Meant to be Seen

Oh I forgot to mention Hawx2, it has head tracking of sorts already, the cockpit look-around works very well with the hydra, so it would be great if this could be massaged into working with the Rift, I think it's quite happy with mouse emulation for looking, it's just a case of calibrating the Rift mouse emulation to match the game's expectations.

Hey Cyber,
I don't want to get too off topic, but while you have been working on the driver, have you gotten a feeling, for which of the supportted games on the list, will be your personal favorite to play on the RIFT ? And which game not on the list, do you want to add, just because you, yourself, want to play it on the RIFT ?

Well it would have to be L4D, simply because I have spent the most time testing and tweaking it (and it is always my goto game for testing 3D hardware).

Would like to maybe get Deus Ex : HR or Hard Reset working, I think that would be fun.

Cool, Thanks Cyber.
+1 with me to for Deus Ex:HR

Not sure if I asked or not, but with HL2 on your list, does that mean the Episodes will work also ?

cybereality wrote:Well it would have to be L4D, simply because I have spent the most time testing and tweaking it (and it is always my goto game for testing 3D hardware).

Would like to maybe get Deus Ex : HR or Hard Reset working, I think that would be fun.

If I have a vote, my vote is for Deus Ex HR. Though I do believe the animations are going to show their age with the rift. Still, awesome game. I got it on steam ages ago and am only starting to play it.

Hi greenknight, "got it on steam ages ago" "animations are going to show their age"

Are we both talking about the Deus Ex that only came out about a year ago and not the first 1999/2000 Deus Ex ?
I have not played the new one yet, so if you are talking about the new game, do you mean it is using an old dated game engine ?

3dvison wrote:Hi greenknight, "got it on steam ages ago" "animations are going to show their age"

Are we both talking about the Deus Ex that only came out about a year ago and not the first 1999/2000 Deus Ex ?
I have not played the new one yet, so if you are talking about the new game, do you mean it is using an old dated game engine ?

The graphics in the new Deus Ex are great! But, the animations look very poor and wooden. I just downloaded the mafia 2 demo, and the graphics there also very nice, but the animations are quite poor. This is also true for skyrim, and most games in general. When you see a person in a game world up close, it is going to be far far more obvious than on a tiny screen (my 27 inch monitor is still tiny compared to life-sized VR after all!).


Also, if the vireo driver has a 50% overhead, doen't that mean you would need 240 frames per second to have the least possible latency?!

Even 200 is impossible for most gaming machines, except maybe games designed for the first xbox. It's early days for sure, but even achieving 120 frames is too high for me. And would be too high even for high end CPU's once they increase the resolution on the commercial version of the rift.

For the atmosphere alone I would love Fallout: New Vegas, or Fallout 3.
However the most important vote for me is remains to get one car game with a working cockpit and head tracking ( I don't care what kind of head tracking technology)

Is the head tracking data translated to 2DOF mouse emulation?

donkaradiablo wrote:Is the head tracking data translated to 2DOF mouse emulation?

For pitch and yaw, yes, but then roll is implemented by rotating the "camera" in DirectX.

Cool

(I assume the new tracker's gonna be supported)

I'm kinda courious how your driver works...
Do you use a service to intercept DX calls (sike iz3D does), or do you work with a launcher or .dll replacemant?

If your driver woks without windows system services im courious if I could get it to work on linux with wine... at least for line interlaced and sbs...

I think someone else was working on a linux driver like that, but I was never sure if it was using wine directly or just OpenGL.

Hi Cyber - any chance of some pics or even better video than we can take a peak with our DIY rift units?

@donkaradiablo: Currently only Hillcrest is supported, but I plan to get the final tracker in there by December for the launch.

@cirk2: The basic idea of how it works is with a proxy DLL that replaces the real DirectX. Though it does use some Windows specific tricks, its not just a straight "drop it in the folder" type of thing. I doubt it would work outside Windows. Fredz is working on a Linux driver, though.

@space123321: Ok, I will make a video today.

