Oculus rift

[melmer]

Did a search and didn't find anything, so... Oculus rift thread! Does no one else think this'll be an absolutle fucking game changer?

I was just thinking what the possibility of this thing being compatable with games consoles was, their FAQ actually states "We hope to make the headset compatible with major consoles and mobile devices in the future." I don't know what the probability of that happening is, but I think it would capture people's imaginations like the Wii did. It seems like the second anyone puts it on their nut they're instantly sold on it.

What i'd really love is to experience something like bioshock infinite, or even the first bioshock, for the first time with this thing.

At that DICE summit a lot of people were talking about getting older people and non gamers into gaming. I think this thing could be the key. Ease them into gaming by first selling them in VR. You could make a VR replicate of the titanic and just let people walk around it on its maid voyage (even sell DLC for the iceburg collision and sinking of the ship watched from a life raft). You could replicate classic football matches and you can watch it from anywhere in the stand, or as one of the players, experience the winning goal as the scorer. Average joe non gamer would go ape shit for this stuff. The possibilities are fucking endless and that's before you even bring gaming into it.

I think (handled correctly) this thing could come out and take the world by surprise, change the whole gaming industry and in 5 years from now 73% of all at home gaming will be done with one of these on your head.

[toblix]

I'm eagerly awaiting mine – I hope it'll turn out better than the Novint Falcon. The key thing is support, and it feels like everyone is eager to add it. If the SDK is good, and it gets supported by a mainstream FPS thing like CoD or Crysis, it might really catch on. Even though things seem to be going great (high dev kit demand (most of it misguided, and not for developing anything at all, like mine,) lots of PR and some high-profile hiring, there are probably a million marketing and financial obstacles they're going to face. If it becomes a success, I wonder how the MS and Sony will react. There are already the Xbox 720 VR goggles rumors ... maybe 2013 will be the year or virtual reality?

 

[melmer]

Why did i start thinking about this at 11pm, I'm not going to sleep tonight

Thinking more about the non gaming side and selling it to non gamers. Movie tie ins! People just want to experience the movie they loved in a different medium they don't necessarily want to play a shitty video game of it. Sell people an interactive tour of pandora from avatar, let people experience it from the perspective of a human and a navi (raise the camera two foot). How about visiting LV4-26, enter the compound alone and it'll be the ultimate horror experience or venture in with the bad ass marine corps, drop ship and all, I wouldn't even give the player a gun, just sell it as an experience. People have been going on alien tours for 20 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_War

How about actually visiting Jurassic fucking Park!

Seriously if I owned a games development company I'd get a small team working on replicating the Titanic STAT!

[melmer]

There are already the Xbox 720 VR goggles rumors ... maybe 2013 will be the year or virtual reality?

 

If the xbox720 reveal with a decent VR head set, that would change everything... EVERYTHING!!! EXISTENZ IS PAUSED /smashes face through table

[Joewintergreen]

The first thing I'm going to do when I get a Rift is load up HL2 and get looked in the eye by somebody.

[clyde]

I think you may enjoy this relevant neogaf thread. The original poster hypothesizes that the Oculus Rift could remove the necessity of gameplay for many environments. I agree. I also think that your ideas of possible VR uses for people with little exposure to video games is a fun subject to brain-storm. It's some Philip K. Dick shit thinking about going to a travel agency during a lunch break and some dude with a calm voice saying, "To Pyongyang again?" picking up the oculus to put it on your head as you sit in a massage chair.

 

[TychoCelchuuu]

Eh, that's bullshit. I enjoy games without gameplay already and it's not like people need gameplay to keep them invested in anything. I can watch a movie without any gameplay just fine even when it's on a screen rather than wrapped around my face for a COMPELLING IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE. The same goes for games. People who don't realize that games where you just exist in a space can already be immersive without forcing you to shoot monsters or whatever are people who haven't played Dear Esther, Proteus, Thirty Flights of Loving, or other things like that. We don't need Oculus Rift to deliver us into the wondrous digital realm of "being there." We're already in that realm but most people have ADHD and can't go 5 minutes in a game without shooting someone or 5 minutes in a movie without someone getting shot. Getting some people to sit through a Tarkovsky film is like trying to bathe an alley cat and the Oculus Rift will probably get them into Dear Esther for another 3 minutes until they get antsy and wish they had a gun and some Nazis or Demons to shoot.

[darthbator]

I'm interested to take a look at it at GDC this year. Some kind of "strap in" experience for enhanced immersion feels like an eventuality. The rift just feels like part of the current "beta early adopter" program. It's an interesting technology that's IMO not going to be a widely accepted consumer product for a good long while. It just seems silly to not be excited for something like this. 

