Haha. 
So I'm going to spew some drunk thoughts...
Firstly, as sim racers, I don't think this is too much to worry about. Oculus has already produced a perfectly functional VR headset for vehicle based games/sims. All we really needed was head tracking in 6 DOF and they gave that to us, plus a resolution increase with the DK2. Soon, if not already, VR headsets are going to be the gold standard for sim racing. With more time and refinement, I imagine VR headsets will be as common as wheel and pedals are for us. This will be Oculus' first big pay day and Facebook would be retarded to screw with that. It may be the only pay day for a while.
Reading Zuckerberg's speech on the acquisition of Oculus, one thing becomes clear. Facebook is going to try to vastly expand the market for VR headsets. He talks about expanding into sporting events and conference calls (the two examples I will latch onto and drunkenly attack from here on) and basically every other form of communication possible. For better or for worse, this is many years away.
First of all, we haven't even developed the technology to yet. I have no doubt that we could produce a 360 degree view of a basketball game from a courtside seat, but has anyone even considered developing that until a few days ago? Probably not. Similarly, what do you visualize on a Oculus conference call? A bunch of people sitting in a board room? That will require either cheap avatars or expensive cameras to record every person's movement to transmit to everyone else. Right now, the tech isn't there. While the Rift is already good to go for gamers, it has very little use for anything Zuckerberg described.
The second issue is immersion. Gamers strive for immersion, other people do not. I often turn on the news just to semi-distract myself while I try to do my homework. I don't want to be completely immersed in the news, I just want to tune in for the 1-2 stories I care about and tune out for the rest. VR headsets aren't worth it when you want to interact with the outside world.
That brings us back to Zuckerberg's examples, how the hell am I suppose to take a conference call or watch a sporting event on a VR headset while I'm trying to do even the simplest of tasks? During the conference call, I'm probably going to have some paper in front of me that I need to look at. While watching a sporting event with my bro, I'm probably going to need to be able to find where I put my beer. There's no way to do either of these things without breaking the immersion of the VR headset.
The simplest way to break immersion is to simply take the headset off. Easy enough for grabbing your beer, but not something you would want to do when you could miss valuable business information. That means we have a second option (which I pulled out of my ass in 30 seconds) in a secondary display. For looking at something outside of your headset, the solution is as simple as dedicating a portion of your display to a camera displaying what is physically in front of you. What about if, say, you're watching a football game and you get a text message? Wouldn't it be convenient if you didn't have to take the headset off to answer it. This is where Facebook comes in.
I imagine on of the first things we shall see on the 'Facebook' VR headsets is the ability to link up with your smart phone. What if you could keep watching the game while receiving an email or text message? A small icon pops up in the bottom of the screen and you indicate that you want to respond to by tapping your phone. From there on, part of your VR display is dedicated to what is appearing on your phone, showing you what keys you are hitting and what message you are sending. Before you know it, you have a while message sent without ever completely turning away from the game. Pretty convenient and probably the future of VR.
Firstly, as sim racers, I don't think this is too much to worry about. Oculus has already produced a perfectly functional VR headset for vehicle based games/sims. All we really needed was head tracking in 6 DOF and they gave that to us, plus a resolution increase with the DK2. Soon, if not already, VR headsets are going to be the gold standard for sim racing. With more time and refinement, I imagine VR headsets will be as common as wheel and pedals are for us. This will be Oculus' first big pay day and Facebook would be retarded to screw with that. It may be the only pay day for a while.
Reading Zuckerberg's speech on the acquisition of Oculus, one thing becomes clear. Facebook is going to try to vastly expand the market for VR headsets. He talks about expanding into sporting events and conference calls (the two examples I will latch onto and drunkenly attack from here on) and basically every other form of communication possible. For better or for worse, this is many years away.
First of all, we haven't even developed the technology to yet. I have no doubt that we could produce a 360 degree view of a basketball game from a courtside seat, but has anyone even considered developing that until a few days ago? Probably not. Similarly, what do you visualize on a Oculus conference call? A bunch of people sitting in a board room? That will require either cheap avatars or expensive cameras to record every person's movement to transmit to everyone else. Right now, the tech isn't there. While the Rift is already good to go for gamers, it has very little use for anything Zuckerberg described.
The second issue is immersion. Gamers strive for immersion, other people do not. I often turn on the news just to semi-distract myself while I try to do my homework. I don't want to be completely immersed in the news, I just want to tune in for the 1-2 stories I care about and tune out for the rest. VR headsets aren't worth it when you want to interact with the outside world.
That brings us back to Zuckerberg's examples, how the hell am I suppose to take a conference call or watch a sporting event on a VR headset while I'm trying to do even the simplest of tasks? During the conference call, I'm probably going to have some paper in front of me that I need to look at. While watching a sporting event with my bro, I'm probably going to need to be able to find where I put my beer. There's no way to do either of these things without breaking the immersion of the VR headset.
