I was able to get a demo of the Crescent Bay prototype (hand-built tech demo of the consumer version) at PAX East this year. I've also tried the DK1 and DK2.
If you've been playing with the DK1 or DK2, the consumer version is fundamentally better. Do not assume you know what the state of the art is until you've gotten your hands on a preview. I don't know exactly what the resolution differences are, and I don't care - it's not the relevant spec to compare. It's gotten to the point where resolution is "good enough" to trick the mind and anyone who says otherwise is bikeshedding. They've gotten the screen door effect under control. With head tracking implemented and drift solved as a side effect, two huge problems are gone. Their low-latency head tracking stops people from feeling nauseated like they did with DK1. I could barely stand without wanting to vomit after playing the Doom demo. The only game I could play for any length of time was a simple platform jumping game called Rift Rush.
I don't know what they consider their largest hurdles, but from my perspective the hardware/software problems are solved for now and they need excellent made-for-VR content. When done well, the effect is stunning - in one of that calmer, more exploration-oriented demos I just stared at the light glinting off a metal bowl as I moved around it for at least 30 seconds.
But the difference between "good" and "mind blowing" was often the result of things that nobody has thought about before. In the movie-like demos, sometimes I missed things because I had my back to the action. In VR movies, the user controls the camera and needs to be told where to look; that's a problem nobody making movies has ever faced before. Even Pixar's demo suffered from this - the action was too spread out for the screen's field of view.
I never got to use Crescent Bay, but I've got a DK2 at home. Resolution for me will be a non-issue once I can read smallish text on virtual signs/displays. I'm thinking mostly for games like Elite Dangerous and other simulators like that, where a cockpit display is part of the game. Do you think the crescent bay prototype is at that point? (this might be a naive question as it's been awhile since I've looked up anything on the newest prototypes)
Otherwise I'm with you. Positional tracking was the thing that really made it awesome for me. There are so many tiny head movements that you make when you're looking around; if positional tracking isn't pretty much 100%, then it just feels wrong.
I agree about the smaller text but at the same time, it's been more of an issue for me when the content wasn't created primarily with DK2-class hardware as the target. Elite is great and I feel like Frontier owes Oculus money because myself and just about everyone I know who got a DK2 also ended up buying Elite but it's still primarily designed for a monitor.
If you're targeting a game or other application for VR (and assuming generally similar hardware to DK2 or whatever), there are a lot of design decisions you can make to improve the experience. Something as simple as using larger text goes a long way. Color choices help, as does less focus on lists and menus in favor of gaze-based control.
Then there's the general stuff like "not trying to shoehorn that awesome first-person-shooter style that was so great on 2D screens into VR". Yeah, it's neat to look around in a FPS-style game but whereas seated or less frenetic experiences are gorgeous and immersive, asking someone to run around in first person while actually sitting in a chair is nauseating. I've seen all the omni-treadmills and other workarounds and I appreciate the way people are trying to engineer solutions but I feel like it misses the point. Some things just work well in VR while other things require a lot of tradeoffs or addons.
I think Minecraft is a good accidental example of what you're talking about, especially on the DK2.
It's natural pixel style makes you not notice the resolution at all, and all of the text is large, and easy to read. The cube nature also really makes me aware of the 3D, which is nice.
It doesn't do anything to deal with the FPS/nausea problem, though I don't react very poorly to playing an FPS in the rift as long as it uses a keyhole style control with the mouse (half-life 2 is a prime example of that).
One other thing I like about minecraft on the rift is that it really shows off the true blacks you can get with the OLED display. It smears a bit, but it's still really rad to look into a mine shaft and have it fade to actual darkness (not sure if the consumer version is planning for OLED off hand).
I definitely agree that it'll be cool when game shops start really thinking about building their games for VR, and that they can work around VR weaknesses.
Weird scaling is another issue, when something was scaled to look right from 2D on a screen, but drops the ball in VR. I played Skyrim using Vireo and the mountains ended up looking like glorified hills, heh.
Another funny issue I had was playing Alien Isolation. VR made it super obvious that looking out through a spaceship window into "space" was actually looking at a black wall about twenty ft away.
Elite Dangerous could do a bit to make their text easier to read even on the DK2 - I think they expect players to rely on other visual signals and so they shrink their text too much.
That said, I think Crescent Bay would help to solve the problem.
Changing the colours (have to manually edit some config files) in elite dangerous made the text easier to read. green text on black background is a lot easier to read then red on black (black being the space in the background for the most part)
It's more related to the chromatic aberration, where the correction is not perfect (esp when not correctly configured) and using only one color avoid the issue. Of course the best choice is green, in resolution and brightness.
Crescent Bay was, for me, a revelation. I don't know if I'm a born again true believer now, but I will say that a lot of skepticism washed away with that demo. It really was a very startling this-is-no-gimmick-anymore kind of moment for me personally.
As I said in my other comment, I'm really surprised by this. When I tried a DK2 and a CB back to back, I couldn't tell a difference (and not in a good way, they were both extremely screendoor-y and pixel-y) other than the headphones.
As an owner of a DK2, I still haven't really had that moment. I'm really hoping that they're able to consistently deliver that kind of experience with the CV1.
> I don't know what they consider their largest hurdle
It seems like there are still plenty of challenges to solve with VR devices. John Carmack recently spoke [1] at the University of Texas at Dallas and mentioned that designing for VR is all about tradeoffs--hardware just isn't powerful enough to reach the ideal combination of resolution, framerate, etc.
He also talked about how to design media to work well with the current generation of VR devices. For example he said to avoid accelerating the user, because this commonly causes users to feel sick (due to mismatch between what your eyes and inner ear are telling your brain). Moving at a constant velocity is fine.
I'm really surprised by your comments about Crescent Bay. I used a DK2 and a Crescent Bay back to back, and literally could not tell the difference aside from the headphones. Both were horribly screen-doory-y and pixel-y.
I own a DK2 and have demoed Crescent Bay several times this year and have a hard time believing this. Which demos were screen door-y to you on the CB? i.e. which specific scenes... please be specific.
The problem with the Oculus is not the display, it's the controls. What are they going to use in order to take care of user input in the virtual world ? At least Valve has a clear answer for that.
i found the screen resolution to be a disappointment in DK2. Otherwise it was fine, nausea is still there, but i guess we 'll never be able to get rid of it.
Argh, the title of the post has the exact same amount of info as the article does. I was hoping for details on the changes to the hardware different from the current dev kit.
Or more importantly, I was hoping to read why I should still care when Valve's offering is planned to come out this year and is supposedly the bee's knees.
Thankfully, Valve has HTC building the things instead of trying to figure out manufacturing by themselves. Maybe that's enough to get them off Valve Time.
Why? They actually said some time ago that they simply didn't have a full story for it and didn't want to push towards anything unless it was what they wanted. I'm not sure they would really care about pushing HL 3 with anything specifically.
They've also said they've been waiting for technology that is palpable to what they did with the havok engine and source graphics in hl2 days. This seems to line up pretty perfectly, and I highly doubt they will just abandon the series at this point.
> I highly doubt they will just abandon the series at this point.
Yeah I don't think they would abandon the series but the way valve works it seems to me they never really cared about pairing it up unless it's something they have to do (like source). Meaning it wouldn't be any type of forced pairing.
I am curious how much of the change to allowing "standing experiences" was technical, and how much was legal. In previous Oculus demos, they would give standing demos yet all official interviews said that the Rift is a "seated experience." My guess was that they were always constrained by not only a limited tracking volume but also the potential for litigation if someone sues them for tripping and falling.
The fact that the Vive very openly was advertising a stand-and-walk-around experience may have helped convince Oculus that the risk of litigation was outweighed by the need to not be giving a sense of inferior hardware.
From their talks and interviews, I've gathered that both John Carmack and Palmer Luckey have always been in favor of standing experiences.