Will absolutely buy this driver from you Very excited for Dirt 2 support and Skyrim also!

[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcgPvCvTqK0[/youtube-hd]

This time its in the correct SBS parallel format so people can test on their DIY Rifts.

cybereality wrote:[video]
This time its in the correct SBS parallel format so people can test on their DIY Rifts.

I can't really tell.
Is this 640x800 on each side?

cybereality wrote:[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcgPvCvTqK0[/youtube-hd]

This time its in the correct SBS parallel format so people can test on their DIY Rifts.

Giddy with excitement, waiting for the DIYers' responses. Come on...what's taking you guys?

mahler wrote: I can't really tell.
Is this 640x800 on each side?

Its 640x720, which should be close enough. The point was that the 3D format was the right one (previous videos used cross-eye).

Hmm, a detail I never thought of before until I saw that video. 2D hud elements appear to be out at infinity with an HMD instead of at screen depth like with a 3D monitor. That's far less distracting. Stuff like the floating player names really bothered me in L4D with stereoscopy but this should be decent.

I wonder how well these HUD elements work in the RIFT...

@Owen: Well the life and ammo elements are at screen depth. I think its just the player names that got messed up. Its not horrible, but just a little distracting. It would be nice if the names hovered at the correct depth above the character, but this seems a little difficult to do.

Really? That should only be the case if there is convergence, which generally doesn't make sense for an HMD. Otherwise you should get zero parallax at infinite distance, because the frustums are parallel.

Personally I wish there were a way to just turn those names off. Its not information you need during play anyway.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh - so nice to see a corect aspect ratio throught the DIY rift! Thanks for posting (and feel free to post anything that you want lol!) Looks great - and the HUD on the right side of the screen looks perfect. Anything along the bottom is visable - however you have to force the eyes to look down.

The 3d looks great with outstanding depth! Cyber - the one thing I noticed though is that really fast side to side movement (turning around quickly) did not look smooth - almost like I was watching a frame delay 3d movie conversion? Not sure if this was simply the Youtube video that had this appearance?

@space123321: Well that is one of the problems with the method I am using to render stereo. Basically I am rendering each eye in succession, which means they are slightly different (1 frame delay). In most cases this is not noticeable and looks totally fine. Especially for slower-paced games (ie Dear Esther) its no problem. However if there is very fast movement on the screen (like turning the camera around quickly in a shooter) than you can notice. I plan on fixing this eventually, but its not going to be ready for the initial release.

Owen wrote:Really? That should only be the case if there is convergence, which generally doesn't make sense for an HMD. Otherwise you should get zero parallax at infinite distance, because the frustums are parallel.

Actually, I thought most HMDs had convergence. The VR920 seemed to be a virtual screen with a screen distance of 9 feet as advertised, when I compared the parallax with real objects. So infinity would have to be slightly behind the virtual screen. But there's probably not too much difference between 9 feet and infinity.

I really have no idea what the real Rift dev kit will be like in terms of convergence.

Anyway, I had a look at the video with parallel free viewing, and I was very impressed with how professional it looked. Very well done. And I liked the way you did the corners so they aren't just black. I didn't mind the names. I'm not sure how usable the HUD would be in your peripheral vision though. Unfortunately, I won't be able to afford your driver when I just got back from Europe.

what about support for non-1stperson games? (with the option of turning off headtracking)

speaking speculatively (having not tried a hmd before), i would imagine that a game like d3 would look off with that high a fov(as would movies)? Would adjustable fov per game setting be possible?
do you know if there is going to an driver for the oculus as part of the sdk? i read that palmer was using iz3d initially, but it would seem that it would be in its nature to have an opensource driver ...so as not to be reliant on some 3rd party. (ex iz3d).

i heard oculus's primary intent was for games and that other usage (transforming movies so that they would look like flat (like most movie threatres)) would be left up to the developers. i don't imagine they'll have some swap-able lens/mirrors such that it will have a flat monitor-like presentation for general purpose viewing (if indeed it could work like that)?
i don't know anyone who wouldn't want that without having to rely on 3rd party programs (and indeed some reviews of sony's hmd seemed a bit disappointed in the blurred edges when trying to use it whiel working on something like a spreadsheet).
sorry about the digression.

