The Glade 4.0

You can't check your phone in VR... and I'm a phone addict... so the appeal is limited.

I will echo Amanar's post and also add that I have no idea of what you mean by the Google Glass problem.



Says who? Someone would just need to make a phone app for communicate with the Rift.

I want real sword fighting or fencing games. Boy, combine it with a Wii or Kinect, could be pretty fun.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Ditto. Motion sickness would be an issue, immersion over interaction and even with a visor/helmet you are spoofing it.

The best idea I've seen tossed about for these is to introduce them in arcades so that you can install multi-directional treadmills and go there with your friends.

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Don't mind 'Skeee. He has a deep and abiding hatred of 3-D that stems from his movie snobbishness.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oculus is streaming a presentation/State of VR thingie on Twitch. Probably gonna feature a final product announcement/release date.

Edit: 1:10pm EDT -- we're getting a sizzle reel of the consumer version. Shots of the final product, EVE Valkryie, and now the dude's holding one.

I'm noticing it looks a bit smaller than the dev kits, and it's got audio built-in. The sizzle reel looked like it had a much more substantial tracking camera than the dev kit 2, as well. No visible marks on the goggles itself for the tracking; I wonder what they're doing it with now.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Closer look.

Custom display and optics. Stressing comfort. 2 OLED screens (oh, not just one showing two halves, now).

Claiming it's light, like putting on a pair of glasses.

Not as high resolution as you'll one day want, but wide FOV and stressing the tracking system and latency.

External sensor. Nevermind, probably not as chunky as it looked at first. It's shown on a stand.

They want to create revolutionary experiences, some seated, some standing.

Precise, low latency presence and tracking.

Won't just trick your eyes, also tricks your ears. Getting audio right is a critical part of achieving presence. Integral audio system.

Talking up comfort/ergo. "The goal is, you put it on and it goes away. It disappears." You put it on like a baseball cap. It doesn't squeeze your face.

External slider to dial in the inter-pupillary distance. We've evolved the form factor to better accommodate glasses.

Headset is completely encased in fabric. Ah, this is why I didn't see the tracking dots. They probably shine/reflect through the fabric.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

A couple of weeks ago, at a Doctor Who convention, I got to play around with a headset for a bit. It's still kinda rocking a '90s, Lawnmower Man-esque vibe.

Talking VR input now.

Wanted familiarity. Tested lots of things, built prototypes.

Including a gamepad in this generation of the Rift is the right move, to help the development community and gamers.

Including wireless X-Box One controller and adapter in the Rift. Mild applause, lol.

Windows 10 logo up while the Microsoft guy talks. "At Microsoft, we're incredibly focused on making Windows 10 a great operating system for gamers."

Rift will natively work with Win 10. (WHAT!?)

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Do you know what version? This more or less represents my DK2 experience, particularly depending on the app.

It should be noted that it features 960x1080 per eye, which is a big part of that.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

X-Box One can stream games to your PC/Rift. Halo, Forza, Sunset Overdrive mentioned.

The video they showed was side-by-side woman playing Forza (?) on one side with a view of the game being played in a virtual room, filling the wall while the viewpoint reacted to her tilting her head around and such. Not exactly what I was envisioning when they said it would stream... I'm not sure they get the point of 3d. Zero audience reaction to this, they're probably thinking the same thing.

Now we get Jason Rubin, head of Oculus Studios.

Talking about Star Wars' original release, and how Lucas and creating worlds inspired him. Took him 7 years to convince his mom to buy him a computer, which eventually lead him to make Crash Bandicoot.

Creating worlds is great, but they're still confined to the screen. Now they're not. Introducing CCP's CEO, to show us Valkyrie, no doubt.

CCP wants to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life. (Lol)

Talked about how the Valkyrie team started off with a few employees becoming Rift backers on their own initiative.

Now we see the Valkyrie gameplay trailer. Sounds like Valkyrie will have an E3 presence again.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This stream is not nearly bandwidth-dense enough for this trailer, lol. Huge amounts of compression artifacting.

Now somebody from Gunfire Games is talking. Never heard of 'em. Presenting "Chronos." Kid with a wooden round shield and a sword, wandering through ruins. Finds and wakes a big sleeping golem. And now, some action of him running away, dropping a portcullis on the golem.

The hero needs to free his land from the tyranny of a dragon. Central to his quest is a labyrinth that only opens once a year. The labyrinth is a test, and every time the hero fails, he's cast out and has to wait a year to test himself again. So he ages as the game goes on, and changes as time passes. For instance, he becomes stronger but less quick.

Now another guy talking (very) briefly about a game called Edge of Nowhere. Looks kind of like a Tomb Raider/Uncharted-alike.

