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Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:39 am
by Paintbrush
The thread is finally back on track :) Great first impressions!

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:42 am
by anon84
nice , best reaction vids I've seen Image can't wait!

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 6:13 am
by adoral84
My dev-kit came in last night so here are some quick first impressions. The physical build of the device is great, and everything was easy to get set up initially. Putting the device on is easy and it feels very snug even when the straps are relatively loose so everything stays put even with abrupt head movements.

I tried out the tuscany demos and wandered around for a half-hour or so, the sense of spatial awareness is pretty incredible. Aside from that, everything just sort of works exactly as expected, I never even consciously thought of the head tracking because it's doing its job well enough that it sort of disappears from the experience. The lack of interactivity of the level does limit the tuscany demo, I hope sixense gets their hydra enabled version released soon.

After that I fired up museum of the microstar, I had some issues where it would lock up at the menu and then one time it loaded but my character was stuck running sideways. After about 10 or so tries it finally started up correctly and I was able to do the full walkthrough. Some very cool vistas and entertaining commentary, this is something that I would've run through in 2 minutes as a normal game but I spent probably 20 minutes wandering around taking it all in with the rift. The demo ran fine with no input lag mentioned by other users during my demo (on my gtx680 and 3770k setup). If it were more stable I'd probably use this as my initial demo to the unaquainted.

Then there was TF2. I hadn't played TF2 in years and it's not my favorite style of game but it's probably the most fully featured rift implementation at this point so I had to give it a try. I dropped into a bot match as a heavy and two things struck me immediately. Valve did an awesome job with the player perspective around seeing your own body, looking down and seeing your heavy's huge shoulders etc is a really cool feeling. Second, the HUD is still terribly distracting. Maybe there is an option you can adjust but I'd much prefer the hud elements be pushed toward the peripheral more. I immediately turned on cheats and ran cl_showhud 0 to hide it, which unfortunately also hides the crosshairs. Playing with the mouse and keyboard I felt like I was playing normal PC shooter with a gigantic screen, after playing games with the razer hydra and other independent weapon aim techniques the whole freeaim box with a mouse just doesn't register right with my brain at this point. I'll get some impressions later this week from some guys I work with who are big into TF2.

The screen door effect and motion blur have been covered ad nauseam at this point so I won't reiterate the details, it doesn't break the experience although I'd definitely pay a premium for a higher quality screen. I'm really looking forward to the next round of rift ready content from the community (hopefully including my own Half-Life 2 mod).

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:01 am
by rmcclelland
@adoral84 since you have a beefy system, try UDK demos. I think they are the best experiences. However, you have to tweak the ini files a bit:

I'm now running:
UDKEngine.ini
[Engine.Stereo3D]
bEnabled=True
[Engine.Oculus]
bEnableHud=False

UDKSystemSetting.ini
ScreenPercentage=150.000000
ResY=800
DynamicShadows=False

Here is a link to some cool expereinces to try (dev forum):
https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/v ... f=44&t=269
https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/v ... f=42&t=146

There is also a UDK specific forum if you need help running it.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:59 am
by MrGreen
adoral84 wrote:Then there was TF2. I hadn't played TF2 in years and it's not my favorite style of game but it's probably the most fully featured rift implementation at this point so I had to give it a try. I dropped into a bot match as a heavy and two things struck me immediately. Valve did an awesome job with the player perspective around seeing your own body, looking down and seeing your heavy's huge shoulders etc is a really cool feeling. Second, the HUD is still terribly distracting. Maybe there is an option you can adjust but I'd much prefer the hud elements be pushed toward the peripheral more. I immediately turned on cheats and ran cl_showhud 0 to hide it, which unfortunately also hides the crosshairs. Playing with the mouse and keyboard I felt like I was playing normal PC shooter with a gigantic screen, after playing games with the razer hydra and other independent weapon aim techniques the whole freeaim box with a mouse just doesn't register right with my brain at this point. I'll get some impressions later this week from some guys I work with who are big into TF2.
They've supposedly patched the game to properly support the Rift and the Hydra at the same time. I haven't heard back from anyone on this though. Is there an aiming mode in TF2 that would properly work this way?

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 8:37 am
by adoral84
rmcclelland wrote:@adoral84 since you have a beefy system, try UDK demos. I think they are the best experiences. However, you have to tweak the ini files a bit:

Here is a link to some cool expereinces to try (dev forum):
https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/v ... f=44&t=269
https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/v ... f=42&t=146

There is also a UDK specific forum if you need help running it.
Cool thanks for the heads up, I'll give it a try tonight.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 9:56 am
by anon84
may be obvious, but there are a lot of UT3 maps you can download for free so you can experience all kinds of different environments that way, the file sizes can get quite big though

just search 'ut3 maps' or ut3 map packs etc

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 5:35 pm
by unsilentwill
There's a livestream on Game Trailers going on right now, it's it's a crazy mix of being wrong, bored, supposedly nauseous and yet still curious. Just called third person impossible. : |

Guess people have less imagination than I thought, content is really key to blow people away. The second half of the show is about the new Batman. If no one makes the Nate Mitchell connection of being Batman, I may lose hope in gamers these days.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 1:30 pm
by Cymatic
mattyeatsmatts wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... KxoEZCaKoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... qqH_L8H-7s

not me I just found it on youtube and thought it was good.
Hey hey! Sweet, thanks for linking me!