[melmer]

Ha. I just read that neogaf thread, they stole all my ideas! Then traveled back in time! Bastards

Eh, that's bullshit.

I had my 'Jurassic park experience' all thought out in my head last night, and got super excited at the prospect, but had to stop myself because yes what if this stuff is actually boring as fuck. No doubt, this stuff would need to be play tested out the wazoo.

I'm picturing this stuff as a whole new medium, don't call them video games, that way your'll lose the GTA Ganny bashing video game stigma. But for them to be successful you would have to gamify the shit out of it, medals, achievements and progress bars everywhere, that's how you would keep average joe ADHD interested for more than 5 minutes.

[melmer]

It's an interesting technology that's IMO not going to be a widely accepted consumer product for a good long while.

I think this could be a really easy sell to joe public. The hardest part of the sell is already over, everyone knows what VR is. we've all grown up with it in Star Trek and the lawnmower man. In fact it's so old people will probably consider VR to be retro for example this was the Burger King mascot from 25 years ago (I can see now that they're just shades, I always thought they were VR goggles when I was a kid which really confused me, I just thought the guy lived in some crazy perpetual video game world. But no doubt they're designed to look like a VR headset)

The only bridge they need to overcome is the fact that you are blindfolding yourself when you put it on. The first time I saw it being used that was my initially hesitation, i don't think id feel very comfortable not knowing whats around me in the real world, and I think it'll be a problem for a lot of people. They need to slap a load of cameras to the front of it and a big button on the side, so at any time you can switch to a live feed what's actually happening in front of you, so you can grab the remote and turn the volume down of pick up your sandwich. Problem solved! I should patent that

[melmer]

Bit of a tangent, but this has got me thinking about the google glasses, motion controls and the future!

youtu.be/SsQT3mbvVWY

This could be replicated with todays technology, I'd imagine pretty easily, sit someone in front of a kinect with VR googles or the google glass on and voila.

Aren't the google glasses going on sale this year. http://www.google.com/glass/start/

2-3 years from now, people will have little portable kinect devices, which they can set up on a table anywhere which will sync with your google glasses and allow you to use their mini head mounted computer overlaid on their vision with hand gestures.

The joke about the hipster sitting in Starbucks with is MacBook or iPad typing away, and you think he's righting a novel but he's actually posting on the idle thumbs forum. That joke in 3 years time, is the hipster sat in Starbucks with his google glasses and his mini kinect device waving his hads around in front of him, you look at him and think with all those fluid hand gestures and swipes he must be creating a work of art when actually he's flicking through his ex girlfriends holiday photos on Facebook.

I'll make a bet with you right now, not only do I think this prediction will come true I also predict that I could get a laugh with that joke in the year 2016

Scary. There's a possibility that ten years from now gaming as we know could be utterly turned on its head, just like the explosion of mobile and touch gaming, the kids of tomorrow wont want to be sat in front of a screen with a joystick they will be playing augment reality games with no controller. There will be no new assassins creed 10 in the year 2020 as there'll be little to no market for those types of games anymore! Maybe that's a bit to far

[clyde]

Eh, that's bullshit. I enjoy games without gameplay already and it's not like people need gameplay to keep them invested in anything. I can watch a movie without any gameplay just fine even when it's on a screen rather than wrapped around my face for a COMPELLING IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE. The same goes for games. People who don't realize that games where you just exist in a space can already be immersive without forcing you to shoot monsters or whatever are people who haven't played Dear Esther, Proteus, Thirty Flights of Loving, or other things like that. We don't need Oculus Rift to deliver us into the wondrous digital realm of "being there." We're already in that realm but most people have ADHD and can't go 5 minutes in a game without shooting someone or 5 minutes in a movie without someone getting shot. Getting some people to sit through a Tarkovsky film is like trying to bathe an alley cat and the Oculus Rift will probably get them into Dear Esther for another 3 minutes until they get antsy and wish they had a gun and some Nazis or Demons to shoot.

Good point.

I am imagining you 30 years from now, at the end of a documentary about the rise and fall of the Oculus Rift saying in a retrospective tone, "But what we found out was that we didn't need to change the hardware, we needed to change ourselves."

[Dewar]

I really want an Oculus, but I managed to hold off on the Kickstarter. If nothing else, it will be a cool conversation piece with the one or two games that support it.

[youmeyou]

I got to try this for a few minutes earlier this year!

