$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut at, but right now, Oculus faces a much bigger risk than low sales volume: Poor reception. If this was the MSRP required to ensure a comfortable, nausea-free experience, it's far better to have a killer product at a high price point than a "don't buy the first generation" product at the price point people were expecting. The former can lead to a cheaper gen 2, but the latter can lead to ruin.
I would argue that price (and this being a high one) could just as easily lead to ruin.
The quality of a user's experience with the Oculus is going to be directly correlated to the quantity and quality of games/experiences available for the device. Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem. Quantity/quality are even more important to the user after making such a significant investment.
The problem here is if developers will be able to make money creating quality experiences for Oculus if the userbase is tiny because no one can afford one. The user market is already being fractured by the different units available - if I develop a game for the HTC Vive (which supports room tracking) is it easy or even possible to port the experience to the Oculus?
Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base (XBOX/PS4/PC/etc). Due to the nature of VR a quality experience is going to require a significant investment to build. If companies can't recoup that cost they'll stop developing and if there aren't any killer experiences people will stop buying the Rift.
For Oculus (or any of the upcoming units) to be successful they need to walk the line between quality and price, and I'm not sure they've done it.
I'm starting to think Sony is in a better position even though it's looking like they have inferior hardware.
> Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base
The problem is that you're associating quality with only AAA titles. There are have been plenty of quality indie titles for years now.
> Even if it's silky smooth and you can use it for hours on end without issue if you run out of quality content in two hours there's a problem.
I don't know about the oculus store, but there's already enough content with existing titles on Steam.
I agree that there have been plenty of quality indie titles but I think the 3D / recreating reality aspects of VR are somewhat limiting here. 2D games (some of my favorite recent indies) are out of the question in VR. A major goal of VR is to recreate reality or some "reality", which requires well designed 3D models and animations. That being said I think there will be great indie experiences available, but they'll also be up against a limited user base when it comes to making money.
Another way to look at it is that the Oculus isn't just a peripheral, it's a platform. Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base, which in turn draws developers and subsequently a larger library which leads to more platform purchases.
Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR. The best experiences, and the ones that will drive sales will be designed specifically for VR.
Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.
I don't think that even AAA level models are good enough for VR. They have the "uncanny valley" effect -- they're close enough to looking good that they just creep you out and throw of that "presence" feel you're looking for. I think it's going to be a long time before you see human faces in VR.
So everybody, even the AAA guys, are going to be putting you into environments like cartoons, space and buildings rather than natural environments, and the people you interact with are going to be in vehicles or space suits or avatars or anything to avoid having to model a human face.
So, ironically, AAA budgets probably aren't going to be a hugely limiting factor, at least in the first wave of VR games, in my opinion.
Neither do. Good games sell platforms. Even better if they're exclusive and you can't find that experience any place else. Basically, you need a killer app. Who makes it is irrelevant.
I agree that AAA games have the marketing power to broaden appeal. However, indie gaming is becoming a powerhouse of sorts. Look at the Steam Top Sellers list at any time, and you'll usually see at least half the games listed there being indies. Currently, it looks to be a solid 50/50, although I'm sure the residual affects of the last Steam sale are there.
Something with the viral appeal of Minecraft, released for the Oculus, would be a massive draw.
> the 3D / recreating reality aspects of VR are somewhat limiting here. 2D games (some of my favorite recent indies) are out of the question in VR
Well there are plenty of great 3D indie games as well, so it's a moot point.
> Console makers have learned how important it is to either keep console costs down or subsidize in order to reach the largest user base
That happened generations ago. With the growth of the internet, now they're inefficient gatekeepers compared to the app stores, notably Steam. It's much easier and cheaper for developers of all sizes to make a release on an App Store. How this translates to gamers is that they get a lot more variety of quality content that risk averse giant publishers would never approve for release, let alone development.
> Most titles aren't going to work with the Oculus out of the box. Even for a standard FPS you can't just check box and enable VR
Yes, but this is a PC release with an audience that's accustomed to tinkering (mods, custom desktops, ...)
> Think about 3D movies and the difference between seeing something like Avatar that was created with 3D in mind and some of the terrible 3D addition cash grabs that have come out. A lot of those poor post 3D additions have turned people off to 3D movies altogether.
When consoles like the NES, Genesis, PS One, Xbox, and the Wii were first released, you can say the same thing about plenty of 3rd party titles. That didn't turn off consumers from video games altogether.
You make some solid points, the key is the successful consoles had killer titles that provided awesome experiences and pushed the technology early (Sonic, Tomb Raider, Halo, Wii Sports, etc.) Also those consoles launched at (relatively) consumer friendly prices.
You can also adapt many AAA games to 3d glasses with minimal issues. The physics and models are unchanged just a 'minor' change to the UI and renderer.
> The problem here is if developers will be able to make money creating quality experiences for Oculus if the userbase is tiny because no one can afford one. The user market is already being fractured by the different units available - if I develop a game for the HTC Vive (which supports room tracking) is it easy or even possible to port the experience to the Oculus?
The Vive will be as expensive and likely more expensive than the Rift.
> Developing a high quality gaming experience is EXPENSIVE, and AAA regularly do not recoup their costs even when they're being offered to a huge user base
Oculus has already paid for a number of Rift exclusive games. Expect them to keep doing that.
Oculus claims that the point of the Facebook acquisition was that they'd have infinity money. As both Oculus and Facebook assert that there's a blank check there, one would hope they've already also heavily invested in a high-quality software library. If not, they need to quickly start doing so. They could start a developer program where devs qualify for free or discounted hardware. They could even start their own game studio. Most other gaming hardware manufacturers do have their own studios and release their own games for exactly the reason you stated (ensuring that there are killer apps on their platform). Oculus has got to put that Facebook money to work!
I agree 1000%, at $600 we need to see some killer early titles and Facebook is absolutely in a position to finance them. Let's just hope they're NOTHING like farmville ;)
They have already started their own studios called Oculus Studios and Oculus Story Studio. There will be at least 20 Oculus Studios games released this year.
Companies have been developing content for Oculus for years now, with basically 0 market outside of the dev kits. The immersion of the experience alone makes fairly simple indie titles much more profound on the Rift than say a $200 million 3D movie, much less a big budget game.
As someone that plays Star Citizen regularly with my Oculus Rift (that I got as a backer in the original Kickstarter, with an SDK), the one thing they won't need to worry about is the games/experiences available for the device.
Yes, I believe for a certain kind of player, the SC experience is enough to sell a lot of Oculus Rift CV1 units. Obviously, this price point is above what most people would spend on a computer, let alone a peripheral. With respect to FPS, I don't know. I don't play FPS. :P
Star Citizen is of limited appeal, isn't a "AAA" title, and won't sell a platform.
Not to mention, it's only 1 game... for this to work, pretty much 99% of AAA titles need to be designed for VR (not just the "enable VR" checkbox).
Call of Duty Black Ops III was just released... no VR support. Battlefront was just released, same thing. These are the AAA titles that would bring support... but they aren't. (it also shows Facebook et al did a terrible job of convincing AAA studios to think towards VR... which could be a nail in the VR coffin in they don't come around on their own).
(and yes, I know there are ways to get both games to work with VR... but it's not native, and the game wasn't designed with VR in mind).
Given it can take 1-2 years to develop a AAA title, it could be a long while before we see it becoming the "norm". In the meantime, all of Oculus' competitors will be on the market, probably cheaper and better (due to learning from the first-to-market's mistakes).
First person shooters probably won't make the transition to VR. Not without basically being redesigned from the ground up. The control scheme is just barf city.
(Although expect to see people playing FPSs on virtual IMAX-like screens in VR. A little bit of stable context can mitigate the nausea.)
But why are you counting the titles available today? The Rift hasn't even been released yet. Even if they are planning to adapt those titles,
there's not much incentive for EA and Activision to rush their ports out.
> But why are you counting the titles available today? The Rift hasn't even been released yet
The development kits have been out for years. The failure to bring big AAA titles to the Rift at launch clearly shows one of two things:
1) Facebook et all were unsuccessful in persuading AAA studios to work with them on VR for relative lined-up launches.
2) Facebook et all did not try to persuade AAA studios to work with them on VR, instead opting for it to grow "organically".
Both are total failures for the Rift, and may spell disaster. For an expensive device like this, it needs several AAA titles featuring full support... they don't exist.
Part of this miraculous unplanned and very sudden firesale to Facebook was so that Oculus could have "virtually unlimited funds", which would be used to further the platform... Facebook could have easily subsidized AAA studios to produce full Oculus/VR support on their next title... but that clearly didn't happen.
While budget does play into what makes a AAA title, it's not the only factor. Star Citizen is Cloud Imperium Games' first game... and it's still not a final release. They are an "indie" shop for all intents and purposes.
AAA status is usually reserved for big studios that produce many games of high quality(ish), and yes, with big budgets (GTA5 cost over $265 MM to create).
A parallel would be a big budget movie produced by Sony vs. Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars was produced by successful people within the film industry, but it's not on the same level as a full production.
> $105 million (and counting) in dev costs
Well, that's not in dev costs... that's money raised... and they're trying to bootstrap a company at the same time, so not all of that money will even go to the game development (unlike a big budget big studio development where literally every penny of their quoted budget is in development cost as the business is already established and earning on it's own).
While Halo was not Bungie's first game, Bungie was not at all a well-known developer at the time. But I think Halo on the original Xbox was very much a AAA game.
Right now they are limited by supply not demand. If they sold them at $1 there would be the same number in the hands of consumers at the end of the year. So I don't see how the high price could be resulting in not enough developer interest. If the VR experience can be something everyone want to try if they get a chance Oculus isn;t going to have any problems.
