Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cruxador]

My VR rig was always on the bare minimum of support from Oculus, and as far as I can tell a recent patch finally killed it off for good. My sensors are giving me repeated poor tracking errors when I use the motherboard's 2.0 ports (no 3.0 on it), and my 3.0 expansion card is even worse, with "repeated catastrophic errors."

Going to have to upgrade the old beast, but until I do, no more VR for me.

Man, here I am watching this thread thinking this is a new technology that I'll buy into when it gets a bit less new, and there's people already with old and busted equipment gone obsolete to lack of support...

[SalmonGod]

My VR rig was always on the bare minimum of support from Oculus, and as far as I can tell a recent patch finally killed it off for good. My sensors are giving me repeated poor tracking errors when I use the motherboard's 2.0 ports (no 3.0 on it), and my 3.0 expansion card is even worse, with "repeated catastrophic errors."

Going to have to upgrade the old beast, but until I do, no more VR for me.

Man, here I am watching this thread thinking this is a new technology that I'll buy into when it gets a bit less new, and there's people already with old and busted equipment gone obsolete to lack of support...

It's not his headset that's the problem, though... it's compatibility with his (older) computer.

[ThtblovesDF]

I added one of the many SalmonGods on Steam (I assume you are the one also in the hoxhud group).

Also thinking about getting onwards, anyone gave it a shot?

Also figured out how to do head tracking with the vive in regular ArmA, which is nice, but that thing is heavy as all hell.

[SalmonGod]

You managed to pick me out of the crowd

I was kinda confused when I got the request.  Took me a minute of digging to realize - "Oh... It's that guy I'd offered to play Payday VR with, without even looking at who the poster was"

How many SalmonGods are there?  However many - I'm the original.  Been using this screen name since 1996.

[ThtblovesDF]

There are about 5 more then expected ; ) - we'll see if we can get it going, I am slap in the middle of the EU.

[SalmonGod]

There are about 5 more then expected ; ) - we'll see if we can get it going, I am slap in the middle of the EU.

No rush... I am busy as hell lately.  Lots of crisis at work.

[Folly]

I read an article today saying that Toshii eye tracking technology is being implemented in some of the next-gen VR hats.

For those unfamiliar, Toshii has developed a system that uses infrared sensors to track eye movement. This has been implemented in a sensor bar that can be mounted on a monitor, or installed adjacent to a laptop screen. The sensor essentially acts as a supplement to the mouse, allowing faster and more accurate clicks. In some instances, like certain video games, the sensor can completely replace the mouse, allowing you to interact with world items just by looking at them.
Toshii has also developed a set of glasses utilizing this technology, feeding precise information about what the user is looking at to a computer, and has touted it's potential use in marketing research and field studies.

Mounting these sensors inside a VR hat would allow for all manner of amusing magic tricks, where you interact with things just by looking at them without the need to aim your controllers.
But more importantly, these sensors seem to have significant implications when it comes to foveated rendering. As many gamers already know, most graphic-intensive video games do not actively render geometry behind the user, thus effectively cutting the GPU usage in half. Toshii's technology takes this to the next level, only fully rendering the small area that a person is actually looking at, and gradually reducing the resolution of graphics further into the users peripheral vision.
Early testers have claimed that they never even notice the diminished graphics, because it gets upscaled to full resolution the instant they move their gaze. NVidia has made the bold claim that this degree of foveated rendering can effectively improve graphic card performance by a full generation; which is to say, last gen cards will perform like current gen cards, and current gen cards will perform like next gen cards. Considering that VR hats need to render each scene twice, once for each eye, and it absolutely has to be the highest definition possible for a satisfying VR experience, this kind of technology could significantly advance what is possible in VR.

[Cruxador]

It also gets rid of the main technical hurdle preventing a wider field of vision, which means that future VR could potentially even wrap the full ~165ºx100º around your head, filling your entire real life field of view. Then there's just that grey haze that they've got people working on, and then it'll be fully immersive.

[PTTG??]

It will also need to take on depth of field, and do it properly. Not sure how they're going to do that, but it might involve electrolenses.

[askovdk]

Now that this thread is revived, then let me mention an article at Eurogamer about how to limit motion sickness:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-06-25-vr-makes-me-feel-sick-but-the-persistence-does-all-it-can-to-help

(Also, it sounds like 'The Persistence' could actually be a real game and not just a VR tech demo.  )

[Folly]

Magic Leap is an upcoming option in Augmented Reality.
The Developers Kit is available for around $2300. The website has several nice videos of software that looks pretty gimmicky, but they are offering generous sums of cash(up to $500,000!) to software developers, so there may be some decent offerings by the time they are ready to sell a consumer version.

