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Biggest human being Ever posted:I find it really odd that they went with TF2 for this, seems like Portal 2 is just a much more obvious candidate. It's not like they were hounding Valve for TF2 support. Some of the programmers over there just asked for the dev kits to mess with and out came VR support for TF2. Pretty sure Oculus was more than happy to accomodate for anyone at Valve asking for these things. Hierophant posted:A "ton" of units in developer hands "before GDC" apparently means "some" and "a week after GDC". Well, if you were considering pre-ordering one, you might consider pre-ordering one now, and if in the three months before yours ships the reviews come in and it sucks, you can cancel your order. It'd be weird to take reviews of the developer kit seriously, though, since there isn't much content to it other than TF2 at the moment. Unless if you mean to assess on what everyone claims it could do, I guess. But yeah, if anyone missed the latest update; they're starting shipping on the 29th with around 1000 to 1500 units a week (which can ramp up, apparently?). That means I probably won't see mine for four or five weeks given the optimistic estimate of 1500 a week. At least I got something a little more definite but I can't help being a little miffed since I've been waiting for so long to experiment with the damned thing. I realize I'm being unreasonable about it given I cannot even begin to understand the logistics of manufacture and shipping for thousands of these things, but I'm just a little tired of people telling me how great it is when I just want to start making stuff for it. That and I'm an impatient prat.
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Mar 22, 2013 07:07
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Well, they were initially thinking ~500 units a day. This is more like 200-300. I'd imagine they should be able to ramp up quite a bit. Otherwise, recent post-TF2 news orders probably won't arrive till the first weeks of June.
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Mar 22, 2013 19:20
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My order status changed to "Processing - Your order is being processed for shipping" today. Can't wait to get this thing. All of the GDC impressions I've read so far have been really positive.
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Mar 26, 2013 16:38
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So I was inspired by Your Dead Gay Son's earlier post about his DIY Rift and I thought I'd take a shot at it. Since I'm probably way at the back of the line for Rift deliveries considering I submitted my pre-order in January, I wanted to get a feel for it while I waited and it seemed like a fun project. I used basically all the same components: 7" LCD, Hillcrest tracker, 5X loupe lenses. As you can see, I haven't done much for light control-- the whole thing is completely transparent. Once I finish tweaking it, I'm going to just go over the whole thing in flat black primer.     So far I've had the most luck using the Vireio app, but it's got limited compatibility right now. Tridef3D works with just about every DirectX9/10/11 game out there... but it's much more limited in terms of adjusting convergence and IPD and while I could get close, I could never get it to pop perfectly the way I could by adjusting the Vireio settings. Overall impression: Holy poo poo. Even with this jury-rigged unit, the immersion is just insane. I can't even begin to describe how well it works. I was fooling around with Dear Esther and I started to get claustrophobic in the caves. It's so loving crazy. Way, way better than I had anticipated. I can't wait for my actual Rift to show up, but this is a blast to gently caress around with in the mean time.
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Mar 27, 2013 03:38
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ephori posted:Awesome stuff. Seeing these nascent stages of real consumer VR makes me want to pull a Rip van Winkle and wake up in five years when this stuff is becoming ubiquitous.
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Mar 27, 2013 04:26
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Cugel the Clever posted:That looks really cool, but isn't the transparency on the sides a bit distracting? It's not really that distracting, since due to the curvature of the lenses you can't actually 'see' the sides. The screen fills your entire field of view. The only downside to having it be transparent is ambient light washing out the display a bit. I do plan on completely blacking it out once I've got the design locked in the way I want it. I think I'm gonna change out the goggles next... the safety goggles I used definitely aren't as comfortable as ski goggles. Also: I just tried out Mirror's Edge. drat. Standing on the edge of a building and peering over feels totally crazy. I can't wait until we've got headmounted displays with the PPI of all these smartphone screens. It's just an unreal sensation. ephori fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Mar 27, 2013 |
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Mar 27, 2013 05:07
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ephori posted:I can't wait until we've got headmounted displays with the PPI of all these smartphone screens. It's just an unreal sensation. This got me thinking that since Google is already deep in AR research with google glass then maybe the next nexus could have a head mount and better orientation sensor, and that got me thinking why microsoft hasn't done anything like this, and that got me thinking why it took some guy in his basement to say "hey maybe we should check out VR again"
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Mar 27, 2013 05:15
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Your DIY HMD is basically a cyberpunk movie prop (I mean this in a complimentary way).mewse posted:That got me thinking why microsoft hasn't done anything like this, and that got me thinking why it took some guy in his basement to say "hey maybe we should check out VR again" The response that the Rift has been getting seems to have caught everyone (include Palmer) by surprise. Microsoft and Google probably focus grouped the VR idea to a few people, got an unenthusiastic response, and decided that it wasn't time for VR yet. If you had asked any of the media people (Verge, Engadget, etc.) about VR before they had tried the Rift, they probably would have scoffed at the idea as well. Even Palmer thought the Kickstarter would only sell a couple of hundred units which he would assemble by hand. What it comes down to, I think, is that predicting what will capture the public imagination is hard, and companies are more risk averse than individuals.
