GDC hopes/expectations?

[mrklaw]

What are people hoping for regarding the rift during GDC? Obviously game announcements etc, but anything else?

Personally there is a huge gap in the racing game area, which should also be one area that is fantastic for the rift (stationary player). I,d love for some of the current in development racing games to either announce support or even better, show a demo with a rift and a racing cockpit setup (seat and wheel)

[Parallaxis]

I expect three things:

1 - Hawken

2 - Some racing sim / flight sim

3 - Bioshock Infinite - Playable (or another major FPS)

Bioshock Infinite is the perfect match for Oculus Rift because it keeps the 1. person view always with no cut-scenes. Also the large scale and grand views in the game, would be perfect for the Rift.

[3dcoffee]

Bioshock Infinite on the Rift.

[Okta]

TBH, just hoping for no more bad news.

[STRZ]

Personally there is a huge gap in the racing game area, which should also be one area that is fantastic for the rift (stationary player). I,d love for some of the current in development racing games to either announce support or even better, show a demo with a rift and a racing cockpit setup (seat and wheel)

Kunos, ISI, iracing and the Project Cars people ordered devkits, but they might have to wait for their kits to arrive like anybody else and play around and develop with it first.

What i hope to see is some new input controllers replacing the gamepad demos. Maybe some new Razer stuff exclusively for VR, or a booth with a virtuix omni setup.

[MSat]

If I was a betting man, I'd say Minecraft support.

[jaybug]

I'm really looking forward to a racing or flight gamem since the perfect controls for those have already been worked out.

[Leahy]

Hopes: Bioshock Infinite
Expectations: Minecraft

[tmek]

The waiting and anticipation is getting so hard now XD It's just like before Christmas as a kid!

One hope/expectation I have is that there will be more announcements from Valve for support of games like portal and left 4 dead at the end of their presentation about what they learned making TF2 work with the Rift. (Given that they are all Source games it seems likely that it wouldn't take much work to get them all running on the Rift after TF2)

I dunno if I expect Bioshock Infinite support at it's launch. "Hope for" certainly, but can't really say I expect it. That would almost seem too good to be true.

Oh man Minecraft would be so amazing on the Rift. And the negative talk of low resolution totally goes away with that game. I really hope Leahy is right about this one.

[ChrisJD]

Hoping for official Rift support coming soon for:

ARMA 2 and 3
War Thunder
Planetside 2
Skyrim
Minecraft (expecting)

[DarkAkuma]

Directly from Oculus themselves... hmm.

Preliminary consumer model details. (nothing complete though since they still need feedback from the dev units)
Dev kit addon positional tracker.
Announcement for a direction that they will focus on for some Oculus branded controls.

I could speculate on more things, but anything else would seem kind of unrealistic at this point.

I'd imagine a who slew of game devs to be announcing planned support or greater interest in putting Rift modes into their games. Would just be throwing darts at a board to guess what though, since dev kits are barely rolling out. E3 will hold bigger news on the game dev front.

[Unclebob]

Screen upgrade module availability

Fallout3 support - one of Palmers favorite games.

Legacy game support based on Vireio driver technology

UB

[mahler]

Dev kit addon positional tracker.

More than anything else, I'm currently hoping to see which direction Oculus wants to go with positional tracking.

Apart from helping developers create content, Oculus is focussing on 3 major issues: Lower latency, higher resolution and positional tracking.
The first two are improvements on existing features, but we know very little about what to expect from the latter.

A better idea might be to wait for some smart cookies (perhaps on this forum) with some really innovative ideas and see which one actually works best or becomes more popular and convince them to join forces, like they did with npr.

[marbas]

I was going to say... hoping for positional tracker solution announcement.

But after the TF2 screens, hope priorities have changed.

Top of the list is still getting the 640x800 pr.eye experience as advertised all along.

[2EyeGuy]

I hope Palmer gets some well deserved sleep. I expect he won't.

[cerulianbaloo]

I hope Palmer gets some well deserved sleep. I expect he won't.

Someone needs to tranquilize that boy before GDC, we can't be havin no undead Palmer givin speeches, unless he's selling a zombie VR game, then I suppose it'd be appropriate.

[Moggle69]

Hopes:
-Bioshock Infinite
-Skyrim

Expectations:
-License Leap technology in an Official Oculus controller. The Oculus 'Force'
-An Official Oculus motion controller. The Oculus 'Sceptre'

[DavidC]

A working demo of iRacing please, that would be phenomenal.

[nateight]

Expectation: "This week we shipped ~4000 Oculus Rift development kits, and the rest will go out in ~a month."
Hope: "That Chinese holiday that split the production cycle was just a rumor started on Reddit and has no basis in actual Chinese custom - we have dispatched giant, magical carrier pigeons with 100% of the pre/post/Kickstarter Rifts and that's them at the door now. Some shipments may include two or more Rifts - our mistake, they're on the house - and additionally all Kickstarter backers with a character per post ratio above the average on MTBS3D.com will receive a free consumer Rift when they ship the week after your game is ready."