More titles at E3 include Damaged Core, VR Sports Challenge, Esper, AirMechVR, and Lucky's Tale. At E3 and available on Rift next year.

List of developer partners. I see some big names, like Square Enix and Harmonix at a glance.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Now, we get Anna Sweet, head of developer strategy at Oculus. Wants to create the best platform for VR gaming. That means supporting established names, as well as independent creators.

Native support for Unreal Engine 4 and Unity.

Talking about the Oculus Share platform. They want to revamp it and make it more active and "vibrant."

Applauding independent developers as the creating the most innovative experiences of the last decade. Calls out Papers, Please, Minecraft, and Meatboy as unexpected game experiences nobody saw coming. They're looking to invest $10,000,000 into independent VR developers.

New guy talking. Missed his name, from the hardware development side.

New software, Oculus Home. "Portal to everything Oculus." Lightweight and efficient, as little between you and your games as possible.

Looks like a VR interface. A kind of room with a flat panel interface floating above a platform.

"You can't convey what a VR game will be like with a video. But since we're already in a VR space, we can let you preview these experiences."

Q1 2016 release date (not more specific than we knew a month ago).

One more thing to show us. "You heard us say input is hard. Well it is. We got it right."

Palmer Luckey himself finally shows up.

Developers have been working with gamepads for years and years. They've proven you can make compelling content with a gamepad. But we see virtual reality input coming in many different forms depending on the experience you're looking for.

They're bundling the X-Box controller to provide a standard developers can count on a user having.

But what about future games, future experiences that can only be unlocked with a different device? I've seen thousands of people presented with their first VR experience. The first thing almost all of them do is reach out and try to touch the world.

This is Oculus Touch. The feature prototypes (Codenamed "Half Moon"). Looks like a Wii nunchuck with a ring around them. Ring obviously has tracking sensors the same way the DK2 does. Tracking is critical, needs to be precise.

Half Moon provides hand presence, manipulation, and "low mental load." Facilitates communicative gestures for social presence. Image waving, or giving a thumbs up. Traditional inputs -- looks like it has buttons and analog thumbsticks. Lightweight and comfortable over long periods of play.

Half Moon comes in 2 controllers. Mirror images of each other. Wireless. Integrated high precision low latency 6DOF tracking, same as the goggles. Each has 2 buttons, a trigger, and a thumbstick. Haptics. Finally, has touch sensors on the outside of the device that help detect "hand poses" like pointing, or giving a thumbs up.

They've been experimenting with this with a sandbox environment they call toybox. Calls out laser guns, basic sportsy things, and a social space. Toybox will be at E3 demos, too.

Okay, found a screen grab somebody posted quick.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm into that. #AndJesusWept for there were no more worlds to conquer!

Press is starting to trickle in with hands-on experiences of the Rift demos.

Polygon's writeup is up, and muses on the difficulty of selling VR through text or stills before describing the demos on offer. The author gives a little bit better idea than the presentation did about how the Touch controllers work, which was nice, and from the sounds of it, they seem pretty responsive and natural.

The Verge has their own take, which includes confirmation that the CV1 has a wider field of view than the DK2 (which, remember, I own and have used). For reference, I found the DK2's FOV to be wide enough to provide satisfactory immersion, but not necessarily peripheral vision cues. This author goes into some more detail about the hardware, revealing among other things that the touch sensors on the Touch are on the index finger trigger and the thumbstick, which makes sense.

I'll probably keep posting E3 VR news of any flavor here, as comparing hands-ons (or, better yet, comparative articles after the same author's been hands-on with multiple products) are obviously going to be key in evaluating the potential of each competing product at this point.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

With valve stating their headset will be available commercially this year, I was really hoping for some good Steam VR information at E3. Their room detection solution looks pretty awesome.

Some insider info about the Ubisoft E3 VR demos -
http://blog.ubi.com/ubisoft-leaps-into-vr-at-e3-2015/

Yeah, I have yet to see any E3 hands-on with the Vive. I also haven't seen any comparisons between the Vive and CV1 Rift from somebody who's used both.

The thing I worry about with the room detection stuff is that a) it'll require a fair amount of space, at least from the perspective of my current layout, where I box myself into my computer desk with a right-angle desk on two sides and the wall on a third; and b) even really good sensor-less camera-based motion detection like Kinect 2.0 isn't very precise. In addition, the vast majority of the population (basically, everybody outside of highly trained athletes, surgeons, and maybe some artists) aren't nearly good enough with their muscle memory to make gesture controls work consistently -- which is why Leap Motion hasn't gone anywhere since coming out two years ago, and why Oculus evaluated it as a potential control scheme and passed in favor of developing their own nunchucks from scratch, so we're still a long way out from getting anything to read useful data from performing actual motions, gestures, and "poses" with our hands that a game would be able to read and interpret intelligently.