My thoughts as well. Plus the price is roughly comparable to a higher end smartphone. Given the hardware and software involved, it's not terribly far off for a gen 1 device.
I think of the Palm and WinMo phones I paid $500+ for during the early generations of smartphones and it starts to make more sense. And just as I'm sure those devices from Palm and HTC could've been a lot nicer even with the tech of the day, the price would've pushed into the $1000 range. Gen 1 is always gonna be fairly expensive and still not quite as good as you wish it was. With later revisions, price drops and capabilities go up.
The only issue I see here is that rather than looking at relative openness and ability to run in-development software on something like the Vive or the Rift, many people are going to look only at price and wait for something like a $300 Playstation VR headset that's limited to whatever can be sold and approved for a game console.
As I see it, it's still an early-adopter techie toy/luxury so whether it costs $399 or $599, I'd only really buy it if I had that sort of dough in my "fun stuff I don't need" budget. Even as someone who bought a Rift DK2 at launch, I'm both waiting on buying any consumer device and not too concerned with the price difference between a $400 device and a $600 device. If anything ends up striking me as really worth buying, I won't just buy a lesser device to save a couple hundred bucks. I'd rather wait until I see something I really want and will use and not buy anything at all until then.
>many people are going to look only at price and wait for something like a $300 Playstation VR headset
This is what I imagine will be the most common outcome here. Sure the Rift is 'only' $600, but you need a $400 video card to make it work on top of a decent rig, so a minimum $1500 investment?
Meanwhile, millions of kids with Xboxes and PS4's already have everything they need for a perhaps lesser experience, but come xmas that $299 console headset is going to be crazy attractive. The hands on reviews I've read with Morpheus compared it to a later model Rift. No idea how it stacks to this new consumer model, but if Sony can sell that level of resolution and performance on consoles, then its going to hurt Oculus severely. As someone who owns both I'm leaning on wating for the consoles to ante up. I think the PC end of VR is going to be a lot of half assed indie games, non-VR games tied to some crappy driver that makes them 'VR' but with a very poor experience, general steam shovelware/paid beta's, and demos masquerading as "games" while the consoles will only allow polished AAA products on their VR platform.
I dunno...I'd prefer being able to download and run every cool virtual meeting space or VR movie theater that plays my own movies or in-development 3d telepresence project or interactive projection visual plugin that comes out (in addition to games and stuff that are fully and officially supported).
Later on, sure, there will be plenty of fully commercialized and polished software on every VR platform that's still around but right now this is inherently an early-adopter platform. Sony will offer a handful of launch titles that work with Morpheus and maybe let you rent VR movies for $20 a pop. But when the HMD is just a peripheral, you'll get the polished stuff as well as the beta stuff and honestly that's where all of the cool software and applications are gonna be for a little while still.
I can't imagine Sony allowing something like Riftmax Theater or letting you use something like VorpX to simulate playing your games on a giant 3D IMAX screen. I'll never get to enable beta VR support in a game like I can with Steam and I'll never get to fire up Unreal Engine and model out some neat stuff, hit "play", and then walk around it in VR.
Basically if AAA games are your priority, Sony and other console-type platforms will be more polished but probably more limited. If you're here as an early adopter with enthusiasm for VR as a platform and eager to try out every new concept or application, you're better off with a more open platform for creation and distribution.
And as for the cost, needing a $400 video card only applies to some people. Since I already need and use a computer for lots of things, I tend to spend the extra money on a nice GPU instead of a gaming console for roughly the same cost. This won't apply to everyone but it's the market that PC-based VR is after at the moment. My GPU cost me $100 more than the launch price of a PS4 with no additional peripherals and lets me play any new games (as well as my huge library of older ones) at 2560x1440 with all the bells and whistles. I think for a lot of people who enjoy gaming and multimedia work/hobby, it's a solid way to go.
Either way, in 5-10 years it'll go the way of much other consumer tech and you'll be able to get top performance at mainstream, affordable prices. The high costs and tradeoffs on various platforms right now will become less of an issue with volume sales and mature hardware/software.
> Plus the price is roughly comparable to a higher end smartphone.
Interesting comparison, but most people are able to finance phones through their carrier (although I haven't looked into that for a bleeding edge new phone model).
Back before smartphones were the norm, if you wanted a high end phone, you had to buy it on your own. I remember purchasing my first high-end Sony Ericsson for something like $600. It wouldn't be stretch to believe that after a few years of production, the price of the Oculus will be under $200.
Unfortunately this is socially positioned more like a TV or a games console, rather than a smartphone (used every day all day), which have much longer lifespans than a smartphone (5-10 years vs 2-5 years).
The interesting question is how long before this version of the Rift becomes obsolete, or will Oculus provide a contract-based upgrade plan (like for phones).
No one in their right mind would expect this hardware to stay relevant for more than 1-2 years.
If you can't afford to spend $600 once a year, get a better job, or stop buying expensive toys.
I'd be totally OK with it costing $1000 if it could really provide a great VR experience.
Well, the $599 price is close to double their "ballpark price" of $350. It also comes just days after they announced they're giving away ~7,000 free Rift units as a special thank-you to those who Kickstarted the devkits.
Right now they have a serious expectation management problem with their price - they're turning off customers because they nearly doubled their asking price overnight. Those free units would translate into a sizeable discount for their paying retail customers, so I argue that the problem here is both real and self-inflicted.
I dunno, it looks like the system requirements implies a not more than 1 year old gaming computer costing at least $1000 (e.g. this one [1]). They're hardly targeting casual gamers, they're targeting people who are accustomed to dropping $600 on gaming hardware to have the "latest and greatest". See the GTX 980 Ti, any 27" 4K monitor, etc. none of which have exactly flopped. Even slightly ridiculously priced products like the GTX Titan X seem to sell OK, or NVidia wouldn't keep releasing $1000 gaming GPUs year after year.
There's a world of difference between a general-purpose computer and a specialized device like the Rift. The computer has its own independent utility and stands on its own merit, the Rift is an entirely optional upgrade that nobody has to purchase. To make a car analogy, most people are going to buy a car to get to work. But you should still evaluate all the optional extras on their own merits, unless you're just too rich to care. The proper way to evaluate a lift kit is not "well it's twice what it was advertised as, but that's still only 25% over the base cost of the vehicle".
Regarding the other things - the fact that nice components exist is entirely irrelevant to the failures of expectation management here. If NVIDIA spent 2 years marketing the Titan X as the best GPU to have at the $1k price point, and then on launch day it's suddenly $2k - their customers would very justifiably be pissed and it would certainly affect sales.
It's neither here nor there, but you can also cut build costs quite a bit further than they did in that article. You can bring it down to about $800 for the same set of core components. Buy the CPU at MicroCenter, use the stock CPU fan instead of a cooler, buy a refurb 970 from EVGA, look for a 750W Gold PSU around the $50 mark, buy a cheaper mobo, buy cheaper memory. You can even go cheaper if you make some minor compromises - use a 2500k and overclock, get a refurb 780 Ti from EVGA B-stock (same performance as a 970), and you can also drop the HDD until you really need more space. That lets you squeeze at least another $200 out of it pretty easily without affecting performance, which would get you down to around $600.
The AMD 290 is 2.5 years old. The NVidia 680 & 780 are also acceptable cards, and they're over 2.5 years old (although considerably more expensive than the 970). So you need a top-of-the-line gaming computer from 2.5 years ago, or a high-end gaming computer from 1 year ago.
> Those free units would translate into a sizeable discount for their paying retail customers
I doubt it. Initial runs are always more expensive because you're paying for the initial tooling and investment, not necessarily because of the actual raw price of the unit. Depending on minimum size commitments and the like with the manufacturers, the 7k "free" units may even be netting a discount on the remaining unit costs.
> sizeable discount for their paying retail customers
I think you are wrong on that. I honestly doubt the 6500 free units they are giving out would actually affect the price at all. Think about this, what would have been worse, your 6500 most loyal and vocal customers being pissed because the price of an oculus rift was doubled overnight or goodwill from dropping the price of a rift 10 dollars?
We need to consider how many Rifts are actually going to be sold at this price point. It's surely many, but it's not going to be millions of devices (this is a very expensive niche product being marketed to a relatively small slice of the market with even fewer supporting games to use it with).
With that in mind, 7k free units may very well indeed be sizable.
Regardless, they already pissed off most of their original backers during the sudden-no-forementioned sale to Facebook (which to this day remains a bizarre marriage). Sure, it may make some folks feel better, but it's unlikely to tip the scales in any sizable manner (or effect the eventual outcome of bringing this product to market).
Unlike a "gaming" monitor (don't buy the hype), the Rift can only be used for a few tasks (namely, gaming)... the monitor is a general purpose product and will get a lot more mileage out of it for the price. It's an "apples and oranges" thing.
Things like G-sync really are specifically for gaming and they inflate the price significantly. A very high refresh rate is also not useful for most users outside of gaming. In other words, a lot of the value of these monitors really is in features that are only useful in gaming and not general purpose use.
In reality, most of these "features" aren't very noticeable to the average gamer. In the case where it is a noticeable, a little screen tearing really isn't a huge deal (not to mention G-sync requires an Nvidia GPU, which not everyone has nor will have).
Avid gamers do have a habit of going overboard on things, such as buying 64GB+ of RAM even though they never use it (and wont unless they run VM's, or huge services/server software, etc...).
It's easy to spend $2,000-$4,000+ on a super high end gaming rig, but in reality the $1,000 rig will game just fine for a long while before mandating upgrades.