I have started releasing a weekly (maybe bi-weekly) segment called "Cymatic Bruce's Rift Requests.", if anyone has specific questions, something you would like me to try, or other requests please send them my way. Hopefully it will help tide over those folks that still have a few weeks to wait. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QakZX8bPIF8

Excelsior,

--Cymatic Bruce

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 1:38 pm
by Namielus
Cymatic, did you see the RoadToVR video ? They have a video from my cinema exclusively for their site and I walk much closer to the screen there.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 1:53 pm
by OzOnE2k10
Nice in-depth review, Cymatic.
Loved your reaction to MotM! (liked, and subbed).

Good to see you tried many different apps too. I didn't even know about some of them (eg. Google Streetview).

@Namielus - great job on the VR cinema as well. I'm only just realizing the implications of this tech.
Does it really give a realistic sense of scale to the virtual screen? How well does the resolution hold up.

Also, I'm wondering if there's a way to get S3D vids to work in it too?
It would need to separate the images to each side / eye though ofc.

EDIT: Had to add these, this is SO cool... :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJVDXKXEMc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U4e9KEmTvU

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 2:00 pm
by Mel
Cymatic wrote:
mattyeatsmatts wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... KxoEZCaKoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... qqH_L8H-7s

not me I just found it on youtube and thought it was good.
Hey hey! Sweet, thanks for linking me!

I have started releasing a weekly (maybe bi-weekly) segment called "Cymatic Bruce's Rift Requests.", if anyone has specific questions, something you would like me to try, or other requests please send them my way. Hopefully it will help tide over those folks that still have a few weeks to wait. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QakZX8bPIF8

Excelsior,

--Cymatic Bruce
Hey Cymatic. Just watched your third video...great stuff.

There's some good info on the Oculuis forums for fixing a couple of the issues you pointed out. the IPD adjustment has known bugs, and the dynamic shadows can be turned off.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 2:18 pm
by Parallaxis
Great vids Cymatic. Keep them coming!

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 3:07 pm
by oculusfan
Cymatic wrote:
mattyeatsmatts wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... KxoEZCaKoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... qqH_L8H-7s

not me I just found it on youtube and thought it was good.
Hey hey! Sweet, thanks for linking me!

I have started releasing a weekly (maybe bi-weekly) segment called "Cymatic Bruce's Rift Requests.", if anyone has specific questions, something you would like me to try, or other requests please send them my way. Hopefully it will help tide over those folks that still have a few weeks to wait. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QakZX8bPIF8

Excelsior,

--Cymatic Bruce
Just watched all 3 vids. You do a really good job giving impressions on the various material. Subscribed!

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 3:12 pm
by Laserschwert
Does the UDK come with a selection of maps (like Epic Citadel) you can open in the editor (and thus experience on the Rift)?

And where could one get more maps for the UDK editor to play around in?

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 3:14 pm
by Namielus
Im not the best to answer about the resolution since its my product - but I will say its OKAY with the dev-kit and will be really cool when the consumer version is out.

As for the sense of scale, the different screens really feel huge.

I think its better to ask Cymatic about the resolution limits. But I think he will agree that its a decent experience now - and the potential is huge for a consumer version.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 5:31 pm
by 3dvison
I would love to hear more from you Rift owners about Google Streetview for the Rift . I did not even know about .

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 1:37 am
by Alkapwn
adoral84 wrote: After that I fired up museum of the microstar, I had some issues where it would lock up at the menu and then one time it loaded but my character was stuck running sideways. After about 10 or so tries it finally started up correctly and I was able to do the full walkthrough. Some very cool vistas and entertaining commentary, this is something that I would've run through in 2 minutes as a normal game but I spent probably 20 minutes wandering around taking it all in with the rift. The demo ran fine with no input lag mentioned by other users during my demo (on my gtx680 and 3770k setup). If it were more stable I'd probably use this as my initial demo to the unaquainted.

Then there was TF2. I hadn't played TF2 in years and it's not my favorite style of game but it's probably the most fully featured rift implementation at this point so I had to give it a try. I dropped into a bot match as a heavy and two things struck me immediately. Valve did an awesome job with the player perspective around seeing your own body, looking down and seeing your heavy's huge shoulders etc is a really cool feeling. Second, the HUD is still terribly distracting. Maybe there is an option you can adjust but I'd much prefer the hud elements be pushed toward the peripheral more. I immediately turned on cheats and ran cl_showhud 0 to hide it, which unfortunately also hides the crosshairs. Playing with the mouse and keyboard I felt like I was playing normal PC shooter with a gigantic screen, after playing games with the razer hydra and other independent weapon aim techniques the whole freeaim box with a mouse just doesn't register right with my brain at this point. I'll get some impressions later this week from some guys I work with who are big into TF2.
Well I had a super nice write up, but was doing it piece by piece and turns out it decided not to post properly. I’ll try and remember the gist of it though.

I found that the xbox controller seems to be the best input method for motion as it goes so far. Just to note, I try and play/demo the Rift standing as I think it makes for the best experience.

Tuscany:
One thing I think may go vastly overlooked in this demo is the head tracking tied to avatar turning that Oculus has added in. If you move just forward and turn your head, you'll start to turn in that direction at a slower rate than with the right analog. This for beginners is very helpful in limiting the amount they turn with the right joystick making the movements and turns feel a lot more natural.

Museum of the Microstar:
If you look at your feet you'll see a circle with arrows pointing in a certain direction. Should be forward once it's calibrated properly (calibrate button comes in WAY handy). If you use the right joystick to turn, it'll actually turn that circle on the ground making your "forward" direction not where you are facing anymore, which is very weird. It may be this was done on purpose, or possibly an oversight, but I don't think it's the best movement setup, and for that reason only tend not to demo it as much.