It'll be interesting to see how the room detection -- and the interface-conscious gameplay it's been demoed with so far, where you get queues built into the game to both indicate you're nearing the edge of your available space and the game itself is built around handling that limitation more naturally -- will stack up against something like Virtuix's Omni -- which has its own hurdles to overcome, mostly based around things like requiring special shoes (in your size, if you're trying to demo the experience with your friends), cost, and the subtle difference between actually walking and the foot-sliding shuffle you have to do with the Omni...

Actually, that's another good point. I haven't heard anything about the Omni being showcased with anything at E3, even though it's actually setting up for the final production runs for delivery at the end of the year...

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Polygon ran a fantastic interview with Palmer. It's worth 15 minutes to watch.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Pre-orders went live half an hour ago, with a final price of $599, limit 1 Rift per customer.

Not bad. Higher than a lot of optimistic bystanders' estimates, but right around what I was expecting.

They're listing a March 2016 ship date, which means it'll beat even the most current Vive promises -- namely April -- to market. (and I'm skeptical of those, because not only Valve, but they they just released a new dev kit a few days ago, so a 4-month turnaround time on spooling up a new iteration to manufacturing doesn't seem to fit with the cycles we've seen from the somewhat more transparent Oculus in the past)

Oculus Rift will ship with an X-Box One controller, which works natively with Windows 10 (and, I think, 8 and maybe 7, but don't quote me on either), a copy of EVE: Valkyrie, and a copy of Lucky's Tale. EVE: Valkyrie is a starfighter sim that's based around head-tracking to get target lock on homing missiles in the EVE universe. Lucky's Tale is a platformer starring a cartoon anthropomorphic fox.

The final resolution for this initial consumer version of the Oculus Rift is 2x 1512x1680, though I don't know how much overlap there is (and thus, what the virtual aspect ratio would work out to). nVidia has pointed out that the high resolution (rendering 3024x1680), coupled with the critical 90 fps framerate necessary to stave off the motion sickness that affects people (to varying degrees) when their own proprioception doesn't match up with visual input, makes for a 7x increase in graphical computing load over running a given game at typical console resolutions of 1920x1080 @30fps. (Granted, there's a little bit of nVidia PC Gaming Master Race spin there, because many if not most console games these days at least aim for 60fps, but both current gen consoles use AMD hardware, so I suppose you can't blame them for trying to sneak a jab in while nobody's looking)

Valve and HTC have yet to announce a price for the Vive, so it'll be interesting to see how theirs compares.

I'm a little surprised that Facebook isn't trying to loss lead this a bit (more?) to establish a market. Lots of people were kind of banking on $300-350, so I imagine announcing $600 is going to be a bit of a buzzkill at first. The rationale is probably that if you're telling people that they need a $600 video card, you can get them to cough up that much for their game-changing display device, too. The market clearly isn't gamers with sub-thousand-dollar rigs, so it can probably bear the price tag so long as it doesn't collapse under the grumbling, and maybe the goal is to weed out some of the obvious bad experiences that people trying to stretch their underpowered computer's capabilities would have because they couldn't push the pixels sufficiently. The thinking might be that it's better to have competing buzz between "It's amazing!" and "It's unrealistically expensive" than it is "It's amazing!" and "It looks like crap and makes me sick."

Oculus' custom hand-held gesture and hand pose controllers have been pushed back to a "second half 2016" release, though they should be getting developer kits out soon.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah, I'm also surprised Facebook didn't for more of a 350-450 price point and sell them at a loss to gain market share. Their VR controllers aren't even ready. I don't understand why they're including an Xbox One controller, as most gamers already have a controller that they prefer, and they could've cut the price a bit more. Pretty strange overall.

I'll be interested to see what Vive does, they've been touting that they're going to be the "premium" experience (I.E. cost more than everyone else), but with Oculus coming in this high if they can release anywhere near they'll gain a lot more market than if Oculus was at 350.

I'm waiting for Vive because I think the proprietary crap Oculus is already pulling with their API's and games is bad for the market, and I think vive's Room scale VR (and forward facing camera for real world collision detection) is a much more solid solution, but we shall see.

Snerk.

Yeahhhhhhh, someone has been drinking the Facebook kool-aid.

Polygon asks Palmer, "What happened to the price?"

Spoiler alert: the answer is essentially "We were initially going to consider a cleaned-up dev kit 2 the consumer version. Then, Facebook bought us and put custom-designed lcd panels into the realm of fiscal feasibility. We tried that, along with separating the panels to optimize interpupillary adjustment, and came up with Crescent Bay. When we compared Crescent Bay to DK2, we realized we couldn't honestly consider DK2 consumer-ready if we were serious about prioritizing quality of experience."

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades