Still waiting for wireless. The new wi-fi standards should provide sufficient speed, now they just need to figure out how to make the batteries light and long-lasting. I have heard rumors already of next-gen devices being wireless. If VR is ever going to take off, they will need to ditch those wires.
I'd avoid TPCast and similar products that repackage existing AV transceiver pairs (TPCast for example are using SiBeam's 2015-era WHD modules). Latency is critical for VR, and any latency added in the video link is latency that cannot be compensated for by timewarp/spacewarp late-sampling techniques. Every millisecond you add in link latency is a millisecond you remove from your render budget in order to stay within the 20ms motion-photons loop latency, and you're already starting from 11-14ms (SteamVR) to ~17ms (OVR) of CPU + GPU render budget in the first place. Add 5ms of link latency, and you need to drop to between 2/3 and 1/2 your scene complexity.
the larger issue than bandwidth is latency. There are plenty of wireless video streaming technologies that could work for this now from a bandwidth perspective, but they have a .5-1 sec latency... which is no good. But that said, I imagine some of the new 60ghz standards like 802.11ad should be able to cut that down dramatically... not sure if it would be enough, but it should help bring a more 'wire-like' expierence.
But then there is also the other end of the equation in that the wire also provides power. Headsets are already too heavy for extended use... the idea of adding battery weight to that equation is not to be taken 'lightly'.
VR will be great and wide-spread... just not at $500. The use-case for VR is just too limited. A flat screen is good for movies, work, games, work, and more work, but VR is mostly good for games... and even then only specific games. AR is also good for a wider variety of stuff, but still limited compared to a normal display.
Still, I think we are going to see 2nd and 3rd gen products that are dramatically lighter, smaller, and cheaper to manufacture, and when they hit the $300 price point we will start seeing mass adoption (and games to match!). Should be good, but even cell phones didnt take off in a year or two. This is going to be a 5-10 year transition... and even then it will be to augment experiences, rather than replacing a traditional display.
Just remember 3D Vision...although it was fun, it is over now and this is what will happen to VR for gaming. As long as only less than 10% of gamers use it, there is no biz reason for software developers to fully implement it in their games. Best 3D Vision game back then was Avator in terms of how it was thought for 3D from the very beginning. Still have not seen anything to compared to that. And 3D Vision was easy to use, wireless and light.
For current applications it is good for gaming and movies.
For future applications it will be good for educational purposes , social networking, visualizations...
AR is useless for everything at this point, and I fail to see anything it can do that either would be usefull or VR won't do it better. I never understood they hype around it.
As for the prce point. Agreed. We're finally nearing the natual price of a beta product that current VR is. Occulus Rift had it right, $300 ... and then lost it, killing the chance of VR in this decade.
By next decade it would be everywhere indeed ... the tech it is too premature, low quality for the time being...
AR and VR are two completely different things. You can't use VR to supplement a real world environment. VR is for immersion, AR is for augmenting the real world the hint is in the name. I don't think they have much overlap outside of the underlying tech.
In terms of actual uses beyond entertainment VR would be better for educational stuff yes, but AR has many uses to improve how people interact with the physical world, one potential use is warehousing for product tracking, though the feasibility is questionable if automated warehousing becomes ubiquitous.
VR is a new technology with evolving hardware and, more importantly, vastly different design constraints than what people have been designing for over the past 20 years. It will take content creators years to figure out how to effectively use the technology. Suppose you decide to make a VR game. You spend a couple years designing and coding the game, then you release it and get feedback on it and consider it. Now you have some idea of what works and doesn't work. Plus you have feedback from other people's attempts. So you go back to try again. That's one iteration. In the meantime the hardware may have changed, allowing different possibilities.
I think it'll catch on, but not overnight. It's the usual situation. It looks like it took over 15 years for television to supplant radio as the largest broadcast entertainment medium. VR is different enough from traditional gaming that it's an appropriate comparison.
Not regretting my $399 Rift purchase. Better controllers and pretty good built in headphones. I'm really disliking the sensors though. They're a pain in the ass to get calibrated.
You'll only start getting issues once you have extremely large (beyond 5mx5m) tracking volumes. Within that, performance is functionally identical (limited by IMU performance) but both have tradeoffs: Constellation links to the host PC rather than the nearest power outlet, but both have wire-tethered sensors/emitters. You can use up to 4 Constellation cameras to increase occlusion robustness, while Lighthouse is limited to two (the new sync-less basestations can do more, but are incompatible with existing Vives and controllers/pucks in that mode). Constellation is vulnerable to overall scene nIR brightness (i.e. no massive open windows or outdoor use in daytime) while Lighthouse is vulnerable to any reflective surface (window, mirror, TV, polished floor) that needs to be covered.