But...the early investor of Oculus is also the CEO, and he apparently has the weakest stomach for VR of anyone at the company. The hard line seems to have been set entirely by him.
Doom and Quake both made many people nauseous. So do rollercoasters, 3D movies, and Telsa Roadsters. There's no reason to eliminate experiences that most people can thoroughly enjoy. Fortunately, the fun camp seems to have won finally.
That was exactly my takeaway from it. Even just the fact that it caters for standing experiences is a fairly big announcement on its own. Especially considering how exhaustively they stressed the fact that the Oculus Rift was a seated experience previously.
One other takeway from this release, is that we will _probably_ be expecting technical specifications and details come E3. At least, it's alluded to.
The SteamVR page seays they will be releasing a developer's edition this spring. Is it supposed to be more or less the same as the consumer version? I'd figure it shouldn't be since they can use the feedback from the developer community, but I haven't heard anything about it.
"A developer edition is set to launch this spring, with the consumer version becoming available "later in 2015", which we guess means the same November release window as the other Steam kit."
I would like to know what kind of computer and graphics card I need to make this thing work. Yeah, a cheaper VR headset pricepoint is nice, but not if you're just unloading all the expensive components onto the buyer via a $1200+ PC purchase. Not to mention, as someone who suffers with motion sickness with traditional games, how will the Oculus work for me? Have they solved this riddle? Will they ever?
This is also why I see Sony having great success with its Morpheus headset. The PS4 is cheap as-is ($399) and if you already own one, its a no-brainer to go with their product. I'd be really surprised if Oculus ever goes mainstream. It still looks like an uber-nerds hobbyist toy like a, say, 3D printer, which technophiles have been telling us for years would be mainstream by now and in "every kitchen."
Carmack isn't stupid. He didn't sell to Zuck because he thought he'd be moving 10's of millions of product every year. He sold to Zuck because he knew that the shipping date doesn't really change things for Oculus. Its still a very rough road to mainstream acceptance and economic competitiveness. I can afford $299 for the headset, but I'm not interested in buying a super gaming box to make it work. Nor am I interested in being a beta tester for a technology known to be a bit wonky, cause motion sickness, have questionable 3rd party support, and Facebook ownership/integration/driver and API's TOS.
This is what on top of what Valve is doing, which may just steal Carmack's thunder as they have everything they need to make this work: the store, no relationship with unrelated businesses like social networking, large customer base, community goodwill, game publisher relationships, a decade plus in the game selling world, etc. If both the Valve set and the Oculus set go for $299, I can't think of any reason to even consider the Oculus.
You'll need a "gaming rig". That's the simplest way I can put it. Don't buy an "ultrabook" or an "all in one" or some $500 laptop to use Oculus. Whether it's a PC (cheaper) or a notebook, it needs to be gaming-focused one.
In terms of specs I'd buy a GPU with at least a 3TF performance, and even that it's probably going to be "mediocre" for the next 2 years. 2TF should work, too, but might not last you too long, especially for new games. Obviously, the higher the performance the better, so if you can afford to pay thousands of dollars for a gaming rig knock yourself out. It will last longer.
You might also want to keep some accessories in mind, such as the Virtualix Omni or those full body controllers, which could cost you an extra thousand dollars.
I'd be interested to know how simple you can make the graphics and still have a good experience. Isn't there an inherent problem with VR that if you try to compete with state of the art non-VR graphics, you're always going to need a more powerful machine for VR than you need for non-VR (e.g. larger field of view, two screens, higher FPS)? The problem will only increase as the headset Field of View increases.
Very simple graphics with flawless 75fps+ and very little lag is highly preferable to dropping frames in a complex scene. In fact Minecraft is a case in point - it works great in VR!
Everyone I know has a gaming rig of some type, but not anything that can do 1080p per eye at 60fps per eye, which is where this stuff actually starts to work correctly and what Oculus is designed to use (less motion sickness, better 3D illusion, etc).