A non gaming screen with similar specs is around $160. Gamers are willing to pay $540 more just because they want a better gaming experience, that's why $599 is totally ok for a device like the Oculus.
Or we simply get this chicken-egg problem where people don't want to develop, market and release games for platform, that is just an addon for PC, that doesn't actually sell well since the price point is so high and there is no games to play with it.
I'm very interested to try Oculus, but not until the price is around other gaming accessories (i.e. south of 200€). Unless someone comes out with game or app that completely revolutionalizes the way we use computers I'm not forking over 750€ for a fad
>>$599 may seem like a perilously steep price to debut
Just wondering if we would think the same way if Apple had launched this even for something as high as $1000.
Perception matters. The apple watch is median $500. And its not even something novel. Watches have existed since hundreds of years.
I think Apple will come to launch VR sometime in the future and it will be ~$1000, and people will buy without blinking, because people will think it's Apple, and a expensive product means a good product.
People buy Apple products because they have a history of making great products, and so they don't mind that they are expensive.
You have to be really rich, and have the right attitude to think that just cause something is expensive it is good.
I spend a lot of money with Apple, but I'm always paying attention to cost-- I count every penny, and if I could get comparable quality elsewhere I would certainly consider it.
The thing is, nobody is making decent laptops, or mobile phones or watches to compete with Apple, certainly not at Apple's price points. Those who think Apple is expensive have a much lower threshold for what is "Good" -- which is fine, they are not using the items in the same way I am.
Apple has made special efforts to distance itself from PC gaming, doesn't court publishers/devs, and is otherwise a troublesome platform for gaming entirely. Why would they get into gaming peripherals? What version of OpenGL does OSX ship with now anyway? What milquetoast videocard is shipping with the current gen of devices? Things like the Rift require something on the level, on a MINIMUM of the Nvidia 370, which is a near $400 card that eats up watts like no one's business.
The few OSX gamers I know just gave up and run parallels or bootcamp.
VR could be the next paradigm shift, but it might not be.
If it is then the transformation could arguably be bigger than mobile was and the hardware/software companies can't ignore it. Games may just be the first obvious application.
While autonomous cars have been more obviously coming since 2012, VR is more uncertain. I'd imagine Apple is doing some work here though or at least watching it closely.
People know exactly how much or little they will use a conventional display, that makes it easy to decide on a quality/price range. With a VR headset, it's like buying a guitar without ever having played a musical instrument. Most people prefer to start with the cheapest model in a situation like that and only get a better one once they know they will stick with the instrument. Actually it's even worse than that with the rift, because right now we don't even know if anyone would stick with a VR headset once the novelty effect wears off and all bets are off about social conventions regarding rift usage.
Of course we all understand why Oculus does not want to offer cheaper, low spec models that might fill the "beginner model" gap. In that kind of situation, maybe Oculus would do well offering franchise kits for rent-a-rift shops. The last remaining video stores might be a good match, the audience is open for technological home entertainment and their economic situation is likely to be desperate enough to try new side lines.
Totally correct. As someone who has been using the Oculus DK2 since it's release, I can personally state that nausea can have many underlying sources, but the most frequent is the conflicting information your vestibular system is receiving: equilibrium vs. vision.
The Rift itself, in conjunction with good software, is excellent at tracking both rotation and translation motion and keeping the display in sync. More often than not, the nausea one experiences has to do with locomotion within the game. Spinning your character around with your mouse, for example, produces a spinning sensation with no corresponding input from your equilibrium, resulting in a sick feeling in some people.
The good news is: Many people are able to "get their VR legs" by starting with simple experiences and slowing introducing more complex ones.
The parts are swappable. Going to a different headset isn't going to make you less prone to nausea if the software is no good. And if the software is good, you'd not get nausea even on a lesser headset. The headset is not the determining factor of nausea. Even the DK2 did its job and did it well enough.
I don't think consumers will care who is really to blame, they'll only come away with a bad experience, word will spread, and demand will drop.
To use a food analogy: You sell pizza, it is the best pizza in town, but the delivery driver sucks and food is constantly arriving cold or smashed. Your patrons aren't going to care that you always blame the delivery driver for the problems, or that the pizza COULD be good if not ruined, they're going to either shop somewhere else or quit buying delivered pizza. Same thing here, regardless who ruined the thing, the experience is still the same.
Except in this shitty analogy, I hire the driver, so if the pizza is bad because of the driver, it is my fault. Oculus doesn't hire most of the VR game developers in the world.
I absolutely would not blame the restaurant if my GrubHub delivery guy ruined the order.
And regardless, what the mythical "average consumer" does or doesn't do is immaterial. You should know better.
Except in that shitty analogy, the way I understood it, Ocolus is the delivery guy. The Rift is not the product, its just the delivery mechanism: the games are the product.
Nausea, headaches, (and a bad experience) can be caused by things like low resolution and low (max) framerates, for example. Software cannot do anything about those issues.
Well, that price does include HiFi headphones with a built-in DAC, an Xbox One controller, a small hand-held controller, and two games. Retail prices on those bought separately? Easily 1/3rd the price.
I hate when marketing tries to add value or justify cost with bundles, add-ons or promotional items. None of those items appeal to me and I'd rather buy a barebones kit and save $50.
I don't need a wireless xbox controller, I have 2 sitting right next to me.
I have no interest in those two games, they'll be thrown on the stack of AOL floppies, Colin McRae: Dirt download codes, and McAfee CDs I have gathering dust in the corner.
The headphones are nice I guess if you don't have wireless ones but I do so they'll be relegated to the bin.
The Oculus Remote doesn't appear to be integral, it just looks like an optional accessory you could use instead of another input means.
One of the reasons I think Oculus went with an onboard DAC is to precisely sync audio, visuals, and head tracking. Using a non-Oculus audio pipeline could introduce unpredictable timing and a worse experience.
That's an interesting thought but I'm not sure that's the case. Everything I've read about VR indicates that latency capturing and interpreting input are the biggest factors in the VR experience. If output latency were a major concern then I'm not sure they'd have chosen standard HDMI to carry the audio/video signals. The DAC on the Rift is simply to take the HDMI audio and output it.
This doesn't include their touch controller, if that's what you mean. If it did I'd consider buying it (I'm still annoyed by 30 dollar shipping costs).
Yeah, that's what I meant. Honestly, for casual experiences, I expect this is going to be very nice. I can imagine sitting away from my desk in my swivel chair, using that controller instead of the gamepad, to do stuff like organize photo collages, watch videos, do teleconferencing, maybe even just meditate.
Personally, I don't mind the lack of touch controllers. I'm more interested in flying spaceships which is going to mean buying separate hardware regardless.
I do wish they'd sell it without the Xbox One controller since I already have 2x wireless 360 controllers. Nothing in the new one sounds particular worth re-buying.
I might be priced out this generation regardless. Ah well.
I'd say you're getting a lot more at a much cheaper price with Occulus Rift than you did with Glass. I think the point is charge more if that's what it takes to create a good experience. Google charged a lot more and the experience was awful. I used it for 1 week and to me Glass seemed like something that was a year or two from being ready for release. The extra expense didn't get you a killer experience.
Glass in mass production was supposed to be a $200 - $299 device from industry estimates at the time. One report claimed it contained $80 in parts. That's a lot of leeway to push itself into the low end of the tech enthusiast market, if Google ever really wants to make it a consumer item.
The Oculus is an amazing and wholly novel experience, the Glass is a completely underwhelming one. I don't think Google could sell many of them, even at a much lower price point.
I wouldn't say it never shipped to consumers. It was available for purchase on the Play Store alongside their other consumer products, and billed as an 'explorer edition'. If it was only intended for devs it should have been available for purchase on the dev site and billed as a developer edition.
In a world where hard core gamers will pay >$500 for a graphics card, this price will work fine for a 1st gen. It'll be a smaller audience at first but that will also help them out as they need to focus on their customer support for issues they find in the wild.
I've seen this idea expressed multiple times in this thread, and wonder how it is that HN users' are so out of touch with the gaming crowd.
Almost all serious PC gamers I've ever known upgrade their graphics cards every 9 - 18months. Very few serious gamers keep a gaming rig untouched for 2 years.
Also the comments about a screen or a graphics card being used for more than gaming. Again, sorry, but most hardcore gamers have a gaming rig for gaming, and will use a phone/tablet/laptop for their more casual usage. They generally dislike cluttering up their primary machine with office productivity apps, etc.
It's a false comparison. It's like someone owning a car for track racing, and saying: "yeah, the seats are expensive, but they will be useful when driving down to the shops to pick up some milk". Absurd. Sure, people might drive their road legal track car to a car show, or a garage, or a parts shop, or their friends, from time to time, but that's part of the hobby experience - not used as a justification for the parts/modification.
It is not a complete platform though; you still need a 1000+$ PC to connect it to.
Furthermore, the PS3 was a known quantity because of its predecessors. You could reasonably assume that you could get hundreds of hours of entertainment for that initial purchase. VR is unproven and the asking price is just too steep for such a gamble (for me anyway).
I think the biggest risk to adoption is real-world interest.
I get that VR is a fun tech, and has some potentially cool possibilities. But to me and seemingly many other people, it's just not that interesting. I don't know why, maybe I'm not geek enough, but I just have zero interest. And frankly it feels kind of like a gimmick. I'm especially averse to the idea of strapping on a clumsy headset every time I want to use it.
In fact, I wish Carmack and Newell would stop messing around with it and go back to producing quality games.
I literally feel sorry for you, not in an unfriendly way, that you haven't seen the right demo yet and can't share the insane excitement that I have for this technology.