Controllers are better and I'll give a very slight nod to the Rift headset for visual. COmfort, Rift wins hands down. Tracking is just fine with two, Three is better but only if you have a larger room that requires it. Set up is easier on the Vive. Roomscale is easy. Less tweaking. Either way, no choice is bad. Both are at good prices. Just got to decide which is better for you.
For me, the problem isn't price. It's giving a care about the games that are VR. 800...600...400...200... it doesn't matter because nothing in VR is worth playing yet. Nothing has to be played in VR like when games went from SD -> HD or 2D -> 3D.
Elite: Dangerous, DCS World, IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad... you may not NEED a VR HMD to play any of those, but cockpit simming on a flat screen sucks by comparison, even with TrackIR to negate the head-tracking advantage. It's the difference between looking at a photo of a cockpit and actually being in it, with depth.
So, no, don't tell me there aren't AAA games out for VR already, because they're right there if you just know where to look.
Also, try playing something like GORN or Robo Recall without VR. You can't, and vaguely similar games like Die By The Sword and Trespasser from back in the '90s felt a hell of a lot kludgier by comparison without modern hand-tracked motion controllers.
Honestly, I'd say I got my money's worth, and that was BEFORE the Rift got its massive price drops. Yeah, I'm a bit miffed about that, but such is life when I couldn't wait for something I've been waiting for since the '90s and the days of Virtuality, the Forte VFX1 and so forth. It's still cheaper than an extended outing at an arcade!
New Rift package is Rift + Touch + 2x cameras in a single box, omitting the handheld remote and XB1 controller. Older package was Rift + camera + remote + controller, and Touch was a separate box with Touch + camera.
For me the problem is ventilation. Each time I've tried these things for more than a couple of minutes, my glasses have steamed up and I couldn't see properly.
Haven't tried a Vive, but my Rift is a real facesweat machine after playing something like SUPERHOT VR, GORN or The Thrill of the Fight for a few minutes. At least the lenses seem more resistant to fogging up than the Note 4 Gear VR.
It makes me want to devise some kind of modified facial interface with a fan to keep things cool, even if it looks kludgy as hell.
Problem is, ventilation runs counter to blocking out ambient light, so it might reduce immersion.
Let’s trust that this price reduction will not awaken “HTC Purse Strings” to the fact that Mesmerism, aka The Charge of The Enlightened Brigade, has no bounds of pricing or fashion other than perhaps A Necessity of Survival. HTC realises this, of course. Eons before said price cut, the result of some joker testing his saliva-ed finger in the air.
So, the question being asked by others is, Why and Now too? And why not Sammy and that Infamous Mesmeriser, Appflings. Perhaps LG ought to follow suit – but not when yore other halves are busy minting eet. Of course. LG and their multi-segmented offerings of the G6. Shorely a joke gone too far. But not when Mesmerism is at The Helm. Yous wanna a G6? Wait for Failure’s Expectations & Demands. Just like this incarnation of HTC’s Mesmerisc Efforts.
Humans have not changed from being 2-eyed to one for countless couplings – unless “The 3rd Eye” is your favourite eye. After all, when you see some cycloptic ambling yore way, you had better, “Git Outta Way”! So too will “Virtual Zist, Zat und zer Other”. Unless price Reduction has its way. Be aware, then, that Temptation is the best form of Persuasion, yet, for Dem Mesmerised.
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fanofanand - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
Still waiting for wireless. The new wi-fi standards should provide sufficient speed, now they just need to figure out how to make the batteries light and long-lasting. I have heard rumors already of next-gen devices being wireless. If VR is ever going to take off, they will need to ditch those wires.vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
There is a product called TPCast that converts the Vive to wireless. Reviews are very good and it actually just got FCC approval[1] so expect it soon.1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/6s87vb/tp...
edzieba - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
I'd avoid TPCast and similar products that repackage existing AV transceiver pairs (TPCast for example are using SiBeam's 2015-era WHD modules). Latency is critical for VR, and any latency added in the video link is latency that cannot be compensated for by timewarp/spacewarp late-sampling techniques. Every millisecond you add in link latency is a millisecond you remove from your render budget in order to stay within the 20ms motion-photons loop latency, and you're already starting from 11-14ms (SteamVR) to ~17ms (OVR) of CPU + GPU render budget in the first place. Add 5ms of link latency, and you need to drop to between 2/3 and 1/2 your scene complexity.CaedenV - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
the larger issue than bandwidth is latency. There are plenty of wireless video streaming technologies that could work for this now from a bandwidth perspective, but they have a .5-1 sec latency... which is no good.But that said, I imagine some of the new 60ghz standards like 802.11ad should be able to cut that down dramatically... not sure if it would be enough, but it should help bring a more 'wire-like' expierence.
