QuakeCon 2012 Keynote

[nrp]

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

John Carmack's keynote is up on Youtube. It's worth watching the whole thing (I'm halfway though right now). Significant parts of it are dedicated to virtual reality. Some stuff I thought was particularly interesting:

John did nearly the same experiment I did with direct retinal projection: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk#t=5480s
Mine: http://eclecti.cc/hardware/blinded-by-t ... projection

Modern inexpensive MEMS gyros are less noisy than extremely expensive fiber optic gyros: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk#t=4050s

Saving a frame of latency by putting head tracking at the right spot in the game loop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Wk#t=6736s

The accuracy problem with the Razer Hydra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Wk#t=7432s

Edit: The Youtube tag doesn't seem to work with timestamps in the URL.

[Krenzo]

Saving a frame of latency by putting head tracking at the right spot in the game loop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Wk#t=6736s

Actually, he was talking about using prediction on the camera which is a very good way to reduce latency by rendering where your head will be before the tracker actually says it's there. It's similar to how multiplayer games reduce internet latency. It's funny to think that 15 years ago Carmack was trying to get rid of latency caused by the internet with QuakeWorld, and today, he's still trying to get rid of latency but from VR sensors and displays.

[STRZ]

Just finished watching it, very informative, especially to get the big picture of where VR is now and is able to go in the future, hopefully.

Interesting how he sees the role of Linux when it comes to cross platform. Hmm...

Having in mind that for example force feedback on Windows is a technology monopolized by a single company (immersion) who doesn't care about innovations, it hasn't evolved in over 12 years. It sucks for true simulation. Like track ir sucks for head tracking is hostile to anything wich could rival them.

And they charge huge money at device manufacturers, making it very difficult for people who want to start out and don't have the mass market in mind.

Positional audio is a domain of Creative (XFI) who do the same.. this are domains wich are very important to VR to get away from those mainstream mass market technology institutions. This stuff can be "pioneered" in Linux. There is nobody who could place stones in the way from a political perspective like the companies ruling Windows. I wouldn't rely on a closed OS, especially if the tendency is to take more and more freedoms away with their OS ecosystems. Its just naive to think that those big software players would let new stuff happen if you take the piece of cake of their other customers.

[cybereality]

I'm watching the keynote now, seems cool.

In terms of Linux, if all the games came out on it I would love to switch from Windows. Plus hardware APIs for VR peripherals, that is usually targeted to Windows. If that stuff worked on Linux, I would throw Windows in the trash. With Steam coming soon, maybe that will happen.

[STRZ]

Everybody i know who is a bit enthusiastic about computers and gaming would switch to Linux instantly if the games they play would run there natively.

For the Sixsense stuff there is a SDK for Linux http://sixense.com/linuxsdkdownload

Googling around i found out that Mumble, a open source Teamspeak alternative ha positional audio http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Positional-Audio

[davidgutierrezpalma]

The main problem about gaming on Linux, is the lack of good drivers for certain graphic cards. If that problem were solved, Linux could be considered a 1st class gaming platform.

[STRZ]

The main problem about gaming on Linux, is the lack of good drivers for certain graphic cards. If that problem were solved, Linux could be considered a 1st class gaming platform.

Seen this? http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

[davidgutierrezpalma]

Seen this? http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

I had already read that article and I already knew that Linux can be (and usually is) faster than Windows, as long as you can find good drivers for your graphic card. I stopped using Linux for my development machine a year ago (as an iOS developer, I need to use a Mac now), but when I was using Linux everyday, it wasn't uncommon to find incompatibilities between propietary drivers and some distros / graphic cards combinations. The performance of free drivers wasn't so great (in comparison with the performance of propietary drivers), but if the situation has improved since then...

[wuliheron]

As I understand it the immediate problem video game developers perceive with windows 8 is that like Apple the more portable devices will force consumers to us the Microsoft app store. Desktops and more powerful hardware capable of running the full version of windows 8 will have the option to use other video game vendors. At any rate, with the explosion in cheap portable systems and all-in-one desktops it is becoming a race to the bottom and who can provide the cheapest computers or dominate the low end of the market at least for awhile to extract as much money as possible. To put it mildly Microsoft has irritated their traditional OEMs by moving into the tablet hardware business and what the video game developers are doing is loudly suggesting they and the OEMs all pool their resources to make Linux a real low end alternative.

So far portable console gaming systems have been able to hold their own thanks to the fact no cheap portable PC could rival their performance on a small screen, but that is changing fast. With advances like chip stacking and hybrid memory cubes soon enough every snot nosed kid will be able to walk into Walmart and buy a tablet capable of playing games as graphically demanding as Crysis, streaming movies, and phoning home. When they become that cheap suddenly having to pay extra to use windows and buy games from their app store is going to become a significant additional cost.