This is the FIRST consumer release! This is the Palm Pilot 1 of VR.
Yes most of the content right now is mediocre but there are some mindblowing experiences too.
For instance Elite Dangerous + DK2 + Motion Sim.
It literally feels like you are piloting a craft in outer space.
I have a similar rig and I literally have to fight off the skeptics / marginally interested after they try it.
The "strap on a clumsy" headset part is going to go away quickly. Every sensor in there is being miniaturized by the day. Magic Leap (and others) are using tricks to project imagery directly onto your retina. The form factor will wind up wireless, probably look similar to google glass.
Oculus + 3D audio + input + eventual tactical is going to completely blur the lines of reality in ways we can't yet imagine - gaming, training, social interaction, SEX, therapy, etc, etc - it's all going to be different in 10 years because of VR.
I believe that being a student of VR at this point, which I believe will be the top mechanism to consume content in the future, is akin to being an early iphone dev.
Hear, hear! I have a DK2 and the experience with E:D is stunning. It's got a brutal screen door effect in pixelation, hurts my face after 20 minutes (I need to wear glasses under it), can make you mildly motion sick, and is pretty low resolution. And it's awesome. I can't help but think about how much I loved Privateer when I was a kid, and this is better in every way, times 10. The little stuff like looking at a thing while flying and the interface highlights and tags it with no mouse/keyboard input - the first time that happens it feels like the damn thing is reading your mind. It's merely calculating where you're looking, but it feels unreal.
The actual experience is great despite enormous product flaws. I'm thrilled there's so many options coming down the pipe, as that will make the
And this is why I think we're heading for a revival (at least temporarily) of arcade places: this kind of setup would be a hit there.
For normal gamers?
I'm more skeptic, it's probably too early: not enough software, hardware still need many improvements: grid door effect, where are my hands issue, etc.
>This is the FIRST consumer release! This is the Palm Pilot 1 of VR.
Actually, there were multiple VR technologies released in the 90s and 2000s. This isn't like being on the groundfloor of some new concept, its like a revival of something old. I wish Oculus all the luck in the world, but this technology has failed in the market many times. Yes, maybe more FPS and higher resolutions is what was needed, but I guess we'll see. Some 90's products:
Its funny how there's this "everything old is new again and we all suddenly have amnesia" attitude with VR advocates. They talk about the headsets which are pricey and annoying to use(and no one has solved the motion sickness problem perfectly yet). They talk about the metaverse, yet we've had Second Life for a decade and it didn't revolutionize anything and is largely an online joke.
Whether people think the social and economic cost of strapping a tissue size box to your face is worth it, is worthy of being skeptical about. 3D TV's came at a zero premium over regular TV's not too long ago, and no one wanted to wear those dorky glasses. Many people I know, myself included, avoid the 3D showings at theaters because of how gimmicky it is and how those glasses wash out the colors (not a concern with the Rift).
>It literally feels like you are piloting a craft in outer space.
You have no idea what its like to be in outer space. You're getting this manufactured and fake experience by game devs who also don't know what its like to be in outer space. That's what really bugs me about this platform, how incredibly fake everything is, yet somehow the marketing is all about it being 'real.' I would love a hardnosed simulator with all the tactile feedback and such involved, instead we're just getting Unity3D shovelware with basic 3D tropes like moving starfields and everyone suddenly thinks this is amazing. Its not. Its just a lot of hype from gamers obsessed with fake experiences and general gamer fanboyism, which is almost always unadulterated hype. Remember the Kinect and all the hype behind it? Its now a dead peripheral:
Hell, even the crowd friendly Wii motion controls have been put on the "gimmick" shelf after a, maybe, 2 or 3 year period where everyone was raving it was the future of gaming.
>t's all going to be different in 10 years because of VR.
According to HN/Reddit/Slashdot we'd have jetpacks, space hotels, 500 year lifespans, cancer cures, and robot servants by now. I'd be very careful with the old "just wait 10 years guys, then you'll see my questionable premise was actually right" trope. Ironically, its an antique.
> Actually, there were multiple VR technologies released in the 90s. This isn't like being on the groundfloor of some new concept, its like a revival of something old.
A better comparison might be the first iPhone. There were smartphones before the iPhone, but the iPhone is the one we think of today as being the first REAL smartphone.
I'm really sick of fanboy products always being compared to a iphone. The Kinect was an iphone. The Ouya was an iphone. The Apple Watch was going to be the new iphone. Or other high profile kickstarter turkeys like the mprinter, smarty ring, myIDkey, etc.
Gee, maybe we should stop pretending we can all spot the next iphone from this far out?
In support of your comment, I would point out that gaming has become progressively less interesting for its technical developments over time. The first videogames really were revolutionary, even as they were derided for being crude, inauthentic, or simple transcriptions of games already playable with cards, pen and paper. The improvements from there have made them more accessible and appealing, but the forms and meanings of computer-driven interactivity haven't fundamentally changed - more realistic 3D just isn't as impressive as the first real-time 3D. We already passed the tipping point in terms of cultural impact, and VR is superfluous to that. It'll make its way into the world eventually, but not with the flash and bang that this generation is banking on.
Now, if we were talking about neural interfaces, that would be a more interesting discussion.
I think there's a good argument to be made that the sooner we make this tech boring, the better. I want this stuff to be off-the-shelf, got-it-by-default now. When it's fully proliferated and cheap with loads of Stack Overflow-like answers and tutorials for it (like phone accelerometers and motion capture software), the sooner we'll really start developing and digging into the cool stuff. And get the crufty stuff out of the way.
But I fundamentally disaggree that it's less interesting. I'm going to assume you're just jaded by the awesome we're constantly surrounded by instead of just taking the easy, boring interpretation. Even 2D animation is advancing where you wouldn't expect (I found the technical work giving the artists better control on The Paperman surprising [0]). New rendering philosophies, networking algorithms, AI/bots, social integration, all of this leads to a refinement that's well worth the effort.
It took a long, long time to get from oscilloscopes [1] to the Occulus, and hopefully in a couple generations we'll have even cooler stuff. Expect to see demos and then have to wait a while for the hard, brutal engineering work to make it actually usable [2].
For the Occulus, the real win is getting the feedback loop between a just-good-enough-monitor and the accelerometer down to few enough milliseconds the brain can kinda fall for it. Like a cartoon, but for motion feedback. Expect other companies to say "I can do better" and let the races begin. The Occulus is a big deal, and better stuff is just a little bit away.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that I couldn't have said it better. After a year, I'm really getting tired of having to explain this to such unimaginative people.
Have you tried VR? It sounds like either you haven't, or you did and had a shitty experience - because it wasn't until very recently that VR was even remotely usable. You should give the Oculus a shot when you have a chance. Sure, the headset is annoying to put on. But once you've spent a few hours in a high-quality VR experience, games on a normal monitor just feel clumsy and claustrophobic.
Carmack and Newell are going back to producing quality games. Those two have been in semi-retirement for years now, and VR is the thing that finally got them excited to make things again. Those two have been dreaming about VR gaming since the day multiplayer was added to Doom.
Also, the trolls still haven't figured out how to downvote here. Don't tip them off.
The best bet for Oculus and VR companies, in my opinion, is not to approach the market assuming that VR is going to be everywhere and used for everything in a few years. Sometimes, that's a safe assumption (like with the iPhone), but with a technology that has as many caveats as VR, marketing the product as if it's going to change everyone's life is the best way to torpedo it.
Case in point - Google Glass. I think Glass could have found viability in specific uses, but they marketed as "people are going to wear this everywhere!" and the resulting backlash completely destroyed the concept in the mind of the consumer.
Not everything has to be an overnight success, or requires every person on the planet using it to be successful. HDTV took years and years to gain traction, during which time the technology improved and became cheaper by leaps and bounds.
I think the current Oculus marketing message - "we know it's expensive; the technology is still improving; we don't really know exactly what the killer apps and best uses cases are for VR yet; this is targeted at hobbyists and people who want to push the envelope and set the stage for the next phase of VR" - is right on. They should stick with that and make sure they don't drift into "VR will revolutionize your life and your social network" territory. Let the early adopters figure out what to do with it.
A lot of people felt the same way about Smart phones, until cheaper options with decent features arrived. Now nearly every one agrees with the utility of smart phones, to a point most people would find quite difficult to live without one.
The same will unfold with VR over coming years. Affordable options with great content and applications can make this a common place gadget.
I currently live in a living room, disturbance and lack of privacy are the biggest annoyances. Something like this looks like an ideal way to create a wall of privacy regardless of who is around. The use cases for such a device are uncountable.
I think this is a bit like a "pocket PC" in the early 2000's. It was just a toy for nerds, then they got more and more useful, then they got re-branded as smartphones and made it big.
You're looking at the Palm Pilot of VR. VR, and mixed reality, is going to get more compelling.
I think you're right. I have a DK-1 and I think it's a cool novelty, but in terms of mass market appeal and everyday uses, I don't really see it. You look weird with the thing on your head, it's heavy and fatigues your neck, you still have to use a kb/mouse input device to control anything other than where your avatar is looking, you can't see anything else around you without pulling the HMD away from your face (bigger annoyance than it sounds), and nobody else can see your screen (in fact, when I used the DK-1, I would often clone the output onto the main monitor so my wife could see what I was seeing and vice-versa). It kills the limited real-life social interaction people can have with video gaming now.
3D TV was very similar in that it worked great for one person, but once you got more than that, you had to make sure everyone had their own pair of glasses, everyone was sitting at an appropriate angle, etc. You couldn't just walk in and out and have a casual social TV experience, because for people without the glasses or sitting at the wrong angle, the image is blurry and unwatchable.