But then there is also the other end of the equation in that the wire also provides power. Headsets are already too heavy for extended use... the idea of adding battery weight to that equation is not to be taken 'lightly'.
JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
VR was always a meme.Hurr Durr - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
Just like ur mom.CaedenV - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
VR will be great and wide-spread... just not at $500. The use-case for VR is just too limited. A flat screen is good for movies, work, games, work, and more work, but VR is mostly good for games... and even then only specific games. AR is also good for a wider variety of stuff, but still limited compared to a normal display.Still, I think we are going to see 2nd and 3rd gen products that are dramatically lighter, smaller, and cheaper to manufacture, and when they hit the $300 price point we will start seeing mass adoption (and games to match!). Should be good, but even cell phones didnt take off in a year or two. This is going to be a 5-10 year transition... and even then it will be to augment experiences, rather than replacing a traditional display.
bebby - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
Just remember 3D Vision...although it was fun, it is over now and this is what will happen to VR for gaming. As long as only less than 10% of gamers use it, there is no biz reason for software developers to fully implement it in their games. Best 3D Vision game back then was Avator in terms of how it was thought for 3D from the very beginning. Still have not seen anything to compared to that. And 3D Vision was easy to use, wireless and light.Steven81 - Thursday, August 24, 2017 - link
For current applications it is good for gaming and movies.For future applications it will be good for educational purposes , social networking, visualizations...
AR is useless for everything at this point, and I fail to see anything it can do that either would be usefull or VR won't do it better. I never understood they hype around it.
As for the prce point. Agreed. We're finally nearing the natual price of a beta product that current VR is. Occulus Rift had it right, $300 ... and then lost it, killing the chance of VR in this decade.
By next decade it would be everywhere indeed ... the tech it is too premature, low quality for the time being...
Teutorix - Monday, August 28, 2017 - link
AR and VR are two completely different things. You can't use VR to supplement a real world environment. VR is for immersion, AR is for augmenting the real world the hint is in the name. I don't think they have much overlap outside of the underlying tech.In terms of actual uses beyond entertainment VR would be better for educational stuff yes, but AR has many uses to improve how people interact with the physical world, one potential use is warehousing for product tracking, though the feasibility is questionable if automated warehousing becomes ubiquitous.
Yojimbo - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
VR is a new technology with evolving hardware and, more importantly, vastly different design constraints than what people have been designing for over the past 20 years. It will take content creators years to figure out how to effectively use the technology. Suppose you decide to make a VR game. You spend a couple years designing and coding the game, then you release it and get feedback on it and consider it. Now you have some idea of what works and doesn't work. Plus you have feedback from other people's attempts. So you go back to try again. That's one iteration. In the meantime the hardware may have changed, allowing different possibilities.I think it'll catch on, but not overnight. It's the usual situation. It looks like it took over 15 years for television to supplant radio as the largest broadcast entertainment medium. VR is different enough from traditional gaming that it's an appropriate comparison.
Gunbuster - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
Call me when it hits $200DigitalFreak - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
Not regretting my $399 Rift purchase. Better controllers and pretty good built in headphones. I'm really disliking the sensors though. They're a pain in the ass to get calibrated.timecop1818 - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
rift sensors and tracking is inferior to Vive in every way possible, so enjoy saving $100 to get substandard experienceedzieba - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
You'll only start getting issues once you have extremely large (beyond 5mx5m) tracking volumes. Within that, performance is functionally identical (limited by IMU performance) but both have tradeoffs: Constellation links to the host PC rather than the nearest power outlet, but both have wire-tethered sensors/emitters. You can use up to 4 Constellation cameras to increase occlusion robustness, while Lighthouse is limited to two (the new sync-less basestations can do more, but are incompatible with existing Vives and controllers/pucks in that mode). Constellation is vulnerable to overall scene nIR brightness (i.e. no massive open windows or outdoor use in daytime) while Lighthouse is vulnerable to any reflective surface (window, mirror, TV, polished floor) that needs to be covered.Manch - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
Controllers are better and I'll give a very slight nod to the Rift headset for visual. COmfort, Rift wins hands down. Tracking is just fine with two, Three is better but only if you have a larger room that requires it. Set up is easier on the Vive. Roomscale is easy. Less tweaking. Either way, no choice is bad. Both are at good prices. Just got to decide which is better for you.natesland - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
I have 3 sensors on my Rift and the tracking is as close to flawless as I can imagine. FWIW.descendency - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
For me, the problem isn't price. It's giving a care about the games that are VR. 800...600...400...200... it doesn't matter because nothing in VR is worth playing yet. Nothing has to be played in VR like when games went from SD -> HD or 2D -> 3D.marcplante - Tuesday, August 22, 2017 - link
I'm looking forward to project cars 2, but I'm a driver.natesland - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
Dead and buried. It's SO much fun!mhampton - Thursday, August 24, 2017 - link
Elite: Dangerous.NamelessPFG - Friday, August 25, 2017 - link
Elite: Dangerous, DCS World, IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad... you may not NEED a VR HMD to play any of those, but cockpit simming on a flat screen sucks by comparison, even with TrackIR to negate the head-tracking advantage. It's the difference between looking at a photo of a cockpit and actually being in it, with depth.So, no, don't tell me there aren't AAA games out for VR already, because they're right there if you just know where to look.