I don't think a lot of people interested in this technology realize how much hardware they will need to buy to make this work. You're looking, at minimum, a $400-500 graphic card. Assuming you have the CPU heft to handle everything else. If not then there's another $400-500 for the chasis, mb, high-end cpu, high-watt ps, fast 8-16gb of RAM, etc. And that's for a fairly mid to low-end VR box. That could be $1000 out of pocket right there on top of whatever the Oculus costs.
Well, it depends entirely on your fidelity of course.
For example, just last night I played a game of Supreme Commander. That was one of the first games I know of that supported dual monitors, and it does it well. But I digress- the point is that I had it maxed out on two 1080p monitors and it was running at 60fps the whole time.
So yes, you will need a big beefy expensive graphics card to play the newest AAA games maxed out at 60fps. But you could always just turn the settings down, or play older games. I'm also willing to bet that when the VR market takes off later this year/early next year, that the indie scene will heartily embrace it. And typically most of those games run fine on "normal" hardware.
If you're not happy with first generation then don't buy it. I guarantee that the second and third generation will be even better. Some guy whining on HN about a first generation product adds zero value. That first generation iPhone had lots of critics too, and rightly so.
Bottom line is that a real VR product ships in less than 12 months.
I had to turn down numerous sliders, including the Oculus Quality slider which made screen door pronounced, but I was able to play Elite at 70fps (you want 70 on the DK2) on a Retina iMac bootcamped into Windows. It tore or jerked occasionally, like in Lave, but it's not nearly as demanding as you say. Minecrift did even better.
My experience was very smooth and playable for hours. On a Mac. With laptop graphics. I'd definitely build a machine around a 980 next, but the tech is perfectly accessible.
If you're getting shitty graphics, turning everything off or lowering to low levels, low framerates, and screen door effect and jerking, etc uh I would rethink what it means to have an acceptable VR experience.
If anything your sub-par experience is proof that I'm correct. Without excellent hardware, the experience is terrible. Just because "it kinda worked" doesn't mean its going to sell or impress anyone.
You were arguing a barrier to entry, not quality. My point was there's not a wall in front of this stuff as you say. You moved the goalposts to "acceptable VR experience," which is a different topic and largely subjective.
I also never said the experience was terrible or "kinda worked." Quite the opposite, in fact, I rather enjoyed it even at a lower quality because I understand the limitations of things. Outside of Lave I stayed right at 70fps and could turn my head from left to right without even a millisecond of delay. It was actually the most fun I've ever had in PC gaming. But you're right, because I didn't have everything turned up to maximum, I should rethink my enjoyment.
Yep! I bought all the stuff you said, but skimped slightly on the CPU/motherboard (2 years old) and I'm having a terrible experience. A universe of judder :-( I'm ready to sell the whole thing.
In theory, with DX12 timed for a 2015 release it could ease the burden enough to make the PC upgrade easier. From what I've gathered DX12 will be significant in terms of efficiency, so new games which support it may be viable.
It's also worth considering whether new games that come out will take VR into account in terms of graphical complexity. If it's clear VR is a viable marketing strat for a game or it gets to a point where big games are expected to support it, it could mean a developer will compromise scene complexity for it. I'm okay with that.
That's fine. One thing that I am certain of: today's $500 video card is next year's $250 video card and the next year's default upgrade from on-motherboard.
I agree overall but at the same time, it really depends on what you already have. Sure, if you own a $400 PS4 and whatever other items you typically buy with a game console, another $300-400 for a HMD is an easier sell.
But I don't have a PS4. What I do have is a solid, modern computer since I need one for all sorts of work and play situations. I can either spend $400-500 on a PS4 and any typical addons or I can spend $400-500 on a powerful graphics card for my computer. And with graphics cards, performance goes up and price comes down every year.