Any reason you're not activating 3d mode on your youtube videos, Cyber?

game support request from my side: Gamebryo (Fallout 3/NV, Oblivion, Morrowind) and X-Ray (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) engine.

I can't find (or just to blind) anything about any plans for further support of DX10/11 in this thread (except a short hint regarding Battlefield 3). Do you schedule anything concrete in this direction?

jaybug wrote:Any reason you're not activating 3d mode on your youtube videos, Cyber?

Probably because Youtube breaks 3d aspect ratios horribly.

Well, yeah, but you can still watch the video as it is now (full SBS) and still have the option to switch eyes, for poor cross-eyed bastards like myself :p

jaybug wrote:Well, yeah, but you can still watch the video as it is now (full SBS) and still have the option to switch eyes, for poor cross-eyed bastards like myself :p

You're not poor. Almost all the screenshots and videos on here are designed for you. It's us poor (metaphorically) exotropic bastards who normally miss out. I try to view things cross-eyed, but all that happens is I see a fuzzy blur behind my finger, where I can't make anything out, that suddenly snaps back into clear 2D as soon as I try to focus on anything besides my finger. I'll manage it one day though.

Can we have a video with some "roll"ing

@noeru: I have not been testing with 3rd person games because I figured most people will want first-person for the VR experience. Though I did almost get Batman:AA working, so I can maybe get that finished at some point. I can also look into other games for the future. I don't know if Oculus plans on making their own driver or simply relying on 3rd parties for support. From everything I have seen they seem to be focused on getting developers to add native support to games, and I can agree this is probably the best focus. However, Emerson did release the source to his driver, and people in the community could jump in on the project if thats something they want to do.

@jaybug: This last video was made specifically for people with DIY Rifts already, not for normal 3D monitors. If I put the YT3D tags then the aspect ratio would be wrong and the video is warped anyway. I can take another 3D video and post it soon.

@tRIACTIs: Yeah, Fallout 3 would be cool. Never played STALKER, but I can put it on the list. In terms of Dx10/11 support, that is a whole 'nother can of worms and there is no way I could get the ready for December. But if this project becomes successful, then I will have more time to dedicate to it and I can look into stuff like DirectX11.

@donkaradiablo: I originally started to record with the roll enabled, but the Hillcrest tracker was being very jumpy and it was giving me a headache. I didn't want to post a video that gives people headaches. I will see if there is anything I can do to fix this.

Applying any convergence to an HMD (assuming 100% overlap for the sake of simplicity) is geometrically incorrect. If Sony does it then that's because they are simulating the experience of looking at a virtual TV screen, not virtual reality.

The only reason 3D displays need convergence is because its one screen. Both images occupy the same physical space so the projections must overlap at some finite distance.

Doing the same with an HMD literally simulates having a lazy eye. You get distortion that results in diminished perception of depth and scale.

OK, guys. Here is a 3D video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peT43KN75gI[/youtube]

Also, just note that FRAPS for some reason introduced serious lag/delay in the head-tracking so this made it not as smooth as normal.

Nice Cyber.

Really looking forward to this! Money ready to throw at screen!

Potentially stupid question: Does the Rift also use this sort of 3d or just parallel?

I don't know what sort of 3D you mean. The Rift looks 3D the same way the real world does (almost), it doesn't require any special viewing technique. It does require a special 3D signal, but the driver takes care of that for you.

@2EyeGuy - Does it do the split blue/red style 3d (Anaglyph 3D) that is in the youtube video, on top of the standard side-by-side (Stereoscopy 3D).

Edit - for 3D technique names. It doesn't mention Anaglyph on the Rift Wiki. Apologies if this is a 'duh' question, I'm fairly new to this wonderful 3d world!