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Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6
- outericky 11y agoIs there anywhere to see a demo? Or are we just preordering?
- dshankar 11y agoMajor trade shows in the coming months are your best bet. I assume you're in SF and the next best SF event to demo would be GDC in March (if you can wait that long)
- soared 11y agogoogle map of individuals with kits willing to give demos: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zOfhcB3uWEbI.k7yXLlv2HcGY&hl=en_US https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zOfhcB3uWEbI.k7yXLl...
- trezm 11y agoSo... when does it ship?
- Greenisus 11y agoand what will it cost?
- dimlyaware 11y agoIt looks like it hasn't been announced yet: [ While Facebook and Oculus VR aren't quite ready to reveal a price of the Rift, Luckey suggested that it'll cost more than the $350 developer's kit. "You know, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you," Luckey said in an interview back in September. "We're roughly in that ballpark... but it's going to cost more than that. And the reason for that is that we've added a lot of technology to this thing beyond what existed in the DK1 and DK2 days." While $350 may be too low, $1,000 seems to be too high. Elaborating on the Rift's pricing on Twitter recently, Luckey stated that Oculus VR has the backing of Facebook and doesn't need an immediate hardware profit. "A company that has to survive on immediate hardware profit would have to hit with a much higher price - think $1000+. Not greed, reality," he tweeted. "1st gen VR users are being heavily subsidized by major players who want VR business to grow, though few seem to understand that." ] Source of Above: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/120994/20160103/oculus-rift-features-pricing-release-date-and-everything-else-you-need-to-know.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/120994/20160103/oculus-rif...
- ZenoArrow 11y agoThe only shipping information currently available (to the public) is 'starts shipping Q1 2016'.
- unklefolk 11y agoA pre-pre order holding page. Before this webpage I guess we were in a pre-pre-pre order state?
- mgo 11y agoI just get the feeling VR technology simply will not work because the resolution isn't high enough, and even the most top-end monster PCs cannot handle standard resolution VR, let alone 4K or even 8K in the future. Graphics cards really need a huge performance jump to make VR work, and given both Nvidia and AMD seem to be happy releasing a new set each year with only modest 20-30% performance gains then what does this mean for VR?
- Karunamon 11y agoEh. VR "worked" quite well enough for presence on the now-ancient Rift devkit 2. And my machine is hardly top of the line. A many gens old Intel proc with modest RAM and a GTX970. Worst case? It means that details are scaled back in the name of framerate. Presence still works in a world that doesn't seem perfectly lifelike, so as long as the player is in another world, that's the single most important thing. Less AA, less texture resolution. We can dial that back up as the tech gets better. VR is the new Crysis when it comes to stress testing your hardware :)
- corysama 11y agoExactly. Half Life 2 worked when hardware was 10x slower than today. Lots of 3D games worked even before that. They just didn't look like Star Wars Battlefront.
- ethbro 11y agoUnreal Engine 1 is still my benchmark for doing impressive things on pretty much any level of hardware at the time.
- djloche 11y agoEven with DK1, a single 1 minute demo was enough to hook me. It works.
- Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago> Worst case? It means that details are scaled back in the name of framerate. No, the worst case is that using them makes people sick.
- TranquilMarmot 11y agoNow the real question- go with Facebook and buy an Oculus Rift or go with Valve/HTC and buy a Vive? The Vive has more features (like head tracking) but maybe it will be more expensive? There's been nothing but silence in terms of pricing of either of them... I do have a hard time justifying $500+ for a screen I'll strap to my head that will probably be obsolete in a year or two. I will say though, I recently bought a Steam Link and a Steam Controller and I am pretty impressed with the quality of Valve's hardware.
- spike021 11y agoOr go with Sony and buy a PSVR (Project Morpheus).
- Zikes 11y agoThe only way to answer this question properly is to wait and see. No reasonable comparisons can be made until the final hardware and their respective prices are available and have been reviewed thoroughly. For now all we can do is speculate, which is fun but likely won't be terribly useful.