The other angle I'd need to consider is what you can do with the whole package (computer + Rift or PS4 + Morpheus). Morpheus will work on the PS4 and I'll be able to buy PS4 content to use with the Morpheus. The Rift will work on any capable computer and I can either buy games/content from Steam or from other sellers or I can go to Oculus Share and download all sorts of experiments and demos and games from all sorts of developers. I can even fire up the free version of UE and start building environments to walk around in via the Rift immediately. The power to create and share content shouldn't be underrated, especially at this early stage.
I think that in 5-10 years time, if this hasn't gone the way of 3D TV (something cool and easy to find but ultimately not that big a deal), the costs will be low enough and content will be abundant enough that it won't matter whether you use a black box under the TV or a silver box under your desk. But during this early time in the market, access to demos and creative tools will be a big deal.
When someone develops a VR teleconferencing app with depth cameras and live streaming, the betas and first release won't be on some Sony or Microsoft game console. They'll be on Windows, OSX, and Linux. When you want to use a sweet HOTAS for your VR flight simulator or enable VR support in the config of some new game, you won't be able to do that on a Playstation or Xbox.
All that stuff is more than enough to get me to lean toward a $500 GPU upgrade over a $400 console purchase. I think until VR stuff isn't early adopter/enthusiast territory by definition, the more packaged solutions will be lacking. Once it's commonplace, it'll be more a question of ergonomics like PC/console gaming is now.
He had a huge amount of buy-in/ownership when he was brought on board and certainly had some level of executive decision making. I doubt he just gets a 1099 for $market_wage and goes home. He's swimming in stock and other perks. You don't hire him to sit locked in an office all day and not have say in your organization.
His is the CTO. That is not a coder monkey position, yes he probably codes and supervises a lot but he's C-level and that means executive decision making.
It's mind blowing how fast we've got to realistic virtual reality with Oculus Rift and graphic techinques like global illumination (e.g., see "Unreal Paris" demo: https://youtu.be/Y6PQ19BEE24) and inevitably forthcoming real-time raytracing.
Same. Apple has shown time and time again that nothing good comes from rushing into a new market with a half baked product. You will win the fight but lose the war. Hopefully they are smart enough to ship it with a polished SDK, App Store and some good content.
from my experience with the dk2 i felt their biggest issues were:
hard plastic frame,
eye tracking,
blood circulation
the hard plastic frame limits the variability of the distance between two pupils. Pupillary distance is ~62mm for women and ~64mm for men(i). With obvious variance even within the sexes. Just hardcoding a distance is a limitation that requires the brain to work harder to massage the inconsistencies causing added strain. ( the images appear to show lenses that are now even unable to be removed, one potential solution i saw was the possibility of buying lens kits for offsetting the lens to your specific pupillary distance )
the lack of eye tracking really disrupts the experience. Look around the place you are in right now, but keep your eyes straight only moving your neck as you move from object to object. The movements are awkward and feel like a retrofuture automaton. Now look around casually and notice how often you utilise the movement of the eyeball. ( unable to tell at this moment if there is any extra hardware in the mask )
as for the blood circulation if i wore the dk2 for more than 20m and took it off to look in the mirror the area around my eyes was white for want of blood and highlighted by the red marks where the mask was pressed against my face. ( the images show the same face pressing frame )
i had many more issues with the dk2, but these three seemed to me to be confirmation proofs that the direction digital stereoscopy is going in is innately flawed
a constructive alternative would be digital stereoscopy that uses eye tracking to measure pupillary distance and the pupils' direction vector in order to create a scene ad hoc, or virtual reality through direct sensory manipulation
Everybody talks about VR in terms of games but I wonder if it might be possible to create a productive desktop using a VR helmet. Surely it would be easy to emulate having N monitors but I bet you could do better.
In a similar vein, I can't wait until the world of music creation software appears in VR. Imagine a virtual studio in which expensive vintage hardware is emulated along side imaginative new instruments. Control mechanisms like step sequencers could be expanded to fill the space around you.
Audio synthesis itself, with it's raw waveforms and various modulations, filters and distortions could be brought to life in space around the users. Imagine being able to surround yourself with the signal path. To examine the shape of a sound in 3D space and track it's progression from, for example, a raw sine wave into a layered deep bass line.
