Hello JohnCarmack,
Will the Field of View warping be a user adjustable setting in Doom3 BFG ?
Or even just a couple higher (FOV) option selections in a menu.
Was thinking when the 120-270 Field of View RIFT add-on lenses become available, we could be up and running in ID software..

I don't think there are plans for a demo version of the BFG edition. I'm probably going to just buy 100 copies wholesale myself and send them to Palmer for bundling with the first round of kits.

The fov is controlled by a console variable and the warping is done with a fragment program that you can replace if you want, but you can't go past 180 degrees with a single rendering, and d3 won't have support for multiple offset views. Until we get higher resolution panels, spreading things out over an even larger fov probably isn't a good trade off. It would be nice to have a little bigger screen so you could get the same 110 degree fov horizontally that you get vertically, and remove the need to mask the optics horizontally, but really, it is already extremely immersive.

I hope to also include a smaller R&D testbed program with source, but I will need to clear that with Zenimax HQ, so I can't promise it.

The Rift V1 is not going to be a consumer HMD, but it is going to be a godsend for interested hackers.

John Carmack

Thanks JohnCarmack,
An HMD option in the full game is all I wanted. No demo is fine with me John. After all your support & help, I was definitely getting the full version as a nod of thanks to you anyway.

With that said,
Hey PalmerTech,
How do I get on the first 100 list...LOL
I don't know how you are going to do it ? Long time posters like cybereality and others need to be at the top of the list, I just hope I can get squeezed into that first batch of 100 units somehow.

Surely there will be a pledge in Kickstarter (limited to 100 units) that includes the HMD, the headtracker and a copy of "Doom3 BFG Edition". As usual in Kickstarter, the first 100 people who "buy" the pledge, get the reward

well I called dibs.....( just sayin'......) I am pretty sure that is an internationally accepted, binding contact, for most any playground..... I may be wrong though.

When the project launches, I will post a link here right away. Anyone subscribed to this thread should easily be in the first 100, since they will have the link before Google indexes it or any of the tech blogs post it.

I hope this is a successful project, but I don't think it will go over 100 units without any promotion!

Subscribed, ready, and waiting!

That said, I want to throw my support behind two sentiments I've seen on this thread already.

First, I do hope that you do turn a small profit from the kits. It sounds like you've devoted a bit of personal time to this and have come up with something good, possibly great. You should totally be compensated for that. My impression is that this is going to be an assembly-required kit, so I'm sure there will be some post-release support work to be done, too. If nothing else, I'd view it as an investment in you continuing the good work with new displays, optics, connections, battery power, weight reduction, and so on. At the very least give us access to a tip jar or something.

Second, I'd imagine that right about now there's a huge amount of pressure/temptation to shove it out the door. If there are things (like the reliability of the display driver board) that you aren't happy with yet, we can deal with small delays. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it's much easier to one thing ahead of time than troubleshoot 100 units out in the wild. Finally, given that this could be somewhat disruptive, the rewards for getting it right out of the gate are probably worthwhile.

I "second" both of Bill's points.

Personally, I'm in no rush. I've been waiting for a real VR kit since the 90's, an extra month or so ain't gonna kill me.

Don't kill yourself Palmer.
I thought the first batch was going to be a low profit do-it-YO-self kit. You really do need to up the profit .
But profit or not, I thought for sure there would be problems & hickups when I get a RIFT kit. WHY ? Because It's a kit, I got it for problems.
I also thought there would be no support to speak of, I thought support was going to be us, helping each other on these forums, or on a RIFT website forum.

I just hope no one wants too much from Palmer. Such as 1-800-tech support, not for this first run of RIFT's in a Kit anyway.
Palmer, just include one BC headache powder with each RIFT Kit sold, and then turn your phone off...LOL

Untill you say different, I will think of the RIFT production line as a one man show.

Very excited by this!

+1 for both BillRoeske's points.
+1 for "I have been waiting for something like RIFT for many years, so I don't mind waiting another additional month".

I'm not a "hardware guy", but I won't have any problem with DIY kits as long as they can be assembled easily: I don't have any soldering skills nor the ability or knowledge to place the lenses manually in the precise angle/position required to get the best effect, so I hope this type of skills are not necessary. I wouldn't have any problem with "simple operations" like "securing these pieces together using screws" or "plugging this cable into that jack", but (while I won't expect a polished product for end-users) I hope these DIY-kits are being built thinking in people like me: people with a basic knowledge about electronics, but without the manual ability to do "complex operations" such as soldering.