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Mar 28, 2013 04:18
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ephori posted:So I was inspired by Your Dead Gay Son's earlier post about his DIY Rift and I thought I'd take a shot at it. This set up is ingenious, and man it sounds fantastic.
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Mar 28, 2013 10:16
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So would there be any reason for them to somehow merge the lenses with active 3d glasses (like nvidia's 3d vision)? I've been messing with 3d vision and for some games its a pretty neat effect. Like BF3's floating hud and sun glare or effects in the Max Payne 3.
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Mar 29, 2013 02:01
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SPACE HOMOS posted:So would there be any reason for them to somehow merge the lenses with active 3d glasses (like nvidia's 3d vision)? I've been messing with 3d vision and for some games its a pretty neat effect. Like BF3's floating hud and sun glare or effects in the Max Payne 3. Nope, I don't think so. You already get stereoscopic 3D with the Rift so you can still get that kind of stuff if the game supports it. Crysis 2 has 3D HUD elements that work fine with my DIY Rift's stereoscopic 3D.
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Mar 29, 2013 02:33
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Rift status: On Vehicle for Delivery Today
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Mar 29, 2013 16:17
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Some guy on reddit got his Rift and posted some very early impressions here: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1b8q6c/omfg_its_happening/ Order number was 224 and he had this to say about TF2: quote:tracking is awesome. screendoor and resolution are rough, but you're mind does meld past them (but when you stop and really look, it's super obvious). scale and presence in the game world is something to be hold.
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Mar 29, 2013 19:33
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quote:screendoor and resolution are rough, but you're mind does meld past them (but when you stop and really look, it's super obvious). scale and presence in the game world is something to be hold. That doesn't surprise me. Very few artifacts are truly noticeable in constant motion. It does bode poorly for productivity applications on the dev kit though. There goes my "virtual monitor wall of remote desktop and VMware / HyperV consoles" idea. I'm hoping Obsurveyor got his today, but I'm thinking it's mostly west coast people which I don't think he is. I assume Fedex / UPS are still delivering tomorrow since USPS isn't taking any days off for Easter or Passover. Edit: Forgot to mention, they finally launched the developer center. Everyone has access as far as I know, even if you didn't buy a kit. https://developer.oculusvr.com/ It's apparently been beaten into to the ground by traffic but they're "working on it" whatever that means. Wish they'd launched it as soon as the API was stable. It'd give them more of a chance to get kinks like this worked out before hardware started arriving. Also frankly they could just torrent the dev kit or put it on a bunch of other hosting sites. I understand the ideas behind registration but honestly, if the point is to hook as many developers as possible I think making a dev kit a click away is the way to go. El_Matarife fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Mar 29, 2013 |
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Mar 29, 2013 20:35
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UPS was extremely late to work today so I had left before it arrived but a co-worker texted me and I guess it's sitting on my chair waiting to be picked up. I'll probably head back to work in a little while and get it.
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Mar 29, 2013 22:15
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You guys better post some pics and impressions! I can't wait to hear some real world experiences.
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Mar 29, 2013 23:28
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El_Matarife posted:Also frankly they could just torrent the dev kit or put it on a bunch of other hosting sites. I understand the ideas behind registration but honestly, if the point is to hook as many developers as possible I think making a dev kit a click away is the way to go. You also have to specify a 'project' when you register. But beware! It seems that whatever you put in the project field is (for now) permanent. I suspect I am doomed to work on 'Placeholder Project' for all eternity.