- yathern 11y agoThe Rift most certainly has head tracking - perhaps you're getting confused with Gear VR, which lacks positional tracking.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoI'm waiting for the Vive, or at least a bunch of a reviews of both platforms. I trust Valve a lot more than Facebook to deliver a gaming device that won't be caught up in strange legal requirements, social media promotion, lock-in, platform exclusives, and potential privacy exploitation. I also feel that the Valve team has been working on the non-sexy issues like controls, motion sickness, advanced eye tracking (rumor?), and head tracking as opposed to the narrative that comes out of the Rift which seems to be centered on "OMG RESOLUTION AND FPS!" Obviously, gamers will lean towards the latter but I suspect work on the former will be more important. I'm also concerned that this stuff will look great, but will require a $2,500 gaming machine to make it all work right. I just upgraded to a Nvidia 950 and from what I've read that's really too weak to do 1080p per eye at 60fps on anything coming close to AAA graphics. I really don't want to be forced to deal with PS3-like polygons and textures for the 3D effect to work correctly. I guess I'll wait and see. I'm certainly not doing any preorders. I'll let the early adopter crowd figure this stuff out. I'm also waiting for magic leap to produce an AR product, but don't expect that to happen anytime soon. I am somewhat concerned that AR could strangle VR in the cradle.
- akmiller 11y agoAnyone know if the rift would work on the newest high end model iMacs with the AMD M390? Obviously still have to run it via Windows I assume but just wondering if it would even work on them.
- x1024 11y agoYour GPU has an "M" in it. I don't have hard evidence, but my experience says it won't work.
- _pius 11y agoEven the latest 5k iMacs don't meet the recommended spec for the Rift (due to the M390), but it will "work" ... it's just not guaranteed to perform at an optimal level.
- sp332 11y agoOur development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows. We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux but we don’t have a timeline. https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/ https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/
- meeper16 11y agoAll hail the Lawnmower Man! This is going to be the biggest flop in the history of history due to being sent back to the 90's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCxFGxqLsHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCxFGxqLsHE Go Mondo2000!
- polskibus 11y agoI wonder if the Ephiphany day was chosen on purpose. Just kidding, can't wait!
- xiaoma 11y agoThe thing that worries me about this is that I don't see anything mentioned about different sizes. Hats aren't all one size. Glasses aren't all one size. I have an unfortunately large skull and "one size fits all" hats never fit me. Does this mean that there won't be an Oculus for me?
- lentil_soup 11y agoyou can change the size of the headset with some velcro that wraps around your head
- mkozlows 11y agoIt uses an elastic strap around your head, and flexible rubber surrounds for the eyepiece. It should fit just about any head.
- web007 11y agoFor the devkit at least, there is an adjustment band that goes from approximately waist-sized down to babydoll-head size, so you should be covered. The only adjustment for eye separation was in software, so YMMV for that side.
- strictnein 11y agoI have a fairly big head as well (I can't really wear an adjustable baseball cap for instance, unless I cut my hair short), but the DK2 worked for me, with a little room to spare. It also worked for my 4 and 7 year old kids.
- lstamour 11y agoIn the DK2, my glasses don't fit. Which completely ruined the experience for me. Additionally, the output appeared calibrated to the lenses to avoid color shifting, but to me that ended up causing little halos of colors at the edges of objects. Hard to say for sure why it happened, but because it was so "smart", I found the 3D much less realistic than Playstation VR, which has a simpler, more permissive headset that worked better with my glasses on, with no color shifting that I could notice at the time. It was lower quality, but better, because of it. I look forward to seeing reviews on the Oculus Rift from those with glasses ;-)
- akmiller 11y agoNot that you can necessarily pinpoint a specific date for release when dealing with hardware but I have to believe, with no hard evidence, that releasing new products right after Christmas and just before tax time has to be one of the worst times to release...unless you intentionally want demand to be initially low.
- berberous 11y agoI imagine the pent up demand for a consumer launch may exceed their initial manufacturing capacity.