Team Fortress 2:
After some fairly thorough testing of the different move and aim modes that Valve has included, I think I've found the best and most natural setup for VR. The funny thing is that it's actually one of their experimental modes.

vr_moveaim_mode 6

In this mode you have separate body and head tracking done in a way that is hard to explain. The right analog basically rotates your body/gun/aim and your head tracking controls your view. Best way I can describe it is probably like your HL2 control scheme, only in this case the xbox controller right analog stick is your independent weapon aim. This works wonderfully well and is just predictable and just feels natural to the point where you stop thinking about how to control your character and just control it.

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Oculu ... User_Guide

Wiki is here, which has a tonne of customization options to get the best possible setup. Stuff for the HUD as well. I wish I could tweak more, but I demo it to a lot of people and am constantly changing everything.

One of the most fun things I've found to do is fly around in cities. I found some buildings off in the distance of a UT3 level and am now obsessed with Supermaning around. Gonna record a video and upload a quick crappy map I made for people to try it out.

Here's a video of a co-worker trying it out in the UT3 map. I didn't shoot the vertical video. :lol:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJVDXKXEMc[/youtube]

EDIT: Just realized I had the wrong move aim mode up there.
Should be vr_moveaim_mode 6

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:19 am
by TheRealistWord
Before heading to bed, I just wanted to add to what everyone else is saying and post my impressions of the Rift. I received mine yesterday, played with it for awhile, and didn't get a chance to try it out again until about half an hour ago. Lastnight, my thoughts were basically, "yeah, this is pretty cool, the 3D effect is incredibly realistic and by far the best I've ever seen, I don't feel as immersed as I thought I would though. Low rez, screendoor, etc. etc. Definitely cool regardless"... and I'm not entirely certain what changed tonight when I tried it out, but suddenly it felt like a completely different experience. I felt like I was inside the environment. In the tuscanny demo, maybe I sort of tricked my brain? I was sitting in my office chair, and I tried to convince myself that in the tuscanny demo, I was also in an office chair (albeit a really tall one) in this virtual environment, just looking around (no positional movement in the demo). Something must've clicked in my brain there, because I suddenly felt like I was transported into the middle of the tuscanny environment. I literally had to restrain myself from hopping off my office chair and walking around in the grass.

It makes me wonder... simple tricks like this you can tell yourself/your brain - basically identifying exactly what is preventing your VR experience from being as immersive as possible, and trying to work around it by convincing yourself otherwise. It worked well in this instance because if I'm in an office chair spinning around - all of the head tracking rotation data is captured from the Rift. And I'm not moving my position. So what other indicators (well, besides the low rez screen) are there to tell me that what I'm seeing and how I'm rotating my head isn't reality? Something along those lines.

Anyway, before my incoherent 4:09 AM thoughts become any more confusing, I just want to close with this:

I definitely believe this is the future of gaming. It's still in its infancy no doubt, but we know where the problems are, it's just a matter of tackling them and coming up with good solutions (and some of the problems can be fixed relatively easily in time, like upgrading the panel). When strapping a device to my head can make me feel like I've been transported to a completely different environment all together, that definitely means something to me. This is a great time to be aliiiive with VR! :woot

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:24 am
by TheHolyChicken
Alkapwn wrote:Here's a video of a co-worker trying it out in the UT3 map. I didn't shoot the vertical video. :lol:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJVDXKXEMc[/youtube]
Video made me laugh. You know, it would be pretty easy to put in a rudimentary "physics" system to accelerate and decelerate when flying up/down, which could make that much more fun. To prove the point, I made the following program/video at university while I was very much still a programming noob (I still am, I'm just better at faking it now :P )

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVVV8Isos4Q[/youtube]

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:45 am
by Alkapwn
Just went flying for a bit. All I can think of now is a flying game that'd be the equivalent of first person Sonic meets Superman game. Collecting stuff, going through narrow passages, tunnels, pipes, corkscrew style pipes like the Sonic ones but claustrophobic, panic inducing.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:45 am
by Nedo
TheRealistWord wrote:...It makes me wonder... simple tricks like this you can tell yourself/your brain - basically identifying exactly what is preventing your VR experience from being as immersive as possible...
Hi TheRealistWorld, thank you for the report, it sounds great!
Maybe you where more relaxed the 2nd time with the Rift? How does the VR expirience feel now when you enter the Tuscany again?

R
Nedo

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:54 am
by Tirregius
It is sounding like for the best immersive VR experiences, small cues, like a scent in your office, or your body position, or the sounds in the immediate area, even your receptiveness to the experience, are all going to affect the amount of immersion a person might experience, especially in subtle environments. Likely someone who is seeing the Oculus demo at GDC who is totally distracted by the neighboring booth's droning soundtrack, or some such, may not really "get into" the virtual world, like someone else who is able to "filter" out more of what is going on around them. That would explain some very different takes on the same experience. I would imagine if they could have put the attendees into an anechoic chamber with a very convincing 3D sound system, and maybe a mild motion platform, they would have been immersed to a much greater degree.

