Which is the better Tuscany demo?

[cerulianbaloo]

When people first started receiving their Rifts after GDC I remember reading that there two different exes of the Tuscany demo, one part of the SDK and another titled Tuscany World or something like that. Anyway I recall people saying one exe was a better experience over the other, had better sense of scale, included those floaty puff ball things outdoors of the villa etc. I was wondering if this was still the case and if so which of these offer the better experience. I know new SDKs have been released since so maybe they're about the same in quality now. Any help appreciated thanks!

[geekmaster]

When people first started receiving their Rifts after GDC I remember reading that there two different exes of the Tuscany demo, one part of the SDK and another titled Tuscany World or something like that. Anyway I recall people saying one exe was a better experience over the other, had better sense of scale, included those floaty puff ball things outdoors of the villa etc. I was wondering if this was still the case and if so which of these offer the better experience. I know new SDKs have been released since so maybe they're about the same in quality now. Any help appreciated thanks!

In the latest SDK, the OculusWorldDemo has a MUCH larger FoV than the Unity Tuscany demo! While using the A-eyecups with my eyelashes brushing the lenses (for maximum FoV), the Unity demo has visible black borders in all directions, even when looking directly at the lower or inner borders. That wastes a huge amount of my otherwise visible FoV. For people who do not wear glasses and use the A-eyecups that come pre-installed in the Rift, I strongly recommend starting with the OculusWorldDemo.

I sure hope they fix the Unity demo soon, because its severley limited FoV will make a bad impression for those who can see the borders, giving a "diving mask" effect to the Rift experience when there is so much more peripheral FoV to see than that.

Of course, if you wear eyeglasses inside your Rift, or if you use different lens eyecups, or if you place you eyes farther away from the lenses to intentionally reduce your FoV, you may not even notice the difference. But I want the high FoV that the Rift was designed for, and the latest Tuscany demo sets a bad example (but hopefully not a bad precedent for future games).

So yeah, FoV-wise (which is all-important to me), the OculusWorldDemo Tuscany as FAR SUPERIOR to the Unity Tuscany demo. IMHO...

[cerulianbaloo]

Awesome, thanks for letting me know. I expect my jaw to be on the floor in a few hours once my DK arrives

[brantlew]

Graphically however, the Unity demo is superior due to the much more advanced and optimized engine.

[geekmaster]

Graphically however, the Unity demo is superior due to the much more advanced and optimized engine.

Granted that, but does it really NEED to restrict the FoV so much? And if so, why can't it do a quick benchmark at startup to decide WHEN it needs to do that. Plenty of gamers here will have adequate hardware to support more FoV, I should think.

I most definitely prefer a bigger FoV over the image quality benefits that Unity offers. But I wish I could have both right at startup, without needing to futz with with the keyboard while wearing my Rift.

But like I said, many people will configure their Rift's in a way where they cannot even see that extra FoV anyway. But I can, and it is the most important feature of the Rift, IMHO. I would never trade my enhanced FoV for "superior graphics" when the smaller FoV that Unity provides at startup is not allocating enough pixels to provide said "superiority". And I do not call blurred edges "superior" -- I much prefer random "Monty Carlo" dither that "sparkles" while giving more perceptual resolution AND color gamut. But then, I like to apply "unsharp mask" to most of my photos too, so there is that... Personal preference is all that really matters in the end, and I MUCH prefer OculusWorldDemo over Unity, due to the dimished Unity FoV. At least we have a choice here, and we can try both of them to decide for ourselves...

[Runbmp]

Its weird but I never felt the Unity engine to be optimized all much. I haven't tried it with the oculus kit yet...but generally speaking on a 120Mhz monitor with two 7970's. Perhaps I will do more further testing on that end once the Oculus rift arrives.

[spire8989]

Its weird but I never felt the Unity engine to be optimized all much. I haven't tried it with the oculus kit yet...but generally speaking on a 120Mhz monitor with two 7970's. Perhaps I will do more further testing on that end once the Oculus rift arrives.

Its not optimized compared to other solutions such as udk or ce3, but maybe versus the raw implementation it is..

[cerulianbaloo]

Well I tried both and while the textures are better and other little touches like the floaty puff balls and fire in the fireplace are nice in the unity exe, I much preferred the oculus world one due to the higher FOV. This was my first demo with the Rift and I think it was a good choice, because yeah, dat FOV.

[cybereality]

The Unity version has cooler effects: fire in the fireplace, the floating puffs, lens flare, better water treatment, etc. The C++ version is rather bare-bones.

[mrklaw]

What makes the unity version have a different FoV? Engine limitations, just how it's set up? Could it be reissued using more of the screen?

[V8Griff]

In terms of things to do there is also the Sixense Tuscany demo which is great if you have a Hydra as you can interact with the world rather than just look at it.

IMO when you have something to do then the reduced FOV is less important, especially as VR isn't just about looking it's interaction.

[virror]

What makes the unity version have a different FoV? Engine limitations, just how it's set up? Could it be reissued using more of the screen?

Designer choice, you can easily compile your own version of the Unity demo and just set the fov higher, max fov that can be set on a camera is 179.