Considering how much audio professionals already spend for high quality production environments and the IOS's popularization of unique, small team created software synths... I can't wait.
This is an amazing startup idea (virtual reality music studio). I think the success of Tiltbrush proves that VR has a lot of potential for interesting new creative applications.
There's currently a Virtual Desktop for Windows and it's pretty damn cool. Not quite ready to sell it for $60 or whatnot but it puts your desktop on a virtual curved display in front of you and gives the option of some nice backgrounds (starfields and stuff like that).
The only real issue is that until you've got some sort of passthrough, even a good touch-typist will find themselves peeking out under the HMD every so often. It's really best for messing with programs that are more GUI/mouse driven.
I mostly just use it as an easy way to watch 3D movies in the Rift but it's got potential.
And on the topic of games vs. everything else, I really do think that while games will be the initial focus, they won't be the final say. I'm more looking forward to VR "movies" where you feel like you're in the room with the action or VR telepresence where a few webcam-sized depth cameras are set up around the room at each end so a live, 3d reconstruction of an environment can be sent over networks and allow you to visit other locations or have "VR Skype" calls. That stuff will appeal to a much more general audience than the games which are the logical first avenue to explore.
There is potential to re-imagine programming, but I have no clue how.
Also, keyboard input is not very compatible with HMD. I guess brain interfaces are the most promising, but why can't we just tap into my pinky's nerve and train my brain to use that as output?
This is what excites me. 360deg desktops with depth perception. This will disrupt quite a few areas least of which would be multiple monitor setups.
An interesting implementation would be virtually working from a beach or sitting on top of a colorado 14er. Just have a table fan sending randomized breeze your way. :)
HoloLens is a better candidate for that. If I'm going to seriously work in a virtual space all around me I rather it be an "open" (AR vs VR) environment.
Honestly, I'm really excited about all these headsets. But I can only afford to buy 1 (day care) To me Vive seems more immersive from a gaming point of view, and hololens seems more practical. I bought a DK1 a few years ago, and developed a few things for it, but it wasn't super compelling for me (yet).
I spend more time in my basement woodworking these days then gaming. So i'll probably buy a hololens, I want to design furniture in 3D while seeing how it will look in the spot that it will eventually "live". I know AR != VR, but if I can only have one, i'll choose AR.
Here's hoping they fix the issue for those of us with wide heads. I've spent a fair amount of time tinkering with my DK2 to get a good experience with my wide IPD of 73mm. I bought some 3D printed lens holders that widen the lenses, and they helped quite a bit. Without them, my view was blurry in one eye which caused a fair amount of discomfort.
I'm wholly onboard for the headset, the DK2 is a fantastic experience (barring the experience of setting it up and launching applications, which is totally fixable.) Can't wait to see the consumer edition.
Recently I finally got to try VR— the Samsung Gear VR.
I was a bit disappointed (my expectations were ridiculously high going into it though). I was surprised to find (1) the resolution to be quite pixelated and (2) visible black strips of the hardware bordering my viewport.
After usage, both the resolution and the visible hardware were not issues. They "melted" away and I was "immersed".
But I'm curious: is the Rift expected to be higher quality than Gear in this regard?
Yeah the Samsung Gear VR was like a mobile consumer version of the DK2. The Rift (CV1) will be a definite improvement over the Samsung Gear VR in terms of tracking, audio, and resolution (resolution hasn't been released yet but it is assumed).
In my opinion, they've taken a bit too long, and now they have a high likelihood of being dethroned between now and their release date (e.g., Magic Leap, Holo Lens, Gear VR, etc.).
Have any of those companies announced a release date for any of their products though? As far as I am aware, the rift is still (or will be) the first consumer accessible VR product.
Technically, the Gear VR has been available to consumers for months and months already, though since it lacks head-tracking and desktop-quality graphics it's not quite the same thing. In addition, being what Samsung calls an "innovator edition", it has not been fully marketed to consumers at large (e.g., on buses and billboards).