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y agoDid they ever decide to care about Linux again? I returned my devkit because they said they didn't care about Linux a couple of weeks after I got mine. I won't send them more money unless they're going to support Linux.
- spicyj 11y agoNo, not yet.
- freehunter 11y agoDid they say they didn't care, or did they say they needed to focus development? There is a big difference between the two. If they were making a game in Unity and didn't release a Linux version, that's one thing. If they're making a brand new specialized piece of hardware and have had numerous delays and just need to get a product out the door... well it's a little more understandable that they would focus on one platform first.
- Alupis 11y agoThe worry is, as time goes on, it will become harder and harder to "bolt on" Linux (or OSX) support. Being cross-platform is a design decision, and it effects how you go about developing your platform (what technologies you use, etc...). So the fear is, they'll go down the Microsoft path and find it difficult to bring in other platforms down the road.
- ptomato 11y agoWell, with OS X, at least, there is no retail Mac that meets the minimum hardware requirements previously announced, except possibly the Mac Pro (though it looks like even that benches lower than the minimum for the Rift). Given that and that Mac graphics driver/OpenGL performance lags significantly behind Windows, there's not really any reason to waste resources on the platform. I don't know what the current state is, but last I was aware, Linux OpenGL performance was also significantly worse than on Windows, so it seems pretty reasonable to me to leave it out as well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cs0 11y agoWhy do they have to be so secretive of their pricing?! Why can't I see the price now so I can consider if it's worth it or not?
- potatolicious 11y agoPresumably because they want to be able to justify the pricing by telling you all about the new stuff they put into the thing, and they want to time details of the product with a big unveiling and marketing push. Just announcing the price without details of what you're getting for it is just going to make a bunch of forums and subreddits very angry in the way only gaming communities can get really angry.
- ethbro 11y agoIf they're shipping by Q1, then they know exactly what the details / specs are. If they haven't released the price, it's more likely because FB wants to throw some serious money behind the marketing push. Which either means they were going to anyway, or the price is going to shock people.
- potatolicious 11y agoSure, they definitely know what the details and specs are, but they also want to make a big deal out of said details/specs, and dropping it silently on a web page isn't anyone's idea of a big launch. It's likely that there are substantial differences between the product and the DK2, or even what's been discussed in previous interviews/previews, so it makes sense to not talk too much about the product until they're in a position to present it properly (e.g., a big keynote followed by journalist demos). And yeah, it's going to be expensive - the fact that they've said as much in previous interviews means they've already been trying to soften the ground for the revelation. It's almost certainly going to be more expensive than the DK1/DK2.
- Someone1234 11y agoOver $350 if this article/interview[0] is to be believed. $350 is the "ballpark" but more, so likely less than $500 but more than $350. If I had to pull a figure out of the air: $425. [0] http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-founder-palmer-luckey-explains-oculus-rift-cost-price-350/ http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-founder-palmer-luckey-explain...
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoProbably the better link is to the announcement of the pre-orders itself: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/oculus-rift-pre-orders-to-open-on-jan-6/ https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/oculus-rift-pre-orders-to-... I'm confused though; why do a pre-announcement for an announcement about pre-purchasing a product that's only two days away? They should have simply opened up pre-orders immediately. That being said I can't imagine they expect to sell much. It requires such a beefy PC (of which fewer and fewer are buying them nowadays for ultrabooks and tablets) and it's going to be expensive plus it won't ship with the touch controllers. I think VR will ultimately become HUGE but until I can get one for at most $200 and use without a beefy PC I'll pass.
- coralreef 11y agoGamers tend to own and upgrade beefy PCs.
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoHmm I'm having trouble finding any type of reliable statistics. When I used to do lots of PC gaming I was in many gaming groups of which maybe 10% of them would upgrade their computers to be above mid to high end. At most (all of us always complained about how terrible our PCs were and how lower our FPS were almost as if it were a badge of honor). But this is anecdotal so I have no ground to really speak on. Having said that it's hard for me to swallow that PC gamers "tend" to "own and upgrade beefy PCs". Any sources? Edit: interesting that when asking for source regarding the parent's claim I get multiple downvotes. I don't really understand why.