[PatimPatam]

Geekmaster is right about the FOV, but i think he forgot and important part in his sentence (added in bold):

"if you wear eyeglasses inside your Rift, OR if you use different lens eyecups, OR if you place you eyes farther away from the lenses to intentionally reduce your FoV, OR if you are not one of the lucky ones who can physically place the lenses very close to his eyes you may not even notice the difference"

Unfortunately for me, my face is apparently at the other end of the spectrum to geekmaster's. I have fairly deep eye sockets and a prominent nose bridge, so even though i don't wear glasses i have to adjust the Rift to max separation (which btw also causes some serious fogging problems).


Also if you go with the Unity demo and have a decent rig i suggest you run it at 1920x1080 for a MASSIVE improvement in quality:
http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments ... lution_on/

I just checked the Unity version of the Tuscany demo with Pix, and it does indeed use a 1280x800 framebuffer. That seems like a massive oversight.

I didn't test that myself but if Fastidiocy is right i wonder if Oculus are using a 1280x800 framebuffer on purpose to make sure it runs smoothly even on slow machines, or if it was indeed an oversight. Maybe Cyber or Brantlew could shed some light on that.


So between the 2 SDK non-hydra versions my advice would be:

IF you can place your eyes very near the A lenses for max FOV OR you don't have a machine that can run FullHD at 60fps THEN
__ C++ demo
ELSE
__ Unity demo at 1920x1080
END IF

(I guess Visual Basic is useful sometimes hehe)


Anyway i hope they fix both the FOV AND the rendering problem for the next SDK version.

[2EyeGuy]

The Razer hydra Tuscany demo is the best.

[PyramidHead76]

I'm not quite answering the question here, but it seems to me the Unity Tuscany isn't really very optimised for the Unity engine, which is part of the reason for the lower frame rates.

The devs seem to have imported one mesh for all of the interior props, one for all the exterior, one for the whole of the exterior of the house, one object for all the tall trees.

The way I believe the occlusion culling works (and I'm happy for someone to tell me I'm wrong), I think this means that if you can see just one tall tree through the window, all of the tall trees are being drawn and then overpainted by the house.

A better system would probably have been to import , for example, one tall tree and then create and place multiple instances within the Unity editor itself.

[MrGreen]

So 3 versions of the same demo?

This is a bit of a mess isn't it?

[PyramidHead76]

So 3 versions of the same demo?

This is a bit of a mess isn't it?

It's kind of messy, but the way to see it is that there were two SDK sample projects (one written in 'C' and one in Unity) which shared the same artwork.

I guess someone took one of those demos (dunno which one) and bolted the Razer Hydra SDK into it to make a third demo.

[V8Griff]

So 3 versions of the same demo?

This is a bit of a mess isn't it?

Why a mess?

The first two are examples of the same demo built in two different development environments, C++ and the Unity middleware/engine.
The third version is an example built by a third party (Sixense) to demonstrate the use of their SDK supporting the Razer Hydra peripheral in a virtual Reality environment.

[geekmaster]

So, apparently, the "Tuscany demo" is the "Hello world program" for the Oculus Rift (just like a "Blinking LED" is the "Hello World" for embedded processors)...

Way back in January of this year OculusVR asked us to help them create a new virtual environment for their amazing new hardware device, the Oculus Rift. After meeting the crew at the Oculus office we thought it would be great to create a bright, colorful, and vibrant world demo. That’s when I suggested, “hey, we recently returned from a trip to Italy and took tons of pictures. Why not create a location based on the Tuscany countryside?” Everyone instantly fell in love with the idea and off we went.

To create the demo, we worked hand in hand with both OculusVR and Robotic Arm Software, who specializes in digital tools development, to create identical demos in both Unity3D and in a custom C++ engine that would be released to developers as part of the Oculus Rift SDK.



What was really cool about the project was just working with the headset device, which we were lucky enough to get one of the very first Oculus Rift prototypes ever created. Once you put the headset on you really feel that this could be the future of not just gaming, but many types of entertainment and simulations. As a designer of video games, my head was literally spinning as I thought of all the potential and opportunity that the Oculus Rift provides developers. What is truly interesting is what we found out while developing the Tuscany demo; everything, I mean everything, is far more intimate in the Rift as opposed to being viewed on a TV across the room. Every nuance is now noticeable, every texture detail is vivid. This created a slightly new way of level creation for us as we quickly learned that the high res textures that make up the environment are critical.

Another aspect that we found was just how important maintaining a high framerate is. When you turn your head in the Rift, the character, or camera, turns in realtime which creates a fantastically immerse feeling. The funny things is that your brain expects this to happen instantly. Any lag and your brain is going “what the heck is going on!” It’s a strange feeling to experience. Obviously, the way to combat this is to optimize the artwork so that it runs very fast, at least 60FPS. I actually think that the Oculus Rift might push new devices to have refresh rates to 120FPS or higher, as this for the first time might actually become noticeable to the user.

^^-- Nice little piece of history...

It looks like the reduced FoV in the Unity3D version may have been an "optimization" to give it the same framerate as the higher-FoV OculusWorldDemo version that uses a simpler and faster "C++ engine". So you have to decide for yourself whether higher FoV or extra "eye-candy" suits your personal preference...

Eye Candy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmXL6-F3vZQ

Who will make a VR game based on that "Eye Candy" video?