HMD Middleware Utility?
Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 7:44 am
I know there is a lot of buzz lately with the Rift and most people simply don't realize that the Rift dev kit is really a dev kit and is not meant to work out of the box on everything. My question is there anyone out there that is currently working on a middleware utility as a generic interface? My experience is with multi-projector S3D gaming and I helped convince Immersaview to get into the consumer market in 2008 with NTHUSIM. I'm trying to convince them at the moment that it would be also a good idea to make a HMD software utility for the Rift to act as a middleware to do the footwork using a profile based system to handle movement interface and camera correction. Am I off the mark trying to get Immersaview involved in development of a HMD software? Immersaview is concerned that the Rift would just have all of that software already designed leaving them with nothing to put into a consumer software product. I'm trying to explain to Alex and Andy of Immersaview that the Rift is primarily a hardware development and they're leaving the software interface up to whatever can be imagined by third parties. Should I pursue this with Immersaview? I helped NTHUSIM for projectors happen and I think I might be able to convince them to develop a HMD utility.
Personally, I see a generic interface utility the missing piece of the puzzle. While all talk has been focused on individual integration into to each game I just don't think dev houses will buy into that in a grand scale. I see it having the same level of developer imvolvement as triple-head LCD gaming. I think that there could still be a middleware utility that could make things just work on a lot of titles. In many ways I see HMD as the next gaming enthusiast niche market -- about the same level of of adoption as mutli-display gaming (AMD Eyefinity/Matrox TH2G/NVIDIA Surround) has evolved into the last half-dozen years. I see a lot of parallels in development between multi-projector S3D pre-warping and HMD. Immersaview has codebase that does pre-warp correction of desktop and DirectX/OpenGL apps. That could handle the camera rendering correction across most situations, including 2D desktop navigation.
Personally, I see a generic interface utility the missing piece of the puzzle. While all talk has been focused on individual integration into to each game I just don't think dev houses will buy into that in a grand scale. I see it having the same level of developer imvolvement as triple-head LCD gaming. I think that there could still be a middleware utility that could make things just work on a lot of titles. In many ways I see HMD as the next gaming enthusiast niche market -- about the same level of of adoption as mutli-display gaming (AMD Eyefinity/Matrox TH2G/NVIDIA Surround) has evolved into the last half-dozen years. I see a lot of parallels in development between multi-projector S3D pre-warping and HMD. Immersaview has codebase that does pre-warp correction of desktop and DirectX/OpenGL apps. That could handle the camera rendering correction across most situations, including 2D desktop navigation.