielus!

wait...u english guys know the german word "schadenfreude"? and it means the same in english? amazing...

[Mystify]

It may seem like they are in balance, but I had a person fall badly and faceplant while walking up the stairs in the Hydra Demo smashing her head
(and the rift) straight into a wall beam.

Schadenfreude! Is it bad that I chuckled?

I hope your Rift is okay.

*ahem* Moving on...

I don't plan to show my Rift to strangers but this is still very good advice anyway. Great thread Namielus!

wait...u english guys know the german word "schadenfreude"? and it means the same in english? amazing...

Schadenfreude doesn't really have an English equivalent, so we have to use German to express the concept.

[Machinima]

Good work Namielus, looks like a lot of very useful and practical tips... notes taken.

[BOLL]

Awesome summary of your experience so far Namielus! Sure some interesting details and funny stories! Where did you set up shop to showcase the Rift, just out on the street? O.o Did you have any poster to inform people what it was? Did you use a monitor to show what was on the Rift?

Did you catch anything on video? I assume that wasn't your goal, and depending on the situation perhaps not suitable either Sorry for all the questions, I'm still waiting for my devkit so I'm digging for details to stay sane(ish), haha! xD

[MrGreen]

wait...u english guys know the german word "schadenfreude"? and it means the same in english? amazing...

Schadenfreude doesn't really have an English equivalent, so we have to use German to express the concept.

What he said. I'm French-Canadian, though. No equivalent either.

[Namielus]

Awesome summary of your experience so far Namielus! Sure some interesting details and funny stories! Where did you set up shop to showcase the Rift, just out on the street? O.o Did you have any poster to inform people what it was? Did you use a monitor to show what was on the Rift?

Did you catch anything on video? I assume that wasn't your goal, and depending on the situation perhaps not suitable either Sorry for all the questions, I'm still waiting for my devkit so I'm digging for details to stay sane(ish), haha! xD

I should have had a poster, but the original plan was to do a presentation.
When I saw the sheer amount of people showing up - I quickly decided to drop the presentation and squeeze in as many as possible that actually got to try it.

All of it was filmed but it was not my footage. I do not know when or if this is going to be up.
Overall it was a great success indeed.

[WiredEarp]

Not a single person mentioned that they missed strafing, but people where walking backwards.

I've been thinking about the need for strafing. While its a nice thing to have for gamers, I've noticed that people new to 3D gaming almost NEVER use strafing. They move forwards, turn a bit, move forward again, etc. For this reason, I think the majority of people will not care about the loss of strafing in most VR titles.

Of course its different if you are competing against mouse/keyboard players, but for general VR games, even multiplayer ones, where you are only playing against VR users, then I no longer think strafing is really necessary.

[rmcclelland]

I would be very interested in ANY more tips or advice you can give.

Check out this thread on the dev site:
https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/v ... f=26&t=124

I demoed the Rift to several people today. Most people were blown away. If it cost $300 and had a 1080p screen, they all would have been glad to purchase one on the spit.

[Machinima]

I don't know how much its been brought up but in the GDC talk Palmer said the rift shouldn't be used by young children, it probably doesn't apply to a short demo but what do you guys think about that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8C ... age#t=822s

[Mystify]

I don't know how much its been brought up but in the GDC talk Palmer said the rift shouldn't be used by young children, it probably doesn't apply to a short demo but what do you guys think about that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRdRc8C ... age#t=822s

There has been evidence that stuff like this can impair proper vision development. I don't know if its conclusive, but would you really risk your child's vision for the rest of their life over it?

[Machinima]

There has been evidence that stuff like this can impair proper vision development. I don't know if its conclusive, but would you really risk your child's vision for the rest of their life over it?

Exactly why I brought it up in this thread. If its a big deal (which is what I was asking) then it seems to be to be a fairly important fact to have in a guide for demoing your Rift.

[Mystify]

There has been evidence that stuff like this can impair proper vision development. I don't know if its conclusive, but would you really risk your child's vision for the rest of their life over it?

Exactly why I brought it up in this thread. If its a big deal (which is what I was asking) then it seems to be to be a fairly important fact to have in a guide for demoing your Rift.

I highly doubt simple exposure to VR is going to cause problems. We are talking about interfering with development patterns, which would require more persistent exposure. Demoing it should be fine, but you should think twice before buying one for your kid or letting your kid use it all the time.

[Namielus]

If the child is under 10, their eyes are going to be so close that they are going to be looking through the inner side of each lens anyway.
Chromatic aberration, softness and a bad experience overall.
A child will not know how to judge if the setup is ideal so you cannot
ask them either.

[geekmaster]

If the child is under 10, their eyes are going to be so close that they are going to be looking through the inner side of each lens anyway.
Chromatic aberration, softness and a bad experience overall.
A child will not know how to judge if the setup is ideal so you cannot
ask them either.

We can compensate in software for narrow IPD, such as looking through the inner half of the lenses, but this requires (well known) tangential distortion correction (the 'P' coefficients in the Brown's model lens distortion correction formulas) whereas we currently only use only radial distortion correction (the 'K' coefficients in Brown's model) under the false assumption that we will always be looking through the lens optical axis. The pre-warp filters I saw also do not perform the recommended distortion correction separately for each RGB color channel, using slightly different distortion coefficients for each color.

Also, the literature recommends performing subpixel distortion correction by first upscaling the image to double size. The sample screenshots I have seen show sharp stairstepping on the pre-warp edges, indicating no upscaling before pre-warp. We can do much better than that...

If performed CORRECTLY, we CAN compensate for mismatched IPD (even quite a lot, such as young children), and we can ALSO compensate for chromatic aberration. I have posted details (with reference links) in the OculusVR forums.

Here are the full formulas, if you are interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion ... correction

Most software assumes perfect optical-axis alignment, and leaves out tangential correction for lens offset. For the RiftDK, it is critical that we include it ASAP. Somebody get on that now, okay?

To measure the IPD of a child, it is usually much easier to measure between eye corners instead of eye pupils. Then set the software IPD to match, and the tangential distortion coefficients to compensate for the difference between viewer IPD and RiftDK 64mm IPD.

[brantlew]

I've seen and heard a lot of instances of children using the Rift and I think it's just a bad idea. Maybe if your kid asks what you are doing you can just put it up to their face for a few moments to show them the screen but anything longer than that is either pointless or really taxing on their eyes. For the really young 2 and 3 year olds that I've heard about it's just pointless. There is no way they can diverge their eyes that far so the stereoscopy won't work and the warping will be completely wrong so it will just be incomprehensible. I think those kids just react to the adults around them and really can't understand what they see. For kids a little older it's probably worse because they might be able to diverge their eyes and create stereoscopy but the effort will be really tiring on their eyes - possibly resulting in headaches for sustained exposure. The Rift is not a kid's toy.

[Zonetripper]

Great thread!

As a fellow norwegian I am curious about where you have showed the rift or to what crowd. (still waiting for mine )

[Namielus]

I was in Bergen showcasing to the Roskilde Road Trip crowd, next up is Trondheim this friday, Oslo next week and
back to trondheim the week after that.

Busy schedule. Anyone can visit me as well.

[Zonetripper]

Sweet! Where and when in Oslo?

[Namielus]

Not sure yet. Will let you know