- yathern 11y agoHere is a good source - unfortunately down at the moment for me: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoThanks I'll check it out when it comes back online later. It's been a while since I looked at the steam survey; I wonder how indicative it is compared with the PC gaming industry as a whole. I mean they practically have a monopoly so I would imagine it's at least good statistically but I don't know how many go through the survey (I'm assuming it's still opt-in like it was when I last used it which could skew the numbers).
- strictnein 11y agoBetter link? https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/oculus-rift-pre-orders-to-open-on-jan-6/ https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/oculus-rift-pre-orders-to-... Also, no mention of the promised Xbox One controller among the bundled items. Wonder if they'll just be sending a coupon or something in the box.
- erikpukinskis 11y agoIt's in the box. Palmer has said over and over people can just sell it if they don't want it.
- aresant 11y agoI am truly surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on this thread. The Oculus is the FIRST high-fidelity consumer VR experience. And they've got the horsepower of Facebook's cash-machine as their bankroll. Zuck gets this to the degree that I suspect he believes Facebook & VR will be synonymous within a decade (1) Do I wish that Oculus was owned by some benevolent billionaire trickster like OASIS in Ready Player One? Sure, but come off it! This release will mark the starting line of the change in how we interact with computers, how we capture memories, how we tell stories. Oculus + 3D audio + input + eventual tactical is going to completely blur the lines of reality in ways we can't yet imagine. Already in the DK2 I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. . . . Really though, I have had some shocking experiences in the Oculus, starting with the DK1 going off the edge of a rollercoaster and feeling my stomach physically drop. Yes this is a generation 1 product for early adopters. Yes it's going to be expensive to buy, it won't be perfect. But if you're browsing HN because you're a hacker / developer / dreamer you are crazy to discount how substantial this release is (especially if you haven't TRIED it yet!). (1) http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/feee4a1e-63aa-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz3wIPsefAw http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/feee4a1e-63aa-11e5-a28b-50226...
- strictnein 11y agoI'm super excited and will be preordering. I think a lot of the "meh" response is the pre-announcement of the announcement aspect of this. With almost no details.
- wmeredith 11y agoHow do I try one without buying it? [serious]
- aresant 11y agoIf you mean the consumer rift you're limited to the big electronics shows for now, I'm sure that they have plans for broader consumer displays that we'll see in the near future. But if you mean Oculus in general the Gear VR is an ok start (and widely available) but I'd recommend (a) Get yourself to one of the many VR meetups that are fairly geographically distributed @ this point http://vr.meetup.com/ http://vr.meetup.com/ (b) Visit www.reddit.com/r/oculus and make a request for a demo in your area if you're in a less populated area.
- ambiate 11y agoHere are my thoughts on the situation: 1) First generation devices are usually flops/riddled with bugs, but usually exploitable if you don't upgrade firmware/etc. 2) I would probably need to buy a 980TI ($600) or Titan X ($1k) to make up for my i7-2600k's failure. (I want a Titan X for deep convolution neural networks anyways). 3) Nvidia is on the verge of releasing their Pascal architecture. The Titan X was just recently released (Mar '15?). While it is a powerhouse, the pascal base Titan may come with 12-16GB of memory and a 10-20% speed increase. 4) Intel is near release on their broadwell-e platform which should be able to consume 40 pci-e lanes (like haswell-e). No word yet on if they plan on being able to use 40 pci-e lanes with skylake. Summary: In 1 years time, there will be a base Pascal Titan that outperforms the Maxwell Titan X, a new ~$500 CPU that will be on par with the current $1000 CPU, and an assortment of VR options available. As much as it pains me, unless I see a Titan X for $600-800 on craigslist, I'm going to wait this one out.