On the Windows MR front, Samsung released their Odyssey+ headset this year for $500, but it's discounted this season down to $300! Compared to older models and competitors, this model touts wider field of view, reduced screen-door effect, built-in audio, lighter weight and improved overall comfort. All of this makes it a compelling option if you're looking to get into VR this sales season.

In other VR sales news, the Oculus starter bundle is down to $350, and PSVR starter bundle is $200.

[Retropunch]

Some news in today about 'VR shoes' as a way to deal with the omnidirectional treadmill/boundary issue (link here: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/11/19/2029255/google-patents-motorized-omnidirectional-vr-sneakers). I really don't know how they'd work in practice (they'd need to be very, very clever) but it's an interesting proposal.

If they could solve the problem via either reasonably priced omni-directional treadmills or shoes (or whatever else) VR would really be something a lot more people would get interested in and could easily become more mainstream. Even if someone wasn't super, super sold on the VR aspect, they'd be able to use it like a treadmill (which people already spend hundreds on) with great graphics or at least be able to justify the purchase as 'it gets me more active'. 

Another interesting thing is that we're turning the corner from VR requiring 'high end' hardware to sort of middle of the road gaming hardware. What started off as 'we can only just squeeze VR out on top end hardware' (which then had the terrible timing of coinciding with mining) is now pretty much standard issue (good) hardware. As an example, my work (not a gaming company or anything remotely similar) bought a number of laptops for presentations and stuff that would be VR capable, whereas 3 years ago they'd have been major high spec.

 

[Folly]

As an example, my work (not a gaming company or anything remotely similar) bought a number of laptops for presentations and stuff that would be VR capable, whereas 3 years ago they'd have been major high spec.

On that note, Google Glass is making a comeback with it's Enterprise Edition. Apparently companies prefer it over smartphones, primarily because you can't play games on Glass.

[SalmonGod]

Another interesting thing is that we're turning the corner from VR requiring 'high end' hardware to sort of middle of the road gaming hardware. What started off as 'we can only just squeeze VR out on top end hardware' (which then had the terrible timing of coinciding with mining) is now pretty much standard issue (good) hardware. As an example, my work (not a gaming company or anything remotely similar) bought a number of laptops for presentations and stuff that would be VR capable, whereas 3 years ago they'd have been major high spec.

All the talk about VR requiring mega-rigs never made sense to me.  My computer is made up of fairly old components at this point.  My GPU is about 4 years old, and everything else is 7-8 years old.  They were all upper mid-range when I bought them.  Now it's mid-range at best.  But I had no problems hooking up a Vive and enjoying things.  This isn't just a VR thing either.  The language people use when they talk about PC performance just doesn't make sense to me in general.

Like yeah... I have encountered a handful of VR games that ran too poorly to bother with.  There have been others that I had to put a little extra effort into optimizing settings to run pleasantly.  But the majority have worked just fine.

I get the impression that over the last 10 years, the mentality towards hardware capability has turned into 'if it can't run at 60 fps on max settings, then it isn't capable'.  And when extended to VR, it's "if it can't run EVERY VR APPLICATION at 90 FPS on max settings, then it isn't capable."  Which just encourages people to miss out on opportunities to enjoy things.

It's especially frustrating when people talk about individual hardware components like "How many FPS does this GPU support at 1080p???"  And I want to commit suicide by facepalm.  Because that's dependent on so many other factors.  Not even touching how many ways pc components can bottleneck each other...  There are so many graphical bells and whistles packed into games these days that take up a ton of resources.  You miss out on very little by shutting them off, and it doesn't take much effort or advanced knowledge to experiment with that stuff for a few minutes and figure out what works for you.  If I try to play most recent AAA titles with a default max setting, they will run like crap on my computer.  But then if I go in and turn off bloom, advanced fog effects, super amazing water reflections, turn down anti-aliasing a couple notches, and various other edge bits like that, I can get just about any game still running great on my rig at 2560x1600 resolution, and hardly miss the small sacrifices made in the process.

TLDR; The current linguistic approach to describing hardware requirements for gaming is way too simplistic, and is damaging to the industry, in my opinion.

[Persus13]

As an example, my work (not a gaming company or anything remotely similar) bought a number of laptops for presentations and stuff that would be VR capable, whereas 3 years ago they'd have been major high spec.

On that note, Google Glass is making a comeback with it's Enterprise Edition. Apparently companies prefer it over smartphones, primarily because you can't play games on Glass.

Google's been quietly doing that for awhile now. Glass is super useful in environments where workers need their hands free to do other things, like operating industrial equipment in factories, so Google's been focusing on developing Glass for that market for awhile now. Its not just about not playing mobile games, its also about not needing to look down at a screen or a readout.