However, John Carmack hinted in a recent keynote on mobile VR[1] that the next version of Gear VR would be promoted widely for all consumers and that it would come out along with the next major Samsung phone release, presumably the Note 5. The Note phones get updated every September.
how far away will tactile simulation gloves come into market?
imagine gripping in-game items, being able to control them as you would with real objects. squeeze to fill the glove pressing back, feel cold/warmth, feel textiles.
Combined with increasingly photorealistic games + VR...we are at the mouth of uncanny valley...it's going to be a very interesting decade.
Maybe we live in a future where people completely abandon their real world life in favor of a virtual one while the appratus in the real world just keeps you alive, very much like Matrix...
I would quite honestly pay for N64-grade graphics if delivered with head tracking and ultra-low latency. I strongly believe that as in literature, most of the immersion experience is in the mind. Oculus technology (+3D sound) really helps to get the computer out of the way of the story.
Agreed. Wonder what they'll suggest? Prob one with tons of fast memory. I read that most devs are using the new Nvidia 980s because the latency is less.
The latency issue is now entirely solved in the DK2 so that's now a non-issue. I had it working on a 7950 even. The 980s and the Titan allow for real-time down sampling to eliminate all judder and help with the SDE.
A $550 video card on top of the price of the device itself? If that is the case, I'm going to have to wait for a device to come out like Hololens that can stand on its own.
As someone mentioned earlier, today's $550 video card is tomorrow's $250 video card. Either way, there's gonna be some expense if you want to be an early adopter. This will be easiest to swing for people who already have a decent desktop computer (recent-ish i5 or better, 8GB RAM or better). Then you either buy a $500 GPU and a HMD or you buy a $400 PS4 and a Morpheus. Lots more early content and tools will be available for Win/Lin/OSX but if you already own a PS4 it will be a lot less additional expense.
Then again, if you already have a decent GPU you can still do quite a bit. When I got my DK2 it ran many things just fine on an older GPU. I only upgraded to a GTX980 because I hadn't splurged on anything in a while and it helped a lot with un-optimized, demanding programs like Elite: Dangerous. I could have kept using my existing card if I just wanted to mess with less demanding content or make stuff in UE4.
If you are a gamer, you should already have that to play current gen games at max settings. I'm on $1000 worth of GPU right now for 4k, and the 4k screen itself was about $500.
Don't make it sound like Oculus is more expensive than what gamer already have to pay to get the best experience.
Lots of people game without playing everything on max. The difference here is that the oculus WON'T work with the max setup. Most other games work just fine. I play lots of games on my iMac I use for work, but it obviously can't run the oculus. I'd have to buy another 1500-2000 machine just for it, and that is tough to swallow.
You're not wrong re: best experience, but your $1000 of GPU + $500 screen puts you in like the top 1% of gamers. Most ppl are gaming on cheap rigs, laptops, etc. It's possible that FB/Oculus are trying to make something that will only appeal to the big spending "prestige-rig" gamer set, but I'd think that they would be trying to make a product that will be compelling to a bigger audience.
Why upgrade now? 10 months is a long time in the world of graphics cards. At least wait a month or two to see if the new AMD cards like the 380 are any good -- even if they aren't nVidia may reduce prices to compete.
For what? VR experiences differ as much as any graphical simulation in terms of needed performance. Thats why the GearVR is a thing next to the Oculus Rift.
Pick any Mid-Range Card and upgrade once you hit a roadblock, that will keep your expenses reasonable while not excluding you from experiences if you deem them necessary.
The current development kit prototype is just 1920×1080, which is split horizontally into 960x1080 per eye. So it's really not "two high def screens". Hopefully they will be able to improve this further before shipping the consumer version.
The new PASCAL Nvidia cards will be out and so will the new Intel chips will be releasing this August (with potentially a progression to 7nm next year).