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Mar 30, 2013 00:56
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Haha oops.. I'm Untitled forever then, I guess. My Rift was waiting on my doorstep when I got home today 
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Mar 30, 2013 01:23
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Rift doesn't seem to actually work. It will display a No Signal blue screen from time to time on the right eye but I can't get it to display anything from the video card. Not DVI or HDMI. I've tried it by itself, on different outputs, nothing will display anything on the Rift.  I also didn't get a signed Rift, poster or T-shirt like I was supposed to for being a pre-Kickstarter. edit: Wow, nevermind, that's crazy. It doesn't show anything if the tracker isn't hooked up. I was trying to avoid cable hell right away. Obsurveyor fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Mar 30, 2013 |
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Mar 30, 2013 01:58
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edit: ^^^^^^ so it's working now? That sucks. It's strange that only one eye would show anything... the box isn't supposed to do any kind of per-eye processing on the signal, is it? Does it look like the display is broken-broken, or more like a bad connection somewhere? Does the power light stay on? This may be a stupid question, but are you sure there isn't some kind of lens-cap or protective film that you have remove? Did you try the contrast/brightness buttons? Hierophant fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Mar 30, 2013 |
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Mar 30, 2013 02:18
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Yep. Not trying to be negative here but the screen door on the Rift is bad. I'm sure my judgement is skewed by my DIY Rift but I actually prefer that display to the devkit Rift. You can see the screen door effect on the DIY but you have to really focus on the screen itself, which isn't natural. On the devkit Rift, it's always present. I ran around for a good 10 minutes in the demo app and my vision never integrated it. I didn't really notice any kind of higher definition towards the center of the screen vs. the outer edges that the warp is supposed to provide either. It looks much like Crysis 2 on my DIY does. Another unfortunate problem is that the refresh rate is too slow, just like my DIY. It gives the effect that when you're moving your head at natural speeds, everything gets blurry, then snaps into focus when you stop moving. Better looking content makes it look worse. Using my little gray and blue Unity app with my DIY hides the effect more than the Tuscany demo for the Rift and the varying textures and colors. None of this is unanticipated though. It's simply an effect of a 1280x800 7" screen being magnified by nearly the same optics as a 5.6" screen being magnified 5x. The pixels are larger and so are the gaps. Refresh rates were already known to be poor on these size screens. This will be just fine for it's intended purpose: A development kit. It still looks way better than any other HMD I have owned, it's comfortable, it doesn't gently caress up my vision or give me headaches when I take it off. If you're on the fence or money is tight, just wait for the consumer version, you're going to get a lot more for your money. Obsurveyor fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Mar 30, 2013 |
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Mar 30, 2013 02:38
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Yeah, I've suspected for a while that the 7'' screen was worse in some specific way than the 5.6'' one based on the fact that they had been demoing only the 5.6'' model until right up to GDC. Still, I think they made the right call to ship dev kits sooner, but with a worse screen, rather than to delay indefinitely while they try to source better screens. What's your vision like? I wonder if people with better vision notice the screen door effect more, while for people who are slightly nearsighted (but not nearsighted enough to switch to different eyecups or wear their glasses inside) it just blurs away. Edit: regarding the higher pixel density towards the center: I've been rolling my eyes every time Oculus tries to pass that off as a selling point rather than a benign artifact of the optics. You can look at the warped images and see that the warping is not nearly aggressive enough that you would really notice the density difference from center to periphery. Hierophant fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Mar 30, 2013 |
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Mar 30, 2013 02:48
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Hierophant posted:Yeah, I've suspected for a while that the 7'' screen was worse in some specific way than the 5.6'' one based on the fact that they had been demoing only the 5.6'' model until right up to GDC. Still, I think they made the right call to ship dev kits sooner, but with a worse screen, rather than to delay indefinitely while they try to source better screens. quote:What's your vision like? I wonder if people with better vision notice the screen door effect more, while for people who are slightly nearsighted (but not nearsighted enough to switch to different eyecups or wear their glasses inside) it just blurs away. quote:Edit: regarding the higher pixel density towards the center: I've been rolling my eyes every time Oculus tries to pass that off as a selling point rather than a benign artifact of the optics. You can look at the warped images and see that the warping is not nearly aggressive enough that you would really notice the density difference from center to periphery.
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Mar 30, 2013 03:02
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The resolution and screen door effect are definitely pretty bad but this thing is still a lot of fun to use. I just tried out Half Life 2 with the Vireio Perception drivers and the screen deficiencies seemed a lot less distracting in a darker game with more going on on the screen. Is the Hawken VR mode available yet or was that just a GDC demo?