The simplest way to break immersion is to simply take the headset off. Easy enough for grabbing your beer, but not something you would want to do when you could miss valuable business information. That means we have a second option (which I pulled out of my ass in 30 seconds) in a secondary display. For looking at something outside of your headset, the solution is as simple as dedicating a portion of your display to a camera displaying what is physically in front of you. What about if, say, you're watching a football game and you get a text message? Wouldn't it be convenient if you didn't have to take the headset off to answer it. This is where Facebook comes in.
I imagine on of the first things we shall see on the 'Facebook' VR headsets is the ability to link up with your smart phone. What if you could keep watching the game while receiving an email or text message? A small icon pops up in the bottom of the screen and you indicate that you want to respond to by tapping your phone. From there on, part of your VR display is dedicated to what is appearing on your phone, showing you what keys you are hitting and what message you are sending. Before you know it, you have a while message sent without ever completely turning away from the game. Pretty convenient and probably the future of VR.
You can't see your box of tissues when you have a VR headset on either. Terrible if you get a runny nose.
Yes, and what if your pet snake starts to cry and you have to wipe the tears from it's little eye?
How can you be sure it isn't on getting on the keyboard?Agree.
To some people headsets seem unsually but they probally have no problem if their desk has a steering wheel. To others that looks unusual too.
Think you overestimate sim racing and underestimate facebook.
Sim people are a very very small group.
Example:
The first version of Rift was shipped: 75.000 times.
Seems a lot but to facebook that is peanuts.
So the final Rift version will surely be bought by more people?
Well, how many?
Total no. LFS accounts according to lfsword: 1357214
Lets asume those accounts are all active and every single driver buys one Rift.
Just for fun lets also take this number and multiply it by five to also include some other sims:
6786070 Rift buyers.
Say they make $200 profit on each sold device.
6786070 Rift buyers * $200 = $1357214000 potential profit.
So basically I inflated the numbers in every possible way.
$1357214000 is still only 1/10 of the $19000000000 that facebook paid to buy the WhatsApp messenger thing.
Again, numbers were hugely inflated in Rift's favor.
This shows sim people are such small group, selling hardware to them is just not interessting to facebook.
THAT is why the deal sucks so much.
Remember why the Oculus Rift looks like well, crap design wise?
Because they only cared about the technology and weight - not about fancy design. It looks nothing like VR headsets were usually imagined:
Compare above image with the bulky thing that is the Rift.
If they want to reach a really broad audience (not just hardcore gamers/sim people) they will want to come up with some more nifty design.
Because if something looks "too techy" it scares off people, it is done all the time.
Sometimes it is overdone, like with that Ouya game console from kickstarter that nobody knows anymore.
They spent too much effort on a very small stylish designed case:
instead of just concentrating on the tech.
.....and then it overheated all the time, the controllers broke apart and it is practically a dead project.
(never owned an ouya myself, just what i understood from following it)
Bit crude example and maybe not so comperable, but if they now mess up the Rift for whatever reason, that is imo the danger...
For real.
Some good discussion here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWtfHiQx50U#t=39m12s
Optimistic, but cautious is my current stance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWtfHiQx50U#t=39m12s
Optimistic, but cautious is my current stance.
I just remembered something. isn't it almost april 1st?
I guess it's technically before noon on April 1st.
1. That's not a VR headset, Jordi LaForge is blind and that stimulates his optic nerves directly.
2. The Rift won't get any smaller without losing the FOV, one of its greatest strengths. You have to fit the screen somewhere in there.
Gutholtz, it's obviously not a big payday by Facebook standards, but I still think they would want to start getting some real income through the door, if only to show shareholders that VR is already commercially practical for a some basic uses.
Hopefully they let the Rift continue as it is, a practical VR headset for gaming, and spawn a separate (yet inevitably related) model to try and take down whatever it is that Facebook wants to do.
Hopefully they let the Rift continue as it is, a practical VR headset for gaming, and spawn a separate (yet inevitably related) model to try and take down whatever it is that Facebook wants to do.
To be fair, look at what Facebook has purchased in the last year. Whatsapp and Instagram. Are either of those dramatically different services post-purchase?
Seems like Facebook will try to keep their hands off of what is currently in development. They might take some of the engineering to develop more specialized or differently marketed devices, but they seem to be alright at not skinning the companies they buy.
Then again, those apps have a massive established userbase, Oculus Rift does not. If FB suddenly started changing a proven concept like Instragram by filling it with forced ads and other bullcrap, people would begin abandoning it very quickly, with the Rift they can do whatever they like as there isn't even a consumer model out yet, although I don't think they will... atleast not yet.
