You need to try RedFrame if you have a Rift

[zella]

This demo has got me excited about my Rift again. It is a fantastic realisation of an environment and it achieves a level of realism that is almost photo-realistic; something that I did't think was possible in Unity.

http://redframe-game.com/blog/redframe- ... rift-demo/

I thought the problem with my DK was lack of resolution, but this demo made me think otherwise, that it's really just lack of quality environments to explore. Of course this demo would benefit from a higher res display, but even with the current dev kit, the feeling of immersion and transportation into the room is staggering. It really is something different from the Tuscanys etc. There is also a decent sound design in the demo so be sure to use headphones.

I think in general games that are photo-realistic (or close to it) won't need high screen fidelity for a believable experience. Just like when you watch a real person on a CRT TV, they don't look any less real, there is just a lack of clarity. And conversely games with more stylised art design I feel really suffer in the low res Rift.

I'm watching the drop in replacement thread just as much as the next guy, and of course waiting for full release. But for now I'm just as excited to see where some of those doors in RedFrame lead.

[virror]

Yes, this demo is really, really awesome!
Scale is a bit strange though, you might want to edit your height in the config utility to something lower than you really are.

[unsilentwill]

There's a lot to learn from this seemingly simple demo. The team has done excellent work with lighting/shadows in Unity which makes Tuscany look like an N64 game. The light and color of a world is so key to immersion I hope the that attention to what the eye sees and believes becomes a standard.

[zalo]

Yeah, after hearing the phrase: "You gotta try this demo; it will blow you away!" about eleventy-kazillion times, I've gotten pretty jaded.

But the subtle use of bloom and baked light maps combined with extremely high qualities textures makes this simple walk-around demo a winner!

It feels... voluminous. It doesn't feel like Unity any more!

Every dev needs to read their blog posts on Light Mapping in Unity:
http://redframe-game.com/blog/lightmap- ... eneration/
http://redframe-game.com/blog/lightmap- ... -lighting/

[cybereality]

I was really blown away by this. It makes the graphics on DK1 look like it's HD.

Then I tried it on the HD Rift and I was blown further away.

[geekmaster]

Here is a video of the new Rift Demo for this game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvER763cPWQ

And here is a peek at more of the house (October 2012):
https://vimeo.com/57759223

[zella]

@Cybereality Great to hear, can't wait to get my hands on an HD Rift. Have you tried Crystal Cove yet, and is that screen higher res or just a OLED of the same res?

[Drewbdoo]

I second this demo as well - very powerful demo. My favorite is walking right up to the shelf with the old photos on it, getting as close as I can to one and then looking down the shelf - just a very powerful 3d effect.

[zella]

Yes I have done just that. And the sensation of wanting to move the coat hangers around in the wardrobe. It's funny how exiting this environment makes totally mundane things seem. Very exciting for VR in general.
The sad thing is that we probably wont see a better environment than this for quite some time. There is clearly a trade off between achievable interaction levels and quality of lighting, clearly this game wont be heavy on interaction. But can you imagine being able to take a gun in there, not that that was the first thing I wanted to do in there, its perfectly pleasant just to walk around and explore, but when we can have high quality environments with excellent interactivity, physics, destruction etc. that will be truly exciting.

[xhonzi]

Then I tried it on the HD Rift and I was blown further away.

Jerk!

[cybereality]

@zella: Yes, I've tried Crystal Cove. I can't comment on the exact specs, but it appears much more clear than the current dev kit.

[zella]

Lol I knew you wouldn't be able to, I was just going journalist on you hoping you'd let slip.
That's great to hear, I hope we don't see any downgrading from this point, as I know OLEDs are crazy expensive, and apparently with the rate of development in that area apparently they wont be getting cheaper for a few years at least:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/10/sams ... our-years/

[Falan]

This demo is amazing, I just stood in that room for about 10 minutes looking about again, its such exciting times we are living in. In a few years things will never be the same again for any of us!

[xhonzi]

It does look very, very good!


It really does make me want to reach out and interact with it. The sense of being there that is set by the visuals isn't matched by ability to interact.

Does anyone know more about the 'game' this is part of?

[zella]

I dont think there are many details about it yet. But I can imagine it being very much like Gone Home, a game which I didnt enjoy half as much as everyone else it seems

[virror]

Just a heads up, there is a new version of this deom on Share with some small updates. Also, don't forget to set you EYE height in the config utility, not your total height.

[daveo2013]

Wow, that is stunning - congratulations to the artist(s) who made it. I can imagine it would be extremely creepy if someone entered that room after you'd been exploring it a while!

[Falan]

It would be genuinely unsettling to have someone appear in the corner of the room staring at you when you turned around, I thought that. Its probably the calm setting coupled with the abundance of horror demos out there, I nearly expected it

[daveo2013]

I think because it's so realistically modelled, textured and lit, it feels a bit like trespassing to be snooping around in there

[braddas]

Very cool! Definitely raises the bar graphics-wise, and one of the only demos where I really didn't notice the screen door effect at all. I think this will be by new go-to demo when showing people the rift for the first time.

[Mr Scratch]

These guys nailed the perspective. This right here is the absolute difference between a project that adds Oculus support and a project that was built from the ground up for an Oculus. The FOV, the height and lighting. Perfect.

[xhonzi]

Just a heads up, there is a new version of this deom on Share with some small updates. Also, don't forget to set you EYE height in the config utility, not your total height.

What's new?

[mickman]

These guys used a Unity 3D texture plug-in called Amplify

here's the basis of what they say...

Amplify Texture is a plug-in for Unity that allows textures to be streamed into your game dynamically. What’s cool is that it only streams the visible parts of a potentially massive virtual texture, which contains all the textures you add to it. Consequently the scene loading time is negligible and you can have one Virtual Texture for each scene, making it virtually unlimited.

It s a really powerful game dev. tool... actually its frikn awesome