 

I think the Oculus will make certain types of gameplay a lot more viable. My reasoning is: in traditional first person POV-type game it's rather difficult to situate yourself in the game space. You know generally where your head is but you don't know exactly where your head is. With the rift, you do. And thanks to 3D it's even easier to understand where you are in relation to what you are seing in the game.

The ability to get up close to objects and determine spatial stuff in relation to your body is where I see this tech making a huge difference. Imagine LA Noire evidence hunts minus the hand holding tonal hints, where you have the ability to crawl around on the ground picking through virtual evidence because you finally can see shit up close in a video game and make out what it is. So I think this could be a great tool for adventure/exploration games.

[darthbator]

The barrier that needs to be breached is in manufacturing and cost IMO not necessarily in some kind of social acceptability. It's still very expensive for a very niche product (one without a lot of software support) and I think it will continue to be that way for at least the next 2-3 years. I'm sure something like this will show up in a big way eventually and I don't doubt this is the first really recognizable step. I just don't expect this to explode out to become the dominant form of game playing in the next 3-5 years. 

 

Someone mentioned it earlier (in a sort of condescending way) but I don't know if a device like this is in line with how modern peoples attention works at all. It's going to need to scale a pretty high bar in terms of the fidelity of the experience in order to get people to focus their attention solely on that and be willing to "plug up" their senses to their local environment. I think occullus is exciting as all hell but I think like most technological advancements people are thinking well beyond where we actually are. Due to that I think lots of very smart people become blinded to "black swan" technologies that show up out of left field.

[melmer]

For those who have bought a development kit

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/18/4118218/doom-3-no-longer-included-in-oculus-rift-deal

 

Doom 3 no longer included you can log in and request a steam voucher instead

[sLiPdIsCo]

For those who have bought a development kit

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/18/4118218/doom-3-no-longer-included-in-oculus-rift-deal

 

Doom 3 no longer included you can log in and request a steam voucher instead

TF2 added support a couple days ago. 

 

The barrier that needs to be breached is in manufacturing and cost IMO not necessarily in some kind of social acceptability. It's still very expensive for a very niche product (one without a lot of software support) and I think it will continue to be that way for at least the next 2-3 years. I'm sure something like this will show up in a big way eventually and I don't doubt this is the first really recognizable step. I just don't expect this to explode out to become the dominant form of game playing in the next 3-5 years. 

 

Someone mentioned it earlier (in a sort of condescending way) but I don't know if a device like this is in line with how modern peoples attention works at all. It's going to need to scale a pretty high bar in terms of the fidelity of the experience in order to get people to focus their attention solely on that and be willing to "plug up" their senses to their local environment. I think occullus is exciting as all hell but I think like most technological advancements people are thinking well beyond where we actually are. Due to that I think lots of very smart people become blinded to "black swan" technologies that show up out of left field.

Remember it's just dev kits that are shipping out for the kickstarter. Hard to knock something for having no software with no dev kits out there.

I've heard $300 for the eventual retail product which in my opinion is pretty reasonable. 

 

With the large amount of positive reaction from the press I'm super interested in it, but I'm terrified that my house will be robbed while using it.

[darthbator]

I have to admit I really need to fight the urge to not be negative about this thing. When I look at people wearing it something inside me feels like it's screaming "THAT'S NOT HOW I WANT TO PLAY GAMES!?". I'm doing my absolute best to reserve judgement until I put one on (obviously failing on that front...). 

[tegan]

I think this could be a really easy sell to joe public. The hardest part of the sell is already over, everyone knows what VR is. we've all grown up with it in Star Trek and the lawnmower man. In fact it's so old people will probably consider VR to be retro for example this was the Burger King mascot from 25 years ago (I can see now that they're just shades, I always thought they were VR goggles when I was a kid which really confused me, I just thought the guy lived in some crazy perpetual video game world. But no doubt they're designed to look like a VR headset)

 

I'm ashamed to admit knowing this, but those really are VR goggles. It's hard to find pictures of Kid Vid from his right side for some reason, but there's clearly an antenna attached to them.

 

[melmer]

The facial expressions in that image are hilarious

[clyde]

The facial expressions in that image are hilarious

You mean "THE facial expression_".

[melmer]

Yeah, I think they did a copy n paste for the three kids in the middle

[Joewintergreen]

I totally ordered a dev kit because I am psyched to experience the future of video games.

[clyde]

I totally ordered a dev kit because I am psyched to experience the future of video games.

I would love to hear about your experiences with it once it arrives.

[melmer]

But how will he contact us from the future of gaming