Expectation: "We're pleased to announce Oculus Rift support for TF2/Hawken [duh], Doom 3 BFG [eventually], Minecraft ["soon"], ArmaI/II/III/DayZ [they're easy], and [probably also a few other upcoming AAA titles but ~zero previously released games and ~zero Rift "exclusives"]."
Hope: "A special driver we've developed flawlessly converts all previous and future video games into Rift games complete with proper warping and full head tracking. We're pleased to announce both Mechwarrior Online and The Elder Scrolls Online are now Rift exclusives, and we've gotten around the network latency problem by partnering with Google to bring Google Fiber to 97% of American households even including ones on that one underserved street out on the very edge of northeastern Ohio. Additionally, Oculus is pleased to now announce the corporate acquisition of Mojang and the ongoing development of several first-party games, primarily Minecraft Online and featuring all your favorite bits of that anime/fictitious VR MMO/other existing MMO you love."

Expectation: "At Oculus, we're hard at work developing the future of in-home virtual reality peripherals for the consumer market, ~none of which we're prepared to reveal or discuss in any way at this time."
Hope: "We've also bought out Sixense, accidentally spilled some chemicals on a Hydra and thereby made a series of startling technological discoveries, and the resulting micron-precision quasi-gravitic hand trackers are now on sale in the Oculus store for $19.95 per pair. We also managed to get positional head tracking into all the dev units absent any external hardware - using two 1080p cameras which can feed mediated steroscopic images to the LCD panel in real time while accurately performing visual odometry on a scene as complex as a writhing pit of snakes. Additionally, we'd like to introduce you to the newest member of the Oculus team, nateight - he will be developing his awesome pedals as a standard Rift controller with proper financial backing and we are paying him for this with an irresponsibly large stock option."

Expectation: "The Oculus SDK is both 'awesome' and available for use right now, today - internal development on the SDK is continual, so please mind the [mercifully short list of rough edges and broken parts]."
Hope: "The SDK is both currently available and includes idiot-proof importable packages for Unity, UDK, and that weird engine only you use. It can function as a latency-free wrapper on VRPN to enable any peripherals and any control scheme you desire, either as player or developer, so you don't have to muck around with that stuff and can get straight to developing and/or playing your games. We've also included a powerful procedural content generator to virtually eliminate all artists of any description from the process of creating game assets - that video that has been playing behind us is not a reel of an upcoming AAA title but rather a real-time feed of Notch solo-coding a new game from scratch, and he's almost done. Lookin' good, Markus!"

Expectation: "The new 7" panel wasn't the one we had planned to use but is actually better [in these significant ways]. The consumer Rift is expected to utilize a 1080p 120Hz screen that exceeds all specifications of the current panel."
Hope: "We were actually saying Seven X panel this whole time, 7x, not "seven inch" - 7x is a proprietary AMOLED screen format Oculus has developed through a joint venture with Samsung and ARM - we call it that because it's three times the resolution and (somehow) fill rate of 4k Ultra HD displays in a 7 gram featherweight package, and it's included in all Rift dev kits. This package also includes a revolutionary new ARM-descendant picoprocessor featuring an air-cooled septuple-core CPU running at 7GHz and seven dedicated GPUs, all built into the HMD housing and able to be fully powered by a shared 5v power line. We couldn't make it all wireless just yet, though - we're not miracle workers here."

Hope: All our wildest dreams will be realized, all our fears allayed. Every famous game developer you've ever heard of will line up to publicly gush about the possibilities, as well as some respected technology luminaries and two or three beloved deceased presidents from only your party speaking through celebrity mediums. Palmer's historically significant closing speech will evoke every emotion VR, video games, computers, technology, and underdog stories have every evoked in all of us, tears of joy will flood the hall and drown several prominent leaders of one or two giant video game publishers you hate, a spontaneous dance party will break out and spread rapidly throughout the country, the lights will suddenly go out and a single spotlight will shine down upon Jaron Lanier and he and Palmer will share an impassioned kiss for an exactly appropriate length of time.

Expectation: It's GDC, yet another industry circlejerk. Carefully crafted messages we all can already guess will masquerade as news and the gaping holes left in our knowledge will drive more than a few people who have yet to receive their Rifts to acts of hysteria. Calm the eff down and get back to building that thing you're supposed to be building instead of faffing around on a message board looking for news that doesn't exist, okay?

[lovelyhead]

@nateight

Brilliant!

[KBK]

will the tunage be reggae at the dance party?

it's important, you know.

none o' that crap inbred illiterate dummkopf bloodclot watered down rat urine dance schmaltz that passes (like bad air) for real music these days.

"Are you saying, Ken, that you don't like modern dance music?"

Bingo! Give that man a Slim Whitman Record!

[Pingles]

Hope?

THAT I HAVE AN OCULUS RIFT IN MY POSESSION

[scubaSPI]

@Pingles - Right there with you on what hope/expectation.

I'd like to chime in on a hope from GDC: Bioshock Infinite on the Rift. I would drive straight to GameStop and buy/pre-order the game. Easy decision.

