Oculus rift

[Dewar]

So I hear the new 1080p rift was being demonstrated at E3. The "screen door effect" of being able to see the gaps between pixels is mostly (but not entirely) gone and it's apparently pretty beautiful.

 

Also, funding: http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/oculus-vr-exits-e3-2013-with-16-million-in-funding-for-consumer-rift-release/

[Jake]

Why do I want one of these? Man. Oculus Rift might be the center of my tech-shit-lust self hatred.

[clyde]

Enthusiasm is one of the most valuable things in the world, embrace it.

[Nachimir]

I totally forgot to post about this. I tried one out properly a few weeks ago.

 

The first time I tried one, in May, it was just a looping video on a low powered PC, so as underwhelming as 3D cinema, but really low res. At Rezzed the other weekend, I played Ether one with full head movement, and it was incredible. The sense of real scale and place completely obliterated the shutter effect; it's going to be phenomenal at higher resolutions. Being able to look behind me was… weird.

 

It also made me feel really, really sick after a while, but there are reasons for that. That really surprised me, because I don't get motion sick and almost nothing can make me nauseous. The potential mismatch in signals from synchronised head and character movements can do some weird things to your brain and inner ear though. The programmer I spoke to said he's done a bunch of work on finding settings and things the minimise nausea; apparently with the first settings they used, everyone felt sick, instantly and all the time. A big part of it was also that in later parts of the demo, the crosshair disappeared and the frame rate dropped. Neither of those helped, especially not having a centrepoint for my eyes to return to: pretty sure the orientations of my head and my eyes were gradually diverging, with the headset effectively isolating them from each other.

 

Interesting thing I've heard from several people working with Rifts: It's basically impossible to do 2D HUD at the moment without it being a blurry mess. To make a crosshair appear legibly, it has to be rendered in 3D, slightly in front of the character.

[Joewintergreen]

I have access to one of these now and it's super cool. Direct your Questions Here.

 

my Initial Thoughts from another forum:

I'm really busy writing documentation and submitting shit and getting ready to exhibit at PAX Aus (come to my booth) but here's my Oculum Drift impressions: 

It's super cool. Mine hasn't arrived yet, I'm using Jorn's since he is visiting. Mine is PROCESSING though. The low resolution issue is significant, though to me less of a "screen door effect" and more of a "i can see the pixels". The head tracking kind of overrides most of the shittiness of that though. 
The first thing I did was try the VR Theatre with an episode of Firefly, though I only hung out for the first few minutes. The most impressive thing about that program is the way the room lights up based on what's happening onscreen. The first scene of Firefly has quite a few explosions and they light the whole room up, it's awesome. Standing at the edge of the cinema I was like "Wow, this is actually a really huge room". 
In HL2, the first thing I noticed was the seriously good sense of scale, and the way that conflicts with the fact that in an FPS, for non-VR design reasons, nothing actually is the correct scale. You probably never noticed playing it without VR, if you're like most people, but Gordon and everyone else in that game is about five feet tall or less. The average doorway you walk through is twice as tall as Alyx. So when you're not around people (they're your size) you feel like a short guy, and when you are around people, you feel like someone designed every room too big (they basically did). Making a VR-only game, it turns out, is going to require some adaptation from level designers to make the scale feel realistic. The good news is I think you could basically make environments with Real Life dimensions and it'd be perfect. 
Epic Citadel feels huge when you're walking around it. 
Quake 1 is disorienting. 
I totally didn't stop and start a lot the way people tell you you should. I didn't get motion sick as such, but I did feel weird after not very long and ended up going to bed with a slight headache. I played some UT3 (in UDK, so proper native rift support) and that worked really well - even the parts where it jumps into third person, we were both surprised to find out that that isn't disorienting, even though when you turn your head the camera orbits your character (when you feign death). You aim with your head, and that is actually pretty intuitive. The spires in VCTF_Necropolis are hooooooj. 

I'm doubling back on myself a bit here but: spaces that feel cramped or small without VR seem expansive and roomy with VR. Jorn walked around the narrow spaces between buildings in Epic Citadel, and I asked if it felt cramped to him (it looked super cramped to me on the monitor). He said, not really, you could totally fit a bike through here. The indoor area in Epic Citadel, with the faux-reflective floor, feels small without VR but really pretty big, like a place where people would gather, with VR. 

The most disorienting experience I had, interestingly enough, was in the playground in HL2. I stood on the merry-go-round thing and that was fine, but then I did what I always do and jumped on the physically-simulated swing, crouched, and swung back and forth. I felt immediately bizarre and had to stop. 