- baby 11y agoAh, between this and HTC Vive... After testing both the HTC Vive was just years better than the Oculus, but I haven't tried the new Oculus iteration with touch... So hard to choose. Anyone want to discuss setups for both? I need to buy a new machine for that.
- yathern 11y agoAre you sure you tested the Oculus CV1? There's been many hardware iterations from Oculus and the latest one that people have been sampling has gotten very good reviews, some better than the Vive. I'm not saying that I know for a fact that one is better than the other, but I'm surprised that you think one is 'years better'.
- baby 11y agoI have actually never read a review placing the Oculus above the HTC, I haven't read reviews in a while though. Around 6 months ago the consensus was that HTC Vive was way ahead IIRC.
- sleepybrett 11y agoThe touch controllers are delayed, won't be ready for launch. It's a wet fart.
- glynjackson 11y agoI'm more looking forward to seeing the Sony VR. It's rumoured to be around the $250-$350 price mark. Sony have a history of getting traction despite not having the best spec/product, for example, remember HD DVD vs Blu Ray?
- bonesinger 11y agoI also think the Sony VR specs are pretty high. They want people to buy a PS4 and play games on their VR system.
- seanwilson 11y agoThe big advantage Sony has is they know all VR games will work well by design as all PS4s have the same spec.
- soared 11y agoNo way in hell PS4 has the specs for VR.
- swang 11y agoEh, uh, I mean Blu-ray wasn't a better product/spec than HD-DVD? I don't know about that...
- melted 11y agoNow watch this face plant in the market. It's a niche product with horrifically overinflated expectations, steep pricing, and no application ecosystem or clear, killer-app use case. Good luck folks, you're gonna need it.
- swalsh 11y agoI mean, i'm not going to buy it... but only because I think the vive offers a better experience. I think VR in general is pretty promising, and a bit more than "niche"
- melted 11y agoWhat's the use case to justify the massive cash outlay these things require? I don't see it.
- swalsh 11y agoI mean, immersive gameplay is a pretty big use case. To me personally, as someone who loves FPS games, that's a huge win. It's worth it to me. When it comes to making predictions, i'd remind you of this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- soared 11y agoUse case? Video games,obviously. This is early-early adopter tech. Chill out with your absurdly premature predictions.
- melted 11y agoWe're talking $1500 for the headset and GPU able to support the headset. Plus a pretty beefy workstation to feed that GPU. Plus the games don't actually exist yet, and they face a massive chicken-and-egg problem. No one but the most dedicated early adopters will buy this until the price comes down like 3x.
- peter303 11y agoHaving tried both the Oculus and Glass, I'd say the Oculus is more exciting. The Glass had about the least capacity a user could tolerate - slow with few pixels. The Oculus is about the most you cram into a wearable, even if you have to pay a lot for it.
- irln 11y agoMaking predictions about the adoption of technology is always perilous. However, after using Google's cardboard camera to take a few pictures on vacation and reviewing those pictures afterward I'm a believer. There's something about the immersive nature of those images that provide a very emotional contextual experience. If one is able to experience this with albeit relatively crude technology when compared to offerings like Oculus, I think these products could be very impactful.
- erikpukinskis 11y agoWait until the light field cameras (like the Lytro Immerge) come out. It's going to blow peoples' minds.
- Blackthorn 11y agoAs a flight sim enthusiast, I am super pumped about this. Though a shame the hands-controller was delayed so I'll need to buy a third-party one (leap motion).
- milkmanjr 11y agoFlight sim in the rift is what I spend the majority of my free time doing. Not sure what type of flight sim you are into, but using a proper yoke, throttle, and rudder pedals makes the experience much more immersive.
- Blackthorn 11y agoI use FSX and X-Plane. I already have a yoke/throttle/rudder pedals. I agree, they vastly improve the experience more than anything else. I currently use a TrackIR with two monitors, but truth be told it's a bit janky and I find it very difficult to visually tell angles (for example: what's the angle of my plane to the runway? I could use the heading indicator for that purpose but I don't want to develop bad habits for real-life flights). The hands thing would let me flip switches in-cockpit, which is nice. No more mouse!