I think there is a market for VR, but I don't think it's the mass market. That doesn't mean VR won't eventually get there, but it's not there now.
One of the reasons why it may lack real-world interest is lack of content.
People need to believe in the medium and pioneer content in spite of lack of interest, in hope to generate that interest, or it will remain an unsolved chicken-and-egg problem.
I believe Newell and Carmack do want to make high quality "games" in the sense of interactive experiences, and they see VR as an opportunity for that. What's required is patience and dedicated resources, fuelled by early adopters/aspirers.
That's fair. Seeing an impressive example of the tech put to good use might get me excited about it, something beyond another 3D "walking around" simulator.
Maybe it's one of those technologies that needs a breakthrough moment, or to reach critical mass to where mainstream adoption starts occurring. Because right now it feels very "really? We're trying to make this happen again?" to me.
Actually because of the way your brain and body are linked: a 3D "walking around" simulator, (while sitting stationary) is currently the worst possible VR experience.
The best, is piloting a machine - car, plane, etc. You're in a seat, like your real body is.
You're waiting for the: experiencing a X-Wing in motion while in a dog fight destroying TIE fighters over Jakku, R2-D2 beeping in your ears demo.
If you get the chance try Eve Valkyrie on a DK2. It is one of the closest, currently existing, demos to the one I described above.
Where this is heading is augmentation that shrinks until it's unnoticeable that you're equipped with anything. Virtual and augmented reality merge, and the display components of traditional products disappear. Everything will get a virtual interface.
Gaming will be about as important to mixed reality as gaming is to all of computing today.
It's shaping up to be one of the most revolutionary technologies of our generation.
Agreed. To look at a monitor, only the eyes have to move; with VR goggles, something needs to be attached to your head AND you'd have to move your whole head to see the environment.
Also, is it good to have your eyes focusing on something that close to your face for a long period of time?
>is it good to have your eyes focusing on something that close to your face for a long period of time?
The converse thought about the differences between viewing a VR screen vs a 2D monitor.
VR Screens you have the capability of your eyes needing to adjust to different depths. That is, the muscles that dictate the position of your eyes will need to be recalibrated slightly when you start viewing entities at different depths.
With 2D monitors you're approximately at the same text tracking rate.
There's ergonomic software that will periodically instruct you to look away from your computer screen to focus on points in the distance for the health of your eyes.
The optics involved mean you aren't focusing 2 inches from your face, with the DK2 you're focusing at 1.3m and the DK1 was at infinity (not sure about CV1). So you could argue its better for eye strain.
I bet opinions like yours were prevalent when 3D games first came out. "This 3D thing is nice, but why don't you just concentrate on making a better videogames?".
As also someone old enough to remember that time, lots of SNES and Sega Genesis owners were saying that. And people were getting sick from Doom at far greater rates than they are today from Oculus Rifts.
>>people (inclduing me) will get sick from it is my big concern
Sick doesn't mean cancer or tuberclosis.
I remember from my childhood watching TV was considered bad, because it was thought to be bad fore one's eyes. Ear phones were bad for the ears and reading on the smart phone in a bus makes me motion sick to date.
I mean getting sick, as in having to throw up. A bit like motion sickness, though it is not exactly the same thing.
If enough people can't use it because they get uncomfortable from it, because they puke on the floor, that would be a bad thing. I understand that there is a lot of work being done to prevent that. And still I think it is something to look out for.
I've ran demos on the DK2 where only 1 person out of 200 said they got dizzy. They certainly didn't puke anywhere. This was code running in a web browser. I would say, from the hardware standpoint, the issue is solved. It's up to developers to write software.
"Sick from Doom"?? I don't remember anybody getting sick from Wolfenstein or Doom. Controversy around (for the time) violent graphic realism? Sure. Seasickness? No.
I was one of the developers on the original Doom and got so sick from playing it that it motivated me to debug my code faster. The phases were no problemo, sweating, farting, nausea, then that was it: gotta lie down and hug the cold, firm floor.
I eventually became less sensitive to it. I imagine the same will happen with VR after we get our "VR legs".
Bonus: "VR legs" have been shown to carry over into meatspace. As in, there are VR users reporting "I can read in the car for the first time!" But, it takes a lot of slow, careful build-up to do well.
Conversely, if someone has bad experiences and tries to power-through them anyway repeatedly, it can build up an aversion similar to a "bad tequila night" and ruin VR for that person permanently.
Interesting info that I was not aware of. I guess I was just a casual player, not a developer like yourself doing it all day long (super-kudos btw - you changed the gaming world). All I remember about Wolfenstein and then Doom, is the wonder, the wow. I personally was amazed that this 3d rendering, basic as it was, was even possible, at the time. We were well before any 3d graphics acceleration. This was bog standard frame buffer VGA, or even, for Wolfenstein, CGA? Correct me if I'm wrong. Silicon Graphics workstations were super-exotic!
I suppose VR has a higher hurdle-rate because the nausea thing has been pre-telegraphed by early adopters of suboptimal beta tech. But I have no doubt that immersive technology is the future.
Oh, i did. Not enough to keep me from playing, but when it hit, it hit hard. Hard enough that i still get minor flashbacks even from screenshots. Surprisingly, the first game where i did not have that problem was, of all things, Descent. Must have been something specific about the movement and/or projection.
I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted, but it's true. Hardcore gamers complained about 3D all the time in the early days. They felt 3D games often ran poorly, were more buggy and had less features than the 2D games before them.
Sometimes they were just curmudgeons who don't like change, sometimes they were right on all counts.
Ditto. $600 is well outside of the impulse buy range for me that this would have had to be priced at ($350 would be an automatic buy, $400 I'd consider, $600 no), and I bought a DK1 (though through Oculus, not through Kickstarter) and have a pretty substantial amount of expendable spending money.
It is interesting to me that the first impulse of so many people in this thread is to try to logically justify the price in the face of people saying they won't buy it -- I'm not saying those people are wrong when comparing the price to a high end monitor or graphics cards, it just isn't relevant to whether or not I'm willing to buy this at $600.
My decision not to buy this doesn't mean I don't think the device is worth the money being asked for everyone, nor do I think Oculus/FB is wrong for pricing it thusly, it is just more than I am personally willing to pay for something that is a fairly niche novelty at this point.
At the current asking price it is very easy for me to justify waiting until gen 2 or gen 3 when things are much cheaper and there's even more support out there.
That price includes VAT. According to google 599 USD is 557 EUR. Add VAT to that, e.g. Finnish 24%, and you get 691 EUR. Not that far from the 699 EUR listed price.
You don't add Finnish 24% VAT but the VAT of the country where the EU branch of the company is based - most likely Luxembourg with its 15% VAT rate. (All Amazon deliveries to the Eurozone come from Amazon EU SARL in Luxembourg, for instance).
Which means the fair price would be EUR 640, almost 10% lower.
VAT is based on the buyer's country for digital goods/services [1], and in other cases (such as this) if the sales exceed 100 000 EUR per year. [2][3] In some countries, like Finland, the limit is even lower at 35 000 EUR per year. [4] So if Oculus expects to sell more than 50 copies of the Rift to Finland, it will have to pay the Finnish VAT.
Except you'll also need a killer desktop PC that can run it [1]:
- NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
- Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
- 8GB+ RAM
- Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
- 2x USB 3.0 ports
- Windows 7 SP1 or newer
The Oculus Touch is stated to need 4 USB ports [2], not just two, so better plan for that as well
So in total you are probably looking at close to $2,000 [3] to use the Rift not including whatever games or applications cost - of which there are not yet a lot of titles (I'm sure that will change in short order though).
Kind of like saying to buy a car you need a $300k house with a garage, when in fact many of the people buying a car already have a house with a garage.
That's also not a "killer" desktop. The 290 is a a 2.5 year old card. The GTX 970 is equivalent to a 680 or 780. The 680 came out almost four years ago. If you had no computer at all, you could build that system for ~$700 - $750 ($200 CPU, $100 Mobo, $200 Used GPU, $50 RAM, $75 SSD, $100 Tower+PSU).
But that's immaterial, as most early buyers of the Rift have hardware that meets the requirements above. And four USB ports? A $10-$20 powered USB hub solves that. Wouldn't surprise me if it came with one.
It's "killer" compared to 99% of all personal computers.
~$700 - $750
For casual gamers and the general public it's a non-starter.
Ok, you say, well it's not for them yet. Actually that's the whole point. In every article and everything that people are talking about in and around VR the whole discussion is how it transforms everything. You think Netflix is on-board so they can cater to PC Master Race people?
I'm bullish on VR (moreso AR actually) but lets not pretend that the next few years will see your average consumer using VR like this. More likely, they will be using something like the GearVR, which I think has a much brighter future.
There are quite a few Tesla owners who don't own houses, actually. It's definitely more convenient to have charging in your garage / your apartment's garage. So it's a big consideration, but not an absolute rule.
Sure, and I do think the Tesla analogy is accurate. This is a first-gen device aimed towards early adopters who are willing to pay more. Next generations will be progressively cheaper.
The "n USB ports" is truly weird, considering that separate ports more often than not share controllers, so the bandwidth would be shared anyways (correct me if i'm wrong).
Maybe the number of ports is for power, obviating the need to bundle a region-specific mains adapter? In that case, a powered USB hub would be fine, a passive one wouldn't.
My (older) home PC pretty much hits the minimum (GTX 970 and the 4590 processor, but 16GB RAM). Honestly I couldn't tell you how many USB ports it has, I only use two.