I have some etymotic ER-4 in-ear monitors that I use mostly for binaural listening that have greater than 44db noise attenuation. Literally, someone can be clapping loudly in the room and with low volume music playing, you will not hear the clapping at all. I think I'm going to find new use for them on my first play-thru of the Gallery when I get my backer copy. :-)

Hearing some of the new takes on what the Rift is bringing in terms of immersion, I'm even more intrigued and anxious to get my hands on one. Just when I think I've got a grasp of the experience that it might bring, some anecdote from a new review makes me imagine it in a slightly new way. The anticipation is definitely a fun part of the wait.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:01 am
by Parallaxis
Alkapwn wrote:Just went flying for a bit. All I can think of now is a flying game that'd be the equivalent of first person Sonic meets Superman game. Collecting stuff, going through narrow passages, tunnels, pipes, corkscrew style pipes like the Sonic ones but claustrophobic, panic inducing.
PilotWings VR

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:19 am
by V8Griff
Had my Rift since last Wednesday now and I thought I'd wait a while till I'd used it a few times and a few other people had seen it.

I'm a reasonably mature user (in years) OK I'm 50 and I'd suggest that is relevant as I think the motion sickness also has an age thing attached to it and I'll explain why. I also wear contact lenses and have for many years to correct quite poor short sightedness. -7 and -4.4 is the contact lens prescription.

Opening the cardboard box you're met by the Oculus carry case and despite it being called flimsy I think it's pretty robust and the contents are well laid out and presented well. My personal opinion is if you asked someone to guess what this all cost they'd say more than the price this has been delivered for. I guess with delivery and import VAT this has worked out at £300 so still what I was estimating.

Everything is packed in plastic bags and there's plenty of silica gel keeping everything nice and damp free.

I'd already downloaded all the SDKs and Demos so I assumed it was just a case of plugging in and jacking into Cyberspace......

Well it was as simple as that, I connected the HDMI, attached the UK pin adapter to the power, plugged the USB in and turned on the power. My PC instantly detected the Rift as a secondary monitor, I set the resolution to 1280 x 800, set the monitors to duplicate the view and fired up Tuscany.
Tracking instantly fired up and I hit F9 (iirc) to go fullscreen. Moving the Rift around showed the view to be following the Rift very accurately and I could see virtually zero lag.

I was sitting down and went for it.

I was inside the villa and looking right at the fireplace. The initial reaction was WOW this is proper 3D and the tracking was spot on, however this was quickly followed by a sense of disappointment at the screendoor effect which on first contact appeared to be significant, the next thing was me groping for my keyboard so I could move. I also need to point out I don't have an X-Box type controller which I now think is essential as the keyboard keys send you moving at a great rate of knots and in my case instant motion sickness. I moved outside through the door and it only got worse so off came the Rift.

I then adjusted the distance the lenses are away from your eyes and adjusted the brightness and contrast on the Rift.

Back into the demo, standing up this time and the screendoor effect was much reduced and everything had a much more comfortable feel to it. Also the particles flying around in there are just the icing on the cake, I have to admit one came right at me as I looked round and yes I flapped a hand at it to stop it hitting me. :woot

I tried the movement again and while it was reduced I felt a little ill again so I started pointing myself in the direction I wanted to go and like Geekmaster closed my eyes as I moved, I think by then the damage was done to my senses and I had to come out after about 5 or 10 minutes.

I continued to feel mildly nauseous for several hours afterwards and I'm pretty certain it's down to the lack of positional tracking.
I never once felt ill in my Virtuality systems in all the years I used them, both 1st and 2nd generations and the graphics and resolutions were much poorer. 320 x 240 in Gen 1 and 244 x 756 in Gen2. Both systems had accurate magnetic positional tracking and were both sitting and standing configurations.

I can only conclude it's the subtle movements of our heads and bodies being translated by the tracking that sends subtle information to our ears/eyes/brain and stops us getting ill. That allied with other things such as speed through the environment and acclimatisation to the overall experience.

Over the next few days I tried both Tuscany and Unreal Citadel and can confirm that the screendoor effect becomes irrelevant in interesting, detailed environments because you look at the environment and ignore the meshing effect pretty much like you do in the real world while looking through a screen door. Also the motion sickness effects reduced so again acclimatisation is definitely key here, but I'd definitely recommend a game pad as control as it offers a better level of control.

I took the Rift over to White Paper Games in Manchester yesterday. I'm working on a couple of projects with this Indie developer and they're writing a game called Ether-One that some of you may be familiar with and I thought that adding support for the Rift was going to be a no brainer as it fits perfectly with the whole concept.

It was great to be like Father Christmas as all development ceased and the queue formed to try the Rift. The game is being developed in UDK and after tweaking the ini files of the updated Unreal build their game worked right away. Obviously some tweaks will be necessary but it's a real testament to the integration work that's been done that a game being developed with a conventional display in mind became almost instantly 'Oculus Ready' The lead programmer was almost disappointed.... :D

The guys reactions were videoed and continued choruses of 'Oh my God', 'This is awesome' and pointing at objects in the virtual world that they could now walk around inside was superb.

Any motion sickness reported? Well for this bunch of 'twenty somethings' nothing except a little dis-orientation and a couple of guys disappeared in there for 20 to 30 minutes with no ill effects at all so it's pretty obvious age has something to do with this as well.

Work is now on to integrate the Rift into the gameplay and a Razer Hydra is now on the list to be integrated.

Apologies for the long winded post but I think it's very encouraging and to think this is only the beginning.

If you want to check out Ether-One it has it's own webpage HERE and it's currently featuring on Steam Greenlight with some appropriate Rift poses on display HERE

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:49 am
by Parallaxis
Thanks for posting that V8Griff, many great insights and thank you for demonstrating the Rift to the guys developing Ether One. I have followed that game for quite some time now :)

I really agree that it is an age thing, but I also think that anybody can be acclimated to the experience, maybe even more so when positional tracking is working and movement emulating the human acceleration and turning speed has been integrated.