Also, try playing something like GORN or Robo Recall without VR. You can't, and vaguely similar games like Die By The Sword and Trespasser from back in the '90s felt a hell of a lot kludgier by comparison without modern hand-tracked motion controllers.
Honestly, I'd say I got my money's worth, and that was BEFORE the Rift got its massive price drops. Yeah, I'm a bit miffed about that, but such is life when I couldn't wait for something I've been waiting for since the '90s and the days of Virtuality, the Forte VFX1 and so forth. It's still cheaper than an extended outing at an arcade!
zepi - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
In europe people report rift coming with two sensors. Isn't this the case?edzieba - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
New Rift package is Rift + Touch + 2x cameras in a single box, omitting the handheld remote and XB1 controller. Older package was Rift + camera + remote + controller, and Touch was a separate box with Touch + camera.Skaface - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
Well the price drop is great and all. But for me living in germany we still overpay for the HTC Vive way to much.Costs after cut:
699€ on Steam and Alternate which is roughly 820$
Cost before cut:
899€ on Steam and Alternate which would be roughly 1.000$
Compared to the Occulus Cost:
449€ in Sale (528$)
589€ after the Sale (~700$)
So getting into the VR market with the HTC Vive as a german is not worth it unfortunally.
HomeworldFound - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
For me the problem is ventilation. Each time I've tried these things for more than a couple of minutes, my glasses have steamed up and I couldn't see properly.NamelessPFG - Friday, August 25, 2017 - link
Haven't tried a Vive, but my Rift is a real facesweat machine after playing something like SUPERHOT VR, GORN or The Thrill of the Fight for a few minutes. At least the lenses seem more resistant to fogging up than the Note 4 Gear VR.It makes me want to devise some kind of modified facial interface with a fan to keep things cool, even if it looks kludgy as hell.
Problem is, ventilation runs counter to blocking out ambient light, so it might reduce immersion.
oranos - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
they can't compete with oculus without cutting the pricetimecop1818 - Thursday, August 24, 2017 - link
they don't need to, if you would read the article you'd notice that Vive is overselling occulus by 100s of thousands despite the sale.occulus is dead, has been since suckerberg grabbed it.
edzieba - Thursday, August 24, 2017 - link
The claims are from SuperData, who are to be considered about as accurate as a tabloid newspaper (slightly below The Onion): https://www.roadtovr.com/what-vr-headset-makers-no...Manch - Thursday, August 24, 2017 - link
PSVR outsells Vive by 4 to 1. Vive isn't considered dead no more than Oculus.oranos - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - link
eventually mobile is probably the only platform where VR will live onvishwa108 - Friday, August 25, 2017 - link
Let’s trust that this price reduction will not awaken “HTC Purse Strings” to the fact that Mesmerism, aka The Charge of The Enlightened Brigade, has no bounds of pricing or fashion other than perhaps A Necessity of Survival. HTC realises this, of course. Eons before said price cut, the result of some joker testing his saliva-ed finger in the air.So, the question being asked by others is, Why and Now too? And why not Sammy and that Infamous Mesmeriser, Appflings. Perhaps LG ought to follow suit – but not when yore other halves are busy minting eet. Of course. LG and their multi-segmented offerings of the G6. Shorely a joke gone too far. But not when Mesmerism is at The Helm. Yous wanna a G6? Wait for Failure’s Expectations & Demands. Just like this incarnation of HTC’s Mesmerisc Efforts.
Humans have not changed from being 2-eyed to one for countless couplings – unless “The 3rd Eye” is your favourite eye. After all, when you see some cycloptic ambling yore way, you had better, “Git Outta Way”! So too will “Virtual Zist, Zat und zer Other”. Unless price Reduction has its way. Be aware, then, that Temptation is the best form of Persuasion, yet, for Dem Mesmerised.
james621lara - Thursday, December 27, 2018 - link
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