I already own Borderlands 1 + 2 but if they released an update for either, I would be found emaciated days later, having forgotten work, or that I'm in a virtual world.

[Moggle69]

Hopes:
-Bioshock Infinite
-Skyrim

Expectations:
-License Leap technology in an Official Oculus controller. The Oculus 'Force'
-An Official Oculus motion controller. The Oculus 'Sceptre'

I now must add Elder Scrolls Online as an expectation as they are in the middle of programming a First Person Perspective for the game. ESO would be a killer app for Oculus. Maybe partner up with Bethesda to offer a free 30 day trial with the customer version of the Rift in return for full Rift support. ESO with Rift support would blow my mind!

[virror]

That would be awesome, just wished it was as simple as implement a proper fps camera to support the Rift properly...

[crespo80]

expected Oculus release:
- we have the first 5000 dev kits already shipped and some of them in the hands of developers
- we'll have official Rift support for all the Valve's Source games in a few months
- Consumer Rift will have a cell-phone 6" 1920x1080 60Hz LCD display
- we're developing a bunch of different input devices and will disclose our work at the end of the year

hopes:
- the shipment of the second batch from China was unexpectedly fast and will ship well before planned
- Bethesda announced a Skyrim VR mode, iRacing will have a beta next month, Crytek is working on Crysis 3, Bioshock Inifinte coming soon
- Consumer Rift will have a custom 6" 2560x1280 120Hz OLED display that kicks ass
- we're willing to integrate a standard input device (foot controller + hands tracking) to bundle with the consumer model

[Evenios]

MINECRAFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i wants :-p i just found a cool tshirt the other day for it.
my second fav would be Garrys Mod for all the cool maps you coud get for it would be awesome .
arma 2 would be nice as well.

[Drewbdoo]

Nate, that's really the end all be all answer. I love your pedal idea and I love all the shameless self promotion at the end.

[CaptnYesterday]

@nateight,
Holy smegging hell... Hilarious!

"irresponsibly large stock option." Lost it at that point and realized I was going to read the whole post. Good luck with that Google Fiber getting out to "that one underserved street out on the very edge of northeastern Ohio".

Hope: More large scale developers announce partnerships or unannounced projects for the rift. (Something that will 'stick'). I can hope.
Expectations: None at this point. Looking back even just a year or 2 ago all of those expectations have been well exceeded.

[nateight]

"laff"

Hey, nobody ever said these hopes had to be realistic, right? For maximum effect I should have replaced "you" with "[you]" so the reader could more easily imagine these GDC speeches were directed entirely at them, but the part about the crappy ISP options around here stays - save me, Google Fiber, save me!

It's often massively difficult for me to ascertain whether I'm being successfully funny or just annoying - outside of friendly forums and MMOs I'm so shy it's unhealthy, and around here I'm mostly just daunted by how much more everyone seems to know about everything - but when my frustration at all the wild speculation coalesced into that post and I started cracking myself up, I figured some people would enjoy it. I needed your confidence boost, too - I'm staring down the hardest part of my secret new project and vertigo is starting to set in. Thanks for the feedback, guys.

[Tirregius]

A working demo of iRacing please, that would be phenomenal.

This. Oh my god, please.

[Tirregius]

"laff"

Hey, nobody ever said these hopes had to be realistic, right? For maximum effect I should have replaced "you" with "[you]" so the reader could more easily imagine these GDC speeches were directed entirely at them, but the part about the crappy ISP options around here stays - save me, Google Fiber, save me!

It's often massively difficult for me to ascertain whether I'm being successfully funny or just annoying - outside of friendly forums and MMOs I'm so shy it's unhealthy, and around here I'm mostly just daunted by how much more everyone seems to know about everything - but when my frustration at all the wild speculation coalesced into that post and I started cracking myself up, I figured some people would enjoy it. I needed your confidence boost, too - I'm staring down the hardest part of my secret new project and vertigo is starting to set in. Thanks for the feedback, guys.

That post on hopes and expectations was one of the most entertaining posts I've ever read on a tech forum. Hard to believe you're a shy one, I'd imagine if you let that cat out of the bag at a party you'd have everyone under the table. Your creative language and obvious knowledge made it particularly special. Thanks for making lightening up my evening after a 13 hr day.

[oculusfan]

Some shipments may include two or more Rifts - our mistake, they're on the house

[AntonieB]

I fear it will be more something like this:
We will start shipping next week to our kickstarter.

[NegativeCamber]

I fear it will be more something like this:
We will start shipping next week to our kickstarter.

I doubt they'd turn up to GDC and just say that lol.

[digitaljohn]

I believe the Unity integration is far more integrated than a regular plugin and I think the Unity guys are going to release an update that will allow native out-of-the-box support.

This would explain why Oculus are being immensely light on SDK integration information. I think once Unity make the announcement at GDC, we will all have the SDK to work with.

[colocolo]

wow, anyone seen the primal carnage genesis footage?

http://www.primalgenesis.com/website/ only source with 1080p.

the t-rex seems to pop out of the screen.

i hope this will be supported in the future.