The guys making The Gallery are pretty much pioneering with these things right now, and it seems that Valve and Oculus hasn't really noticed the importance of rotational acceleration and the acceleration or the avatar. These things has to be just like real life. Most seems to be focused on the speed, but that isn't nearly as important as the acceleration factor IMO.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:51 am
by museumsteve
V8Griff wrote:Had my Rift since last Wednesday now and I thought I'd wait a while till I'd used it a few times and a few other people had seen it.

I'm a reasonably mature user (in years) OK I'm 50 and I'd suggest that is relevant as I think the motion sickness also has an age thing attached to it and I'll explain why. I also wear contact lenses and have for many years to correct quite poor short sightedness. -7 and -4.4 is the contact lens prescription.

Opening the cardboard box you're met by the Oculus carry case and despite it being called flimsy I think it's pretty robust and the contents are well laid out and presented well. My personal opinion is if you asked someone to guess what this all cost they'd say more than the price this has been delivered for. I guess with delivery and import VAT this has worked out at £300 so still what I was estimating.

Everything is packed in plastic bags and there's plenty of silica gel keeping everything nice and damp free.

I'd already downloaded all the SDKs and Demos so I assumed it was just a case of plugging in and jacking into Cyberspace......

Well it was as simple as that, I connected the HDMI, attached the UK pin adapter to the power, plugged the USB in and turned on the power. My PC instantly detected the Rift as a secondary monitor, I set the resolution to 1280 x 800, set the monitors to duplicate the view and fired up Tuscany.
Tracking instantly fired up and I hit F9 (iirc) to go fullscreen. Moving the Rift around showed the view to be following the Rift very accurately and I could see virtually zero lag.

I was sitting down and went for it.

I was inside the villa and looking right at the fireplace. The initial reaction was WOW this is proper 3D and the tracking was spot on, however this was quickly followed by a sense of disappointment at the screendoor effect which on first contact appeared to be significant, the next thing was me groping for my keyboard so I could move. I also need to point out I don't have an X-Box type controller which I now think is essential as the keyboard keys send you moving at a great rate of knots and in my case instant motion sickness. I moved outside through the door and it only got worse so off came the Rift.

I then adjusted the distance the lenses are away from your eyes and adjusted the brightness and contrast on the Rift.

Back into the demo, standing up this time and the screendoor effect was much reduced and everything had a much more comfortable feel to it. Also the particles flying around in there are just the icing on the cake, I have to admit one came right at me as I looked round and yes I flapped a hand at it to stop it hitting me. :woot

I tried the movement again and while it was reduced I felt a little ill again so I started pointing myself in the direction I wanted to go and like Geekmaster closed my eyes as I moved, I think by then the damage was done to my senses and I had to come out after about 5 or 10 minutes.

I continued to feel mildly nauseous for several hours afterwards and I'm pretty certain it's down to the lack of positional tracking.
I never once felt ill in my Virtuality systems in all the years I used them, both 1st and 2nd generations and the graphics and resolutions were much poorer. 320 x 240 in Gen 1 and 244 x 756 in Gen2. Both systems had accurate magnetic positional tracking and were both sitting and standing configurations.

I can only conclude it's the subtle movements of our heads and bodies being translated by the tracking that sends subtle information to our ears/eyes/brain and stops us getting ill. That allied with other things such as speed through the environment and acclimatisation to the overall experience.

Over the next few days I tried both Tuscany and Unreal Citadel and can confirm that the screendoor effect becomes irrelevant in interesting, detailed environments because you look at the environment and ignore the meshing effect pretty much like you do in the real world while looking through a screen door. Also the motion sickness effects reduced so again acclimatisation is definitely key here, but I'd definitely recommend a game pad as control as it offers a better level of control.

I took the Rift over to White Paper Games in Manchester yesterday. I'm working on a couple of projects with this Indie developer and they're writing a game called Ether-One that some of you may be familiar with and I thought that adding support for the Rift was going to be a no brainer as it fits perfectly with the whole concept.

It was great to be like Father Christmas as all development ceased and the queue formed to try the Rift. The game is being developed in UDK and after tweaking the ini files of the updated Unreal build their game worked right away. Obviously some tweaks will be necessary but it's a real testament to the integration work that's been done that a game being developed with a conventional display in mind became almost instantly 'Oculus Ready' The lead programmer was almost disappointed.... :D

The guys reactions were videoed and continued choruses of 'Oh my God', 'This is awesome' and pointing at objects in the virtual world that they could now walk around inside was superb.

Any motion sickness reported? Well for this bunch of 'twenty somethings' nothing except a little dis-orientation and a couple of guys disappeared in there for 20 to 30 minutes with no ill effects at all so it's pretty obvious age has something to do with this as well.

Work is now on to integrate the Rift into the gameplay and a Razer Hydra is now on the list to be integrated.

Apologies for the long winded post but I think it's very encouraging and to think this is only the beginning.

If you want to check out Ether-One it has it's own webpage HERE and it's currently featuring on Steam Greenlight with some appropriate Rift poses on display HERE
Thanks for that write up mate, I'm in the UK and approaching your age :D so it was interesting to read your experiences.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 4:00 am
by 3dcoffee
V8Griff wrote:Apologies for the long winded post but I think it's very encouraging and to think this is only the beginning.

If you want to check out Ether-One it has it's own webpage HERE and it's currently featuring on Steam Greenlight with some appropriate Rift poses on display HERE
No apologies needed, it was one of the very interesting reads. Thank you for sharing. As for Ether, I will definitely buy it after it launches.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 4:22 am
by FR3D
V8Griff wrote:Had my Rift since last Wednesday now and I thought I'd wait a while till I'd used it a few times and a few other people had seen it.

I'm a reasonably mature user (in years) OK I'm 50 and I'd suggest that is relevant as I think the motion sickness also has an age thing attached to it and I'll explain why. I also wear contact lenses and have for many years to correct quite poor short sightedness. -7 and -4.4 is the contact lens prescription.

Opening the cardboard box you're met by the Oculus carry case and despite it being called flimsy I think it's pretty robust and the contents are well laid out and presented well. My personal opinion is if you asked someone to guess what this all cost they'd say more than the price this has been delivered for. I guess with delivery and import VAT this has worked out at £300 so still what I was estimating.

Everything is packed in plastic bags and there's plenty of silica gel keeping everything nice and damp free.

I'd already downloaded all the SDKs and Demos so I assumed it was just a case of plugging in and jacking into Cyberspace......

Well it was as simple as that, I connected the HDMI, attached the UK pin adapter to the power, plugged the USB in and turned on the power. My PC instantly detected the Rift as a secondary monitor, I set the resolution to 1280 x 800, set the monitors to duplicate the view and fired up Tuscany.
Tracking instantly fired up and I hit F9 (iirc) to go fullscreen. Moving the Rift around showed the view to be following the Rift very accurately and I could see virtually zero lag.

I was sitting down and went for it.

I was inside the villa and looking right at the fireplace. The initial reaction was WOW this is proper 3D and the tracking was spot on, however this was quickly followed by a sense of disappointment at the screendoor effect which on first contact appeared to be significant, the next thing was me groping for my keyboard so I could move. I also need to point out I don't have an X-Box type controller which I now think is essential as the keyboard keys send you moving at a great rate of knots and in my case instant motion sickness. I moved outside through the door and it only got worse so off came the Rift.

I then adjusted the distance the lenses are away from your eyes and adjusted the brightness and contrast on the Rift.

Back into the demo, standing up this time and the screendoor effect was much reduced and everything had a much more comfortable feel to it. Also the particles flying around in there are just the icing on the cake, I have to admit one came right at me as I looked round and yes I flapped a hand at it to stop it hitting me. :woot

I tried the movement again and while it was reduced I felt a little ill again so I started pointing myself in the direction I wanted to go and like Geekmaster closed my eyes as I moved, I think by then the damage was done to my senses and I had to come out after about 5 or 10 minutes.

I continued to feel mildly nauseous for several hours afterwards and I'm pretty certain it's down to the lack of positional tracking.
I never once felt ill in my Virtuality systems in all the years I used them, both 1st and 2nd generations and the graphics and resolutions were much poorer. 320 x 240 in Gen 1 and 244 x 756 in Gen2. Both systems had accurate magnetic positional tracking and were both sitting and standing configurations.

I can only conclude it's the subtle movements of our heads and bodies being translated by the tracking that sends subtle information to our ears/eyes/brain and stops us getting ill. That allied with other things such as speed through the environment and acclimatisation to the overall experience.

Over the next few days I tried both Tuscany and Unreal Citadel and can confirm that the screendoor effect becomes irrelevant in interesting, detailed environments because you look at the environment and ignore the meshing effect pretty much like you do in the real world while looking through a screen door. Also the motion sickness effects reduced so again acclimatisation is definitely key here, but I'd definitely recommend a game pad as control as it offers a better level of control.

I took the Rift over to White Paper Games in Manchester yesterday. I'm working on a couple of projects with this Indie developer and they're writing a game called Ether-One that some of you may be familiar with and I thought that adding support for the Rift was going to be a no brainer as it fits perfectly with the whole concept.

It was great to be like Father Christmas as all development ceased and the queue formed to try the Rift. The game is being developed in UDK and after tweaking the ini files of the updated Unreal build their game worked right away. Obviously some tweaks will be necessary but it's a real testament to the integration work that's been done that a game being developed with a conventional display in mind became almost instantly 'Oculus Ready' The lead programmer was almost disappointed.... :D

The guys reactions were videoed and continued choruses of 'Oh my God', 'This is awesome' and pointing at objects in the virtual world that they could now walk around inside was superb.

Any motion sickness reported? Well for this bunch of 'twenty somethings' nothing except a little dis-orientation and a couple of guys disappeared in there for 20 to 30 minutes with no ill effects at all so it's pretty obvious age has something to do with this as well.

Work is now on to integrate the Rift into the gameplay and a Razer Hydra is now on the list to be integrated.

Apologies for the long winded post but I think it's very encouraging and to think this is only the beginning.

If you want to check out Ether-One it has it's own webpage HERE and it's currently featuring on Steam Greenlight with some appropriate Rift poses on display HERE
you are 50 !!! YES you are a very old man ;)

I'm ONLY 48 :)

very nice review - i'm still waiting for my rift


FR3D

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 4:51 am
by olistreet
Hey hey! Sweet, thanks for linking me!