I'm so excited for this, I have been waiting a long time for a true VR experience. Thank you PalmerTech for creating this and progressing VR tech. Thanks to John as well for the software support. Good luck with the Kickstarter.

Count me in on the kickstarter! This is to good to be true. Doom on an HMD. A dream that comes to reality! So awesome.

Can't wait.

This project looks really good, I'll back you on kickstarter for sure.

Just dropping by to say I'm in for the kickstarter when it happens. I look forward to running my work-in-progress games on the Rift.

yeah Im super stoked for this peice of kit. You are about to change the VR landscape and its about time someone stepped up to do it right. Maybe other companies with follow suit and understand IMMERSION is where its at. Ill be supporting your kickstart as well as picking up a unit if possible. Also, if you are still looking for a logo I would be happy to submit some concepts over the next week (Im in Japan until Wednesday but when Im back in Canada Ill throw some your way - unless you have something already - you can PM me any art needs you have I would be glad to be a small part of this)

I do have a few questions if you have the time to answer them:

1) What is the process for getting existing games to work with the unit - eg: Flight Simulator X, or Just Cause 2 for example. Is it simple or do games need an entirely new driver..etc

2) When released what would one use with it? Would DOOM be our only demo for a long while (with hopefully Rage to follow) or would we be able to look forward to a slate of working titles (this question is kinda like my first one)

Either way Im excited, this combined with a motion chair you would never see me again!

Nah, we can use zooms for that. Most important for me has been good contrast and colours.

@Damo3D: We should be able to use the IZ3D driver with it, though it may not render the aspect ratio perfectly. Should still work for a lot of games though. That is what I used on an earlier prototype I tried. I am also in the process of writing my own 3D driver, which will have specific support for the Rift (correct aspect ratio, pre-warping, etc.). However I am just in the early stages of this, and it will probably be a few months before I have something ready for the public.

@demo3d: I guess when more people get their hands on this thing a lot of software / usecases will emerge automaticly. There are probably lots of developers / wizkids under the interested user base.

I for one am excited to get started working on some projects I have a development background but not excactly in the HMD / VR scene.. but willing to learn so my guess is that lots of people will be sharing software / drivers / tests on the mtbs3d forums and or 'The Rift' homepage (if there is one)

Now let's hope the kickstarter starts soon

Palmer,
With John's warping, have you had a look at one of your 2D HMD's but with a much more massive FOV ? No 3D, but with a massive FOV and a full screen resolution at 16:9, It would be awsome. Even without 3D. Or was warping never a problem that needed to be corrected with the 2D version ?

@3DVision: Palmer can correct me if I'm wrong but 2D is not really an option at this time. The unit is optically fixed for 3D viewing only. John's warping only applies to in-game stereo and would not carry over into the desktop.


cybereality's post got me thinking - there are several developers that will probably start hacking together display drivers and post-processing warpers for the Rift, but it will probably take a long time for this stuff to mature. The fastest way to get good support for the device in many games would be if DDD or IZ3D were to include support for it. I wonder if we could lobby them to add that? I for one, would pay a significant surcharge for this upgrade.

I don't have any experience with driver interception on Windows, but I developed something that might help on Linux two years ago. It was a Linux-addon for multi-head projection on curved surfaces.
The software takes the backbuffer before it gets rendered on to the screen an you can warp it using custom geometry (or through Bezier-curves). Because it runs in the background, it affects every picture - desktop/applications/games. If the need es there, I could ask my boss, if it would be okay to release the source. The codebase hasn't changed in years, and I'd love to make it compatible with the Rift.

Ah yeah, I found some old pictures: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/479717/1 ... e?h=48fca5
You see a colleague of mine even testing Quake with it (those are old random shoots taken during the development of the project).

Can't wait for the Kickstarter to start

I think Palmer has enough to do. I did not mean it to be an option for sale now. Just wondering if he looked into it himself.
Desktop..LOL..270 degrees, No thanks. I ment in-game warping. I was thinking of 2D warping to fix the fisheye look from large FOV optics. I did not know Johns was setup for 3D only.

Anyway, this is drifting off topic of the 3d RIFT.
Gauntlet, wow. That looks like it must be put to work with the RIFT somehow.
brantlew, Your DDD & IZ3D 3D warp driver is a great idea.
The warping, is the last piece of the puzzle.