Looks like I'll be holding off consideration until I upgrade :)
a 599 PC is not going to have a GPU strong enough to give you any decent VR, 599 is about the starting point for the GPU only, I would honestly not go with anything less than a 980ti for a minimum of future-proofing, and unless you already have one I would wait for a Pascal card, which in any case will cost at least that much.
in VR dropping frames / latency directly maps to motion sickness, so it's not a case of "eh, I can deal with the framerate not being super solid" like it can be on normal gaming.
This costs less than some flagship cellphones, 599 is definitely not that much all things considered.
> in VR dropping frames / latency directly maps to motion sickness, so it's not a case of "eh, I can deal with the framerate not being super solid" like it can be on normal gaming.
Do you have any articles/papers about this? I'm not doubting you, just curious!
I thought I had heard in the $200-$300 range expected for the final product. I'd jump at the lower end of that range, but there's no way I'm paying $600.
Eh, 24 inches, no *-sync, 144hz refresh, 1080p, 1ms "grey-to-grey", and it's TN not IPS.
More on the high-end is Acer Predator X34: [0]
34" cinema 21:9, g-sync, 100hz refresh, 1440p, and IPS (also full 100% sRGB coverage). This thing retails for ~$1300 and is sold-out almost everywhere.
If we're talking pro-gamers, they probably don't want a 34 21:9 cinema display either. While I haven't tried it, I'm guessing g-sync @ 100hz makes having a insane refresh rate unnecessary. But at $300-400, I'm guessing most progamers will go with the minimum necessary to get their frame rate optimal.
In reflex based games, given two otherwise equal setups with players having equal reflexes, the one who gets the stimulus first due to higher refresh rate will win. The standard 60 Hz means new data is sent every 17ms. With 144 Hz you cut it down to 7ms. With equal reflexes, the player who receives the stimulus 10ms earlier will execute the necessary actions 10ms earlier.
In practice no two players are that equal, but it's still beneficial to accumulate every advantage you can.
If you're not an early adopter enthusiast: it may not be a great idea to purchase this right now. You will probably need a PC upgrade to match your new $675 toy. The new generation of Intel/Nvidia is right around the corner. Don't dig yourself into a hole where you buy current flagship and need to upgrade it 9 months down the road from now for Q4's toy.
> The new generation of Intel/Nvidia is right around the corner.
To be accurate, the next Intel process shrink (Cannonlake@10nm) is delayed to 2H 2017. Kaby Lake@14nm fills in for 2016, and mostly features chipset updates (e.g. native USB 3.1 and more PCIE lanes). Likely no socks to be blown off there.
Nvidia with Pascal will be out ~2H 2016, and is probably worth waiting for. AMD will be out with Arctic Islands as well. Both are process shrinks from 28nm.
If you're looking at buying the next generation, it'll be either existing Intel + new GPU 2H 2016, or Cannonlake w/ likely 2016 GPU in 2017.
Given that CPU isn't a bottleneck in existing graphics applications, 2H 2016 is as good of a time to buy as any. Which also happens to mean missing the hype train and letting real-world reviews of HMDs come in before choosing.
2016 Q3/Q4's new fancy toy may not be a RiftV2 and may have a minimum requirement of a Pascal GPU or Skylake/Broadwell-e CPU. Its just a really horrible time to buy computer hardware right now.
Graphics card question: If I wanted to run my own software on this (ie. I don't care about AAA games), would any old graphics card do, as long as I'm only rendering very simple, low polygon scenes? Or is there something inherent in the high end graphics cards that makes them essential?
With weaker hardware, it may be possible to run very graphically simplistic content like virtual desktop, virtual cinema (for watching movies), and 360 videos, however you will be totally on your own without support if you choose to do this, and it is unlikely that there will be many (or any) games that support lower specs.
If you do wish to take this non-recommended path, your PC must at least meet the absolute minimum requirements:
Video Card: GTX 650 / AMD 7750 desktop GPU or better and newer
USB Ports: 2x USB 3.0 ports
Video Output: free HDMI 1.3 output
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
Sadly, this is what stopped me from considering the Oculus Rift. My expectations were wrong in thinking this would be more of a mass-consumer oriented product instead of targeting VR hobbyists'*
Basically, forcing people to shell out ATLEAST 1600$ to be able to use it (not to mention making them buy a desktop).
Aside: I was always more interested in the potential of Gear VR. Thanks for the info.
Unfortunately this is the way it will be for the immediate future - the combination of high resolution requirements and high refresh rate requirements means that any VR application will have to render a lot more pixels than "typical" games on phones/PCs.
You can for example get away with rendering at 30Hz for a typical game, but that's a recipe for nausea in VR - where you'd want 90-120Hz instead. That's a lot of extra pixels immediately.
Even something as simple as a virtual desktop is going to be pretty performance intensive if only because of how many pixels your hardware has to push around.
There's not really a good way to make a mass-consumer (i.e., low-end PC, mid-end phone) version of this tech yet, and probably not in the near future either since any hardware gains we make (either in mobile or desktop) will be poured into visual fidelity.
You don't need to spend anywhere close to $1600. I just put together http://pcpartpicker.com/p/p8MjmG with only a little consideration for price and it's less than $900 while exceeding the requirements.
It's in between right now. It's not just targeted at 'VR hobbyists', but it IS targeted at tech early adopters/hardcore gamers. Give it a few more years and I'm sure the price will slowly come down.
You're fortunate. Yes, there are some laptops that can do it, but most have NVidia Optimus getting in the way, and it's nearly impossible to tell which ones are okay and which are not just from spec sheets, so I can see why they just say "no laptops".
I used Windows, because the rest of the hackathon team I was on was using Windows. We were using Unity, but we didn't want there to be any problems getting the code to run on multiple OSs. I know that Unity makes it easy to do that, but we didn't want to risk it.
Edit: Also remembered that we used as Kinect, which requires Windows
> The Rift will not run on your laptop, this rule does not change!
IMHO, this is the biggest issue. The computer landscape has shifted towards laptops/mobile and now this device requires a device whose marketshare is shrinking.
Not so much among PC gamers, from what I've seen. And that's really the market that matters. Not many other segments are still buying high power desktops, but they certainly are.
With a Gen1 release, Oculus is trying to build its "core audience" which will be the PC Gamer. Any serious PC gamer will have built their own custom rig to play games. As long as they can nail this audience, they'll be able to grow from there with more "mass consumer" equipment to target lower capability computers.
Yes, it feels like a big mistake. An external box containing the necessary graphics hardware should probably be a part of the Oculus package - it seems to be setting itself up for failure by pretending to be a display, rather than a graphics pipeline.
Assuming that box would add 300$ more to the package price, you would be close to sinking four digits when it turns out that VR is more immersion than you like. In that case, a regular GPU upgrade will happily drive your conventional screens, whereas an Oculus box would likely be dead weight causing or at least cause all kinds of compatibility headaches when repurposed for conventional display use.
Lots of their target market already has suitable video cards, and don't want to pay $400 extra for a downgrade. And what would you plug the box into? I've read that there are specs for external PCIe x16 ports and enclosures but I've literally never seen one.
Apart from the recommended spec, the Rift will require:
*Windows 7 SP1 or newer
*2x USB 3.0 ports
*HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297MHz clock via a direct output architecture
It sounds like being able to pump out 2160×1200 at 90Hz is a fixed requirement, and not all videos cards can even do that based on the connectors available
I'm not an expert -- but I have heard the number 3.5x thrown around, i.e., the basic point is that a VR-rendered scene is 3.5x as computationally expensive as a standard scene.
599... not to mention I have a very high end computer by today's standard but it still needs upgrades. I have one of the better AMD processors but it tells me I need an Intel, which means I will have to buy a new board and rebuild the entire thing, as well as replace the GPU... right.
In the late 1990s-early 2000s a decent gaming PC would cost you between $2500 and $3500, and those numbers represented more money than they do today.
A "very high end computer by today's standard", when it comes to games, would have a GPU that's substantially faster than what Oculus is requiring ... I find their requirement shockingly low and wonder if that is a tactical mistake.
I'm not a gamer, but I still get a kick out of people complaining about how expensive $45 or $50 games are.
Get off my damn lawn, when I was a wee lad, I reserved my copy of Super Mario 3 and was HAPPY to find a store to hold a copy for me on release, of course full retail price of $65. That's $130 in today's dollars!
Not to mention that whole promise that Facebook is going to make it so much easier for them...and they can't even provider proper support for all mainstream chips.
Unlike a lot of people, I don't think $600 is an insane price to pay for a good piece of good VR kit... The insane part is the fact that they don't even list basic technical specs on the marketing site?! Am I missing something obvious? I'm supposed to drop $600 on a piece of hardware that relies on a high-resolution screen to work well, without knowing the screen's resolution? They know they're selling mostly to nerds at first, right?
As I said, I don't see a documentation link with specs anywhere, can you link us to it? Are you talking about this docs site: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation ? Because I don't see any hardware specs on there either. Are you saying I have to run the validation tool (.exe) to get it?
Parent is looking for the technical specs of the rift itself, not the pc specs required to power the rift. As far as I'm aware, those specs are not available.
For all the complaints of $599, consider the prices of graphics cards, gaming monitors, phones, (4K) TVs, and so on. With this price, they are targeting the alpha consumer, who (hopefully) will have a great experience, tell their friends and the world, and prepare the markets for the eventual mass market version that will be in the $200-$400 range. AAA devs were never going to participate in this first gen anyway (there was no way they'd recoup their dev resources, so why would they).