I have started releasing a weekly (maybe bi-weekly) segment called "Cymatic Bruce's Rift Requests.", if anyone has specific questions, something you would like me to try, or other requests please send them my way. Hopefully it will help tide over those folks that still have a few weeks to wait. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QakZX8bPIF8

Excelsior,

--Cymatic Bruce
Hey Cymantic Bruce I've found your blog http://cymaticsoftware.wordpress.com/ to be really useful, because i'm not a dev and sometimes it's hard to know where to start, your tutorial-style approach is much appreciated!! also you are linking lots of resources from udk, as soon as my rift arrives I'll try to emulate your examples :P

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 5:43 am
by crespo80
Alkapwn wrote:Just went flying for a bit. All I can think of now is a flying game that'd be the equivalent of first person Sonic meets Superman game. Collecting stuff, going through narrow passages, tunnels, pipes, corkscrew style pipes like the Sonic ones but claustrophobic, panic inducing.
you mean, just like that, right? :lol: (I couldn't resist!)
http://youtu.be/1dJXgJ1c4vY?t=4m1s

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 6:12 am
by geekmaster
crespo80 wrote:
Alkapwn wrote:Just went flying for a bit. All I can think of now is a flying game that'd be the equivalent of first person Sonic meets Superman game. Collecting stuff, going through narrow passages, tunnels, pipes, corkscrew style pipes like the Sonic ones but claustrophobic, panic inducing.
you mean, just like that, right? :lol: (I couldn't resist!)
http://youtu.be/1dJXgJ1c4vY?t=4m1s
So, how long until you have completed your Rift port of that Superman game? I can't wait to try it! (Or not)... More like "Superman meets Lord of the Rings"... :lol:

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 7:59 am
by brantlew
@V8Griff: Nice write up. I'm 39 and have had a pretty easy time acclimating to the Rift. The very first time I used it way back at QuakeCon I felt very ill for a few moments. The only other time I have felt really ill was in the Museum of the Microstar but that one had very laggy tracking. Had to lay down after that one. But mostly I haven't had a problem with the Rift.

One thing that I have learned to do that mitigates the effects is to keep my movement direction in sync with my head and torso. I find a keyboard is actually better for this than the gamepad because thumbsticks can be really "sloppy" with direction (or at least in my hands they are). So for example if I am looking forward I push W, but if I turn my head sideways, I cycle my fingers through W+D and then D to keep my movement vector in the direction of my torso. This is something that I am used to from Red Rovr and not only does it increase immersion, but it also somehow reduces dizziness for me.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 8:18 am
by V8Griff
brantlew wrote:@V8Griff: Nice write up. I'm 39 and have had a pretty easy time acclimating to the Rift. The very first time I used it way back at QuakeCon I felt very ill for a few moments. The only other time I have felt really ill was in the Museum of the Microstar but that one had very laggy tracking. Had to lay down after that one. But mostly I haven't had a problem with the Rift.

One thing that I have learned to do that mitigates the effects is to keep my movement direction in sync with my head and torso. I find a keyboard is actually better for this than the gamepad because thumbsticks can be really "sloppy" with direction (or at least in my hands they are). So for example if I am looking forward I push W, but if I turn my head sideways, I cycle my fingers through W+D and then D to keep my movement vector in the direction of my torso. This is something that I am used to from Red Rovr and not only does it increase immersion, but it also somehow reduces dizziness for me.
Thanks for that. As I mentioned things have improved with use but I forgot to mention I've developed a headcold that's become apparent over the last few days so that and the associated blocked sinuses won't have helped either.

Interesting comments about the keyboard and the combination moves so I'll try that the next time I have the Rift here. I've left it with the White Paper guys for the time being so they can have a play and mod their game to work more seamlessly with it.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 9:30 am
by Thodder7
@V8Griff: Thanks for the review, good read!.. and thanks for being willing to lend your dev kit to developers... I can't imagine how difficult that must have been lol But truely amazing, as its what needs to be done in order to see the Oculus succeed.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 10:55 am
by NikoKun
V8Griff wrote:I continued to feel mildly nauseous for several hours afterwards and I'm pretty certain it's down to the lack of positional tracking.
I never once felt ill in my Virtuality systems in all the years I used them, both 1st and 2nd generations and the graphics and resolutions were much poorer. 320 x 240 in Gen 1 and 244 x 756 in Gen2. Both systems had accurate magnetic positional tracking and were both sitting and standing configurations.

I can only conclude it's the subtle movements of our heads and bodies being translated by the tracking that sends subtle information to our ears/eyes/brain and stops us getting ill. That allied with other things such as speed through the environment and acclimatisation to the overall experience.
I'm starting to think that the Rift's motion-sickness problem is not so much because of a lack of positional tracking, (a feature which will eventually be available anyway), but rather because the Rift is TOO good! lol (Which is the reason why it NEEDS some form of upper-torso positional tracking, to help alleviate/minimize that problem. It's a solution, but not really.)

I've now heard a few people say that the Rift initially made them more sick, than more primitive/older VR hardware did. I think this might be due to the fact that the rift is much more immersive, and has better rotational motion tracking than our bodies expect is possible. Never mind the resolution or other problems, they don't matter. The Rift simply combines it's 1-to-1 tracking with a very good FOV, which gives us a sense of immersion few previous VR setups could.. If any.

The Rift is just at the right level of immersion, like a tipping point, where our bodies start requiring more accurate information about the reality it is perceiving. The obvious solution is to add some form of positional tracking.. But lack of it is not the cause of the problem. And it wont really solve it either, it just helps. Even WITH positional tracking, new players will still get motion sickness, because it is SO immersive, that ANY movement which our body is not truly performing irl, will cause motion sickness.
Even with positional tracking, when your character starts walking forward for the first time, and you're not really moving, you'll feel odd. When you get into a virtual car, and drive around, the lack of expected g-forces will make some people ill, until they adapt. As we go forward into the future of VR, this may be a problem which we simply have to accept and adapt too.