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Mar 30, 2013 04:00
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I'd love to see someone get their hands on one of the 5.6 inch demo units and do a side by side comparison. I didn't see a screen door at all when I tried one but I was mostly blown away by the FOV so maybe I just didn't notice. Requiring the USB to even put a picture on screen seems like a bad idea. What happens if the USB cable gets accidentally yanked out mid play by an aggressive turn or something? Some people are definitely going to plug the Rift into a monitor USB hub or something like that. They'd be much better off popping up some kind of a warning about "Tracker disconnected" than just going dead altogether. Maybe they're actually pulling a little power over USB?
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Mar 30, 2013 19:22
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El_Matarife posted:I'd love to see someone get their hands on one of the 5.6 inch demo units and do a side by side comparison. I didn't see a screen door at all when I tried one but I was mostly blown away by the FOV so maybe I just didn't notice. quote:Maybe they're actually pulling a little power over USB?
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Mar 30, 2013 21:09
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I wondered if you were using the same panel. So generally speaking, you'd say less resolution issues and a better refresh rate, but is the FOV noticeably better on the 7 inch panel?
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Mar 30, 2013 21:24
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El_Matarife posted:I wondered if you were using the same panel. So generally speaking, you'd say less resolution issues and a better refresh rate, but is the FOV noticeably better on the 7 inch panel? I think the refresh rate is identical or nearly so. I was playing Crysis 2 last night on my DIY right after using the devkit with the Tuscany demo and was using the 360 controller to try to simulate the speed of head movement and it seemed to blur about as much. The screen door on the devkit, unfortunately, makes the blur real obvious for head movements vs. the DIY. Once they send out the Unity Pro trial keys, I can do some actual 1:1 comparisons with the Tuscany demo on my DIY and the devkit.
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Mar 30, 2013 21:30
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Have you experienced any framerate issues when playing regular games? I'm kinda curious what it's like if something doesn't run at a super steady framerate on the rift.
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Mar 30, 2013 21:36
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Biggest human being Ever posted:Have you experienced any framerate issues when playing regular games? I'm kinda curious what it's like if something doesn't run at a super steady framerate on the rift. I haven't played any games on either DIY or devkit Rift that wasn't 60 fps. My machine is pretty beefy so I don't think I have anything with support that I could make it run slow. I might be able to simulate it with a Unity app. Just for fun the other night, I ran two copies of VLC with the same video, each taking half the screen and watched it on my DIY. I got them pretty much in sync but you could tell the frame rate was low and a tiny bit out of sync. Someone needs to make a side by side plugin for VLC, none of the ones it comes with will do it.
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Mar 30, 2013 21:47
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TF2 is the only real game you can really play on it at the moment and that doesn't seem to have any trouble maintaining a high framerate. The Vireio Perception drivers are kind of useless at the moment but apparently an update that makes them work better with the dev kit is coming in the next couple of days.
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Mar 30, 2013 21:47
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Obsurveyor posted:I haven't played any games on either DIY or devkit Rift that wasn't 60 fps. My machine is pretty beefy so I don't think I have anything with support that I could make it run slow. I might be able to simulate it with a Unity app. Right, I forgot to consider that everything happens at 1280x800 on both of those. Another question then, you mentioned playing Crysis 2, is there some 3rd party tracking support or did you just use your DIY rift as a regular display without headtracking?
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Mar 30, 2013 22:11
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Biggest human being Ever posted:Right, I forgot to consider that everything happens at 1280x800 on both of those. Another question then, you mentioned playing Crysis 2, is there some 3rd party tracking support or did you just use your DIY rift as a regular display without headtracking? Yeah, no head tracking. It has built-in support for side-by-side 3D and I enable that to get stereoscopic 3D along with a 360 controller. It's not perspective correct but it still works and you don't notice it most of the time.
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Mar 30, 2013 22:24
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Obsurveyor posted:Just for fun the other night, I ran two copies of VLC with the same video, each taking half the screen and watched it on my DIY. I got them pretty much in sync but you could tell the frame rate was low and a tiny bit out of sync. Someone needs to make a side by side plugin for VLC, none of the ones it comes with will do it. I was really hoping for pure USB power for laptop plane watching or gaming. I hate to watch some of the HBO stuff like True Blood cause I feel it's got entirely too much tits and blood for public viewing, haha. I'm also hoping to see 3D BluRays on the Rift. Zero crosstalk should be Sony HMD good if less resolution but for 1/3rd the price, I'll take it!