- lsiunsuex 11y agoCan anyone speak to using the Rift as an extended desktop? I've seen some mention of using it as an extended monitor in both Windows and OS X - has anyone with development devices used it with head tracking and had an almost infinite display? How cool would it be to ditch multiple monitors and spread out over a 360 sphere code windows / browsers / documentation / etc... ? Use the head tracking to navigate the desktop world and still use the keyboard / mouse to interact.
- jc4p 11y agoFor what it's worth as of SDK 0.6.0 of the Oculus you can no longer use it as an extended display. Prior to 0.6.0 you could run the Oculus in either "Extended" mode which just made it show up as an extra monitor, or in "Direct" mode where apps directly displayed their contents on the Oculus (without you having to move the window, make it full screen, etc). What you're talking about however can easily be done with [Virtual Desktop](http://www.vrdesktop.net/ http://www.vrdesktop.net/) -- I've used it a few times while developing, it mostly works. It's definitely a nice experience to have your IDE infront of you, documentation a head tilt to the right, and Google a head tilt to the left, but the resolution was too low for me to be comfortable reading text for a long time on the DK2.
- seanwilson 11y agoI don't understand why there isn't more emphasis on non-realistic graphics for VR to keep the specs down. If you try to make a VR game that looks as good as current high-end games, it's always going to require massive horsepower because it must run at 60+ FPS at a high resolution so everyone but hardcore gamers are going to be left out. Mobile gaming became hugely popular without high-end graphics because of the easy of use, portability and touch input controls. I would have thought it would make more sense for VR games to focus on experiences you can only have with VR games (e.g. highly immersive, having sense of scale, use of hand input) and play to its strengths rather than limit its audience with high-end graphics. I'm very excited about VR but having to buy a Rift and a high-end Windows gaming PC is asking a lot to get involved.
- Arelius 11y agoThere is a lot of emphasis on non-realistic graphics. But the consensus is that it must run at 90FPS+ with two views so that bumps the specs back up again. Especially considering that most contemporary game engines aren't build with those sort of latencies in mind.
- mastax 11y ago> There is a lot of emphasis on non-realistic graphics Yes, I've seen this a lot on mobile especially and also with things like "Job Simulator". What I'm confused about is everyone (especially on /r/oculus) being very adamant about needing a GTX 970+ for VR. My ~$200 GTX 760 can consistently run Team Fortress 2 at upwards of 200 frames per second, and TF2 looks fine to me. I'm sure many people will appreciate having games for VR that take advantage of their fancy hardware, but why scare people away with such high requirements? Can't the industry tighten its belt a little for the first round and live with the fact that VR games won't look quite as good as their 2D counterparts? Surely even a $700 gaming PC would deliver a better experience than GearVR, which is already quite good.