While I think the concern for content is a valid one, I think indies and non-gaming apps will come through with a few breakthrough experiences that will drive the first set of sales, paving the way for the AAAs.
Good to see the Oculus Rift is on its way. Early tech will always have nosebleed prices and growing pains, but after a generation or two we'll be able to experience high-quality VR without getting a headache or our cars repossessed for nonpayment.
And it means we will have decent competition to the Rift, for those who don't want Facebook monitoring our every glance and gesture.
Interesting tweet from Palmer (https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/684772857625231360) on high load and fraud. Always interesting to see large launches not considering load/security on the web app. Out of curiosity, why is www.oculus.com not using a CDN (direct to AWS), and shop.oculus.com not using a CDN with rate control capabilities.
Hope they can tell the difference between "script kiddie fraud" and normal users trying to do the payment again and again using a different machine and a different browser because they site can't handle the load...
I agree, however you can reduce fraud load by rate limiting IPs for a start. I'm not sure if shop.oculus.com uses the same infrastructure as www.oculus.com (I'm assuming not). But if it did, caching www would help as well.
I don't understand why product launches like that aren't done using Shopify or something alike. They're already solving the VR problem, why try to solve e-commerce at scale on top of it.
It isn't blank anymore, but it was nearly impossible to place an order.
I kept getting vague "Something went wrong. Please try again." messages on both the Payment Method and (when I finally got there) the Review and Complete Order pages. Meanwhile, my expected ship date went from March to April. It wouldn't accept my AMEX at all, for some reason.
I stand corrected. I just got a $1 authorization charge placed against my AMEX even though it never once even got to the point of storing my AMEX information as my "Credit Card" in their system.
I guess I should be happy it was only a single authorization charge?
It finally went through although no confirmation email or any trace of the payment on my paypal account (or confirmation email from paypal which is usually immediate). So not sure if it actually went through...
Paypal and credit cards are both declined with "Something went wrong", console shows "Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error)"
Watching my ship date go from March to April and now probably May was a bit disheartening.
The site seems to autocorrect it to MM/YYYY if you enter MM/YY. At least, when it works. Even when I entered the information in manually I got the same vague errors.
I wonder what the purpose of collecting at as MM/YYYY even is given that everyone will have an expiration date of 20YY for a long time; and that when they don't, the ones collected now will be expired so not an issue. Even if they store it locally as 20YY to avoid some bug in 2100 (which would be rather long term thinking at this point), it still makes no sense to collect it that way and to autocorrect. Why not just append the digits on the back end?
Among the giant debate over cost and power, I'm just wondering what would've happened had they waited, say, two years to release. Suddenly, the cost (of both the device and of the desktop PC) go way down. With something like this, a poorly received first launch can torpedo not only the product but the entire VR industry, and when someone's spent over $2k to get it to work their expectations will be very high.
I'm sure that there are very viable reasons to release now, but I still have a feeling that it was more of a "release as soon as it's acceptable" than a "release as soon as we can be sure the launch will go amazingly."
Two years is a lifetime in tech. This isn't a mainline consumer product even though they may market it as such. A few hardcore gamers and VR enthusiasts will buy this, slightly more will get to experience this through a friend who has purchased it. It will churn away and people who can't quite justify shelling out the cash will still be excited by the experience. By the time v2 comes around, the price point will be much more acceptable. I would expect that by v3 it will be mainstream.
I wouldn't be surprised if we saw yearly iterations of the Rift for the first few versions. Ultimately I think this tech has to be paired with a console rather than a PC for widespread adoption.
The Kickstarter was in 2012. They've been putting out developer kits for years and years. There's no sensible way they could just go for another few years without releasing something.
I think the only thing that could really torpedo the VR industry is if the Oculus experience isn't pleasant for the early adopters. If their system requirements are accurate, and they have built a decent piece of hardware, then I don't think initial pricing is a problem for the entire VR industry.
That being said, there are currently not a lot of options between their recommended specs (gtx 970) and the current "top of the line" gfx cards (gtx 980 Ti) If their recommended specs are inadequate to get a good experience, people simply won't have many upgrade options until the next gen GFX cards start coming out (Q2 2016 at the earliest.)
I was surprised to discover that Oculus have dropped support for Linux and OSX, at least for the time being. I'm sure you can still run the headsets, but it seems like a somewhat risky purchase as long as there is no official support.
I'd love to hear about other Linux users' experience with a consumer unit though. I'm really excited about VR and would love to pick up a headset at some point soon.
I hope Oculus start to focus on Linux support again soon!
> I was surprised to discover that Oculus have dropped support for Linux and OSX, at least for the time being.
The graphic driver situation is abysmal for both. With Linux, you might as well not even bother with modern AMD cards. They've done a terrible job the last few years, often eschewing such things as a change log that shows what this random update you're downloading does.
NVIDIA is much better on Linux overall, but even they have got a lot of limitations and quirks. Performance is much better than AMD, as long as you don't use the open source drivers.
On Mac, the drivers are crazy out of date and seem to be very tied to specific Mac OS releases. I don't know whether to be irate with Apple or NVIDIA/AMD. Linux benchmarks better on many games than Mac OS. Phoronix runs these periodically if you wanted to see some numbers.
I've got a 980 GTX running on Ubuntu 14.04.3 and it's pretty good overall. I can play most games at a decent framerate in very high quality @ 2560x1440. It can run Portal at 4K, no problem. The rig I have is pretty new and cost just over £2000 though. I've had less impressive results with lower spec'd hardware. As with all things gaming/hardware related, YMMV.
Yeah, Portal isn't too demanding. I've got similar hardware and even it strains with the more recent higher end titles, whereas Windows runs it beautifully.
Until the driver situation improves a bit, it's going to be hit-or-miss on a per-game basis.
Heh. My last early adopter experience assured that I would get Portal 3 (if it's ever released...). Pretty much anyone using a steam controller with a mac got the Valve Complete Pack, future titles included, as a gift due to buggy support on pre-release.
I'd really like the infinite space for terminals and docs. Maybe turning my head to look over at stackoverflow would suck, but my glasses are thick, so even through the lens vision is blurry at the edges.
I can imagine a goofy hackers style 3d world would be amusing for a while. Even a really pedestrian window manager would be nice. terminals could be very tall, so i could look up to see many commands back. heck, i could float docs where the keyboard is right now.
At the moment the resolution simply isn't there for multiple virtual high resolution displays.
I did some math a while back, and if I wanted the 1080 display I had at work at the same distance from my eyes in virtual space, I would need 5k by 5k pixels per eye.
Add a high refresh rate and that's far higher datarate than we can handle right now. And you'd need display tech that's pretty insane.
While it's not a replacement yet, if you're happy with some oldschool low res displays it's probably fine. Someone should do the math of the resolution you'd get in some examples.
Interesting. i use small fonts just so i can pack more stuff on the screen. doubling the font size seems like i'd need 4x the area, eyeballing my current monitor setup, seems like it'd be a wash. Might be worth trying out just for the novelty though.
The deed is done. I guess I have about 2 months to figure out how to convincingly explain to my wife, just as our baby is born, that it's a business expense and I neeeeeed it.
Might be a small amount of profit in someone finding DK1-backers who have gotten out of VR and don't want a CV1 and buying their free devices off of them.
- Valve/HTC Vive may be considerably better -- wait for solid reviews of consumer units together with the games we're interested in
- AMD & NVidia will have card refreshes in a similar time frame. These refreshes finally move to a new process, from 28nm to 14nm FinFET, so the performance increase should be quite massive. This means that a mid-range video card should be enough.
Pricing and strategy of expensive desktop dependency now looks like a huge mistake. My guess here is that Apple or Google is going to come up with VR enhanced phones + cardboard like cheap device that has experience pretty close to Rift before the end of the year. If that happens, their VR devices would be under $200 which would be just accessories for the new phones. That would be far more acceptable to most people then dedicated beefy PCs that fewer and fewer people want in their houses. So the end result might be that Apple/Google VR product might become first mass produced and mass accepted which defines platform, apps and APIs while Rift might slide in to niche for hardcore gamers who want that extra ounce of oomph. There is Occulus Gear VR type devices that might be able to compete but here key thing is that they will really need to control end-to-end experience and this has to be the strategy from the start instead of future pivot or backup plan.
Yes, but I think experience can be improved dramatically if industrial design teams gets on the mission and if phones can have targeted improvements. For example, iPhone 7 is rumored to have massive increase in resolution which could be boon for VR. Add on to this a dedicated chip for generating stereo graphics that stays offline except during VR session to save power. Phones can also get two cameras to support AR scenarios as well as 3D photo/video recording. The headset can be equipped with eye gaze and depth sensors with easy way to slide phones in and out.
Has anyone with vision issues been able to try out the hardware? I suppose it's more of a software issue, but I'm blind in one eye, and if applications assume you have vision in both eyes, you could end up with usability issues when controls are only displayed on one screen or the other.
You won't have to worry about that. UI on only one eye would be a very bad idea for everyone. I can speculate about someone using it for an intentionally weird and distracting ghost effect or to approximate "impossible colors" like red-and-blue-not-purple. But, otherwise it won't be done.
Also, people with monocular vision have reported that the 3D-ness and presence of VR headsets works just as well as real life. In fact, it's fairly common for people with stereo vision to have a hard time noticing when they are running VR software that intentionally/unintentionally displays in mono.
Interesting to know. I still won't buy one until I can actually try it out, but it sounds like it's better than 3D movies, which I cannot watch without getting a splitting headache (I think it's due to the decreased light levels that come through the glasses).