Good question, I say... I have the DK2 and I don't have the nvidia card in my macbook. It runs... ok, but is really an issue with heavier games/demos. Dropping frames with VR is a huge problem if you get dizzy at all - it makes it a lot worse.
Sure, but you have several things working against you. Integrated graphics aren't gonna be great for even non-VR applications if they're graphically demanding. And you're running 1) a laptop, and 2) a Macbook so you've got something that is much more geared toward lower power usage and (in the case of most Apple notebooks) thinness and lightness so those power tradeoffs may be more pronounced.
Honestly, I'm impressed you've been able to do a whole lot with it at all. I've got a fairly decent laptop (i7, 16GB RAM, and a mediocre nVidia 760m GPU) and it's still been underwhelming when I hooked the Rift up to it.
Desktop will be much more power for the buck this early in the game. Portable will catch up but you sacrifice some bang for the buck when you get something more optimized for portability and battery life.
Nobody knows what the final specs are yet, look at the resolution and the refresh rate when they release that info and pick a card that can reach that frame rate in your favorite game. I'm hoping for 120hz!
They currently have a Linux SDK on developer.oculus.com, so looks like Linux support now, for the hardware they've already shipped. Third-party games are a different matter, but that's less inside their control.
For the OSX and Windows versions, the SDK package actually includes both development tools (headers, etc) and the runtime; the only reason to offer a package which leaves out the development stuff, is to make the download smaller, which seems unimportant.
You can get a sense of where the Linux support currently stands by looking at share.oculus.com, where third-party developers can submit their games and demos, and you can filter the list by which operating systems they support.
It would obviously be an upscaled resolution in games. 4k is for the screen door effect.
4k is necessary for readable text, ability to watch HD movies and using virtual monitors. Currently the resolution is too low for any of these, as in it works but not good enough for being practical.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I read that the screen door effect were even less visible in the Sony Morpheus prototype, even though it had less resolution than the Crescent Bay prototype.
I think the general consensus is that it helps, but also other ticks help like the diamond shaped pixels in the HTC Vive.
Current resolution still not works well with viewing virtual screens e.g. movies, virtual desktops and text.
I think this is much more important as it increases practicality of the device.
Forget graphics card support, HDMI 2.0 cannot even support 4K at higher than 60FPS. Considering how important pushing higher frame rates is to reducing latency, that seems like a nonstarter.
GPUs will continue improving. For now, upscaling would still be very good, especially for screen door effect. Though, I have a gtx980 that is just fine pushing incredible frame rates at 4k.
If the Note 5 has a 4k screen, it might. However, I have a feeling Oculus will want to use something that's heavily tested instead (unfortunatley because 4k would be great, going by this: http://vr.mkeblx.net/oculus-sim/ )
If you've been playing with the DK1 or DK2, the consumer version is fundamentally better. Do not assume you know what the state of the art is until you've gotten your hands on a preview. I don't know exactly what the resolution differences are, and I don't care - it's not the relevant spec to compare. It's gotten to the point where resolution is "good enough" to trick the mind and anyone who says otherwise is bikeshedding. They've gotten the screen door effect under control. With head tracking implemented and drift solved as a side effect, two huge problems are gone. Their low-latency head tracking stops people from feeling nauseated like they did with DK1. I could barely stand without wanting to vomit after playing the Doom demo. The only game I could play for any length of time was a simple platform jumping game called Rift Rush.
I don't know what they consider their largest hurdles, but from my perspective the hardware/software problems are solved for now and they need excellent made-for-VR content. When done well, the effect is stunning - in one of that calmer, more exploration-oriented demos I just stared at the light glinting off a metal bowl as I moved around it for at least 30 seconds.
But the difference between "good" and "mind blowing" was often the result of things that nobody has thought about before. In the movie-like demos, sometimes I missed things because I had my back to the action. In VR movies, the user controls the camera and needs to be told where to look; that's a problem nobody making movies has ever faced before. Even Pixar's demo suffered from this - the action was too spread out for the screen's field of view.