- moron4hire 11y agoVR is not comparable to 3D TV because it's not TV. It's fundamentally an interactive medium over which the user has complete narrative control, yet one that doesn't feel like you're interacting with something, so much as wearing a piece of clothing. 3D TV is burdensome for very little benefit. VR is freeing for significantly greater benefit. If you haven't tried it, you don't understand the difference between head tracking and moving a mouse around in an FPS game. They are not just different ways to move a pointer around. They are fundamentally different. They are so fundamentally different that it's actually difficult to combine the two concepts. VR is not comparable to the Wii or the Xbox 360 with the Kinect (which were massively successful products, so I don't know what the point of comparing them is), because there is zero disconnect between motion and reaction. You aren't looking at a mirror version of yourself moving around. You're just moving around. If you haven't tried it, you don't understand the difference between waving your hand around at the Kinect, trying to line up hits with no depth perception, and using VR with even a relatively low-res positional tracker like the Leap Motion. If you haven't tried it, you just don't know what you're talking about. You have nothing in your life from which to draw a conclusion. That includes anyone talking about the systems from the 1990s. I can, today, in a weekend, create a full VR experience that would blow Dactyl Nightmare out of the water, and give it to you for a handful of dollars. The order of magnitude difference in realism and price is staggering. It's the between a real car and one of those RC cars that only turns when you put it in reverse, and then only in one direction. Except the real car is the one that costs $50, and the RC car was $20k. VR is going to fulfill the promise of teleconferencing. If VR was a "flop" in the 90s, then teleconferencing definitely was, too. Talking to people face-to-face in VR is night-and-day better than using Skype or FaceTime. There is barely any comparison to be made. You forget you're using technology when having a f2f with a person in VR. And this isn't a prediction. This is available today. The product development lifecycle is going to speed up, as VR is going to give us a new, virtualized testing cycle that isn't bottle-necked by physical prototypes just to check look-and-feel. Architects are going to make better pitches. Universities and hospitals are going to sell more buildings and research wings to big-ticket donors. Other universities will do away with their physical presence entirely. Doctors will be able to share life-saving techniques and train other doctors across the world in the fine-motor skill to perform it. Museums are going to be able to record exhibits in full detail, into perpetuity, and provide patrons unprecedented access to artifacts that would otherwise be too sensitive to put on display in public, relatively uncontrolled environments. Psychiatrists are going to be able to treat more patients. Data scientists are going to be able to recall and organize more information. All of these things are doable on a smartphone in a cardboard box, say nothing about the rapidly developing market of purpose-built devices. Have you not been paying attention? Technological advancement has only been accelerating. It's not going to be "many years" before these devices are any good. It's going to be two. It's going to be less time than it took the iPhone to get any good. Remember that original iPhone? That no-app-store-having, no-3G-having, no-GPS-having, no-speech-recognition-having iPhone? That glorified iPod with a relatively crappy phone crammed in it? To quote Tom Hardy's character Eames, speaking to Joseph Gordon Levitt's character Arthur in the Christopher Nolan film INCEPTION: "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."
- aculver 11y agoI'm surprised no one on here has mentioned Minecraft yet. One game that I was never able to get into before Oculus Rift was Minecraft. My kids have been begging me to play with them, but I really struggled to remain interested in the game. I could see why they loved it, but I didn't get into myself. It bugged me that I was missing this opportunity to connect with my kids, especially with something computer-y, so over the holiday I spent a little time getting the Minecrift mod working. Wow! I now totally get it, and it seems to me that Minecraft will be at least one huge driver for the adoption of VR hardware amongst folks who are able to use it. (Recommended 13+.) The low-resolution polygons in Minecraft really accentuate the 3D effect. When you're going up hills or looking at trees, the depth effect is crazily pronounced and amazing. The basic graphics in Minecraft also have the benefit of rendering quite nicely even on incredibly limited hardware. For example, I spent hours playing on my 12" Retina MacBook, which I believe is the weakest hardware Apple ships. (Maybe it benefits from a GPU that powers a Retina display? I don't know.) Getting attacked by creepers and zombies in the first-person was an insane experience. My heart rate was actually going up as I attempted to escape and ultimately failed. And I was there. I grew personally attached to the cave I mined for myself where I hid to protect myself throughout the night, and felt a little sad when I accidentally let water flood in and destroy it. I was in that cave. Very cool. I would frequently look down at my hands to remind myself of what weapon or tool I was holding and go through my hot keys until I saw the tool I wanted to use. I'd spend a good deal of time just watching that big pixelated sun set over a landscape, and if I found a safe place, I'd sit around and watch the stars move through the night sky as the earth rotated. (Mostly I think this is when I became the most aware of the "screen door" effect.) Anyway, if you've got DK2 hardware, I highly recommend trying it out with Minecraft if you haven't already. Microsoft announced they're planning official Oculus Rift support for Minecraft in the first half of next year, and judging from the way my son talks to his friends about it ("he's actually in Minecraft,") I think Minecraft will be a huge driver of sales of Oculus Rift.