The good thing is, by the time the Oculus Facepalmer Riftbook CV1 is out, the competitors will propably have something significant about to ship aswell. What I fear is Oculus now getting a monopoly with the backing that FB can give them, leaving other viable competitors in the dust for years to come.
We'll see, we'll see.
Edit: How DK2 image looks through the lenses, not as bad as I was expecting due to pentile, but a long way to go to get rid of the screen door.
The good thing is, by the time the Oculus Facepalmer Riftbook CV1 is out, the competitors will propably have something significant about to ship aswell. What I fear is Oculus now getting a monopoly with the backing that FB can give them, leaving other viable competitors in the dust for years to come.
We'll see, we'll see.
Edit: How DK2 image looks through the lenses, not as bad as I was expecting due to pentile, but a long way to go to get rid of the screen door.
Michael Abrash leaves Valve and joins OVR, only Joe Ludwig to go and the perfect VR development team is together.
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/i ... h-oculus-chief-scientist/
Very good presentation by him
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/i ... h-oculus-chief-scientist/
Very good presentation by him
On one side it is lame to act based on prejudice. I will wait for the final package to decide whether it is worth it or not. There are a lot of possible good outcome to this. Bad ones too.
On the other side, the community's reaction is pretty useful. Oculus and Facebook knows what most of us don't want now.
On the other side, the community's reaction is pretty useful. Oculus and Facebook knows what most of us don't want now.
I haven't tried oculus myself but I think there is some need for caution here. Virtual headsets still do have some problems that are very hard to solve even with truck loads of money. And when it comes to virtual reality headsets and systems there are alternative ways to do it. I'm not sure if oculus is the best solution. To me it seems oculus is the kind of solution that is for certain group of enthusiasts.
So what are the alternatives? Well there is the wearable tech approach like google glasses. That is going to be the mainstream approach in some form. That is probably closer to facebook's current ecosystem than oculus which atm. has absolutely 0 usability for any social based software. By usability I mean anything you can do with facebook and oculus now.
Then there is the middle ground between oculus and google glasses. CastAR. Something that takes what is around you and then adds the virtual reality to it. Instead of putting a tv right in front of your face and hiding everything else it puts you into the middle of it. Best of both worlds.
CastAR is by far the most interesting of these techs for me because it is essentially the holodeck tech from startrek. Oculus is just tv attached to your face and google glasses is a small tv.
As far as oculus goes I would be surprised if they would only come out with single product in the end. They have to cater for gamers because without gamer specific product they will instantly kill oculus. Current facebook users imho aren't early adopters and any virtual reality based systems still need to be downloaded to your computer. In other words oculus needs a fast graphics card and that will limits is usefulness. Other option is to watch videos in oculus and what's the point in that?
But even if oculus seems to me like a niche product in the end what do I know. People buy tons of tablets. I would have never guessed that becomes popular. I always thought tablets is a stupid gimmick product. A bad notebook. But there are are almost as many tablets sold as notebooks. How the hell did that happen?
Anyways one of the biggest roadblocks for any virtual reality product is money and pr. Facebook can spend as much as it wants. Even when you put the 2 billion dollar number into perspective the valve's (valve=steam) total worth for example is somewhere between 2 and 3 billion. Valve could never compete with facebook when it comes to throwing money at you. When we are talking this huge numbers there are only handful of businesses that could buy oculus. Maybe facebook was the only one that was interested? What did they get for that 2 billion? Not a whole lot imho. Mostly what facebook got was the name and brand of oculus. And couple of years of development and testing. The tech itself is old. VR headsets is not a new thing.
So what are the alternatives? Well there is the wearable tech approach like google glasses. That is going to be the mainstream approach in some form. That is probably closer to facebook's current ecosystem than oculus which atm. has absolutely 0 usability for any social based software. By usability I mean anything you can do with facebook and oculus now.
Then there is the middle ground between oculus and google glasses. CastAR. Something that takes what is around you and then adds the virtual reality to it. Instead of putting a tv right in front of your face and hiding everything else it puts you into the middle of it. Best of both worlds.
CastAR is by far the most interesting of these techs for me because it is essentially the holodeck tech from startrek. Oculus is just tv attached to your face and google glasses is a small tv.
As far as oculus goes I would be surprised if they would only come out with single product in the end. They have to cater for gamers because without gamer specific product they will instantly kill oculus. Current facebook users imho aren't early adopters and any virtual reality based systems still need to be downloaded to your computer. In other words oculus needs a fast graphics card and that will limits is usefulness. Other option is to watch videos in oculus and what's the point in that?