We also tested Vroom! with VR which mostly worked, but we haven't tried InFlux yet. Going to screw around with this over the next few weeks whenever I have time! VR is awesome you guys. I just have to get used to it enough to not Feel Weird. 

Also: I haven't heard this effect mentioned before, but me and Jorn agree that after using the Rift for a bit, you take it off, and you're tired. Like, you want to go to bed and sleep. Not fatigued or anything - it's light - but I don't know, some kind of VR lag. The trip across the world to Eastern Europe for HL2 tuckered me the hell out. Will be interesting to see if that stays a thing.

 

Since then I've got my VR legs a lot more and don't get motion sick easily at all. I took the Epic Citadel rollercoaster yesterday three or four times just for kicks. 

[clyde]

So what is the deal with roller-coasters? On neogaf everyone seems to love the rollercoaster. Can you describe the appeal? Is it just a matter of "Can I handle this?" or is it an experience that VR makes worthwhile? 

[Joewintergreen]

It's not a "can I handle this jelly" thing, though I thought it was going to be. It feels less likely to cause motion sickness than a lot of more tame things like just running around HL2. It actually feels like a rollercoaster, in a surprising way. On the sudden drop part, I actually get that feeling like when you're in an elevator going down, you know the one. I was really impressed me in how it made me feel, I felt like I had to hold on to my desk while I was doing it the first time. I held on to the desk like it was that bar you'd hold onto on an actual rollercoaster. Even though there was obviously none of the wind in my hair or anything. It's interesting how much of that sensation is apparently based on sight. 

 

It also does the thing real rollercoasters do where there's a slow buildup as your cart climbs a hill that builds anticipation for the drop. It works incredibly well.

 

I mean, unfortunately, no-one can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.

[clyde]

I see a creative renaissance coming for roller-coaster design.

I've been thinking about games I want to play with the oculus rift (not much else to do ehen you don't have one) and I'm stuck on SSX. Man, SSX seems like it would be so cool with VR. A first person mode would be so interesting, especially of the camera flipped as you did.

Thanks for answering, I look forward to reading everything you have to say about it.

[Lu]

I would make a rollercoaster that looks really sweet and then half-way you go through a tunnel and when you come out the other end, the track ends and there are only horrible screams as you get catapulted into the air over the rest of the virtual amusement park. And then you die in real life too.

[Dirk Anger]

I've been thinking about games I want to play with the oculus rift (not much else to do ehen you don't have one) and I'm stuck on SSX. Man, SSX seems like it would be so cool with VR. A first person mode would be so interesting, especially of the camera flipped as you did.

This! A Ski/Snowboard game was the second thing I though of when I first heard about the Occulus (the first thing was "Holy shit, this must be AWESOME for Flight Sims!")

I loved 1080° and the SSXs to bits back in the day - but what those games utterly lack is the sheer sense of verticality you get when rding down a mountain in real life. For me, every Snowboarding game I ever played doesn't feel much different than a regular racing game, without the perception of scale and depth. I imagine this would be very, very different with the Occulus.

[Jayel]

My favourite demo so far is Titans of Space. It's a neat little guided tour through our solar system (and beyond).

Even though everything is rendered at 1 millionth of actual size, the sense of scale is amazing. It's truly something else when you're up against a star and have to physically turn your head all the way to see its horizons. I get sick very quickly playing first person shooters with it, but driving/flight sim demos feel very natural and I don't get nauseous at all even with hours of playing.

[Joewintergreen]

This! A Ski/Snowboard game was the second thing I though of when I first heard about the Occulus (the first thing was "Holy shit, this must be AWESOME for Flight Sims!")

I loved 1080° and the SSXs to bits back in the day - but what those games utterly lack is the sheer sense of verticality you get when rding down a mountain in real life. For me, every Snowboarding game I ever played doesn't feel much different than a regular racing game, without the perception of scale and depth. I imagine this would be very, very different with the Occulus.

I never played these games. Could you link a video that shows what you dug about them? I might want to try a thing with UDK.

[Patrick R]

I want this to be an Oculus Rift game.

 

 

[Erkki]

I want this to be an Oculus Rift game.

 

 

First Person Oculus Rift minigame in GTA V confirmed!

[I_smell]

Actually a bike-racing game is what I thought of aswel.

 

Did I ever mention I tried this? I almost forgot I did!

I don't know what version I tried, but it was sitting on a table at an office. There was a load of latency between me moving my head and it catching up on-camera.

I looked up, down, around and all over the place, then sat backwards and did other dumb stuff. It was a funny, cool toy, but wasn't as mind-blowing as people keep talking about.

 

Oh I played the roller-coaster thing, by the way.

[Joewintergreen]

The result of you guys talking about snowboarding games in here lead to me and my pal Jorn making an Oculus Rift game this evening. Coming soon! (tomorrow morning because I'm leaving it to upload overnight).