I've seen convex screen demos where another app is used to warp the picture in order to create seamless blends and curves. However I can't find the name of this software at this time. I believe it's well known in flight sim hobbyist circles. Only thing I can remember is that it uses a chequerboard pattern to calibrate the output. In the short term this might be a tool to let all apps and the desktop 'fit' the Rift.

Not sure if you heard but IZ3D is basically out of business. They are claiming they will release the source-code if they get... wait for it... $800,000 in donations from the community. I plan on supporting this effort, but there is probably no chance in the goal being attained by the end of this month. But if it does work out, I will plan to help support the project and I hope some other developers here would do the same. Then we could add support ourselves for all this funky stuff we want to do.

@ Optimus - its probably NTHusim (sp?) or Warpalizer.

RIFT is not so bad .. does it stand for anything ?

R.I.F.T ? Real Inner Face Technology ( could swap Real for Retina too.. since its a hot word these days )


So Rift can go along way as it is ...


you were also asking for help in design areas ... I use Maya 3d (Industry standard modelling and animation software ) for creating VFX in games and film etc..

if you need something made up let me know ... I'm guessing you need proof of concept with a product de-construction of the product and actually product demonstrations etc.. yes ?

Mick

@optimus: Isn't that just for a single screen rectangle though? The warper would need to warp two independent rectangles. Don't know if Warpalizer is that configurable.

@cybereality: Too bad about IZ3D. Well we could still organize a campaign here and on the DDD forum. Having DDD support would be huge in terms of versatility. Does anyone here have any "pull" at DDD? Hell we could start a KickStarter just for that. I would put $100 in the pot for DDD support.
PS. The purple chic is my favorite of your avatars.

Just wondering if the project has been launched on KickStarter yet & if so.. what is the title ? I'd like to make a contribution ...

Wow, so much feedback! Sorry for the hit and run post, but I am on a so-far exhausting trip to Boston, and I really need to sleep.

I made a site, added some info, and most importantly, a newsletter function! I will still be posting the Kickstarter link here first, but the newsletter is a great way to make sure you are up to date.

Here is the site: http://oculusvr.com

Thanks to Brantlew for the sweet logo.

Will reply to everyone when I can!

Best,

Palmer

Palmer, you should really add a media page to the website.

I would demand to see lots of code before paying, C++ projects tend to grow into freaks if the team isnt experienced together.

Probably a lot of work but my guess is somekind of opensourced driver instead of DDD or IZ3D on the long run is the best solution.

In current situation you are always depending on support from 2 commercial companies that will never ever have the same targets / ideas as the opensource community.

In the mean time something like a game engine with dedicated support is awsome and very important to showoff what is possible. The cooperation of John Carmack can be very important here. and the Doom3 engine is also very open with lots of tooling so anyone interested in working on / making some project can use the Doom3 tools

In other words all looks great and I can't wait to get my hands on this hardware and see what we as a community can create.

Love the logo too, but that was Bishop51's doing.



In the long range an open source solution is best for everyone but might take at least 6 months to become even partially workable. There are hundreds of details to research, implement, debug, and then customize per game. Tridef already has a solid, tested solution in place and existing support for hundreds of games. They would only need to add the final warping transform to their side-by-side view. As a beta feature my guess is that it would take them a week or less to implement this.

We should at least ask them whether they would consider adding experimental beta support. A campaign on their forum would be a simple way to voice our interest in this feature. A petition and a pre-release unit from Palmer might be all that is required to motivate them. But we are still a very small percentage of their customers which is why I also suggested a kick-starter campaign. If Palmer sells 100 of these kits, I am pretty sure that all 100 of those buyers are going to want game support. If everyone contributed $40 that would be $4000. That's enough to pay for two weeks of a senior developer's salary. So at least (in theory) we could use our group power to pay for the development of the feature.

Good idea, lets already start a forum thread to get things rolling... I guess already asking for such a feature can't do wrong. (I don't know the 'technical' details about the warp / parameters so I think somebody with more details should start a thread there)

We should get PalmerTech's thoughts and blessings before we initiate this, since he might be called upon to advise Tridef and supply technical support and hardware to them.

I agree, well I will for sure not post something on the TriDef forums without any details / a device myself anyway.

Yeah, I think its a great idea to see what DDD thinks. Best probably for Palmer to start the thread since its his project. But I could contribute $100 to the effort.

This panel looks like it could be a great contender for a future HMD device: http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/306674 ... ppi-ah-ips