But even if oculus seems to me like a niche product in the end what do I know. People buy tons of tablets. I would have never guessed that becomes popular. I always thought tablets is a stupid gimmick product. A bad notebook. But there are are almost as many tablets sold as notebooks. How the hell did that happen?
Anyways one of the biggest roadblocks for any virtual reality product is money and pr. Facebook can spend as much as it wants. Even when you put the 2 billion dollar number into perspective the valve's (valve=steam) total worth for example is somewhere between 2 and 3 billion. Valve could never compete with facebook when it comes to throwing money at you. When we are talking this huge numbers there are only handful of businesses that could buy oculus. Maybe facebook was the only one that was interested? What did they get for that 2 billion? Not a whole lot imho. Mostly what facebook got was the name and brand of oculus. And couple of years of development and testing. The tech itself is old. VR headsets is not a new thing.
The thing is, you *must* have used the Oculus Rift to truly understand and realize what they're about and why it's going to be such a huge shift in how we use computers. It's far more than "just a screen on your face".
There is in fact nothing else quite like it, once you get in to the virtual perception so your body actually thinks it's in a completely different place, it's an incredible feeling that makes you crave for more. I just wish we were 10 years further ahead in technology after using the DK1.
Google glasses aren't an alternative at all as they do not even compare. They're AR, not VR. Augmented reality and virtual reality are completely different ends of a spectrum.
Social + VR is going to be HUGE, and I think this is what Facebook are going to aim for after the actual VR products are polished enough for mainstream use. Taking a trip with friends to amazing locations on the planet (or even outside our planet) or just simply watching a movie in a virtual theater with mates... it's going to rock. Even the current cinema VR demo is fantastic.
There is in fact nothing else quite like it, once you get in to the virtual perception so your body actually thinks it's in a completely different place, it's an incredible feeling that makes you crave for more. I just wish we were 10 years further ahead in technology after using the DK1.
Google glasses aren't an alternative at all as they do not even compare. They're AR, not VR. Augmented reality and virtual reality are completely different ends of a spectrum.
Social + VR is going to be HUGE, and I think this is what Facebook are going to aim for after the actual VR products are polished enough for mainstream use. Taking a trip with friends to amazing locations on the planet (or even outside our planet) or just simply watching a movie in a virtual theater with mates... it's going to rock. Even the current cinema VR demo is fantastic.
I think there is going to be a brawl between AR and VR. To me it seems like VR is more of an enthusiast product. Something that does less but does it a lot better. Like a desktop computer while AR is more of laptop or tablet. Or mobile phone with a camera vs good single purpose digital camera.
AR can also develop into cheap mobile product relatively easily whereas VR like oculus type headsets are more of a product that you use it when you intend to get a VR experience. Movie theaters are obvious example where you will use VR instead of AR. In regards to AR you can have it anywhere and anytime you want.
Where is the killer solution for oculus? I don't know. I don't think it exists yet. But the same thing is of course true for AR but it is a lot easier to imagine all kinds of things you can do with AR because as a tech it is closer to what we can already do now whereas the things you want to do with VR are a lot more specific and focused... what's the word... With AR you can do alot more things but with VR you can do less things better.
AR can also develop into cheap mobile product relatively easily whereas VR like oculus type headsets are more of a product that you use it when you intend to get a VR experience. Movie theaters are obvious example where you will use VR instead of AR. In regards to AR you can have it anywhere and anytime you want.
Where is the killer solution for oculus? I don't know. I don't think it exists yet. But the same thing is of course true for AR but it is a lot easier to imagine all kinds of things you can do with AR because as a tech it is closer to what we can already do now whereas the things you want to do with VR are a lot more specific and focused... what's the word... With AR you can do alot more things but with VR you can do less things better.
Sorry for bumping this thread with something a little off the main subject of the thread, but I didn't want to create a new one just for one question...
Does anybody know if the next versions, or the final version of the oculus rift will require, or be compatible with kinect to help tracking?
I plan to buy oculus rift in the future (when it get 1280x1440 or more for each eye) but since it can take some time to happen, I would like to start using something to do headtracking, and if kinect will be required/optional, I could buy it now to headtrack, and still use it when I receive my oculus rift...
Does anybody know if the next versions, or the final version of the oculus rift will require, or be compatible with kinect to help tracking?
I plan to buy oculus rift in the future (when it get 1280x1440 or more for each eye) but since it can take some time to happen, I would like to start using something to do headtracking, and if kinect will be required/optional, I could buy it now to headtrack, and still use it when I receive my oculus rift...
It will never require it. As JC says, Kinect is a buttonless mouse with lag from hell, so don't expect it to be a great experience for VR which depends on having as little lag as possible on all aspects.
Oculus has it's own IR tracking camera/sensor system.
Oculas-rift goodbye, thanks for the possibilities.
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