 

 

 

it has a twist ending

[CjEggett]

I know that the idea for the Oculus Rift is mostly geared towards "immersion" and that usually means "first person". But has anyone seen/used OR with a third-person game?

 

It seems that the depth/distance adds the sense of a "real space" - what I really want is that wow factor of walking into a beautiful/grand landscape, or narrowly avoiding a  dive into giant chasm and I mostly experience these situations in 3rd person games.

 

Is this a stupid question?

[Wrestlevania]

The first time I tried one, in May, it was just a looping video on a low powered PC, so as underwhelming as 3D cinema, but really low res. At Rezzed the other weekend, I played Ether one with full head movement, and it was incredible. The sense of real scale and place completely obliterated the shutter effect; it's going to be phenomenal at higher resolutions. Being able to look behind me was… weird.

 

That's really interesting about the head turning thing. When I accidentally discovered the head-turn key in DayZ, I immediately though of the Rift and how much better a tense survival game like that might be. Everything's so dependent on space and observation, my assumption is that Rift would add a huge amount to a game like that.

 

Interesting thing I've heard from several people working with Rifts: It's basically impossible to do 2D HUD at the moment without it being a blurry mess. To make a crosshair appear legibly, it has to be rendered in 3D, slightly in front of the character.

 

This is something else I've been thinking about a lot* regarding Rift, too. I guess something like Metroid Prime's projection map-like holographic HUD might work, as it curves naturally around the edges of your view.

 

I really, really want one of these, but I'm worried it's never going to be cheap enough to justify buying one. If I do somehow manage to scrape together enough money for a new chunk of hardware, it's definitely going on one of these over Yet Another Console. It might just be wishful thinking, but there seems to be a steady increase in mentions from different projects and developers regarding Rift integration over the last few months.

 

* My day job is interface and interaction design.

[clyde]

The result of you guys talking about snowboarding games in here lead to me and my pal Jorn making an Oculus Rift game this evening. Coming soon! (tomorrow morning because I'm leaving it to upload overnight).

 

 

 

it has a twist ending

I want to play it. 

[Nachimir]

Supporting UDK was a really good move to get developers making stuff for it.

 

This is something else I've been thinking about a lot* regarding Rift, too. I guess something like Metroid Prime's projection map-like holographic HUD might work, as it curves naturally around the edges of your view.

 

Yes, I think that and the projection from Dead Space would both work. Ether One deals with it by using floating text, which looks stylistically odd but works pretty well.

[Lu]

I know that the idea for the Oculus Rift is mostly geared towards "immersion" and that usually means "first person". But has anyone seen/used OR with a third-person game?

 

It seems that the depth/distance adds the sense of a "real space" - what I really want is that wow factor of walking into a beautiful/grand landscape, or narrowly avoiding a  dive into giant chasm and I mostly experience these situations in 3rd person games.

 

I remember one of the Oculus guys talking about this and that it can be a little strange to be looking over someones shoulder in Gears of War, but that it can be just as immersive. I suppose it all depends on how you handle the camera stuff.

[Patrick R]

Kane And Lynch 3: You Play The Cameraman confirmed!

[Joewintergreen]

I played some UT3 with the Rift - since it's built into UDK and therefore has full support in the Oculus build. I was surprised, the third person view when feigning death or driving a vehicle wasn't disorienting at all. It worked fine.

 

Also, crossposted from the Oculus forums:

 

I run a vidjagames company called Impromptu Games. Last night a couple of us decided to make a ski game for the Rift inspired by SkiFree. We worked on it for about five hours I think. The physics are a little glitchy for UDK reasons but it's mostly good - high FPS will help. As with the UDK Rollercoaster, setting the resolution higher than 1280x800 so the rift downscales will get you a far better image. The console command for that is "setres 1920x1200" or whatever resolution you want.

 

 

Controls:

Mostly self-explanatory. Left/right turns left/right. Forward and back push you a little bit in that direction.

Press T to restart the level (it's quite short but it has a TWIST ENDING).

 

 

 

Download link!

 

Also, taking this opportunity to plug the other game we're soon to release, InFlux, which needs your vote on Steam Greenlight. It won't support the Rift at launch but we'll likely patch it in.

 

 

 

Hmmm, quotes are weird on here. That was meant to all be one quote.

[clyde]

So how is it? Do you go off any sweet jumps? Does it feel similar to the rollercoasters?

[Joewintergreen]

-It's awesome, obviously

-You do go over some sweet jumps

-Not really, the rollercoaster is very different what with all the smooth, super fast turns and extremely steep drops. This is still cool though (in before the internet hates it)