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Mar 30, 2013 22:30
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Obsurveyor posted:Yeah, no head tracking. It has built-in support for side-by-side 3D and I enable that to get stereoscopic 3D along with a 360 controller. It's not perspective correct but it still works and you don't notice it most of the time. That's something you can only play on your DIY rift then, correct? Because I think you or someone else mentioned that the Rift doesn't work without the headtracking box enabled, meaning you can't use it as just a "regular" display. You think that's something that people will be able to do through software eventually?
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Mar 30, 2013 22:32
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Biggest human being Ever posted:That's something you can only play on your DIY rift then, correct? Because I think you or someone else mentioned that the Rift doesn't work without the headtracking box enabled, meaning you can't use it as just a "regular" display. You think that's something that people will be able to do through software eventually? It just doesn't display anything until the USB cable is plugged in. Once you plug it in, it comes on immediately, even before Windows enumerates the USB device. It's not really something you need to unplug most of the time. Right now, you can only play Crysis 2 on a DIY because the side-by-side 3D has no adjustment for eye overlap. Each half covers 100% of each eye. On the devkit Rift, there's partial overlap so you get doubled vision similar to looking at a straight 2D display on either. The Viero driver should be able to fix that once they support the Rift.
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Mar 30, 2013 22:42
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Obsurveyor posted:It just doesn't display anything until the USB cable is plugged in. Once you plug it in, it comes on immediately, even before Windows enumerates the USB device. It's not really something you need to unplug most of the time. Sounds like it would be relatively easy then to create a very basic driver that allows the rift to display a regular old 2d image, would be useful for playing all the games that don't support the rift and watch movies on it. Turn the thing into a non-terrible HMZ-T1 basically.
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Mar 30, 2013 22:54
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Looks like the Rift really should have its own forum thread. I foresee it really taking off once devs starts pumping out the goods. I'm #930 so I hope mine shows up sometime next week. I reallllllly need to try getting into development. I have tons on simple ideas for a Rift app, but have no talent to put it together. Looking around, how hard would it really be to learn Unity from 0 to being able to create some simple 3D test apps? Also how did valve do TF2's VR? Is it mouselook or head aim? And any experience with Hawken yet? When the Rift was first announced I was practically first to the game stating this is the Sim players dream headtracking. No longer do you have to do the TrackIR/freetrack hat and look left or right while focusing on a fixed screen. Games like Rise of Flight, WW2Online, IL2, FSX, A10, any number of racing games, etc all need to support the Rift asap. Hopefully devs can get that driver up to snuff with both the 3d as well as either full trackIR emulation, or at least freetrack support. Even my current addiction of World of Tanks would be sweet with the Rift by allowing separate mouselook at all times.
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Mar 31, 2013 04:08
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EdEddnEddy posted:Looks like the Rift really should have its own forum thread. I foresee it really taking off once devs starts pumping out the goods. I'm #930 so I hope mine shows up sometime next week. quote:I reallllllly need to try getting into development. I have tons on simple ideas for a Rift app, but have no talent to put it together. Looking around, how hard would it really be to learn Unity from 0 to being able to create some simple 3D test apps? quote:Also how did valve do TF2's VR? Is it mouselook or head aim? And any experience with Hawken yet? quote:When the Rift was first announced I was practically first to the game stating this is the Sim players dream headtracking. No longer do you have to do the TrackIR/freetrack hat and look left or right while focusing on a fixed screen. Games like Rise of Flight, WW2Online, IL2, FSX, A10, any number of racing games, etc all need to support the Rift asap. Hopefully devs can get that driver up to snuff with both the 3d as well as either full trackIR emulation, or at least freetrack support. Don't throw away that TrackIR(really need to find mine) because it's still useful with the Rift for positional tracking. You miss not being able to crane your neck forward more than you realize, once you've actually put on a Rift.
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Mar 31, 2013 04:54
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EdEddnEddy posted:I reallllllly need to try getting into development. I have tons on simple ideas for a Rift app, but have no talent to put it together. Looking around, how hard would it really be to learn Unity from 0 to being able to create some simple 3D test apps? What's "0"? If you already know how to program, then the learning curve isn't that steep-- I'm not that familiar with Unity specifically, but probably the most difficult part of moving from general programming to 3d stuff is the math (in 2d you get can by with arithmetic and some trig, but in 3d you'll want to be at least somewhat familiar with linear algebra). If you don't know how to program, then learning to program will be your biggest hurdle.
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Mar 31, 2013 05:02
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