Some people seem to think there is something wrong with the Rift, and they claim that because older VR systems didn't make them this sick, it must be some fault of the Rift's. But the truth is, it is simply so good, so immersive, that any small issues with motion, become bigger problems for your body to adapt too. Those older systems just weren't at this level.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:35 am
by geekmaster
A pre-warp filter that is not what you expect can cause a little queasiness too. It takes me awhile (and causes motion sickness) when I get new eyeglasses with lenses that are shaped differently from my previous pair. Getting accustomed to particular eyeglass distortion can feel strange with you move around without eyeglasses (like while swimming at the beach).

Also, standing close to a large aquarium (in Real Life) and moving sideways (strafing) while viewing the fish inside can cause a little motion sickness for me. After I got my Rift, I started paying more attention to Real Life activities that cause a little motion sickness, and optical distortion seems to be a leading cause (for me).

Some VR research suggests that the closer your VR gets to "real", the more likely you are to get sick from small imperfections, and optical distortion is a leading cause (as is head tracking latency and lack of positional tracking). Almost like an "uncanny valley" thing, where "too close to real but somehow not real" can be very uncomfortable.

So yes, the Rift seems to push us closer to reality where even small distortions can be uncomfortable. A lot of those "approximations" used in video games and motion picture CGI may be a problem in VR where we get that "uncanny" sensation all too easily.

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:48 am
by Cymatic
Namielus wrote:Cymatic, did you see the RoadToVR video ? They have a video from my cinema exclusively for their site and I walk much closer to the screen there.
Holy crap, I did check out that video! Walking closer to the screen was epic, it was like a real theatre - I would pretty much only see the bottom of the video, horizontal FOV was more than completely full. Awesome!
OzOnE2k10 wrote:Nice in-depth review, Cymatic.
Loved your reaction to MotM! (liked, and subbed).

Good to see you tried many different apps too. I didn't even know about some of them (eg. Google Streetview).

@Namielus - great job on the VR cinema as well. I'm only just realizing the implications of this tech.
Does it really give a realistic sense of scale to the virtual screen? How well does the resolution hold up.

Also, I'm wondering if there's a way to get S3D vids to work in it too?
It would need to separate the images to each side / eye though ofc.
Thank you for watching, and for the sub!

As far as Virtual cinema, I have watched all Namielus' videos through the Rift, and the experience is great. It absolutely gives a realistic sense of scale - the screen is HUGE. Resolution does come into play, because you keep your head still when watching a movie. You are essentially focusing on a small part of an already small screen, so the low resolution is a big factor here. Movie viewing will benefit the most from a higher resolution screen.

SBS 3D videos work decent! I tried watching one with just plain old media player, and aside from the warping it looked FANTASTIC. SBS movies in the virtual theatre might be a little more complex, since you are able to move your head.
Mel wrote: Hey Cymatic. Just watched your third video...great stuff.

There's some good info on the Oculuis forums for fixing a couple of the issues you pointed out. the IPD adjustment has known bugs, and the dynamic shadows can be turned off.
Parallaxis wrote:Great vids Cymatic. Keep them coming!
Excellent, thanks for the head up - I will look into that! Thanks for watching!
Laserschwert wrote:Does the UDK come with a selection of maps (like Epic Citadel) you can open in the editor (and thus experience on the Rift)?

And where could one get more maps for the UDK editor to play around in?
Yup! there are loads of UDK maps in the Content/Maps folder. As far as other maps, I would just to a Google search. In fact I am doing that right now... Why didn't I do this earlier! *Goes to check*

Okay, just downloaded a BioShock Inspired map to explore, and also found this:

http://www.moddb.com/groups/udk-develop ... /downloads

Lots of people have made UDK maps, and posted them up for free download for folks to check out!
Namielus wrote: I think its better to ask Cymatic about the resolution limits. But I think he will agree that its a decent experience now - and the potential is huge for a consumer version.
Hell yes, I agree wholeheartedly. The way things are going, I don't think I will buy a TV ever again. :shock:

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

--Bruce

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:58 am
by MrGreen
You f***ers don't make the waiting any easier.

Thanks for the impressions anyways. :lol:

Re: First Impressions From Rift Owners

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:03 pm
by V8Griff
NikoKun wrote:Even with positional tracking, when your character starts walking forward for the first time, and you're not really moving, you'll feel odd. When you get into a virtual car, and drive around, the lack of expected g-forces will make some people ill, until they adapt. As we go forward into the future of VR, this may be a problem which we simply have to accept and adapt too.

Some people seem to think there is something wrong with the Rift, and they claim that because older VR systems didn't make them this sick, it must be some fault of the Rift's. But the truth is, it is simply so good, so immersive, that any small issues with motion, become bigger problems for your body to adapt too. Those older systems just weren't at this level.
I tend to disagree.

The orientation & positional tracking on the Virtuality systems was easily as good from a lack of latency as that in the Rift so I really do doubt it's because I wasn't expecting something so realistic from a head motion point of view. The feeling of immersion or high detail VR environments is not something that's new to me (Simulation is what I do) so I know/knew what to expect from being in the game so I was aware of the potential disorientation.

In fact I did wonder if it was the higher level of detail in the environment that was 'too much' so I loaded up the 'Tiny Room' demo which is about as basic as they get and indeed much simpler than any Virtuality environment and the motion sickness effect was similar, slightly less than the Tuscany demo, probably because I was starting to acclimatise, but it still caused a similar effect, so I don't think it was anything to do with the environment's quality.

I won't dismiss the possibility out of hand but I'm eagerly awaiting the opportunity to see the Rift with positional as well as translational tracking to see if my theory is correct.

As I've pointed out several times here despite being 20 years old the Virtuality systems were very sophisticated and I'm sure if they were able to run with today's better screen technology they would be acceptable even in todays world.