Totally blind or just legally blind? My left eye can count fingers up to a distance of 2' with peripheral vision and a complete lack of foveal vision. Playing around with the DK2 I still felt the "presence" VR tries to achieve.
I'm legally blind in my left eye due to Toxoplasmosis, most likely passed to me before I was born, and they didn't figure out what was wrong until I was 6. Your description of your vision sounds similar to mine, strangely enough 10 years ago it was even worse, but I still don't have the necessary sight to read with that eye.
This is for sure too expensive for casual gamers. And probably too expensive for serious gamers - at least until there are some serious VR games. By the time that serious VR games arrive, the price of a quality VR headset - with built-in GPU - will probably be around $400.
This will remain a small niche market until mainstream killer apps arrive - and those won't be games. The obvious killer apps are a) immersive major league sports, b) immersive animated movies, c) immersive porn. Then the tech gets cheap enough that useful killer apps will emerge (education, history, etc.)
My biggest fear for VR is that it's going to introduce a much more severe form of console exclusives. I really don't want to drop $600+ on an Oculus Rift only to find out that some other killer game from Valve is going to support VR, but only on the also very expensive Vive.
It's frustrating enough having to own multiple redundant game consoles to play all AAA titles, but it'll be even worse (and basically unaffordable) having to own multiple VR headsets.
That's very likely. Valve is almost certainly going to release a game that takes advantage of the "roomscale" capabilities they helped develop for the Vive. If they make full use of it, the game may be impossible to port to a headset that doesn't allow you to walk around.
It's not really that different from multiple consoles, what did an Xbox360 and a PS3 cost in today's dollars?
Palmer Luckey tweeted that there is no reason why roomscale won't work on the Oculus. He set up two cameras in the corners and said it worked acceptably.
It's been available as a "development version" for almost two years.[1] The price was $1000, and anyone could buy it on Amazon. This is a 40% price cut, which is nice, but not a mainstream price.
Is there a killer app for this yet? The roller coaster simulators are fun for about ten minutes. Second Life now works with the Oculus Rift [3] but few people care.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 is pretty damn good. I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but people are more than happy to put scores of hours on that game. And the VR really improves it.
Well, I liked it at least. It enhances the game in the same way jumping from 16bit to 64bit makes a lot of stuff nicer. It doesn't fix fundamental deficiencies, but it makes the good stuff gooder. Being able to just look at the mirror instead of pressing a key feels way better and is far more natural.
But you gotta give 'em points for mapping the FOV control to the 'seat position' (or something close).
I regretted cancelling my devkit in righteous rage after the facebook sellout, but the somewhat tepid uptake of VR2.0 the last 18 months or so sadly makes it seem like the right decision, if maybe for the wrong reasons.
I kinda hoped that the other vendors would have had something remarkable by now.
Amusing that they went for $599. The PS3 was launched at $599 during a much-ridiculed E3 keynote and the price tag was ultimately looked back on as a huge strategic error.
The Oculus is a different kettle of fish, of course. But $599 seems almost like a deliberate reference.
Will wait to see how all the major players compare Oculus, HTC/Steam, PS4's VR and let's not forget some interesting alternatives like http://castar.com/.
So many people talking about how its 'too expensive'. Obviously expense is subjective, but if you ask me, purchasing THE premium product of THE emerging market, means you can expect a high price.
Correct, even the GPUs used in the top end Mac Pro fall short of the minimum requirement. Both GPUs rendering an eye each would be fast enough but that configuration isn't widely supported by games yet.
Apples and oranges. Oculus is a different experience, not a different gaming platform. If PS4 or XBone could offer an Oculus-like experience then your point would absolutely make sense, but they cannot.
The closest comparable console is the Virtual Boy from 1995.
This is a l10n problem. This happened to me when I was set to Spanish (Latin America) and Russian, but it's correct with English. Some xenophobe must have stripped out the commas...
Well I really wanted this to be a huge, consumer hit that turns VR on to the masses, but like many the price is simply not going to make that possible.
I think it's unwise to target 'hardcore gaming pc users' who will drop 600 on a new video card enough to not bat an eye at this price. In that context it might be a hit, but that's hardly going to forward VR into the mass market as was the original hope of this device, at least for me.
Like other have also touched on, Sony seems to be in a better position now. They are a consumer product company and have learned the hard way of the perils of a roughly 600 dollar gaming device and how that works out in actual sales (the original PS3 was 599 at launch at got pummeled by Xbox360).
This would all be a moot point if there were that one true killer VR app that made us all want a Rift but it doesn't exist right now either from what I can tell. This again plays into Sony's hands as they can sit and wait for that one product to emerge and maybe have already grabbed it (they seem to be holding the reins now on No Man's Sky, which could very well be the VR killer app we are all waiting for).
Time will tell but I'm disappointed. VR for the masses will have to wait a bit longer.
VR thethered to a Windows PC was never going to be for the masses. It's an awkward form factor. Mobile VR is the thing that will achieve wide adoption. Look for standalone VR devices under $500 in the five year timeframe. That's when we'll start to see hundreds of millions of users.
The price and hefty GPU requirements make this a no go for me.
I think PSVR, which is already rumoured to be cheaper will be far more successful, and the install base for the PS4 is already there.
Sony are in a unique position to use the PSVR as a loss leader to sell VR software, which Oculus can't (currently) compete with - hence the high price.
$600 is a bit more than people expected, but it doesn't seem "unreasonable" for a high-end consumer product. When Apple's first computer (the Apple II) came out, the launch price was ~$5,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. The TRS-80 was the "cheap" computer, and it cost ~$2,300.
Yep. Third person games like Metal Gear and Grand Theft Auto just need a rewrite to he camera system and the UI and they should be good to go. Racing sims should be easy ports. FPS's are dead in the water.
I for one is super excited that the Rift consumer version is finally released!
I experIenced a lot of overload issues: "Something went wrong. Please try again." in red when I try to pay. I solved it by just keeping on trying. Issue was oveload, not my credit cards. See followup too.
Ok, I finally got my order through. (If anybody had the same issue: Don't think I did anything differently than before though so it's probably just some part of Oculus' payment system that is under dimensioned...)
I'm very interested but will wait until the reviews are out and to see what their long term business model is. Video game consoles don't really make that much money but rather the software does so I want to know what their plans are.
I thought Samsung has been doing a pretty decent job of integrating VR into their smartphones. Will there be a substantial improvement to the VR experiences using Oculus?
Just comparing my DK2 to stuff like GearVR (or Cardboard at the low end) it really does make a difference. Without the smoothest of framerates or positional tracking, it really limits the useful applications of VR. It's OK for watching a movie on a virtual giant screen or some more limited experiences but for a real sense of immersion, you really need some level of positional tracking.
When I got the DK2 I spent way more time grinning that I could stand up and look around behind my flight chair and around my cockpit in Elite Dangerous than I'd like to admit. Just having a 3d "surround" image to look around is cool but positional tracking makes you feel like you're really "there".
$399 should be an all-in-one price anyway. Not going to be mainstream till 2017-18 even but we'll see some nice kiosks and promotional booths in businesses.
It's probably also helpful that most PC games that were ported from console support DirectInput/XInput. Getting the PC users set up with controllers will make it easier to pitch developers on porting from console VR (Sony) -> PC VR.
It seems like you can't take that out of the bundle if you have one yourself, possibly a modified version? Otherwise that seems like a major disappointment for those already own an xbox controller, and force them to pay additional $$.
Palmer said that they get the controllers for next to nothing (remember the deal they made with Microsoft?). If you don't want it you can sell it and come out ahead of where you would be if they had never included it.
I've tried both the Oculus and the HTC Vive in their latest dev kits, and the Vive is incredibly more awesome. My advice is to wait for the Vive. In addition to the way better technical experience I had, I think the HTC/Valve mashup is incredible (and it showed in the demo).
If you're a 3D artist or programmer you'll probably find uses for it soon enough. Either making 3D art in it (something I've already done at a simple level, and will do more of once more tools are compatible) or making VR applications for other people.
Same here. I like to play around in Cinema4D and I've started to learn the basics of UE with my DK2. Even just making neat environments to walk around in is a load of fun and the applications will reach far beyond video games as the tech matures.
Still gonna hold off on this and thankfully I can still do stuff with the DK2 until future runtimes stop supporting it in newer applications. I'm mostly just looking forward to watching the whole platform (VR in general) evolve past the initial "make Fallout/Minecraft/CoD in VR" phase and get into more immersive movies, VR telepresence, and new ways to communicate and create stuff.
True, but pro athletes have already had other proprietary technology for the past year. Oculus might not even be the best solution currently for athletic performance. A cool read on Stanford Football's use of Virtual Reality in practice settings [0]
VR is the real thing. You still throw the football. You just get to see exactly what you did, and how it compares with the throws before and after. And you can get things like realtime audio feedback while you move to give you information about where your body is relative to where you're trying to train to. The possibilities are infinite.
Stop with "Virtual Reality" hype. People feel dizzy after trying this out. You will see how this hype will decline after the product launch. We see hype because big companies bet on this product and now want to get their millions back...
I have the dev kit from the first Kickstarter (and will get this one apparently for free because of it); never felt dizzy at all nor anything else negative besides getting sweaty in my face after a while of playing. It might be a hype and it might decline but not because 'people feel dizzy' in general.
Different VR devices are different. The GearVR for example has no positional tracking, which can make people very sick. Oculus has been focused almost entirely on fixing nausea issues one by one for the last 4 years. In addition game design choices have a huge effect. Games will be rated on a scale of how nauseating they can be. The most accessible experiences will be no more nauseating than sitting at the bus stop.
